by Scott Baron
The freighter full of drones was Mal’s ace in the hole, but Daisy couldn’t see it anywhere.
You see their drone carrier? Daisy asked, scanning the skies.
“No. They must’ve been separated when she broke orbit. Freya, do you see Mal’s freighter anywhere?”
“Sorry, Sarah. I don’t. And I’m a little bit busy at the moment,” the mighty ship said, straining as she dodged a dozen swarming Ra’az ships.
“There are too many of them,” Daisy noticed. “There weren’t supposed to be this many Ra’az ships here.”
“They’re pulled from the other side of the planet,” Freya said. “Zed sent a transmission for the others to target the battle stations on the opposite pole if they can.”
“So they saw the invasion and threw everything they had at it?”
“Seems that way.”
“But that leaves the battle stations over there on their own.”
“Well, no one has been able to break off to get over there, so it seems to be working,” Freya said.
“Why don’t they just warp?
“Shape of the planet. It’s blocking them. They’d have to jump away then back, and the battle stations are putting out random flak fire into space in all directions. They’d stand too high a likelihood of warping right into the line of fire,” Freya told her. “Now hold on.”
She bucked and dove, trying to reach the Váli to take some of the pressure off.
Mal had already been hit several times, multiple pods shaking in their mountings as she tore through the atmosphere.
“Who’s that?” Daisy asked.
Freya saw what she was inquiring about. On Mal’s flank, a craft similar in style to the Váli, though significantly smaller, was covering her as best it could, drawing enemy fire away when possible, firing its rail guns constantly, protecting their wake.
“I don’t know, Daisy. I haven’t met that one yet. The fleet’s huge, after all.”
“It just looks a lot like the Váli, is all. I thought she was the only ship of her kind.”
Another blast shook the Váli, tearing free several of her pods. Daisy just hoped they were carrying supplies and not troops. She watched them fall, their emergency landing thrusters having been blown clean-off in the blast. Whatever was inside would not be surviving the impact.
“If she doesn’t get out of here, and quick, she’s going to sustain too much damage to stay in the air,” Daisy shouted.
“I know!”
Mal, for her part, knew as well, and was doing everything she could to lighten her load. A half-dozen pods were rattling in their couplings, broken loose, but intact. Another handful were flapping in the turbulent air, knocking her airframe about violently as she tried to maneuver.
“Mal, you have to release those pods!” Captain Harkaway yelled.
“I’m trying, Captain, but the system is damaged. Reggie, can you access the backup subroutine from your station?”
“Negative,” the co-pilot replied. “I was able to activate the emergency damage protocol and seal the doors of most of the pods ship-wide, but I can’t access the release system. It’ll need to be done manually.”
“Shit,” Harkaway growled. “Vince, do you copy?” he called out over the ship’s comms.
“Here, Captain.”
“How are we looking down there?”
“Engineering is holding up okay, but this atmos flight is wreaking havoc on her drive systems. I’m doing all I can, but we’re going to need to clear atmos, and soon, or the engines are going to run the risk of flaming out on us.”
“Keep at it, Vince. We’re doing all we can. Just keep us in the air.”
“Will do,” he replied, then cut off his comms and set back to work putting out fires, both figuratively and literally.
A massive jolt shook the ship, throwing Vince roughly to the deck.
“Mal, what the hell was that?” he yelled into the comms.
“A loyalist ship impacted one of the starboard pods,” she replied. “It was a small one, but the craft is lodged in place.”
The ship shuddered and lurched.
“Vince, the wind resistance is wreaking havoc on my propulsion systems. I fear I will not be able to compensate much longer. Can you re-route additional power to the main engine output?” Mal asked.
“I’m all over it, Mal,” he replied, jumping to work. “I just hope she can take the load.”
Nearby, smoke wafted in the passageway where the loyalist ship had crashed into the Váli. One of the inner doors had been open at the time of impact, and had they not been flying in atmosphere, it may well have doomed them all.
As it stood, the ruined alien ship had mashed into the pods and burst into flames but was quickly extinguished by the sheer force of the wind as the Váli hit near-Mach speeds as they desperately avoided their attackers.
One of Maarl’s rebels traveling aboard the Váli managed to make his way from the adjacent pod and into the corridor. Walking in the turbulence was difficult, and he was using his four powerful arms to brace himself as he tried to make his way to the site of the impact. He knew full well they would need that door sealed if they hoped to exit the atmosphere, and time was of the essence.
“I have reached the site of the impact,” he called out over the comms. “There appears to be no damage to the interior passageways. I will attempt to dislodge the debris blocking the airlock door.”
With a great heave, he strained and pulled until the door finally dislodged, sliding smoothly open. The piece of wreckage blocking the door was a trivial thing to remove. The sharp piece of ceramisteel that pierced his chest moments later, however, was not, and his lifeblood gushed from his body to the deck as a bloodied loyalist survivor forced his way from his wrecked craft and into the Váli.
The last wisps of smoke disappeared as the door sealed shut behind him.
