Ancient English words were imprinted on one of the metal outer sheaths, along with a yellow symbol of a circle with three, broad, radiating rays.
"Yiorgos, what does this say?"
The cyborg looked closely at the words and brushed off a portion. "Most off it is worn off. I think it says 'central action' or maybe 'center process' in ancient English. And I don't know what this symbol means," he added, pointing to a small yellow circle with three radiating rays coming from it.
"What the hell is this thing?" Dirken asked.
"Maybe it's a bomb," Eow said. Dirken certainly hoped not.
"Not likely," Yiorgos said. "Why would they keep an ancient bomb locked in a safebox?"
The pirates on the other side of the door stopped their banging as someone gave a command. Then sparks flew through a slit in the door as they started cutting through.
"Crap," Dirken said. "Is that the only way out?"
"No," Eow said. "There's another way. Come with me." She picked up the pulse rifle and ran down a side corridor.
Cradling the heavy sphere, Dirken followed. They quickly came to a dead end at an airlock. A handful of red spacesuits with bulbous helmets hung on the wall. One suit was clearly for an Aquarian centaur. The other three were bipedal and of different heights to accommodate different species.
Eow started suiting up. Yiorgos deactivated his plasma saber and started suiting up as well. "Come on!" Eow said to Dirken. "They'll be through in just a minute."
"Out there?" Dirken asked. He gulped and stared out through the little airlock window. Extra-Vehicular Activity. He hated going EVA. The vacuum of space was nowhere for a being to be. He'd seen his share of people die when their suits ruptured, frozen almost instantly as their eyeballs explode and their lungs rupture. Going EVA was a necessary part of being a spacer, mainly for maintenance and repair purposes, and he had done it more times than he could count. But it still gave him the willies.
He cleared his throat and tried to shake off the fear. "And just where are we going?" He looked down at the suit and realized it didn't have any thrusters. One wrong slip off the hull and he would go floating off into space.
"The hangar has an access hatch," Eow said. "Come on!"
He figured he didn't really have a choice, not with a shipload of pirates about to barge in.
Dirken gingerly set the sphere down, still wondering if it was a bomb, and looked at the remaining suits. Other than the centaur, the only one that hadn't been grabbed was tall and thin, probably for a lanky Tau Cetian. He started trying to put it on, but it clearly wouldn't fit. He couldn't get the straps around his muscular chest. "Damn it!"
"Here," Yiorgos said, already strapped into his suit. "Use the centaur suit. The part for the lower body and back legs will just have to flop around behind you." He pulled it off the wall and opened it up.
Reluctantly, Dirken stepped into the suit and latched it shut, then Yiorgos twisted the helmet on, activating the suit's life support systems and projecting a readout of suit stats onto the faceplate of the helmet. The air in the suit smelled like wet dog, and dozens of tiny scales clung to the inside surface.
Dirken felt like he was wearing a tent, and as he stepped forward to pick up the sphere, the "lower body" and back legs of the suit dragged along behind him. "I feel like a total idiot wearing this."
"Oh, suck it up, space jockey," Eow said, stifling a laugh. She was fully-suited and carrying the pulse rifle.
They stepped into the airlock and closed the inner hatch just as they heard a loud bang from the other room.
"They're through the door," Yiorgos said.
As the airlock evacuated, Eow pointed at her comm panel on her arm and flashed three fingers, indicating channel three. They each activated that channel on their suits. "Energize your magboots," she said through the intercom.
Dirken realized that, while the front magboots were needed for his own feet, the rear magboots would act as an anchor, seeing as how he wasn't a centaur. So he simply clomped the soles of the two rear boots together, conjuring an odd image of him as a centaur doing an Irish dance and clicking its heels together.
Eow opened the outer hatch. Each of them stepped to the edge of the airlock and crawled out onto the outer hull of the ship in single-file.
