A series of bangs rang out from the direction of the command deck. They were softer than the one that had preceded the ship’s staggering, but they sounded like gunshots, and not just from a single gun.
“Cora!” I yelled. I sprinted as fast as I could toward the central corridor, Desmond right behind me.
We popped out into the intersection and saw Captain Saunders sprinting toward us from the command deck. Cora was behind him, the g conditions slowing her down, but he had one hand around her wrist to help pull her along. With the other, he fired his pulse-pistol blindly over his shoulder. Two other Earthers ran alongside them. One was promptly struck in the back by a spray of automatic rounds and toppled onto his face.
Bullets whizzed by Desmond and me. I was just able to grab him and heave him back behind the corner as one zipped by his ear like an angry hornet from ancient Earth. He was in shock, and soon after, when the captain and Cora joined us around the corner, they were equally shaken. I grabbed Cora and pulled her close, but she couldn’t focus on me. Her eyes were glued open. Captain Saunders clutched the handle of his pistol, hands shaking. The other Earther hadn’t made it.
“Captain, what the hell’s going on?” Desmond asked, his voice cracking.
I would’ve asked the same thing if I could have mustered the words. Almost getting shot had my heart pounding, but seeing Cora so near the same fate had my legs faint. As I held her, I found that she was helping me stay upright as much as I was her.
“They came...” Captain Saunders panted. He sounded like he’d just run all the way around Pervenio Station. “They came through the viewport on the bridge. Fired right through the glass.” He paused to breathe again and then popped his pistol around the corner. “Bastards!” he yelled as he fired off more shots at whatever was down the hall.
“Who?” Desmond questioned.
“I don’t know! They’re in heavy armor and tinted visors. Three of them, I think. Got automatic pulse-rifles too.”
“Do we have any weapons?” I asked with urgency as the heavy footsteps of the attackers drew nearer. I knew it was a stupid question, but it was the first thing that popped into my head.
“This is a harvesting ship—what in Earth’s name do you think? This and some batons are it.” Captain Saunders gestured toward his pistol and then reached out to fire another shot. His features darkened when he heard the click indicating that the clip was empty.
“We should get everybody we can into the harvesting bay, then,” I said.
“Run?” Desmond said. “That’s just like you, Kale. We’ve got numbers.”
“Yeah—and fists.”
“Kale’s right,” Cora addressed the captain meekly. “We can lock the blast door down from the inside.”
Captain Saunders didn’t wait for any more opinions. “You heard her,” he said. “Let’s move!”
He sprinted back down the straight corridor toward the galley. Desmond grumbled something before following. I glanced back into Cora’s eyes to make sure she was ready. Every echoing footstep of the nameless invaders seemed to be making her shudder. She forced herself to nod, and I did the same before we fled.
“Everyone to the harvester bay!” Captain Saunders shouted as he ran past the dorms.
“What is it?” an Earther roaming the corridor asked.
“Emergency protocol! Let’s move, move!”
Ringers and Earthers poured out of their respective dormitories ahead. They stared at what was behind us, and I didn’t need to turn around to know our assailants must have rounded the corner. The faces of both races filled with dread before they all started sprinting down the hall. Three Earthers tried to help Culver up, but two of them were the ship’s security guards. They decided to drop the head mechanic and fell in behind John toward the harvester bay as soon as he exited the dorm. That left only one Earther with Culver, and we all blew by them.
The deafening clatter of pulse-rifle fire erupted, making the pipes running along the metal walls rattle and clang. Culver cried out in pain and collapsed with a thud. I didn’t risk looking back. I was slow under Earth-like g, and Desmond and Cora weren’t much faster, but they’d been working on the Piccolo longer than I had. Scrubbing canisters and controlled lifting we could handle, but Ringers weren’t built for sprinting while on Saturn. Plus, there’d been no opportunity to receive my standard-issued morning g-stim before getting to work.
