by Wayne Basta
Lahkaba considered him for a moment. Maarkean really wished he had a better understanding of Kowwok expressions. Contemplative would have been his guess, but it could have just as easily have been confusion.
“Jairyd said we had to be prepared to give our lives for the cause if we were going to have any hope of succeeding. He warned us you might not be. I was told to take over if you weren’t prepared to do what was necessary.”
Despite himself, Maarkean laughed. He had no idea why. They were being pursued by Alliance fighters. The ship that was supposed to take his sister to safety was unable to escape. And he was a meter away from a Kowwok who just revealed he might be about to kill him.
“You’re not going to kill me,” Maarkean said, when he could get air.
“No, I’m not. Jairyd got pretty full of himself when Lei-mey was taken. I think he saw dying on this mission as a glorious way to further the cause.”
“Better power down that turret, or we’ll get to test that theory.”
Getting up from the ops station, Lahkaba moved back to the turret controls. As he did so, alarms started shrieking. Maarkean recognized them immediately as a warning that they were in a target lock.
“Guess we waited too long. Keep that turret up. Get ready to shoot.”
“Shoot what?” Lahkaba said hastily, strapping himself in.
“Missiles,” Maarkean replied, and he took the ship into a fast series of maneuvers and course changes, trying to throw off the target lock. His sensor display showed two incoming missiles.
As the missiles drew closer, Lahkaba began laying down a stream of fire from the turret in their direction. Significantly smaller and faster than the fighters, the missiles proved a much harder target. Despite the fire, Maarkean knew they were done for as the missiles continued closer. It was a welcome shock when they suddenly exploded.
“I didn’t hit them,” Lahkaba said, dumbfounded.
“What did?”
Scrambling out of the gunner station, Lahkaba dropped down into the operations chair. He ran a more thorough scan of the area than the other station’s short-range sensors allowed. Shock filled his voice when he spoke.
“The freighter.”
“I thought that thing was unarmed?”
“They’re using the mining lasers,” Lahkaba said incredulously. “We just might win this thing!”
“Or they’re going to get themselves killed.”
Racing down the spine of the ship to the engineering section exhausted Saracasi. Exercise had never been her favorite activity, and spending the last few days trapped in a cramped building, and living aboard a transport ship before that, had not given her many opportunities. The heavy breathing that threatened to overcome her made her rethink her attitude toward it, though.
When she made it to the engineering room, she found Chavatwor and a female Notha waiting for her. Chavatwor introduced the Notha as La’ari Mahon; she had been a ship engineering student before being sent to Olan. She briefed them on the issue they were having with the hyperdrive.
The group spent the next several minutes familiarizing themselves with the room’s layout before identifying the hyperdrive control panel. When they examined the display, Chavatwor mumbled several things in his native language which sounded to Saracasi like curses. She found herself glad she couldn’t understand.
“This system is a complete mess,” Chavatwor finally growled. “Hyperdrive as a secondary system? The way the systems are routed, I’m surprised it ever worked.” He appeared to be completely captivated with his study of the system.
“Can we fix it?” Saracasi asked.
“Sure,” Chavatwor said cheerfully, as if he were looking forward to the challenge. “Give me two months, a couple dozen workers and several new components, and I’ll make it the most efficient system on this ship.”
“Can we fix it before the Alliance blows us up?”
Chavatwor looked startled as he seemed to remember the crisis they were facing. “Um, sure. La’ari, go to the reactor control panel. I’m going to need you to make some adjustments. Saracasi, go back to the bridge; I’ll need someone to make some changes from the controls there.”
With a sigh, Saracasi headed back down the spine of the ship. She tried to run, but she could only manage a light jog for most of the way. The stairs at the end almost did her in, and she once again vowed to exercise more. She promised herself she would ensure there was a jogging path in the Cutty Sark’s cargo bay no matter what cargo they had onboard.
When she got up to the bridge, she headed straight for the engineering terminal. Once there, she sent a message to Chavatwor, but she only got a perfunctory response. While she waited for the Kowwok to tell her what she needed to do, she noticed that there were several new people on the bridge.
“Where’s Zeric?” she asked.
The Terran woman she had seen up here before turned to her and looked startled. “He ordered us to turn around and then ran off.”
Saracasi noticed two young men at the helm and operations stations. Both looked younger than she was, but you could never be certain with other species. The Notha introduced himself as Isaxo Mahon, and she recognized the family name as that of the Notha working with Chavatwor.
After several minutes, the bridge comm came alive, and she was surprised when it was Zeric and not Chavatwor who spoke. “All right, bridge, this is Zeric in the port laser control room. Get us in close to the Alliance ships; these lasers apparently don’t have very good range before they lose power.”
A sinking feeling came over Saracasi. “You’re going to attack them? With mining equipment?”
“Who is this? Saracasi?” Zeric asked. “We’re trying to help your brother. How’s the hyperdrive coming?”
“Should have it working again in a few minutes,” Saracasi said, though, in truth, she was only hoping that was true. Chavatwor had not given any estimates. “Those mining lasers can’t be very powerful. You sure you can get through the shields on those fighters?”
