by Kris Delake
She had sped up the Hawk as fast as it could go, hoping that she might get to Kordita before anything bad happened. Jack would probably tell her not to do this, but she had hopes that Kordita’s space cops would be able to help her before the Hawk exploded and took other ships with it.
As she had sped up the Hawk, she had also separated the environmental system of the cockpit from the rest of the Hawk. She had realigned all of the Hawk’s navigational and engineering controls to the cockpit and sealed that realignment with DNA identification and a living hand confirmation. She had locked down this level.
No one, not even Jack, was going to get up here without her help.
She tried to watch what was happening on the video security system, but apparently Heller had shut that down the moment he crawled into the cargo bay. He had entered alone—she saw his scrawny form ease the bay doors open—and then the video went off, as did the heat signature monitoring.
Somehow he had done that without tripping any alarms up here. If this ended well—when this ended well—she would figure out how he did that.
Right now, she kept an eye on the only monitors she had—the heat signatures on the lower decks outside of the cargo bay. The video security got shut off everywhere, but the heat signatures remained everywhere except the cargo bay.
So she could keep an eye on Jack—at least at the moment.
The security system had registered him as a little red dot, which she would have found amusing if it weren’t so stressful. Nothing about Jack was little—not his body, not his brain, and certainly not his courage.
Damn him for that courage.
It was going to get him killed.
And then she really would be alone.
She watched the red dot hesitate near the next lower level, and for a moment, she worried that Heller had found Jack. Then she realized that she would see Heller as a heat signature if he were outside the cargo bay.
Jack was clearly contemplating something else.
And then she realized what it was. He had stopped one floor down and run toward the master suite.
She knew what he had gone for.
Her laser pistol.
And that broke her heart.
He hadn’t had the lessons she had, the training she had. He probably didn’t know that superior firepower meant nothing when facing off with a good assassin, or even with a better trained opponent.
When she’d been training, she’d gone into several simulations with a laser pistol—as the only person armed in the room—and she had been disarmed and fake-killed within seconds. Once she’d actually sprained her arm trying to wrench the pistol away from her opponent. Her trainer had later told her that had that been a real fight, the opponent would have broken her arm, and then broken her neck.
“Jack,” she whispered.
He was going to leave her. Only unlike her parents, unlike everyone else in her life, he wouldn’t leave intentionally. He would leave because Heller would kill him.
And then everything that Skye had done these last few weeks, everything she had tried just so that she would know that Jack existed somewhere in the universe, all of that would be for nothing.
He would be dead, and she would be alone.
If she survived whatever else Heller managed to do.
And right now, she was out of options. She had done all that Jack had asked and more.
All she could do was wait.
Chapter 54
Heller wasn’t even trying to be quiet. He banged around in the cargo bay, humming as he worked.
Jack glanced at the bay’s monitors on the outside of the door, but noted that Heller had shut everything off. There was no way to monitor what cargo was in the bay—which was what the monitors were for—and no way to track who was inside.
But shutting all of that off left the door open—it was one of those safety regulation things—and that allowed Jack to hear what was going on.
From the sounds of it, his assumptions were correct. Heller was setting up a bomb.
It was, Jack had to admit, the best way to go up against a member of the Assassins Guild, particularly if you had no idea whether or not she was a trained assassin.
Jack took a deep breath. He only had one shot at this. He would have to override the controls outside of the door, then shut the door, and then shut off the atmosphere entirely. Without oxygen, Heller would die.
It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would happen relatively fast, and then Jack could go in and try to disable that bomb.
He wished he were a better engineer. He wished he had had time to familiarize himself with all of the controls on this ship. Instead, he’d familiarized himself with Skye. He didn’t regret that, but he’d had a few other hours to himself. He could have used them more efficiently.
Or, at least, he would have if he had known that he would be in this situation. He had never thought Heller would come after him directly, but it made sense.
Heller wanted him gone. Heller had tracked him out of the sector, where no one would have known if Jack had died.
Heller had then followed him here, and if Skye hadn’t seen that ghost image, he would have killed them both—and whoever else was nearby on the shipping lanes when that bomb went off.
Jack’s hands were unbelievably steady. His heart wasn’t. It pounded against his chest like a prisoner trying to get out. He moved quietly and quickly, and wished he were more resourceful.
And that was when he realized all of the sound from the cargo bay had stopped.
Either Heller was done with the bomb or Jack had done something to alert Heller.
Neither scenario was good.
He grabbed the laser pistol from his belt, unhooked the safety, and eased toward the door. Then he peered in. Heller had stopped working and was looking at a light that had gone on above him.
That light must have been what alerted him to Jack’s presence.
Jack had only a few more things to do before he finished rerouting the circuitry. He couldn’t do those things one-handed.
He had to make a quick decision: he had to finish the work, because that was the only way he could fight Heller like an equal, or he had to try to shoot Heller.
