Irritation flickered through Anya. “I’m not completely sure myself. The alarms while ago were for a collision alert, though. Something’s coming at us.”
“Out here?” Melanie asked blankly. “The relief crew ain’t scheduled for … uh … weeks.”
“It isn’t a ship—not unless it’s carrying munchkins.”
Melanie snickered. “What’re munchkins?”
“Little tiny people,” Anya answered promptly, smiling.
They ran into a problem when they reached Melanie’s quarters. “Don’t take your suit off!” Anya said sharply when Melanie began to struggle with the fastenings.
Melanie looked up at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I can’t sleep in this thing!”
“Yes, you can. And you’re going to.”
“The whole damned thing?”
After a little thought, Anya disengaged the helmet and removed it, then helped her to remove the air tanks. “If the alarm sounds again, you put these on immediately. Understood?”
Melanie nodded, but Anya doubted she was really listening. As soon as Anya relieved her of them, she crawled onto her bunk and curled up.
“I’ll come if the alarm sounds again, but don’t wait for me. Put on the rest of your gear.”
Melanie yawned.
Anya almost envied her. She’d managed to project a surface calm, but deep down she was scared shitless. Whatever it was heading toward them was traveling fast enough it could demolish the station if it hit them squarely.
Seeing Melanie was either already asleep or halfway there, she left her friend’s quarters and locked it down. It made her nauseous to do so knowing they might or might not have time to gather everybody up if they’d miscalculated on anything, but Melanie wasn’t in full possession of her facilities and, with her judgment impaired, she could be a threat to herself and others.
That assessment was born up when she located Cooper and Vance dragging a barely conscious Tony Russo toward his quarters. “Where’d you find him?”
“Trying to figure out how to get the airlock open,” Cooper said with disgust. “The moron had decided to take a stroll outside.”
Anya felt a fresh wave of fear wash over her. “God! Where are the others?”
“We’ve already got them in their quarters. Russo’s the only one that gave us any trouble,” Vance responded.
Relieved of that anxiety, Anya wanted nothing so much as to dash back up to the bridge to discover what was going on. Instead, she hurried to the med lab, checked to make sure she had plenty of supplies on hand for whatever type of injuries she thought they might be looking at in the event the station was struck. The med lab was in order, though, and well stocked.
Leaving again, she headed down to the hanger to check to see what supplies were on board the ship. They’d completed their mission in record time, but they hadn’t been scheduled to leave until the next crew arrived, and they weren’t expected for weeks. She doubted any preparations had even been started for departure.
The sound of vigorous activity greeted her when she reached the hanger deck, however, and she discovered that Captain Laine had risen to the occasion despite the fact that he hadn’t been entirely sober. Three crew members were frenziedly prepping the ship in case of need.
Without surprise, she discovered there wasn’t anything on board but a first aid kit, a bottle of pain killers, and few rolls of bandages. Heading toward the supply room, she gathered up everything she could carry and raced back to the ship. She was winded from rushing as she made trip after trip and fearful that she was too frightened to properly assess the situation, but she could almost feel the minutes ticking by. Instead of trying to figure out and anticipate needs, she grabbed as much of everything as she could carry and stocked every shelf and drawer until she could barely close them.
It dawned on her when she finally paused to rest that they weren’t going to be using the ship unless the station became useless.
And that meant the crew coming to relieve them, which was already well past the point of no return, probably wouldn’t have what they needed to get back to the next station.
She hurried after Morgan. “Did Laine tell you to stock extra fuel cells and food for the crew of the Miranda?”
Morgan glanced at her impatiently, but she could see the moment it clicked in his mind. “He just said prep the ship for emergency evac.”
Nodding, Anya tried to reach the captain on the communicator. After a few moments, she realized he must have taken his helmet off and moved to the wall unit. He glared at her as his image appeared on the screen. “What is it now?”
“The Miranda’s already on the way here. Shouldn’t we take on extra supplies for them in case the station …?”
He looked annoyed that she’d thought of it and he hadn’t. “It’ll make take off sluggish if we overload it,” he ground out to cover the fact that he hadn’t thought about the other crew.
“Maybe so, but we have to consider that they might not have enough supplies on board to make an unscheduled trip back to SP-12.”
“Do it!” he snapped and cut the connection before she could ask him what the situation was.
“He’s concerned about overloading,” she said as she turned to Morgan again. “See if you can get half again as much as what we’ll need. They’re still three weeks out. They won’t have had time to use up what they’ve got.”
Her stomach was in knots of anxiety and the urge to dash up to the bridge was nearly unbearable, but she forced herself to stay and help supply the ship, knowing there should have been twice as many people working on it as they had.
Seeing after a while that there was no way in hell the four of them were going to get the ship prepped in under two hours, she left the three men loading and rushed back up to the bridge. It would’ve been far more efficient to have called the captain again, but he was focused entirely upon the situation on the bridge. She was breathless by the time she arrived and sweating inside her suit.
Removing the helmet, she stood just inside the door for several moments.
“Give me the latest calculations!” Laine barked at Nix.
