“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You might as well know,” Bricket said. “We’ve been ordered on some suicide mission. Our only hope of survival is if I can break into an enemy warship’s computer network in a couple of minutes.”
“Is that possible?”
The bartender kicked the side of one of the consoles. “Fat chance. Military systems have too many security gates. I’ll never break—” He stopped when he noticed Mason standing in the doorway. “Can you believe that, Rick? The military gives us a death sentence for doing so well?”
Mason didn’t reply. He extracted a folded slip of paper from one of his pockets.
“What’s wrong, Rick?” Sam asked.
Mason fidgeted. “I don’t have time to explain.” He handed the note to Bricket. “This may help you.” He wheeled around and walked away.
“Rick?” Sam called after him, but the pilot was already gone. Sam looked at the bartender in bewilderment. “What does it say?”
Bricket opened the paper and turned it right side up. His forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “No, it can’t be.”
“What?” Sam demanded.
Bricket didn’t answer. He rushed to the main computer terminal.
STEINER shifted in his chair at the security station, keeping his gaze on the monitors. After his announcement of their mission, he had expected some protests, even rioting, but the convicts were preparing for battle, strapping themselves into each of the gunnery ports. Coming off the high of their mission at Hurot IV, some of them felt pride at their success, despite the odds. It might be they really had no idea how badly outmatched they were.
Steiner looked back into the interior of the command center. Sanchez and Palmer glared back from their standby positions next to the helm while Simmons listened to the communication channels at his station. The sparkle of excitement he had seen in them after the raid yesterday had vanished, replaced by bitterness and resentment. No doubt, they fully understood the situation before them. Steiner suspected they would mutiny if they had the means.
He glanced out the starboard viewport at the Freedom, positioned several kilometers away. Both of them had arrived just minutes ago at their assigned starting point along the border and were waiting for the order to begin the mission.
Steiner couldn’t help but remember the Valiant’s fatal run. Maybe this was how McKillip had felt. Helpless.
Mason climbed up the stairway to the command center.
“You’re late,” Steiner told him. “You almost lost your chance to pilot this mission.”
“I’m sorry,” Mason replied. “I had something very important to—”
“Captain, the Magellan is signaling us to initiate our run,” Simmons interrupted.
Steiner didn’t reply for a moment. He thought of how Mary might be beckoning him to join her now. That prospect used to comfort him, but not now. He wanted to live. He wanted to accomplish more as captain of the Marauder.
“Sir?” Simmons asked.
Steiner met Mason’s gaze. “If you’re ready,” he whispered, motioning to the helm. “Take us into starspeed on the prearranged coordinates.”
The pilot nodded, then maneuvered to his station.
Steiner took one last look at the monitors and saw Tramer heading toward the command center. Satisfied, he stood up and made his way to the command chair.
The stars crept by in the side viewports, gaining speed until they blurred into thin streaks of light. The Freedom trailed closely behind in the rear port. Steiner suspected all of its guns were aimed at them in case they tried to deviate from their course.
The destroyer disappeared from sight when Mason phased the Marauder into starspeed. Steiner’s stomach already felt so tight that he didn’t even feel the effects of the dimensional shift. They barreled through the utter blackness with only the navigational sensors to direct Mason along a safe path.
Can we survive the same trip back, blinded? Steiner asked himself as he strapped himself into his seat.
Tramer’s heavy footsteps announced his arrival in the command center. He stood at his post in front of the weapons console. “Thirty seconds to the planet Macrales.” His synthesized voice rang out through the utter silence.
Steiner could feel the room closing in around him. The desire to be free of his confines grew. He released his safety harness. It wouldn’t help him anyway. They would be destroyed too quickly for it to be of any use. He slipped to the edge of the chair in expectation. “Are there any vessels in orbit?” he asked.
“Two Separatist battlecruisers and a dreadnaught,” Tramer answered.
A dreadnaught, Steiner thought. A warship more powerful than the other two combined. Once during his tour aboard the Valiant, he had seen one defeat two U.S.S. destroyers by itself.
“Both battlecruisers are initiating pursuit,” Tramer said.
“Mr. Mason, angle our trajectory back toward U.S.S. space.”
Before the words had completely left Steiner’s mouth, the pilot guided the Marauder into a wide arc and retreated.
The chase was on.
“One of the defending vessels is pursuing us while the other is engaging the Freedom,” Tramer announced.
Steiner hoped Cole’s attack force succeeded in fighting off the dreadnaught and destroying the base. He didn’t want his death to be wasted, not like McKillip’s.
“I’ve just lost navigational sensors.”
The hairs on Steiner’s arms stood on end. For a moment, he had thought he heard Suzanne’s voice instead of Mason’s. Should they continue, blinded? Certainly not. History would repeat itself. Steiner refused to die in a retreat. “Reduce speed,” he said, then activated the shipwide intercom. “All stations, prepare for combat.”
STEINER’S announcement over the speakers in the computer room sent shivers down Sam’s back. “How’s it coming?” he asked.
“Give me a second to finish the link,” Bricket replied, clenching his cigar between his teeth. “Besides, this will probably fail anyway.”
