by Clara Woods
“Quick, come.” Lorka urged as she closed the gap to him. On her way, she handed a gun to Doctor Lund and another one to Uz.
“Why are you helping us?” she asked the young mage as they jogged down the corridor.
“I believe you,” he said, then stopped in his tracks. “I don’t know if there are more people up ahead.”
“There’s more from behind us,” Cassius said through gritted teeth.
“More guards?” Lenah inquired.
“Yes. Carrying weapons,” he said, sounding out of breath.
“You can hear that?” Lorka asked, gaping at him but then seemed to catch himself.
“Yup,” Lenah answered, unwilling to give away any information about them. She was grateful for the rescue but couldn’t understand the young mage’s motive for helping them yet.
“Right, um. Can you guys get close to me? I want to create another bubble, but it gets harder the bigger I have to make it.”
“Lorka, what do you believe?” Lenah inquired, not moving.
He gave her a pained and impatient look but nodded. “That you’re not a trouble-maker. That you’re right about the magnitude of the threat.”
Lenah regarded the young mage in a new light. This was not just a clumsy youth talking, this was...
Cassius cleared his throat and shook Lenah out of her thoughts. She realized that now was not the time to think about this. “Let’s go, everyone,” she said, and they all shuffled up behind Lorka after only the slightest hesitation. A few moments later, the whole group was encased in a watery texture. Unlike the last time Lenah had been trapped in a bubble, she was able to move. It wasn’t encasing her everywhere but seemed to be a sphere around them. Very handy.
They followed the corridor down and toward a sign that read ‘Guest Landing Bay’.
Lenah hoped that was the landing bay where they had also parked the Rambler. She could imagine a big space station like this having numerous landing bays for its many guests in different areas. Especially, since this place received visits from all kinds of people: family members, elites from the various planets, commoners.
They crept down the corridor, Lenah and Doctor Lund going first, holding their guns.
“Cassius, can you hear if there’s someone up ahead in that landing bay?” Lenah remembered seeing a control cabin inside the bay when they had landed.
They stopped, so he could listen. “I hear breathing in there,” Cassius finally said.
“Ok. Persia, can you switch positions with Doctor Lund? You and I will go in first.”
“Let me, I’ll go,” Cassius growled, stumbling a few steps forward.
“No way. The worst you’ll do is crush someone under your weight by coincidence.”
“I’m fine,” he pressed out but needed to take hold of the wall.
“Cassius, stay back. Handle the guards coming from behind. We’ll go in,” Lenah said before turning and nodding toward Persia who had taken the gun from Doctor Lund. Together, they snuck up the final meters to the entrance.
The door was open, and Lenah carefully took a peek. No one was in the bay directly, but she did spot the Star Rambler. It felt so good to see it. Then her eyes darted over the clamps still tying it to the station’s floor.
“Thank the stars, it’s here,” she whispered while taking another look around.
Two guards were sitting in a room off the side wall.
Signaling for Persia to follow, Lenah ducked in and carefully walked toward them. Their cabin wasn’t directly pointing toward the hatch but instead watched over the parked ships. They’d need to crane their necks to see Lenah and Persia approaching, but luckily, they seemed to be watching a holovideo coming from one of their wristpieces. Lenah and Persia made it to the cabin and, without hesitation, Lenah ripped the door open and stormed inside.
The two guards, both young women of thin build, startled into action. One dropped a coffee cup she’d been holding, spilling the content over her companion’s leg who yelped from being hit by the hot liquid.
Before the guard could grab a laser pistol from her belt, Lenah slapped her hand with the butt of her tranquilizer gun. Persia was doing the same to her colleague.
Next, Lenah turned her gun and pointed it at her guard. “Open the clamps on the Star Rambler, and I won’t tranq you.”
The young woman shook her head frantically and lifted trembling hands.
“Just do it. Then I won’t have to stun you and do it myself,” Lenah repeated.
“Do it, Micky. I’ve read once that it’s a pain like being struck by lightning when you get hit by a stun dart,” the other woman finally said.
“And you know how much it hurts to be hit by lightning?” Micky asked.
“Well, no. But I suspect it’s a lot.”
“Quit talking and act,” Lenah pressed, shoving the tranquilizer gun closer to Micky’s face. She would use it on her if she needed to, but really hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. These two had nothing to do with the reason for their escape. Apart from their bad choice of employer, Lenah couldn’t blame them for anything. Not that she wanted them to know that.
“Okay,” Micky said and nodded. Keeping her eyes locked on the dart of Lenah’s gun, she moved her still trembling hands down toward one of the screens, only looking away at the last moment.
“The Star Rambler. That’s the crappy ship, isn’t it?”
“It’s old and reliable, not crappy,” Lenah answered. Though maybe she shouldn’t have. Maybe they wouldn’t give as much of a chase if they thought the Rambler could barely limp away. “Be quick,” she added, remembering the noises of armed guards Cassius had heard.
Micky swiped in a command on the screen. “Done.”
“Great, now step out of the cabin.”
