Caspar seemed to go slowly on purpose—must be matching his pace. He growled, frustrated, but couldn’t waste the air to tell her to hurry up. Anyway, it’s what he would have done, too, if he’d been the faster one.
The door was closer, he knew it. Another five meters. Maybe three. But it was fading, falling away from him. Caspar looked over, saw his eyes, and looked worried. She grunted, took a deep breath, and rose, sprinting the remainder of the distance and slapping the console on the wall. It dinged.
But the door didn’t open.
She slid to the floor, took a deep, racking breath, and had a coughing fit.
Dolridge breathed in fire through his nose. Yep. He was too old for this nonsense.
He somehow managed to crawl to the door, then reached up and slapped the keypad again. Same thing—ding, but no dice. He turned on his back and kicked, hard. There was no give. Stupid thing.
Another few seconds and they would both pass out, and he doubted they would ever wake up. There wasn’t much to lose by taking a chance. So he slipped his blaster pistol from its holster at his belt, tried to aim at the console, and fired.
He missed.
The round lit up the foggy air like a nebula. He blinked his bleary eyes, refixed his aim, and shot again. This time sparks flew from the console and it smoked, the cover melting away.
Dolridge grabbed Caspar by the shoulder and struggled to speak.
“Tear out the… circuit.”
She nodded and rose to her knees, still coughing. Then she cleared away some debris from the smoldering console, reached inside, and pulled. A grunt, a snap, and a little piece of circuit board came out in her hand. She tossed it to him.
The doors hissed open.
But the scene on the bridge wasn’t much better. Bodies hunched over stations, everyone already unconscious. The gas seemed even thicker here. It was acrid and smoky, creating a hellish atmosphere. This must have been ground zero for dispersal; the bridge crew had never had a chance.
Happily, there were emergency ventilation contingencies. But Caspar and Dolridge had already pushed their bodies to the max. They would have to crawl at least halfway across the bridge to get to the nearest station, then just hope it was in better working order than the door had been.
He glanced at her. Her eyes were grim, jaw set. She knew they weren’t going to make it.
Small, narrow portholes on either side of the viewscreen looked out onto empty space. A light flashed through the smoke from the porthole to the left. Dolridge peered up and saw the light come to settle outside. It was followed by a single, continuous blasting charge at the porthole.
Cutting through.
5
A hand grabbed Dolridge by the shoulder—Caspar—and pushed him back through the doorway. She rolled through after him.
“Put it back,” she croaked, pointing at the broken console. No use. Her voice was an impotent hiss.
Instead, she grabbed the circuit board from him and lurched up to the console. He watched in bewilderment as she jammed it back into its slot. The doors closed again, but not before the blaster outside cut through the porthole. All the gas on the bridge rushed out, and the gas in the corridor was sucked along behind it. Fresh air followed from the vents, and when the door finally sealed, Dolridge and Caspar had air to breathe.
They sat, their backs to the door, gasping in lungfulls of clean oxygen. Dolridge struggled to his feet, balancing against the wall. Stars swam in his eyes.
“Marx,” he groaned into his com. “Come in. Marx? You there?”
A crackle of static, then nothing. Dolridge sighed heavily.
Caspar was fiddling with her comp device. “Hull breaches all over the ship, Sir. Looks like engineering has been spaced… lower decks are shot… and—” She paused, looking like she might vomit, and cursed.
“Well?” he asked.
“The bunkhouses, Sir. They’re gone.” She held up the device and he scanned the screen. Sure enough, the crew quarters had been breached and destroyed. A lifeforce scan revealed no survivors in the lower decks. Neither was anyone alive on the bridge, which was now open to the void.
She took the device back. “I’ll have the comp run a systems-wide diagnostic. Could this be a security malfunction, Sir? Ship thinking she’s cleaning house?”
Dolridge shook his head, jaw clenched. “I know exactly what this is. If you’re the praying sort, Caspar, set your spiritual affairs in order. Neither of us are leaving this ship alive.”
