James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 08

by Hellfire

  “Yeah, hopefully,” Max Jordan agreed. They continued there way through the ship, encountering no one as they came to the second docking position.

  “If I read the spatial maps correctly, a ship called the Archonix will be connected through that airlock,” Driver said.

  He tapped the panel next to the airlock, and was greeted with three identical red symbols, that he supposed meant “Access Denied.”

  “Warfighter Jordan,” Driver ordered, and pointed to the panel. Jordan crossed over and touched the panel with his battle glove. Wires snaked out again, connected to the system, and began working through an understanding of it.

  Seconds ticked by. The system was proving hard to circumvent. “I wish Caliph were here,” Jordan muttered.

  “You mean she’s not?” Driver asked. The mission briefing had said she would be. Her ability to interface with cybernetic systems was critical to the success of the plan.

  “She hasn’t spoken to me since Lt. Rook assigned us to this mish,” Jordan replied.

  “Oh,” Rook considered this. “So, she’s out of your head?”

  “I don’t know,” Jordan answered, trying to concentrate on opening the lock. “I can’t tell if she is in there or not.”

  “That would scare the Hell out of me,” Rook said. “Not knowing.”

  “Warfighters,” Driver hissed at them, and drew his hand across his neck.

  Finally, the three symbols turned green and the hatch opened like an iris in front of them, leaving Rook, Jordan, and Driver to confront the two Hellion Guards that stood on the gangplank to the ship.

  “Security alert, intruders at Airlock 9,” the guards would have said had not Rook snapped a mini-stun grenade into the linking tunnel beyond the airlock. The three Pegasans ducked back into the linking tunnel. There was a bright flash of pure white light and two soft

  “clumph’ sounds as the Hellions fell to the deck.

  “Well done,” Driver said, powering down his pulse weapon. After putting nine-hour sedation patches on the guard’s necks, Rook and Jordan stuffed them into a storage locker and quickly boarded the second Tritium Hauler, whose name was stenciled next to the lock, Arkonix CI-88. They encountered no guards as they walked through the ship’s darkened passageways.

  “They made it a little too easy to steal their ship,” Rook said.

  “They didn’t expect us to do this,” Driver answered.

  “I didn’t expect us to do this,” Jordan put it. “We’re usually not this smart.”

  “You don’t know Lieutenant Commander Change like I do,” Driver told them.

  Jordan and Rook went below to the fuel handling station, and stood by to decouple the fuel carrier from the Legacy X. They pulled up on their tactical displays the specs Lieutenant Jeff had prepared for them on the decoupling sequence.

  Arkonix CH-88 was similar enough to Liminix CH-53 that Matthew Driver was able to find his way easily to the bridge. Its layout superficially resembled the bridge of Liminix CH-53, but was more intact and the controls were upgraded. He strapped himself into the helm station. The only thing that could hold him back was a code lockout from the helm controls.

  He was relieved to power up the ship and discover there was none.

  He signaled to Rook and Jordan on his COM link. “Begin the decoupling sequence.”

  “Slight problem with that,” Jordan came back. “If I’m reading these specs right, the big ship has control over the decoupling mechanism.”

  “There’s no way to by-pass it,” Rook added, rightly anticipating the next question. “There are three connection points, and they’re only accessible from the big ship.”

  “We thought this might be a problem,” Driver told them. “You know what to do.”

  “Za, but we don’t much like it,” Rook came back.

  Max Jordan grinned. “Hey, we’re warfighters. We’re not supposed to like it.” Down in the Cargo Management Room, Jordan pulled opened his pack and drew out the small charges as Rook opened the hatch in the floor of the deck. There was a space underneath, less than a meter high. It ran along the bottom of the ship. The plan was for the two warfighters to place resonance charges on the Arkonix side of the docking clamps, and weaken them enough for the ship to break free.

  “There’s a connector just forward of here, and two more aft. The furthest one is one hundred and six meters away from here,” Jordan reported.

  “And the only way is through this shaft,” Rook said, lowering himself in. “All right, you take the two forward ones, I’ll take the one that’s way back there. No argument on this one.”

