“We can override it. We’ve done this before.”
The Commander’s confident tone might have put Ellie’s mind at ease if it weren’t for the wall of ship that was bearing down on them at what appeared to be highly unsafe speeds. A small portal broke the smooth surface of the ship’s hull, but it looked barely big enough for Ellie to fit through, let alone the ship.
Just as quickly, the ship veered around, dropping Ellie’s stomach once again as empty space filled the view screen. A loud groan, like metal scraping metal, issued from the hull just outside where she stood and Ellie’s heart leapt into her throat.
“Um…” she began, but wondered if distracting the pilots was a good idea at that moment.
“Nothing to worry about,” Commander Vonsse assured her. “The Emperor’s ship just picked up a bothersome barnacle.”
“Running a diagnostic,” the copilot announced. “Pressure and air quality is adequate. Preparing the hatch.”
“Eidyn Master, you’ll want to move away from the door for a moment.”
Ellie stepped back, grateful that the ship was no longer moving as she let go of her hand rail. A hissing sound filled the cabin, followed by a pop as the air pressure changed. The hatch opened, revealing a short tunnel to the open portal on Svoryk’s ship.
“Will you stay docked?” she asked. “Without the ability to dock my ship, we may need rescue transport.”
“Of course,” the Commander nodded. “I’ll stand guard. Here,” he added, handing her a small cylindrical device. “It’s not the most sophisticated communicator, but it is serviceable. Place it in your ear and press down to speak.”
“It’s better than what I’ve got.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” she said with a wry grin and climbed through the portal, emerging in what looked like a large closet with an armored metal door. This had to be the airlock that her ship would not dock with. The sight of the heavy door dismayed her, but a moment later, the Commander followed her out the hatch and came over.
“Sorry,” he said, grabbing the handle and yanking it upward as he pushed in. “I guess you’re not used to inferior tech.”
“Thanks,” she said, ignoring the fact that she was so intimidated by so-called inferior tech that she allowed herself to be stumped by something as simple as a door. “Stay safe,” she added and took off in what she hoped was the right direction to get to the bridge.
But as she passed through the airlock an into the cargo hold, Ellie nearly lost hope. She’d known she would enter the ship below the modified displacement core, which would make bypassing it difficult. What the Commander’s schematics hadn’t shown was the extent to which the displacement core had been modified.
“No wonder they’d barely left the solar system,” Ellie muttered as she looked for a clear path. What should have been a large, enclosed engine with a maintenance corridor running the length, had been retrofitted with a series of pipes and pistons, reminding her of the type of engine rooms that were typically added to sci-fi movies as an element of danger for the crew to navigate, but life was a whole lot different from the movies.
She ran to the opposite side. Surely even Svoryk needed to have at least one cleared access corridor. But as she came to a skidding halt on the opposite side of the engine, she let out a startled gasp. Spires of crystal jutted out in all directions. Not only were they blocking her path, but they appeared to pierce the wall around the displacement core.
Ellie knew not what purpose any of the modifications served, but she didn’t have time to dwell on the impracticality. All that mattered was that she was now stuck on the wrong side of the ship seeing as the maintenance corridor was blocked on both sides. Worse, there was no time to return to Vonsse’s vessel and attempt to find a better docking port.
There had to be a way up.
The hold was full of parcels, some of which were labeled with Eidyssic symbols she recognized as possible weapons. Being that this was Svoryk’s personal vessel and not a cargo transport, it seemed likely that there was a method by which they would be able to get items to the main body of the ship while in transit.
And then she saw it. A near transparent tube at the far end of the corridor that reminded her of the pneumatic tubes banks and old buildings used to send small objects.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding!”
As she got closer, Ellie realized the tube wasn’t just similar in appearance, but that was exactly what it was. A simple button switched the direction of the pull. There was no way a person could use such a device, but despite her search, Ellie found no stairs, elevator, or access at all to any other area of the ship. What she did find was a helmet, which did nothing to ease her apprehension, but she had no choice. After adjusting the straps to fit her head, Ellie pressed the button marked outgoing and stepped into the tube.
