Boyd pointed at one body on the deck. His arm reached over Thresh’s shoulder, his bicep brushing her cheek.
“Kitzov,” Boyd said, pointing at the body on the flight deck. “Is he dead?”
Thresh shook her head and then tipped it to nestle in the crook of Boyd’s arm. “No, all ship’s company are accounted for. We have their life signs here.” She pointed at the medical display.
Boyd tapped the controls and selected another sensor node. He saw the main central corridor running the length of the Silence. Bodies lay scattered along it. Another node in the drive room showed the same scene—small flashing lights at unpowered consoles in standby mode and bodies on the deck.
“What about the Fist?” Boyd said. “They were docked with the Silence before they put me to sleep.”
“I might be able to access an external sensor, but with the power down, I’m not sure how much range I’ll have.”
Thresh tapped the controls and an external holo-image appeared. The Fist was alongside the Silence, but both ships were unpowered and tumbling lazily next to each other. And then Boyd and Thresh saw the large, dark shape looming over both ships.
“Can we get a better look at that?” Boyd asked, but he already knew what it was. The merest glimpse of the long rapiers told him everything he needed to know.
“I think so.” Thresh zoomed out the image. It lost a lot of clarity and color, but they both knew what they were looking at.
“We need to get out of here,” Boyd said.
“I’ll go to the drive room and try to get the power on. You go to the flight deck. Can you manage it alone?”
“Hey, I know this configuration. I can fly her with one hand behind my back.”
“I didn’t expect anything less of a Union pilot.”
Boyd laughed. “Hey, just because I can fly, it doesn’t mean…”
“Stow it, flyboy. Save it for your courtroom defense.”
Boyd handed the scalpel to Thresh. “You might need it. It will at least light the way for you.”
“What about you?” Thresh said.
“I could find my way to the flight deck blindfolded. Just try and get some power up, unless you want us both to get out and push.”
Boyd stepped out into the corridor and checked for any sounds before finally patting Thresh on the shoulder.
“Okay?”
Thresh nodded, the scalpel held up in front of her face.
Boyd ran along the corridor. The faintest lights on bulkhead consoles and internal door control panels lit his way. He tripped over a body in the corridor and heard something clatter across the deck as he stumbled. Feeling across the dark floor for what had made the noise, his fingers touched a pulse rifle. He grabbed it and immediately fired up the electron bayonet. The meter-long blade erupted from the muzzle and lit up the corridor with an eerie glow. The body at his feet was a trooper. Boyd frisked him and found the concealed pistol. Boyd tucked the pistol in his waistband and moved off toward the flight deck.
The flight deck was dark but for the crazy flashing of the console standby lights. Boyd climbed up into the command chair, propping up the rifle so the glowing electron bayonet could give him some light to see by.
Tapping away at the armrest controls, Boyd discovered the command chair systems were down. He pulled a panel and accessed the circuitry. He attempted to repower the command chair systems from its back up source.
“Boyd,” Thresh’s voice came crackling over the flight deck communicator. “I’ve run some power to the communication systems. The core still has power, it was just disrupted. It’s like when the Skarak attacked us on Kalis. I’m sure I can get us underway in a few seconds, but as soon as I power up the drive, the Skarak will hit us again.”
Boyd burned his fingers as the command chair circuits flashed. Power came on over the chair, armrest holo-controls blinking into life.
“What about thrusters? Just nudge ourselves away a bit and then hit up the drive.” He opened the armrest holo-stage and looked at the scene outside the ship.
The Skarak warship was hanging in space over the two Faction ships. And then he saw the dark specks moving away from the warship toward the Fist and the Silence.
“We don’t have time,” Boyd said. “The Skarak are coming here.”
“Why don’t they just kill us?” Thresh said, anger and fear in her voice.
“It’s not their plan,” Boyd said. “They want to take control of us. I don’t want to become one of those walking corpses. We have to get out of here now.”
“I’ll give you power,” Thresh said. “Get ready to move.”
“No,” Boyd said suddenly, a plan formulating in his mind. “Can you bring the Fist’s core back online?”