  “Good luck, buddy,” Jordan told him.

  Rook smiled. “Yeah, good luck to you, too.”

  “Time is a factor, warfighters,” Driver told them from the Bridge Arkonix CI-88

  Minutes later, in the access tube, Max Jordan carefully placed the two charges on the docking assembly. Placement was the key, the charges were designed to weaken the titanium alloy in the clamps, until it was about as strong as aluminum foil. Then, Driver would be able to peel away from the ship at full power.

  They hoped it would work that way because they really didn’t have a Plan B.

  Incorrectly placed, they might instead weaken the outer hull or some critical load-bearing structure, and that would be problematic in terms of the ship not disintegrating around them.

  Driver remained on the bridge as the two warfighters worked, checking out the ship’s systems. He wondered if the power-up had been detected from Legacy X. For the first nine minutes, there was no indication that it had. He then checked his screen, and saw that a detachment of Hellion security had reached the outer airlock.

  Driver signaled Rook and Jordan as he stood from the helm station and crossed to the control area of the bridge. “Warfighters, we’ve got company at the forward airlock. I’m going to depressurize it and lock it down. But that won’t hold them for very long.”

  “Just about there,” Rook answered him. “I’m positioning the last charge. Give me about four minutes to get back to the cargo control station.”

  “Can you make it in two?” Driver challenged him.

  “It took me six to get down here,” Rook answered. “Jordan, where are you?” Jordan answered, “My boomers are in place and I’m heading back to Cargo Control.” Driver checked his monitor. The security detachment had detected the lockout on the airlock. One of them spoke into a communication device. Seconds later, alarms began sounding in the main ship.

  “Rook, you have to get out of there now,” Driver said, running back toward the helm.

  A few decks away, Jordan reached the access hatch and pulled himself into the Cargo Management Room. He called into his COM Link. “Johnny, you have to get up here now.” In the tube, Jordan looked down the long access tube, barely a meter high, and intruded upon by wires and conduits. Even at a fast crawl, it would take another four or even five minutes to get back.

  At the airlock, the Hellions were positioning some sort of device at the iris. As he looked on his security monitor, Driver wasn’t sure what the device was, but he had a pretty good idea what it did. He clicked his COM Link. “The Hellions are about to breach the airlock.

  Our time is up.”

  “We can’t blow the charges, Rook is still in the tunnel,” Jordan reported.

  Driver tapped his controls. He couldn’t tear the ship free with the docking clamps in place, even at full power. He wouldn’t order Jordan to detonate them, which would almost certainly breach the tunnel to space. The load of Tritium and his ship’s honor was not worth Rook’s life.

  Visions of Hellion holding cells dancing in his head, he tapped the COM link, “I can’t break free unless we blow the docking clamps.”

  The Hellions finished positioning the device. Once they boarded the ship, it would take less than a minute for them to gain the bridge.

  Jordan called into the hole. “Rook?”

  “I’m halfway there,” he answered in his COM Link.

 
; Suddenly, Caliph appeared in the lens of his Spex. “Hi!”

  “Not now, Caliph!”

  “I thought you could use my help,” she said poutily.

  “What can you do?” Jordan asked her.

  She didn’t tell him, she showed him, projecting a schematic onto his SPEX. “There’s an emergency hatch ten meters ahead of Warfighter Rook, and another ten meters behind him. If he closes them both, he will probably survive when the ship decouples.”

  “How probably?” Jordan asked.

  “The conduit will probably lose structural integrity when the ship breaks off.” She paused. “But between those two bulkheads, he has a fair chance of survival.”

  “A fair chance?” Jordan questioned.

  “It’s that or be captured,” she explained to him. “I don’t want you to be captured,” she added.

  But Jordan also remembered how much raw loathing and resentment he had felt coming from Caliph in his dream a few nights earlier, and how she had not spoken to him since. He wondered if she could be trusted, if she were being a lady or a tiger.

  At about that time, Driver’s Bridge monitors showed an airlock over-ride in progress.

