by Jason Letts
The nervousness that racked Rion was more than anything he’d ever felt before. He knew his friends would never back down or give up after all the times they’d told each other to believe in the ship. Now they were caught and didn’t even know it.
The wait was uncomfortable to say the least. Rion stood there shifting his weight from one foot to the other, listening to small talk and heckling from the crew as they prepared their assault with no small degree of malice.
“I knew they’d blow it sooner or later,” one said.
“They won’t last ten seconds,” said another.
Commander Hobart didn’t comment or even seem to heed any of the chatter. He kept a disciplined eye on the scanners and the flight paths of the fighters as they raced to their positions.
All Rion could think was how wrong it was for the Assailing Face’s mission to end this way. It never crossed their minds in planning the raid that they could end up being tracked. Rion was supposed to get on board, spread news in favor of the Marshall Force, and get back to the Gravilinx station. Instead he had a front row seat to what could easily be his friends’ deaths.
The soreness of it cut through to his core. More than anything, he resolved that if he saw Lena again, he’d tell her how he felt. Even if she didn’t care about anyone, he needed to tell her he cared about her. Odds were he’d be talking to a cold, still body.
“Standing by, sir,” one of the officers said.
“Move in,” Hobart said.
Rion clenched his teeth and kept his eyes fixed on the monitors. He could imagine Lena and Bailor sitting in the cockpit talking about Reznik or something Bailor had come across in his history books only to see the scanners suddenly light up. A moment passed, two. Were they deciding what to do? For all he knew they could be asleep.
Then all at once the engines came to life and the ship accelerated away from the station.
“They’re running,” said a navigation officer.
“Cut them off,” Hobart said.
A squadron of fighters shifted to block the Assailing Face’s path. There was still a lot of empty space left in the net, but it was closing fast. Lena headed toward the fighters for another moment before adjusting course. The Alliance fighters shifted in response and others converged from nearby areas. All while the Vestige closed the gap, a shark among minnows.
“Hold your fire until they fire,” Hobart ordered.
This was around the point where weapons systems would come online. A few seekers would shred the first few fighters, no doubt, and buy them a few seconds. But what then? Lena continued to fly in a sharp arc, trying to find more open space, but her scanners had to look like a solid ring.
The fighters were in close now, some right on its tail. Rion held his breath, sure that his friends noticed that they hadn’t been fired upon yet. Continuing to swing around, they were about to face the massive gray wall of the Vestige.
On the screen, he spotted the cannons heating up, the satellite bays opening. The electromagnetic pulse would’ve been charging. That’s exactly what Rion would’ve done, fire off everything and hope to make it through in the chaos, but it was hopeless. There was the valve to the auxiliary engine, a last resort.
They had to do something soon because they were flying on a path leading to impact. For a second Rion wondered if they’d resigned themselves to a kamikaze mission. He dreaded that more than anything and had to restrain himself from crying out a few words urging them to give up. Anything he said would give him away.
Then the engines faded and the cannons were lowered. Rion closed his eyes in a moment of solace. Whether it was Lena or Bailor, he had to give them credit. They made a smarter move than he would’ve.
Hobart had a wan smile on his face, possibly because this wasn’t the outcome he expected or really wanted.
“Let’s find a home for that wagon in docking bay C. Anyone on board who resists should be executed on sight. The rest can be moved to the detention block and wait there until I can perform a thorough examination. We’ll need to consult the chancellor about what to do with them and the ship,” Hobart said.
Rion knew Bailor wouldn’t attempt to fight any boarders, but Lena was another case entirely. She was powerful enough that she might be able to take down the first two or three that came at her, and the threat of being killed might seem like icing on the cake.
They watched as the fighters herded the ship in the proper direction. Eventually a tether was attached that pulled the ship to its destination.
Already Rion’s mind was hard at work sorting out what he could do. He would not allow his friends to die and his ship to be lost, not while he was alive. Besides, he wasn’t too familiar with the Alliance’s interrogation techniques for enemies, but he guessed sooner or later Lena or Bailor would understandably be compelled to give him up.
A slap on the shoulder pulled him out of his thoughts.
“The Assailing Face might have a real second act after all,” Hobart said in a congratulatory tone. “The chancellor will be pleased. I could mention you…”
Rion had never been so disgusted that someone might be happy with him.
“The real credit goes to all of the professionals you have with you in the command deck. Let Chancellor Yetrue hear about them,” Rion said, hoping it turned out as well for the condescending chatterers as it did for his father.
He needed to do something quickly.
After leaving the command deck, Rion was compelled to return to his crew where they were running checks on the electrical systems in the damaged areas. A few small pockets of outages remained and it was affecting the circulation of air. Trying to fix the ship that was holding his friends hostage felt even more grating, and every instant that passed produced another surging feeling to tear something apart.
