My Other Car is a Spaceship

by Mark Terence Chapman

  “No tricks. On my word as captain. There are few left aboard, and I do not think most of them are armed anyway.”

  “Oh?” Hal’s eyebrows rose. “Why not? I wondered why we had such an easy time of it.”

  Tro grimaced. “Not long ago, I received a call from Tarl Penrod ordering me to send my crew to him to help him suppress what sounded like a palace coup. Apparently your friends have stirred things up here and set Penrod and his second-in-command at each other’s throats. Most of the crew has yet to return from shore leave. That left me with only a handful, else you would not have gotten this far before being cut down.”

  “A palace coup, eh? Interesting. It’s good to hear that Kalen has been productive in my absence. Now, please proceed.”

  Capain Tro did as he’d promised, granting Hal and Mynax full access. This allowed Hal to monitor the internal sensors, to ensure that the crew did as they were told. As there can be only one captain per ship, giving captain’s authority to Mynax meant ceding his own.

  The rest of Hal’s team locked the ship’s holding pen doors, securing the six members of the crew who remained aboard ship. Then two of the team came for Tro and MosVeksal, taking them below and securing them as well.

  Hal and Mynax now had full control of Queen Anne’s Revenge, and in a short while—when Giffen Moritha Brih was done working her magic—they would have control over two nuclear missiles as well.

  Now came the tricky part. How were the nine of them supposed to find and retrieve Kalen and the others while still holding the ship?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sonn and Berjelar stood at opposite ends of the corridor, keeping watch as Sue affixed the explosive to the wall alongside the door, where the sonic lock controls were. Sue knew there wouldn’t be time to use the calibrator, so she’d left it with Nude, just in case. The lab was going to blow any minute. If she was going to get the prisoners to safety—or at least a chance of survival—she had to get them out now.

  She moved six paces to the opposite side of the door from the explosive and triggered the remote. The blast wasn’t big—it didn’t need to be—but it did the job. She rushed back to the door and slid it open by hand. Nine beings of assorted species awaited within, most with shocked or terrified expressions on their faces.

  She waved them toward the door. “Hurry, if you want to live!”

  Some hesitated, but when they saw the others begin to run they did the same.

  “This way,” Sue called over her shoulder. “Sonn, let’s go!”

  She heard the heavy footsteps of the Sestran coming up behind the group. They reached Berjelar and the dozen prisoners they’d previously released. Only six of the just-released prisoners were armed; those were all the blasters Sue’s team had to spare.

  “All right everyone, this is a jailbreak. We are heading for the hangars. With luck, the rest of my team will already be there and will have a ship waiting for us. If not, we will have to help them steal one. Only nine of us have weapons. You three…” she pointed, “you guard the rear.” She selected three others. “You stay in the middle, guarding our flanks. The rest of us…” meaning herself, Sonn, and Berjelar, “will take the lead. Everyone stay together. We will not have time to go back for anyone who gets lost or lags behind. If anyone gets hurt, the rest of us will have to help them keep moving. Carry them if we must.”

  She paused for a second to look over the frightened, confused, or determined faces. “I know it is a lot to take in all at once, but we have no time for explanations. In a few minutes, this fortress will be rendered unlivable, so we all have to leave. Now.” She saw some heads bob in agreement. “Good. Let’s go!”

  She turned and led the way at a trot. Near the back of the group, a tall human did his best to hide his neatly-trimmed black beard and the fresh blaster burn on his cheek.

  “Kalen! We have to get out of here. Now!” Tep Movoo looked at the timer again. Only 1:58 left.

  “I’m open to suggestions. They’ve got us trapped in here. There’s no back door and a bunch of guards are holding down the end of the corridor. If we’re not out of here in a minute, we’re all dead, but if we try to leave sooner, the guards down the hall will cut us to ribbons.”

  Tep shrugged helplessly.

  “Smoke!” someone shouted. Indeed, billows of white smoke poured in through the doorway following a double bang.

