James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 08

by Hellfire

  “Getting deeper into the ship might be a good idea” Max Jordan said as he clung to a handhold on the inner hull. The place where the shuttle was locked against the ship was straining dangerously under the larger ship’s acceleration.

  Rook extracted the tactical gauntlets from his landing pack. These were upgrades from the pulse weapons of earlier, and packed a more solid punch. He handed one to Jordan and began strapping his on.

  “Do we really need them?” Driver asked.

  Conveniently, the voice of Mata then came over the ship’s address system and provided an answer. “Attention. The ship has been boarded by Solarite pirates.”

  “I would take that as an affirmative,” Rook said. “Cycle the inner airlock, I’m going in first.”

  “No, I’ll go in,” Jordan protested. “I know this is a pretty sensitive time to bring this up, but you have a wife and a daughter back on Pegasus. I should go in first.”

  “Neg, I’m the senior warfighter, I will go in first,” Rook insisted.

  “No one’s getting in, the airlock’s jammed,” Driver informed them. He had begun working its control panel while Rook was still unpacking the heat. Driver hit the intercom.

  “Airlock to bridge, we’re stuck in here, can anyone release the airlock, or come to our assistance.”

  Silence answered him. And when he repeated his request, Silence answered him again.

  Either the communication system was down, or whoever was on the Bridge had more important problems to deal with.

  “This could be a problem,” Driver told them.

  “Airlocks are usually the strongest part of the ship, we should be totally safe,” Jordan said, and was immediately contradicted by the whine of stressed alloy from the docked shuttle.

  LiminixCH-53 veered to starboard, tossing them around again. A distant percussion charge rattled the ship again.

  “Would have been nice if they got the inertial dampeners on-line,” Rook said.

  “If the shuttle breaks loose, it could tear out the airlock with it,” Driver warned them.

  “And with this maneuvering, I’d guess there’s a better than 50% chance of that happening.”

  “Worse, you mean,” Rook corrected him.

  Driver didn’t answer him, but began working the interlock mechanism again.

  Suddenly, the ship pitched over and slammed them into each other and into the far wall.

  “What in the lost marbles of Sullivan are they doing up there?” Driver wondered aloud.

  Liminix CH-53 – The Bridge

  Liminix’s two functioning engines were putting out as much power as they could, but were far short of what was needed to escape on speed alone. It was only Eliza Jane Change’s extreme maneuvers that were keeping the pirate ships out of range.

  “We’ve managed to put some distance between us and the larger ship,” Change reported. “There’s at least three smaller ships in pursuit. How far until Hellfire 3.”

  “Hellfire Station 3 is still thirty two million kilometers away,” Ono protested. “We will never make it.”

  “If we don’t make it, we die anyway,” Change reminded her. She pulled up a navigational display on one of the available screens. “So, that means there’s nothing to lose.” The hatch to the Bridge swung open and Technician Logo stumbled through. Mata, the Security Man, was close behind her, waving his large heavy gun down one corridor, than over to the next.

  “Report, Technician Logo,” Ono ordered.

  “We encountered two Solarite pirates in the Engine Control Room,” she explained. “We killed them, but Engineer Tama was badly injured. The visitor’s engineer is managing our engines, and he said something about being provided with an ‘adult beverage’ at the conclusion of our journey.”

  Ono ordered Mata to take the weapon station and Logo to monitor navigation. Change finished studying the Navigation screen, and then bent the control yoke hard down and to port. She altered course on a vector away from the sun.

  “What are you doing?” Ono demanded. “We’re off-course.” Change, who had a reputation for never betraying emotion, was almost grinning as she grabbed both joysticks. “I’m gonna lose those pirates.”

  “If you continue on this course, you’ll bring us directly into the asteroid field at the edge of the corona,” Ono protested. “At this ludicrous speed, you will never survive passage.” Change brought up a three-D map of the approaching asteroid debris field, and mentally projected a course through it. She understood the challenge. She just had to fly like an eagle through an avalanche while remaining untouched by a single stone.

  This would be the most fun she had had in a very long time.

