“Got it, Captain. The Starfall is probably still in the hold. We will help you get under way and take that to escape.” Brua held out her palm, face up.
Jim recognized the gesture from Jun’s memories and touched his palm to hers. Chris distributed pistols to everyone, along with a space charge pack in case of trouble. Then the two groups split up. “Alright, we’re almost to the bridge. Let’s give this one last shot and get out of here.”
When they reached the bridge, he stopped them. “Weapons up,” he said. “If Krazirk is still alive, he’s got to know we’re here and waiting for us.”
He held up the ID card to the sensor. The light turned from red to green, but immediately switched back to red. He tried again but got the same result.
“Maybe we don’t have access after all,” Melissa said.
“Knew that bastard was lying to us. I’m going to take him apart.” Chris’s fingers tightened over the grip on his weapon.
“More likely is there is somebody in there locking the door as soon as we unlock it. Mel, you try.” Jim put his hand on the door and started pushing.
Melissa swiped the card. Jim kept pressure on the door as the light turned green. It gave an inch before the lock reengaged.
With nothing to grip into, the lock clicked repeatedly as he put all this weight against the door. Either this bulkhead weighed a ton or...
“Gun,” he shouted as his eye caught a glint of light off the grey barrel pointing around the opening.
Chris slammed the butt of his blaster down on the weapon. A bolt went wild, bouncing off the floor and down the hall.
Chris brought the butt down again and the pistol clattered to the floor. Jim used the distraction to shove against the door, knocking whoever was behind it down.
As Jim reached for his rifle, Chris barged into the bridge, swinging his weapon back and forth in search of a target.
The Razak from behind the door recovered his gun. Before he’d brought it up to aim, he fell to the floor to the floor again. A wisp of smoke rose from his forehead, where the laser beam of Chris’s blaster had baked his brains.
Another officer leaped from behind the navigator’s station. Chris rotated and fired, but the weapon beeped and died instead. The Razak landed on him, throwing Chris’s bulk to the floor as if he weighed nothing.
They rolled around the floor, grappling. Chris got a few good hits, but it was obvious that the other had the superior strength. Jim and Melissa grabbed the navigator’s shoulders. Together, they pulled him off their comrade.
Chris used the surprise to flip the navigator, pushing his head into the floor. Melissa’s stun baton made its appearance again and touched his neck. The Razak stopped fighting at once.
Jim leaned in close to the man’s ear. “Where is Krazirk?”
“Just kill me. I won’t tell you.”
“We are here to save your life,” Jim replied. He held out his hand to the Captain as another fit of coughing racked his body. “We have a medic drone.”
“I won’t surrender. Razak never surrender. Kill me or don’t, the ship will explode soon anyway.”
Jim glanced at the captain’s seat. Red lights flashed and a counter ticked down. He ran the math. “Bobby, Jerrol. Get back to the shuttle immediately. We’ll meet you there. The ship’s self-destruct sequence will go off in thirty minutes.”
He grabbed officer’s arm and pulled, but he wouldn’t budge. Jim smacked his hand against the side of the chair. “Fine, die if you want. We tried. Let’s go home.”
Jim held his arm out. “No, this way isn’t it either. We’ve been to this deck already. We’re going in circles.”
“Are you sure, dad? Maybe you don’t understand Razak as well as you thought you did.”
“No, see the tail at the end of this digit. It definitely marks it as a three. And... Oh, never mind. Just take my word for it.”
“Well, what are we gonna do? The clock’s ticking,” Chris said.
“We will go back to the elevators. Maybe there’s a button we haven’t tried. “
Jim led them back at a jog. Chris was right; they were running out of time. He hit the call button. When nothing happened, he pressed it again, hitting it several times in quick succession. “Come on; it was just here.”
The door finally opened, revealing a squad of Razak soldiers. “Get back, get back,” Jim yelled.
They ran down the corridor and ducked into the first open room they found. The room seemed to be some sort of enlisted quarters. Rows of bunks built into the walls offered little protection should the soldiers found them.
