One Trade Too Many

by D. A. Boulter

  One look told a terrible story.

  Red bubbles flecked Mary Pendleton’s lips, and a stain of the same colour spread across her shirt.

  Using his knife, Telford cut away at the garment, and placed his hand tightly against the wound in her chest.

  She opened her eyes and a trembling smile came to her. “You’re alright?”

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry, we’ll get you to safety.”

  But she had closed her eyes again.

  “Damn,” Telford whispered.

  “Get her to Gunther,” Colleen said. “I’m going for Security before anyone can react to that sound. Meet me there.”

  “Damn it, Ms Yrden—”

  “Just go.”

  He picked up the unconscious woman and hurried back the way they had come. She turned and retraced her steps up to the door where the Damarg had appeared. She pressed the plate, and it swished open. Gun ready, she moved in, low. Nothing. Or, rather, no one.

  And she met no one else on her way to security, where she found the brig empty. No guards, no prisoners. Something inside her collapsed. That meant one of three things. No one outside the Catastrophe Core had survived the taking of Blue Powder, or those that had were either under guard as they did their duties, or no longer on Blue Powder at all. She checked Security’s arms locker. Empty. She shoved the gun Telford had taken from the dead Damarg under her belt.

  Hearing soft footsteps outside in the corridor, Colleen stepped out to join Telford, only to find herself face-to-face with a Damarg raider.

  He went for his sidearm; she went for his throat with her blade. The gun dropped to the floor as life fled with the spurting arterial blood.

  Colleen dragged the body into Security, picked up the gun and headed back to find Telford.

  * * *

  The chances of Pendleton surviving, Gunther told him, were directly proportional to the speed with which they could get her to his operating theatre.

  “There are Damargs out there, Doctor Yrden.”

  “And she will die if she stays here.”

  “I’ll carry her,” Pilot Derek Yrden said.

  “Nurse Avery?” Gunther looked at him, and the nurse nodded.

  “I’m with you, Doctor,” he said.

  Together, the four of them slipped back out, Telford leading the way. They met Colleen coming back.

  “What the hell?”

  “We need to get her to sickbay, Colleen,” Gunther Yrden said. “I need to operate immediately if she’s to live.”

  “We can’t stick around to guard you. Someone’s going to wonder where their comrades went.”

  Telford’s gaze dropped to the knife she held in her hand. Although wiped clean, she still had blood on her hand. Her other hand held a pistol, but not the one he had taken from his Damarg. He looked at the needler she held, and nodded grimly.

  She handed him the gun.

  They made sickbay without encountering any more Damargs. Derek laid Ms Pendleton down on the operating table, while the doctor and nurse began to scrub.

  “Give me a knife, and I’ll stand guard,” Derek said.

  Telford let out a small laugh, and handed him the needler instead. “Better this. You know how to use one?”

  “I know.”

  And he did. All pilots and traders trained with weapons – just in case. If it hadn’t been policy before Erin and Liberty Station, it had soon become that.

  “Try to get them when they come inside sickbay. Not good to have a body in the hallway when you want to disguise the fact that there’s anyone here at all. Keep it quiet. That’s why you get the needler and we keep the loud one.”

  Derek nodded. Telford left him to it. He turned to Colleen.

  “Security?” he asked.

  “No one there.”

  “Engineering or bridge” he asked, wanting to get her mind off the possibilities. Chances that her husband survived on ship: next to nil. Had he, they would have used him to get her to open the Catastrophe Core. He gave that a second thought. Or not. The Catastrophe Core made a good prison. Although Korsh had occupied it many times, he’d never gone down into the storeroom – at least that Telford knew of – and thus had remained unaware of the second exit. The lack of a guard there proved that.

  “Engineering,” Colleen said. “I want two needlers for when we try to retake the bridge. I don’t want to fire this,” she patted the gun in her belt, “in there.”

  “No, I guess not.” Not only that, if they cleared the ship before going to the bridge, a Damarg call for help on the InShip would bring no one.