There was a noticeable pause from Zeric’s end, and when he replied, he sounded less confident. “Sure, we should be able to do it if we’re close. Get us as close to the fighters as you can.”
Deciding the best thing she could do was to get them all out of there, Saracasi went back to the engineering terminal. She noticed some of the changes Chavatwor and La’ari had made, and she thought she had an idea what they were attempting. While they worked, she spoke to the Terran woman, Meyka.
“Zeric said you were working on calculating how much air we had to breathe?”
Meyka nodded. “Yeah, turns out, not a lot. Our destination was supposed to be Kol, but I estimate that we’ll be out of air before we get halfway there.”
“I entered a set of coordinates for our first jump into deep space to throw off our pursuit. See if you can find a planet with a breathable atmosphere that we can reach from there.”
Looking appreciative at having something productive to do, the woman went back to the environmental terminal she had been working from. Saracasi did not at all like the idea of running out of oxygen and suffocating. Rotting in an Alliance prison held more appeal. Maybe getting the hyperdrive working wasn’t going to be the blessing it was supposed to be.
Alarms started sounding from terminals all over the bridge, and Saracasi realized that they were taking weapons fire. She ran a diagnostic and saw that nothing critical had been damaged. Remembering that the hyperdrive was not considered a primary system, she started a secondary diagnostic, wondering what other critical systems were listed as secondary.
The weapon fire against the ship continued for several minutes. Isaxo and the Camari flying the ship let out shouts of fear and excitement, and she heard someone yell, “We got one!” She spent her time adjusting the shield power to keep them protected as best she could.
“Bridge, what’s going on up there?” Chavatwor called angrily. “I’m close to getting this thing working, but the power keeps fluctuating.”
&n
bsp; “I’m trying to keep the shields up,” Saracasi yelled back.
“Stop for one minute, and I should be able to finish!”
Saracasi considered her choices. She could stop adjusting the shields, potentially letting them fail and having the ship be destroyed, or allowing them to escape to hyperspace. Or she could continue adjusting the shields, and keep them alive for a few more minutes – but they would eventually be destroyed anyway.
Reluctantly, she moved her hands from the controls. She brought up a status display for the hyperdrive and then called forward to Isaxo, “There should be a set of coordinates locked into the navigational computer. Bring them up, and then when I say to, engage the hyperdrive. Pilot, give us an appropriate heading so we can go as soon as I say.”
The two acknowledged her, apparently relieved at the thought of getting away. Several tense moments went by as Saracasi watched the shield power decline and red warnings spring up about hull integrity and various systems taking damage. She fervently hoped she had made the right call in listening to Chavatwor.
When the status on the hyperdrive changed from offline to online she almost didn’t believe it. It took Chavatwor screaming at her over the comm for her to accept it. She in turn shouted to Isaxo, “Go, Isaxo, go!”
The young Notha wasted no time, and the bridge windows were suddenly filled with the colors of hyperspace.
Chapter Nine
Zeric was greatly relieved when they jumped to hyperspace. There was no information about the status of the ship in the laser control section, but based on the number of hits they had taken, he was sure some things were broken.
Climbing down from the manual control station for the mining laser, he walked back to the central juncture of the ship. There, he nodded to Chungum, who had been operating the starboard laser. The Kowwok returned his nod and then dashed off toward the aft of the ship where his wife had been working a turret.
He shook his head as the Kowwok left. Zeric didn’t consider himself prejudiced against any species, and he had no problem with interspecies relationships, but the thought of kissing, much less having sex with, something that hairy held no appeal for him. The next time a woman gave him a hard time about his goatee, he would have to tell her about that relationship.
When he reached the stairs that led up to the bridge, he found Lohcja coming up from the lower deck. He was wearing a sling on his injured arm, but he looked much better than when Zeric had last seen him. He said as much, and as best as Zeric could tell, the Ronid smiled. The lips were too long to make a proper smile, and the mandibles just gave it a creepy look.
“I saw that we made it to hyperspace. There are some people down there who wish to thank you. We managed to get Lei-mey with the last group,” Lohcja said.
“Excellent,” Zeric replied, trying to sound enthusiastic. He had never really cared if Lei-mey or anyone else made it out, beyond his friends. It certainly made things a lot nicer for him, though. Had they rescued his friends and not her, there might have been problems. And he certainly wasn’t upset that she had been rescued. He just couldn’t sum up the excitement Lohcja clearly felt.
“Lei-mey would like to thank you personally,” Lohcja said.
A passing thought crossed Zeric’s mind. Ceta was quite attractive. If that trait ran in the family, Lei-mey had been in prison for a while, and if she was grateful to him… He stopped that train of thought immediately. They weren’t safe yet.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Zeric replied as he started up the stairs. “We haven’t made it to safe ground.”
Leaving Lohcja behind, Zeric climbed up to the bridge. He found Saracasi and Meyka conversing over the environmental station and Isaxo and Ceno talking excitedly to each other at the front of the bridge. Ignoring the young people, he went back to join the two women.