Beyond, the vastness of outer space wrapped its celestial arms around them, a billion starry eyes watching them step along the brigantine's hull.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EXTRA-VEHICULAR ACTIVITY
For many minutes (Dirken wasn't sure how long, since the time readout on his heads-up display was written in Aquarian centaur language) they clomped along the hull in silence. Dirken made a conscious effort to keep his eyes on the hull and not on the vastness of space, not just for the sake of his own nervousness "out there," but also because of the difficulties of wearing the ridiculously oversized suit.
He soon found himself sweating and huffing. For one thing, Dirken's magboots clung too tightly to the hull, requiring him to tug with each step. It seemed Aquarian centaurs had stronger legs. For another thing, the stupid lower body and back legs of the centaur spacesuit flopped and swung with every step as if he were being trailed by a giant mass of balloons. There was just enough mass to it to cause him to wobble every time the suit reached one extreme or another, and sometimes it wrapped completely around his torso. The physics of its movement seemed hard to anticipate. The combination gave his gait a ridiculous, clownish stride and threatened to trip him up.
"Come on, Dirken!" Eow said through the comm, glancing back. "They've surely discovered we're out here by now. We have to hurry!"
"Easy for you to say," Dirken muttered. His legs were already tiring and the trio had only gotten about halfway to the hangar.
Yiorgos hung back for a moment to wait for him. "You seem to be having some problems, Dirk."
Dirken swore he heard a little titter of laughter before the cyborg turned off his mic.
"Yeah.… Problems."
"Here." Yiorgos reached out his hands when Dirken was within touching distance. "I can take the Heart."
Dirken's first thought was to keep it and just charge to the end. He thought of the ancient North American game of football — or was it called foosball? — where a player with an oversized helmet would run a ball to an end zone, never dropping the ball or getting brutally slammed to the ground by other players. But then the rational side of his brain took over.
"Thanks," Dirken said, and started to hand over the Heart, slowing down.
The back part of the centaur suit wrapped around him just as he tugged up his right boot. The suit went under his leg as he stepped, tripping him, then the suit swept up between him and Yiorgos, hitting the Heart.
The sphere slipped out of his hands.
"Oh shit!" Dirken reached up as the Heart floated up and away from him.
Yiorgos tried for it too. His fingers touched it and slipped off, propelling the Heart faster.
"No!" Dirken shouted, then jumped as hard as he could. The boots came off the hull with a thwang. Then he was floating, slowly catching up to the Heart. His hands reached out.
"I've got you," Yiorgos said in the comm.
"No, wait!"
"Can't!"
Then Dirken grabbed the Heart, his palms clinging to it as hard as he could.
Then he realized he was no longer attached to the ship. He stifled a rising panic. His heart-rate escalated. His eyes darted up to the endless sea of stars. He was floating away! "Yiorgos!"
There was a yank on his suit. Dirken stopped abruptly. The Heart almost slipped out again.
He looked back and saw that Yiorgos held the EVA suit like a handle at the very tip end of one of the back legs.
"Got you." Yiorgos pulled him back down.
Dirken heaved a huge sigh and tried to control his breathing. It was a great relief when his boots contacted the hull. Yiorgos reached out for the Heart.
"I think I'll hold on to it, thanks," Dirken said.
He turned back toward their objective. Eow stood watching them. "If you boys are done playing, we've got a ways to go yet."
They glanced at each other, then followed her across the hull. "Playing!" Dirken muttered.
He continued lumbering along for what seemed like an interminable stretch, wondering all the time what the pirates were planning. Surely, he thought, they know we're out here. What kind of ambush are we walking into? This may not have been a good plan.
They had to make a slight detour around an area that had been blown open by bombardment, the hull blackened and twisted inward in wreckage. Jagged shards of metal as large as he was were bent around and threatened to snag and rip their suits if they got too close. He didn't want to be freeze-dried in space.
They passed various portholes. One of these looked in to an aquatic environment. As Dirken gazed down into it, the pale white face of an Argulan suddenly appeared out of the greenish water and looked back at him, its sucker mouth growing wide in reaction. It then swam away in haste, pushing a webbed hand against the porthole to launch itself. The tip of its eel-like tail slapping the window as it propelled itself away.