“Sir?”
It had been over a decade since he’d given up spying and joined a starship’s crew. But he still remembered his last mission, what he’d seen. A prototype squadron of space marine drones, developed on Old Earth and up for bid to anyone in the inner worlds. Send them out into space and they could home in on any target for reconnaissance or an attack, with no loss of life. The real treat was their AI, a massive upgrade to previous combat drones, which had substantial trouble operating in the realities of the void.
“Drones,” he grunted. “From Old Earth. Or whoever owns them now. Maybe Earth forces. Or the Sons. Hard to say. Doesn’t matter.”
“How do you know, Sir?”
“It’s their MO. Latching onto a ship’s hull and cutting through with prolonged blasting rounds. Once they’re in, all the atmo jettisons out into space.” Eventually the ship would be left an empty husk of space junk. An eternal graveyard.
Caspar’s device beeped. “Sir, a lifeform in the Captain’s cabin! Gray must be alive!”
Dolridge grunted and pushed off from the wall. His vision swam and he fall back against it. Caspar rose to her feet, eyes still glued to her device screen.
“I’m going to go check on him. You alright here, Sir?”
“Of all the lousy times you’ve seen me propped up against a wall, barely able to walk in a straight line, this is the time you’re just going to leave me here?”
She frowned and made to help him stand up straight, but he waved her off.
“No, no. Go. I’m kidding. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, gunner. We’re all three of us going to die today.”
“I’m not ready to believe that, Sir.” Her voice had grown quiet again.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe. Sometimes death just sneaks up and takes what it wants.”
She stepped back from him. “With all due respect, Sir, I don’t really care what you think right now. Look, if you have intel, and you want to help me, then let’s help each other and survive. But if your plan to is wait here until those things cut through that door and pull us out to die in the void, then you might as well just go open the door for them. Me? I’m going to breathe until I can’t anymore.”
She turned and sped toward Gray’s chamber. Dolridge watched, grimacing. Had he ever had such a drive to survive? Maybe she was right about him. Maybe, after she was safely inside with the door shut, he should just go back onto the breached bridge and be done with it. How long would it take to die in the void, anyway? He pursed his lips and started going down the checklist of what would kill him if he got shot out into open space.
But then death would win, a voice seemed to say.
He’ll win in the end anyway, he thought back.
He’ll claim your body. Not your spirit.
Death claimed my spirit long ago, he thought, coldly.
So claim it back.
Talking to himself? He really was advancing quickly into his dotage.
Anyway, what harm would it do if he chose to just die? What great scar would he leave behind? None. No one would mourn him. No one would remember him as he lived now. Everyone he had cared for had already grieved his loss, first when he had retired from spying for the Kuiper Blade, second when he had retired into his booze after Sarah’s death.
And Sarah. She wouldn’t judge him too harshly, would she? On the other side? Surely she would understand. She must have seen his suffering. Must have missed him all this time. Maybe she would even laugh with him about it all, be glad that he
had finally given up and taken the easy way out. They could be together. They could be a family again.
Down the hall, Caspar had reached the Captain’s quarters. She swiped at the console and the doors slid open. Dolridge turned away, his eyes on the door to the bridge.
He heard blaster fire.
Followed by the dull thud of a body.
6
Dolridge gasped, his head clearing all at once. He was halfway down the hall to her, his lucid mind telling himself that it wasn’t Sarah, that he wasn’t reliving her death. Another few paces and he saw Casper roll to the side, just in time to avoid another round.
So she hadn’t been hit; she had dropped to the ground under fire. He caught his breath and told himself to calm down. She saw him and her eyes widened. She nodded back inside Gray’s cabin.
“Captain’s dead,” she mouthed. “It’s a drone.”
