He looked at Colleen. She had closed her eyes. Perhaps she prayed. The gods – if they existed – owed her.
The InShip Broadcast came to life. “Prepare for zero-g and evasive manoeuvres.”
“Oh, hell,” Telford said, and grabbed a spacesick bag. He held it up. “Get ready, everyone.”
At the admin position, Colleen sealed the Catastrophe Core hatch. Telford strapped himself in.
“I want a count,” she ordered.
Those in charge of passengers began ticking them off their checklists. Colleen began calling names of crew out, reading off the crewlist on her screen, and marking those present.
The GravGens went off-line, and everyone floated in their webbing. Colleen, meanwhile, had returned to her duty.
Then the ship began to spin slowly about its longitudinal axis. The GravGens made themselves felt again, and gravity returned at the maximum allowable rate.
“If they’re floating, he wants to cause accidents,” Colleen murmured to Telford. “Also to make them vomit, if possible.”
Vomiting in helmets would certainly incapacitate them. Telford felt his own stomach lurch as the GravGens cut out again. The ship began to tumble, end over end.
“Enemy has breached the ship proper,” came Jackson’s voice. The sound of weapons fire came through the headphones.
* * *
Sean and Doreen ran through the ship heading for Scout-1. The Damargs would board at any minute, and they needed time to get her ready to leave.
“This may be our last run together,” Sean murmured, low, but not low enough.
“If it is, then we go out together, as it should be,” Doreen replied.
“Didn’t mean you to hear that, Dor,” he said.
The hatch opened, and they hurried through. Sean sat himself in the Pilot’s chair, Doreen took co-pilot’s.
“Web in,” he warned her.
That way, only their arms would stay free, and he could engage in all but the most violent of manoeuvres. They put on the helmets that would lock to the seat, allowing them to turn their heads, but preventing them from breaking their necks should a sudden sideways thrust be too much for their muscles.
“Bridge, Scout-1. Ready to undock in one minute. How are things?”
“They’ve boarded us, Sean,” Clay told them. “Soon as you’re gone, we’re going to spin, kill grav, and go into a tumble. I guess I don’t have to tell you to go to full thrust and put as much distance between you and them as fast as you can.”
Sean flipped the switch that would put Scout-1 under its own power and drop the umbilicals. The detector screen went blank as it lost input from the ship. The NavTank showed the conditions that existed just before that happened. All three pirates lay to port.
“I’m going to eject you to starboard. Hopefully we’ll mask your departure for at least a few seconds. Get your shields up fast. At least you don’t have ours to worry about.”
That last came with some anger. Someone had sabotaged the shields. A criminal offence.
“Kicking you free ... now!”
The scoutship jolted sideways – not the easy ejection they usually felt. Sean adjusted its attitude so that they would angle away from the enemy yet not hit Blue Powder with their backwash.
“Ready?” he asked Doreen.
“Ready.” She held out her hand, and he took it.
The thrust flung them back in their seats. Sean’s vision started to blur, his sight narrowing down to a tunnel. He cut the thrust back to a manageable level to ensure before he wouldn’t pass out.
Beside him, he heard Doreen gasp.
“Shields up,” she said. “Pirate ship has us!”
Its detector signals overwhelmed their receiver at this close range, and the screen washed out. Now everything depended on whether or not the pirate had its beam weapons heated. Every second would see them further away from it, every second would increase the timelag between the time a pulse from the pirate’s detector left its antenna to the time it reflected off the scoutship, returned to the pirate and displayed in the ship.
“Blue Powder’s started its tumble,” Doreen said.
“That’ll give the pirates something to think about. They won’t be able to unload – and their people on board will be trapped inside.”
Sean hit the ventral thrusters and the ship jumped upwards even while continuing to accelerate. Then he began dodging in random directions, to try to throw off the enemy’s tracking.
“One of their ships has begun accelerating,” Doreen said, peering at the detector screen, which had begun to clear a little. With each second, the distance between them and their enemy grew, lessening the percentage of the detector beam targeting them that hit their own receivers.
“Won’t be able to catch us,” Sean said. Thrusters threw them sideways, and he thanked the helmet fastener for protecting him. He hadn’t done anything even remotely like this in fourteen years, not since the rescue run through the asteroid field at Erin.
The shields flared.
“They got us.” He hit starboard thrusters, and the shields went quiescent for a moment before flaring again.
“We’re two thousand kilometres from them,” Doreen reported, “and opening the range.”
Sean flung them about, dodging, trying to keep the beam from holding them long enough to do damage to the shields. It took another five minutes before his evasive manoeuvres allowed the weakening shields to start to recover.
“They still have us pinned at seven thousand kilometers,” Sean said, as the beam hit them once more. “They must have excellent fire-control systems.”
“We’ve already passed one hundred percent of recommended insertion velocity,” Doreen warned.
“I know.”
“We’ll run out of fuel if we keep expending it at this rate.”
“I know that, too, but acceleration complicates their target acquisition.” He reduced thrust by one g, and the shields ceased their flare. A second later they flared again, and he jolted up and sideways.