The next turn in the passage led to the harvesting bay. It was a long, straight run away, especially with bullets peppering the walls and ceiling behind us. Even with the alarm continuing to cry, they were all I could hear. Hisses and snaps. Instruments of death all around me. I hadn’t pushed my legs so hard since the time my mother had caught me running foundry salts for Dexter when I was ten.
The captain yelped and smashed into the wall ahead of me. Turning my head to see what happened couldn’t have wasted much more than a millisecond, but it was enough of a hesitation for me to be hit as well. A bullet clipped the meaty part of my thigh, causing me to trip. I would’ve smashed my head on the floor if Desmond hadn’t caught me and dragged me to safety around the corner.
“You okay?” he gasped.
Exerting myself in high g had my heart racing so rapidly I thought my chest was going to explode. I could hardly breathe. My muscles burned like I’d been dipped in a vat of acid. Cora kneeled over me and frantically checked my injured leg. I couldn’t see straight enough to decipher her reaction to what she saw.
“There’s no blood,” she said. She was nearly as winded as the rest of the Ringers were.
I rubbed the area of the wound and brought my fingers close to my dizzy eyes. My leg hurt like I’d been hit with a hammer, but there was no blood.
A flurry of bullets struck the back wall of the adjacent hall. I forced myself to focus, and that was when I noticed that many of the bullets were bouncing back onto the floor. They were rubberized, flathead rounds, used on ships in space to prevent piercing the hull, or during riots when security didn’t want to kill anybody. Luckily, the bullet that’d hit me had done so in one of the few places on my slim Ringer body where there was some extra meat; otherwise, it might’ve shattered a bone.
“I’m fine,” I said, still catching my breath.
“Good,” Desmond said. “We’re close.” He grabbed my arm, groaning as he tried to lift me.
I pulled away and peered back around the corner as furtively as possible. Captain Saunders slumped over a cluster of conduits. His bloody head rested against the wall, and he wasn’t moving.
Beyond him, three attackers clad in heavy, powered armor marched down the hall, pulse-rifles in their hands. Half-sphere helmets enclosed their heads, with tinted visors that made it impossible to determine who they were. I tried to see what color the suits were to get an idea of what faction they might belong to—Pervenio, Venta Co, pirates—but the ship’s emergency lighting was too red to allow me to tell.
“Would you come on!” Desmond implored.
“Kale, what are you doing?” Cora asked. “We have to go.”
I knew I should listen, but just then, the captain’s eyelids fluttered. Because his fall hadn’t been stopped by human arms, he’d been knocked unconscious, but he still was breathing.
It seemed wrong to leave him out there with a faceless death squad bearing down on him. While I was trying to decide what to do, a hungover member of the Piccolo’s crew who’d been left behind stumbled out of the Ringer dorms right in front of the attackers. He didn’t make it far before a bullet caught him on the hip and sent him twisting through the air and into the wall.
The distraction was exactly what I needed. I fought every survival instinct in my body, held my breath, and plunged into the hall. I threw my arm under the captain’s broad shoulder and hauled him backward. The Earther’s body was heavy, especially while I was dealing with overstrained muscles and an injured leg I could hardly put any weight on. I was fortunate we didn’t have to get far. By the time the attackers noticed what was
happening, I’d dragged him to safety.
My leg suddenly gave out, and I staggered along with his body toward another wall. I was cramping all over. Breathing hurt so badly it felt like someone inside of me had a knife to my ribs. I moaned and grasped at my chest.
“Kale!” Cora yelled. She lunged forward and caught me. Captain Saunders slipped from my grasp, but Desmond reluctantly placed his arm under the captain’s shoulder to keep him upright.
“He wouldn’t have done the same for you,” he remarked.
There was no time to catch my breath. Cora and I joined Desmond in carrying the hefty captain, and we set off toward the harvesting bay together. Our three exhausted pairs of legs were going to have to do. Up ahead, I could see that the harvesting bay doors were open, but under the emergency lighting, it’d be impossible for anyone inside to tell who we were until we were closer. None of us had the energy to call out over the alarms.