  As they walked down the long hallway towards Engineering, they came across a pool of drying blood. Telford swore. He knelt down to look at it.

  “That’s a lot of blood.”

  Colleen’s eyes narrowed. “I’m going to kill every single one of them.”

  Telford believed her. “You might want to rethink that, Ms Yrden.”

  She glared at him. “Going soft, Mr Telford?”

  He winced internally. When alone together, she rarely addressed him formally.

  “If they’ve taken your husband and the others off this ship, you’ll want some to interrogate.” He let her think on that a moment. “Can’t get much information out of a dead body.”

  Colleen rose back up. “Thank you, Adrian. I guess I won’t kill them all ... yet.”

  “Looks like this is where they entered Engineering,” Colleen said quietly, looking at a door that had a somewhat circular hole burned through it. “I wonder what they used to do that.”

  Colleen bent down to step through the hole, but Telford touched her on the shoulder. “You want to go in now, or hunt for their relief?”

  She stopped and considered that. “In now. Then we’ll wait for their relief to show up. One’s bound to be in the control booth. He’ll be hardest.”

  He nodded, and she stepped through. He followed. Once in the main engine room, they saw two of the Damargs. Colleen pointed at one, then at Telford, then the other, and indicated herself.

  They would have to take them together. Each one would notice the other going down. Telford went to the left, Colleen to the right.

  The Damargs stood before equipment with manuals in front of them, perhaps trying to figure out how to operate the unfamiliar pieces. Telford’s Damarg didn’t notice anything until he received the knife blade through the ribs and the arm around the neck at the same time. He grunted. The other Damarg looked up, and had begun reaching for his weapon when he gave a short scream.

  Colleen pulled her bloody blade from him, and that Damarg collapsed to the deck. Telford gave her a quick nod of the head. Together they went to the control booth.

  “My turn,” Telford said. He opened the door and fired three shots from the needler he’d taken from his victim.

  “Well, the Engine Room is ours,” he said. “What next? Bridge? Search the ship?”

  “Let’s wait here for shift change. If they’re on the same schedule as the guards, it should be about two hours. We can take them as they come in.”

  Telford frowned. “I don’t know. We killed two of the relief already. Are they from Engineering, the bridge, the guards, someone else? The longer we wait, the more likely someone discovers them missing. Then they’ll start a search. What happens when they get to sickbay? What happens if they seal the bridge?”

  Colleen pressed her lips together.

  “Good point. Let’s take out the guard and get some reinforcements. Then we take the bridge. Once we have that, we can have our people sealed in there, leaving us free to hunt down the rest – however many they left for us.”

  The guards died together, neither one even rising from his seat. Telford waved at the camera, and Yvonne opened the airlock for them.

  “I’ll take one of those guns, and we’ll take over Engineering,” she said after Colleen had explained the situation. “We’ll take care of whatever relief comes our way.”

  She left with three of her people.

&nbs
p; Pilot Al Waxton and Brint Yrden came with them, and they took the bridge by storm. The three fools making up the Bridge Crew hadn’t even closed the hatch to the bridge, let alone sealed it. They had expected anything but an attack.

  “Someone bled a lot here,” Al said, pointing to a pool of drying blood on the deck.

  Colleen didn’t look. “Al, see if you can figure out where we are. Find a safe place to drop and then do so – but at a dead stop. Don’t forget we have a casualty in sickbay, with Gunther operating on her. Then set course for Rossiya. They have the closest hospital – in case we need it. But be careful, we don’t want to come out of jump into the same situation as last time. Again, no acceleration until cleared to do so by Gunther.”

  Al nodded. “Only hyperspace acceleration. Got it.”

  “Oh, and seal the bridge after we go.”

  “Right.”

  The bridge door sealed behind them.

  “We have a choice, again, Ms Yrden,” Telford said. “We can wait for shift change, or we can go on a hunt.”

  “Let’s hunt. We don’t know how many there are, but we can pretty well count on most of them being awake and ready to go at shift change. If we can find some of them sleeping, so much the better.”

