Her engineer shook his head. “I’d have to go into the reactor space to reach the override. The compartment is unlivable, even with our evac suits.”
“Do we drift until she’s picked off by the Prax or claimed by a Hauler?”
“Captain…the pod.” Travers was tugging at Kendra.
Kendra looked around. This was her engineering; she landed a berth on her first Fleet ship years prior after spending the initial fourteen years of her space-duty career in the transport runs—by her own choice. Starting as a hold crew junior mate of the merchant arm, she’d ended up after a decade as the first officer of a massive cargo vessel that got caught in the crosshairs of a Prax attack on the Struve system. As a result of her actions—more desperation than calculated planning, really—the enemy had been held off and she’d finally received her merchant arm Captaincy. Four years later the war shortage of qualified skippers landed her the belated attention of Command and a commission as Fleet officer. As Second Engineer on the outdated Carillion.
For seven more years Kendra had patiently endured the male bias aboard—starting with the Captain who wasn’t impressed with her pedigree or antics on a “cargo scow”—and the obscurity in the engine room of an old, poorly-designed and underpowered Fleet warship. As Chief Engineer she’d finally won over key members of the crew and won the vote for Captain. An amazing day that had been, barely two years ago.
And now my old Carillion is mortally wounded. Just like the Goliath was once.
“Make sure everyone is off.”
A low grinding sound had begun, seemingly emanating from everywhere at once. The remaining crew in that compartment paused in their flight to the escape pod to look around.
I should have been on my bridge. Kendra cursed the universe and put her hands over her ears. Her normally tightly-worn dark brown hair was hanging down in places, matted with her blood. Half my crew gone in minutes.
Alician caught her other arm. “Captain Kendra, focus.” Her eyes were soft when Kendra met them. The shorter woman nodded.
She allowed herself to be led down the adjoining passageway by Travers and Alician to the hatch that connected to the pod. As with all older-generation fleet cruisers, the Carillion had a bare minimum of escape pods. Rather than one per major compartment, the designers had placed larger ones within each major deck group. The Carillion had four for a projected crew complement of eighty. The long, slender pod was launched from a tube very similar in design to the projectile launch tubes, only much larger in diameter.
By the time the three reached the pod it was already crowded. At the hatch, Kendra rallied and started tugging on her sleeves still gripped by her friends. “Ybarra. The ship. We have to go back and try to save her.” Her voice rose in its anger and frustration. “We’re giving up!”
Travers put his face close to hers. “Stop, Captain.” The crew were looking on from within the pod with fear and morbid curiosity at their Captain’s travails. “Trust me, the ship is doomed. Ybarra is gone with the bridge deck, remember?”
One of the crew called out. “Get her in here!”
Travers hadn’t moved away. His slight frame wasn’t intimidating to Kendra in any way; she was the tougher of the two. But he was trying to break through her fog. “It’s all right, Captain. We took a hit we can’t recover from.”
Her bitter brown eyes focused on the man. “You don’t know that.”
Alician said from her elbow, “It was likely an enhanced Praxxan plasma weapon, Kendra. We couldn’t prepare for that.”
The crew were all against her, Kendra thought with anger.
Travers and Alician together half-carried her into the pod. The same unseen crewman in the group said more quietly “Finally.”
“Shut up, you idiot!” replied Travers as he let Kendra go and poked his head out into the passageway to check for more crew on their way.
“We’re all here, sir,” said another crewman.
With an exhale of defeat, Travers punched the launch code into the pad next to the hatch, grabbing the handhold mounted there to steady himself.
The pod hatch slid shut and locked in place with a whoosh of equalization and immediately the pod was moving, increasing speed perceptibly within the confines of the ship’s artificial gravity. Everyone was pressed against the black metal seatbacks momentarily, then released as they passed into space.
Travers checked the pad to verify that the coding was correct and the pod would return to the pre-programmed marshaling point for the fleet, halfway between Earth and Mars.
“Put her on camera.” Kendra was standing next to him.
“Captain,” Alician warned from her seat nearby. “You’re injured.”
“Do it.”
Travers pulled up the external cameras and found the angle to see their ship. A large guidance monitor at the front of the pod lit up, bathing the dimly-lit compartment with light.
A gasp went up from the two dozen crew in the pod.
The Carillion was coming apart at the seams; the ship appeared to be convulsing and twisting at the same time. The cameras accentuated her closeness, and more than one crewman recoiled at the perceived imminent collision. Their pod was moving fast, however, and was well out of range. Kendra watched with a combination of anger, self-loathing and resignation as the ship’s thruster array separated from the main hull and began moving in its own direction. Flashes of explosions aboard the ship lit the scene, even as they were immediately extinguished by the inrushing vacuum of space.
Several crew cursed aloud; Kendra avoided the looks toward her and instead found herself concentrating on what loomed above and behind the dying Carillion. Her ship’s killer, hovering as if to watch its handiwork unfold. A Praxxan battlecruiser, immense and menacing. Looking like the angel of death itself.
