“Bring’em up!” Fix shouted down the one hallway and Beauregard appeared at the head of a large line of people.
“What the hell happened?” Lafayette demanded as he strode up to her.
“Jennings put a dozen rounds in the Gael’s chest, and he survived somehow,” she said hurriedly. “Came after us in HK armor.”
Lafayette flinched. He remembered fighting against HK armor-clad Gael far too well. “Where’s Williams?” he asked.
“Michelle stayed with Jennings,” she replied. “They’re both dead.”
Lafayette held up a warning finger at Beauregard. “Mon capitaine does not know how to die,” he said and then spoke into his comm, “Lafayette to Jennings, can you receive? Lafayette to Jennings. Mon capitaine, come in.”
“What the hell are you still doing here?” he heard Jennings’ voice over the radio.
“Mon capitaine,” Lafayette said with relief.
“He’s coming,” Jennings said. “I can’t hold him off forever. Get everyone and get the hell out of here!”
“They’re still alive,” Ciaran O’Sullivan said eagerly. Without a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed a pistol off of one of Petrova’s bounty hunter’s belts and took off at a run back down the passage.
“Kid! Stop!” Fix bellowed and made like he was going to go after him.
“Capitaine will get him,” Lafayette said as he grabbed Fix’s arm to hold him back. “We head for the rendezvous. Maintenant.”
3
Matthew Jennings looked with dread at the section of steel wall across the elevator lobby from where he lay that was slowly being cut away. The Gael was maybe half a minute from being able to follow the escapees. Jennings himself was buried under a good deal of debris from the waist down, including a piece of a steel girder that was keeping his legs pinned.
The lobby area was littered with debris, most of the lights had burned out or been shattered in the explosion, and there were a half dozen dead bodies lying near the elevator. With some relief, Jennings saw that they were all TGF security officers. None of the escapees were included in the casualties, but he did not see Michelle anywhere. She had not been that far ahead of him. Had she managed to get into engineering and join the others before the explosion?
“Matthew!” he heard a voice exclaim, and Michelle raced out of engineering, dropping to her knees next to him.
“Are you all right?” he asked her weakly.
“I’m fine,” she said. “The blast knocked me halfway down that hall, but nothing’s hurt.” She grabbed at the girder and tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“It’s useless,” Jennings said. “Go find the others before he breaks through.”
As if on cue, the wall across from them fell away, and Pahhal’s HK armor suit stepped through. With an even greater strain on her face and a greater sense of desperation, she pushed on the girder trying to get it to move.
“Captain Jennings,” Pahhal’s voice rang, amplified by the armor’s in-helmet megaphone. “I was hoping to give you a more sporting death than this,” he said as he lumbered forward. “More sporting from my vantage point, I should say.”
“Michelle, run,” Jennings insisted. “Run now!”
Another person came sprinting out of engineering, fired a few shots at Pahhal, taking the Gael by surprise, before he dropped down next to Michelle and said, “Together.”
Ciaran O’Sullivan and Michelle working together were strong enough to lift the girder, and Jennings was able to pull his legs free. “Get her out of here,” Jennings said to O’Sullivan as he drew himself to his feet and drew his pistol.
Stepping forward, Jennings started shooting, each shot splashing off the HK’s shields. O’Sullivan started trying to pull Michelle back into engineering away from the firefight, but she dug in her feet and refused to move. She called Jennings’ name over and over again until she was sobbing. Neither O’Sullivan nor Michelle noticed that one of the TGF soldiers that they had presumed dead was stirring.
The charge ran out on Jennings’ pistol, and he ejected the power pack and reached for a new one. Before he could reload though, Pahhal had sent the HK’s right arm forward and it had caught Jennings in its grip, large fingers coiling around Jennings’ trigger arm and yanking him forward, causing the pistol to slip out of his grasp. He then pulled Jennings up so they were face to face.
“You fool,” Pahhal spat into Jennings’ face.
The TGF security guard was up on his feet now and aiming a pistol at O’Sullivan and Michelle. “Don’t move,” he said.
