by Jake Bible
“There is no call for superstition here, Sno,” Pol said.
“There is every call for superstition, Pol,” Sno countered, pointing at the view shield and the Skrang fighters that were getting closer by the second. “If we are going to survive that, then I’ll take every bit of hoodoo, mojo, lucky gump feet, bags of grave dirt, and whatever else is needed to get me through this.”
Sno stepped closer to Pol and sneered.
“That way, when I do live, I can come back here and destroy you, Pol Hammon,” Sno said. “Count on that.”
“Denman Sno,” Pol said, sounding pleased. “That fighting spirit right there is why you are Agent Prime.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that, asshole,” Sno said. He turned from Pol and faced the rest of the Lucky Thirteen. “I believe we have ships to get to.”
“Allow me,” Pol said.
Again, Sno’s world disappeared then he was standing in a docking hangar, staring at fifteen ships. Bots scurried this way and that, finalizing whatever work orders Pol had given them. The Lucky Thirteen all took deep breaths and steadied themselves. Then they each looked at Sno.
“What?” Sno asked. “I haven’t flown combat missions. Do not look at me to be in charge.”
“You’re Agent Prime,” the Shiv’erna woman said. “You work for the Galactic Fleet. We’re all civilians now. It only makes sense for you to take command.”
Sno growled low then nodded.
“Fine. Let’s get to work then.”
They each hurried to a separate ship and climbed in as side hatches and cockpits opened wide for them.
33.
Sno made sure to synchronize a countdown as soon as he sat down in the pilot’s seat of the ship he chose. He had to scroll through a menu to find the right setting since he no longer had implants. He couldn’t simply swipe his wrist over the control console.
The same was true for the pre-flight checklist and lift off from the hangar. He was doing it all manually, including the comm.
“This is Agent Prime checking comms,” he called. “Reply if you can hear me.”
“One can hear you.”
“Two here.”
“Three is loud and clear.”
“Four here.”
“Five is here.”
“Six ready.”
“Seven is loud and clear.”
“Roger for Eight.”
“Nine is a go.”
“Ten here.”
“Eleven ready.”
“Twelve is loud and clear.”
The hangar doors opened wide and the thirteen ships angled themselves then left the hangar in a close, orderly formation with Sno in the lead.
“Listen,” Sno said as he aimed the ship for the incoming Skrang fighters. “Stay alive. Keep the fighters from going after the Mip, but try to stay alive. This doesn’t have to be a suicide mission.”
“It is not suicide if none of us want to die,” One said. “This is a sacrifice mission.”
“True, but we don’t have to die,” Sno said. “If we work together, we can corral the Skrang fighters and keep— Hey! Who is that?”
A large cruiser, one way too big to outmaneuver the Skrang fighters, broke formation and raced at the smaller enemy ships.
“Answer me!” Sno shouted.
“Five,” came a tense voice. “One is right. This is a sacrifice mission. We should face that now before we fool ourselves with false hope. There are twenty-five of them and thirteen of us. If we use our ships wisely, we can take out the Skrang fighters quickly.”
“Five, get your ass back in formation!” Eight shouted. “Don’t do this!”
“Only thing I can do,” Five replied. “Check your ships. Our shielding will hold off about eight or nine direct hits from the Skrang plasma cannons. We can duck and dodge all we want, but in the end, we are all dying in order to keep the Mip, and those we love onboard, safe.”
There was a squelch of static and Five’s comm cut off.
“Shit,” Sno said as he pushed his ship faster to try to catch up with Five.
“Agent Prime,” One called. “Don’t. Five has made his decision. Let him.”
“Dammit,” Sno grumbled.
He slowed his ship and kept formation with the others.
Five’s ship raced towards the Skrang fighters and six of them broke off from the rest to engage. It took about four minutes for them to close on each other. The Skrang fighters opened fire and Five’s cruiser was lit up like a holo game. The cruiser dove sharply and the Skrang fighters pursued it closely.
