“On,” everyone but Zhaff replied. With his eye-lens, he didn’t need spotters. To be honest, a part of me figured he could see through walls with the thing.
Zhaff tapped me on the shoulder and motioned forward. I nodded.
“Magnetize,” I said, hitting a button on my suit next to my oxygen. My boots were slowly drawn to the metal floor. A minor magnetic force charged them, not enough to walk properly, but enough to keep me anchored after every extended step. It was similar to walking under the natural conditions of Luna, only the rest of my body still felt completely weightless.
The rest of the squad did the same, and we moved ahead through the cargo bay with long, bouncing strides. My pistol was raised, and the daunting quiet had me on edge. Other than our magnet-induced footsteps, the only sound filling the Piccolo was the gentle purring of its engines. Then I heard a clank.
“Shit!” one of the officers yelped.
“What is it?” I questioned.
Another officer switched on the flashlight built onto the barrel of his gun. A line of spherical harvesting tanks lined the walls. Thousands of liters of pressurized hydrogen and helium all around us, and more in smaller canisters to be transferred to cold storage. The officer had banged his forehead against the base of one tank, and it was still reverberating.
“Everyone, watch your step,” I said. “We puncture one of those, and we’ll all be cooked.”
“We must reach the ship’s command deck,” Zhaff said. “Any rebel combatants or surviving members of the crew are wanted alive if possible.”
“Good luck with that, freak,” the officer who banged his head remarked. “I see one of these Ringer bastards, I’m putting them down.”
I reached back and grabbed the officer by the shoulder. “We’re here for information first,” I growled. “One stray shot and this thing will go up in flames. Shoot to wound and only if you have to. Those are Director Sodervall’s orders, so unless you want to take it up with him when we get back, you’ll listen.”
Regardless of how much Zhaff could irritate me, he was right, and I knew his report would reach the ears of Director Sodervall. I wasn’t trying to screw up what was now my third opportunity to prove my worth in as many months. Plus, it didn’t seem right that anybody but me could talk to my partner like that.
The officer grunted in response, but I could tell I’d gotten through to him and the others. They’d likely never heard my name—it wasn’t part of a collector’s duty to earn fame enough to be known—but they knew what I was. Any collector who’d served as long as I had held considerably more clout than an officer or guard. They’d probably never even had the opportunity to utter anything more to a director than the word sir.
“All right, Zhaff and I will head for the command deck,” I said. “You three take the engine room. Gaining control of the ship is our highest priority. Remember, watch those trigger fingers. Com’s open.” The Pervenio officers went in the opposite direction at the first branch in the hall, leaving Zhaff and me to continue on our own. I turned to him. “You got the ship schematics?”
“Memorized,” he said.
“Why am I not surprised? You lead, then.”
Zhaff moved in front of me, and we started off down the dark passage. I decided after a few steps that my spotters weren’t working for me. Waiting for heat signatures to pop up in a warren of winding corridors would only lead to me making mistakes. I preferred to see through own two eyes when I could.
“Screw this thing,” I said as I removed the device and switched on the small flashlight fixed to the top of my pulse-pistol. “I’ll leave the signatures to you. I’m going basic.”
It might’ve revealed our positions, but our magnetized footsteps were the loudest sound in range, so it didn’t matter much. With the flashlight, I could better see the condition of the ship. Much of the circuitry and systems were left exposed through the grated walls and floors. I noticed a spot of blood on one pipe from which hot steam poured through a narrow gash.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “Why switch everything off?”
“It is possible the broadcast utilized a great deal of energy,” Zhaff answered.
“I guess so—” As the words left my lips, a male Ringer soared sideways across the hall ahead of us. “Freeze!” I barked.
“Don’t shoot!” the Ringer whimpered. He grabbed hold of the wall and raised his free arm. It shook.
“Turn around slowly,” Zhaff said.