  Liminix – The Airlock

  Rook powered up his gauntlet and pointed it at the airlock. “Stand back.” Rook’s charge hit the airlock mechanism, then spread its energy across the entire lock in a miniature electrical storm. The control panel adjacent to the lock sputtered and spat nasty white and orange sparks at them.

  When it stopped sparking, Matthew Driver examined the lock. “You’ve fused the micro-circuitry,” Driver said angrily, which translated into a slightly-louder tone of voice than usual.

  “Subtlety failed, let’s try brute force,” Rook suggested. He augmented his Tactical Suit to full Manplification and made for the hatch to the airlock before noticing its smooth surface offered him no handhold for pulling it open. “This is no good.” At their feet, the ring that locked them to the shuttle was groaned ominously. Then, as Liminix went into a steep climb, a fissure as thin as a thread and long as a finger tore in the alloy plate on the edge of the airlock.

  Max Jordan checked his readings. “Stellar atmosphere is beginning to leak into the chamber.”

  “Nothing like a little radioactive death plasma to make our situation more interesting,” Rook muttered.

  “I love the smell of radioactive death plasma in the morning,” Jordan added, turning the Manplification controls on his suit to full power, and turning up the atmospheric filter as well.

  He gestured for Rook to rejoin him, then flicked his head toward the airlock hatch Rook rejoined him at the back of the chamber, and the two of them heaved their Manplified strength upward against the airlock, which refused to yield and left both of them holding their shoulders painfully. “I immediately regret this course of action,” Rook seethed through clenched teeth.

  Then, the ship lurched violently again and threw them against the shuttle side of the airlock hatch, where they landed in a pile.

  “Look,” Jordan pointed, as he crawled out from underneath his comrades. “The hatch is loose.”

  The violent pitching of the ship had knocked the shipside airlock hatch ajar. Not by more than a couple of centimeters, but it was enough to get a finger-hold. Rook and Jordan grabbed the edge of the hatch and heaved with all their strength. Slowly, and with a grind of alloy-on-different-alloy, the hatch slid back until there was space enough for a man to squeeze through.

  “Go!” Driver ordered Jordan. Jordan realized there was no time for argument. The hatch and docking ring assembly that held the shuttle to the ship was stressed to the breaking point.

  More fissures were opening around the edges. Jordan squeezed through. Driver ordered Rook to follow, and Rook did with no argument.

  Driver spent an agonizing moment contemplating the body of Aha before resigning himself that he could not pull it through the airlock. Saying a quiet prayer, Driver pulled himself through the hatch and then the three of them pushed it back until it sealed it behind them.

  They stared through its viewport as the shuttle’s docking ring and airlock disintegrated.

  It would have been more dramatic if the old shuttle had broken free just as he secured the airlock, but the shuttle managed to hold on for almost another minute before tearing away from the ship and spiraling away to smash spectacularly against a boulder-sized asteroid.

  “She is getting us way too close to those rocks,” Driver protested. “I have got to get to the Brid
ge before…”

  And when he turned away from the hatch, he saw that their troubles had only just started.

  Liminix CH-53 – The Bridge

  Change pulled Liminix CH-53 into a steep dive around a hunk of mountain-sized asteroid that had, over the course of millennia of collisions, become surrounded by a cloud of chips ranging from peanut-sized to house-sized. Change deftly took the ship through the field, but one of the Solarite vessels smacked head-on into one of the house-sized rocks and disappeared in an explosion of fuel and metal.

  “One down!” Eliza Change yelled at Ono, who had regained the command chair and strapped herself down as the ship veered wildly among the avalanche.

  According to the scanners, there were at least four pirate ships left. Change was almost sure she could she lose them if her ship held up long enough.

  Liminix CH-53 – A lower deck

  Johnny Rook and Max Jordan regarded the being that was blocking their passage through the chamber. This was their first view of an actual Solarite, and it beggared description, but here’s a shot.

