by T. R. Harris
He rolled to his right to escape another incoming blow, twisting his left wrist on something when he landed on all fours. The object moved under his hand, and a moment later Coop realized it was the fallen flash weapon.
The alien dropped a sharp elbow into his back, sending Coop falling flat on the cold metal deck. Then a fist bunched up the cloth of this shirt and flipped him over. The expression on the face of the Nuorean was one of euphoria, and now he had his right arm lifted high and about to deliver the knock-out blow to his beaten opponent.
That was until he noticed the flash weapon pressed against his belly.
At this range, a perfectly round hole was burned all the way through the Nuorean, with the energetic bolt exiting the body with enough residual charge to strike the ceiling of the pilothouse and ricochet toward the pilot. He was on his feet by now, having reacted to the fight taking place to his right. He jumped out of the path of the flash bolt, landing about three feet from Copernicus. The pilot was unarmed, but when he noticed the weapon in Coop’s hand, he showed no fear. Instead, he bared his teeth in a savage show of defiance and jumped forward.
Coop fingered the trigger—and nothing happened. He’d drained the weapon’s power pack.
The Nuorean was on top of him, hitting and kicking with insane ferocity. Coop had another flash weapon on him somewhere, but he forgot where. All he was concerned with at the moment was protecting himself from the onslaught to his head and body.
Seeing an opportunity open—yet not knowing Nuorean anatomy—Coop still took the shot, delivering a knee to the alien’s exposed groin. He was rewarded with a squeal and burgeoning golden eyes from his opponent, along with a momentary cessation of hostilities. As with most mammals—be they from the Milky Way or Andromeda—when your balls are crushed, a change of heart quickly follows.
Feeling sympathetic for his fellow male, Copernicus laid a swift fist to the alien’s projecting chin, sending bone fragments into the brain and ending the poor creature’s suffering. He shoved the body to the side and sat up, looking at his victim. “You’re welcome,” he panted. If the roles had been reversed, Coop would have prayed for death as well.
After a brief recovery, he climbed to his feet and unlocked the pilothouse door. Sherri was waiting on the other side, the sixth and final guard nowhere to be found.
A Juirean guard went to the controls. This was one of the smaller vessels with the pad of keys for control, rather than the wheel with buttons underneath. Either way, no one aboard knew how to fly the ship. It was still in a gravity-well, heading for the blaze of star ahead that was the Andromeda Galaxy.
“We have to get to the jump point,” Sherri said, vocalizing the thoughts running through the minds of all the former prisoners.
The Guard in the pilot seat looked up at the Human female. “I will gladly surrender control to one more-experienced.” When Sherri remained silent, the alien grunted and turned back to the key panel. Soon, it became discovery by committee, as everyone was offering their input, with some reaching out and pressing buttons even as others were tried.
Fortunately, the ship was alone in space otherwise its erratic movements would have surely attracted the attention of even the casual observer. Ten minutes later, everyone aboard—and not just the Juirean sitting in the pilot seat—had a working knowledge of the controls.
Now they turned their attention to nav screens and monitors. Sherri let out a sigh of relief when it became obvious they were still in the vicinity of the transit channel between galaxies, in fact not too far from the staging area. That was indicated by the incredible mass of energy sigs, now moving slowly closer together, to form an even more intense signature. The fleet was preparing for a jump.
The Juirean pilot increased the well depth and raced toward the jump point. Moments later they were closing on the back side of the mass of ships, and merging with hundreds of smaller ships, many like theirs. The larger signatures were in the front of the formation.
They eased back as the cluster became denser. Starships usually didn’t move this close to each other, but the Nuoreans only had so much room in the gravity beam. They had to get all the bang for their buck they could.
“It has to be happening soon,” she said to the room. “Otherwise we’ll start running into each other.”
As if on cue, she felt a strange sensation come over her, like waves of nausea. She was dizzy and her ears began to ring. This may have been what she’d experienced before, but now she was more aware.
And then came the flash.
61
Close to the mutant Panur meant bringing the D-4 within forty-two miles of the alien craft before sending Adam and Riyad out to fly through space like Buck Rogers. In case anything went wrong, the mutant was so kind as to send them out with additional oxygen tanks which they would leave at the halfway point with a magnetic beacon attached. Otherwise they’d be sucking fumes on the way back if they had to abort.
They chose a Nuorean ship like the one they’d stolen from Ankaa simply for its familiarity to Adam and Riyad. The next nearest ship was four hundred miles away—just the blink of an eye in space distance. After a brief explanation of where and how to install the small device he’d built, the mutant cast them out the airlock and sent them on their way.
Adam had never made a forty-two mile space walk before; he doubted anyone ever had, at least intentionally. Now he and Riyad were flying through the vast emptiness of space on gas jets, awed by the absolute size of the nothingness around them. The stars seemed much brighter from here, their brilliance separated from their eyes by only an eighth-inch-thick piece of glass.
At one point they dropped the extra oxygen packs and continued on their way.
