-When we first discovered the Resolve. You complained about the C-4, the gun, and the knife. Well, they all wound up being necessary, weren’t they?- Chris’s mental voice came out low and gravelly.
-I can’t believe you’re still going on about that.- The logical part of Jim’s brain knew they were wasting time arguing over this, but the more animal part didn’t care that Chris had a point. This wasn’t the time to discuss it, and he would waste even more time arguing over the waste of time.
-Hey, if you don’t want the knife, I’ll take it back.-
-Fine. You were right.- Jim yelled mentally with enough force that even Melissa backed away.
That did get Pukin’s attention. “Looks like you’re feeling better. I guess it’s time to get you back to the Captain.”
Ankir gripped his arm. “Before you go, you have to hear about what Jerrol did during the lockdown.” This launched Pukin into an angry tirade about their colleague who seemed to have tried to use the battle as a stage for his own mutiny. Jim followed along as he inched closer to the hidden knife. Perhaps this Jerrol would support their cause. At the very least, the ship’s XO seemed to have made an enemy in common with Jim.
He reached the corner. Jim didn’t dare disappear around it, but leaned against the wall and tried to look like he was resting. He was exhausted. He would probably sleep for a week when all this was over. Jim recalled the vow he’d made to himself before they’d boarded the shuttle. If they got through this, he’d have a log of spare time to sleep. The rest of his life.
The corner of his lips curled upward at his own pun. Melissa looked at him with a questioning look. He paused for a second to think of a reasonable excuse and his fingers caught the tip of the blade. It went spinning but held its position. -Got the knife,- he explained.
The knife would be necessary to be of any use in a fight, but loosening his bonds wouldn’t help in itself. He still needed the gun. Jim shuddered to think of what Pukin would do if he found him free.
He arced his back against the wall as his fingers searched for the weapon. He’d almost come to the end of his reach when his hand found the long, smooth barrel of the Fagare laser pistol. Jim scooted it closer to his body until he almost sat on it. Then he returned to the knife and sawed at the cable wrapped around his wrists.
-Uh, boss, we got company coming. Better hurry up with that. I can’t take ‘em all on my own.-
Jim picked up his pace at Chris’s urging. One of the strands snapped; the jagged barbs dug into his skin. Jim suppressed the hiss of pain, squeezing his eyes shut tight. After the sensation passed, or at least was muted compared to the initial response, he worked at the other strand.
-There’s about to be a commotion. I’m waiting as long as I can, but I need to start shooting soon,- Chris warned.
The other strand snapped, and his hands were free. He scooted the knife across the floor towards Melissa and grabbed his weapon.
Pukin and Ankir both turned at the sound. Pukin swung the stunner rod up, his face twisted in rage as he realized he’d been duped. Jim whipped the pistol around his back and fired. The first shot went wide. He’d never stopped moving and hadn’t given himself any opportunity to aim. Jim took a breath and steadied his aim before pulling the trigger a second time. A burn hole the size of a dime appeared in Pukin’s uniform just below the heart.
Pukin took another step forward, slower this time, but fueled with enough hatred to keep Jim moving. Jim fired again. This time, he held the trigger down, realizing the vital difference between the energy weapon and the guns from back home. Another hole burned in the uniform, a few inches to the right. As Pukin moved, and so did Jim’s own unsteady arm, the hole turned into an angry scar across the fabric. Jim smelled burning flesh as the laser ate into Pukin’s skin. The Razak dropped his stunner and looked down. He pressed his hand against the fabric, but yanked it away again as the laser singed it. Finally, he dropped to his knees.
Jim grabbed the dropped stunner and pressed it into the neck of his enemy. The body flopped as electricity surged through it. Jim twisted the dial up to its maximum setting. The smell of burning flesh sickened Jim, but he held the weapon to Pukin’s body until it didn’t move anymore. He looked from it to the stunner in his hand, as if noticing it there for the first time. He threw the weapon on the floor and backed away from the body.