A dark but delicious thought entered his mind. Damaging the Vestige’s exterior with another ship was nearly impossible, but inside with fingers on much of the most sensitive circuitry there were quite a few vulnerabilities that could be exploited. If properly executed, the skeleton crew on board would be helpless when it came to responding to another situation.
It was late in the shift and a long night waited ahead when the night crew would be less attentive than their daylight counterparts as the Vestige began its voyage back to Earth. Rion slipped a wrench into his pocket before leaving off and returning to his bunk, where he spent many sleepless hours contemplating what was to come next.
That night, Rion climbed out of his bed and slipped into the hallway. Doing anything to the main core powering the ship was out of the question, but there were quite a few substations controlling parts of its systems that he’d become familiar with. His first target was an electrical hub near the rear that housed the back end of the surveillance equipment.
Under the guise of making some emergency repairs, he removed the panel to the substation and began tinkering with its components. He took his time, methodically checking each electrical pathway to make sure there wouldn’t be any unintended consequences that might get him noticed. When he was satisfied that he had it all figured out, he cut the power to the surveillance cams but not the monitors, freezing images of empty hallways in place to allow him to get around.
Rion didn’t waste time putting everything back like he normally would. Sneaking out, he barely placed the panel back before rushing down the corridor and to a lift. It was eerie how empty the ship seemed at this time. He went on for a while through the ship without running into a single person. The solitude emboldened him and he hustled like he was running against himself. Once he reached the detention block, coming up against an officer was going to be unavoidable.
Gripping the hefty wrench he’d stolen earlier, he stalked down the hall and let the automatic doors to the block open before him. A guard at a monitoring station caught a surprised look when Rion entered.
“Have you been having problems with your waste disposal?” Rion asked, trying to keep his breathing from appearing visibly labored.
The guard, a man with a moustache and splotchy skin, squinted at him.
“No, not that I know of,” he said.
“Is there a way to take a look? I got a report there was a backup that needed to be taken care of immediately.”
As soon as the guard glanced down at the row of console screens built into his desk, Rion swung the wrench into the back of his head like he was hitting a home run. The guard’s face slumped against the surface of the desk and his body went limp. Whether he was dead or merely knocked out cold…that would be for someone else to discover. He had to hurry up and figure out how to unlock the doors before his luck ran out.
A thumbstick chip attached to the guard’s belt got Rion’s attention, and he wrestled it off and rushed headlong into a row of about a dozen cell doors. Each had a small window, but it was dark inside and hard to see who the occupant was. In the heat of the moment, starting at the far end and opening them all with the chip seemed the most expedient method. One after another he pushed open doors, peeking inside before moving on to the next. Some were empty, some contained occupants he didn’t know or care about.
The fifth door in contained Lena.
Her hair and clothing were cloaked in shadow, but there was her black blood catching the light and noticeably trickling from her mouth. She seemed to quaver when the door opened and he stepped inside. They’d roughed her up pretty bad between the docking bay and here. She had a tired look in her eyes.
“Lena, come on. It’s time to go,” he said.
“I’ll be going soon,” she said.
Without any more pretense, he went over to her and lifted her onto her feet. She leaned against the wall and put her hand to her forehead. Up close, the wound to her mouth looked terrible, like they’d fishhooked her and dragged her like that. Rion was beside himself with anger.
“Can you walk?” he asked, the urgency of moving on hitting him.
“Rion?” she said, weakly raising her eyes at him.
He got under one of her arms and propped her up so they could reach the exit. Before they left the room, he needed to make good on the promise he’d made himself.
“And by the way, I’m in love with you.”
“What?” she mumbled in a disbelieving way.
They spilled into the corridor and moved on to the next doorway. If Lena was this bad off, he knew Bailor would be on a stretcher.
The next door opened to reveal his spiky haired friend sitting on a cot. He got up immediately and even managed a smile. As best Rion could tell, he was completely untouched.
“You good?”
Bailor gritted his lips.
“Because she’s from Neptune, they figured she was in with the Marshall Force. I couldn’t stop them,” Bailor pleaded, but they didn’t have time to waste apologizing to each other.
Bailor grabbed Lena’s other arm and together they helped her down the rest of the corridor. Rion’s friends noticed the incapacitated guard at the station but didn’t ask any questions. Neither did they argue when he led them out into the open hallway. The odds of running into anyone along these barren stretches of hallway were minimal, but there was a chance the lifts would be in use and there would still be a security detail around the docking bays.
After checking that a lift was empty, Rion brought his friends inside. With the doors closed, they had a moment of peace.
“I’ve never been more impressed with you,” Rion said to Bailor, who raised his eyebrows.
“For what?”
“For surrendering.”
Bailor rolled his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Well, you’ll match it for me if you can actually get us out of here. What’s the plan?”
Rion looked up at the lights above the door displaying their path as they moved toward the middle of the ship on the starboard side where much of the damage from the Assailing Face had been.