Then the cruiser’s fore thrusters engaged at full power and the ship braked hard. The Skrang fighters were about to collide with the ship and half began to break away. But before they could get clear, the cruiser exploded. A quick flash of brilliant white light then nothing but debris. None of the Skrang survived.
“He put his engine drives into critical,” Three said. “Six Skrang fighters down.”
“Nineteen for us,” One said. “You see what has to be done, folks. Let’s do it.”
The Lucky Thirteen’s formation broke into chaos and Sno watched in confusion and awe as the other ships shot out and away from him, all headed straight at the rest of the Skrang fighters.
“Stop!” Sno yelled into the comm as he watched the Skrang react. Their formations broke apart and the fighters flew in different directions. “They won’t let that happen again!”
“No, they won’t,” One replied. “And we don’t need them to.”
The ships raced towards the Skrang. It took two minutes for them to reach the cluster of fighters. Sno glanced at the countdown and was surprised to see that there were only twenty minutes left in the hour.
“Listen up!” he shouted. “Twenty minutes! That’s all we need to hold them off! Twenty minutes! Get back here! We can live through this!”
No one replied.
The eleven ships shot through the cluster of Skrang fighters, all of them taking a good amount of cannon fire as they passed. Sno blinked several times as he watched the eleven ships seem to completely ignore the Skrang fighters.
“Hey! What are you doing?” he called.
No one replied. There was zero chatter on the comm.
“You have got to be kidding,” he muttered. “They shut me out.”
Sno guessed that One took command, which was fine by him, really, and told the others to switch to a different comm channel. They left him behind and silent.
“Agent Prime,” Pol said, his voice echoing from the bridge’s loudspeakers. “Are you not going with them? Don’t be a coward, Sno.”
“Pol, stop all this insanity,” Sno demanded. “Tell them to come back and then get us out of here. I am sure you have enough money transferred by now. Don’t be a greedy asshole.”
There was a long pause then, “Twelve minutes remain, Agent Prime. Best get in the fight. I have no intention of letting cowards back onboard the M’illi’ped. Go fight, go survive, then come back before we leave.”
“You’re mad,” Sno said with disgust. “You are completely mad. And the GF brass are just as mad to deal with you. They should have known you’d double-cross them. Your reputation has shown that you are only capable of deceit.”
“Deceit? Quite the accusation coming from an agent of the SSD,” Pol said with a laugh. “And I do not intend to double-cross anyone, Sno. The Galactic Fleet will get what has been promised to them. And I will get to finally be free.”
“They’ll never rest, Pol,” Sno said. “They will find you.”
“Denman, Denman, Denman,” Pol replied. “The GF will not only rest, they will pretend I never existed. Yes, there will be fallout from my extortion, as you call it, but that can be fixed with a special fund set up to compensate these spoiled beings for their losses. None of them will recoup all of what they transfer to me, simply because none of them will report the full amount. Doing so might contradict the legal accounting their estates have been reporting for centuries. Can you imagine th
e back taxes and fines that would accrue if the actual amounts were discovered? No. They will get back enough to be comfortable once again, but not one of these families will have the same influence as they did before going on their little luxury cruise.”
Sno shook his head.
“Mad,” was his reply.
“We agree to disagree,” Pol responded. “Now, go help the others or remain in Mlo forever, Agent Prime. Or until your ship runs out of power and you are sucked into the black hole.”
“I will find you, Pol,” Sno said.
“No, Denman, you will not,” Pol said and the comm went dead.
Sno stared at the eleven ships that were well past the Skrang fighters. He knew what they were doing and it was working. All eleven ships were headed straight for the Skrang destroyers. They were going to try to ram the huge ships.
The majority of the Skrang fighters turned and pursued the eleven ships. But five did not. They were racing right at Sno.
“Dammit,” Sno said as he hit the throttle and headed straight at the fighters. “Eight Million Gods dammit!”
