Endless Advance: Age of Expansion - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (Uprise Saga Book 2)

by Amy DuBoff

  “Still two against one.”

  “Except he’s a Were… and whatever else.”

  “We can find a sonic blaster and take him out.”

  “Not unless we find some noise cancelling earbuds. Gun like that will echo like crazy in a small ship like this,” Widmore countered.

  “Then what do you suggest, sir?”

  “We tackle and shackle the old-fashioned way.”

  “Why am I not surprised you’d say that?”

  “It’s been too long since I’ve been in the thick of action.”

  Ava grinned and released the inner door. “He’ll know we’re here, but we still have numbers on our side.”

  “That we do. Lead the way.”

  * * *

  Nox glowered at the computer screen. How did they make it on board?

  Members of the Force are quite industrious, Kurtz replied. He tried to hide the satisfied smile in his mind.

  He’d been afraid that the ship had broken free too quickly, before anyone had a chance to board. The fact that anyone had made it inside the airlock was a near-miracle, but he’d take it.

  The question now was whether they’d be able to subdue Nox without harming his body. He was certain Nox would rather die than be captured. Death wasn’t on Kurtz’s itinerary for the day.

  You should hand yourself over now, if you want to live, Kurtz told the alien.

  Why ever would I do that? I’ve won.

  They’ll have the door to the bridge open in a matter of minutes.

  A course has already been set. By the time they override the controls, we’ll be among my people.

  A bang sounded on the door.

  Kurtz knew they’d never try to bust through the steel. That was an alert for him, if there was any part of himself. His friends were coming.

  I sense you getting your hopes up, Nox said. You’re only setting yourself up for disappointment.

  Where are you going to meet your people?

  Gidyon.

  Ah, so that’s why no one goes to that system.

  One of the reasons.

  And the other? Kurtz prompted.

  I’m surprised you don’t know already. It’s—

  The door flew open. Kurtz was on the ground before he had a chance to react.

  Nox struggled against Major Widmore’s grasp on his arms while Ava grabbed his ankles.

  Just need a little more time, Nox said. How about something to keep them busy?

  * * *

  Ava swiveled her hands to better hold Kurtz’s writhing form. “The cuffs, Major?”

  “Working on it,” Widmore grunted while slipping one of Kurtz’s hands through the stasis cuffs they’d grabbed from the supply locker outside the airlock.

  The first cuff cinched around the colonel’s wrist, and Widmore hurriedly jammed the man’s hand into the other.

  Ava was just about to force his knees up so they could lock his ankles when the shape of the colonel’s legs began to change. They bulked and lengthened in her grasp, his boots and suit flexing.

  “Major, he’s—”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Widmore muttered while staring down a Pricolici snout.

  “Shit!” Ava shouted as Kurtz’s booted feet kicked free of her hands. One foot struck the side of her head, and she tumbled toward the wall.

  The Pricolici roared, slamming the back of a clawed fist into Widmore’s face.

  Blood poured from the major’s nose, but he threw his weight against the Were. “Ava, the cuffs!”

  Still dazed, Ava dove onto the colonel’s legs and forced his knees to bend.

  Widmore strained against the Pricolici, reaching out the tether to loop around its ankles.

  Just a little more… With a surge of strength, Ava got Kurtz into the necessary position, and the cuffs cinched tight. She dropped the anchor to the deck, locking Kurtz in place.

  Ava scrambled backward and rose to her feet. “You know, that actually went better than I expected.”

  Widmore wiped the blood from his upper lip. “Easy for you to say.”

  She looked at the flight controls. “Never mind. I retract my statement.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ava groaned. Well, that’s just fantastic.

  “What is it?” Widmore glanced over at her from the communications console.

  “We’re on a heading for the Annex Gate. The nav system has a destination set in the Gidyon System,” Ava replied, returning her gaze to the navigation screen.

  “So?”

  “That’s a… bad place to go.”

  Kurtz, still in his Pricolici form, snarled on the floor and jangled the cuffs.

  Widmore frowned. “You need to be more specific.”

  “I don’t know what’s there, Major,” Ava admitted, “but everyone in the Alaxar Trinary knows to not enter Gidyon. It’s the adjacent system.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’ll have the ship turned around in no time.” He looked over Ava’s shoulder at the controls. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, I was about to get to the part about the nav override triggering a life support failure.”

  “How the hell did he rig this so quickly?”

  Ava grimaced. “He didn’t get to be a colonel for nothing.”

  “Fuck!” Widmore scanned the panel. “Can you undo it?”

  “Honestly? I’m not sure, sir. But in the interest in being productive, yes.”

  “I’ll take it. What can I do to help?”

  “I don’t suppose you have study notes from the nav system programming final exam on hand, do you?”

  Widmore shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Well, then I guess we need to get into the communications system.”

  “Now that I might be able to help with.” Widmore leaped over Kurtz so he could access the communications console on the side of the room. “I’ve had to rewire these a time or two in my day. I should at least be able to get a distress call to HQ.”

