by R. A. Nargi
I thought about what I might do if the Faiurae had killed her. As I considered the possibility, a rage simmered deep within me. I would have to take them out. Each and every one. And screw the Rhya.
With those dark thoughts swirling around in my head, I prepped the bay doors for auto-launch and powered up the T-9 starhopper. It was time to set things right. Thankfully, the starhopper had been regularly maintained and it launched without a problem.
I got less than a thousand kilometers away from the Freya before Ana-Zhi Agrada’s voice hollered at me through my comm unit.
“What the fuck, Jannigan? What. The. Fuck?”
I didn’t even bother to respond. I just flicked off my comm and focused on the Faiurae ship ahead of me. My target was sleek and glossy, with distinctive curves that reminded me of a vintage Swallow. The ship didn’t have a lot of observation ports, so if the Faiurae weren’t actively scanning for me, I might have a chance of getting to the ship undiscovered.
Once I got within range I had to take it slow, because otherwise—cloaking or no cloaking—I’d trigger their ship’s anti-collision monitoring system. I told myself to take it easy and forced myself to do some deep breathing to calm my thundering heart.
I managed to execute a gentle drift up against their hull, matching their velocity so as not to alert their sensor. Then I used the grappling harpoon to anchor the starhopper to the Faiurae ship right at the lower-level airlock. After double checking my weapons and gear, I launched myself towards the hatch.
I had done plenty of zero-g space training and acrobatics, but I still felt like barfing in my exosuit. It must have been the fear affecting me. Which was fine. I could use all the cortisol and adrenaline I could get.
With a clunk I grasped onto the hatch and withdrew Xooth’s donokkal. I almost dropped the cylinder, but finally managed to get it into position and then stabbed the fluted end onto the hatch’s locking mechanism.
Thank Dynark that the old Plargondian tech came through for me. Within seconds I was pushing my way through the airlock and into the ship proper.
The corridors and doorways were sized for Faiurae, not humans, so I felt like a little kid exploring a starship for the very first time. But then my training—all the sim-tests and scenarios and war games—kicked in. Cautiously I snuck across what appeared to be a lower-level cargo hold and passed through a doorway on to a ramp.
As I made my way up the ramp, I caught a glimpse of my first Faiurae—barreling towards me. It looked even more desiccated out of its suit—like a roughly-manlike effigy made of gnarled vines. The Faiurae had clearly been surprised by my presence. It barked an aggressive threat at me. But the Faiurae wasn’t armed, so I blasted it with suppressor strands.
One down, and it would stay down for half a day. Maybe more. I wasn’t a hundred percent up on Faiurae physiology.
At the top of the ramp I emerged in the mid-level core of the ship, which ran along its length like a spine. My suit’s optical visor had real-time visual processing, so it was able to translate the Faiurae words emblazoned on the various doors and passages that I passed. I appeared to be near the main launch bay and engineering. It was reasonable to assume that they’d have crew members in this area, so I launched a micro drone with a 360 video feed paired to my visor’s display. The drone hugged the ceiling, skimming along cables and conduits, all the while sending seven different bands of data back to my suit.
I hit the jackpot: three Faiurae commandos sitting in a ready room in the engineering bay. I could have jumped in there, guns blazing, but I was a little afraid I wouldn’t be able to take all three out before someone sounded an alarm.
So I cheated.
I tossed a guided bonerattler sonic grenade into the room, then dove behind a wall. A flash of light lit up the room and I heard screams of pain as the Faiurae’s nervous systems were wracked by sticky electrical vortices. They convulsed for a few more seconds and then lay still on the ground unconscious.
Three more down. Just a few to go.
Moving as quickly as possible, I peeked into hallways, bays, compartments—whatever spaces I could find.
Unfortunately my room-to-room search of this level yielded no sign of Chiraine or the other Faiurae. They must all be in the bridge area.
I snuck upstairs, a few meters behind the micro drone, and found myself in the aft hall. It was empty, but the prominent security cams and sensors didn’t make me feel very confident that I wasn’t being observed right this second.
The hall led to a galley area, which appeared to be empty. But I only managed to get halfway through the room before all hell broke loose.
A half dozen meters in front of me, two panels in the corridor wall slid open with a pneumatic whoosh and a pair of security bots rolled out. They were less than a meter tall, but bristled with weaponry. And they came at me fast. Way faster than I could move.
I knew they wouldn’t fire blasters or large-caliber rounds at me. They were programmed to avoid damaging the ship, so they were going to attack at point-blank range. Probably with some sort of stun weapon like the bonerattlers I had used on the Faiurae downstairs. I, of course, didn’t give a shit about blasting a hole in the ship. Especially because I was wearing a nice comfy armored exosuit.
I dove behind a cushioned bench as one of the bots raced towards me. In my peripheral vision, I saw two more emerge from the hallway behind me. They were boxing me in.
I jumped on top of a dining table, swung up my railgun, and blasted away at the bots. Bits of bench exploded in a shower of sparks as I zeroed in on one of the bots, leading it as I fired. Boom! My direct hit exploded the bot into a million burning pieces. I glanced back just in time to see one of the others peek between two chairs. I tapped the trigger to activate pulse mode and squeezed out a burst of 12-millimeter explosive-tip armor piercing rounds which cut that security bot into a spray of parts.