As the man turned his head, I shone my light in his face. A sanitary mask covered his mouth, but it was covered with blood as if he’d had his nose broken and his eyes were rife with terror. He held out his hands; they were empty.
“Please, I didn’t do this,” the Ringer said.
“Quiet!” I ordered. “Get on the ground now, and you won’t be harmed.”
He didn’t hesitate. He extended his arms, grabbed hold of the grated floor, and pulled himself down, looking like quite a pro when it came to being detained. That was a common occurrence for Ringers from the lower wards on Titan, where learning how to steal food was a crucial part of staying alive.
“Cuff him,” I told Zhaff.
Zhaff got behind him and held him down against the floor so he could bind his wrists with a band of fiber-wire. “Are there any militants remaining on board?” he questioned.
“I… I don’t know,” the Ringer stuttered. “They switched all the lights off and disappeared. I swear we didn’t do anything!”
“He’s telling the truth,” Zhaff assured.
“Don’t try to make a move,” I said to the Ringer. He nodded vigorously, and Zhaff lifted off him. His weightless body started to drift upward, but without his hands, he would be completely useless at escaping.
I activated on my unit-wide com-link. “We’ve encountered our first member of the crew,” I said. “He was unarmed.”
“Us too,” one of the officers responded in my ear. “He’s alive,” he added with a grumble.
I tapped Zhaff on the shoulder, and he continued forward. He turned left at the next branch in the corridor. My magnetized boots brushed across a large patch of blood splattered on the floor. It was still fresh enough to rub off on the soles.
“I guess not everyone got into that airlock alive,” I whispered to Zhaff.
Zhaff stopped moving and knelt. He ran his gloved finger through the grooves of what appeared to be bullet-induced dents on a nearby pipe. “Doubtful,” he said. “The attackers used non-lethal rounds.”
“How generous of them. So nobody got to miss out on their little show.”
“It was a message,” Zhaff clarified.
“Trust me, I know. I’ve seen plenty like it, though usually, they target officers or soldiers, not innocents.”
“The harvesting of Saturn’s gases is vital to expansion. Removing one ship, no matter how outdated, will cost Pervenio Corp greatly.”
“Not to mention make Venta Co’s efforts around Jupiter seem far safer to invest in,” I realized. “Not just storms to worry about, but terrorists too. I’ll give them this, these Children of Titan sure did their homework.”
Something moved behind us. I whipped around quick enough to see someone’s foot disappear around the corner. I went to follow it, but Zhaff grabbed my arm and shook his head. “Ignore it. That Ringer is unarmed. The command deck is close.”
We walked until the corridor ended at a sealed door. The control console adjacent to it blinked red with the word ERROR.
“Locked,” I groaned. “Naturally.”
“One moment,” Zhaff said.
He knelt in front of the console, drew his hand-terminal, and held it up to the screen. After a few seconds typing furiously to hack the controls, he turned back to me.
“Come,” he indicated, taking my arm and leading me into an adjacent storage room.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Raise your visor for breach and stow your firearm.”
“What?”
&
nbsp; Without answering, he sealed us into the room and signaled the command deck entry to open. Air in the corridor outside whistled as it rushed through the door, dragging loose parts and hanging wires out with it. I scrambled to close my helmet, and the moment I did, Zhaff opened the storage door and hauled me into the gale. It wasn’t the initial burst of decompression, but it was enough to drag us into the command deck even with our magnetized boots on. With my arm in one hand, Zhaff grabbed hold of a console before we were sucked into space. Somehow, at the same time, he managed to seal the door behind us, halting the change in pressure and preserving the oxygen within the ship for the survivors. The vacuous conditions of space took hold.
“Next time, warn me when you’re going to do something like that!” I rasped.
“I did,” Zhaff replied.
“Be more specific, then.”
I swung my feet around so that my magnetized boots would cling to the metal floor, then I studied the command deck. It had a dome-shaped viewport for a ceiling, but its structural members were splayed open, exposing it to space. As my gaze turned downward, I noticed that someone else held on to the floor, pinned beneath the ship’s command console. Whoever it was, they were lucky they hadn’t been flung out into the void.