Surprisingly, she did not rocket off at speeds meant to turn her into a bug splattered on a windshield, but the experience was by no means pleasant. Ellie felt as if she was being compacted. All of the air had been pressed from her lungs and she could barely raise an arm to steady herself as she pushed off with her toes. The actual trip upwards had taken all of five seconds, but it felt like a lifetime.
She was flung from the tube with such force that she crumpled into a heap of what might have been broken bones had it not been for her Eidyn heritage. The crushing lifted, but at the same time, her own body felt as if it weighed a ton after being pushed and pulled through what she could only imagine was a simulation of being adrift in open space.
“And here I thought roller coasters were bad,” she groaned as she tried and failed to push herself up. Instead, she rolled onto her back, opened her eyes, and found herself staring into a pair of inky black pools she’d missed more than she dared think about.
Chapter 21
Julian shifted his palm against the smooth wall, gliding over each of the matrix connectors, but still nothing happened. He was trapped. Whether due to the degradation of the ship’s info matrix or a deliberate lock out on the part of the woman he held no trust for mattered little at that moment. Every second he remained locked in the small stall meant more lives were in danger.
He looked up, noticing a barely visible seam running in a semi-circle around the rim of the ceiling. The irony that Svoryk’s own paranoia might be the very means of his escape was not lost as Julian hopped up onto the wash basin, testing if it would hold his weight before bracing his feet on each side of the bowl. He placed his hands on the ceiling panel and gave a shove. The panel shifted, but something seemed to be keeping it down.
Julian gave another push, throwing all of his strength into it. A creaking snap echoed through the access corridor overhead as the panel flew from his grasp and clattered to the ground. Ignoring the noise, he lifted himself through the hatch, noting with bemusement the twisted and broken remnants of a simple metal latch.
Every shuffling step as he crawled across the scaffolding seemed to echo thunderously in the eerie silence. On any normal star class vessel, the silence would mean the ship was performing properly, however, Julian had crawled through the bowels of many modified Imperial starships. Clanging, creaking, and noises of all sorts were commonplace with all the mechanical retrofitting required.
Getting into Bethany’s cell without making a sound was impossible, but if the ship’s silence indicated what he thought it did, it mattered little. With another loud snap, Julian broke the lock holding the hatch in place and lowered himself into the cell, prepared for a verbal onslaught, but the only noise that met him was a less than gentle buzzing coming from the curled up lump in a corner.
“Bethany? Wake up, please,” Julian said in a low tone as he gave her shoulder a brief squeeze. He pulled back as she sat up, mumbling incoherently as she stretched her legs fully and opened her eyes.
“Ugh, yeah, I’m up, I’m up. Tell Ms. Shirley to keep her wig on—” Her eyes went wide and she was on her feet, scrambling to put as much distance between he
rself and Julian as the small cell would allow. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What the hell are you?”
“Bethany, it’s me,” Julian said, cursing himself for not thinking as he quickly resumed the appearance of Isa’s human assistant. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Uh huh. And I suppose you’re also gonna tell me you weren’t just a blue lizard man a second ago too, huh?”
“I assure you, I am not a lizard. I’m here to rescue you.” Julian smiled, using the carefully practiced charm that seemed to work altogether too easily on most humans he’d encountered. “You’re a prisoner on Svoryk’s ship. We need to get you out of here, but we need to hurry.”
“Ship? What the figgity you talking about? This don’t look like any cruise I ever been on.” Bethany made a show of looking around at the sterile surroundings of her cell. “Are you trying to tell me that toad man is a pirate or something? Where are we?”
“We’re in space,” Julian said with a smirk, switching to sarcasm as it seemed Bethany was immune to his charms. “Are you injured? Can you walk?”