But one of the other bots had made it to my table. A long, whip-like appendage shot out from its body, sizzling with electrical energy—enough power to fry my nervous system—if it could get through the dispersement web of my suit.
I leapt towards the wall, just as the bot’s coiled appendage smashed down where I had been standing. Thank Dynark there was some ferromagnetic material in the wall. I hit it with a thunk, but my suit’s magtouch unit kicked in and prevented me from falling right above where the remaining two bots were waiting.
They didn’t wait long to react. The one shot out its stun-whip again, while the other sprayed liquid webbing at me.
But I was already on the move. My boots instantly reversed the polarity of the magtouch—which propelled me to the other side of the room.
As the bots swiveled to track me, I pumped them full of APs, which left a nice debris-field of robot parts in the galley.
That kind of cheered me up a little.
What didn’t cheer me up were the blast doors which clanged down from the ceiling in the middle of the fore deck, cutting me off from what I presumed to be the bridge. That was probably where the last three Faiurae were holed up—with Chiraine.
Crap.
I tried Xooth’s donokkal on the door, but no luck. The locking mechanism must be protected up in the ceiling. Even with a plasma torch I’d need a few hours to cut my way through.
Time for a new plan.
12
I raced back down to the lower level—blasting my way through another couple of security bots in the process. By now I was getting the hang of my weapons and my suit. That plus nearly twenty years of training helped me deal with anything the Faiurae threw at me.
Luckily, the Faiurae’s engineering bay was like every other engineering bay on every other ship in the galaxy. It had a large standalone schematic mounted on one wall. My suit’s visor did the translation for me, so I was able to figure out what I needed.
As a bonus I had hoped to be able to flip a few switches and knock out their shield generators, but the Faiurae must have locked the controls remotely. That was okay. I
had something else in mind.
I returned to the fore deck where it had been cut off by the blast door, and then found the access corridor I had seen on the schematics. After picking out and disabling the corridor’s security cams, I looked for a way around the blast doors. Unfortunately there was no crawl space or air duct big enough for me to sneak through, but there was a cluster of environmental conduits and tubes big enough to accommodate my four centimeter micro drone.
Soon my suit’s visor was displaying the drone’s view of the inside of a small duct. Other than a build-up of dust, the way was clear for the drone to make its way through the maze of pipes and atmosphere tubing to emerge through a vent on the other side of the blast door.
Go, you little bastard! I urged the drone on as I directed it down the other side of the fore deck towards the bridge. There were several doors and bays in this part of the ship, but I needed to check the command deck and bridge area to see what I was up against.
Through the micro drone’s camera I saw the remaining three Faiurae commandos huddled in the bridge, flipping through control screens, and trying to figure out where I was.
Good enough. At least Chiraine wasn’t right there in the line of fire.
As I ran to the blast door, knocking out security sensors as I went, I directed the drone back.
But that was when my luck ran out.
One of the Faiurae spotted the drone and let out a yelp of alarm. They jumped up, drew their sidearms, and started firing.
On the other side of the blast door I tried to ready my own weapons, including a few more bonerattlers and a shimmer bomb, but it was tough to split my attention. I had to concentrate on flying the little drone, zig-zagging and dodging to avoid the Faiurae’s fire.
It zipped around corners and between struts—with the Faiurae right on its tail—and then the other side of the blast door came into view.
I knew that I’d only get one chance at this. I had to hit a target that was even smaller than the drone: the emergency release button.
With the drone only a few meters away from its target, one Faiurae figured out what the drone was trying to do and started blasting at the release button itself in order to prevent the door from opening.
Then my video feed went dark.
Thankfully the blast door slid open with a rumble of pneumatics. Without missing a beat I started firing on the Faiurae.
One went down immediately, tangled in strands. I hit the second with a quick spray of tremble rounds, but I had to duck out of the way of an RB blast that came from the third Faiurae, who obviously didn’t adhere to the non-lethal-force rules of engagement. I guessed that this asshole was the one who beat the shit out of me back on the Freya.
He took cover in a doorway, and I was pretty sure that I had pinned him down. But he had a surprise for me.
More security bots rolled in from behind me. They must have been summoned from the lower level. And it was clear by their volley of blaster fire, this time the bots had been set to use any weapons they had to take me out.
I dove into a narrow corridor, out of the line of fire. This was not good. Not good at all.
The blaster fire kept coming, trapping me in the side corridor. I needed to do something. In a few seconds, four bots would roll around that corner and blast me into oblivion.
I unclipped a shimmer bomb, armed it, and bounced it onto the fore deck. A high-pitched hum sounded, growing louder and louder until my suit cut the external audio to protect my ears. Then an intense bright light flashed, draining all the color out of my surroundings—just for a fraction of a second as the bomb detonated. Security bots exploded into the air—fragmenting into deadly projectiles which would have cut me into ribbons if I hadn’t ducked even farther down the corridor.