"Crap," Dirken said into the mic. "A crewman saw me through a porthole."
"Well," Yiorgos responded, "I'm sure they knew we were out here, and they probably have guessed where we're headed, anyhow."
At last, as they passed around a gravwell panel that looked like it had been stolen from some freighter, the hangar came into view. He thought about sabotaging this important piece of equipment, but it would take too long. Just another couple minutes to the hatch off to the side of the bay door.
Then a compartment opened over the bay.
A swarm of "flea" drones came zooming out and arced toward them.
"Shit!" they all three said in unison.
"Run for the hangar!" Dirken said, suddenly not noticing his tired legs. His hands were full with the Heart. His blaster was inside the suit.
But Eow had her pulse rifle handy. She turned and fired several bursts at the fleas, hitting two of them. One exploded. The other drifted off into space, disabled.
The fleas were black and ovoid and festooned with sensors, grappling legs, thrusters, and a laser. They had seemed so small and insignificant from far away, but up close he realized they were large enough he'd hardly be able to wrap his arms around one and massive enough that it probably weighed almost as much as he did.
Yiorgos grabbed Dirken's arm to pull him along.
Eow fired again as the swarm descended upon them. Two more fleas exploded.
They were almost to the hatch.
A flea slammed into Eow, knocking her back, but one boot stayed adhered. Then two fleas fired on her, narrowly missing. She swung her rifle like a club and hit one of them. It went twirling off at an odd angle.
Dirken and Yiorgos passed her and reached the hatch. He felt the reverberation of rifle fire through his boots.
The cyborg grabbed the rotating handle of the hatch and turned it, but then ducked as laser fire cut an arc across the hatch.
Another flea slammed into Dirken, and he almost lost the Heart again.
A sputtering sound, then Dirken's suit deflated with a whoosh. He realized with a horror that the flea had punctured the flopping back of the suit. He tried to cry out, but the air rushed out of his lungs.
It was his EVA nightmare — for real this time.
He shoved Yiorgos in a panic, just as the hatch opened, revealing the airlock inside.
His partner turned, saw what was happening, grabbed and swung him into the airlock, then following him in.
Dirken let go of the Heart, turned, and bunched up the suit to try to block the leak, wherever the hell it was. His vision was clouding over. He could feel the surface of his eyeballs freezing.
Eow plowed into the airlock with a flea on her heels. The robot ricocheted off the walls of the airlock, firing its laser in seemingly random directions and burning lines across the panels.
Dirken was losing consciousness. His eyes felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets. He couldn't catch a breath. When he opened his mouth in an unconscious action, the saliva vaporized, popping on the inside surfaces of his mouth.
Then Yiorgos slammed the hatch and latched it, hitting the red "atmosphere" button.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HANGAR BATTLE
The atmosphere slowly returned.
Eow grabbed the flea by its back, turned, and aimed it at the inner airlock door as it continued to fire.
Dirken twisted and ripped off the helmet, gasping for breath, even before the atmosphere was back to Terran-normal. He was covered in beads of sweat that had frozen to little spheres on his skin when he had lost life support. Now they were thawing, dropping off of his brow like a mini rain of hail.
The inner hatch to the hangar opened…
…and the flea's lasers burned through two pirates on the other side as Eow guided it. The human and Proximan pirates screamed as the laser cut across their chests.
Dirken gratefully unlatched the stupid centaur suit and stepped out, his legs wobbly and coated in sweat. At last he pulled his blaster.
Yiorgos threw off his helmet. He picked up the Heart, tucking it under his left arm, and activated his plasma saber with the other.
"Go!" Eow yelled, slamming the flea into the wall until it sparked and fell silent. Then she picked up the plasma rifle and started firing and advancing through the airlock into an open space that he assumed was the hangar.
Dirken's vision was still fuzzy from the suit breech, but he aimed as best as he could at any moving figures he saw. He fired off three shots. Two figures fell.
"This way!" Eow yelled, having discarded her helmet. They raced toward the far end.
Dirken ducked as a plasma bolt sizzled through his hair. Another struck the deck plating between his boots.
