Prison Ship

by Michael Bowers

  Among the flaming debris littering the floor, a smoldering helmet rocked back and forth.

  JULIO Sanchez reached the source of the explosion, with Dante right on his heels. Glenn and Dicer had already arrived at the site and were staring down at the bodies of Peter and Fritz, lying in pools of blood. Inside the blazing cabin, the torso of another armor-clad figure lay burning in a corner.

  “The fools should’ve called for backup, like I instructed them,” Julio growled. “A reward is useless if you’re dead.”

  “The captain must have been better armed than we thought,” Dante replied.

  Rex and Bo showed up at the site, scowls distorting their faces.

  “Who nailed the captain?” Rex asked.

  “Nobody, but Midas, Peter, and Fritz are dead,” Julio replied.

  The two raiders cheered and disappeared back into the darkness.

  “Greedy fools,” Julio shouted after them. He turned back to the four others. “Are the rest of you willing to work together to capture the captain? We could split the reward four ways. Is it a deal?”

  Julio held his hand out in pledge. Glenn and Dicer grasped it, but Dante shook his head and raced off.

  “It’s the three of us then,” Julio proclaimed.

  “What’s your plan?” Glenn asked him.

  “First, let’s get the lights back on.”

  SEATED at the remains of Tramer’s damaged security station, Mason pressed keypads until a fiery doorway appeared on one of the monitors that Bricket had repaired upon entering the command center.

  On the other side of the room, Bricket knelt by the communication console, opening its maintenance panel.

  “I found the explosion we heard,” Mason announced. “I don’t see any mutineers celebrating, so I’m certain Ironhand is still alive.” He switched through several other scenes, but the light level was too low to allow the cameras to register any images.

  A sharp clatter made Mason flinch. Turning around, he saw that the bartender had thrown the inner communication assembly to the ground.

  “Can you repair it?” Mason asked.

  “Not a chance,” Bricket shouted in obvious frustration. “Simmons did a fine job of wrecking the unit. I might be able to send out a short-range transmission with what’s left, but it wouldn’t do us any good way out here.”

  A muffled response came from the command chair.

  Picking up his cane, the bartender whacked Simmons’s legs. The captive let out a sharp cry. “That made me feel a little better,” Bricket said. He lifted himself and hobbled over to the security station.

  A barely visible shadow caught Mason’s eye on one of the screens.

  “Who was that?” Bricket asked.

  “I couldn’t tell. It’s too dark.” Mason let out a sigh. “I wish I knew what was happening down there.”

  “If you like, we can talk about something else to pass the time.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, which government would you like to see win the war?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Bricket chuckled. “You wouldn’t have come on board if that were true.”

  “It beat rotting away in prison.”

  “No, I don’t believe that either. I’d wager that you want the Separatists to lose the war to get back at your father.”

  Mason hated it when the bartender was right, so he refused to respond.

  “You’re too easy to read,” Bricket said with a slight smirk.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Mason shouted.

  “Why not?”

  “If these are my last minutes of life, I don’t want to waste them talking about him.”

  “What about your mother? Did you hate her, too?”

  Mason fought to keep himself from propelling both fists into the bartender’s face.

  “No, you loved her deeply,” Bricket said. “He did something to her, didn’t he?”

  Mason turned away, hiding the tears forming in his eyes. “Did he beat her?” Bricket asked.

  Mason fought hard to keep his thoughts from sinking a mire of bitter memories, forgotten tragedies, forsaken loved ones. “Worse.”

  “It will make you feel better if you get it off your chest.”

  “It won’t change anything. It’s best if I don’t dwell on it.”

  “If you try to suppress your emotions, they’ll build up inside you until they explode. Confront them now.”

  Mason wanted to shout a curse at the bartender for torturing him like this but couldn’t. He could hear the sincerity in the man’s voice.

  “My father was promoted to a U.S.S. admiral when I was sixteen. A year later, Christophe Staece convinced him and two other admirals to join his New Order Empire.”

  Bricket reached into his pocket and extracted his partially used cigar. His eyes never left Mason as he stuck one end into his bearded mouth and lit the other. “What happened to make it go sour?”

  The smoke from the bartender’s cigar curled and twisted a random course toward the ceiling. Mason could see images from his past dancing within it. His mother’s desperate pleas sounded from somewhere far off in time.

  “My mother didn’t agree with the choice but remained silent. After the U.S.S. succeeded in fending off the first invasion, my father bombarded the planet Macrales. My mother stopped being silent.”

  Bricket groaned. “That caused problems for your father in the emperor’s eyes.”

  His mother’s distant screams echoed in Mason’s head. “My father’s enemies demanded that he be dismissed from his post for having a conspirator as a wife.”

  “What did your father do about it?”