Everything she had built, had worked for. Taken by those dishonorable alien murderers. Kendra’s hatred threatened to explode from within her, and might have if she’d not practiced for years to keep it in. The scene of her dying ship and the Prax vessel, weapons at the ready and seemingly gloating…
Travers cut the feed and announced to the crew that the pod was operating correctly and they were on their way to the marshaling point for recovery by the fleet. Kendra knew he was doing it to calm their nerves and give them some hope.
She felt Alician’s hand on her arm as she sat down again. No words were needed or could help. Now she would face Command in disgrace. What lay ahead for her?
Chapter 2
That Same Moment - Occupied Earth
Rat City
Deacon watched the rats scurrying out of the way of the cart’s wheels with eyelids half-closed, partially out of sheer boredom borne from years of seeing it and, conversely, also from a suppressed excitement building within that distracted his normally-alert focus.
The rodents didn’t rush; they too had been at the game for years. The greasy, foul-tasting creatures were literally everywhere in the city…in fact the millions of humans eking out their lives there had long ago dubbed it “Rat City.” As Deacon pushed his work cart down the alley, the things followed behind at a careful distance, hoping for a morning snack to present itself. The people of Rat City were not much better off.
He was lost in thought, however, and paid no attention to his entourage. Today was going to be a special day, Deacon hoped. His mind was on it.
The sounds of others up ahead snapped him back somewhat. The alley opened into a wider thoroughfare, one filled with a steady stream of similar carts pushed by workers like Deacon. He joined them and the rats fell back into the shadows, preferring the darker corners with fewer humans present to the brighter open areas underneath the solar roofing.
The stream of shambling people thickened as the thoroughfare reached its terminus; a massive metal wall fifty feet high that rose unnaturally between two human structures. Deacon knew that the structures themselves were empty; no one wanted to take up dwelling that close to the Prax complex.
The entrance wa
s open this morning—as it was every morning—for the workers to enter. As Deacon stopped in the press of foul-smelling humans waiting to enter the complex, he leaned on his cart and dared to glance up, observing. Everything looked the same from his vantage point.
Prax guards stood on either side of the crush of humans, weapons cradled across broad chests and eyes carefully scanning the flow for anomalies. Deacon watched them from under his dark brows, head slightly down and elbows relaxed on his cart handle as he inched forward with everyone else. No one spoke unless spoken to; that was one of the rules in the complex.
A rat moved between the wheels of his cart and his feet, making a breakfast run through the crowd at great risk of being trampled or trapped underneath a wheel. Deacon glanced down to see the thing scurry away through the mass of legs. He caught himself admiring the creature’s determination. If only the people around me had half that level of risk tolerance.
The gate towered over him as he entered the opening. Deacon kept his eyes down as he passed through the scanner, its blue beam like a wall itself that everyone had to pass through. He knew that every metal, every plastic and every shape was classified and recorded by the machine somehow. Every now and then, the scanner alarm would sound and stop the flow of workers as the guards waded in and inspected the offending human or cart. Sometimes it was a new type of cleaner the worker had procured, other times a worthless trinket acquired that contained trace amounts of some rare metal. Most of the time the worker incurring the wrath of the scanner earned only a scowl and wave from the guards; other times it didn’t go as well for him or her and they were hauled away along with their cart. Nobody spoke or watched it happen when it did. Those were the rules.
Deacon’s cart passed through the scanning beam as it had for hundreds of times before. When he was inside, he followed the continuing crowd but risked a glance over his shoulder to observe the back of the gate area. As usual, two other guards were stationed in a booth keeping an eye on the flow of humans with bored looks on their red faces. As with all Prax, they towered over the humans around them. The typical alien—they were all male as far as he knew—was well over two meters in height, not including the boots.
Beyond the gate, the complex lower levels stretched out for miles. Deacon followed the crowd down a main hall for several hundred meters before it branched left and right. He and many others took the left direction and continued on. Eventually the stream of workers thinned out as people entered side passageways on their way to their sections. Deacon himself had a long walk to get to his area. With little to see in the bare corridor, he turned his thoughts to his plan for the day.
“Deacon,” said a man walking nearby. Salvador, one of the people working in a section almost as far as Deacon’s.
He looked up briefly and nodded in greeting. Conversations were unwise in the complex. Deacon had worked here for six years of his life—almost a quarter of it, in fact—and his plan did not include drawing unnecessary attention to himself. Plus, you never really knew who you could trust; the Prax were said to plant humans among the workers to root out trouble before it started. He’d known Salvador for years but that didn’t mean anything. He never saw the man outside in the city, but that didn’t mean anything either. In the crush of humanity of Rat City, you never really saw much beyond your cell of living quarters and the few overcrowded streets that serviced it. Salvador didn’t live in Deacon’s cell. Plus, Deacon avoided contact in his chosen profession, unless they were buying or selling something.
Eventually Salvador turned into his section and left Deacon alone in the hall. Another fifty meters and he arrived at his own door and put his back to it, turning the cart to pull through behind him as he pushed on the hand lever. The door released and he used a hand to hold it open as he negotiated the cart into the room.