They’ll have to do. Jim rolled into the first one and yanked his pistol from his belt. Melissa found the opposite bunt, and Chris squeezed into one behind her.
Chris dumped the contents of his back onto the cramped space before him. He grabbed the parts of the plasma rifle and assembled them without taking his eyes off the door.
The Razaks ran past the room’s opening. Jim exhaled and rolled towards the floor. His shoulder caught on the ceiling of the niche, jogging his gun from his grasp. It clattered to the floor, the sound echoing against the sparse room.
Shouting sounded from the hallway. Jim grabbed his gun and moved back against the fair side of the bunk.
A soldier filled the doorway, Jim held his breath, trying to give as little indication of their presence as possible. Something caught the man’s attention, and he took a step back, turning his head towards the direction from which he’d come.
“In here,” The Razak barked. Jim took aim and fired at his head. Ever since getting captured, they’d made sure all of their weapons were turned to maximum power.
The soldier crumpled to the floor. Two more heads poked through, looking from their fallen comrade to the room inside. Melissa took both of her weapons and fired, turning one dead Razak into three.
Now they had the attention of the full squad and the sound of boots against metal floor echoed off the walls. Chris slapped a power back into the receptacle of his weapon and flipped the switch. The power whined and an indicator lit up. Circular bars glowed one by one. “C’mon,” Chris muttered.
Jim added to the growing pile of bodies at the door, but the rest held back out of their line of site.
“Almost,” Chris said, more to himself than the others. The indicator had nearly reached full power. The last bar lit up and the whine changed to a low hum. “Cover me.” Chris lurched out of the bunk and onto his feet. Jim and Melissa fired at the doorway to dissuade anyone from coming closer. They paused as Chris reached the door. He jumped out and fired without aiming. The hum increased in pitch back to a whine and then a white ball of light burst from the tip of the two-handed gun. The force threw Chris from his feet.
Jim was out of the bed in an instant and went for the big man without thought for the danger down the hall.
Chris blinked as he took Jim’s hand. “Musta hit my head. I only see legs.”
Jim turned. “Holy shit. Chris, turn that thing off. Legs are all that are left of them.”
They hurried through the ship, finding nothing else to impede their progress. Jim expected alarms throughout the ship as the countdown continued, but apparently, the Razak priorities weren’t in saving lives.
Bobby pushed a crate on a hover-carrier into the back of the shuttle. Cases, spare parts, and items Jim couldn’t identify climbed up the walls of the limited cargo space. “Those drones you sent up are already stowed. When we got the news, Brua and the others took off to find their ship.” He glanced over at Chris before adding. “How much that one guy looked like Chris kind of messed with my head.”
Jim nodded. “He’s probably related somehow to Chris’s ancestor from the original crew. I hope they make it out of here.”
“They’ve been on board for months,” Melissa pointed out. “They won’t get lost like we did twice.”
“Well, it’s not like there was anyone around to ask directions,” Jim huffed.
Bobby stepped in between Jim and
his daughter. “Guys, let’s wait till our lives aren’t in grave danger. We can’t have more than a couple of minutes before we need to be out of here.”
Jim checked his watch. “Less than two. Bobby, fire it up. Chris, help me get the last of this stuff inside.” He looked from side to side. “Wait, what happened to Jerrol?”
“He was just here a minute ago,” Bobby said over his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t have a problem leaving him here if he ran off.” Chris lifted the crate off the hover-carrier and stacked it on top of one of the few piles not already over his head.
“Jerrol, where are you?” Jim shouted. “We need to leave soon.”
“Forget him,” Chris grunted as he settled into a seat near the rear of the cabin.
The mechanic - XO, Jim reminded himself - appeared around the corner, struggling under the weight of a cylinder large enough for the four of them to hide in.
Jim rushed over and took one end. The mass reminded him of when he’d been tasked as pall-bearer for Melissa’s obese grandfather. Jim had been picked not so much for any closeness he’d felt for his father-in-law, but as one of the few in the family who could help carry the five-hundred-pound body in the heavy oak casket. “I hope this canister is vital for our survival. Because if we don’t hurry, it will be the cause of our death.”
