by Greg Mutton
‘I have done this A-Bra-Ham.’
‘Good, there is a yellow button on the lower right part of the panel.’
‘I have it.’
‘OK, that will depressurise the cabin… just press it; all the air in the cabin will be drained into the tanks.’
‘Yes, I have pressed it.’
‘When the light on the top of the panel turns red, all the air has drained and you can open the door.’
‘Yes,’ Mondrac replied as the door opened, ‘I have done this A-Bra-Ham.’
As Mondrac stepped through, Aaron moved aside and let him into the ship’s airlock. Aaron stepped back into the pod, opened a storage locker and took out two cylinders. ‘Collapsible stretchers, we may need them.’ Together they raced toward the nearest emergency passage, looking for a way down the three levels to where the victims were.
‘Here!’ Aaron cried as he wrenched a door open. Mondrac consulted his data pad and agreed. Inside the door was a stairwell, thankfully not an emergency ladder. Even with the greatly diminished gravity on the ship, Aaron didn’t like the idea of having to haul two dead weights up a ladder; stairs would be bad enough. The lower gravity might be a help on the return journey but trying to go down was a real pain.
Aaron suddenly had an idea — he climbed over the stair rail and pushed himself down with all his strength. Three floors in three seconds, he thought as he grabbed the railing on the floor he wanted. Mondrac joined him moments later. Next, they forced the emergency door open, taking precious seconds to find something to prop it open, a fire extinguisher finally doing the trick.
Again Mondrac looked at the pad; three doors down the corridor and on their right should find their target; a small chamber at the rear of the bridge.
I don’t like being the bearer of bad news but I think you should hurry, Petra’s voice sounded inside their helmets. We just detected three vessels heading this way, at extreme sensor range, but they seem to be moving quickly.
‘It never rains…’ Aaron grumbled to himself as they reached the door. He stopped, looked at Mondrac and drew one of his blasters. ‘Just in case,’ he explained and kicked the door in. Unconscious on the floor, were the two survivors. Aaron grabbed the med-kit he had strapped to his thigh and took out the sensor unit, powering it up as Mondrac connected a new oxygen tank to each survivor. He quickly ran the sensor head over them.
‘Not good,’ he said to himself, ‘severe oxygen depletion, hypothermia… life signs are very weak… they’re both in comas. We’re going to have to carry them back.’ He took one of the canisters he had brought, opened it and lay out the contents, Mondrac doing the same with the other. The two stretchers were quickly assembled and, to Aaron’s pleasure, both had small anti-grav units in the kit. Once each victim was securely fastened to a stretcher, Aaron activated the anti-gravs and the stretchers both floated off the floor.
‘Mondrac, can you get these two back to the pod?’
‘Yes, A-Bra-Ham; but what are you going to do?’
‘The bridge… if I can access their data core, we could get a few more answers.’
Mondrac could see the reasoning. ‘Time may be the issue.’
Aaron nodded and called the ship. ‘Junior, how far out are our visitors?’
Tocmal answered, fifteen of your minutes… we have identified them… Galdorans. Aaron could almost feel the anger in Tocmal.
‘This is going to be real tight. Mondrac, we better get going.’
Mondrac nodded and started to push the two stretchers out of the room. Aaron turned in the opposite direction; ten metres further down the corridor was the entrance to the bridge. As he reached the doorway, he saw the faint red glow of the emergency lighting indicating the door was open. He turned just in time to see Mondrac disappear up the stair well. He stepped onto the bridge.
The story in here was different: five bodies lay sprawled, still strapped in at their stations. Aaron felt a cold shiver run down his spine; he had only ever needed to board a dead ship once before and that memory still haunted him. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, turned to the main computer access control and tapped the power button. He was in luck — the backup power supply still had a little life in it. He quickly searched the system for the data core and found it attached to the base of the command chair.
Aaron moved to the chair, unbuckled the captain’s body and moved it aside, his mind screaming for him to get out, as the body floated away. He resisted… I’ve got to get the core. He lifted the cushion from the seat; there was a code pad, still powered but, without the code, he couldn’t access the core. ‘How long, Junior?’
Eight minutes until they are in firing range… get moving! Petra said urgently
He stood, trying to figure out a way to break the code but there would be over ten million possible combinations. Two minutes gone… Aaron thought, as he drew one of his blasters… no time for finesse, brute strength is all I’ve got. He set the weapon to a very fine beam and started cutting the seat off the base; it fell away, exposing the core and its connections.
Aaron grabbed the main connector, ripped it out and used the blaster to cut away the four bolts securing the core to the base. It floated slightly, free of its enclosure. He grabbed it and started for the door knowing he was racing against time. He tore up the stairs, leaping from one landing to the next, the weight of the core negligible in the near-zero gravity. As he reached the last floor, Tocmal’s voice entered his helmet, his tone cold and impassive.
A-Bra-Ham, I have a passive lock on all three Galdoran ships. Do I have your permission to fire?
‘Not yet…how long?’
Two minutes.
‘As soon as the pod leaves, they’ll see it but Junior will still be invisible. Have they powered their weapons?’
In truth I do not know; we are only using passive sensors but their output seems to indicate they have. They haven’t raised their shields yet though.
Aaron stopped to think… no shields… why have weapons powered and not shields? Then it hit him. ‘Tocmal, how long before they reach optimum effective range?’
Another six minutes, why?
