“Can’t get a clean shot, even if we get permission to fire,” Ledward said. “He’s keeping the service tech in front of him, and—”
“Wait a minute,” Daniels interrupted. “He’s got a hostage?” When Hallet nodded, she glared at him. “You didn’t tell us that. Why the hell didn’t you tell us that?”
The sergeant’s deportment did not change. “You really wanted the two suits from company to hear that? Both of them looked like they were going to have a heart attack as it was.”
She conceded the point. “Right. Okay, so there’s a hostage. How is he behaving?”
“She,” Ankor corrected. “Pretty well, considering that she’s in the hands of a crazy person who might at any moment blow the two of them out into space.”
Daniels’ thoughts churned. “Any chance she could get away from him?”
Ledward let out a snort. “Sure. Right before he shoots her in the back of the head. Near as we can see, he’s got only a pistol, but that’d do it. No heavy weaponry. Won’t need any if he blows the door.”
“He doesn’t seem concerned for his own life,” Hallet put in.
“The rest of the bay is secure?” Daniels pressed him.
The sergeant nodded. “Monitors show every piece of equipment as unoccupied and service spaces between are clear. There’s nobody left inside except crazy guy and his hostage. Whoever he is, he’s working this alone.” He was silent for a moment before continuing. “As a security situation, this falls within my sphere of operations—but I know you’ve got company reps on board. Plus—” he gestured toward the vast storage bay on the other side of the door “—I know you’re responsible for every piece of gear in there down to the last self-setting screw. I don’t want to do anything without getting your say-so. Any thoughts on how you want to proceed?”
She considered. “You said he claims to have set explosives in the bay. Do we know what kind of explosives?”
Hallet exchanged a glance with his team members before turning back to Daniels. “No idea. He didn’t go into details. He did say that he’s set packages at multiple locations.”
She nodded, thinking hard. “He’d have to. It would take a lot to blow the main door. So… multiple explosives at multiple points. To make a dent in the big door he’d have to set them all off—or most of them, at least—simultaneously. That suggests he’s working with some sort of remote detonator.”
The security team leader regarded her. “You sure you never worked security?” Hallet asked.
She shook her head, preoccupied. “When my section is involved, my cargo, my responsibilities, I try to think things through.” She looked up at the sergeant. “A remote detonator implies broadcasting an execute signal of some kind. Infrared would need line-of-sight. Short range RF would work better.” She eyed each of them in turn. “If we can’t disrupt his actions, maybe we can disrupt his device.”
“How we gonna do that?” The youthful Ledward’s trigger finger was twitching. All he wanted was one clean shot at the saboteur, but the monitors indicated their target had taken good cover. Whatever his ultimate rationale, while he might be crazy he wasn’t stupid. Daniels pulled her comm unit from her duty belt.
“Tennessee, you there?”
The reply from the bridge was immediate. “Right where I belong, darlin’,” the ship’s pilot said. “I hear there’s a, uh, situation in the main cargo bay.”
“Some wack job has planted explosives on the main door and taken a hostage. Monitors show him keeping under cover so security can’t get at him easily.” Then she pulled out her multiunit and checked a new readout. “Scans indicate that he’s got some kind of small nonstandard electronics installed in the glove of his right hand, and something else with a flex battery inside his right boot. We need to shut him down.”
“Tell me what to do.” From his position on the bridge, operating independently or in tandem with Mother, Tennessee or his wife and co-pilot Faris could control the entirety of the Covenant’s systems.
“Ship’s instrumentation is set up to remotely adjust or manipulate the programming on every piece of terraforming equipment, prior to their being unloaded on Origae-6,” Daniels said. “The same systems ought to work just as well right now. I want you to bathe the entire cargo bay in a full electromagnetic pulse. Smother the local spectrum with junk—range-specific pencil-beam broadcast. That should jam whatever frequency our unhappy visitor is using for whatever he’s installed in his glove and boot. An e-shutdown won’t deactivate the explosives, but if either the glove or the boot contains the detonator, he won’t be able to set them off.”
“This your call, darlin’?” Tennessee sounded more than a little dubious. “A full smother will scramble every unshielded instrument on every piece of equipment in the bay. Any of them that happens to be active will need to be completely reprogrammed.”
She smiled thinly. “It’s not like we won’t have plenty of time. Besides, when it comes to reprogramming, Mother can do the heavy lifting. In the meantime, I take full responsibility for this course of action.” She noted that Hallet was watching her closely.
“What happens if it doesn’t work?” the sergeant asked.
She shrugged once. “Then I’ll owe Weyland-Yutani a new cargo bay door—and Jacob and I will probably be searching for a new career arc.” She scanned the rest of the group. “Everybody suit up. Once we’re inside, cables down. If this doesn’t work and he blows the door, at least we won’t follow the gear out the back.” Once more she addressed the comm unit. “In five minutes, Tennessee.”
She turned back to the waiting security team. “Let’s move, and don’t forget those tie-down cables. I’m not gonna be in position to grab anybody if they go flying by. At five minutes two seconds, we go in… quietly.”
Hallet nodded. “The guy won’t even see us, but we’ll see him on our suit monitors.” She gave him a look, and he added, “We won’t do anything to endanger the hostage.”
“I’m counting on that,” she said. “I’m coming with you.” Pulling an EVA suit from a cabinet by the door, she climbed into it and let the stocky Private Cole help her with the helmet. “Suit comms will also be jammed, so we won’t be able to communicate with Mother. We’ll have to use the manual diaphragms to talk to each other. Once we make contact with the crazy, I’ll try reasoning with him.”
“We already did that,” Cole pointed out quietly through his thick beard. “As you know, it didn’t do a damn bit of good.”
“Maybe I can be more persuasive.” She checked the broadcast volume on the unit’s manual communications setup. “If nothing else, you can be positioning yourselves while I engage him.”
“If he doesn’t decide to kill the hostage first,” Ledward muttered.
“He kills her, he loses his shield.” Ankor was checking his rifle.
“Given his threat to blow the door while he’s standing right next to it, it doesn’t sound to me like he much cares if he lives or dies,” Daniels reminded the private. “All he wants is to fulfill his mission, which is to stop the Covenant from carrying out its own, and to vent whatever propaganda he’s cobbled together. Neither is going to happen.” She turned back to Hallet. “Time’s about up.”
He nodded. Hefting his own rifle, he positioned himself beside the door that opened into the cargo bay. As Daniels had surmised, the velocity of the F90’s ammo had been adjusted for safe use within the hull of the ship.
At five minutes plus two seconds, Ledward activated the door controls. Rifle raised, Cole led the way. Once inside he immediately moved to his left so that he wasn’t blocking the portal. Ankor followed him and slid to the right. Should it be needed, they could lay down covering fire. Hallet, Ledward, and, finally, Daniels advanced quickly into the cargo bay. One by one they attached their suits to the sliding emergency cables that would reel out behind them. In the event of the bay’s sudden, explosive decompression, the cables would keep them from being sucked out into space.