“But you said you wouldn’t tranq us if I did this!”
“And I won’t. But we’ll need to tie you up.” She held the door open for them, and they both filed out of the room, distrust written all over their features. Lenah saw some metal wire in the corner of the bay and made her way there, then tied them up. She noticed that Cassius seemed to be more himself again, as he was moving a heavy-looking shelf to block the entrance to the bay, aided by Uz and Doctor Lund.
“Which button opens the station’s airlock?” Lenah asked the two guards. The young woman pointed to a red button on the panel in the cabin, and Lenah went to press it. A hiss sounded several hundred meters away from the depth of the airlock tunnel. She shoved the guards back into their cabin and closed the door.
“Let’s go, quickly.
10 Away
Only when they were outside of the UPL station’s long airlock tunnel, did Lenah dare breathe. They had made it out. They even had the stone.
But her respite was short-lived. Less than a minute out of UPL station, three more ships emerged from a different spot on the round wall. Her scanner identified them as military-use shuttles. Not good.
“I think we have company.” She winced and looked over at Persia, who was sitting next to her, the stone propped up in her hands to heat it for use.
The others were cramped behind them in the corridor, except for Lorka who was sitting on the floor further back. He looked unsteady and pale, speaking of the great mental effort it had taken to keep them all protected in a warp bubble for several minutes and especially after Lenah had exposed them to the open airlock. As soon as the Rambler’s hatch had closed behind them, he’d dropped the bubble and only been able to walk up the stairs and to the cockpit supported by Persia.
At least Cassius looked a lot better. He was still grimacing in pain, but he was standing by himself now, looming behind Lenah like he always did.
“I don’t suppose the stone will be ready in the next few seconds,” Lenah addressed Persia.
“No, at least five minutes.”
Lenah cursed. “That’s long. These ships are only seconds behind us. And we still have a tracker somewhere on the ship.”
No one said anything. Was it because t
hey also felt the helplessness of the situation, or because they wanted her to concentrate on whatever she was going to do about it? They couldn’t start shooting at three ships at once and hope their shields wouldn’t fail first. The only thing they could do was somehow get these ships further away from them. Speed was not an option, but what if…
“Everyone, you should go to your cabins and buckle in. This is about to get a little rough,” Lenah said. When they didn’t move fast enough, she yelled, “Now!”
That jerked them into action, though Cassius gave her a frown before turning and vanishing down the corridor to his room. The internal buffers would catch most movements from the ship, but what Lenah was about to do didn’t count as a normal movement.
Taking a deep breath and seeing that the other ships had almost reached them, Lenah dropped the shields of the Rambler. She’d need every bit of energy going to the engines now. If this worked, they wouldn’t need the shields, anyway.
Lenah took a slightly sideways course, then, hoping the others were already buckled in on their bunks, flew them up at a steep angle. This would bring them closer to the approaching ships, but hopefully, not close enough to get them caught. Or shot down, she thought as the detectors showed an incoming laser beam from one of the ships. Luckily, it went wild when the other ship also adjusted its course. They certainly wouldn’t have expected Lenah coming back toward them.
The Rambler groaned from the strain of the steep angle, and the station grew bigger in the view window as she took them closer.
“Er, Lenah, are you sure you want to go back toward the station?” Persia, who was buckled up next to her, whispered, and Lenah felt her worried glance.
She grunted but didn’t have time to answer right now. If she messed up the timing of this, she might crash them head-first into the station. Or put them straight into the direction of the other ships’ lasers again.
All three UPL ships had followed her by now, their upward angle even closer to the station than hers.
Perfect.
Lenah pulled the back thrusters hard. She had practiced this maneuver in the simulations when she learned to fly but had never done it in real life. Nor with a ship so old. Her stomach lurched as she was pressed hard into her seat, the Rambler lifting unevenly from her hard braking. The nose kept going up, the body of the ship catching most of their speed until they hung vertically in the air, less than a couple of klicks away from UPL station.
Lenah dared take a deep breath, watching the other ships on her screen. As she had hoped, they hadn’t expected her maneuver and were about to overtake them, thinking she’d been aiming to fly across to the other side of the station.
As soon as the back thrusters had stopped the Rambler completely, Lenah carefully gave it forward thrust. Just ever so much to tip them forward but not move them from where they hung. If she were wrong about how the ship would react, she could crash them into the station or send them past the other ships and straight into their line of fire. Especially, since the thrusters of the Rambler were less than sensitive. But she had learned to use her ship in the past weeks and now found it a lot easier to micro-adjust.
Ever so minimally, she moved the thruster. The ship kept hanging until—suddenly—Lenah felt her stomach lurch, this time forward. A pearl of sweat dripped from her face onto the control board under her as she hung in her harness. Again, timing was of utmost importance.
When the Rambler had turned straight downward, she pulled the thruster to its fullest. Despite the downward angle, she was pressed into her seat from the sheer speed of the ship’s weight and its thruster power combined.