“Coolant for the magnetic chamber,” Jerrol said, huffing. “Even if you get your engines running again, they’ll just overhead and explode without this.”
“Okay, so important. The cut on your cheek is gone.” Jim pointed with his head at Jerrol.
“Uh, the medical drone caught up with me.” They dropped the last piece of cargo just inside the hatch, and Jim pounded his hand against the switch. As soon as the shuttle door closed, Bobby yanked on the throttle, and they were off the ground.
“Uh, Bobby, the airlock is still closed.” Jim pointed in front of them.
“Hold on.” The pilot spared a look over his shoulder. “This is going to get bumpy.”
Jerrol slid into a jump seat near the rear and pulled down a console. He beat at the keys, and the door opened slowly.
Jim looked at his wrist again. “Fifteen seconds.”
Bobby pulled on the throttle, and the shuttle turned sideways. Jim grabbed onto the unused cargo tie-down as his feet slid out from under him. The unsecured cargo around him clanged and rolled about on the floor, or, Jim supposed, the ceiling. The shuttle rails scrapped against the opening airlock. The ship shuddered and stopped. Bobby’s feet pressed against the floor as he put all his weight into the joystick.
Five. Four. Three. Two.
The shuttle came free, and they shot into space. The ship behind them exploded into white light. Bobby put as much acceleration into it as the shuttle could provide. The artificial gravity caught up with the change in their orientation, and the floor became down again. The loose cargo thudded to the ground.
So did Jim.
Air escaped his lungs when he landed. The toe of his boot caught the floor, and his ankle twisted painfully as the rest of his weight came down on it. A hand appeared in his vision, blurred by pain. He reached out to it, and Chris hauled him up, his harness still tangled around his other arm. He winced as he put weight on the foot.
“You okay, boss?”
Jim opened his mouth to answer but the ship shuddered suddenly, and he fell back to the floor. Glancing up at the screen, the shockwave had caught up with them. The shuttled pitched and rocked as an expanding plasma field surrounded them. Debris knocked at them.
Jim grabbed at a handhold and pulled himself back up slowly. Leaning against the bulkhead to take the weight off his rapidly swelling ankle, he flinched at each dinging sound of metal against metal. “Can we reduce the gravity in here?” He winced again as the buffeting swayed him and forced more weight onto the injury.
He heard a tapping sound behind him, but the effort of turning around to satisfy his curiosity didn’t seem worth the additional pain. He felt lighter and the pain eased, if only just a little bit. Jim finally turned. Jerrol looked a little green. “Motion sickness?”
Before he could answer shuttle lurched and the stars in the viewscreen shifted. “We just lost the starboard engine,” Bobby announced.
“Can we still get back to the ship?” Jim hobbled up to the front of the shuttle.
“Yeah, but it will take us a while.”
“I’m not sure we have that long,” Melissa said. She pointed at her holo-screen. “Big chunk of the Star Destroyer is coming up behind us. Think it might be the bridge. At our current speed, it will overtake us in fifteen minutes.”
“Take evasive maneuvers,” Jim barked.
Bobby eyes moved to Melissa’s screen and then back to his. “That thing’s too big. I’ve got no real power to give. It would be like trying to get out of the way of a tanker ship in a rowboat.”
Jim sighed. “Can we ditch some of our cargo? Surely we can get by without some of this junk.” He limped to the back of the shuttle where the unsecured canisters and crates lay scattered about the floor. “Less weight means more speed from the available power.”
“You want us to roll down a window or something?” Bobby snapped at him. “This thing’s only got one door, and it’s keeping the air inside. I kind of like breathing.”
“Can’t we use those shield generators or something?” Jim grabbed fistfuls of hair and tugged it from his scalp. He’d never been one to yank his hair or bite nails, but now was feeling like a good time to pick up some bad habits.