They approached the ship at an angle, rather than straight on. Most starships had a passive laser defense system to protect against micrometeorites and other objects on a collision course with the vessel. They were traveling fast enough at this point to be considered a hazard. As it was, the radar would record them as a non-threat and let them go.
As they neared the craft, they reversed the thrust on their jets and matched speeds with the spaceship. Approaching at a crawl wouldn’t set off any alarms.
They still had a mile to go, but that passed quickly. They contacted the hull and grabbed onto attached lifelines. They were under the influence of the ship’s gravity internals by now and were able to walk on the surface. At the airlock door at the rear of the ship, Riyad looked at Adam, both their faces lit by helmet lights.
“Okay. It was you’re brilliant idea,” said Riyad, having already raised the question back at the D-4. “Go ahead, knock.”
The question had been how to gain access to the ship? Adam’s solution was simple. He took out a metal wrench from his tool pouch and began to tap on the airlock hatch, non-rhythmically, as if something was loose and banging against the hull. The sound would transfer throughout the ship, attracting the attention of the crew. If they were like everyone else, they would want to know what’s happening outside. It could be dangerous.
They would be right in this case, but only when they opened the hatch would they find out how much.
That came four minutes later, after the source of the knocking had been isolated. The hatch cycled open.
Adam and Riyad slipped out of view. A space-suited figure swung the rectangular door open and looked outside. He stayed in the airlock while looking up and down along the hull. Then he checked the outer side of the door. Still nothing. He ducked back inside.
Adam crawled along the hull until he was just above the closing hatch and wedged the wrench into the gap between the door and the opening. When the pressure door failed to close, the frustrated Nuorean pushed it open again and looked up at the obstruction. That’s when Riyad swung in from underneath, using one of the lower lifelines for leverage.
He crashed into the unsuspecting alien, knocking them both to the deck of the airlock. Adam followed a moment later.
He dogged the hatch and the chamber b
egan to pressurize automatically. In the meantime, Riyad had smashed every antenna and electrical contact with the alien’s helmet and his suit, hoping to break communications with the other crew members. Adam knew a ship this size had a crew of four. After Riyad smashed the faceplate of the alien’s helmet with a tool of his own, embedding it the soft tissue of a golden eye, only three were left.
Adam opened the inner door quickly, allowing the two invaders to enter the main part of the ship. They couldn’t risk tripping any alarms and having pressure doors locked down around them.
Now the real mission began. The problem, as Panur outlined, was that the control ship—the one with the radio link—had to stay active until the last second for the plan to work. First, the gravity drive had to be activated to prevent the ship from being pulled into the nearly three-million-light-year-long blackhole. Afterwards, they had to cut the drive as commands were sent to all the ships around it to engage back-wells for the headlong crash into the arriving fleet. The bottom line: The crew had to be eliminated and Adam and Riyad take control. Luckily, this particular ship didn’t need to be one of those crashing into the fleet. After the commands were sent to the other ships, it could be flown back to the D-4.
Normally, killing four aliens was something Adam did before breakfast, but these were scattered throughout the Nuorean ship and he had no idea where. The pair of pirates kept their suits on, yet they now had flash weapons at the ready. They split up, Adam heading forward while Riyad checked the engine room and landing bay.
Since these particular aliens were assigned sentry duty, Adam figured they weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. He was hoping to find them napping, with feet resting on control consoles, and therefore easy targets. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
The first alien came out of a side room, wearing a modified combat outfit and covered in sweat. He was placing a ressnel sword into a soft, velvet sheath, appearing to be finishing up a training workout. The moment of hesitation upon seeing the surprise guest aboard was measured in milliseconds. The Nuorean had the ressnel out again and was crouched for action. Proving the old adage that you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, the flash bolt that burned a hole in the alien’s chest eliminated the threat, but it also lit up the interior of the small starship, with its distinctive crack echoing off the bare metal walls.
The security door to the pilothouse began to slide shut. With Nuorean gravity being similar to Juirean standard, Adam had some extra muscle power to use as he kicked off the deck and jumped for the closing door. Bridge portals were a little wider than normal openings on Nuorean ships, allowing more bodies to gain ingress or egress to the most important room on the ship, and Adam nearly made it through before the door closed on him.
Fortunately, it closed on the heavy metal of his boot. It didn’t hurt his foot, but he was caught, lying on the deck, looking into the pilothouse, unable to break free.
There was one crewmember in the room. He sat at the pilot’s station working controls. When he heard the door controls whine, fighting against the blockage to close, he turned to see what was happening—and took a level-two flash bolt to the face.
Adam pulled but still couldn’t free his leg.
“Riyad, splash three. How are you doing?”
“Got a sneaky little one back here. He was in the engine room, but now he’s somewhere in the landing—” There was a grunt and then the sound of heavy breathing.
Adam gave him a few seconds. “You okay?”
“Yeah, but lucky I don’t have to wear this suit back to the D-4. Damn mother-of-a-goat nearly impaled me with a length of welding metal.”
“Get up to the bridge. I need a little help.”