  A reasonable idea. “So, where would you sleep if you needed to relieve someone on the bridge?”

  She looked at him. “Captain’s Day Cabin. There’s a bunk in there, and it’s only steps to the bridge in case of problems.”

  The Damarg within rose out of bed as the door slid open. His hand reached for the weapon on the chair by the bed when he saw humans instead of a Damarg. Colleen shot him through the neck, and he collapsed.

  “One more down. That makes eleven,” Telford said. “Let’s see if we can clear the administrative area and lock it down, then finish with the crew deck.” He motioned to the InShip comm. “Call up the bridge and have them change the passcodes on the doors. Our override will work, but any cards that the Damargs got off of our people will fail to work. If some of them are on other decks, we’ll isolate them.”

  As long as they kept moving, Colleen would have no time to think about the missing crew – especially her husband. Telford just hoped that she could keep it together until they had finished mopping-up operations.

  “Trader’s Office?” he asked after she had disconnected from the bridge.

  “Trader’s Office,” she confirmed.

  The Damarg within went for his weapon as soon as the door opened. Telford cut him down, and scooped up his needler.

  “They all have the same basic weaponry,” he said, examining the gun. It could mean something – organization. Or it could merely mean that they’d raided a shipment of small arms.

  “Let’s go.”

  Telford stepped back out into the companionway, and then dropped to the deck, a burning in his left arm. The snick of the needler told him that the Damarg who had seen him had fired again. He rolled over until he hit the opposite bulkhead.

  Colleen fired from the doorway, and the Damarg dropped, too, but he fired again, the needle clicking off the bulkhead where Colleen had stood a second before.

  Telford emptied his pistol at the fallen Damarg, and heard a harsh cry of pain. Colleen reappeared and fired her pistol into the prone form until it stopped moving.

  Telford examined his bloody arm, and cursed.

  “Is it serious, Adrian?”

  “Don’t think so. Let’s get a first-aid kit. I don’t want to bleed over everything.”

  She tenderly disinfected and then bandaged his forearm, occasionally looking up at him, to make sure she hadn’t caused him pain. She had, but he didn’t show it. And his stomach jumped when she touched him, and when she looked up at him like that. If Clay Yrden had gotten himself killed...

  “Let’s go,” he said brusquely, wiping the other thought from his mind.

  “They left a bridge crew of three,” she said.

  “And we killed three near the bridge. That might be it for the area.”

  She laughed. “Or it might not.”

  They found no one else on the crew deck.

  “The holds,” Colleen said.

  Telford breathed in and let it out in a long sigh. Too many places to hide in the holds.

  “Perhaps we should just evacuated them of air,” he said.

  “We still have no prisoners,” she replied. “And they might have our people in there.”

  He nodded grimly, and headed for the most dangerous part of the ship.

  They started with Hold Number 4.

  “Damn them all to hell,” Colleen said. “They took our ore shipment – the rare earths. Well, most of it, at least.”

  “Valuable?”

  “Very.”

  “Could be worse,” he said.

  “How?”

  “They could have had the whole ship.”

  Hold Number 3 still held most of its goods intact. As did Hold Number 2. Telford looked at Colleen.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Scout-1 got away ... we think. Might have made them change their minds about emptying our holds at Waypoint 2.”

  The hatch to Hold Number 1 stood open. The two exchanged glances. Telford eased through it, and went to his right. Colleen went left. They moved quietly, slowly, scanning all around for any motion, listening for any sound.

  The Damarg hit him like a moving wall. Knife and gun went flying, and Telford felt the air rush out of his lungs as his opponent rammed him against the bulkhead. He fought back with everything he had, punching to the head and body, but the Damarg took every blow he gave it, and came back for more. The wound to his left forearm bothered him, but he tried to ignore the pain.

  They crashed together to the deck, holding onto one another, each trying to get an arm free for a punch.