  It passed two meters in height and kept going. It’s skin was leathery and brown. Its arms were elongated and ended in oversized hands covered in small bony plates, like scales, with two opposing thumbs each. Most of the limbs and torso were similarly covered by bright bluish purple plates, like a crab shell. Its face appeared at first be covered by a gas mask, but on closer inspection, the mask was actually growing out of the Solarite’s skull. Long ropes of hair grew from the back of its head in dreadlocks, and it carried a hideous long gun in its left appendage, which it pointed at Rook, Driver, and Jordan and shrieked,

  “Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

  “Aw, crap,” said Rook, raising the single sidearm he had been allowed to bring and getting off a single shot at the creature’s gun-hand before the ship pitched violently to the left and left him and the others rolling to the deck.

  From the floor, Johnny Rook and Max Jordan looked up toward the shiny black eyes of the Solarite, which blinked at them from four-way eyelids.

  “Should we try reasoning with it?” Jordan asked.

  “Yarrrrrrrr!” shrieked the Solarite, swinging a weapon in their direction. It unleashed a volley of what looked like ball lightning, except it shot straight toward them. The shields on their tactical suits diminished the impact, but it still was like grabbing an electrical wire.

  Then, the ship barrel-rolled, and that knocked everybody off-balance.

  Liminix CH-53 – The Bridge

  “What was that?” Ono demanded.

  “That was a pirate ship getting much too close and trying to lock on,” Change explained. “I’ve avoided him for the moment.” She checked her Navigation Chart, and confirmed that they were approaching an area of the field too dense to navigate at high speed.

  She banked the ship and plotted a course underneath it.

  Suddenly, the face of one of the Solarite pirates appeared on the foremost window of the bridge. The beast opened its mouth and screamed, but since they were in space, they did not here it. It raised a fist and began pounding on the transparent plate.

  “Aw, Gravity,” Change spat. She hit the counter-thruster on the forward hemisphere, which shot out white-hot radioactive gases and sharply decelerated the ship. The Solarite shook and lost the grip with one hand, but he managed to hold on with the other. When he recovered, he began pounding at the template again.

  “I can not shake him,” Change informed Ono. Dealing with a homicidal creature pounding on the outside of the bridge was a relatively minor section of the Mining Guild’s Pilot’s Manual.

  The hatch at the rear of the Bridge opened, revealing Mata and Logo, who had fought their way to the bridge and dispatched a Solarite en route.

  “I will take care of this,” Mata announced. He aimed his hand cannon at the plate and fired. The round hit the plate and shattered the screen. The combined force of the exploding projectile and the escaping atmosphere pushed the creature off the front of the ship.

  A split-second later, an emergency plate dropped into position, covering the hole but leaving Change half-blind apart from the sensors.

  “Guard the door,” Ono ordered Mata. “We can’t let intruders into the command center.

  Logo, take over the navigational controls. We have to get back to…” Suddenly, there was a sharp snap, or maybe it was a ping. Ono got a brief expression of shock on her face, then slumped to the deck.

  Change noticed she had gone silent, but little else. She ordered Mata to man weapons and Logo to monitor scanners. Three solarite vessels remained stubbornly on Liminix CH-53’s six.

  “Status of Weapons?” Change demanded.

  Mata answered. “The particle cannons have been dismantled by the Solarites.”

  “In other words, off-line,” Change shot back. She banked the ship sharply, hoping to out-maneuver the Solarites.

  Logo reported. “We are currently twenty-four million kilometers out from Station Hellfire-3. We should be in range in about forty microns.”

  “You have to adjust course and speed,” Logo added. “We can not approach the station at this velocity.”

  “Right,” Eliza Change acknowledged. “If we slow down, the pirates will have us. I am barely keeping ahead of them as it is.”

  “Unfortunately…” Logo began, and then paused long enough to force Change to prompt her.

  “Unfortunately, what?” Changed demanded.

  “Unfortunately there are a number of Solarite vessels surrounding the station, I would have spoken sooner, but I was trying to get an exact number.” Logo paused. “At least ten vessels, though.”

  “Display them on my navigation display,” Change ordered.