“Let me get a picture of this first,” Riyad said before reaching through the gap in the door and releasing the safety controls. But before he did, he actually did snap a digital picture using the suit’s built-in helmet cam.
“Better not post that on Facebook.”
“I would, if Facebook still existed. But there’s always YouTube.”
Adam climbed to his feet. “Check and see if any alerts went out while I install Panur’s magic box. We have no idea how long we’re going to be here before the next link. Let’s make sure we can stay incognito for all that time.”
An hour later Adam contacted Panur through the suit’s comm system. He’d lifted the visor and was breathing fresh Nuorean air. “All right, the gizmo’s installed and we have control of the ship.”
“Excellent. Any problems?”
“Nothing to speak of. You know, the Nuoreans must have some kind of check-in routine for their sentry ships. How long do you think we’ll be here before the galaxies link up again?”
“J’nae and I have been calculating that. Considering the size of the singularities that must be created, plus the stretching effect, along with the size and number of the generators required and their distance to the—”
“How long?”
“It should be anytime now.”
True to his word, the Nuorean ship began to vibrate. Riyad was in the back; now he raced to the bridge.
“Ready the drive!” Adam yelled.
The roiling motion continued, not only in the ship but in their bodies as well. They hadn’t been this close to the event the first time; now they were getting the full effect.
“Are you set to go on your end?” Adam yelled into his helmet comm.
“Yes. The device will send out a blast signal that identifies the control codes for each of the ships in the area. J’nae and I will then manually access each ship and issue the order to activate the drive.”
“Manually? You have to contact over three hundred ships manually?”
“It will take us eight-point-six seconds for the task. We work fast around here.”
“Not bad.”
“Well, we don’t get paid to sit around looking pretty.”
“Touché. Wholly crap, there goes the big suck!”
The Nuoreans had placed a small flotilla of ships at the apex of the void this time; shift rotations and data carriers undoubtedly. Now the ships elongated and disappeared into the huge black disk a light-year away. From their close-in vantage point, the disk was huge, filling the entire sky. Without the countering gravity-well, Adam and Riyad would be on their way to Andromeda—just as Sherri and Copernicus had done.
The effect died down and the other ships around them cut their drives. Any second now and the Nuorean fleet would appear out of the blackness.
The ship jerked violently just as the generators cycled. The back-well was firing up.
“Panur!” Adam yelled through his comm.
“I know…sorry. We had to isolate your code first.”
The well dissolved, but not before the Nuorean ship was already hurdling toward the mass of warships that had just appeared in the void. Riyad activated the forward well and their momentum stopped, but not soon enough to avoid an exploding starship on the port side. Internal inertia compensators were overloaded, allowing Adam and Riyad to be sent slamming into the left side bulkhead. They fell to the deck and were pressed into place by the rapid acceleration. The ship was blown away from the blast, with sections of the hull torn off in sheets. Alarms sounded and lights flashed.
A strong countering force came next, the result of another nearby explosion to starboard. This time the emergency pressure door to the bridge slid shut and locked down, preserving the atmosphere in the small room, even as the rest the ship suffered near-catastrophic failure.
The two Humans fought to climb into chairs and fasten safety harnesses across their bodies. With the damage to the ship, the compensators weren’t only overloaded, they were inoperable. The ship tumbled and rolled, the only thing saving their lives being the wide leather straps that cut into raw skin even through the spacesuits.
More buffeting occurred until the turmoil outside began to subside. Fortunately, the forward viewport was still intact, and through it Adam and Riyad witnessed a terrible, yet wondro
us site. There were flashes of light popping up all around as chain reactions of collisions and explosions rippled throughout the Nuorean fleet. As was the habit of the invaders, their behemoths were at the head of the fleet, designed to create a grand entrance, if even for the waiting sentry ships. These vessels took the brunt of the nearly two hundred smaller ships that plowed into them on full back-wells.
Panur’s plan had worked…almost too well.
By the time their screens cleared from the transit flash, half the fleet was in ruins. Some of the vessels on the edge of the cluster managed to bolt away at oblique angles. Some survived, some didn’t. Yet it was the smaller ships toward the rear of the formation that suffered the least. At least that was the case for some of them.
There were fallen stanchions strewn across the deck and hanging from the overhead. Electrical lines popped and cracked, sending hot sparks to the deck. A moment later internal gravity was lost.
Sherri welcomed the surge in her stomach and throat, which was not unlike the sensation of mounting the summit of a roller coaster and heading down the other side. After the brief period of nausea, she found some relief for the pain she felt in her left leg. Through a red haze of blood entering her eyes, she searched the shattered room for Copernicus. Only a few emergency lights survived, along with the occasional spark from electrical wires and flashes coming through the forward viewport—which by some miracle was still airtight.
“Coop!” she cried out. Silence. “Copernicus!”
“Yeah…I’m over here.”
“I’m stuck, and I think my leg is broken. You’ll have to come to me, if you can.”
“Give me a minute. There’s a lot of live wires all over the place.”
He floated next to her, taking hold of her hand while wiping the blood from her face. “Is it just your leg, or more?”