Thresh was quiet.
“Thresh. Can you do it remotely?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet and filled with dread.
“Can you remove the governor fields on the core interface nodes?”
“No,” Thresh said in a panic, and Boyd understood from her tone that she had fully understood his plan without him having to spell it out.
“Can you?” he asked more firmly.
“I won’t,” she said.
“Then we all die, or worse.”
“I can do it,” Thresh said finally, darkly. “But I’ll do it for Kitzov, not you, Will.”
“Do it. Then power up the Silence. I’ll be ready.”
Boyd stepped down from the command chair and to the pilot’s seat. He pulled the unconscious pilot from the chair and dropped him on the deck. Boyd pulled the maintenance panel from the flight console and powered it up, a spark burning his fingers again. He let out a curse at the sudden flash of pain, flexed his fingers, and prepared himself to act.
The flight console holo-stage lit up, a small image showing the scene outside. Thresh’s voice came over the flight deck from her position in the drive room.
“Three, two, one.”
Boyd watched as the Fist lit up, external lights coming on and showing the name: Odium Fist. It had been Boyd’s ship for months. He had infiltrated Poledri’s crew and had lived among them. He prepared to say good-bye forever.
The lights across the exterior of the Fist grew brighter. The drive assembly flared, a blue-green bubble growing and engulfing the entire ship.
Then the lights on the flight deck of the Silence burst to full intensity.
Boyd heard Thresh shouting, but he was already acting. His hands danced across the flight controls and he punched the Silence up to speed.
Then the Fist erupted in a huge plasma ball that engulfed the entire ship in super-hot energy. The fireball punched out and slammed into the rapier cluster at the front of the Skarak ship.
The Silence leapt away, Boyd using the heading it happened to be on—a heading that took it down from the plane of the ecliptic at an angle of close to ninety degrees. At this rate, he would be at the southern face of the Sphere and out into the interstellar void. It didn’t matter, because now he had to escape the billowing explosion on the Odium Fist. Boyd could correct and put the Silence on a safer heading once they were clear of the explosion and the Skarak.
The holoimage to the rear of the Silence dimmed as the ship raced out of range, but the last image that Boyd saw clearly was the Skarak ship turning, its rapier cluster broken and rapiers falling away. The forward hull was shimmering and appeared to be flaking away into space.
“Thresh, we did it. It looks like we got away.” Boyd punched the flight console in victory. Then he saw a body at his feet move, ever-so-slightly, a mere shudder at first and then a slow, painful quiver.
All around the flight deck, the bodies were starting to move, coming back to life. Boyd jumped up from the flight console and ran, leaving the waking crew behind him.
The corridors were littered with bodies all waking from their Skarak-induced sleep. Boyd wondered if it was time or distance that weakened the Skarak’s hold on them. He wasn’t going to stop to ask. He pulled the pistol from his
waistband and kept on running for the shuttle bay.
Every Union Frigate had a shuttle. Boyd hoped that Kitzov had kept the shuttle on this ship that he had stolen from the Union. If there was no shuttle, Boyd would have to fight the entire ship’s company, arrest them all, and take the entire ship into the custody of the Blue Star Marines. He knew he would not back down, but even Boyd had to admit that a single Marine might struggle a little against the entire ship’s company.
Turning into the shuttle bay corridor, Boyd came face to face with Thresh. She was standing at the entrance to the hangar, a pulse pistol in her hand, pointing it at Boyd. Behind her in the hangar, Boyd could see the shuttle boarding ramp was down. Ready.
“The shuttle is ready to go,” she said.
“Thanks,” Boyd said, taking a step forward.
Thresh raised the pistol and pointed it at Boyd’s head.
“I can’t let you go,” she said, a quiver in her voice and her eyes red and misty.
“Come with me,” Boyd said.
Thresh took a step forward, aiming, her finger on the trigger. “I’ve deactivated the audio nodes in the corridor here. I’ve left on all the imaging nodes. Kitzov will see that I tried to stop you.” She took another step forward. “If you want to get out of here, you are going to have to fight your way out.”