  “The ship is not set up to do that,” Logo said apologetically.

  Change pondered this for a second, and then got a very determined look on her face.

  “Contact the station, and let them know we’re coming in hot,” Change ordered.

  Logo shook her head. “Our communications array is off-line.” Change almost smiled, and she cocked her head to the side. “I guess we’ll have to trust them to figure it out, then.”

  Section 04

  Liminix CH-53: A Lower Deck

  The Solarite Pirate fired his blaster and blew a substantial hole in the interior bulkhead a few centimeters from Max Jordan’s head.

  “Jeepers!” Jordan exclaimed again, as he rolled and unloaded a brace of pulse charges into the pirate. The Solarite staggered backward as three of the shots hit him right in the chest.

  That should have killed him, and would have, if we were just human, or, for that matter, if he were a Borealan Marsh Ox.

  Instead, his back to the wall, the pirate fired again, putting another blast of charged plasma through the bulkhead just next to Matthew Driver.

  Johnny Rook opened up with a fusillade from his gauntlet, concentrating on the Solarite’s horrible face. The Solarite thrashed like a man beset with bees, but didn’t die.

  “Why won’t you die?” Rook called out.

  “Yarrrrrr!” answered the pirate. He fired his blaster, and its firing produced a large black melted circle in the deck but did not penetrate to the outer hull. It was only a matter of time before one of his shots did.

  Johnny Rook fired again. The pirate lunged at him and struck him a blow in the chest that threw him across the deck and knocked the wind out of him.

  “Yarrrrr!” the pirate screeched.

  “Nobody does that to my best friend!” Jordan snarled. He realized at that second his suit was still at maximum strength application from when he pried the airlock open. He rushed the pirate screaming, “Brute force!”

  From Driver’s perspective, there was a blur as Max Jordan’s super-strengthified and accelerated arms pounded against the Solarite’s face and chest. The Solarite turned and twisted, trying to get away from the pummeling fists that rained down on him like a meteor storm.

  Max Jordan was stronger and faster, thank
s to his tactical gear, and was using his training to slow his perception of time, which meant the pirate was having difficulty even landing a blow on him. The swings and kicks from the pirate came to him as though in a watery slow motion, and he was able to dodge it like warfighters had been trained to dodge high speed projectiles at the end of Advanced Perception Training. But the pirate was extremely resilient. No matter how hard Max hit, the pirate refused to break or bleed.

  Jordan focused his blows on the pirate’s head. Any one of them would have finished off another man, but it took their collective force to finally subdue the pirate.

  When finally the Solarite slumped to the deck and no longer moved, Jordan permitted himself to collapse onto the deck, sweating and fiercely hungry from the calorie expenditure.

  He looked over to Rook. “Are you all right, Buddy?”

  “Yeah,” Rook said, “I’m all right.” And apart from some residual pain, he was.

  “I have to get to the bridge,” Driver picking himself off the deck.

  Rook grabbed the pirate’s gun. “Our weapons couldn’t stop him. Maybe theirs…” He puzzled over how to work the trigger when suddenly it went off and punctured the deck above their heads.

  “On second thought…” he said, throwing the gun aside and following the others down the gangway.

  Liminix CH-53, Main Bridge

  “Status!” Change demanded. She was still weaving the ship throw the debris field, but its density had lessened.

  “Four pirate vessels are still pursuing us,” Logo reported.

  “Distance to station?” Change demanded.

  “Eleven million kilometers,” Logo answered.

  “I have point-one-five light speed, and I think that’s all she’ll give us,” Change told them. “But we should make it.” She knew the tricky part would be stopping.

  Suddenly, there came a pounding on the hatch at the rear of the bridge.

  Mata powered up his weapon and aimed it at the hatch.

  The pounding persisted for more than a minute, then was replaced by weapons fire against the hatch, and finally straining noises as the intruders tore outer hatch open. Then, the inner hatch opened and Mata emptied two shots in that direction (only managing to gouge the hatch’s frame with the explosive bolts his weapon fired) before Matthew Driver came in with his hands up. “It’s me!”