  “If you can manage it, Sam or Nick might be able to talk us through how to create a back door into the system so we can undo the nav lock.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  While Widmore got to work, Ava tried to regain control of the ship.

  She tended to think of the colonel as being mostly a paper-pusher, but she had to admit that the work on the system had been genius. Tying the life support to navigation was no small feat, especially in such a short time. But, being a rush job, the work was imperfect.

  “Sir, I think I may have something,” Ava said.

  “Good, because I was able to get a distress signal to headquarters, but any kind of text or voice communication is a no-go for now.”

  “I think we can do a system reset to wipe out the current destination without permanently disabling the ship like he intended,” Ava continued. “Problem is, that means we’ll lose life support for that time.”

  “How long for a reboot?”

  “Six minutes.”

  Widmore smiled. “No problem! Plenty of air and it won’t get cold for a lot longer than that.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s not my concern. Trouble is if the system doesn’t come back on afterward.”

  “The FDG will have a ship here before that becomes an issue. Besides, we have our suits.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I sense another ‘but’.”

  Ava nodded. “Whoever the alien was going to meet, my guess is they’ll want him back.”

  “You think they’ll come for him?”

  Him… or me. “We don’t know anything about this enemy, sir.”

  “You’re right, we can’t rule out any possibility. But we need the facilities at the base to figure out how to get the alien presence out of him.”

  On the deck, the Pricolici’s snout receded. Kurtz stared up at them. “He said he can’t be removed,” he stammered.

  “Colonel?” Widmore leaned down toward him. “Are you—”

  Kurtz cried out in agony and spasmed. “He’s mine now. You�
�ll all be.”

  Widmore straightened. “Ava, hold on that system reset. I have another idea.”

  * * *

  Kurtz writhed on the ground as Nox regained control.

  Never betray me again or there won’t be any of you left, Nox snarled in his mind.

  Clearly, the alien still didn’t understand the FDG even after spending three years in Kurtz’s head. A warrior wouldn’t be consumed so easily.

  Above him, Ava and Major Widmore were talking urgently. As much as Kurtz wanted to listen to their conversation, it was taking every bit of his concentration to maintain his place near the front of his consciousness.

  Ava bent down and looked him in the eyes. “Colonel, are you in there?” she asked telepathically.

  “You can’t help me,” Nox replied on his behalf.

  Kurtz shoved him aside. “I’m here! Don’t let him tell you otherwise, Ava.”

  Ava smiled. “You’ve got it, Colonel. I’ll do whatever I can to help. But right now, you need to help me. How do we undo the navigation lock?”

  Don’t you dare try to tell her, Nox threatened.

  You have no leverage, Nox. There’s nothing you can do to this ship that won’t kill you, too, or Ava, and I know how important she is to you.

  “Sorry, Nox, but I have to side with the colonel on this one. I see you for what you are.”

  Nox’s surprise was palpable. “You can hear us?”

  “Yeah, the whole telepathic thing.” Ava cocked her head. “Don’t understand us humans as well as you thought, huh?”

  “Your abilities won’t get me out of him,” Nox spat back.

  “Maybe not, but guess what—I don’t need Kurtz to tell me anything. Push him back as much as you want. I can see your recent memories, Nox, and everything I need to know about the nav system is right there. I know exactly what I need to do.”

  “You… you can’t!” the alien stammered. “How…?”

  Ava shrugged. “Maybe modifying me wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

  * * *

  Widmore watched Ava as she bored into the colonel’s mind, her gaze as intense as he’d ever witnessed.

  He had no idea if she was making any progress, but it was worth a shot. No sense in risking a reset if it wasn’t necessary.

  “The nav command…” Ava said, her voice strained.

  Widmore came to attention. “What do we need to do?”

  “Go into the main nav directory and enter the following code.” She listed off an alphanumeric string to him.

  “One sec.” Widmore did as he was instructed. As soon as the final digit was entered, a command window popped up. “There’s a prompt for contingent relays. I have no clue what that means.” He frowned at the screen.

  “Is there a default setting?” Ava asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, select that. Then things will get tricky. You need to do a physical bypass of the life support system using the wiring under the console.”

  Widmore nodded. “Just don’t tell me we have to reverse the polarity.”

  A smirk curled Ava’s lips. “If only that worked as well as it always seems to in the old movies.”

  The major dropped to his knees and peeked under the nav console. The metal plate covering the circuitry had already been removed, and it looked like several wires had been spliced together with crude junctures.

  “I think I see the problem,” he muttered. “Which ones do I change?”

  Ava frowned. “I keep getting an image of a blue wire.”

  Widmore swore under his breath. There were at least four blue-ish wires he could see. “You’re going to have to be a lot more specific.”

  “You know, the blue—”

  “Ava!”

  She tore her gaze from Kurtz’s prone form. “I’ll have to look at it myself. I can see it, but Nox keeps trying to cloud my perception.”

  “Nox? Is that what took over the colonel?”

  “That’s what it calls itself. It’s some sort of conscious presence, but I can’t tell what kind of physical form it might possess.”