Ankir fumbled with his holster; from the conversation, he’d overheard Jim didn’t think that the other man had the warrior instincts of his brethren. Now Jim realized that Ankir probably had no training at all with his weapon. Jim had met officers like that in the Navy, there due to family connections instead of any ability or willingness to do work.
Jim glanced down at the pistol still in his hand. It had a dial similar to the one on the discarded stunner. He turned its power up as he had on the rod before charging at Ankir. The other man froze in his battle with the hip holster providing Jim with all the opening he needed. He pushed the pistol into the Razak’s gut and held down the trigger. Ankir fell on Jim’s hand. Jim stepped back and the alien collapsed at his feet.
Chris chose this moment to make himself known around the corner. “What took you so long?” Jim asked.
“While you were dealing with these two, I got four in the other room. What took you so long?” Chris smiled broadly. He took the knife from Melissa where she was still trying to remove her bindings. With a quick tug, the blade sliced through the cable.
Jim clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, I knew you wanted some of the fun.” He looked at the bodies by his feet. “New plan. They can rot here for all I care.”
“There you are,” Bobby called out. “I’ve been looking all over the ship for you.” He entered the section they were in, still limping a little from his earlier injury. “You’ve got another one behind you,” Chris yelled. He drew his rifle and aimed it at the Razak head coming up behind Bobby.
“Woah, woah,” the mechanic from earlier spread his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot. I’m defecting.”
Bobby spread his arms in front of him to create a human shield. “My bad. I probably should have warned you about that.”
Chris grimaced. “I don’t like it. What if it’s a trap?”
“Do you know how to repair our ship? Or we can be stuck out here for another millennium. Face it, we need someone who actually knows what he’s doing, and he doesn’t want to be shot for surrendering, or for losing a battle.” Bobby took a step closer to Chis. “You know that’s what the Razak do to their own survivors? They win or die. That’s it.” The rifle wavered and lowered, but only just barely. “Trust me on this one.” He held out a hand on the rifle’s muzzle and pushed it towards the floor.
“Jim?” Chris looked sideways to him.
He nodded to Melissa. “What you do think?”
She stared at the dead body a few feet away. “What are your thoughts on that?” She asked the mechanic.
He looked from her to Pukin’s corpse and back to her. “You do that?”
“I did,” Jim said without looking up.
The mechanic didn’t move his gaze from Melissa. “Good.”
Melissa held out her hand. He looked at her.
“You shake it, dummy,” Chris said.
Recognition lit up his face. He took her hand. “I’m Jerrol.”
Melissa smiled. “Welcome to the crew.”
“He’s not getting a gun.” Chris kept the rifle aimed at the floor, but he kept his arm tense, ready to raise it at the slightest provocation.
“I can accept that,” Jerrol said, still smiling. He turned to Jim. “Captain, most of the crew is dead. But there may still be survivors on the bridge. It has separate life support that can be activated in case of emergency.”
Jim nodded. “We’ll check it out. Wait, you said your name is Jerrol?”
“It is. I guess this asshole mentioned me.” He kicked the dead body at his feet.
“Ankir’s gossip about you probably saved our lives by providing a distractio
n. I was under the impression you were the XO.”
“I started in Engineering and got promoted,” Jerrol shook his head. “Razak rules of succession are difficult for other cultures to understand. I was hiding down there when the engines exploded.”
“Well, I feel a lot more comfortable about your intentions now. Okay, you and Bobby will collect parts to repair the Resolve. The rest of us will make sure there are no more surprises on this ship...”
Jerrol dropped down beside the body and pulled out a red identification badge from a pocket. “This should get you access to just about anywhere in the ship. Ankir was the political officer. He outranked even Krazirk.
Jim slipped the card into his vest. “Be careful. We meet back in thirty minutes, regardless of the status of our respective missions. Oh, and you two need to figure out how to get the shuttle inside, too.”
Jerrol smiled. “I’ve always wanted to go outside. My rank always meant that I had to send somebody else out whenever there was a problem.”