“Don’t move!” I shouted before realizing the Ringer couldn’t hear me with my helmet sealed.
Zhaff pushed off the back wall and zoomed over my head. He perched on the captain’s chair and aimed his gun down at the person. Whoever it was, they were also in a spacesuit, and their helmet turned slowly to see him. I shone my flashlight on the area as quickly as I could. Through the visor, I could see it was a young girl, probably in her late teens, with a pale Ringer face and hair so blonde it could’ve been silver. I was about to give Zhaff direction when I noticed she had something clutched in her hand.
“Hand!” I shouted into the com-link, not eager to experience a repeat of Undina.
Without hesitating, Zhaff grabbed the girl by the forearm and slammed it into the edge of a command console. The device, which appeared to be little more than an older model hand-terminal, floated out from her fingers. Zhaff promptly snatched it and placed it in his belt, then yanked her away from the command console, and pointed to the sealed entrance.
I turned around and drew myself toward it. Zhaff followed close behind with the girl in tow. We moved to the sides, then he set the door to open. Air gushed out, and the continuing change in pressure made it incredibly difficult to pull myself through, even with the augmented strength armored suit provided, but as I curled my legs to push off the floor and give myself a boost, I felt a strong thrust from Zhaff behind me. The door slammed shut behind us, and when I removed my visor, everything was quiet again. Zhaff tore off the girl’s helmet and held his pistol against her forehead.
“What were you doing?” he questioned, his voice more elevated than I’d ever heard it. It was enough for me to know she would be in trouble if she lied.
All she could manage was to shriek in response and grasp for her injured arm. Her bulky suit made it difficult to tell, but judging by her expression, it was probably broken. She panted wildly, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. Her lips trembled.
“Tell me,” Zhaff demanded.
Maybe it was because she was so young, but I actually felt bad for her. She didn’t look like a terrorist at all. In fact, despite her face having many typical Ringer features, she was relatively short for one, and it made her look even more frail and harmless. She also wasn’t wearing a sanitary mask like they usually did.
I placed my hand on Zhaff’s shoulder and brushed him to the side. I knelt in front of her and gazed straight into her eyes.
“You’d better not irritate him,” I whispered to her. “Just tell us what you were doing up here, and you’ll be fine.”
“Malcolm,” Zhaff said. I glanced up at him, and he had her hand-terminal raised so that it faced me. The screen was completely white except for an orange circle in the center. “All of the data has been wiped except for this image.”
The girl’s eyes widened when she spotted the device. “I found that connected to the command console!” she said, her frantic breathing hardly able to keep pace with her words. “By Trass, I swear, I only found it when I got up here! I… I only wanted to see what they did.”
Zhaff nodded to confirm her story, and I looked back at her. “I believe you,” I said. “So the attackers came through the command deck. What happened to them?” I incidentally shook her shoulder a bit too hard, and she winced.
“They all left… I think,” she moaned. “I… I was trying to switch the systems back on so we wouldn’t run out of air, but I was locked out.”
“Are you sure you did it correctly?”
“I am—was the navigator. I know how to run the ship. All of the power is being diverted to the engine’s reactor using emergency overrides.”
“Shit!” I cursed to myself. I switched on my com-link to message the rest of our squad. “Have you reached the engine room yet?”
“We’re there now,” one of the officers answered. “The Core’s humming, but all the lights are off down here as well. Wait… we’ve got something. Argh—” His feed cut out.
“What is it? I repeat, what did you see?”
I heard gunfire erupt through the com-links of the other officers as they attempted to respond.
After a short period, theirs went silent as well.
“Zhaff, we’ve got to get down there now!” I shouted.
