“Get him,” he muttered. “Hurry.”
He turned his attention back to the display. The enemy fleet wasn’t slowing; instead, it was actually picking up speed, as if the CO was determined to play a mad game of chicken. Or, perhaps, force his way into energy range. Colin grinned to himself, then checked the tactical display. They would be in medium range in two minutes. And then they would see…
Sidney had no problems navigating the tubes. As a native of an asteroid settlement, he was perfectly aware that sometimes he just had to crawl through tubes, even if the tubes were so thin that it seemed they were closing in on him. He clutched his stunner in one hand as he came out of the tube and turned to see a young woman fiddling with a datapad. She let out a gasp as she saw him, then grabbed for the pistol at her belt. Whatever she was, Sidney realised, she’d had some good training. She had the pistol out of her holster before he zapped her with the stunner. She let out a little gasping sound and crumpled to the metal deck.
He keyed his throatmike as he stepped forward, keeping the stunner pointed at her head. “I found her,” he said, as he knelt down beside her. They’d been warned to take no chances, so he pulled her hands behind her back and secured them, then tied her ankles together. “Just one person, Sergeant.”
“Understood,” the Sergeant said. “Are you sure she’s out of it?”
Sidney checked the girl’s vital signs. “Yes,” he said, shortly. “She’s definitely stunned.”
“Good,” the Sergeant said. “The others are on their way now. Once they’re with you, help them carry her to the brig. Leave her modifications alone. The engineers will deal with them.”
“Crewman Third Class Natasha Rosina,” Anderson’s voice said. “One of our newcomers, definitely. And she would have been in position to betray the asteroid too.”
“Understood,” Colin said. “Take care of her. I’ll see you once the battle is over.”
He closed the channel, just as the enemy ships came into range. “Lock weapons on target,” he ordered. “Fire!”
The five arsenal ships that had been pretending to be superdreadnaughts fired as one, launching over ten thousand missiles towards the enemy ships. Colin’s actual superdreadnaughts fired a moment later, adding their own weight of fire to the barrage. The enemy ships seemed to flinch as the missiles roared towards them, then returned fire. Colin allowed himself a tight smile, then gave the order. The entire fleet flickered out without further ado.
“Jump complete, sir,” the helmsman said. “We escaped without losses.”
Colin smirked. The enemy fleet had probably powered up its flicker drives too, assuming that Admiral Wachter had overridden the beancounters who whined about wear and tear on expensive machinery. In peacetime, they would have had a point. Keeping a flicker drive powered up shortened its lifespan by at least half. But now, with massive missile swarms an ever-present threat, such whining should go out the airlock.
“Seeker will join us later,” he said. The destroyer’s orders had been to cloak, then observe the result of the missile barrage. Colin would have preferred to believe that the enemy squadron was utterly destroyed, but he knew better than to count on it. “Stand down from battlestations; take us back to the rest of the fleet.”
He stood. “XO, you have the bridge,” he added. “Contact me as soon as we reach the fleet.”
There were five armoured Marines on duty outside the brig compartment, with two more inside. The ship’s doctor was examining a naked figure lying on a bed inside the first cell, with yet another Marine and Anderson standing next to her. Both of the men looked concerned — and irked. The girl had spied on them for months and they’d only noticed through sheer luck.
“She’s basically normal, physically,” the doctor said. “No implants that I can detect, a limited amount of gene-splicing… nothing really dangerous. The only significant point is a modified gene for null-gravity environments, one that isn’t catalogued in the database. It might just have come from the Beyond.”
“Or it might have been devised by Imperial Intelligence,” Anderson rumbled. “Something to prove her credentials.”
“Perhaps,” Colin said. “And no one suspected anything?”
“Her supervisor gave her a glowing report,” Anderson said. “She was liked by everyone, it seems. And she had a partner, one Crewman Rogers. He refused to believe the truth when I told him.”
Colin winced, feeling a moment of sympathy for the young man. It wasn’t easy to form a relationship with a girl, not on an Imperial Navy starship. Below decks, life could be very hard for the women. They were not only outnumbered significantly by the men, they were often chased by their superior officers too. And the very worst ships had the female crewmen forced into prostitution… it was one of the things everyone knew happened, but did nothing to stop. Colin had won the loyalty of Shadow’s crew by taking a stand against such gangs.
“No need to harass him,” Colin said. “Check him out with a lie detector, then let him go.”
“We know how she accessed the datanet now,” Anderson said, changing the subject. “If she refuses to cooperate, we can duplicate it for ourselves.”
The spy let out a gasp, her entire body jerking against the restraints. Colin watched, grimly, as the doctor placed an injector against her neck and shot something into her bloodstream, explaining that it was a mild sedative. It was quite possible, Colin knew, that the spy had been conditioned to commit suicide as soon as she was captured. The sedative, combined with the restraints, might make it impossible.
Her eyes jerked open. “I…”
“Relax,” the doctor said. “You’re safe.”
Anderson grunted, unpleasantly. The doctor shot him a sharp look. There would be time for an intensive interrogation later, but for the moment they had to prevent any suicidal programming from activating. If the spy didn’t believe herself to be in real danger… she jerked again, her hands straining against the restraints. Colin shook his head, but refused to turn away. There was no way the spy could believe she was not in danger.
The girl convulsed, then went limp. Alarms sounded as her entire body sagged. The doctor swore, then pushed another injector against her neck. But it was already too late.
“The command to commit suicide was too strong,” the doctor said. There was a bitter tone in her voice. “The moment she realised she was caught, her conditioning ordered her to die.”
Anderson scowled. “There was nothing you could do to save her?”
“I could have kept her permanently sedated or stuffed her into a stasis tube,” the doctor snapped, tartly. “But I doubt I could have kept her awake and alive. You would probably need direct brain linkage to pull anything out of her and we don’t have the equipment. And if we did, I wouldn’t. It would be grossly immoral.”
“Imperial Intelligence does it all the time,” Anderson said.
“I rest my case,” the doctor countered. She looked over at Colin. “I’ll give her an autopsy, but I don’t think I’ll uncover anything particularly significant. There was nothing special about her, merely her brain and her forced obedience to orders.”
Colin leaned forward. The girl looked so innocent, in death. “You’re sure she was forced?”
“She was quite definitely conditioned,” the doctor said. She shrugged, expressively. “But apart from that… we’ll probably never know. She could have been captured, turned into a spy and sent back to the Beyond or she could have volunteered for the job. If she’d changed her mind later…”