The five fighters broke into two teams of two, those two teams breaking off to flank Sno while the fifth fighter kept its course head on for Sno’s ship.
“What can I do? What can I do?” Sno wondered to himself.
His fingers raced across the control console and he brought up every system and protocol the ship had. Nothing even close to an offensive weapon. The shields would take a beating but not for too long, and not from all five of those fighters. He’d be dead in minutes.
Minutes.
Sno glanced at the countdown and saw that there were only nine minutes left before the hour was up. If his calculations were close, then that left him with a minute to spare. He could keep the fighters occupied until the Mip did whatever Pol had planned. Then maybe he could get free and try to slip around the Skrang destroyers to get through the wormhole portal.
Sno laughed loud at his idiocy. He wasn’t going to survive the Skrang fighters, let alone get past two destroyers in order to get through a wormhole portal. He was a dead man flying.
“Then don’t fly,” he said out loud.
Sno stood up and left the bridge. The ship had five levels and he took the lift down to the bottom level. After some hunting, he found what he needed. Lined up in racks, and probably never used, were two dozen environmental suits.
Racing to the closest rack, Sno pulled down a suit then stripped to his undergarments. He’d been trained for deep space isolation and knew that the suit would be more efficient if he didn’t have clothes on. The systems could better track his temperature and life signs if his skin was bare.
Sno slid into the suit and grabbed a helmet. He secured the helmet, went through the suit’s safety checklist, twice, then stepped to a panel on the wall and tapped at it until he got a schematic of the ship. Sno studied the schematic, saw where he needed to go, and took off running.
Klaxons blared as the ship began to shake and shudder as it took on fire from the Skrang fighters. Sparks flew around Sno as he reached the lift. He tapped at the control panel, but the doors didn’t open. A thin line of smoke was coming from the seam between the doors.
“Shit,” he said then spun about until he located a side hatch.
Sno ran to the hatch, popped it open, ducked his head inside, and growled at the ladder, and long climb, before him. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t have time to. Sno grabbed onto the ladder and ascended up through the levels of the ship.
Smoke began to fill the shaft, and Sno was nearly knocked loose from the ladder several times as the Skrang kept up their attack. Sno checked a reading on the wrist panel on his suit and saw he had two minutes left. He doubled his effort and kept climbing.
One minute was left to spare when he reached the emergency airlock at the top of the shaft. Sno grabbed onto the manual controls and twisted the handle twice to the left, twice to the right, then slammed it back into its recessed port. The hatch above him opened and before Sno could do anything, he was sucked out into open space. He hadn’t attached a safety tether because the last thing he wanted was to be connected to a doomed ship.
Sno was tumbling out of control, but at least he was headed in the right direction. Every half revolution he could see that the Mip was dead ahead. If he was lucky, he might reach it in time.
Then his ship exploded. He was close enough that before the concussive force could dissipate into the void of open space, he was buffeted and sent tumbling even faster towards the Mip.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Sno said over and over.
Closer, closer, closer, almost there. Sno started to smile, but the smile fell from his face as he came out of a half rotation and there was no Mip. The luxury liner was gone. All that he could see was the black hole devouring that half of the Mlo System.
And Sno was still tumbling.
Training kicked in and Sno used the small thrusters on the environmental suit to steady himself. The tumbling stopped and he turned away from the black hole. No need to keep facing that nightmare.
Instead, Sno focused his attention on what was happening with the Skrang. No implants meant no ability to access the environmental suit’s face shield. He couldn’t zoom in on the action. All Sno could see was far off micro-explosions, that he was sure weren’t so micro close up, and their aftermaths. Light from the system’s star glinted off a sea of debris.
At least the fighters that had gone after Sno were gone. The afterburn from their engine drives were dots in the nearly dark void.
There were several more far off micro-explosions then Sno was shocked to see a massive detonation. One of the Lucky Thirteen had gotten through and took out a Skrang destroyer.
“Good for you,” Sno said to himself as he slowly drifted towards the black hole.