  The Damarg collapsed on him, and Telford looked up to Colleen standing above them. She’d used the butt of her gun on the Damarg’s head.

  He pushed his way from under the dead weight, trying to get his breath back. He needed to exercise more.

  She reached down to help him up. Their hands met and, as she pulled him to his feet, the ship dropped from hyperspace. He felt the euphoria flow through him, saw Colleen’s eyes widen, heard her gasp.

  “Didn’t expect that,” he said, trying to lock in his memory the touch, the feeling, the sensations that charged his every cell. He had dropped linked to her! A dream come true, but a dream for different circumstances. He released her hand.

  “No. Me neither.”

  He looked down at the unconscious Damarg. “Well, there’s your prisoner. What shall we do with him? Carry him back to the brig?”

  “And what if we meet more on the way? No, I have a better idea.”

  Together they dragged him to the shuttle bay’s airlock.

  “You’re going to space him?” Surely her anger couldn’t have reached that level of callousness, to allow her that brutality.

  “No.”

  He helped her stuff the Damarg into the lock and closed the door.

  “Now we’re going to evacuate the air from the shuttle bay,” she told him.

  He understood. With vacuum on either side of the lock, and no EVA suit – or emergency suit – awake or unconscious, the Damarg would stay put. He would have to do that or die.

  “Let’s check on Sickbay,” Telford said. He shuddered at the thought of being trapped in an airlock, vacuum on either side of him. Colleen nodded as she watched the air pressure indicator for the shuttle bay drop.

  “Good enough. If he does try to escape this way, he’ll go unconscious, but not die.”

  Near the door to the sickbay, Colleen stopped and engaged the InShip comm. She dialed into the Sickbay. Derek answered.

  “We’re just outside, coming in,” Colleen said.

  “Come ahead. All clear. Thanks for warning me.”

  And the warning might have saved their lives. Inside, they saw a dead Damarg on the deck.

  “He tried to come in,” Derek said. He
didn’t look at the body. “I threw up.”

  “Afterwards,” Telford stated.

  “Afterwards.”

  “You did well. How’s Ms Pendleton?”

  “You’ll have to ask Doc.”

  Gunther appeared. “I’ve done the best I can, but she needs hospital care. It’ll be touch and go. How soon can we get moving?”

  They all felt the nausea of jump.

  “I think that answers your question, Gunther,” Colleen said.

  The comm chimed.

  “Sickbay,” Colleen answered and put it on speaker.

  “Colleen?” they heard Yvonne’s voice.

  Telford tensed. They had left them basically alone there in Engineering.

  “Yes,” she said, sharp and curt.

  “We got one of them,” Yvonne reported, and Telford relaxed inwardly. Then he tensed again. “And we found Teemo, and Jerry Parsons. They didn’t make it. Damargs dumped them into a spare parts room. Bastards.”

  “We’ve cleared the crew deck and bridge, the holds, and everything on the passenger deck ahead of the demarcation line,” Colleen told the engineer. “We’re going to do a sweep through the passenger deck now.”

  She signed off, and they went out. Telford gave Derek a pat on the arm. He had moved the body out of the way, and covered it with a sheet so the pilot wouldn’t have to look upon what he had done.

  They found no one else. No more Damargs, no more bodies of their crewmembers, and no one locked up in any out-of-the-way place. Clay, Minda, and the rest had just disappeared.

  Back at the Catastrophe core, Colleen addressed the occupants. “We control the ship now.”

  Cheers broke out. Brian stared at his mother, and Telford noted that his eyes went to the blood on her sleeve. He should have suggested that she change. He had blood on him, too. Some of it Damarg, some his own.

  “We’re headed for Rossiya as fast as we can. Ms Pendleton remains in critical condition.” The smiles faded. “Now, we’re going to ask all passengers to remain in the Catastrophe Core for a couple more hours. We – the crew – need to make the place ship-shape again.”

  In other words, clean up the blood, remove the Damarg bodies to a holding area, and prevent their guests from seeing anything untoward.