  “Rook, Jordan, I can’t hold off any longer. We either go or we surrender.”

  “Just go!” Rook ordered. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Jordan got on the COM Link to Rook. “Johnny, it’s me. Your best bet is to seal the bulkheads in front and behind you. They’ll probably give you enough shielding to survive the explosions and the decoupling.”

  “How probably?” Rook asked.

  “Hey, that’s just what I asked,” Jordan exclaimed. “It’s either that, or get captured by the Hellions. And I don’t want to go through that again. It’s your choice.” Driver cut back in. “Gentlemen, I can’t delay any longer. If we’re going to leave, I’ve got to get the thrusters and main engines up to speed.”

  Rook broke into the COM Link. “Charges are set, Captain, blow them whenever you’re ready.” He immediately back-tracked and closed the hatch behind him.

  At the helm, Driver pushed the four levers forward that powered up the Main Engines to Full Thrust. He then took on the left joystick that controlled the smaller maneuvering thrusters, and brought them up to power.

  The Iris side of the airlock opened wide. The men moved the machine against Arkonix’s outer airlock.

  “Rook, are you safe?” Jordan called.

  Rook sealed the second hatch then crouched on the deck with his fingers in his ears.

  “As safe as I’m going to get. Blow the charges!”

  Jordan COM linked to Driver. “Detonating charges now.” He sent the command. Underneath the ship charges 1, 2, and 3 detonated. They detonated without explosions, which would have been excitingly loud and violent and done a lot of damage. They weren’t explosive charges after all. They simply pulsed out a molecular sheering wave that sliced through the alloy, weakening the molecular structure at the connect points enough to let the ship break free.

  They hoped.

  Because, of course, there was no Plan B.

  Driver fired the maneuvering thrusters at full power.

  There was a tugging sensation as Arkonix CI-88 strained against the interlocks that kept her harnessed to the Legacy X.

  But, the clamping mechanisms held.

  “I’m hitting the main engines,” Driver said. He had hoped this wouldn’t be necessary, since there was a fair chance this would rip open the bottom of the ship as well.

  “Main engines to 50 percent thrust,” he said, pressing the controls forward. There was a loud bang as the forward clamp gave up the ghost and the front of the ship lifted, leaving behind a nice chunk of the coupling strut.

  The Hellions retreated quickly back to their side of the Iris.

  The rear clamps were still holding, but the strain against them was sending groans and quakes through the ship.

  “Main Engines to 100 percent thrust,” Drive announced, mostly to himself, because no one on the rest of the ship could quite hear him over the straining metal.

  As the engines passed 83% of full power, the second and third coupling struts gave way almost simultaneously. The center strut ripped free with a chunk of the ventral hull the size of a double-door attached to it. Decompression alarms sounded on Arkonix CI-88.

  The ship snapped free and jarred Matthew Driver violently on the Bridge. He watched on his screen as Legacy X fell away below him. He banked the ship and fired hard toward Pegasus.

  “Rook, Jordan, are you all right?” Driver asked, pushing the ship hard up its acceleration curve.

  “I’m super, thanks for asking,” Jordan concerned.

  “I am well also,” Caliph added.

  They waited. “Rook are you all right?” Jordan said.

  No answer.

  “Rook, are you there, please respond,” Jordan repeated.

  No response came.

  The Hellfire System – Archonix CI-88 – Space

  The distance to Pegasus was a scant 100,000 kilometers. Arkonix CI-88’s acceleration curve should have allowed them to make the trip in a matter of twelve minutes, give or take.

  They almost made it before the defense ships caught up with them.

  Legacy X carried but a single squadron of short-range attack ships, but they were swift and well-armed, and they flew passed Arkonix CI-88 to make a defensive line between the hauler and Pegasus. Once in position, two of the fighters broke off and fired warning shots around the ship’s knobby command section.

  The face of an enraged Captain Aja appeared in the bride’s command screen. “Whoever is piloting Arkonix CI-88, I ordered you to stand down, surrender, or you will be destroyed.” Driver ignored him.

