Stealing Endeavour: Book 1 of the Forever Endeavour, Amen Trilogy

by Martin Tays

  Grace’s vision tunneled in and out for a moment as the blood pressure spiked in his brain from the centripetal force. Finally, things cleared up enough for him to see.

  “Jesus. Jesus! Jesus…” He shook his head, staring around the bridge at the stunned crew members. “What… what the hell just happened? I want a report. I want a report NOW!” He shook his head again in an attempt to clear the blurriness.

  “I have no idea, sir.” The helmsman looked over, blood streaming from his nose. “Checking. Standby.” He shook his head and turned back to his display. “Sir? It looks like someone triggered the hab ring lockdown.”

  “What?!? Can they do that?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, no sir, they can’t.”

  “Indeed.” Grace stared at the helmsman for a moment, then raised his voice and shouted “Maneuvering, bridge! What the fuck just happened?”

  “Well, hi, there!” A vid window from engineering opened in front of the command chair. Bill, now in charge in the engineering spaces, smiled out. “How’s them strawberries, Cap’n Queeg?”

  Grace paused, then his eyes widened. “Bridge out. Lock down the bridge. Lock down the bridge now!” One of the security men arrowed over to secure the bridge hatch.

  Panicked, he looked at the people around him. The security operatives looked concerned, but the crew… the crew looked smug. Smug. He fumbled a key ring from his pocket and threw it toward the closest guard, pointing at the arms locker. The guard nodded as he fielded the tumbling keys. He moved over to the locker, opened it, and began passing out sidearms.

  “Fine. Fine, then. You people think you’ve got the best of me? We’ll see about that. Shipwide!” The navigator on duty looked over to the helmsman, who shrugged.

  “Attention. Attention, crew. So, you think you can take over this ship, do you? Well, bear in mind I’ve got three of your crewmates locked up here on the bridge with me. You people have precisely two minutes to find a security operative and surrender to him or her. Otherwise, I shoot your friends. Shipwide out.” Grace looked over at the horrified crew, smug now himself.

  Obaseki, the helmsman, finally stammered out “You can’t kill the crew! Who’ll operate the ship, then?”

  “Oh, don’t be stupid.” Grace beckoned one of the guards over and took his handgun. He examined it for a moment, then racked the slide, slipped the safety off and aimed it at the terrified crewman. “I never said I was going to kill you.”

  He fired.

  ☼

  Mad froze, mostly down the accessway to the hab ring, as the muted but distinct sound of the shot echoed from the front end of the ship and down the now warped access tube. She cursed and turned to go back up.

  “No!” Sam reached out and grabbed the engineer. “Later. Rafe first.”

  “But…” The look on the engineer’s face was anguished. “He’s killing people!”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Sam replied, pointing down the tube. “But he’s not the first.”

  Mad turned and looked. The floor of the hab ring, normally a clean, pristine white, was smeared with what she suddenly realized was blood. Blood and other, less definable bits of the security guards who had been unfortunate enough to discover what happens when you all but instantaneously go from at rest relative to your environment to close to a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour.

  Sam pushed past and down to the hab ring floor. She looked upturn and saw a smear similar to the first. This one was on the ceiling. Past that, there was another on the floor. They continued on, alternating overhead and floor, until the curve of the corridor mercifully hid them from view.

  The guards had had quite a bit of momentum to use up.

  A larger chunk of guard drifted by and Sam’s face went white. Mad stuck her head out of the opening and followed her gaze down the corridor. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. Come on.” She shoved off savagely toward Rafe’s cabin door. Halfway there, she paused, yawned, and looked back at Mad. “Did your ears just pop?”

  “We’ve got a leak.” Mad took a deep breath, then exhaled. “Pretty bad one, too. Move!”

  Sam’s eyes widened, and she shot off down the curving corridor. Madeline paused, then pushed over to a locker on the wall and ripped the door open. She grabbed one of the packages inside and strapped it around her waist, centering it in the small of her back as she arrowed off to join Sam.

  ☼

  “See? You’re not dead at all. Whiner.”

  Obaseki clutched his shattered knee as he drifted back from the helm, screaming.

  Grace turned from the helmsman to the nearby guard. He handed back the recently used pistol and pointed toward the bridge medical kit. The guard nodded, yanked the kit, and swam over toward the wounded man.

  Smiling, Grace turned toward the remaining two crewmen. “So. Any more objections?” They both shook their heads vigorously. “Thought not. Shipwide.” He pushed back over to the command chair and sat, strapping himself in. “Okay, people, that’s one. Ready to call it a day, or would you like for me to shoot another? Shipwide out.”

  Suddenly, something changed. It was almost as if the ship were under gravity ― and down was straight ahead of the ship. Grace rocked forward in his chair, then back as the strange gravitational effect ceased.

  “Alright, I’m getting so tired of saying this, but what the hell was that?” He glared over at the navigator, who looked back at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. The frightened crewman started to say something, then just keyed a command onto his console and pointed toward the new vid window. Grace turned, and saw the biggest spaceship he’d ever seen in his entire life. It was gigantic, it was dark, it was alien.