Broadcasting as a lifeform? That was a new trick. But he supposed if they had been programmed to act as lures, maybe they had replicated Gray’s sig before frying him. Or maybe the AI had come up with that tactic all by itself. The hairs on Dolridge’s arms stood up, and he suppressed a thrill of horror. Maybe the drones were hunting them, adapting to their environment, trying to trap the survivors.
Trying to trap Caspar.
He saw Sarah’s face in his mind, her arms outstretched, beckoning, and silently, inwardly, said, not yet. Then he pulled his pistol out, squatted, aimed toward the door, and rolled across the opening, covering himself with fire.
Of course the drone fired too. It clipped him in the arm and he dropped his pistol, biting his tongue and groaning as his flesh sizzled. But he made it to the other side of the doorway alive.
“You alright, Caspar?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow and looked at his arm. “You sure you’re the one who should be asking that right now?”
He glanced at it and chuckled. “That’s nothing.” His arm didn’t look good. But in sleeveless undershirts, they could both see the many other scars on his arms and shoulders. Souvenirs of the old days, when he was a Blade agent.
He caught her staring, and she met his eyes. “You know, they can get rid of those scars if you want.”
He sniffed. “Nah. I don’t want them to make me pretty. I want the reminders.”
“Of?”
“That I’m alive. C’mon.”
At the end of the corridor, a panel concealed a maintenance hatch. Together they pulled off the panel and turned the dog lever. The hatch hissed open.
“Wait.” Dolridge stopped Casper with an arm. He leaned forward and took a whiff of the air from the maintenance shaft. It was clean. When he looked back at Casper, he saw a look of amusement on her face.
“Sir, am I going to have to report you for conduct unbefitting an XO of the Kuiper Fleet?”
His arm was stretched across her chest, covered in a tight undershirt. He fought a blush and pulled his arm back.
“Oh, shut up, gunner. You know what I was doing.”
The ship harbored a small force of escape pods, most of them in the lower decks. From what Caspar’s scans had reported, it looked like these had all been destroyed. But there was a lone escape pod just a level up, held there for quick access from the bridge.
They headed up, pulling themselves carefully, rung by rung. Orange running lights gave the shaft an eerie glow. A level up they reached another hatch, and turned the wheel.
This deck still had atmo, but it was deathly quiet. “Caspar, you seeing any lifeforms?”
“No,” she said grimly, looking up from her device. “Not another on the whole ship.”
They reached the console outside the docking bay that housed the pod. Dolridge swiped at the controls, and they lit up, announcing that the pod had already been jettisoned.
“What?!” he growled from between clenched teeth. Casper plugged her device into the console and pulled up the logs.
“Marx took it,” she groaned.
Had he been in collusion with whoever had sent the drones to begin with? A man inside—and chief security officer, no less—might explain why there hadn’t been klaxons sounding and lights flashing. It had been a silent takeover. Silent, and apparently complete.
Dolridge shook his head. “She’s lost. Totaled.”
And there was no other way off.
Why had he ever agreed to babysit this stinking piece of metal in the first place? He didn’t belong here, scooping up antique fighters and—
“Casper,” he whispered. “You still want to live?”
“Still?” she chuckled mirthlessly. “Is there any other way?”
He nodded. “Might be. But we’ll need a good deal of luck. And I don’t know if you’d noticed, but that seems to be in short supply today. Follow me.”
He turned, heading back to the maintenance shaft.
7
Ten minutes later they were leaning against a hatch to the cargo bay, ears pressed to the door.
“Not a sound,” Dolridge murmured. He was still set on edge by the silence that had fallen over the ship. Caspar leaned into the wheel and turned, pushing the hatch open.
Yes, there it was. Across the dock there sat a little comet-hopper, a small maintenance vessel equipped to carry up to ten men. Short-distance only, so they would have to hope they could evade the drones and get scooped up by someone else. But if they could only put themselves on course to float up through the orbital plane, that might be enough. And he knew it had fuel and would at least start, because they’d tested it out after picking it up to see if it might be worth anything.
The only problem? The veritable army of drones scattered across the floor of the dock between them and the hopper.