“Everything would get sucked out,” Chris pointed out. “Ain’t got time to sort or space up front for the most valuable parts.”
Jerrol mumbled something. Jim turned around, wide-eyed. “What was that? If you’ve got an idea that can save our hides, now’s not the time to be quiet.”
“We could dump something already outside the ship,” he said, louder this time.
“How would we do that?”
“Fuel,” he said. “If we override the safety valve, we can shoot hydogene fuel out the port engine and move the ship out of the way of the wreckage. It won’t be very efficient, but it should be just enough.”
“Why are we standing here talking about it, then? Do it,” Jim said.
“I just need your permission, captain-.”
Jim took a step forward. Jerrol flinched. Jim’s expression softened. “I’m not like your previous Captain, Jerrol. If it can save our lives, you have my blanket permission.” He put his hand on the defector’s shoulder. “You’re safe now. But only if you can get us clear of that.” Jim pointed outside the ship.
Jim felt the tension in Jerrol’s body ease, if just a little bit. “Actually sir, the wreckage is that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction. For the first time in the few hours that he’d known him, Jerrol smiled. It was a slight thing, little more than a grin, but it was a start.
Jim smiled at him. “Ragging on your Captain. You’ll fit right in around here. None of these guys take me seriously.”
“Five minutes to impact, captain.” Melissa interjected. The moment between them passed and Jerrol slipped back into his normal, serious self.
“The access to the valve is behind that console,” Jerrol pointed to a panel that looked like a cross between a vending machine and a filing cabinet. Lights flashed across its surface in a seemingly random array. “Pull it out, but don’t disconnect it.”
Chris felt around the edges with his fingertips. “This bolted in or something?”
He shook his head and slid into a seat near the back of the shuttle. Unlike the holographic controls they’d gotten used to, this one had an old-fashioned screen. Jim smiled to himself. A week ago, he would have considered it state of the art, and now he couldn’t imagine using something so primitive.
Jerrol started tapping at keys. Screen and keyboard, what was this the stone ages? “Magnetic fasteners. I can disengage them at the engineering station here, but you have to be fast. Once the mechanism recognizes that w
e are still in flight, it will lock them down again.” He turned back to her console and continued typing. He paused and looked over his shoulder. “Oh, and that weighs about five hundred pounds.”
The wall around the console clicked. Jim and Chris grabbed at the edges and pulled. The lip of the device only stuck out a few inches and the edge was completely smooth. Jim grimaced as he shifted his weight onto the bad leg.
The device resisted their attempts to pull it away. “You only have about thirty seconds,” Jerrol warned.
Chris turned and pressed his back against the wall, pushing at it instead of pulling. Jim nodded and did the same. Pressing his palms against the edge, it moved first an inch and then a second.
The wall clicked again, but they had moved it enough to keep the locks from engaging.
Jerrol crouched down at the base of the machine. While Chris and Jim pushed against the wall, he pressed his fingertips against the lip nearer to the bottom and pulled. It lurched and slid out a foot and a half before stopping again.
“That’s as far is it will go without unplugging it,” Jerrol explained.
“What happens if we do that?” Jim asked, as he stretched and tried to release the tension out of the muscles he’d worked too hard.
“That controls the life support systems. Shuttle will stop pumping oxygen into the cabin.”
“Guess that’s out,” Jim said.
“Yeah, since Bobby’s such a big fan of breathing,” Chris quipped. Bobby shot him a look, but the bigger man flashed a goofy grin to show he was only teasing.
“There’s a conduit that will run along the wall behind there with wires sticking out of it.” Jerrol pushed on in spite of the joking. Jim sobered quickly. The stress of the situation was more than he felt ready to handle but ignoring the danger would only make things worse.
“If somebody cuts the wires, the backflow valve will lose power. Then, I can override the control and jettison the fuel through the ruined engine. I have to do it immediately, though, or the back pressure will cause the conduit to explode inside the shuttle.”
Lost Fagare Ship 2: Absolve Page 4