From my location, I wasn’t able to assess the damage the shimmer caused, but it obviously wasn’t enough. My opponents were still at it. Either the Faiurae or a surviving bot shot something down the corridor at me. Luckily I was down low and the projectile buzzed over my head and burst against the far wall in an explosion of smoke. Within seconds the smoke thickened so much that I couldn’t even see a meter in front of my visor.
I didn’t understand their strategy, though. They knew I was in an environmental suit, didn’t they? Unless the smoke contained some sort of super-potent acid gas, it wasn’t going to harm me.
There wasn’t much time to ponder what they were up to, however. One of the bots—the last remaining one I hoped—raced through the smoke, blasting erratically—almost randomly. Maybe its firing system got messed up. No matter. I had to take it out before I could advance any further.
It was tough to get a bead on the thing with all the smoke, but I managed to group my shots enough to blow off the bot’s central controller, which caused it to roll into a wall and cease firing for a second. Then I jumped on the bot with my judder knife and carved it to pieces.
I leaned back against the wall, completely exhausted. I was definitely feeling the aftereffects of all that adrenalin coursing through my system. But I needed to keep going. Chiraine was around here somewhere. And that last Faiurae as well.
Railgun raised, I pushed through the lingering smoke back towards the corridor where I had last seen the Faiurae. There was no sign of it—nor any other bots. Thank Dynark for small miracles. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. The Faiurae commando was still out there—somewhere. It had probably used the smoke cartridge to obscure its escape.
I limped down the corridor and began to go room-to-room. There were a half dozen doors—leading to various ready rooms, technology bays, or control rooms. All were empty—except the last room at the end of the corridor. That final door slid open and there was Chiraine, huddled up in one corner, sitting on the floor with her knees tucked up to her chin—as if trying to make herself as small and unobtrusive as possible. Her face was bruised and battered and one eye was swollen badly. She had obviously been tortured.
I couldn’t believe what they had done to her.
She blinked in disbelief as I strode into the room and made my visor transparent so she could see me.
“Jannigan? Holy shit. Is that you?”
“Yeah. We need to get out of here. Can you walk?”
“How did you—?”
“Later. We’re running out of time.”
I helped her to her feet and then into the survival suit. She was shaky, but I held her up with one arm, while keeping my other on my gun. Just in case the Faiurae jumped out of nowhere.
Cautiously, we wound our way back to the fore deck. Chiraine’s eyes widened at the sight of the Faiurae corpses.
“There’s one still out there,” I told her. “Keep your eyes open.”
I flipped my visor back to normal and launched my last micro drone. It buzzed down the corridor in full alert mode.
“How did you even get here?”
“A starhopper I found in the Freya’s hold. It’s an old beater, but someone had added a cloaking device, so I got a little jump on our friends here.”
“It isn’t that one, is it?” She pointed to a porthole.
I followed her glance and saw the T-9—my T-9—flying away from the Faiurae ship. My chest tightened like a fist was squeezing my heart. How could this be?
But I knew how it could be. The last Faiurae commando had stolen the starhopper—leaving us trapped on a ship it knew we couldn’t fly.
Then it got worse.
An alarm klaxon sounded. It was deafening.
Chiraine clamped her hands over her ears. “What is that?” she yelled.
We raced down to engineering, and I frantically scanned the display for some clue as to what was going on. As my visor translated the warning codes, my worst fears were confirmed.
The ship was set to self-destruct.
Chiraine scowled at me. “Some rescue this is!”
My mind raced, trying to figure a way out of this. “What about lifepods? There have to be lifepods!”
“There were lifepods,�
� Chiraine said.
She pointed to the schematic. Both lifepods were grayed out and a Faiurae word flashed on the status display. My suit’s scanner translated the word as “EJECTED.”
Great. Just great. I couldn’t believe the Faiurae captain had left his own crew to die.
“How much time do we have?” Chiraine asked.
The display was ticking down until the self-destruct sequence would activate. It was less than five minutes. Not enough time to do anything. This was the end…
Chiraine shook me out of my reverie. “Call the Freya!”
There was no way they’d reach us in time, but she was right. I had to let them know what had happened.
“Come in Freya. This is Jannigan. We have a situation here.”
“Oh, now you want to talk to me?” Ana-Zhi Agrada’s mocking tones sounded in my suit’s comm unit.
“I got Chiraine, but we’re trapped on the Faiurae ship.”
“What?”
“I took them all out, except one. The bastard took my starhopper and set this bucket of bolts to blow. Four minutes and twenty seconds.”
“Get to the lifepods!”
“Ejected.”
“Shit! Let me think.”
I heard her yelling commands at Hap, but couldn’t quite make out what she was saying.
“I just needed to let you know,” I said. “I’m sorry. It was the wrong move to make.”
“Shut up, Jannigan. You have a suit for Chiraine?”
“Of course, but—”
“Get out an airlock. Closest one. Do whatever you can to get away from that ship! As far away as you can!”
Then it hit me. Ana-Zhi was right. There might be a way out of this.
The closest airlock was the one I came in through—at the bottom of the cargo hold. We raced down the ramp and over to the airlock hatch. Looking through the porthole I verified that the starhopper was indeed gone.