“You could have been rid of us,” Pahhal was continuing. “You could have been free. Would you not sacrifice one hundred and eleven lives for your people?” O’Sullivan made a sudden movement that distracted Pahhal, the bringing of his weapon up toward the soldier. Pahhal saw the intent on the face of Security Chief Jacobson and he screamed, “No!” as he sent a mental command to target him and obliterate him with the HK’s mounted plasma cannon.
The HK fired, but not before Jacobson had sent a shot straight through O’Sullivan’s head. Michelle screamed as O’Sullivan’s blood spattered across her and then again as Jacobson was ripped apart by the HK’s shot. Incredulous rage surged through Pahhal. One of the souls had been killed. This was not possible. He had been so careful. All this planning, all the years spent searching. They had been so close. He screamed again in frustration.
“To answer your question,” Jennings said.
Pahhal had completely forgotten about the human that his robotic hand currently had in a firm grip by the arm. He looked down and saw in horror that the human had drawn a double-barreled grenade launcher with his free hand and had shoved both barrels through the shield that protected Pahhal.
“I’d only sacrifice one life to save my people,” Jennings said as he pulled the trigger.
The force of the exploding grenades threw both Jennings and Pahhal backward, but the explosion had originated within the HK armor’s shield and was therefore confined completely within the shielded space, so no fireball chased Jennings across the floor. Instead, he got to watch as fire surged against the shield walls, turning them blue repeatedly as the explosion attempted to pound its way out.
The shields failed, and there was a flash of fire that suddenly vanished, as the flames had been nearly suffocated after consuming most of the oxygen within the shield. There was a loud, audible crack, and Jennings saw that Pahhal had set aside the shattered faceplate to his helmet. The Gael’s skin appeared to be singed in places as the broken pieces of armor and weaponry fell off his body, clattering to the ground, but he was mostly unhurt. Jennings cursed HK armor to the lowest bowels of hell. It was strong enough to withstand two grenades even without its shields. At least, the HK suit was damaged beyond repair, he thought to himself as he tried to pull himself to his feet. The Gael was already standing and drawing a weapon from a holster on his back. Jennings had lost his last plasma pistol and he was fresh out of grenades. Dropping the launcher on the ground, he raced across the debris strewn lobby, stopping only to pick up a pistol lying on the deck. Quickly, he grabbed Michelle’s hand and dragged her away from Ciaran O’Sullivan’s body and into the engineering section, the Gael limping behind them in dogged pursuit.
Chapter 37
1
Remy Lafayette’s plan for escaping the main engine room was fairly simple in the long run- he was just going to take the elevator. What Anastasia Petrova had not known, because no one thought it wise to share with her, was that one of the long, large walls in the main engine room was actually the door to a massive cargo lift. Engine rooms tended to have large components, which in turn required a large elevator that ran directly from the hangar to engineering.
Everyone was on board the elevator: Petrova’s people, the crew of the Melody Tryst and one hundred and nine human prisoners. It would have looked suspicious if they had all decided to take the elevator’s main exit door and walked out into the hangar deck, but the lift also had a small do
or that opened into the space traffic control offices. Lafayette was hoping that no one had thought to secure the area, and it was still the middle of the night, but he had Petrova send her men in first with Fix before allowing the civilians to leave the elevator just in case.
There had been a half dozen guards peppered throughout the cubicles and on the second floor, but Fix and Petrova dispatched of them quickly and quietly, with no further alarm being raised. Lafayette had ordered all of the civilians to hide in the desks while he, Petrova and Beauregard snuck over to one of the large windows that looked out over the hangar deck. Security was out in force everywhere, but they were especially concentrated around the Grey Vistula.
“You’d think with all the havoc dat we have caused in security, supplies and engineering dat we would have drawn some of these guys away,” Lafayette muttered.
“They know that our goal is to make it off of this ship,” Beauregard said. “As long as they keep the Grey Vistula locked down, they still win.”