Carol worked at her computer for a moment and then stared blankly at the readout.
“Well?” Laine demanded impatiently.
Carol lifted her head, blinking several times. “It’s slowed down, Sir.”
Laine, everyone on the bridge, froze and turned to stare at her. “You’ve done something wrong!” Laine said tersely.
“I didn’t! I’ve run the numbers three times, Sir. That thing, whatever it is, it’s slowing down … and its changed directions. It’s still heading straight for us!”
“That’s impossible!” Laine ground out, surging out of his chair. “Didn’t you say you couldn’t detect any propulsion?” he asked, rounding on Phil Perkins.
Perkins gaped at him, blinking while his mind tabulated. “There’s no heat. Unless it’s got some kind of propulsion capabilities that don’t emit heat, it’s got no propulsion, Sir!”
Stalking to Carol’s station, Laine commanded her to run the figures again.
He stared at the readout without comprehension when it came up. Lifting his head, he glanced blindly around the room, obviously struggling with the information. “Run a diagnostic on your system,” he said shortly and stalked across the bridge.
“Smith! You got a visual yet? It should be damned close by now.”
Smith narrowed his eyes, focusing intently on his viewing screen. “No, Sir! Wait! I think I see something.”
Almost as one, everyone on the bridge strained forward, trying to see what Smith had seen. “Bring it up on the big screen.”
Anya’s belly did a nose dive toward her toes as the screen winked on. Little besides a velvety blackness filled the screen. It was like looking into a black hole. She’d known they were at the very edge of the solar system, but the few times she’d looked out, she’d looked toward home—not the endless space beyond their system.
It took an effort to make he
rself stare at that emptiness, but she ignored the cringing of her stomach and peered at the screen until movement finally directed her gaze to the object.
“Diagnostic complete,” Carol announced. “No problems detected, Sir.”
“Run the program again,” Laine growled without taking his eyes off the screen. “What the hell is that that thing?” he muttered to no one in particular.
“A torpedo?” someone asked.
“Slowing down?” Carol demanded. “Because it is. It’s dropped to sub sonic speed, Sir.”
Anya examined the dark object on the viewing screen. “It looks like a coffin,” she said finally.
Laine turned and stared at Anya. “What are you doing back up here? Don’t you have something to do?”
Anya’s lips tightened. “I’ve checked out the medical stores on both the station and the ship. I came to see if you could send a few more crew members down to help prep the ship in case we have to evac. There’s no way the four of us can manage it in the time we have.”
Laine looked irritated. After glancing around the room, he apparently decided to ignore her. “We’ve got a situation here. I can’t afford to put anybody else on it right now.”
Anya was tempted to point out that they couldn’t afford not to have the ship ready either, but it had begun to seem less likely that they were in danger of a collision … or at least in danger of a catastrophic collision. Carol marked another drop in the speed of the thing.
“Any sign of propulsion now?”
“Negative,” Perkins responded.
“What the hell is it?” Laine growled in frustration.
“And where did it come from?” Anya added.
Chapter Two
“Three degrees port,” Laine ordered after a lengthy silence.
“One degree,” the man at the helm called back. Minutes passed. “Two degrees.”
Anya found herself straining to help the clumsy station turn, her muscles taut with useless effort. Mildly embarrassed, she discovered everyone else was leaning, as well, as if they could help the station by sheer force of will.
“Three degrees,” ‘Burke’ Burkehalter announced after several more tense minutes had passed.
“Check it, Nix.”
“It’s still coming at us. Still decreasing speed.”
Laine dragged his attention from the viewing screen and stared at her as if he was fighting the urge to demand she check it again.
“Sir! The computer’s estimating impact in twenty minutes at the current speed! And it’s coming in hot, whatever it is!”
“Smart torpedo?” Perkins guessed.
Everybody in the room turned to stare at him in wide eyed horror.
Laine shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense! Coming from deep space? Anybody picking up anything else out there?”
“Negative, Sir!”
The alarms cut loose again, nearly making everyone jump out of their skin.
“Shut it off!” Laine yelled.
The silence when the alarm was shut off was nearly deafening. “Nix you got a fix on where it’s likely to hit us?”
Carol Nix ran her calculations. “Oh God! The bay!”
For a split second everyone froze. “Evac! NOW!” Laine bellowed.
Anya, standing near the door, whirled to run and still almost got mowed down by the stampede for the exit. “What about the crew members confined to quarters?” she yelled as everyone shoved past her and raced down the corridor.
“Grab anybody that can move fast!” Laine bellowed to no one in particular. “The ship leaves in five minutes whether everybody’s on board or not!”
A flicker of outrage ran through Anya, but she didn’t have time to vent. She headed for Melanie’s quarters. Thankfully, the second alarm had roused her. When Anya opened the door, she found Melanie struggling with her air tanks and helmet. Grabbing her friend by one arm, she dragged her from her quarters and hurried toward the docking bay, wondering if they were only going to manage to assemble there for annihilation rather than evacuation.
