The little girl was younger than his own Shiloh, and she looked nothing like his daughter, but Noah was hit by a wave of almost fatherly concern.
“No, Tara, you’re safe in here. Don’t you worry.”
She nodded, accepting what he said, but from the look on her face, Tara’s mother was not so accepting.
Noah hoped to God that he hadn’t lied to the child.
***************
“I wonder how how Captain P is doing on the bridge,” Sergeant Hilborn said. “Do you think he got his message out?”
“He should have. The bridge comms are self-contained,” Chief Bostick said.
An hour after the abortive attempt to burn through the hatch, all comms and power to the engineering spaces had been cut off. The passengers had cried out in a panic until the back-up power came on four seconds later, but the comms with the bridge and the rest of the ship were not restored.
Engineering still functioned. Life support was not affected, and the ship still traveled through bubble space—it would be a poor design if a crazy passenger bent on suicide, for example, could take down a ship. But inter-shipboard comms passed through micro optics, and they’d been obviously located and cut.
Without alternative orders, Noah had carried on with the original plan. Chief brought the ship out of bubble space as scheduled and confirmed their position. The shift had been barely noticeable; in this one aspect, the old cruise liner was superior to a Navy ship-of-the-line. Noah wondered if the passengers even knew they had reached normal space and within spitting distance of Reece Station.
Now, for the ten people in engineering, it was merely a matter of waiting. Noah wished he knew what was happening outside their little enclave, but he had to accept that things were now out of his hands.
He idly watched Tara and Norton, her brother, play on the deck. Jackson had poked around and found two small Nympho dolls that one of the Queen’s crew had squirreled away to titillate himself or herself during the long hours underway. After disconnecting their active functions, and with permission from their mother, he’d given the two porn dolls to the children, which for them were just another two toys, nothing “adult” about them. Tara was berating Norton at the moment, chiding him for breaking book and trying to make his doll fly. He had to smile at that. The more he watched the little girl, the more he thought she was like Shiloh, and the more he missed his kids.
“I think we have company again,” EN2 Jackson announced.
Their connections with the rest of the ship might be cut, but the admin office was still part of engineering, and they could monitor the readings from it. They’d switched the rest of the ship to automatic, which meant, among other things, that the BLP would be deployed in case of every fire, but they’d kept their office space on manual.
“Watch the temps,” the chief said as he walked up to the hatch, followed by Noah and Hilborn. He put his right palm on the hatch and after a moment said, “Yeah, they’re at it again.”
“Should I hit them?” Jackson asked.
The chief looked at Noah who nodded, then said, “Yep. Do it.”
Jackson flipped his switch, then waited eagerly for readings that would indicate he’d knocked them out. He waited for a few moments, then frowned.
“I’m still getting readings. The temps are rising.”
Chief put both hands on the hatch, and Noah had to follow suit, testing the surface first to make sure he wasn’t going to get burned. The hatch was warm, and he could feel a very slight vibration.
“They’re still coming,” Chief said.
“But, what about the BLP?” Noah asked.
“They picked up some breathing apparatus somewhere, that or vacsuits. I’m only surprised it took them this long to figure it out.
“Do you think they’ll be able to break in?”
The chief shrugged, then said, “Depends on what they’re cutting with. I’m guessing we’ll know soon enough.”
“What’s happening, Sergeant Major?” Dylan asked as she joined them.
“Your friends out there are trying to get in.”
“Will they make it?”
“Don’t know, ma’am. We’re watching now.”
“I hope you can do more than just watching. If they get in, well, I don’t think they’ll take kindly to me and mine, you know, seeing as how we ran away from them in the first place.”
“I know, I know.”
He looked around the space. About 15 X 20, it was mostly filled with controls and the CAH projector where the engineers could pull up a real time 3D rendering of any system on the ship. At the far end was an access tube where the engineers could make the most common adjustments and replace parts to the drives. There was no place where six civilians could hide.
“Where’s that hatch lead to,” he asked the chief, pointing to a one-by-one-meter hatch set low on the aft bulkhead.
“That’s the cold room, you know, for the bubble initiator.”
Noah only had a layman’s knowledge of bubble generators. He knew they needed an “initiator” to spark off the generator, and that initiator worked at ultra-cold temperatures. After that, it was all black magic as far as he was concerned.
“Can they survive in there?” he asked, tilting his head at the civilians.
“For a bit, sure. But the room is kept pretty cold, you know. Every degree colder helps in keeping the initiator tubes cold.”
“How long could they last in there?” Noah said, feeling the heat begin to emanate from the near side of the hatch.
“I’m not a doctor, Sergeant Major. I don’t know. With the kids? Ten minutes maybe?”
That’s not going to work.
Noah looked back at the hatch, his mind racing. He’d feel a lot better if they were out of any possible line of fire.
“Wait, can’t we just turn off the cooling? I mean, we won’t be needing bubble space again, right?”
“Sure, we could, I guess. That will fry the tubes, and that’ll cost a lot to repair.”
“I’m not too concerned about that at the moment, to be blunt, Chief.”
“I guess you’re right at that,” the chief said with a laugh. “Jackson, kill the cooling for the cold room, and open up the hatch to it.”