  And it was less than a hundred kilometers away.

  Grace screamed, unbuckled his safety belt, and dove for the weapons control panel.

  ☼

  “Kkkill t-t-hee d-d-drivvve!” The main engines of the Endeavour cut off abruptly, and Moses stared at the viewscreen uncomprehendingly. “Okay. Someone tell me the warship didn’t just vanish.”

  Mattie turned to face the command chair. “Sure thing. The warship didn’t just vanish.”

  “Thanks. You’re lying, you know.”

  “Yep.”

  He shook his head and turned back to S’Nhu-gli, who had braced as best he could in the auxiliaries control station chair for the powered flight. “He used the drive.”

  “I believe you’re correct, yes.”

  “Fuck. Bridge to maneuvering.” Cath’s strained face appeared in a vid window. Before she could speak, Moses asked “Is it possible to use the warp drive for in-system movement?”

  Cath blinked. “Huh. I don’t know. Depends, I suppose, on whether you plan to be alive at the end of the day.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why? What’d you have in mind?”

  “We need to go about seven…”

  “Eight.” Mattie yelled from the helm.

  “Sorry. Eight light minutes.” He pointed out toward the bow of the ship. “Thataway.”

  Cath whistled. “No. Not if you’re sane, anyway.”

  “Okay. So, what if you’re not sane? More to the point, what if you’re a pissed off weasel who’s intent on beating us to the new human ship?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I wish.” A thought struck him, and he turned to face the alien priest. “S’Nhu-gli… I thought your daughter was the only one who could operate the drive on that thing.”

  “She is.”

  “Oh. Oh, shit.”

  “When the general left to return to the warship, he insisted T’Han-mri accompany him.” The priest waved at the forward viewscreen, now empty. “Now I know why.”

  “Holy crap.” Moses looked at the screen himself. “She’s good, though. Damn good.”

  “Who’s good?
” Doug, now dressed, came onto the bridge and started handing out shipsuits.

  “Oh, thank God!” Sandar grabbed one and started wiggling into it.

  “Damn.” Moses looked around. “And I was just getting used to operating with an all nude crew.”

  Ami, running her hand up the front of her suit to seal it, looked over. “Just wait till the next party, dear.”

  “Oh, all right. I suppose.” He turned back to the vid window from maneuvering. “Cath? Think you can match Tan’s little stunt?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “I don’t think I should, but I think I can.”

  “Good. How much time do you need?”

  “Plot it. By the time you’re done, I’ll be ready to try to kill us.”

  “Good girl. Bridge out.”

  “Babe?” Moses looked over toward Ami. Concern was evident in her eyes. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. But I do know that we’ve got to get out there before they kill each other.”

  The alien priest pushed over to the command chair. “You understand that we’re probably too late already, yes?”

  Moses shut his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, probably.” He opened them and looked at his alien friend. “But… damn it, we’ve got to try, don’t we?”

  S’Nhu-gli nodded his disconcertingly human nod.

  “I agree.” Added Ami. Mattie gave a thumbs up from the helm behind her. Sandar never even looked up from her frantic work.

  “Just out of curiosity…” Doug handed the last shipsuit in his pile to a grateful Mattie and hauled himself over to the command chair. “What do we have to try?”

  “Don’t have time to explain, Doug, and you probably don’t want to know.” Moses replied, his voice quiet. He then looked up, and Doug was shocked by the expression on his face. “Let me just say this… go find Fiona — right now ― and tell her that you love her. ‘Kay?”

  “Oh.” Was all that Doug could finally say. He nodded jerkily to Moses, then turned and shot off of the bridge as quickly as he could.

  “Manuevering to bridge.” The engineering vid window popped open again. “You understand this is against my better judgment, Moses. Microjump at your discretion.”

  “Microjump, eh? I like that.”

  “You would.”

  “What better judgment, by the way?”

  “What discretion?” Cath shot back. She paused for a moment, then just shook her head. “Engineering out.”

  Moses closed his eyes briefly, then sighed and looked over toward S’Nhu-gli. “So… got any good prayers for us?”

  “I have one that would be well suited for the matter at hand.” The priest said quietly, staring at the viewscreen. “It is called ‘a prayer for dissolution’.”

  “Swell.”

  ☼

  General K’har-atah released the breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding and keyed the intercom to the tiny control room inside the interloper. “Excellently done, Engineer. Your concerns were groundless.”

  “No sir, my concerns were not groundless.” T’Han-mri’s voice crackled hotly over the speaker. “We were exceptionally lucky to have survived such an insane stunt. We should be dead.”

  “Yet here we are, alive. The Maker is with us, child.”

  “He may have been with us before we jumped, but I do not believe he is crazy enough to have remained with us afterward.”

  “’Ware, child.” The general growled. “You veer perilously close to blasphemy.”