Jack decided to finish the work.
Now his hands were shaking. He couldn’t make a mistake and yet, half of what he was doing was guesswork. He finished, praying it would succeed.
As he stood, he realized that he hadn’t heard anything from inside the bay for a long time.
He made his way to the door, trying not to breathe loudly. He leaned in, and saw Heller about ten yards from him, weapon out, scanning the entire area.
And Heller’s weapon wasn’t a laser pistol. It was a laser rifle, the kind that could shoot so fast that the victim probably never even saw the shot coming.
Jack resisted the urge to call him and taunt him.
Instead, Jack did something he had never done before.
He pulled out the laser pistol and fired, aiming straight for Heller’s heart.
Chapter 55
The shot missed. Instead of hitting Heller in the heart, Jack hit him in the leg, knocking him down.
Jack had been hoping for a kill shot. He had thought it his only chance of making it out of this alive.
Instead, he’d wounded Heller, and made him mad.
Heller propped himself up and turned the rifle toward Jack. Jack sprinted to the side and slammed his hand on the controls, as red laser shot after red laser shot banged out the door.
“Shut, shut, shut,” he said, urging the door to close. He heard more shots, realized they were coming faster and they were nearer than they had been before.
The door groaned and then started to move. Jack crept toward it, and shot through it, staying away from the opening. Shots from Heller’s rifle went past him.
“You can’t beat me,” Heller yelled.
“I have no idea why you think I’d try,” Jack said.
The door was moving too slowly. The shots had
stopped, and Jack heard scraping, coming closer.
Jack knew what that meant. Heller was trying to get out. If he got out of that cargo bay, he would kill Jack easily.
Jack continued to shoot, hoping that the door would close all the way.
One shot went wild and burned a smoking hole in the floor. And that was when Jack quit shooting. He didn’t dare make holes in that door, and he didn’t want to give Heller ideas either.
More shots came out.
“Let’s talk, Jack.” Heller’s voice sounded closer than it had before.
“About what? Your desire to kill me?”
“You can still work for us, forget about all that other stuff—”
The door slammed shut, and Jack ran back for the controls. He fumbled, then managed to get the environmental controls to respond.
He hesitated for just a moment—if he shut off the environment, he would be killing a man—but that man would kill him, Skye, and anyone else in his path.
Jack flicked the controls off, and then monitored them, hoping Heller was too far away to get to the control panel. Jack didn’t want Heller to turn the environmental systems back on.
Shots hit the door, but didn’t break through.
Jack held his breath. He’d have to move out of this corridor and shut it down too. He ran, stumbling a little. And managed to get farther down toward the elevator.
Then he realized it didn’t matter if he used the comm.
Shots broke through the door, creating holes. That was all that Heller would need. Holes would provide oxygen and a way out.
Jack went for the ladder, slamming on the comm as he did.
“Shut off the environment on this level and vent the oxygen,” he said. “Do it now.”
He hoped the message got through.
He hoped Skye wouldn’t care that he was here.
He hoped she listened, because if she didn’t, Heller would win.
Chapter 56
Shots. The entire cockpit warned her of them. Shots in the cargo bay. Someone was using a laser rifle on that level, and Skye knew that someone wasn’t Jack.
Skye stopped pacing and went to her chair. She wasn’t sure what she could do, but she wanted to be ready.
And then she realized there was one thing she could do. She knew where Heller was. She knew where he wasn’t.
And he wasn’t on board his ship.
She turned on the exterior program that separated objects from the Hawk. She scraped that ship off the side of the Hawk as if it had never been. Then she monitored it. If it spun uselessly away, no one was on board.
If it righted itself, then Heller had companions.
Because no one left an autopilot running if a ship was attached to another ship.
She swallowed, watching Heller’s ship spin away.
If it spun in the right direction, it would become Kordita’s problem. She sent out a message, though, warning about loose space debris in the area. That should protect some other ships.
Then Jack’s voice echoed in the cockpit.
“Shut off the environment on this level and vent the oxygen. Do it now.”
She hit the comm panel. “Jack! Jack!”
But he didn’t respond. And she cursed.
If she shut off the environmental control, she would kill him too.
She glanced at the red dot that was Jack, saw it was on the ladder going off that floor. On the floor, near the cargo bay, another red dot appeared.
Heller.
Shit. He was coming for Jack. No wonder Jack wanted the environmental controls off.
She sealed the level, hoping the seal wouldn’t impact Jack on the ladder. Then she shut off the environmental controls to the entire floor.
She wanted to close her eyes, but she didn’t. She had to see if Jack made it.
She had to see if he survived.
Chapter 57
“You son of a bitch!” Heller shouted. “I’m going to make sure that your death hurts.”