“But—”
“I know, just do it. See if you can force some warmer air from out here inside.”
“Roger that.”
Noah turned to Dylan and told her, “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to keep them out, so I want you and the rest inside the cold room. And it’s cold, really cold. We’re turning off the cooling, and we’ll try to get some warmer air in there, but better let the others know. I can keep the door open, but if they break through, we’ve got to close it. If that happens, keep quiet and stay inside until someone comes and gets you.”
It looked like she was going to argue, but then she nodded, and asked, “And if you don’t come and get us?”
“Give it a few hours, if you can hold out. By that time, station security should be aboard.”
“I hope it’s you, Sergeant Major, who comes to get us.” She pulled his head down and gave him a kiss on the cheek before she turned back to the others and started then to the hatch.
A short moment later, a cascade of sparks shot into the space from the outer hatch. There were shouts from the civilians as Noah yelled, “Go, go!”
“Hilborn, take the right again,” Noah said as he took his own position on the left side of the hatch. “Chief, you’d better get back.”
A flame pushed through the hatch as the sparks kept falling. An acrid scent burned Noah’s nose, and his eyes watered. The flame pushed lower, leaving a three-centimeter gap above it. Standing to the side of the flame, Noah lifted his M90, put the muzzle up at the gap, and fired off a 20-round burst of hypervelocity darts. Immediately, the flame stopped, and Noah could hear shouting from the other side.
He took a moment to look back. The kids and two women were already inside the cold room with only Dylan a
nd Auburn still outside. Dylan looked back, gave Noah a wink, and let Auburn help her in. A moment later, he followed her.
“Jackson, the moment anyone makes it in here, you close that hatch.”
“Do you think they will, Sergeant Major? I mean, make it in?”
“I don’t know, son, but Sergeant Hilborn and I are going to have something to say about that.”
He wished he had weapons for Jackson and the chief. Hell, he wished he had a squad of Marines. Instead, he had two M90s with a couple of thousand darts each. Their advantage was that the only entry into the space was the single door. Their disadvantage was that there was only the single door—they had no way out. Like it or not, if there was going to be a fight, it was going to be right there.
The flames started again, and the cut slowly started to lengthen. This time, though, the flame was more focused, the gap narrower. Hilborn stepped forward and tried to fire out back at the top, but his darts ricocheted, some bouncing back into their space. Noah took a quick look and saw that the passengers had put something up to block the opening.
Smart boys.
He knew that whatever they had up against the gap was only temporary, probably being held up by manpower. Hilborn’s and his darts were deadly, but they didn’t have the mass to punch through whatever they were using.
“Are there any cleaning supplies in here?” Noah asked to no one in particular.
“I saw some back in that little closet,” Sergeant Hilborn said, pointing to a door not a meter from the main hatch, right in front of Noah’s face.
“I guess I could have opened my eyes,” he muttered as he opened the door.
Inside were a variety of cleaning supplies, and as he hoped, an electrostatic broom. He grabbed it, then detached the broom head. He only wanted the handle. He positioned himself just to the side of the spark cascade, then told Hilborn to get ready. Carefully, he placed the end of the handle just inside the wider part of the cut, the section where they were blocking.
“Now!” he shouted as he put all his weight behind the handle.
He’d been correct. The plate was being held up by one or more people, and with Noah’s sudden surge, he knocked it out of their hands. He pulled back, and immediately, Sergeant Hilborn fired off a string of darts into the hole while shouts sounded from the other side and the sparks ceased. Hilborn fired off another string of darts, possibly 100 in total.
“Fucking A, yeah!” Hilborn said as the plate or whatever was put back into place. “That’ll give the bastards something to think about.”
It was only temporary, Noah knew. But they were fighting time, and any delay was worthwhile. The burning started again, and Noah tried to push the plate out of the way again, but they were prepared now.
Noah, Hilbron, and the chief were almost mesmerized by the cut in the door as it sunk lower and lower. Noah had to shake his head and get back to trying to figure out a solution. He didn’t have anything in the space with which he could try to block the hatch, so it looked more and more like he and Hilborn were going to have to play the Horatius at the Bridge role, keeping the bad guys out as they tried to enter through the limited space opened by their cutting.
“It’s changing direction,” chief noted from five meters back.
He was right. The cut started moving off the vertical line and curved to their left. Within a minute, it started curving back. If they continued the shape, they’d have cut a circle, perhaps eight or ten centimeters in diameter.
For a moment, Noah thought it was a mistake. A hole that size would allow Hilborn and him to fire out. But then it struck him. They weren’t totally stupid. They had to know that. They were cutting the hole so they could get something in the space.
“Grubbing hell! Chief, what can they fire through that hole? Do they have grenades?”
“Grenades? I doubt it. This is a civilian cruise liner, not a Navy ship.”
“What about some kind of gas?”
“I . . . I really don’t know. I imagine there’s something they could gin up with what’s on the ship. Then they’d have to figure out some way to get it in here. Uh, let me think . . .”
“No time for that, Chief. They’ll be through in another minute. All of you, emergency hoods on.”