“Nice timing on that hyperdrive,” Zeric said with a smile.
“Nice attempt at getting us all killed,” Saracasi replied with an icy tone.
“Hey, now, I’ll have you know our first two shots took out two missiles that were about to destroy your brother. The targeting systems on those lasers are quite nice,” Zeric replied defensively. He had known it was a long shot, but he thought it worked out pretty well.
“First, thank you for that. Second, that was about the only thing you destroyed. Those lasers are designed to cut through rock with a sustained beam. They were not powerful enough to penetrate the shields on the fighters for the short bursts you were firing. Third, hell, those aren’t even lasers – I don’t know why people use that word.” Saracasi said. She went from angry to grateful to frustrated in just a breath.
“Wait, they aren’t lasers?” Zeric said, latching onto the least important thing Saracasi had said.
“No, they’re a directed beam of energy, but a laser is a focused beam of light –”
Saracasi was cut off by a frustrated noise from Meyka, who said, “If you two are done, we have the matter of breathable air to deal with.”
Zeric focused in on the woman’s words. This had been a worry of his from the beginning. Suffocating in space was high on the list of ways he didn’t want to die. It was a long list, and the top spot tended to change based on what the immediate danger was, but suffocation in any form was always pretty high.
“How long do we have?”
“That’s kind of a mixed answer,” Meyka replied. “This ship is designed to support a crew of forty for at least six months. Now, like most ships, the oxygen system uses recycled air most of the time, which, with the correct amount of crew, will keep the air flowing pretty much indefinitely. However, by my rough estimate, we have about seven hundred people onboard.”
The number staggered Zeric. He had seen a lot of people, but had no idea it was that many. It gave him an uneasy feeling about their chances.
Meyka continued, “With that many people, we’ll run out of oxygen reserves in a week.”
Zeric brightened up. “A week should be enough time to reach Kol.”
“I wasn’t done,” Meyka said, dashing Zeric’s spirits. “We’ll burn out the environmental system in three days and die from carbon dioxide poisoning inside of four.”
Letting out a breath of air, Zeric tried to remain positive. “Okay, where can we reach in less than four days?”
This time, Saracasi spoke up. “I’ve been going over the possibilities and identified three worlds capable of supporting life.”
She turned away from the environmental station and brought up a holographic display on one of the central tables. A galactic map appeared, showing Sulas and their approximate location not very far away from it. Kol was brought up on the opposite side of the table. Three of the stars lit up with a name beside them.
“We’re about two days from Ailleroc. A well-colonized world, with heavy Alliance presence. Even if we can beat word of our escape, a packet ship from Sulas won’t be too far behind us.”
Saracasi pointed to the next world. “Mirthod, a lightly populated world, no major Alliance facilities but still a presence. The civilized areas aren’t much more than trading posts.”
Zeric shook his head. “Mirthod is lightly populated because it is so dangerous. Almost every native creature appears to be designed to kill you. Those trading posts’ primary source of revenue is hunting trips. Lots of money to be made from some of those creatures, but lots of experienced people don’t come back alive. With this many scared and hungry people, we’ll be torn up.”
By this time, Isaxo and Ceno had made their way to join the group by the holo display. Zeric didn’t like the idea of their predicament spreading too far among the former prisoners, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He just tried to give the two young people a look he hoped would get the message across not to share anything.
Saracasi continued with the last world. “That’s it for established colonies. There are dozens of star systems in the sector that don’t have any Alliance presence, but most have never been surveyed, so we have no idea what’s in
any of them. One that has, PX-1997, is the moon of a gas giant barely in the habitable zone for the system. It is undeveloped, so no Alliance presence, but also no place to refuel or resupply.”
“Irod is not undeveloped,” a new voice said. Zeric turned to see the Notha, Faide, his tail swishing behind him, coming onto the bridge. He was followed by Chavatwor and another Notha.
“According to the database, there was a survey of the moon about a hundred years ago, but no one has established a colony,” Saracasi said.
“It won’t appear in the database. The colony was set up seventeen years ago by a friend of mine, looking to get away from the war. His followers did not want to involve themselves in any more violence. I would have joined them, but I was arrested before I could leave.”
Zeric considered Faide’s words. There were lots of unidentified settlements on habitable worlds, so what he said was possible. But seventeen years was a long time. That many years in a prison was not something he wanted to consider.
“If your friend was setting up a colony that long ago and you’ve been in prison since then, how can you be sure it’s still there? Most independent colony efforts fail.”
Faide shrugged. “I can’t be. But I do know the indigenous species are no more dangerous than you’d find on any world, unlike Mirthod, and there are no Alliance bases, unlike Ailleroc. But I leave the decision to you.”
Not much of a choice when you put it like that, Zeric thought. He noticed the rest of the group looking at him expectantly. It took a moment, but he realized that, for some reason, everyone was leaving the final decision to him.
“Well, even if the colony isn’t there anymore, there’s a good chance they left some stuff behind. We can drop off most of the passengers and use the ship to get help from somewhere else if need be.”