Despite what Jerrol had told him, they searched the ship compartment by compartment. Bodies littered the above decks just like they had below. They showed no signs of struggle; they just slumped down wherever they stood. This isn’t what Jim had wanted. They were supposed to give up, to run away like they had at Coucare. So much death. He’d left the military for precisely this reason. When the game had turned real, with real stakes, he’d wanted nothing to do with it.
Jim turned around yet another corner in the byzantine ship and was met with a stairwell. “Get in there, you worm,” the unmistakably Razak voice shouted. Jim peeked up the stairs. Five guards surrounded a group of Fagare and some other races in tattered clothing. The guard closest to Jim pulled out a stunner like the one Pukin had used and pressed it into a Fagare woman’s side. She stumbled but remained upright. The guard turned up the intensity until she fell. Her arms flailed as Jim’s had done just a few minutes earlier. He kept it pressed to her side until the flailing ceased.
“You two. Dispose of her body. Now I want a volunteer to climb into that plasma conduit and apply the patch. I’ll keep killing you one by one until the job is done.” The two the guard had pointed at quickly grabbed the dead woman’s limbs and carried her towards the room, where Jim and the others stood.
“They must be dumping her in the trash composter we passed a little way ago,” Jim explained. “Find somewhere to hide.”
They scattered and found various bits of rubble from demolished walls and ceilings. Jim scrunched himself behind a bean as wide as Chris’s bike. Chris had picked a fallen wall panel with wires dangling out of it. His brown boot contrasted with the grease and blacks of the Razak ship.
-Chris, your foot,- Jim warned through the mental connection.
“Who’s there?” cried one of the Fagarans. She dropped the woman’s legs, letting them smack against the hard floor.
Jim stood with his hands raised. “We’re here to help.”
“You’re not Razak,” the other Fagaran shouted.
“Shh,” Jim hissed. “They’ll hear you.” He pointed above their heads where the guard still screamed at the other captives. “I’m Jim, and this is Chris and Melissa. We’re from Earth, but all part Fagare. Descended from the crew of the Resolve.”
The first Fagaran whistled. “That ship disappeared a thousand years ago. I’m Amaya and this is Brua.”
“What weapons do they have?”
“Mostly stunners,” Amaya said. “A couple have pistols, but those are reserved for officers.”
Chris opened up the bag strapped to his back. “Here, now you both have pistols as well.”
“Take care of her,” Jim pointed to the body. “When you get back, try to warn the others and wait for our signal. There are five of us and five of them. Should be easy. Are you able to communicate telepathically with the other prisoners?”
Brua shook her head. “How do you have that mod? Only Fagaran Fleet officers get it. I was a pilot on the passenger cruiser, Starfall. The Razak caught us while doing a random patrol and took us all as slaves.”
“Kind of a long story. Well, it was worth a shot. We just have to be careful not to shoot your passengers.”
Brua and Amaya picked up the body of their fallen comrade. “Wait.” Jim held up his hand. “I know what you’re about to do to her. There are stasis pods a few decks down. Put her in there and we can return her body to her family.”
A tear streaked down Amaya’s face. “Thank you for the gesture. Sentimentality isn’t something you experience much of these days. But, it’s too far. The Razak will know something is up.”
“Take her as far as the compactor. We will return for her after we free the rest of the prisoners. Everything that happened today is my fault. I need to do some good here.”
Brua spat, narrowly missing the corpse she held. “Everything here is the Razak fault. They captured us as slaves. They attacked a ship from a primitive planet. They knew the dangers to the Star Destroyer from your Selenium munitions.” Her knuckles whitened around the trousers of her cargo. “Sorry about calling you primitive, by the way.”
Jim waved the apology away. “I’m sure we are primitive compared to the races you deal with. Now go, or those guards will start looking for you.”
They returned to their hiding spots in case the Razak did just that, but Brua and Amaya returned without any incident. Chris handed them each another two pistols. “If you can, hand these out to the others. Anybody who might have any training or just whoever you think won’t accidentally shoot you instead of them. Give us five minutes and then attack.”