He quickly scanned the area. No other rebel enemies were present, and all the other pods appeared to be going into emergency lock-down. Faced with the choice of single-handedly assaulting a locked and reinforced command pod or finding another way to take the ship out of the sky, the loyalist quickly chose option two, spinning and running for engineering.
Vince was hard at work, manually rerouting energy couplings to feed into the ship’s already overtaxed systems, when the hair on the back on his neck abruptly stood on end. He trusted his instincts and dropped straight to the deck. That instantaneous reaction was the only thing that saved him as a piece of jagged metal slammed into the console where he’d been standing moments before.
The loyalist, however, wasted no time, quickly landing a brutal kick to the downed man, sending him flying against the bulkhead.
“Motherfucker!” Vince yelled as he scrambled to his feet.
The alien lunged at him once more, but Vince had trained in unconventional combat with Daisy. Trained a lot, in fact, and rather than landing a killing blow to his much-smaller opponent, the alien’s viciously thrown fists met nothing but metal. Vince had seen the attack coming and deftly dodged to the side, landing a flurry of blows with the heavy spanner already in his hands as he did. To his satisfaction, he thought he heard something crack.
The Chithiid jumped back, startled by his wily quarry, cradling his now-broken elbow.
“Yeah, that’s right. Now it’s a three-to-two advantage, you bastard,” Vince growled. “Stick out another one, I might just even things up,” he taunted his four-armed opponent, spinning the improvised weapon in his hands.
The tall alien paused in his attack. This human was more difficult than he anticipated. With a sudden lunge, he feinted a punch with two of his arms, then threw a surprise kick, catching Vince off-guard and knocking him through the open door into the corridor.
“Shit,” Vince blurted as he quickly rolled to his feet, struggling for solid footing on the bucking ship.
The Chithiid raced after him to the doorway, but then paused, looking back at the engineering compartment.
“Oh, no y
ou don’t,” Vince growled, throwing the heavy tool in his hands as hard as he could.
The spanner hit the alien a glancing blow to the jaw, hard enough to draw blood.
“I shall crush the life from your fragile body!” the enraged loyalist yelled.
Vince turned and ran as fast as he could down the passageway.
“That’s right, you bastard, come and get some!”
The Chithiid seemed more than happy to comply, despite not speaking a word of English. The tone of the defiant human was easy to understand.
Vince bolted down a lateral connecting passageway to the exterior layer of pods, ducking into the nearest one, the alien close on his heels. He slapped the keypad, and the door began to close behind him as he raced to the far wall, but the Chithiid stuck a limb in the gap, triggering the auto-stop safety mechanism. The door slid back open.
Slowly, the tall loyalist leaned into the chamber, sizing up his prey. The little human was cowering against the far bulkhead, no weapons in his hands, and nowhere to run. With a wicked smile, he stepped inside the pod. The door quietly sealed behind him.
Vince had nowhere to run.
It was at that moment the alien noticed something unsettling. Something wrong. The human wasn’t scared. No, his eyes told a different story, and though he couldn’t explain why, the Chithiid hesitated. Then he saw the flashing keypad next to his quarry.
He realized his mistake, but it was too late.
Vince smiled as he pressed the button, overriding the dual airlock door safety mechanism, opening both doors to the outside at once.
The air immediately sucked out of the chamber, replaced by a buffeting gale as the exterior winds whipped through the pod, pulling everything not bolted down out the door in an instant. The flailing Chithiid managed to hold fast to the doorframe for a second, then he was gone. The loyalist intruder was going to have a very long fall, and a most uncomfortable landing.
Vince’s hastily attached carabiner tether was barely keeping him secured to the wall, and with great worry, he realized it felt like his pants might rip loose at any moment, sending him to an unwanted free fall as well.
He quickly keyed the door command and sealed the airlock, dropping to the floor as the pressure normalized.
“Vince, what the hell’s going on down there? We just registered a decompression in Starboard Pod Twelve,” Reggie said.
The exhausted engineer keyed his comms. “Had some loyalist company, Reg, but I took care of it. He’s taking the fast route to the surface.”
“An intruder? From the ship that impacted us?”
“Yeah, that’s my guess.”
The Váli bucked violently as Vince moved for the passageway door.
“Shit,” Reggie growled. “The damn thing’s wedged in between a few pods. It’s trashed our maneuverability.”
“Mal told me,” Vince said as he was roughly slammed into the wall, then the floor, as he tried to make it back to engineering.
“You think you can get us that extra power?” Reggie asked. “There’s too much drag on the airframe. We’re gonna drop out of the sky without it.”
“I’ll do what I can. Just try to keep her steady for a minute so I can get back to engineering.”
“I’ll try, but we’ve got a lot of company,” Reggie replied, straining at the controls.
“Do what you have to. I’ll get back to engineering somehow.”
“Vince, did you see any more loyalists board the ship?” Captain Harkaway’s voice interjected.
“No, Captain. Just the one.”
“Okay, then. Hold on. We’re gonna try to shake that bastard’s ship loose before his buddies realize we’re flying crippled here. Hopefully it’ll gain us at least a little maneuverability.”
A new voice joined the conversation, overriding their comms system from far above.
“Lars, I can have my escort to you in five minutes,” Celeste called out to him over the line.