“Unless we take the bridge,” Petrova muttered. “Take over the entire ship.”
“We have one last card to play,” Lafayette said as he pulled out a small remote control. “I hope it’s enough to draw some of them away, otherwise it’s going to be a helluva fight to try and take that ship back.”
Lafayette took a deep breath and hoped that Fix was praying to that God of his. With a tiny press of his finger, there was a sudden shudder throughout the entire ship and then the Intrepid tilted crazily for a moment before artificial gravity corrected and inertial dampeners compensated. A new set of alarms was blaring and most of the security officers guarding the Grey Vistula had been knocked off balance or even off their feet. Once standing again, several looked like they wanted to rush off and see what was going on.
“Hold your places!” a voice roared. A short, stubby human with grey stubble and sergeant’s stripes was stepping in front of those trying to rush off to see what was happening.
“Sarge, that sounded like it came from the engine,” someone protested.
“If they need you to fix an engine, boy, they’ll order you to do it,” the sergeant pointed out. “And if it’s a major problem, believe me, there are worse places to be than the deck that has all the ship’s main means of escape.”
The soldiers got back into their positions and Lafayette cursed.
“Plan B, da?” Petrova said.
“Oui,” Lafayette responded. “At least they won’t be able to follow us to light speed.”
“Let’s get the ship back first,” Beauregard pointed out.
2
Matthew Jennings and Michelle Williams made it as far as the catwalk over the large vats of water before Pahhal caught up to them. Jennings whirled to fire but the Gael shot him in the arm, sending Jennings’ gun flying behind him, clattering off the catwalk’s handrail and coming to a rest on the floor in the entrance to the next passage.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Pahhal demanded with a mocking laugh. “That’s the first of many pains you shall experience, Captain Jennings.”
Jennings shoved Michelle backwards out of the line of fire, which distracted Pahhal for a moment, and allowed Jennings to charge forward, closing the distance between them before Pahhal could get another shot off. Jennings’ arm hurt like hell, but he could still use it, and he grabbed Pahhal’s gun arm by the wrist and forced him to aim the pistol into the ceiling. The gun went off several times and Jennings decked the Gael in the face with his good hand. He followed up with a blow into Pahhal’s bruised and battered torso that stole the breath from the Gael. Using both hands for added leverage, he slammed Pahhal’s arm down on the catwalk’s railing repeatedly until the gun fell from his grasp.
Jennings followed this by firing a rapid series of punches into the Gael’s face and torso. “This is what your kind never understood about humans,” he spat as he decked him again. “You have the impenetrable supercruisers and the HK armor and all the tech that we don’t.” He threw a kick into Pahhal’s shin that dropped the Gael to one knee. “But when that’s all stripped away, we kick your fucking asses.”
Jennings stepped forward and aimed a punch at Pahhal’s throat, hoping for a deathblow, but the Gael blocked the attack with surprising speed and jumped forward, wrapping his fingers around Jennings’ neck. Returning to his feet, he lifted Jennings off the ground and stared at him with a look of purest loathing.
“Is that a fact, you puny human?” Pahhal roared as he tried to squeeze the life out of Jennings. “Your race is so weak that we can break them with just our bare hands. With our fingers.”
Jennings was struggling, but his kicks seemed to bounce harmlessly now against the Gael, and he could not reach Pahhal with his hands. He clawed desperately at the hand that was choking him, but he could not break its grasp. Michelle looked on in horror and turned away- she did not want to see what came next- but that was when she saw it: the gun Jennings had lost. Jumping up off the floor, she raced over to it, bent to one knee, and grabbed it. She spun about, looking for a target, but she had no shot. Pahhal was holding Jennings’ body between the two of them.
Tears began streaming down Michelle’s face as a horrible laughter emanated from the Gael Overseer. The hatred that she had born the Gael had always been at best a political statement, at worst a college phase, but there was something much deeper and more desperate screaming through her brain now. It was something she had never before experienced. She wanted to murder Pahhal, to see him dead for the suffering he had caused, and she wanted Jennings to get out of the way so she could shoot the bastard.