His voice echoed from the floor below. Jack kept climbing, slower than he wanted to. He tried pulling himself up two rungs at a time, his hands sore.
No sign that Skye had heard him. No sign that she had shut off the environmental controls.
Jack was trapped. Once Heller got to this part of the ship, he would shoot upward, and Jack would die. It would probably be painful.
And then Skye would die, and so would everyone nearby.
He tried to go faster. Maybe if he got to the next level, he could shoot down at Heller.
But Jack was a terrible shot, and Heller killed people for a living. Jack had only had one chance, and he had blown it.
He got to the next level, and pulled himself out of the engineering circle. Then he leaned over the edge, pistol pointed downward, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Heller hadn’t said anything for several seconds. And Jack couldn’t hear him moving below.
Jack finally rolled over, got up, and checked the security system. One red heat signature on the floor below him, and it wasn’t moving. In fact, the red was fading.
Was that possible? Was the heat fading away? Did it get that cold that fast in an area without oxygen?
For a guy who loved being in space, Jack was truly clueless about the deadliest parts of it.
He slammed his hand on the comm. “Skye?”
“Jack! Oh, my God, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” he said, although he hadn’t done an inventory. He could move. He could talk. That was enough. “Did you shut off the environmental controls on that floor?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s sealed off.”
“And you vented the atmosphere?”
“Yes,” she said.
He let out a small sigh of relief. Then he said, “You have to scrape off the ship. Make sure no one else boards.”
“Already done,” she said.
“God, you’re marvelous,” he said, and meant it.
He glanced at the heat signature. It was so light as to be indistinguishable.
“Do you have a temperature reading from down there?” he asked.
“You don’t want to know,” she said.
“How long will it take him to die?”
“Not long,” she said. “And if you’re thinking of going back down, it won’t be pretty.”
“I have no choice but to go down,” he said. “There’s a bomb down there.”
Skye was silent for a moment. “I can help,” she said.
“You know that building a bomb is different from dismantling one,” Jack said.
“Yes, but at least I know what the components are,” she said.
She had a point. Jack let out a small sigh. Still, he didn’t want her down here.
“Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll turn everything on when I get there, and you can talk me through it.”
“Jack, it’s better if I come down,” she said.
“No,” he said. “You might have to open the cargo bay doors. It’ll be better to sweep me and that bomb into space than it would be to have it explode on the ship. I’ll hook everything back up.”
She was silent. He could tell she was thinking about it.
“Can’t I do that from below?” she asked after a moment.
“No,” he said, even though he had no idea if that were true. “Is he dead yet?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “I’m not watching it. I don’t like watching someone die without an atmosphere. It’s worse than drowning or suffocating. It’s the worst way to die.”
Jack knew that, but he was a bit stunned that Skye, who had told him she didn’t get grossed out by anything, was squeamish about this. Of course, anyone who had seen someone die in space without oxygen or a pressurized cabin never wanted to see that again.
“But,” Skye said into Jack’s silence, “even if Heller isn’t dead, he won’t be in any shape to come after you.”
No kidding. And that would be even worse.
Parts of Heller would have already been so badly damaged that he probably couldn’t move.
Jack didn’t want to think about it either, but he had to.
“All right,” Jack said. “Turn the environmental controls back on. I’m going in.”
Chapter 58
It took longer than Jack expected to get back down to the cargo area. The ship wouldn’t allow him access until the environment was human-friendly. That meant oxygen at the proper mix, and temperature somewhere above freezing.
He could feel the clock ticking with each wasted moment. He had no idea what was going on with that bomb, and he worried that it was ready to blow.
Finally, the ship let him into the floor below. When he reached it, he was stunned to see ice on the floor and the walls. The ice was slick and starting to melt, but he had to be careful.
Apparently, he and Skye had had the humidity higher than usual in the ship, and the moisture had become ice as the air leached out of this part of the ship.
He came across the rifle first. It had slid away from Heller’s body. The body itself was gruesome. He was glad that Skye didn’t see it. He hoped she never would.
He wasn’t sure he would ever forget it.
He made his way—gingerly—to the open door to the cargo bay. He stepped inside and went to the interior controls first, turning the security video feed back on.
“Got me?” he asked.
Skye’s voice floated around him. “Yes. Are you all right?”
He wasn’t about to assess his feelings at the moment. “I think so,” he said. “Can you see the bomb?”
“No,” she said, “but there’s equipment on the floor about a dozen feet to your left.”
He walked over there, carefully again, and saw it. The bomb was large, hanging off one of the empty cargo containers, right in the center of the room. He couldn’t tell what kind of bomb it was or even if it was active.
He swallowed hard. “Found it,” he said. “Follow my finger.”
He pointed at the bomb, and hoped she could focus in somehow.
“Got it,” she said. Then she was silent. He wasn’t sure if she was contemplating what she saw or if he had lost a connection somehow.