“I can’t,” Boyd said.
“Then we’ll both die as spies. You think Kitzov is going to be happy that I let you escape? For krav sake, Boyd. Don’t think, just shoot.”
An alarm sounded somewhere in the ship. It echoed along the corridors and into the shuttle bay.
Thresh smiled. “It’s okay. You don’t have to kill me, like the Union freighter crew you were supposed to execute. I knew you didn’t kill them. I knew all along you were not truly Faction.”
“How did you know?” The pistol shifted in Boyd’s grip. “And even if you did know, then why didn’t you turn me in right away?”
The sounds of movement form along the corridor caught his ear. Shouts of Faction troopers.
Boyd brought up his pulse pistol and fired. The pulse round slammed into Thresh’s chest, just to the right. Hopefully far enough away from her heart that she might survive, close enough so it looked like he had tried to kill her.
With footsteps running toward the hangar, Boyd stepped over Thresh, her chest heaving erratically. He wanted to fall to his knees next to her, to breathe life into her lungs, to hold her hand and promise her she would be fine.
But the footsteps in the corridor grew louder. He heard Kitzov’s voice, groggy but fierce.
“Boyd, I’m going to kill you with my own hands, you Union spy bastard. Boyd!”
But his shouts were cut off as Boyd stepped over Thresh and into the hangar where he sealed the inner doors. He ran to the shuttle and up the boarding ramp.
Acting without thought, Boyd fired up the shuttle and was through the outer hangar doors. All he could think about was Thresh, lying wounded, dying in the Silence. He consoled himself that she would get the best medical treatment the Faction could provide, but it was little comfort. He had shot her, and he hated himself for it.
11
“Out of my way.” Kitzov strode along the hangar deck corridor, shoving troopers aside. A medic was kneeling next to Thresh, applying a med-pack to her chest. Kitzov kneeled next to Thresh.
“She’ll be okay, boss,” the medic said. “She was lucky. The pulse missed her heart by a fraction.”
Kitzov studied the medic and then looked back at Thresh. He placed a hand on her forehead. “Little Enke,” he said. “I’ll give you his head on a spike. Get her to the med-bay. Now. If she dies, I’ll tear you apart.” He glared at the medic and then stood.
The corridors of the Silence were scattered with recovering crew. A trooper here, leaning against a bulkhead. A gunner there, rubbing his head to clear it of the pain.
Kitzov shouted as he ran. “To your posts. Get ahold of yourselves and get this ship under control.”
The flight deck was in chaos. Consoles powering up, flight deck crew dashing around. A light in the bulkhead was flashing on and off, its power supply fluctuating massively. Kitzov wondered how badly the ship had been affected by the Skarak attack. He could still taste the hideous blue crackle beam on his tongue, it felt as if it was still flickering around inside his bones.
The image on the holo-stage was out of focus, a sensor operator and a maintenance drone correcting the levels. The image steadied and showed the Silence heading down from the ecliptic plane to the southern edge of the Sphere. A small signal was racing up and away from the Silence, following the line of the ecliptic and heading toward the inner system.
Kitzov climbed up into his command chair and called up the data on the fleeing vessel. It was the Silence’s shuttle. He knew Boyd was aboard.
“Get this ship under control. Set an intercept course for that shuttle. Bring it into range of my spitz guns. I want manual control of all weapons at my command chair. Get me on the tail of that shuttle—now.”
Boyd tapped into the drive systems as the shuttle raced along at full tilt. The single core reactor was at near-perfect symmetry and delivering all power to the drive. The gravity field was reduced to zero, flight deck lighting powered by emergency backups. Weapons, the small spitz gun upper turret, was offline. Only the hull stability field was in operation to prevent the small craft from tearing itself apart under the massive forces of acceleration.
Boyd managed to fine tune the reactor delivery shunt to throw an extra gigawatt into the drive field, giving a minor boost to the shuttle’s top speed.