  “Get ready for a charge,” Kalen yelled.

  He and the rest of his team took cover wherever they could.

  “Kalen! Hurry, while they cannot see what they are shooting at.” The voice came from the other end of the corridor.

  “Nude! Is that you?”

  “None other. Now hurry. The flash-bang grenade was too far from them for full effect, and the smoke grenade will not last long.”

  “Let’s go!” Kalen hissed to the others. “Stay low, and keep firing. We can’t let the guards come up behind us in the smoke. You too, Felmendar. I’m not leaving you behind to mess with the explosives.”

  “But—!”

  Kalen grabbed a tentacle and pulled. The smaller, lighter Foren had no choice but to follow.

  “Now run!”

  Kalen glanced back at the timer as he dashed for the door.

  1:12.

  “Now that we hold the ship,” Mynax asked his pilot, “how do we rescue the other prisoners?”

  “I was just wondering that myself,” Hal replied. “I’m the only one who can fly this ship, so I have to stay here. The solid rock would block my remote access if I went much beyond the hangar. But I’m also the only one who knows where Kalen and the others were hiding—assuming they haven’t moved on by now. If they’re still hiding, you probably won’t have any more luck finding them than the guards did. But at least you know what Kalen looks like. You’ll have to head up the rescue team.”

  Mynax nodded. “Of course. But it would help if I knew where to start.”

  “I wish I could tell you exactly where they are, but….” Hal shrugged. “Using the ship’s transmitter I tried to reach Kalen through his implant, but no go.”

  A deep rumbling accompanied the shudder that afflicted the bridge. Both men jumped.

  “What the hell?” Mynax said.

  “That’s an explosion—a big one. My guess? Kalen. It might make your job easier, if he and his people are out and about. But you’d better hurry. There’s no telling where he’s going or how long he’ll be visible.”

  Mynax nodded. “We’ll leave immediately.”

  “Good. I’ll hold down the fort.” Hal opened a radio channel to the rest of the teams, both inside and outside the ship. At this point he wasn’t worried about their radio chatter giving away their position. Surely the guards in the shack had called for reinforcements already.

  “Everyone but Giffen meet at the fore access hatch, ASAP.” He turned back to Mynax. “Good luck, sir. Hurry back.”

  The two men shook hands. Mynax flashed a crooked grin. “You bet.”

  Hal immediately powered up the engines into full operational mode. As soon as Squad 1 reached the hatch, he raised shields, protecting everyone inside. He energized the antiproton cannons on minimum power and took aim at the guard shack. A bare-minimum burst obliterated the shack and those within and gouged out a huge chunk of the solid rock wall behind it. Pieces bounced off the ship’s shields.

  Then Hal raised the ship a few centimeters, rotated it, and blew out the airtight doors near one end of the hangar and then the other. Now he had a clear view of the area immediately outside the hangar, including the long corridors leading to the doorways. No one was going to be able to sneak up on the ship from the front, and with sensors fully engaged, no one could approach undetected from outside the asteroid, either. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake the pirates had.

  Hal lowered the shields and radioed the team. “I’ve cleared the way for you. Good luck everyone. Keep your heads down.”

  After raising the shields again, he watched as the seven spacesuite
d figures ran through the smoking wreck of one of the hangar doorways.

  Kalen and the others raced down the corridor, trying to outrun the expanding cloud of radioactive dust and gasses that emanated from the lab. Strobe lights on the walls flashed and alarms sounded.

  Having the air handlers in that sector shut off helped, but the force of the blast blew out large chunks of three walls, spreading the plutonium dust down the adjacent corridors. In addition, the fires raging out of control in various parts of the fortress created vortexes that sucked air from other parts of the fortress, including the area of the lab. Within minutes, large sections of the fortress would be toxic. As it was, the Kadre had already lost one of their number, cut down by random blaster fire through the smoke. The pirates also winged another the same way.