Bethany made a show of feeling her arms and legs, giving Julian a sideways glare as she did. “I’m whole, but you got a lot of explaining to do, blue boy.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he replied, placing his hand over the panel by the cell door. Again, nothing happened. He tried melting away the plastic insulator, but found the ship’s circuits unresponsive. “But first, we need an escape plan.”
There was no question now. The entire ship’s info matrix was damaged, meaning they were navigating a ticking time bomb. Should the environmental system shut down, they would have much larger problems.
“I can’t open the cell, but we can leave through the maintenance hatch,” he explained with a glance up at the portal he’d come in through. “I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” he added, remembering that to get out to the main hallways they would have to climb through the central lift terminal.
Bethany said nothing as she jumped straight up and caught the edge of the hatch with the fingers on both hands and deftly pulled herself through with the grace of a gymnast.
“Need a hand, Skinny?”
“I think I can manage,” he said, winking as he gracefully leapt the extra few inches needed to grip the side of the hatch.
“Showoff,” Bethany muttered as Julian slid past her and motioned for her to follow him.
He reached out with his mind, letting his connection to his master take over. She was closer than when he last checked, but not by much. This was good. If she was still attempting to dock, then there was a chance he could get Bethany to the airlock and safely off the ship in time to get himself to the bridge.
“What kind of freaky-ass eighties space movie crap is that?”
Julian pulled up short and followed Bethany’s pointed finger to an outcropping of crystals. Their presence alone was enough to give him pause. The crystal shards, though much larger, were exactly like the mass of silicate tumors that had ravaged his former Kyroibi master. He’d never heard of a ship suffering a degenerative disease, but given that the silicate compounds used to create interstellar class ships were much the same as those found in the transfer diode matrix of his people, it was terrifyingly not impossible.
Especially not when he’d just discovered one of the passengers carried the rare but deadly disease. Suddenly, Dryova’s invisibility made sense. She didn’t show up as a lifeform because the vessel saw her only as part of its own illness.
“Oh my god! Are those…?”
Julian’s blood froze as he noticed what had Bethany shaking with fear. Trapped within the crystalline structure were people. Their features were obscured by the crystal prison, but from what he could see, their deaths had not been swift or painless.
“Stay here,” he commanded Bethany and hopped over the railing to what had once been communal living quarters. The silicate crystal wall extended as far as his eye could see.
Suddenly the unusual silence made terrifying sense. Taking into account where they were, Julian was not optimistic that the damage hadn’t yet spread to the displacement core. In fact, as he eyed the pattern of growth, he had to wonder if the damage hadn’t spread from the core itself.
“Okay, we need to hurry,” he said, pulling himself back up to where Bethany waited on the catwalk. “And it’s about to get tricky.”
“The sooner we get out of this nightmare the better.”
A few more turns and Julian held up his hand, motioning for Bethany to come forward.
“That is why I asked about heights,” he said, pointing down into the ship’s central transportation hub. “We need to climb down five levels and cross the maintenance catwalk to the other side. From there we go down two more levels and there should be a long hallway leading to the left. If it hasn’t become blocked.”
“Heights I can handle. Dead bodies is a different story. You see these?” she flexed her arm, bringing a corded bicep up in front of her face. “They’re not for show and they’ve saved my butt before.” Not allowing Julian to answer, she lowered herself onto the first rung and began to descend the wall with ease.
At the bottom, Bethany showed no sign of vertigo as she crossed the catwalk and waited for Julian to show her where to go to get down to the next level. When they reached the corridor, both let out a collective breath when they found it clear of crystalized debris.
“We’re not far from the airlock,” Julian said as he set a brisk pace through the hallway. “We just need to get around the displacement core and we’ll be off this ship in—”
Julian cut off as a red light flashed up ahead, indicating an incoming transport from cargo. Given that there was no one manning the cargo station, he took a step back, pulling Bethany behind him. If there truly was a package coming up and no one to guide it from the elevator, it could easily become a projectile weapon. A sudden rush of air signaled the transport was in operation and a second later the hatch slid open, tossing out not a package, but a person, limbs flailing and twisting in ways that were completely unnatural.