The flight deck holo-stage showed the Silence heading down from the ecliptic plane under full power. It drifted from sensor range. Boyd felt a minor thrill of victory having escaped the ship, but as he saw the image blink away, he also felt a pang of remorse. The last contact he would possibly ever have with Thresh had been his shooting her.
He thought of her, where he had left her, lying injured and possibly close to death on the deck of the Silence.
“Sorry, Thresh,” he said, running his fingers through the holo-image of the fading Faction ship.
The shuttle powered on toward the inner system. The nearest friendly port was anywhere around Supra. Each of her moons had orbital space ports and ground landing pads. He would use his Blue Star codes and put the shuttle down and present himself to the local commander. He might have a short wait, but he would be back aboard a Union ship in no time and then back with his own battalion. Boyd couldn’t deny he was excited to be returning after a long undercover operation, but he was also disappointed to be returning emptyhanded. He had left to find and assist in the capture of Faction Leader Kitzov. All he had done was get close, get uncovered, and get taken into custody. Escape had been nothing short of a miracle, with a lot of thanks to Thresh.
The holo-stage image showed him Supra, still a billion kilometers away. Even at top speed, the shuttle would take hours to get there. This was no Union frigate that could cross the entire Scorpio System, from Lastone to Proxima, in less than a day.
Then the image showed a new signal: a ship moving up from below the ecliptic, heading in at speed on an intercept course with the shuttle. Boyd didn’t need to see the ident codes to know what the ship was. It was the Silence. Kitzov was coming for him.
“Okay, Will,” Boyd said. “Let’s keep them off us for as long as possible. He will never follow you into the range of the orbital defenses of Supra.” Boyd checked the time and distance to the gas giant and its Union facilities. He didn’t need to do the math to be sure, he could tell with a rough estimate.
He wasn’t going to make it.
“He’s never going to make it,” Kitzov said, snarling with joy. “He’s heading to Supra, hoping I’ll be scared off by a few Union guns.” Kitzov leaned forward, glowering at the image of his shuttle racing away. “I will fly through a thousand Union ships to be sure you are blasted out of the void. You better run, Boyd, but it’s no use. You are a
dead man. It is just a matter of time.”
The Silence closed in, reducing the distance to its target by kilometers a second. It would be many long, agonizing minutes before the shuttle was in range. Kitzov was already adjusting the guns through his command chair interface, the holographic gauntlet around his hand responding to his movements.
Kitzov felt his body quiver with anticipation and with frustration as the Silence’s range to target on the holo-stage showed his time intercept had just increased slightly.
“He’s getting away,” Kitzov shouted down from his command chair. The young pilot at the flight console turned and looked up to Kitzov.
“He’s trying to evade us.”
“Of course he’s trying to evade us!” Kitzov shouted, leaping to his feet.
The young pilot nodded and stared up at Kitzov, frozen.
“Don’t look at me!” Kitzov shouted. He jabbed his arm forward, index finger quivering and pointing at the holo-image of the shuttle. “Look at your controls, and get me in range of that shuttle!”
The pilot returned his attention to his console. All across the flight deck, a well-trained crew managed their systems. This was the best crew in the Faction—selected to be the best of the best, for service aboard the Faction flagship, a symbol of all the Faction was and all it hoped to be. Service to Kitzov was an honor for this crew, and they took pride in their work. Kitzov knew they could be better, but they were more than a match for a single Marine on a stolen shuttle now creeping back into range.
“Krav it,” Boyd said in frustration as he saw the Silence match his maneuver. He had thrown them off by a few kilometers and bought himself maybe an extra second. He needed to perform a similar maneuver every few seconds for the next eight hours to have a chance of making it to Supra alive.
He threw another maneuver, pushing the shuttle to starboard. He knew the Silence would match him quickly—just enough time for him to glance around. He saw the emergency environmental suit in the locker at the rear of the shuttle. He knew he would need that suit. If Kitzov landed a salvo of spitz gun rounds on the hull, he would surely have a breach. He didn’t have the power, or enough hands, to manage a breach and take evasive maneuvers at the same time. He would have to get into that suit, and quick.
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 33