The uniforms the Fagare wore were little better than rags at this point and provided limited hiding spots. Brua looked over the butt of the pistol at Amaya’s back. “That will have to do. We’ve been gone too long already.”
Once Brua and Amaya had returned to the others, Jim and his crew crept up the stairs and waited just below the top. “We never discussed what the signal would be.” Jim bit his lip.
“Oh, I think it will be pretty obvious,” Chris said. “I’m going to shoot a hole in that pipe. Hopefully, there’s nothing too important in there.” He pointed at a tube, more than twice the size of the others that ran along the ceiling.
“That’s the Razak symbol for water,” Jim said of the glyph embossed on the pipe’s side near the wall. “That’s perfect.”
Chris lined up his shot and pressed the trigger. “I noticed these are kind of low power. I don’t think the Fagare like to kill if they can avoid it. It’s gonna take a minute.” The pistol beeped. “I need another charge pack.”
Jim pulled the battery from Chris’s bag. There was at least a dozen more, plus additional pistols and parts of what looked like a plasma cannon. “Got enough firepower in here?”
Chris took the pack from him and swapped it for the dead one in his pistol. “Ain’t never enough firepower.” He aimed again and poured more energy through the coherent light beam at the water pipe. Steam wafted from the red dot.
“Hopefully the Razak don’t notice that,” Jim muttered.
“Nah, that’s good. It means there’s a small hole and I’m boiling water. Just be a sec now.” No sooner had Chris finished speaking than the hole reached a critical size. The water heated by the laser created more pressure than the pipe had been designed to handle and burst through like a collapsing dam.
Chris was right, that did get everyone’s attention. The prisoners that Amaya and Brua hadn’t been able to arm all ducked down as five Fagare and a short man who looked like a cactus fired at their captors.
Chris and Melissa ran up the remainder of the stairs to join the firefight. Jim held back. If there was anyone left paying attention to the ship’s alarm’s another crew could be here any moment. The firing stopped abruptly. Jim turned back. A man who could be Chris’s twin cowered in one corner while the rest aimed the pistols they’d provided at the remaining guard. In turn, he held the cactus man with one hand and had his gun pointed at the captive
’s head.
“Lower your weapons and return to work,” he shouted.
The others hesitated, looking from Brua to Chris for direction.
“I’ll lower your head,” Melissa screamed. She grabbed the stunner she had stuffed in the hammer loop of her carpenter pants. Jim hadn’t even realized that she’d picked it up after the last fight. With a fluid motion, she twisted the dial up and hurled it like a javelin at the Razak guard.
His eyes widened at the sight of the projectile. He tried to duck, but cactus man resisted and pulled him forward into the incoming stunner. It struck him in the face. Electricity arced between the guard’s skin and the stunner’s surface. The man screamed and collapsed to his knees. His former captive picked up the fallen stunner, taking care to only touch the insulated grip. The torture device connected with the guard until his body ceased taking conscious commands and spasmed on the floor. A wet spot spread across his trousers.
“That’s enough,” Melissa said softly. She took cactus’s hand and pulled him away from the guard. “We should put him out of his misery.” She found the dial on her own sidearm and turned the power up to a killing blow. Melissa knelt beside the guard’s head and pressed the muzzle against his heart. A quick squeeze of the trigger and the man’s whimpering stopped.
-Bobby, where are you guys? I’ve got Fagare captives I want to send down to you.- Jim felt the stairs he sat on rattle and ducked down to see three more guards and a pair of repair drones approaching. “Uh, guys, we got company.”
-Send them down to Shuttle Bay C on Deck Eight. We could use a hand loading.-
-Copy that. We’re about to get you a couple more repair bots, too.- Jim grinned. This was the first bit of good luck they’d had all day.
Melissa and Chris took his sides. “Pick your target. We fire on three,” he told them.
They dispatched the guards without calling more attention to themselves. The drones listed and bumped into each other without receiving direction from their handlers. “Brua, take your people to Shuttle Bay C. We’ve got people down there loading up and could use a hand. Take these with you.”
Lost Fagare Ship 2: Absolve Page 3