“Negative. You need those with you.”
“But you’re––”
“Celeste, no! Stick to the mission. Protect yourself. We’ll manage,” he said, straining under the g-force as Mal pulled them into a powerful turn, narrowly avoiding a Ra’az and loyalist vessel crossfire.
“Don’t you die on me, mister,” his wife commanded.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a little laugh. “Love you too.” Harkaway quickly turned his attention to his guns, firing out a volley of rail gun sabots.
A Ra’az ship jerked, then flamed out, falling toward the planet below as one of the captain’s shots flew true.
“Got you, ya bastard!”
“It’s not going to matter if we don’t cut those damaged pods loose,” Reggie shouted across the command pod. “It’s getting worse. I don’t know how much longer we can stay in the air.”
“I know, Reg,” Harkaway said, grimly. “The release isn’t functioning, but we can at least take as many of those fuckers with us as possible.”
Barry unbuckled from his station and lurched to his feet, tossed and thrown hard into the bulkhead. A thin trickle of blood showed at his hairline.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Barry? Sit back down––that’s an order!”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but I’m going to have to disobey that command.”
The cyborg grabbed onto the nearest handhold with a firm grip and hauled himself toward the pod door.
“Mal, open the door.”
“What are you doing, Barry?”
“Those pods need to be released.”
“I understand,” Mal said, opening the door for him.
A blast shook the craft, making it lurch abruptly, launching Barry violently out the door into the corridor.
Quickly, he scrambled to his feet and began running down the passageway, thrown violently against the walls every few steps, leaving an increasingly bloody trail in his wake.
He pressed on, determined. Mal could patch up his flesh covering later, provided her medlab remained intact. And if they survived, of course. For the moment, the medlab was undamaged, he noted as he flew past it, rudely thrown from his feet by an abrupt banking turn as Mal narrowly avoided yet another Ra’az blast.
The smaller ship trying to protect Mal was having a hell of a run of things, but had managed to stay largely undamaged. That was mostly due to it not being laden with fully loaded pods, as the Váli was, but nevertheless, it hadn’t been designed for combat flight in atmos.
Freya had managed to drop into a position behind both ships, and was doing all she could to pick off the Ra’az attack craft and pair of heavy cruisers on their tails.
“She can’t keep that up much longer,” Daisy said, grimly. “Those loose pods are making her a sitting duck.”
“They need to be cut free so she can make a run for space,” Freya said, objectively.
“But Vince is on board. And Sarah. Our friends are on that ship.”
“I know, Daisy. I’m just stating the facts. Unless they cut those pods loose, the whole ship will go down.”
“It’s a goddamn Mr. Spock moment, isn’t it?”
“What?” Freya asked, confused.
“The good of the many,” Daisy replied, grimly. “Come on, we need to give them as much cover fire as we can.”
Blood-soaked and battered, Barry clung to the emergency handles near the entrance to the Narrows junction deep within the Váli’s superstructure, his metal fingers clearly visible where their flesh covering had torn away in his frantic scramble for the access panel.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he hoisted himself into the tight space and began the long shimmy to the manual pod release. The turbulence continued to beat him against the walls of the craft, but now that he was inside such a narrow space, the impacts were reduced, as his body had less distance to travel and gain momentum.
He was leaving a bloody mess in his wake, and a tiny part of his brain registered that he would have to come back and mop all of that up later�
�–if they didn’t crash into the surface in a fiery wreck, of course.
Barry made good time crawling to his destination, the limited foray into the Narrows giving him a newfound appreciation for the difficult job Daisy and Sarah had performed aboard the ship.
But there was no time for reflection.
He took his miraculously intact comms headset and plugged into the hardline jack, since deep in the Narrows, the shielding wouldn’t let any wireless signal pass.
“I’ve reached the release system, Mal,” he informed the ship’s powerful AI. “Please confirm that all pods are sealed.”
“They are,” Mal replied.
“Disconnecting in three,” he said, not bothering with a countdown. They were both computers, after all. Keeping track of three seconds was not an issue.
The pods, however, did not release.
“That was three seconds, Barry,” Mal said.
“I am aware, Mal,” he replied.
“What the hell’s going on down there, Barry?” Harkaway yelled into the comms.
“There appears to be a short, Captain. I will have it repaired momentarily.”
Indeed, there was a short. Just a tiny little thing, but one that was preventing the signal from reaching its destination. There was just one problem. He had no tool kit with him.
Barry evaluated the issue and made a quick decision, ripping wiring from one of the neighboring panels to complete the repair. Food replication might not function properly for a bit, but compared with dying, he thought the crew would understand his choice.
His fingers were a blur of activity as they quickly spliced the new wiring into place.
“Repaired,” he announced over his comms. “Releasing damaged pods in three.”
This time, when the clock ran down, the explosive bolts holding the damaged pods in place––barely––fired their charges and cut the pods free. The pods––and wrecked loyalist ship––tore loose, and the sudden jolt sent the Váli into a corkscrew spin.
“They ejected some pods!” Daisy called out. “Freya, can you get any life readings in them?”