Julian could not believe his own eyes. The pneumatic freight transporter was a danger to anyone who operated it without the proper safety equipment. And yet, there she was, groaning and struggling to sit up. Pulling his thoughts together, he rushed over and fell to his knees, searching for any sign of injury.
But as the diodes on the tips of his fingers met with those on Ellie’s temple, Julian was overpowered. Not by the intensity of her injuries, but by the myriad of emotions that tumbled through their connection. Relief, elation, joy, and something so much more powerful caught him completely off guard. Before he knew what was happening, she sat up and placed her own fingertips to his temples before pulling him into a passionate kiss.
As the floodgates of Ellie’s own emotional turmoil opened, she overpowered Julian not only with the feelings she’d recently been building, but those she denied for years. Feelings she’d tried to pass off as a schoolgirl crush when she first laid eyes on him four years earlier. She held nothing back and in return, she felt his concern and fear receding, replaced by a torrent of desire. He wanted her as much as she wanted him.
“El’iadrylline…”
Her name was no more than a low murmur on his lips, but the sound of it sent her pulse into overdrive. She leaned into him, forgetting everything and leaving nothing unspoken between them. But in the next instant, the emotional flow took a sharp turn. Guilt, fear, shame, and anger overwhelmed her as Julian turned away with an anguished cry.
“I’m sorry,” he said sharply. “I lost control. I… please forgive me.”
“Forgive you? For what?” she asked, her mood darkening quickly.
“For taking liberties that I know better than to take.”
“Liberties?” Ellie rolled her eyes. “Julian, in case you didn’t notice, I kissed you. I’m also here to rescue you, so don’t you dare try and pull some chivalrous crap, okay? I know my own heart.”
“El’iadrylline, please,�
�� Julian lowered his head, diodes pulsing with confused emotions he could not suppress. “You’ve been to Ia’na Eidyn. Surely you now know—”
“I do,” she said with a breathy sigh, tracing a path between the softly pulsing lights on his cheek, willing the confusion away. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t give a damned. I don’t care if you think your worth is somehow diminished because of what you are. I know what I feel, both in my heart and in yours. You may be a construct, but you are not a machine.” She steeled her nerves and took a deep breath before boldly sliding her hand down to his chest, placing the fingertips of her right hand directly over his heart. “And neither am I.”
“Ellie…” Julian began, moving in to again capture her lips, but a shadow fell across the two of them, giving him pause.
“You know, I do love a good happily ever after, but aren’t we in a bit of a hurry?”
Chapter 22
“Bethany!” Ellie jumped up, fumbling out of Julian’s arms and onto her feet with all diodes blazing in embarrassment. “Thank god you’re safe!”
“Girl, I am beyond happy to see you, and happy for you and lizard man here too,” Bethany said as Ellie pulled her into an unrestrained bear hug. “But ain’t we supposed to be doing something important here? Like say… ESCAPING FROM THE CRAZY TOAD MAN?”
“We actually have bigger issues even than Svoryk at the moment,” Julian noted. “The sooner we can get Bethany safely onto your ship the better.”
“Uh, that’s a good plan, but how?” Ellie threw an apologetic glance towards Bethany. “She’ll never survive that thing.”
“I’m rather shocked you did. What possessed you to crawl into the freight elevator, especially without protection? Why didn’t you just take the maintenance corridor around the displacement core?”
Ellie raised her eyebrows. “I thought you knew. Svoryk’s additions made that impossible.” She gestured to the strange outcropping of crystals. “The other side is all pipes and pistons.”
A Space Girl from Earth (The Kyroibi Trilogy Book 1) Page 21