  “In order to save his career, he released a statement denying all knowledge of his wife’s treason, and to prove his loyalty to the emperor, he took the necessary actions against her.”

  Bricket’s face paled. “He didn’t …”

  Mason bowed his head to hide the tears that refused to be held back. “I still remember the day they came for her. My brother, Randy, and I watched as four uniformed thugs dragged her out, while she pleaded to my father to help her. He wouldn’t even look at her but held both Randy and me so we couldn’t chase after her. He whispered lies about her to comfort us. She was executed that night.”

  “How old was Randy at that time?”

  “Not old enough. He was fifteen, six years younger than I was.”

  Bricket plucked the cigar from his mouth. “He believed the lies, didn’t he?”

  Mason sighed and nodded.

  “Randy wanted the love of his father so much he deceived himself,” Bricket said. “Poor kid.”

  “When I heard the Centri System needed good pilots, I tried to take him with me.” Mason heaved for breath. “He tried to turn me in to our father.” The anguish threatened to consume Mason. His pride, the trait that had caused him to survive for so long without family, prevented him from succumbing. “My father stole everything dear to me. I would jump at the chance to hurt him in return.”

  “Good,” Bricket said. “Until now, I wasn’t sure where your loyalties lay.”

  Mason stared at him. “What?”

  “During our confrontation with the enemy battlecruiser, you gave me their password to save your own life. I wanted to be sure you wouldn’t turn on me if you were given the chance to return to your homeland.”

  The answer left Mason dumbfounded. He had never thought of it from that perspective before. After all, he was the son of a New Order admiral. Could Bricket have trusted him to fight against his own people?

  “Look,” Bricket said. “The lights came back on in the crew quarters, which means someone must be in the computer room.”

  With the press of a couple of keypads from Mason, three body-armored men appeared on a monitor, standing over the main terminal.

  “Julio Sanchez,” Mason said. “I had a feeling that idiot would eventually mutiny.”

  “The person on the far left is Dicer,” Bricket replied. “I’ve
played several hands of poker with him. Who is the other guy?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ve seen him shooting in the targeting range.”

  “Is he good?”

  “Does it matter with weapons like theirs?”

  On the screen, Julio stood up and spoke to the other men. When they started to leave the room, Julio looked up at the camera.

  “Oh great,” Mason muttered. “He can see the red indicator light.”

  An orange flare ignited from Julio’s assault rifle. The screen burst into static.

  Mason exchanged a knowing glance with Bricket. The raiders would be coming to the command center next.

  STEINER stood on one of the rungs inside a ladder well, just high enough to see above the floor of the upper level. When the lights came on, he had sought a hiding place. With his advantage gone, he would have to rely on surprise from there on. His muscles tightened when he heard voices. A glance down at his tracker found two men proceeding toward his location.

  A nearby explosion rocked the area, followed by a howl. Steiner stole a peek around the corner and saw Rex launch a missile into a second cabin. The ladder vibrated under the violent force.

  The two hunters appeared determined to disintegrate him rather than hunt for him. He aimed his rifle’s muzzle at the edge of the entrance to the well.

  Bo appeared in his sights, but Steiner kept himself from firing because Rex remained out of range.

  When Bo noticed him inside the well, he shouted and raised his weapon. Two of Steiner’s energy blasts tore through Bo’s exposed throat before he could fire. The man toppled back against the bloodstained wall behind him.

  A venomous scream erupted from Rex.

  Letting go of the ladder, Steiner fell down the well. The hiss of a missile launching sounded from above. Steiner tumbled to the floor of the bottom level and rolled away just before the tunnel above him burst into a roaring inferno. He looked up in time to see a backwash of fire proceeding down the chute. He shielded his face as it burst out from the well’s entrance. The searing wave swept over him. His skin burned with pain for a second, then the feeling mellowed.

  When he lifted his head, he saw that his reddened flesh had first-degree burns—painful, but not serious.

  The blackened well smoked. Smoldering metal cinders lay all about the floor amidst the remains of his assault rifle and tracker.

  Steiner tried to stand up and winced from a sharp sting in his lower thigh. Blood oozed from where a charred fragment had embedded itself in the tissue.

  Boots scraped against metal as Rex began to descend. A foot became visible from out of the roof of the entrance.

  Ignoring the pain of his wound, Steiner catapulted himself up and ducked into the first open doorway, which turned out to be the utility closet.

  Leaning against the inside wall, he realized the time had come for his suicide plan. He glanced down at the single grenade attached to his belt. His finger poised above the trigger.

  Metal cinders ground outside in the hall.

  “Captain,” Rex bellowed. “Come out and play with me. Maybe I’ll let you live.”

  Play, Steiner thought. That’s it.

  The yellow bruiseball helmet still lay in the corner of the closet. He snatched up the game prop, activated the grenade, and dropped it inside.