The attackers were just coming around the nearest corner when a group of Earthers finally recognized us and ran out. I’d never been more grateful for them. Their strong arms grabbed hold of all of us and took the weight of the captain off our limbs. Bullet fire clattered again right before we were heaved into the harvester bay. The blast doors sealed shut behind us, and the ship’s alarms grew quiet.
Everyone in the harvesting bay stared while Cora, Desmond, and I crumpled to the floor, wheezing. I was relieved to finally give my legs a rest, but it still pained me to breathe. Cora was behind me, her arms wrapped around mine to keep me from tipping all the way onto my side.
A relatively equal split of Ringers and Earthers were present, only twenty or so altogether. The rest were either caught in the carnage outside, lying somewhere wounded, or dead. The Earthers who’d taken Captain Saunders from us carefully laid him on the floor in front of Doctor Orsini, who used a pile of dirty harvester rags to prop up his head.
Captain Saunders wasn’t exactly a friend, but we’d known each other for years. I couldn’t ever remember seeing him vulnerable. Blood trickled down the ends of his hair from a gash on his head, and Doctor Orsini used the cleanest cloth she could find to wipe it off, her hands trembling.
“He’s still breathing,” Doctor Orsini said.
“What happened?” John questioned, glaring in our direction. He sat near the captain against a rack of canisters, bandage still wound around his head.
“He got hit,” Desmond replied.
“You see who they are?”
Desmond shook his head.
“Soldiers, I think,” Cora said.
“Heavy armor... guns...” I panted. I pulled up my pants leg to reveal a welt the size of a cherry on the back of my calf. “They’re using nonlethal rounds.”
“Makes sense,” John said. “They don’t want to blow us all to bits.”
“Or they want us alive,” I said.
“For what?”
All I could manage was a shrug. I had no idea if or why they’d want that. Worst-case scenario, I’d heard rumors of a black-market slave trade that went on in the asteroid belt, where even the most influential corporations of the USF had trouble governing, and it could’ve reached Titan. Best-case scenario, our cold storage was being robbed of any gas we’d harvested, and our robbers were kind enough not to kill us, though any group smart enough to locate a ship in the middle of Saturn’s stormy atmosphere should have been smart enough to wait longer than a few days into a harvesting shift to hit it for that.
“Des!” Yavik yelled. His eyes were bloodshot from a night of sniffing salts. He shoved his way toward Desmond, pushing aside the Earthers. He offered to help his friend up, but Desmond seemed content on the floor.
“Lester?” Desmond asked.
Yavik frowned. “Too hungover to get up,” he said.
Desmond didn’t have a response.
“We’ve got to message for help,” John said. “Cora, are you okay?”
For a moment, it sickened me to think that he was pretending he cared about her after what he’d attempted in the galley, but then I remembered that, as XO, he was in charge with the captain unconscious. He needed her. Nobody else with enough knowledge of navigation or communications appeared to have made it.
She nodded.
He gestured toward a control console that secondarily governed the harvesting machinery in case of malfunction. “Good. Get onto that control console and...” He lost his train of thought. His mask of composure slipped away, and it became clear he was as petrified as the rest of us. “See if you can contact anybody. Pervenio Station, another harvester, hell, a luxury cruise liner—anything!”
“I don’t know the com-systems that well,” she replied.
He pounded on a canister. “Just do it, dammit!”
If I wasn’t still so exhausted, I would’ve said something. Cora gave my arm a squeeze to make sure I didn’t.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, smiling at me. It was a frail smile, barely noticeable, but it was enough to calm me. She released me and was helped over to the console by one of the less tired crew members. Once she was there, her fingers fluttered across the keys.
“How does it look?” John asked.
“Not good,” she replied as she continued to anxiously type away. “There’s another storm passing, and they’ve infiltrated our systems from the command deck. Main communications are down if we can even get something out with all the interference. It’ll take some time to find a workaround.”
“Get it done.”
“I didn’t sign up for this,” said a Ringer sitting with his arms around his knees by the harvesting tanks. He was new to the Piccolo.