Inside, Deacon stored the cart next to his locker and changed into his work clothes, which were made up of a simple tan-colored pullover top with long sleeves, and gray pants with side pockets. Shoes were rubber-soled without laces. All designed to be hard to hide objects within and easy to scan as the worker passed through a section entrance. The aliens didn’t care about humans, just the contraband they may be secreting on themselves.
The small screen on his locker flashed a set of numbers indicating where Deacon should be working on this two-day shift. Today and tomorrow, Deacon would be cleaning in the lower core as he had for the last year. It seemed more like ten. But today, he was just a bit more on-edge, his practiced attitude of servitude and outward detachment more difficult to maintain as he passed Prax in the hall and deferred to them by standing with his back to the wall, head down.
At 1145 hours he was working in a machinery room as planned. The equipment wasn’t anything sensitive—some redundant environmental systems—so he wasn’t under personal surveillance by a guard. The space was all metal, as was most of the complex…no soft materials, nothing organic in nature. However, even in the bowels of the Prax complex dust made its way in, and somehow rodents and insects found homes among the maze of pipes, tubes and ventilators. That was where the human servants came in, for no self-respecting Prax warrior would be caught dead rooting around for mice droppings to sweep up. At least the Prax place a high value on efficiency and cleanliness, thought Deacon as he used the electrobroom to poke in among the equipment and remove detritus.
As usual, he was lost in his thoughts and daydreams in the usual grind to forget the menial work he had been consigned to year after year. It had proven profitable for a few years, and he’d cultivated some relationships of value…but the work was terrible.
But, he remembered, today that would all change. His most profitable mission would finally start to move forward.
A cough at the hatch to the room startled him, but it shouldn’t have. He himself had planned it. Trying not to appear flustered, Deacon straightened from where he had been working and turned to the sound.
A Prax warrior officer stood just inside the entrance. In typical Prax style, he had opened the hatch so stealthily that Deacon had missed it, even with his heightened on-edge senses of the day.
The two beings stood facing each other for several long seconds, appraising the situation in their own ways. Deacon leaned against his electrobroom and looked up at the alien who stood twice again as tall as him. Commander Axxa—for that was his name—folded his arms across a broad chest and returned his stare from greenish eyes that seemed to glow in his red-skinned face. The visor of the form-fitting metal helmet covered his eyes in shadow in a way would have likely struck fear into a typical human servant. But after years of moving through the Center undetected as a smuggler, Deacon wasn’t cowed by the imposing figure before him. At least he told himself that…
The Prax spoke first. “Do you have more information?” His tone was curt, something not translated by the implant in Deacon’s head. But the sound was unmistakable.
Deacon twisted his hands on the broom handle as if he were strangling a small animal. “Nothing yet. I am not concerned, though. We have the resources to complete the plan as scheduled.” He looked up at the other. “Are you prepared to move forward?”
In the silence that followed Deacon’s mind flashed back over all the months—years—spent toiling in this alien base. Risking detection of his smuggling operation. After the contact from the human Fleet, seeking to weasel his way into a place to be able to communicate with the Prax on a regular basis. Then more months to finally put his finger on one of them who had seemed disaffected by the occupation. And finally, months spent befriending him and convincing him to…
“I am.”
Deacon felt the palpable release of tension within him. His biggest payday drew just a bit closer.
“You are concerned.”
Deacon cursed himself for letting so much emotion show through. The Prax had an innate ability to sense emotion—weakness, in their culture—and pounce on it. That skill had nearly cost him his life on several occasions as he ingratiated himself int
o their complex community.
He shook his head. “No, just already calculating the next moves.”
Axxa was stiff and inflexible, both mentally and physically, as were all of his kind. He stood straight and tall, glowering at Deacon with unreadable expressions. “Your hesitation is concerning to me.”
Time to recover control. He had to play the part he’d constructed for himself; Fleet spy. “It’s not hesitation, Commander Axxa. You know as well as I that you’ll be missed and so will I once they check the records. While I have the transportation available off-world, we still have to make it to the launch point.”
The alien didn’t move, but his eyebrows twitched a bit. Which was a veritable emotional outburst from a Praxxan. “I have considered this, of course. I plan to request leave to visit the city on a covert mission,” he paused with a look at Deacon that was supposed to be laced with irony if he even understood the concept, “to root out a spy whom I had learned of.”
Deacon nodded. It made sense, but he was nervous about it already.
“My arrangements will not be perceived by the Center security until we are already underway.” Deacon’s translator rendered the Praxxan word for their command leadership as “Center” but he knew that wasn’t exactly right. The term of respect and authority was just untranslatable to the software.
He twisted his hands on the broom again. “You make it sound easy. It’s taken me at least six years to get to tomorrow. Let’s try to be extra-cautious, okay?”
Axxa finally showed some sign of relenting from his ultra-serious stance, and something approximating a sigh escaped from his red lips. “Humans. To you six cycles is a long time; we waited almost a hundred while we planned our conquest.”
War Without Honor (Halloran's War Series Book 1) Page 2