  The normally diffident engineer snarled back her response. “Me?!? General, I am a priest. I am my Maker’s or my Emperor’s to punish. It is not for laymen to judge me for blasphemy. And it is certainly not for the likes of you.”

  K’har-atah slapped the intercom panel hard, cutting off the connection. He glared around the control room, as if daring the crew to say anything, but no one said a word. Satisfied, he turned to the other controls in his chair, brought down the video monitor from the ceiling, and activated the forward view. He was momentarily startled by the closeness of the human ship.

  He was about to order a closer approach when an alarm began to blare. A technician at the sensor panel looked up, a frightened expression on his face. “Missiles, sir! Three… no, four of them!”

  “Action stations!” Additional alarms began to wail, adding to the cacophony. He turned to the helm. “Is it possible to outmaneuver them?”

  “No sir. There’s no way.” He sounded less scared than just plain defeated. “No way.”

  K’har-atah savagely keyed the intercom to the interloper. T’han-mri replied, sounding distant. “I see the missiles, general. I’m…” The voice grew louder as the engineer moved closer to the intercom box in her frantic work. “I’m almost done. There! Now bringing up the drive in restricted power mode. That should do it.”

  “We shall find out soon enough. Bridge out.”

  ☼

  The four missiles arced gracefully out from the command module of the Excelsior, then turned toward the warship, their small but insanely powerful drives screaming. As one, they moved toward the stationary ship, then veered at the last moment to climb out in four different directions. They then tipped over, acquired their targets, and began their terminal runs.

  Suddenly, there was a flash and an eye searing twist of space as the warship’s drive came to life. All four missiles, still pointed at the target they now would never reach, were dragged sideways. They vanished into the warp bolus with a retina scorching display of light as the immense gravity gradient shredded them into convenient, quark-sized packages. The drive field vanished.

  The warship remained.

  Slowly, it turned to face the Excelsior.

  ☼

  “Almost got it.”

  “Good.”

  “You know… I could get it done quicker if you’d get out of my God damn light.”

  Sam jumped back. “Oh. Sorry.”

  Mad made another adjustment to the open control panel. There was a ‘pop’ and the smell of frying circuitry. “There. That’s better.” She turned to Sam. “Okay. The power’s out and the security lock should be deactivated. It’ll take both of us to manhandle the door open.”

  The slender security operative just nodded and pushed savagely over to the door. She braced herself and, with a grunt, muscled the door open and into its pocket hard enough to unseat it from its tracks. Sam turned and zipped inside the now open compartment.

  Mad blinked. “Or not.” At a slightly more sedate pace, she followed Sam in to find her wrapped around Rafe, her lips planted firmly on the startled spacer’s. She blinked again, then cleared her throat.

  Sam broke away, looking embarrassed. “Sorry.”

  “Suuurrre.” Mad looked over at the bemused Rafe. “Guess we can consider you off the market.”

  Rafe looked at Mad, a bit blankly, then turned back toward Sam with a slightly goofy grin.

  “Crap.” Mad reached over and slapped Sam on the arm. “Way to go. You broke him.”

  Sam, studying Rafe, shook her head. “Actually, I think he’s concussed.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face several times, with no reaction, then turned back to Madeline. “We put him under a lot of gees with that little stunt. Look at his face.”

  Sure enough, Rafe’s face was mottled, the surface capillaries burst. Mad pushed quickly over and peeled back his unresisting eyelid. The pupils were uneven, the whites filled with burst vessels. “Damn it, you’re right. I think he’s going into shock.”

  “Of course, he is. I’m a great kisser.”

  “I never thought I’d say this, but this really isn’t the time for jokes.” She laughed briefly. “Boy, Moses’d be shocked to hear those words coming out of my mouth.” She grabbed a blanket out of
the compacted debris on the upturn side of the compartment, wrapped it around Rafe’s shoulders, and gently steered him toward Sam. “Here, keep hold of him. We’ve got to get out of the ring before it decompresses.”

  “Check.” She clutched Rafe’s shoulder, then turned and looked over at the engineer. “And Madeline?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sorry for kicking you.”

  “That’s okay.” Mad looked back from the door and nodded. “Sorry for punching you.”

  “No problem.”

  “By the way.” Mad asked as they carefully maneuvered the still unresponding Rafe out into the corridor. “I’ve got a question I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time, now.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “What do you do with an elephant with three balls?”

  “What?” Sam looked over the top of Rafe’s head, then smiled. “Oh. Oh! Yeah, that’s simple. You just walk him and pitch to the rhino.”

  “That’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard.”

  “You need to get out more.”

  “I guess so.”

  Carefully, cautiously, they made their way through the gore-slimed ring toward the access tunnel.

  ☼

  “Reload! Reload now, reload now, reload NOW!”

  The security operative looked up from the weapons control console. There was panic in his voice, but mainly there was frustrated anger. “Damn it, sir, it’s an automated reload system. It’ll be done when it’s done.” He pulled his sidearm from its holster and proffered it, grip forward, toward Grace. “Perhaps you’d like to shoot it? Think that’d help?”