Noah grabbed two hoods and threw one at Hilbron while the chief grabbed two more for Jackson and him.
“I see four more in here. Give them to the passengers, and Jackson, if anything comes in, you slam that hatch shut, got it?”
“Roger that!”
“So, that’s it? No weapons aboard?”
“Well, there’s probably a weapons locker. You know, side arms, a couple of Pirate Hammers.”
“A what, Chief?”
“You know, a Pirate Hammer. An anti-boarding weapon. Like a shotgun, but either a plasma or meson beam.”
“Well shit, let’s hope they don’t have one of those,” Noah said, then to Hilborn, “Get ready.”
With a final flurry of sparks, the torch completed the circle, and a chunk of the door fell into engineering. Noah just started to move forward to fire when a blast of energy came through the hole, hitting the muzzle of his M90 and causing him to drop it.
Noah jumped back, his heart racing. He ducked and reached for his M90, giving it a quick one-over. The muzzle, for about 15 centimeters, was blackened, but otherwise looked fine. He didn’t know the recycling rate of whatever was being used, so standing to the side, he held out his M90 and fired off a barrage of darts through the hole before darting back.
“Chief . . . ” he started, then stopped as he looked back.
The chief was on his back, his arms bent at the elbow, forearms and curled hands pointed up. Jackson had just slid to his knees beside the chief and was lifting up on the man’s head.
Noah recognized the signs of a disrupter beam. The chief’s nervous system had been fried beyond hope of resurrection.
The slight whine of a recharging powerpack reached him, and he shouted, “Jackson, get out of the way, now!”
“But the chief!” Jackson said, a woeful expression on his face.
“I said get the fuck out of the way before they fire again!” he ordered as he swung around to pump more darts through the hole in an attempt to keep the gunman on the other side from firing.
Just as he pulled the trigger, another blast came through, and Noah’s right hand went numb. Not numb as in his arm was asleep, but numb as if it just wasn’t there. He dropped the M90 again and jumped back, landing on his butt as he scrambled to get out of the way.
He looked back to Jackson, afraid of what he’d see, but evidently, the sailor had listened to him, and he was prone and to the side. His face was twisted in fear.
“Get back to your station, Jackson. Be ready to close that hatch,” he said, and when Jackson didn’t move but kept staring at the chief’s body, he added, “That’s an order, sailor. Do it now!”
His voice must have cut through the young man’s mind. He looked with a confused expression at Noah, then scrambled back to his feet and ran to where he could close the shack to the cold room.
“Shit, Sergeant Major! Are you OK?” Sergeant Hilborn asked from the other side of the hatch.
Noah looked down at his right hand, and he almost threw up. It didn’t look too bad, but it had the signatory curled fingers of totally nervous destruction. His hand was lost. Noah felt light-headed, and he knew shock was setting in. With an extreme force of will, he looked away and picked up his M90 with his left hand.
“Nothing’s changed, Sergeant.”
Another blast came through the hole in the door, and Noah immediately fired a burst back through in response.
“Switch sides,” he told Hilborn.
On the left side of the hatch, he’d fired his M90 with only his right hand, the hand that was now useless. Firing with his left hand was awkward from that side, so he needed to switch with the sergeant.
The two Marines kept up a steady stream of harassing fire as the torch started cuttin
g again. Whatever the bad guys had used to block the upper cut evidently wasn’t large enough for the hole itself, and Noah was going to take advantage of it.
As one point, someone stuck the barrel of what had to be the energy gun through the hole to try and angle enough to hit them, but Hilborn grabbed the barrel and got into a tug-of-war with it. The weapon discharged harmlessly while the sergeant struggled with it, and finally, the gunman was able to jerk it back.
Noah checked his ammo: he had 312 darts left. The number sounded like a lot, but darts were designed to be expended in large numbers. He could cycle through those in twenty seconds of sustained fire.
“How’s your ammo?” he asked Hilborn.
“Four-forty-six,” the sergeant said.
“Let’s be a little more judicious with our rate of fire,” Noah told him.
The cut was at the bottom of the door and was slowly working its way across. Noah figured they had twenty minutes max before the door was breached. They’d made a big mistake, though. If they had only cut the hinges, then the lock, they could have simply kicked in the door 15 or 20 minutes ago.
Noah had been ignoring his hand, but he couldn’t help glancing at it for a moment. The weirdest thing to him was that there was no pain at all. It was just a useless lump of flesh at the and of his arm.
“Wish we had a couple of grenades,” Hilborn said.
“If wishes were gold, we’d all be sitting . . .” Noah started before an idea hit him.
He leaned forward so that his mouth was close to the hole and shouted out, “Sergeant, get ready with the grenades.”
Within a few seconds, the torch cut out, and Noah could hear shouts and scrambling on the other side.
Hilborn smothered a laugh.
Their reprieve was short, however. Within two minutes, Noah could hear movement, and he fired a ten-round burst through the hole.
“Very funny in there. Enjoy it while you can, assholes, ‘cause we’re gonna cut your guts out while you watch—”
The voice cut off with a shriek after Hilborn fired a burst through the hole.
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 114