Yiorgos fired off several shots. Then a bolt slammed into his right leg, throwing him to the ground and spinning him, his saber cutting through the deck plating in a line. The Heart rolled away from him.
"Cover us!" Dirken yelled to Eow.
As she laid down a rapid round of cover fire, Dirken helped Yiorgos to his feet, wrapping his arm around his partner. The cyborg's right mechanical leg had a chunk blown away just over the kneecap.
Dirken fired several shots, then roughly pulled Yiorgos over to get the Heart.
"Watch it!" the cyborg said. "My leg was blown open, in case you didn't notice!"
"Stop complaining and get the damned sphere."
Several more blinks and Dirken's eyesight cleared, but his eyes felt very dry and pained. Following Eow, they were headed toward an interstellar shuttle, its gravwell panels wrapping around the hull like a ribcage.
"Oh, fuck!" Eow exclaimed. "My ship!"
And then he saw what she had. The gravwell panels had been cut into. The mass expanders — osmium-iridium alloy packs with diamond lenses that were necessary to project the gravwell generator emissions — had been stripped out. One of the most valuable parts of any ship. Without them, there could be no folding of space and no escape.
The pirates stopped firing. Then came a deep, cynical laugh from Dirken's left.
He turned and saw the Bloodhawk standing beside three other pirates, a Rigellian with a blaster and two lizard-like Reptilocs aiming pulse rifles. They were about six meters away behind a parked shuttle.
"Captain Neenan!" Eow growled. "You have damaged the property of the Eridani Mafia. Grimmag Ruby-Eye will not be pleased."
The pirate captain pulled his sword, a scimitar, from the scabbard on his lower body. The metal gleamed, then the edge flared with a blue glow as he activated the plasma blade on it.
"He can shove his displeasure up his maggoty ass!" the centaur said. "I like your gumption. It seems I've lost some crewmen, thanks to you. Hand over the Heart and throw down your weapons. If you comply, I'll let you replace them as my crew — and live. If you refuse, you die."
The Heart, Di
rken thought, glancing down at the sphere in Yiorgos's arms. What the hell is this thing? Whatever it is, it's got a value high enough to take on a UW destroyer AND defy the Eridani Mafia! He wasn't sure which was more dangerous.
"No chance, Bloodhawk!" Dirken shouted, backing away. "You'll have to do better than that!"
Yiorgos looked up at him incredulously.
"Yes, forget it!" Eow added. "Grimmag will destroy you and your miserable little fleet!"
"Have it your way!" the Bloodhawk said. He pointed his scimitar at the trio, and the three pirates opened fire.
Eow returned fire, and they ran for cover behind Eow's ship, ducking behind the front of the ship as rifle shots impacted around them.
"They're advancing!" Dirken shouted as he fired back at the pirates.
Then Eow gasped.
Dirken shot a glance over to her then straightened in shock, swinging his blaster around to face a new threat.
"Uh uh uh!" Mom said. He had sneaked around Eow's ship and grabbed her by the neck from behind, his blaster barrel pushed against the back of her head. His face had turned bluish with bruising and was still covered in dried blood from his fight with Dirken. His right eye was swollen shut, but his left stared at Dirken with menace. "Wouldn't want your lovely little kitten losin' any whiskers, now would you, maggot?" He shook Eow by the neck, and she responded by emitting a low growl and showing her fangs. "And don't even think about usin' those spines of yours, girly. I got you at arm's length. Now drop your weapons!"
Mom had Eow in front of him. Dirken didn't want to risk firing for fear of hitting her.
Eow dropped the rifle.
Then the Ananak swung into action.
She dipped, spun, and in one smooth move knocked away the blaster with a right arm block and ripped out Mom's throat with the claws on her left hand. Before Mom had time to realize what was happening, Eow spun again, her tail counterbalancing, swooped to pick up the rifle, and fired it point blank into Mom's chest.
It was the same kata Dirken had seen her do in the brig, only sped up to just a couple seconds.
The First Nova I See Tonight Page 7