She slowed to unlock the doors where the other drunken crewmembers had been locked up. Three others had been rousted. Two, Mitchner and Russo were so out of it, punching and screaming at them had no effect. Grabbing Melanie’s arm again, she focused on getting the two of them to the docking bay before the ship left without them.
Anya and Melanie reached the docking bay just as the gang plank was beginning to withdraw. Screaming curses, Anya dragged Melanie into an awkward run and raced for the ship.
To her relief, the gangplank paused and extended again and she raced into the ship with Melanie, scrambling to find a seat to strap herself in even as she heard the mechanical whirs that told her the hatch had locked in place and the bay doors were opening. The ship’s engines roared to life as she struggled frantically with her belt and the ship shot from the bay into space before the bay door had even completely opened, nearly peeling the roof off the ship.
Melanie, Anya discovered when she was finally able to focus on something other than her own hide, was still struggling with her helmet and air tanks, but thankfully she still had them. There was oxygen in the ship, but it was far too dangerous not to be suited up when they had no idea whether the thing coming at them would hit them or not. Shifting, she took the helmet from Melanie and settled it and fastened it then adjusted the air tanks.
When the captain decided they’d reached a safe distance, he turned the ship and pulled up the viewer. The lozenge shaped object, almost as black as the space around it except for the light reflecting off its glossy surface, slammed into the hull less than three meters from the hatch they’d exited minutes before, pierced it, and disappeared into the space station.
Everyone watched in frozen shock, expecting any moment to see SP-13 disintegrate before their eyes. Minutes passed. Anya hardly breathed. Someone released a shaky laugh. “It didn’t blow! It must be a dud!”
“It wasn’t a torpedo, lame brain!” someone muttered.
“Well, what the hell is it, then?”
“It’s in our damned space station is what it is!” someone else muttered.
Thirty minutes passed, then an hour. Restlessness began to replace the terror that had gripped everyone as they’d fled the space station.
“We didn’t finish prepping the ship,” one of the crew members volunteered. “What do we do now?”
“If it was going to blow, wouldn’t it have done that when it hit?”
“Cut the chit chat, ladies!” Laine snarled. “Russo?”
“He’s still on the station,” Anya said curtly.
“Shit! Who else knows explosives?”
“Mitchner.”
“He’s on the fucking station, too!” Anya snapped.
She could hear someone grinding their teeth in her ear piece.
“Volunteers?”
Five minutes passed in complete silence.
Laine unbuckled his restraints and got out of his seat. “Burk, you’re in charge until I get back.” He glanced over the other crew members. “Vance, you just volunteered to come with me.”
Someone muttered a curse under their breath. Anya suspected it was Vance. “I’ll go, too,” she found herself saying, wondering if she’d lost her mind.
“You stay here with the others,” Laine said curtly, “unless you happen to know something about explosives that I’m not aware of?”
“I don’t know any more than you do, but I can run a scan on the thing and see what’s in it.”
“The computer will run the scan,” Laine retorted.
She didn’t really want to take a space walk, and she sure as hell didn’t like the idea of approaching whatever that thing was, but she felt a compulsion to go. “None of us are exactly safe. They didn’t have time to completely prep the ship,” she pointed out.
The captain stared at her a long moment and apparently caught the undercurrents of her comments—that three less on the ship not fully prepped meant better odds for the other
s. Finally, he nodded.
The trip across from the ship to the station was probably the most terrifying ordeal of Anya’s life. The utter blackness, the endlessness of the darkness set her teeth on edge. She had to quell the urge to chatter only for the comfort of hearing her own voice, but she did, knowing that the more she talked, the more of her oxygen she’d use.
As unnerved as she was at the idea of entering the station with that thing on board, it was still a relief to get inside. The impact had caused far less damage than she’d expected, but it had succeeded in wrecking enough of the bay to knock out the computer and lighting on that deck. With the hull breached, they were also locked out of the remainder of the ship.
She was glad she’d had the forethought to bring some of her instruments with her, including a small portable scanner. Otherwise, she would’ve had to have returned to the ship for it and she thought she might have been mindless with terror making two more trips through space.
They found the alien object resting near where the nose of their ship would’ve been if they hadn’t pulled out. Anya didn’t doubt Laine felt vindicated by that discovery since it supported his decision to bail out before the thing hit. If he hadn’t ordered the evac they would’ve been stranded until they could’ve repaired the ship—if they could’ve repaired it.
A shiver skated down her spine as they approached the thing, raking their portable lights over it. It was impossible to tell what the thing was made of. It could have been metal, but it didn’t look like any metal Anya had ever seen. It looked more like polished stone of some kind.
She didn’t doubt it was a capsule of some sort, however, and the sense washed over her again that it looked more like a coffin than anything else—except that it wasn’t boxy at all, more lozenge shaped. When they had reached it and flashed their lights over it more carefully, she saw that the entire surface of the thing was covered with markings.
She glanced up at Laine. “What do you make of this?”
He shook his head. “Writing?”
The moment he said it, she knew it was, but it wasn’t like any writing she’d ever seen.
The thought had no sooner materialized in her mind than she realized it was vaguely familiar somehow. She just couldn’t place it.
Lords of Mayhem Page 2