  “We can deal with that later.” Widmore pointed to the hanging wires. “First, what do we do with that?”

  “Right.” Ava dropped to her back and began sorting through the wires, her brow furrowed.

  Widmore sat back on his heels and allowed her to complete the task without interruption. He was fortunate to be surrounded by such talented colleagues, and Ava was truly one of the best. If he had to be stuck with someone on a ship headed into unknown territory, she was at the top of his list for a partner.

  After two tense minutes, Ava finally dropped her hands to her side and sat up. “Okay, I think that should do it.”

  “How sure are you?”

  She shrugged. “Enough that I’d rather try to power on the system and see if this works than find out why Gidyon is off-limits.”

  “Fair enough. Proceed.”

  “Here it goes.” Ava took a deep breath and activated the control panel. She half-closed her eyes as though bracing for an explosion.

  Widmore took a step back.

  The console beeped, and green lights illuminated across the display.

  Ava grinned. “Good news, sir. We’re not going to die.”

  “Have you regained control of the nav system?”

  She tapped on the menu and nodded. “It appears everything is responding.”

  Widmore took a step toward the pilot’s chair. “Well done. Let’s get back to—”

  An alarm sounded, echoing in the compact chamber.

  “What now?” Widmore’s pulse spiked.

  Ava’s face drained. She began cycling through the ship’s systems to identify the issue. “Sir, we’re venting atmosphere.”

  “Where? How?”

  On the floor, Kurtz chuckled to himself. “Stop trying to override the nav controls and I’ll halt the leak.”

  Ava scoffed. “Have you forgotten about our suits?”

  “You might want to look at it more closely,” Kurtz replied.

  Widmore looked down at his suit and was horrified to see a gash running along the side of his torso. It must have been ripped in our fight earlier, he realized. So much for having a functional pressure suit.

  “You’ll die with us,” he told Kurtz.

  “Oh, no, this venting is at a very specific rate. There will be enough air for two of us to live until we make it to our destination. If you don’t want to decide who lives and dies, then stop resisting.”

  “Too late. Course is already set back to the FDG base,” Ava replied.

  “Is it, now?” Kurtz smirked. “Then why haven’t we turned around?”

  Widmore ran to look over Ava’s shoulder at the controls. “The destination is still set to Gidyon.”

  “I changed it!” Ava re-entered the FDG base and the system reset again. “It keeps overriding it.”

  Fuck! Widmore took a steadying breath. “What are our options?”

  “We could try the full system reset, but after seeing this, I’m not sure it will work. At a minimum, I imagine we’ll lose life support, like we feared.”

  “Do it.”

  “But, sir, your suit…”

  “I’ll get the patch kit. We can’t go through that Annex Gate,” Widmore said with a tone of finality.

  Ava nodded and turned her attention to initiating the reset.

  Widmore stepped around Kurtz to access the back storage area of the ship. The patch kit was where it should be in a cabinet near the entry airlock. The materials hardly looked like something that would hold up long-term, but it would have to do.

  By the time he was finished placing the adhesive strips along the tear, Ava had completed the preparations for the reset.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Kurtz objected from the deck.

  “If you don’t want us to do this, then that means it’s exactly what we should be doing,” Widmore shot back. He nodded to Ava. “Proce
ed.”

  “Here it goes.” She initiated the restart sequence.

  All the mechanical and electrical systems cut out, leaving the cockpit in darkness. The artificial gravity released, and Widmore slowly floated upward. His stomach turned over, but he took calming breaths to settle his senses.

  He waited to the count of sixty before concern began to set in. “Why hasn’t it come back on?”

  “I don’t know,” Ava replied through the black to Widmore’s right.

  Great, we’re going to be floating out here until we freeze. That kind of thinking wouldn’t solve the situation. “How visible are we out here powered down?”

  “Not very.” Just the slightest hint of concern edged into Ava’s voice. “Do you think the FDG will have sent a rescue ship?”

  “That’s my hope. I did get off the distress call before the shutdown.”

  “Good, and we haven’t altered course.”

  “All the same, we’re a speck in the black. We need to activate the emergency beacon.” Widmore shook his head. “Which was probably right below the patch kit. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “We all have a few things on our minds. Don’t worry about it,” Ava assured him.

  Kurtz yanked against his restraints on the floor. “But will the FDG find you first?”

  “They’re the best,” Widmore stated. The base isn’t far. They should be here soon.

  Feeling his way through the dark, Widmore worked through the door into the open area surrounding the airlock. He followed his mental map of where he’d just been, feeling in front of him for a latch to the cabinet. There was no way he’d be able to locate and activate a beacon on feel alone, but there was one item he knew exactly how to find if he could just get the cabinet open.

  His hand found the handle in the dark, and he pulled. The door popped open. He ran his fingers along the inside of the door. A cool cylinder met his probing touch.

  “Watch your eyes,” he warned Ava. With his own eyes closed, he activated the flashlight.

  Red light illuminated the cabin, casting an eerie glow in the small space.