“None of us did, yet here we are,” Desmond said. He finally accepted Yavik’s help up. “Never thought I’d die with a bunch of stinking mud stompers.”
“Why don’t you come say that to my face!” one of the Earther guards barked.
Desmond stopped and turned around. He still breathed so heavily I could see his chest heaving, but that didn’t stop him from jumping at a chance to fight. “Gladly,” he said. “Then I’ll toss you out to those fucks. Bet the cap'n will do the same to us once he comes to, just to save his ass.”
“Watch your mouth, ghost!”
“Quiet, all of you!” John ordered. He used a rack of canisters to pick himself up. “Captain’s out, which means I’m in charge. Both of you, all of you, get to barricading the blast door just in case. It might hold long enough for Cora on its own, but if it doesn’t, we need to buy time. I don’t feel like dying in here with any of you shits.”
Realizing he was right, everyone who was standing hopped to. I was still too tired to move, and my gaze left Cora to scan the room.
“The only equipment that’s mobile are canister racks,” I gathered the energy to say. “But they’re wearing powered armor out there, so it’ll only stop them for a few seconds, and tire us out.”
“So what would you have us do, Drayton?” John said. “We’ve got nothing to fight back with. Pervenio is our only shot at rescue.”
“I’m saying we figure out what they want. What if Cora can’t get a message out? They’re not killing us, so maybe we could just give it to them.”
John stormed toward me. Instinctually, I slid back along the floor until the wall stopped me. “The captain thanks you for getting him here, but right now, I’m giving the orders,” he bristled. “If you got any actual ideas then, by all means, tell me. Otherwise, shut the hell up and start emptying those racks so we can move them!”
Desmond appeared in front of me from out of nowhere. “Move the shit yourself,” he said to John. “We’re not wasting any more of our time listening to you.” He gestured for Yavik, and together they helped me up. They walked me past the XO, to the area around the console where Cora was working. One by one, all the other Ringers stopped working on the racks and followed our lead.
John’s fists were clenched. Who knows what he would’ve done if he wasn’t injured and terrified, but his cheeks turned bright red before he r
ubbed the wound on his head and exhaled. “Captain’s gonna hear about this when he wakes up,” he growled. “You’ll all be scrubbing the engine for the rest of the shift!”
“Haven’t you heard?” Desmond said. “Shift’s over.”
Nearly a half hour passed in silence; I couldn’t be exactly sure without a hand-terminal and didn’t bother asking. Barely a soul had spoken since Desmond’s last words. All I could hear was the steady rattling of worn air recyclers, the heavy breathing of twenty or so frightened people, and the constant clicking of Cora’s busy fingers as she tried to save us.
So far, she had no luck broadcasting our need for assistance. Sweat poured down her forehead and arms. I thought about walking over to encourage her a few times, but I didn’t want to distract her, and my leg was too sore for me to get up. Watching her and wishing for her to succeed was the best I could offer.
John and the Earthers had emptied the canister racks and shoved them in front of the blast door, so they were drained as well—all to buy us maybe a minute if the attackers were able to slice through the blast doors. In the rare case of toxic gas leaks, the harvesting bay was able to be sealed from either side. We’d secured it on our end, which meant that only Captain Saunders’s override code was supposed to be able to open it from the corridor.
The captain was conscious again, but he hadn’t uttered a word since coming to. I caught him staring at me a few times, but every time I did, he looked to the ground as if he were ashamed. I’m guessing one of the Earthers had informed him of who’d gone back to save him. It was the least I could do for the chance he’d given me, but I’m sure if I were a captain, I’d want to be the one saving my crew and not the other way around.
Presently, he was as useless as any of us except for Cora, and likely suffering from a concussion like the hotheaded XO sitting beside him. They were the only two people on the ship with leadership experience, and the XO had already alienated half of the remaining crew.
“Who raids a harvesting ship this old?” Doctor Orsini asked from across the room, breaking the unsettling silence. Everybody glared at her as if she’d just fired off a gun. Everybody except me. Hearing those words caused me to remember my initial thoughts upon receiving R’s message back on Titan.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 36