  Kalen blinked and wiped a trickle of blood from his eye. He’d scraped his forehead against the corridor wall when the blast threw everyone from their feet. “Wait a minute,” he exclaimed, grabbing Nude’s arm as they ran, “where’s Merry?”

  “I hid her in a maintenance closet up ahead when I heard the sound of blaster fire coming from your direction. You sounded like you needed help.”

  “True enough. But where did you get the grenades?”

  “I thought they might come in handy in defense of Merry, so I pocketed them when we left.”

  “You never cease to amaze, me, doctor.”

  Nude smiled. “That is as it should be, Captain.” He pointed. “There is the closet where I left Merry.”

  “Good. Let’s get her and get off this godforsaken rock.”

  Assuming Fen and his team were successful in getting us a ship.

  Fen Donue, Loc Pordu, Pir Seploo, and Glon’Slouv’Moul—the three Thorians and a Chan’Yi that comprised Team 2—were at an impasse.

  “How are we supposed to get in there and take a ship, with that monster standing watch?” Seploo grimaced in frustration. “Every time we try to get close, it swivels its APCs at us. And with its shields up, there is no way we can hurt it. All we have is blasters and a few grenades.”

  Donue shrugged. “I suppose our only option is to try one of the other hangars and hope we can find an easier target there.”

  “But we do not have time for that. Besides, how would we let the others know where we went? They expect us to be here.”

  Donue growled, “If you have a better idea, let me know—otherwise be quiet and let me think.”

  Before Seploo could reply, the sound of blaster fire echoed down the corridor from behind them. The duo jumped, then turned to listen.

  “Jendor damn it!” Donue cursed. “It is coming this way. We are about to get caught between the ship and the reinforcements. We cannot stay here.”

  He raised his voice so the other two members of the team could hear as well. “This position is indefensible. We have to move. It sounds like Kalen and whoever is with him are coming this way, chased by the pirates. We have to find a position where we can cover for Kalen.”

  He paused for a moment. “Back to the previous intersection! We will wait there.”

  “Right,” Pir agreed. The others nodded.

  The foursome ran up the corridor, away from the hangar and toward the roar of blasters.

  “C’mon, c’mon, come on!” Hal fretted.

  Hurry it up, Spelvin. The pirates won’t hold back forever.

  He kept a close watch on the external sensors. Every so often a head would poke out around a doorway or someone would run across his field of view. He tracked them with the cannons, but made himself hold back from firing. Unless he actually saw someone he recognized, he couldn’t tell if they were good guys or bad guys.

  That could be a problem. If a bunch of prisoners escape and steal guns, how can I tell them from a group of pirates when they come charging into the hangar? The guards wear uniforms, but the other pirates don’t always. Either group would come in here with guns blazing—the pirates because they know we’re in here, and the prisoners because they don’t.

  Hal pursed his lips in frustration. “I guess I’ll have to play it by ear—like just about everything else so far on this mission.”

  “Jespin! They seem to be heading for the main hangar. You and your people circle around from Sector Blue Four and cut them off. Velzen! You do the same, coming from Blue Five. Do not let them get past you!” Jern Ishtawahl waited long enough to hear the acknowledgments and then cut off the connection.

  He had four guards left with him pursuing the escaped prisoners. They’d picked off a few, but lost several of their own in the shooting. Between the curving passageways and the intersection turns, it was hard to get many clean shots at them. But with Velzen and Jespin hitting them from the rear, that should settle the matter finally.

  He snapped off a shot at a shoulder just before it disappeared around a curve, but missed. Then he had to duck back from two blaster bolts that came from the same spot.

  He smiled. Good. Every time you slow down to return fire, it gives my people more time to get into position. You are cutting your own throats.

  Spelvin Mynax held up a hand to stop those running up behind him. He listened closely for a moment.

  “There’s blaster fire coming from over that way.” He pointed to his right down a crossing corridor. “There’s a pretty good chance the people we’re looking for are on the receiving end of that. It makes sense they’d be heading for a hangar. The tricky part will be to keep the good guys from shooting at us. Hopefully the Unity insignias on these suits will be visible enough to do the trick. Of course, the pirates will take that as an invitation.