Lenah took a glance at the control panel. The other ships, like she had hoped, had vanished over the other side of the station and were turning around in a less dramatic way. Nonetheless, she would need to be fast now.
They plummeted past the station, as they continued their downward angle, but just as they passed the thickest part of the large globe, Lenah pulled on the back-thrusters again, this time with less force. The ship shuddered hard, and, for a moment, she thought she had overdone it and would send them spinning uncontrollably into the station. The white sphere came uncomfortably close, but then their flight evened out, until they were facing forward, the ship coming out in a standard position under the sphere.
Lenah went to search for a place to hide immediately. When they’d first come here, she had noticed that while the top part of UPL station was mostly smooth, the white plating only interrupted by the large silver view windows, the bottom half of the station was full of air ducts, vents, and other large machinery. Given the station’s size, even the air ducts were huge; huge enough for a small ship like the Rambler to hide in between. Or so she hoped.
There, a cluster of round towers was sticking out of the station’s underbelly. Lenah directed the ship over slowly, keeping an eye on the three crafts up above on screen. They were coming closer again, apparently having managed to turn but must still be far above her.
The place she had chosen was tight, tighter than she’d anticipated and would only fit the Rambler leaving minimal space at its side. If she crashed into the station, surely someone would notice. As slow as she dared, Lenah brought them into the middle of the air ducts.
When they were surrounded by them, she turned the ship’s motor off. Then she turned everything else off, only leaving on basic gravity and life support. If the other ships didn’t have incredible sensors, this would ensure they were no longer showing on their enemy’s screens. Given they were still high above in the middle parts of the sphere, they also shouldn’t have seen Lenah vanish under the station. Hopefully, they’d interpret their vanishing as them going into a warp bubble.
Immediately, it got cold on the ship. They wouldn’t be able to stay like this for long. Lenah waited, staring out of the front window, having to rely on mere sight now as she’d also turned off all the screens. She didn’t have to wait long for them to show up.
Two of the shuttles flew by fast, apparently thinking they were trying to escape downward, but the third one was coming in slow. Had they seen through her ruse? She didn’t breathe, holding her hand over the ‘On’ button of the ship in case they started shooting, and she needed to pull up the shields. But they flew underneath them, vanishing out of her window’s view. They must be right under them. Lenah even thought that she could hear the motor rumbling only a few ship lengths away.
A minute ticked by, until the ship emerged again, this time in her side window. It had flown past and was going after the other ships now, accelerating away fast.
“Stars, that was tight,” Lenah said when they vanished out of sight in the distance. But how long would it be until they discovered the Star Rambler, including its tracker, hadn’t actually entered into a warp bubble and was instead right here?
Lenah loosened her harness and went to find the others. She had to pull open all the hatches manually, given the ship was not supplying any energy. After a few minutes, her crew was assembled in the dark corridor. Lenah turned on the flashlight of her wristpiece, illuminating everyone’s faces and clouds of frozen breath.
“That was some amazing flying,” Persia said, patting Lenah on the shoulder.
“They think we’ve already vanished in a warp bubble?” Cassius asked.
Lenah nodded. “That’s the idea. But we don’t have a lot of time until they realize we must still be here. We still most likely have a tracker on board. Corinna knows this, and it’s only a matter of minutes until the ships out there know it too.”
“We all take a section of the ship,” Cassius said. “Everyone is responsible for their own cabin, and we’ll search the common areas together.
“You think they put it somewhere in a cabin?” Us asked.
He nodded. “That would be the least frequented place.”
11 The Tracker
“Ouch,” Lenah cursed as she knocked her head against the galley sink from below. She crawled out of the tight space with the urgent need to take a bat
h. Her crew had cleaned here, yes, but they hadn’t addressed the underside. Somehow, the pirates that had owned the Star Rambler before them had been very talented at leaving filth behind everywhere. Which included the tracker they still hadn’t found.
She blew breath on her icy fingers, watching the cloud of cold air escape her mouth. Without the temperature control system running, the Rambler had turned into a freezer within minutes. If they didn’t find the tracker soon, they’d have to start up the ship, anyway. Just where was that damn thing?
Could it be on the outside of the ship where they couldn’t access it, given that they were parked in space? Or was she being paranoid for being so convinced of being tracked?
In a desperate attempt, Lenah started to pull open the kitchen cabinets in the common room once more, touching the walls for anything out of order.
They’d been searching for thirty minutes already, and everyone was frantically turning over their mattresses and any other belongings the original owners had left. The other ships, miraculously, had not returned. But there was nothing even close to a tracker, apart from a strange clock device Lenah had found in the emergency compartment of the cockpit and an old-fashioned grenade Uz found wedged under her bed. She had carried it out of her cabin with wide eyes, probably thinking she could have blown them all up in her sleep. Doctor Lund, deeming it a real grenade, not a tracking device that was disguised as a grenade, had taken it to the cargo hold for safety.
“Hey, still haven’t found it?” someone said from the entrance. Lenah shot a quick look to see Lorka standing there, still looking pale but at least walking on two legs instead of almost crawling on the floor.