On the screen, the enemy vessel’s computer prompt appeared.
“Here goes nothing.” Bricket typed in the long series of numbers and characters written on the paper Mason had given him.
The screen darkened.
Bricket sighed, creating a small cloud of smoke. “It cut us off just as I—”
Before the bartender could finish, an emblem resembling a silhouette of Emperor Staece wielding a sword appeared. A menu of command functions was listed below the picture.
Bricket gasped. His cigar dropped against the console with a splash of glowing ashes. “I don’t believe it. We’re in.”
“What do we do now?” Sam asked.
The bartender snickered. “Use their vices against them.”
CAPTAIN Ronald Peters smiled to himself when he saw the fleeing spacecraft turn to defend itself. His battlecruiser, Conqueror, was monstrous in comparison. The U.S.S. must really be desperate to be utilizing ships as pitiful as these.
“Sir, the enemy vessel is charging up its weapons,” Lieutenant Niles said.
“Do the same to ours,” Peters replied. “Program into our computer: Attack Response Three.”
This battle would be short.
Blasts of orange-red energy beat against the Conqueror’s defensive energy shields without any effect.
“Is that the best you can do?” Peters coaxed the vessel on the viewscreen. “Lieutenant, initiate our response.”
He turned back for one last look at his opponent. One hit from a megacannon should break it in two. He waited expectantly, but nothing happened.
“What is the delay, Niles?”
“You had better see this for yourself, sir,” the young officer muttered in disbelief.
Peters stared at the readout. On the screen, a barely dressed female danced about.
“What is this?” he shouted. “Access the weapons.”
The lieutenant pressed several keypads, but the woman continued, uninhibited.
“Outside signal?” Peters exclaimed. “From wher—?” He looked up at the U.S.S. vessel broadsiding them with a fierce blanket of energy bolts. “Send an attack virus into the connection,” he demanded.
Immediately, Niles typed out the commands to do so. “How were they able to break into our network, sir?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Peters snapped. “Hurry, before it’s too late.”
BRICKET chuckled like a giddy child who had pulled the ultimate prank. On the screen, purple hair whirled as Princess spun in place, then leapt into the air.
Sam wondered what the Separatist crew might be feeling as they watched her prance around their tactical readouts. Astonishment? Fear? Exhilaration?
“How did Rick get a code that could do all this?” Sam asked. “I had the feeling he was holding something back.”
Bricket’s mouth crinkled. “I’d rather not think about it now. He may have saved all our—”
A red light flashed on top of the central unit, stopping Bricket cold. He muttered something, then typed out commands rapidly.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.
The bartender seemed too preoccupied to answer.
Then the control board died into darkness. Princess faded from its screen. Bricket turned toward an unused console at the far end of the room. It sprang to life, with the dancer continuing her stage show. In the same heartbeat, she vanished as the machine erupted into a shower of burning embers. Bricket pressed a keypad on his darkened board, resurrecting Princess on the screen above him. The purple-haired beauty shook her hips as if in celebration.
“What happened?” Sam asked.
“The Separatists sent a destructive program through the link, but I was too quick for them. I diverted it so that it missed us.”
“Then they’re wise to us?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry,” Bricket said with a smirk. “They know we have them by the throat.”
“ACCESS the weapons,” Peters shouted.
“I can’t, sir,” Niles replied. “The virus wasn’t successful.”
“Send another one then,” he barked.
The small U.S.S. spacecraft lunged at them again, raking into their shields. Each shot ate away at their already weakened defensive grid. He couldn’t allow his mighty Conqueror to be defeated by a ship half its size.
Peters grabbed Horace, the communication officer, by the sleeve. “Tell the gunners to operate their weapons manually until we have our systems back online.”
“Yes, sir,” Horace stammered, then relayed the order.
Niles turned around. “The second virus failed, sir.”
“Keep sending them,” Peters shouted, slamming his fist into the console.
STEINER couldn’t understand why the enemy warship hadn’t fired a shot in defense of itself.
“The battlecruiser’s defensive screen has collapsed,” Tramer announced.
Steiner was astonished. Victory lay within their grasp. From there on, every direct hit would cause damage to the other vessel.
At that moment, energy streaks hammered into the Marauder ’s hull. The ship heaved to the side, throwing Steiner from his chair. He crashed against Simmons’s communication console, then propelled himself back into his seat. Less then a second later, he had his harness strapped securely around him. Mason rolled them clear of the assailing bolts.
“Damage report,” Steiner ordered, rubbing his shoulder where it had hit the console.
“Nothing severe,” Tramer replied, remaining perfectly erect despite the pitching of the ship. “We weren’t hit by any of the megacannons. Only normal artillery fire. The pattern of the shots was too random to be a computer-guided assault.”
“Do you think their network is down?”
“No. It must be occupied.”
Steiner wanted to shout for joy. Bricket must have broken through, somehow.
ANOTHER console exploded five meters away from the main terminal. Sam covered his face against the tiny metal bits that sprayed him and Bricket. The bartender routed the power back to his darkened control board, then looked over at the smoking ruins of the other console.