He wondered if any of the Lucky Thirteen realized they didn’t need to fight anymore. The Mip was gone. But he had his answer soon when the dots of the last Skrang fighters disappeared, followed quickly by the far-off shape of the last Skrang destroyer. The unmistakable swirl of the wormhole portal opening then closing was easy to see from where he was.
“Hello?” Sno called, activating the helmet’s comm. “Anybody out there? Anyone left alive?”
There was no response. None of the Lucky Thirteen replied to his calls.
“Great,” Sno said. “Well, here I am.”
A polite chime sounded in his helmet.
“Air levels at critical,” an electronic voice said. “Please return to the ship.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Sno said.
He tried to find the cutoff for the voice, but couldn’t. The controls weren’t on the wrist panel. If he’d had implants, he could have ordered the voice to shut all the Hells up.
So, Sno relaxed in the suit, thought about his life, and consigned himself to the fact he was going to die. He activated the thrusters and spun around so he could face the black hole. He’d asphyxiate before he reached the impressive phenomenon, but he’d die with a great view.
34.
Once again, Sno woke up in a med pod.
“Hey, buddy,” B’urn said, smiling down at him through the med pod lid. “Welcome home.”
Sno blinked then started laughing. The laughter turned slightly maniacal which caused B’urn’s face to become concerned which caused Sno to laugh even harder.
“How about we get you out of there,” B’urn said.
The med pod lid opened and Sno sat up. He got himself under control and wiped at his eyes.
“Toss me some clothes,” Sno said.
“Don’t you want to know how you got here?” B’urn asked.
“I think the story would be best heard while wearing underpants,” Sno said.
“Fair enough,” B’urn said and shrugged. He fetched a pile of clothes on a chair close by and handed them to Sno. “It’s a great story, by the way.”
Sno got dressed then shook B’urn’s hand as he nodded at the med bay’
s doors.
“Hungry. Thirsty. Very,” Sno said.
“I see your syntax has gone primitive,” B’urn replied and laughed as the two walked out of the med bay. “Maybe that brain of yours was deprived of a little too much oxygen.”
Sno looked about. “Division?”
“Where else would we be?” B’urn asked.
“I thought I was going to die in that environmental suit,” Sno said. “Barring that, I expected to wake up at GF headquarters, not Division.”
“Oh, the GF brass wanted to have you taken to headquarters, but Crush and Gerber argued that you should be brought here for medical treatment and debriefing first,” B’urn said. “Gods knows how many favors Gerber had to cash in to make that happen.”
People passed the two agents and nodded. Many seemed quite pleased at the sight of Sno, while others looked downright pissed off.
“There was a pool going to see when I’d wake up, wasn’t there?” Sno asked when they reached the lift and stepped inside. “What was the winning guess?”
“Forty-seven days,” B’urn said reluctantly.
“Forty-seven days?” Sno exclaimed. “I’ve been out for forty-seven days?”
“Oh, Hells no,” B’urn said. “You’ve been here at Division for forty-seven days. You’ve been out for eighty-eight days. Approximately. The smugglers that dropped you off at the closest GF outpost weren’t exactly detailed in their reporting.”
“Smugglers?” Sno nodded. “Right. Smugglers. The Mlo System.”
“Let’s get that food and drink then I’ll fill you in on the whole story,” B’urn said.
Sno agreed and they stayed quiet until they were in Sno’s quarters. Tana was waiting for them.
“You son of a bitch,” she said as she wrapped Sno in her arms. She kissed him on the lips, on the cheeks then gave him a hard shove. “You son of a bitch!”
“Why exactly am I a son of a bitch?” Sno asked, heading straight for the wet bar.
“No!” Tana ordered. “Food first. You just got out of a coma, you moron.”
“Comas make me thirsty,” Sno said, but didn’t pour a drink. He started to tap at his wrist then paused. “Uh, could someone order food for me? I’m a little naked in the implant department.”