“We’re going to light the ship on fire,” he said, grinning.
“Good. I feel cold,” Lena said.
When the lift doors opened, they pressed on together arm in arm. Lena gradually recovered some of her strength and awareness. She slowed them down less and less. They came to a section of the ship where most of the walls were nothing but plastic sheets, and bits of debris and tools remained on the floor. Through the plastic, they could see countless tubes and cords, the veins of the ship. Up ahead was another substation, this one marked with a large X in tape over it.
“They wanted us to fix the power on the ship quickly without much of the proper equipment, so we had to take a few shortcuts. Instead of actually repairing the conduit here, it was faster to just run lines from various other parts of the ship. That’s what this jumble of wires is, this section of the ship piggybacking on the power routed through a number of other sections.”
“You can overload them all right from here,” Bailor said.
“Exactly. And this portable backup generator was left here by yours truly just in case such a thing became necessary,” Rion said, uncovering a device tucked in along the wall. He connected the generator to the substation, flipped it on to maximum output, and gestured to the others to start going back the way they came. Once it was all set and the generator was roaring, Rion didn’t wait around for the first spark.
He caught up to Lena and Bailor, hustling them along.
“Brace yourselves,” he said, but his words were drowned out by the explosion behind them. They turned a corner to avoid any physical effects of the blast, but an instant later the lights running along the ceiling cut out. They were in perfect darkness until Rion pulled a small lamp from his belt and used it to guide them forward.
They pressed on through long hallways and down dark sets of stairs. The lifts were no longer operable. At the sound of footsteps rushing in their direction, Rion turned off the lamp and they stood aside, holding their breaths as Alliance officers ran past. It was hard not to feel like they’d be exposed every instant, but the officers ran by without breaking their steps.
Farther on they reached another substation, where billowing smoke and flames spilled into the hall. It was searingly hot and some emergency crews were attempting to extinguish the blaze. They were so busy that Rion, Lena, and Bailor were able to scoot right around them with their shirt collars held over their mouths.
“There’s one more thing we need to do before we get to the docking bay, and then once we’re there we’ll have to manually close the airlock before we depart,” Rion said.
He hoped that the commotion taking over the ship would’ve emptied out the entire docking bay area as all hands were called to assist with the sudden outages, but as they came in sight of the control room he spotted lights in operation there. Simply strolling in to facilitate their exit wasn’t going to work, and the five officers inside would be too much of a match in a fight.
Ducking under the control room window, they reached another compartment in the walling that contained a node for many of the ship’s communication functions. Kneeling down and feeling inside, Rion reached for a plug and yanked it, setting off a sensor that caused the emergency alarms to flash.
Huddled a ways away, they watched as officers rushed out of the control room and down one of the hallways. Rion’s impression was that they were headed toward the command deck, leaving the area wide open. The door to the docking bay controls had been left open and power was still running through the main console, which actually made their escape harder because it meant the locking mechanisms holding the Assailing Face to the Vestige would still be in place.
Rion ran his hand through his hair and cursed to himself.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to launch. We’d need a passcode with proper authorization to release the locks,” he said.
His first thought was to smash the console, but that would only freeze the locks in place.
“Here, let me,” Bailor said. “Maybe there’s a way to retrieve an old log-in, or maybe one is still active on one of these machines.”
&nb
sp; Bailor hopped around the consoles in the room, finally settling on one and manipulating the system for the first time as though he’d been born using it. Clapping his hands, Bailor turned and pointed toward the door.
“Brilliant!” Rion said.
“Let’s save the celebration until we’re in the clear,” Bailor said modestly.
The docking bay was still cloaked in darkness except for a few yellow rays from the emergency lights passing through the control room. It was a large space and they had to make sure not to walk into fighters’ wings or equipment parked on the floor. The airlock was ahead against the far wall. They could see the tunnel that would allow them to board.
“Those substation explosions have compromised almost every component of this ship shy of the engines. Electrical, navigation, ventilation, the sensors, you name it. The Pluto project might get finished before all of it gets fixed. Once we’re out of sight we’ll be clear,” Rion said, beginning to feel truly optimistic for the first time.
Then he heard a pair of footsteps behind them coming through the open doorway to the docking bay.
“Rion, stop right there or I’ll shoot!”
He didn’t have to look behind him to know who it was. It was still some distance to the airlock, which would have to be pulled closed while remaining in the line of fire from whatever weapon Hobart was holding. Feeling like he’d bitten down on a nail, his jog slowed to a halt. Lena and Bailor stayed with him, and together they turned to see a solitary dark figure striding toward them. Something in Hobart’s hand shined in the faint rays of light.
“Your father would be disappointed,” Hobart said when they could finally discern enough of his face in the darkness.
“Would he, or would he be proud that I’m actually trying to change the Alliance? You know the truth that we didn’t blow up the distribution station, and it was some other ship that attacked Mercury.”