“I can’t keep this up much longer,” he grumbled. “There are only two operational units left.”
Sam tightened his grip on the bartender’s chair, fighting to keep himself on his feet despite the jolts. “What happens when there are none left?”
Bricket frowned. “We lose.”
Then they both heard it.
An explosion echoed from somewhere inside the ship.
BLACK smoke billowed from deep within the reactor chamber.
Daniels checked the instrument readouts to see what damage had been done. The cooling system for the reactors had overloaded. If the temperature inside any of the cores rose above nine hundred degrees, a meltdown would occur. The engine chamber had to be sealed and the emergency hatch blown. The vacuum of space would quench the blaze and cool the reactors.
“Code Zero,” he yelled into his headset to the other engineers.
Spider, J.R., and Andrew rushed into the control cubicle. Two others were still unaccounted for.
“Don’t leave us,” a cry sounded from Daniels’s headset. It was Charles, one of the missing men. “Fred was injured by the blast. I can’t get him out alone.”
With all speed, Daniels snatched an extinguisher from the emergency cabinet. “I’ll try to contain the fire long enough for one of you to help them,” he told his colleagues in the cubicle.
“I’ll do it,” J.R. replied, then sprinted into the dark cloud.
Slinging the canister over his shoulder, Daniels hurried after him into the forbidding haze.
Visibility dropped to several feet beyond the curtain of smoke. Even though the fumes tried to choke the air from Daniels’s lungs, his pace never slowed. He was determined to save his two colleagues, no matter what happened to himself.
The deck shuddered from an impact against the outer hull.
God, grant me the time to save my friends, Daniels prayed.
Finally, he reached the edge of the fire. Flames licked the top of the high ceiling. Intense heat singed his skin. He aimed the nozzle and activated a powerful stream of chemicals. The blaze consumed the extinguisher liquids without any effect to itself whatsoever.
A second stream of chemicals joined his hopeless attack. Daniels turned to find Spider beside him, firing an extinguisher. The aide smiled faintly. Daniels never expected him to come. In the past, Spider had always been afraid of hazardous situations. His loyalty must be stronger than his fears.
A cough broke through the black smoke to his right. Daniels could barely make out the vague forms of J.R. and Charles helping Fred to safety.
“Daniels,” Mike shouted over the headset. “The temperature gauge is reading eight hundred degrees and rising. The core is going critical.”
Time had run out. The engine chamber had to be sealed for decompression.
“Go now,” Daniels screamed at Spider.
The man paled, dropped his extinguisher, and ran back into the black smoke.
Daniels continued to aim his stream of chemicals into the white of the flames. He shielded his tearing eyes from the heat with his arm. A few more seconds, he promised himself. Give them time to escape.
“Eight hundred and fifty degrees,” Mike shouted in the headset.
Daniels knew he couldn’t stretch it any farther. Every fiber in his being was telling him to run. Perhaps it was a message from God. Dropping his extinguisher, he fled. He had no idea what direction he was heading in. He coughed and gasped for breath. How could he possibly make it back like this? Yet he kept running.
“Phillip,” J.R. said in his earpiece. “We’ve reached safety.”
“Seal the pressure door and blow the hatch before we lose the reactors,” Daniels shouted.
“You’ll be trapped.”
&nb
sp; “Do it now.”
A motorized whine echoed from somewhere ahead. Daniels used the noise to get his bearings. He still had a chance of making it before the barrier shut. It took twenty seconds to close completely.
As he barreled ahead, each of his feet found solid ground somehow. One misstep would result in death.
Directly ahead, faint lights showed through the haze. A descending wall of darkness covered half the opening. He still had a chance to beat it.
He skidded to an abrupt stop at the foot of something in his path. It was Spider, curled into a ball and whimpering hysterically.
“Spider,” Daniels cried, pulling the other engineer to his feet. “We’re almost there.”
The man sobbed something in reply.
Daniels heaved him over his shoulder and stumbled ahead with all his might. His head began to spin, the first sign of asphyxiation. He knew he would black out soon. He forced each leg forward in short strides.
The world seemed to be falling away from him. Shadowy silhouettes gathered under the shrinking gap. He reached out as if to take hold of them, but they were too far away. He felt himself floating through air, then his face struck something hard and cold. He tried to move but found his body numb.
As he drifted off into a sea of blackness, he felt the sensation of being pulled somewhere. Voices spoke to him, but he couldn’t understand what they said. The last thing he heard was an echoing thud.
Within the silence of the darkness, he saw the faces of the people he had assassinated, looking at him through the gloom. Then he saw her. His last victim. A government official he had been contracted to kill. He saw himself standing by the sleeping woman’s bed after administering an absorbent poison to her skin. Before she died, she woke up and looked at him. She opened her mouth and started to say something.
“Phillip?” A voice cut through the vision. “Can you hear me?”
Daniels blinked his eyes and saw J.R. smiling down at him. Daniels inhaled deeply of the pure oxygen flowing through the mask over the lower half of his face.
“That was a close call,” J.R. said. “Both you and Spider are going to be fine.”
Prison Ship Page 20