A finger to his lips, Dolridge reached for the hatch to pull it shut. The wound in his arm seized him, and he muffled a gasp, pulling back. Caspar closed the hatch without a sound.
“I really hate that AI,” Dolridge said.
“You think they knew we were coming?”
He shook his head in bewilderment. “It must have known beforehand what all was on board, and narrowed down our options. Process of elimination and all that.”
“Let me look at that.” Caspar took his shoulder in her hands and turned him to inspect the wound. Her eyes popped open, then refocused.
“That bad, huh?”
“Let’s just say I think you need a medic more than a shower—for once, Sir.”
He snorted softly.
She pulled up her device and fiddled with it for a moment. “Listen. In about five minutes there’s going to be a distraction, which I hope will lure these things out of the loading dock. It’s an AI, right? Must be curious. As soon as they go, get to the hopper and get it fired up. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
“This distraction wouldn’t happen to involve you blowing up another part of my ship, would it?”
She shrugged. “Well, Sir, I am your munitions officer.”
“I’ll go. You stay and wait for them to leave.”
She suppressed a laugh. “With respect, Sir, no. You look like hell. Just between us, I think I’m giving you quite enough responsibility by asking you to get yourself to the hopper in five.”
“You’re giving me responsibility…?”
He wasn’t going to let her go, but she dodged away before he had finished his thought. Oh, well. She was right, anyway.
For once, things went well. A few minutes after Caspar’s disappearance there was an alarmingly loud sound, followed by a shudder, and, as one, the drones rose and vacated the bay, all heading in the direction of the noise. Dolridge shook his head. That was quick thinking, however she had done it. She would have made a fine agent of the Blade.
His arm burned and he winced as he ambled out onto the deck. He tried calling up his old training. There was a time he’d been able to shut pain down like a comp, but his brain just didn’t work that way anymore. He would just have to rely on grit to get through.
The hopper was old, but functional
. He started the comp and engine, saw the tank was only half full, and brought her up to coast over to the opposite side of the bay, where there was a fueling dock. He had just finished topping her off when he heard a clang from back where the hopper had been sitting. A panel had fallen from the wall. Caspar leapt out, saw that he had moved the hopper, and broke into a run, her face hard and determined.
He climbed down to cross toward her, but she waved him back. “Go, go!” she shouted. “Get moving!”
An instant later he saw why. Just as she reached him, the drones flew out behind her in a perfect line and gathered above the deck like a swarm of bees.
Angry bees.
They were closing in on the hopper by the time he had lifted off. Caspar’s hands flew on her device, and the bay doors yawned open.
“It’s no good,” he growled. “They’ll just follow us and tear us apart out there.”
“Not if they can’t get out!” Caspar hit one more keystroke, and the doors reversed direction, moving toward each other again. Dolridge slammed the accelerator and the little hopper flew out into space, the doors clamping shut just behind them.
“Brace!” Caspar yelled, ducking down and holding her head in her hands.
But Dolridge couldn’t have prepared for the force of the explosion if he’d tried. The entire starry sky behind them seemed to be enveloped in flame. A shock wave sent the hopper bucking, her nose tipping down. He had just enough presence of mind to counter with front thrusters so they wouldn’t be locked in a spin. Then another explosion, another wave, and Dolridge flew from his seat toward the ceiling and knew no more.
8
It was the strangest debriefing he’d ever had. Officers interviewed him in the med bay of whatever base they’d brought him to. They didn’t seem as interested in asking questions as in explaining to him what had happened. Drone attack by a rogue mercenary cell, inner-worlds. No military directly responsible. Cell was being hunted down, would be held accountable, blah blah blah. His mind wasn’t as nimble as it had once been, but he recognized political mumbo jumbo when he heard it. And he knew the perils of letting on. So he nodded and smiled and thanked each one of them for coming to his aid.
Totaled: A Starship Fairfax Prequel Story Page 2