“We’re not going to make it.”
“We will,” he replied. “Get ready for jump.”
She looked at him, horrified. “That will kill us.”
He cut the thrust, and they breathed easier for a moment. “I’m turning her around.”
He aimed forty degrees away from the pirate and hit full thrust, slamming them back in their seats once more.
“Tell me when we drop to one hundred percent recommended insertion velocity.”
The distance between them and the pirate increased more slowly.
“Now.”
He spun the scout around jinked sideways about three times as long as normal, then killed the shields.
“Jump.”
They slammed into hyperspace.
“Didn’t think we’d make it,” Doreen gasped out.
“Never doubted it for a moment,” Sean lied to her.
They both began to laugh with reaction.
“Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
Blue Powder spun and tumbled.
“Why’s he doing this?” Ms Pendleton asked, looking like she wanted to give up the contents of her stomach.
“Makes it difficult for the pirates to latch on.”
“One passenger missing,” the purser called out. “Passenger Korsh.”
Telford closed his eyes. It made all the sense in the world.
Yvonne Yrden spoke. “Teemo thought it might be Korsh,” she said, just loud enough for Colleen and Telford to hear. “He sent me to the Catastrophe Core because he said that we might need the chief engineer later. And, besides, he said, he felt responsible.” She looked haunted. “Now I know why.”
“Enemy on the crew deck,” came a voice from the bridge.
Which meant they had gotten past Pelburn and Cosgrove. A coldness began to seep through Telford, and he recalled Liberty Station fourteen years previous. An old life, now forgotten, he had thought. But, no, the Telford of that time
had returned. He exchanged a glance with Colleen, and he could see the killer in her coming forth, too. Good. He would need help.
Perhaps twenty minutes later, the ship stabilized and gravity returned.
“They’ve taken Engineering,” Colleen surmised. She tried to contact Teemo, but received nothing in return.
Teemo had impressed everyone when he joined the Family. Good natured, fun to be around, and a good engineer. Bev Yrden, now sitting in the back of the Catastrophe Core would be heartbroken had anything happened to him. Telford swallowed a curse, but heard it anyway.
Shocked that he had said it aloud, he looked to Colleen, but she gave no indication of having heard. He then realized that she had uttered it, not him. Same word, same time.
“I told him what would happen,” she said.
“Told who?”
“Korsh. If anyone threatened me or my Family. I told him.”
“You picked it up in your day cabin?”
She opened her jacket to show him the two-edged knife that she had used to good effect on Liberty Station. He patted his own jacket in response.
“Oh, hell,” Colleen whispered. She pointed at the screen.
Telford looked. It showed the area just outside the Catastrophe Core. A dozen armed figures had taken up station. Two tried to work the hatch. They failed, but remained there.
“Too many,” Telford said. Nothing they could do against a dozen that wouldn’t get them killed, and give the raiders more hostages than they would know what to do with – or, worse, access to those same in order to remove all witnesses.
“Damn,” Colleen muttered.
“Now what?”
“Comm from the bridge gone – I didn’t notice when it went.”
They sat, unable to do anything, hoping against hope that the raiders would just leave once they got what they came for.
The InShip Broadcast clicked on and everyone heard Clay’s voice saying, “Korsh? You?” followed by the characteristic snick of a needler. Someone cried out, and then the InShip cut off.
Colleen blanched.
“Dad!” she heard Brian’s anguished voice behind her.
Then the InShip came on again, but instead of hearing one of theirs, they heard Korsh’s voice speaking in Damarg.
Two hours later, all but two of the raiders left the hall outside the Catastrophe Core. Those two set up chairs and waited, long arms over their laps.
Then the ship began to accelerate, and everyone felt the jump to hyperspace.
For a time, everyone sat in shocked silence. Telford gathered his thoughts. He had to play this just right, needed to avoid shocking Colleen to the point of incapacitation.
“Mr Yrden’s not in control of the ship,” he stated.
“Agreed. He would have let us know.”
Telford nodded. She seemed composed enough. “Therefore, the pirates are taking us somewhere they can loot the ship at their leisure. That means that Scout-1 got away.”
Colleen stared at him, eyes boring into his.
He waited for her to speak, hoping against hope that she would not collapse, leaving him alone to do what they must do.
“That means we have to retake the ship before they drop out of hyperspace at their destination.”
A slow smile came to his face. “My thinking, too.”
She indicated the door monitor with her chin. “Only two out there.”
He shook his head. “We’d never make it. Soon as we open the door, we’re faced with guns – and only one of us can get out at a time.”
“Not my point. If you had fifty or more – I think that closer to one hundred boarded us – how many would you leave on guard? If Korsh is one of them, he knows how many people we have on board. Including passengers, we’ve near two hundred in here.”
He studied the door monitor. The raiders had taken off their helmets. No need of them, and they must have been hot inside. Damargs. Figured.
“I’d have two, just like they do. Enough to keep each other awake; enough to give warning should we attempt to get out. It’s an airlock. We open the inside door and a red light comes on out there.”