  Aja repeated, “Whoever is piloting Arkonix CI-88, I ordered you to stand down, surrender, or you will be destroyed.”

  Two more of the fighters peeled back from the defensive line and fell behind the ship.

  Disrupter fire began raking across the rear hull.

  Driver responded by banking his ship into a dive, so that the additional shots blasted small pits in the lower hull. He rolled into the opposite direction.

  Aja spoke again, “Whoever is piloting Arkonix CI-88, I ordered you to stand down, surrender, or you will be destroyed. This is your final warning.” Driver pulled the ship up. There was not a lot, he realized, you could do with a big old tanker against fighting ships. His only weapon, really, was the ship’s size and tank-like constitution.

  One of the fighters came behind him and shot a missile into one of the four ion-thrusters at the rear of the ship. It exploded, taking out the engine next to it. Arkonix CI-88

  slowed. Driver tapped his COM Link. “Flight Group, if you’re out there, this would be a good time to show yourselves.”

  “Acknowledged, Captain Driver,” came the voice of PonyBoy James.

  In space, an Aves appeared, dropping its holoflage shields and standing in the night sky.

  Then, 83 more Aves dropped their shields and appeared, completely surrounding both the Hellion ships and Arkonix.

  Another face appeared on Arkonix CI-88’s communication screen, the face belonging to Eliza Change. “Enemy forces, you are outnumbered, and outgunned. Stand down, or you will be fired upon.”

  Several tense moments passed as orders were passed between Legacy X and its fighters.

  Then, one of the Hellion fighters wheeled about and began a diving attack run on Arkonix CI-88’s rear quarter, seeking to take out the ship’s two remaining engines. A fast missile from James ended that attack.

  The Hellion fighters fell back, and Arkonix CI-88 continued through the cordon of Aves toward its rendezvous with Pegasus.

  Pegasus – Main Bridge

  Eliza Change tapped a command onto her COM Link, and addressed the Hellions again. “We have taken back what is rightfully ours. Stand down your ships. You can not defeat us, and we would prefer not to destroy you. You may continue your journey now. We will have no more to do with yo
u.”

  They waited for several minutes for a response. One by one the Hellion fighters peeled off and returned to their ship.

  Captain Aja called on Pegasus again. “You have committed an act of piracy. We demand that you return our ship and our Tritium.”

  “You can have the ship, if you want it, but we’re keeping our Tritium,” Change answered.

  “By this outrageous act, you have squandered the good will of my people,” Aja puffed at her.

  “The good will of your people and nine space credits will buy me a large kava at the Interplanetary Commissary on Ronin 4,” Change snapped back. “We have our Tritium, and we have returned your slush Deuterium, and the 30,000 liters of Tritium you gave us. The contract is fulfilled. We wish you well in your journey.”

  Aja scowled at them from the display. “You are bad people,” he said.

  Then, the transmission cut out.

  Specialist Roentgen reported that Legacy X was moving away at a high rate of speed.

  Section 10

  Pegasus – Main Bridge

  A few Aves trailed Legacy X for a few light-hours as it accelerate out of the system, to make sure it was leaving and avoid further treachery. They noted that at the edge of the system, Liminix CH-53 was jettisoned from the side of the bigger ship, and left to drift in space.

  Pegasus remained behind with unfinished business. A day and a half later, when the Hellions were well beyond sensor range, the pathfinder ship moved into orbit around a scorched asteroid just within the debris field. The ball of scorched rock was over 2,000

  kilometers in diameters, and millions of years earlier had been the moon of an outer gas giant.

  Its surface had been burned black and rusty brown over eons of hellatious flares from 200 200

  Ara.

  Lieutenant Commander Windjammer handed command of Pegasus over to Lieutenant Commander Alkema at 1100 hours on the second day after Legacy X’s departure. “Rendezvous was supposed to be at 1100 hours,” Windjammer commented as Alkema took the watch. “The Commander is late.”

  Alkema disagreed. “The Commander would argue that it’s always 1100 hours somewhere in the Galaxy. What’s the status on the fuel transfer from Archonix?”