A sudden lurch in the ship pitched Michelle forward as the roar of what sounded like an explosion reverberated off the ship. Pahhal lost his balance as the ship’s systems attempted to correct the problem, and he dropped Jennings down to the catwalk. Michelle had been kneeling when the explosion occurred, so she was the quickest to recover and had her gun trained at Pahhal once more.
The Gael Overseer noticed her at last and laughed. “Put that away, child,” he said dismissively. “You’re hardly the…”
Michelle fired and the plasma bolt scorched straight through Pahhal’s left eye, blasting out the back end of his head. A look of pure astonishment passed across the Gael’s face at the moment of his death, but it was gone just as the Overseer fell over the catwalk railing, his body bouncing off the water vats several times before smacking wetly into the level below.
Dropping the gun, Michelle raced forward to where Jennings lay face down on the floor. “Matthew,” she said as she collapsed on the catwalk next to him. “Please be all right.”
Jennings coughed several times, rolled over and smiled at her. “I’ve had just about enough of this fucking ship,” he said. “What say we get the hell out of here?”
Michelle smiled. “Sounds good to me,” she said.
“Come in, Marquis,” Jennings said into his comm as he stood up and offered a hand to Michelle, pulling her to her feet as well.
“Mon capitaine?” came the surprised, yet hopeful reply.
“What’s your twenty?” he demanded.
“We’re at the rendezvous point,” Lafayette responded.
“Stand-by, Marquis, we’re on our way,” Jennings said.
3
“What the hell was that?” General Dominic Ounimbango demanded loudly to the bridge crew as he pulled himself up to his feet, one hand gingerly holding the spot on his forehead that had struck his station and was now bleeding.
The crew was still pulling themselves back into their stations, but one turned up to the General and shouted over the warning klaxons, “There was an explosion in the FTL engine.”
“If the FTL engine exploded, this ship would have been vaporized,” a woozy-looking Malik al-Ansari said as he pulled himself to his feet.
“Aye, sir,” the same crewman agreed. “It looks like an explosive detonated on the engine casing.”
“What’s the status of the engine?” Ounimbango demanded.
�
��Offline,” he replied.
“I can get repair teams on it,” al-Ansari said.
“With God knows how much of our ship isn’t even in our control?” Ounimbango demanded.
The general had been pacing the short area of his observation station on the TGFS Intrepid’s bridge, becoming more angry and worried with every new sensor reading and vague report that he received just before the explosion on the FTL engine. The men he had sent to secure engineering had reported encountering resistance and then had gone offline. Security Chief Jacobson was no longer responding and there were sensor reports of weapons fire throughout supply storage, a lobby on the engineering deck and engineering itself.
“Every security team we have on this ship with the exception of the bridge and the hangar bay has gone dark,” Ounimbango said. “And I’d bet your salary that Petrova set that explosion on the FTL engine.”
“Trying to make sure that we can’t follow her when she makes her escape,” al-Ansari said knowingly.
“We will not allow that to happen,” Ounimbango said angrily as he punched his own open palm. “Send a few men from the bridge detail down to the engineering deck. Try to find out what the hell is going on.” He thought for a moment before he said loudly, “Would it be too much to hope for our having communications?”
“Communications unaffected, sir,” came the reply from the communications officer beneath him.
“Get a message to TGF HQ,” the general ordered. “Explain the situation and request reinforcements. Repair ships. Marines. Everything.”
“Aye, sir,” the comm officer replied before turning back to the two technicians in front of him.
The officer and the technicians seemed to argue for a moment, and the communications officer then pushed the technician aside and attempted to send the message himself.
“What’s the problem?” al-Ansari demanded.
“We’re being jammed, sir,” he answered.
“By whom?” Ounimbango asked.
“Sir!” came a cry from across the bridge at the external sensors station. “I have ten ships dropping out of light speed, approaching our position.”
111 Souls (Infinite Universe) Page 37