Colleen frowned. “They must work in shifts.”
She did a capture and blew up the faces of the two Damargs. Good thinking. They only needed to watch for a couple of shifts and see how many Damargs rotated through.
In the mean time...
“Yvonne, Gerard,” Colleen called over her two most senior crewmembers.
“Yes?” They unstrapped and came to her.
“We have to organize. We have people to feed, to keep occupied, to stop from doing anything stupid. Have our crew start getting meals from below decks. Things are going to get tense, and we don’t have anyone from Security besides Mr Telford here. Washroom privilege is going to become a sore point. Too many people, not enough stalls. We have to keep on top of the situation at all times.”
Gerard kept his voice low. “What are we going to do? They have to be taking us somewhere.”
Points for the Cargo master; he had figured it out, too.
“Mr Telford and I are going out there eventually. We hope to retake the ship.”
Their eyes widened.
“What can you do where Security with guns failed?” Yvonne asked.
“They wouldn’t have left their full boarding party on Blue Powder,” Colleen explained. “Question is, how many did they leave? And we know the ship; they don’t. Mr Telford and I will do a reconnaissance. If there are too many, then we’ll think of another plan. Those left, they’ll be separate – some on the bridge, some in engineering, some sleeping, some on guard duty.”
“They still have guns, and you don’t” Gerard said.
“Until we kill the first one,” Colleen replied.
Telford almost laughed at their expressions. Over the last fourteen years, they had forgotten who Colleen had been. None, other than Clay, had observed the sparring matches she regularly indulged in. None saw the killer in her the way he did. And she recognized the same in him. Not that either wanted to kill but, given the necessity, they would do it without a second thought.
“Listen up, everyone,” Colleen called out to passengers and crew. “We’re going to organize meals. Looks like we’ll be in here for a while. Don’t worry; we have something planned. But it will take a little time. And our scoutship got away; we’ll soon have rescue ships looking for us.”
That might fool the passengers, but the crew knew better. One day in hyperspace, and they could sit out somewhere in deep space and no one would ever find them. And it would take more than one day for the scoutship to get to Rossiya or Fandaff and then return with help. They could be light-years away by then – in any direction.
Conversation started, but Colleen hadn’t finished.
“Your acceleration chairs recline; sleep if you can. We’d prefer you keep strapped in as much as possible, in case they go zero-g on us. But that’s not an order. Children need to play, people need to eat, to use washrooms. Crew will answer any questions they can.”
While the crew brought up ready-meals from the storage room on the deck below the passenger portion of the Catastrophe Core, Colleen and Telford made their plans.
“Shift change,” Telford said as movement in the door monitor caught his attention. They did a capture of the new faces. “Looks like approximately four hour shifts.”
Four and one half hours later, the shift changed again.
“First two,” Colleen commented.
“Which means they only have four guards. No other reason for onerous duty like that. If they’ve been likewise stingy with other areas, we have a chance.”
“We give it half an hour, give those relieved time to get to the cafeteria to eat, or to go somewhere to sleep.” Colleen touched her side where her knife resided. “First thing, we go to Security. If they have the rest of the crew locked up in the brig, we free them. That’ll give us some back-up.”
Telford saw the logic of that, but disagreed. If they
found no one there, would that cause an adverse reaction in Colleen? He needed her able to fight.
“I think that we should—”
“Security first, Adrian,” she insisted.
“Yes, Ms Yrden.”
Though encouraged to rest, people moved about. Colleen and Telford stood up and gave their places over to Yvonne and Brint.
They slipped into the galley area, then down to the below decks storage. There they walked to the second airlock. A quick look at the door monitor showed no one in the passage.
Colleen gave him a wolfish smile. “Let’s go hunting, Mr Telford.”
CHAPTER 27
Blue Powder
Colleen followed Telford out the airlock, through the door to the companionway. She looked back as the door closed behind them. On it, the warning, ‘Sewage: Breathing Apparatus Required Beyond This Point’, made her smile.
Telford had gained a little weight over the years, but she still admired the feline grace with which he moved.
A vision of him, knife in hand, stalking down the hallways of Liberty Station, her at his side, came back to her. The old clarity of mind, kill or be killed readiness, returned as if it had never left. And behind it, carefully banked, the towering rage at Korsh and those who had invaded her ship fuelled her.
Telford motioned with his head, and she slipped against the left-hand wall, while he did the same on the right. They inched forward, each looking the other way, as they approached the crosscut. Nothing.
They flitted across, and continued down the hall, neither of them hearing the door opening behind them.
“Adrian!”
They both spun at the sound of Ms Pendleton’s shout. The Damarg spun, too, his gun coming up, and level.
Telford lunged for him, but his knife struck only after the bullet had cut down Mary Pendleton.
Colleen winced, the crash of the gun making her ears ring. Telford pulled it from the dead Damarg’s grasp, and handed it to her. He ran back to the fallen woman. Colleen backed up carefully, looked each way down the crosscut, and then joined him.
One Trade Too Many Page 22