‘OK, that gives us what… eight minutes? They’re here to destroy the evidence, and I’ll bet they won’t waste energy firing from extreme range. They’ll need to make sure, so I believe they’ll wait until their weapons will have the most effect and they won’t need shields to protect from debris.’ Aaron started walking towards the airlock. ‘The instant we fire up the pod, we’ll be visible, and a sitting duck. No, we’ll wait until they reach their firing point, then we’ll detach from the ship. At that time you have permission to fire, agreed?’
Agreed, Tocmal replied, a little too enthusiastically.
Aaron walked the last few metres to the pod, secured the ship’s door and cycled the pod’s airlock. He placed the core into a storage cupboard behind the passenger seats, and moved to the control panel, re-established the pods atmosphere and waited for the tell-tale to change. He moved to the two patients, running the instruments over them again.
“Still in comas but their oxygen levels are climbing, I think they’ll make it.’ Aaron dialled the oxygen concentration back and took his seat at the controls, Mondrac taking the one beside him. ‘You heard?’
‘Yes, A-Bra-Ham… unfortunately, I have no other solution and we will be the aggressors in this encounter.’
‘Yeah an encounter in a dead realm with an adversary who isn’t supposed to have the technology to get here; an adversary with no valid reason to destroy that ship, and that ship is from our realm and should have no way to reach here, either. I think we can leave it to history to sort that out. All I want to do is get out of here in one piece.’
A-Bra-Ham… Tocmal was almost whispering in anticipation… one minute until they reach their optimum firing point.
‘Thanks, we’re ready,’ Aaron replied, adding to Mondrac with an amused grimace, ‘Sounds like the little guy is enjoying this, a little too much.’
Mondrac nodded, ‘Reglaons are very passionate creatures.’
Aaron disengaged the docking clamps and let the small craft slowly drift away from the derelict, hoping they looked like a piece of wreckage. He slowly turned onto a heading for Junior and stabilised the pod’s attitude. He looked back to Junior; it was moving slowly. Petra was giving Tocmal the best firing solution she could. Aaron checked the time again, thirty seconds. He started his mental count down.
It was as if he’d choreographed the whole thing. As his mind reached zero, Junior opened fire. The Galdoran ships opened fire and Aaron pushed the little pod’s throttle to maximum. It accelerated quickly. So too did the torpedos from the Galdoran ships. The pod may have been sturdy but it had no shields, only forward and lateral deflectors which weren’t designed to withstand the onslaught about to rain down on it. The pod also didn’t have much of a sensor array so Aaron was flying blind; he couldn’t track the progress of the Galdoran weapons. He cut propulsion and turned the ship through 180 degrees, to face the Tellurian derelict.
Now, to his far right, he could see the track of the weapons; he increased power to the deflectors and watched. Two seconds later, twelve torpedos slammed into the hulk in a spectacular explosion. Debris flew out in all directions, scattering any evidence over a huge area, some of it heading toward the pod. ‘Here it comes… brace yourself!’ Aaron shouted.
A large amount of wreckage was on course to hit them.
‘There’s too much debris, and it’s coming faster than we can run!’ Aaron cried, desperately trying to manoeuvre out of the way.
Suddenly, the pod shuddered to a standstill. Aaron switched to the rear view screen… frantically searching for what they had hit; nothing. Somehow, they were now dead… just hanging in space. Then a shadow moved over them. Petra manoeuvred Junior between the pod and the oncoming debris cloud, the shields taking the brunt of the impact; the small amount that broke through were deflected by the new resin compound from Reglaos.
Aaron saw the pod bay hatch open. He quickly moved the pod into position and the docking grapple that Petra had used to catch them pulled them into the bay. Once the atmospheric conditions were matched, he opened the pod door just as Petra entered the bay. She walked up to him, threw her arms around him and kissed him, a long desperate kiss. She broke free and punched him in the chest.
‘What’s that for?’
“For scaring the shit out of me! Next time you decide to play hero, don’t!’ she said and kissed him again.
‘Who’s on the bridge?’
Petra smiled. ‘Gunner Tocmal; he’s scanning for more Galdorans and his eyes are doing that red thing again.’
Aaron just shrugged, ‘At least he’s enjoying himself.’
They moved back to the pod, retrieved the two patients and took them to the med bay, Aaron now grateful that Henry had over-ordered equipment. Both stasis pods were connected to the med bay systems for the trip back to Earth, keeping the occupants sedated and nourished for the duration.
As Aaron resumed his position in the command chair, Tocmal reported, ‘I moved the ship to a safe distance, and cannot find any additional Galdorans.’ The ships he had fired on were now only three glowing debris clouds on the screen.
‘Now can we go home?’ Petra asked as she re-initiated the nav program for the trip back to Earth. Three hours later, the jump drive powered up and FTS Condor Junior quietly left the Eleventh Realm.
About the author:
I live on the mid north coats of New South Wales, Australia, in a small bay side village. This is my first novel and it starts the Twelfth Realm saga; two more will be released during 2019 and two others are nearing completion for release in 2020.
I thank you for buying this book and I'd like to ask that you leave a review on Amazon when you finish it. Also, please visit our website and join our Sci Fi community to keep up to date with my news.
Like you I hate junk mail so here’s my promise, I won’t deluge you with useless emails or worthless offers just information pertinent to my stories which I hope you will love reading.
Cheers,
Greg
Visit: www.gregmutton.com
Coming soon:
Chronicle of the Twelfth Realm Book 2:
SEDITION RISING