Zhaff started to run, but as he did, we were thrown back against the wall. A powerful force seized my body, enough to make me feel like my eyeballs were going to pop backward into my skull. The Ringer girl howled in pain. Without our suits on, it may have been enough to make us pass out.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out what was happening. The Piccolo had begun to accelerate at a full burn, on a course set directly for Pervenio station. We stood on a four-hundred-ton projectile with a dated nuclear reactor powering its engine as well as unknown amounts of flammable gases that together could create an explosion as powerful as an atom bomb if it overloaded.
“We must go, Malcolm,” Zhaff said loud enough so that I could hear him over the rattling of the ship’s ducts and systems.
I looked down at the girl and said, “Don’t move.” She was crying, but she managed to nod.
I gritted my teeth. With the initial shock worn off, I was able to holster my gun and pull myself up by the ceiling so that I could get upright where my boots would work properly. Zhaff had accomplished that task far quicker.
We used whatever projections we could to pull ourselves forward. He made it look easier, and our suits helped, but there was no question that even his chiseled frame was struggling. For the moment, it didn’t make me feel any better seeing him display signs of weakness. I couldn’t help but wish I’d listened to him and exercised to get my muscles up to speed, but I think my unrelenting stubbornness was part of what helped me press on. I desperately didn’t want him to get the last laugh… if he could laugh.
“Graves, what’s going on?” Director Sodervall asked over the com-link with urgency. “Scanners have the Piccolo accelerating directly toward the station! Do not let that ship reach us or we will have to shoot it down!”
“We’re working on it!” I grated. It was an effort just to speak. My lungs felt like they were being squeezed inside a vise. “How long until impact?”
The director went silent, and before he could find an answer, Zhaff had one. “Twenty minutes and thirty-six seconds,” he stated.
“Yes… that,” the director grumbled. “You have fifteen, Malcolm. If you can’t find a way to stop it, you two better get your asses off that ship.”
“We’ll stop it,” I said. “You just don’t fire until you have no other choice.” I had no idea how we were going to do that, but it seemed like the right thing to say to get back onto his good side. Especially if we succeeded.
“This way,” Zhaff indicated.
We turned down a corridor, our bodies outstretched so we were holding on to the low ceiling with both hands and shuffling forward with our magnetized boots. We couldn’t move very hastily, and the clock in my head told me we weren’t going fast enough. The engine room was on the other end of the Piccolo.
My arms grew numb. My legs felt like they were back in the sewers of Mars, sloshing through a meter of shit. Zhaff built the distance between us with every reach, but I clenched my teeth and forced my body to keep pace. Maybe he could handle what was awaiting us on his own, but I wanted to be there. We were partners after all. I needed to prove he needed me if I planned on sticking around for longer than this mission.
I released the roar festering in my belly and pushed myself even faster. Zhaff glanced back, thinking I was injured, but I waved him to continue. I had been counting down in my head to try to ignore the pain, and by my calculations, we only had six minutes until Director Sodervall was going to give the order to blow the Piccolo into space dust.
We passed by another masked Ringer clinging to the wall, terrified. We ignored him. Zhaff clambered down a nearby staircase beyond which the rumble of the engines grew louder. We were getting close.
I followed him, but when we reached the bottom, Zhaff held on to the ceiling, completely still. The reddish light leaking through the entrance to the engine room up ahead revealed the body of one of the Pervenio officers we’d arrived with. A gruesome cluster of bullet holes punctured the center of his chest, with a deepening stream of blood leaking out and pooling against the base of the stairs.
“Not using non-lethal rounds anymore, I guess,” I wheezed.
“No,” Zhaff stated. He, too, sounded slightly winded. He reached down and drew his pulse- pistol before continuing onward. I would’ve done the same, but I needed both arms just to fight the forces of acceleration and move.
A minute or so later, we found another officer lying through the engine room entry. His corpse lay longways and jammed the inner and outer seal, leaving both a quarter open. Zhaff pulled himself toward the man and checked for a pulse.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 14