  “If someone shoots at us, shoot back. All we can do is hope they’re pirates and not nearsighted prisoners. But with so few of us, we can’t afford to stand around indecisively. You’ve all seen holos of Captain Jeffries. Keep an eye out for him, and make sure you don’t shoot at his group. Let’s go!”

  He took off at a run, followed closely by the other six members of his team.

  That’s not a lot to take on a whole fortress full of pirates.

  He snorted to himself. Of course, if it comes to that, we’re doing this all wrong.

  Sue, Sonn, Berjelar, and the escaped prisoners approached the left-most set of airtight doors to the hangar. Or at least, where the left-most set of doors used to be. Sue stopped in confusion, and the others jostled to a halt behind her.

  “What happened here?” She glanced at the fused and shattered structural members that once framed the doorway. Ahead, farther down the corridor that ran along the front of the hangar, she saw what was left of the other set of doors. To her right, one of the main corridors leading to the hangar was empty, but she heard the sounds of blaster fire getting closer by the second.

  “Perhaps Fen and his team did this,” Sonn offered.

  Sue tilted her head in the negative. “I do not think so. These doors were blown out, not in. Someone inside the hangar had to do this. Someone with a lot of firepower.”

  Sonn shrugged. “Perhaps Fen did it after getting in, to make it easier for us to reach him.”

  “With what? He had blasters and some grenades; nothing powerful enough to do this.”

  “Good point.” Sonn glanced back at the shattered opening and shrugged. “What choice do we have but to advance? There is no retreat from here. If we are to escape, we will have to get inside and commandeer a ship—if Fen has not already done so.”

  Sue thought for a moment, then nodded. “Let us be cautious. We do not want to rush in blindly and be cut to pieces by a squad of guards lying in wait for us inside.” She turned to the rest of the group. “Keep watch for anyone approaching. They could come from any direction. We cannot afford any surprises.”

  Without waiting for a response, she peered around the wreckage of the doorway. There were three ships inside. One had a shattered main viewport and a damaged access door. It was going nowhere. The one next to it also had smoke pouring from the forward access door. It, too, looked to be staying put. The third ship, how
ever, was in perfect shape. Its graceful lines were rare for a pirate ship; the many energy weapons festooning its hull were not.

  Worse, two of the antiproton cannons swiveled to aim at the doorway as soon as her head poked out. She pulled back.

  “It cannot be Fen’s people in there. They have no way to control a ship, unless they are holding blasters to the heads of the captain and the pilot, which seems unlikely. That means he failed and we have to find a way to get in there and take that ship. But how do we get past those cannons?”

  “Get ready,” Fen Donue whispered.

  He and his people waited thirty meters from the intersection where all the noise was emanating. Any second now he expected to see Kalen’s party race through the intersection, chased by a pack of guards. The foursome raised their weapons.

  A moment later, Kalen’s slender frame appeared, followed by five others, including Chalmis’Noud’Ourien carrying the human child, Merry.

  What are they doing here? The child was supposed to be kept out of harm’s way. No matter. They are here, and we must do our best to slow down the guards who chase them.

  After a gap of several seconds, the first of the guards appeared in the intersection.

  “Fire!” Fen yelled. He and the rest of his team did so and killed the three leading guards and nearly hit the fourth, an Alberian, before he ducked back. A fifth rushed past him and was taken down by the second salvo. After a momentary pause, the Alberian appeared again, diving across the intersection while firing to his left. The shots aimed at him all went high, and he made it through unscathed. His shot, on the other hand, struck Pir on the left wrist, severing the hand and cauterizing the wound.

  Pir shrieked in agony. His eyes went wide as he spotted his hand gently rocking on the floor, still holding the blaster.

  There was no time for coddling. They had to cover Kalen’s team’s back.