  “I surrender,” he shouted, then stepped out of the closet and tossed the helmet to Rex.

  The man’s bruiseball instincts seemed to take over. Lowering his missile launcher, Rex caught the prop with one hand. His eyes sparkled.

  Steiner flung himself back into the doorway as a white-hot burst cut off a howl in midstride.

  AFTER going back to get the laser cannon, Julio, Dicer, and the third man took five minutes to cut through the forward section’s pressure door. Mason kept an eye on them the entire time using the security monitors. Julio hadn’t shot out any more cameras even though he must have seen them active. Maybe he no longer cared whether they were watched or not.

  Bricket sat quietly, savoring the last of his cigar.

  Mason rubbed his face. How foolish he must have sounded when he told Bricket his family history.

  On the monitor, the three raiders stepped through the burnt-out hole. Bricket grabbed his cane and lifted his body out of the chair. “Let’s get ready to show them our hand, shall we?”

  With a nod of agreement, Mason followed him down the stairway to the sealed entrance. Bricket whistled as he entered the password into the control panel. The double doors split apart, both halves retreating into the bulkhead. Beyond them, in the middle of the corridor, stood Bricket’s secret weapon, right where they had left it.

  Mason had to admit the idea had been a brilliant one, but at the same time, it seemed wasteful. His finger ran across the side of the six-foot-high storage container that housed eighty gallons of the bartender’s own brand of extrastrength beer. They had used an antigravitational truck to move it.

  When Bricket removed the lid on top of it, the overpowering smell of alcohol escaped. The cigar smoke mixed with the aroma of strong liquor, reminding Mason of being back inside the bar. “I’ll bet you feel a little bit angry at having to use your stock like this,” he said.

  Bricket blew several ringlets then smiled. “No, on the contrary, I’ve never felt more alive than I do now. No profit can ever top this. I’d rather die feeling like this than live as I did, in fear.”

  When Mason saw the three raiders approaching, he pulled Bricket behind their secret weapon.

  Julio halted the other two mutineers thirty feet away.

  “Captain,” he shouted. “Give yourself up.”

  “Wrong, Julio,” Mason answered back. “I’m not Steiner, and I don’t plan on surrendering either.”

  “Mason?” the man exclaimed. “You can’t defeat us. Come out before we start firing.”

  Bricket’s bearded mouth cracked into a giant toothy grin, curling the scar on his cheek. “Let’s give them Hell.”

  Using the floating truck as a pivot, they put their backs against the container and pushed it over. A flood of liquor gushed down the passageway, steaming and bubbling like a brown river, and poured over the mutineers. Dicer and the other man slipped and tumbled under the flow, dropping their laser cannon. Julio kept his footing despite the rushing liquor flowing around his boots.

  Bricket removed the cigar from his mouth and flaunted it at the victims. “Crown the new king of audacity.”

  Julio turned and retreated, splashing through the ankle-deep liquor.

  The smoldering cigar made an arch through the air and landed in the river. Flames burst out, racing down the corridor to engulf all three raiders. Dicer and the other man screamed as they struggled to get up from their fiery graves.

  Bricket laughed gleefully.

  A steady hum grew in intensity. Mason realized that the cannon must have charged itself when it struck the ground. The blaze would heat the core to overload.

  “Let’s get out of here, your majesty.” He grabbed the bartender by the shirt, dragged him back beyond the entrance to the command center, then hit the keypad to seal it.

  After the barriers on each side of the entry began to close, a flash of brilliant light shot through the shrinking aperture. Shrapnel pelted the outside of the doors as they sealed the center from the blast.

  Out of breath, Mason turned to Bricket, sprawled out on the base of the stairway with a stunned look on his face.

  “I guess it worked better than I had planned,” the bartender said, then chuckled. “That’ll teach them to mess with a crippled man.”

  Mason replied with a weary nod.

  DANTE examined the remains of an armor-clad person in the midst of a charred hallway outside a ladder well.

  Seconds ago, he had heard another explosion coming from the forward section of the vessel and wondered what the other three raiders were doing up there. It didn’t matter, though, since it was obvious the captain had been here last.

  A drop of blood near
the utility closet caught his eye. Another one had fallen a few feet away from the first. He could barely contain his joy when he discovered a trail of them leading away.

  Steiner must have been injured, making him an easier target.

  He followed the path of droplets right up to the sealed door of port-side air lock. The neighboring cabinet stood ajar. One space suit was missing from the rack inside. When Dante activated the monitor for the inner lock, he saw stars glistening through the open outer hatch.

  The captain must have escaped onto the exterior of the ship.

  Dante grunted in frustration. He had been so close to capturing him, only to lose him again. Maybe he could go out there to find him?

  Something moved in his peripheral vision. He spun around in time to see a space-suited figure reach out of the cabinet and press a keypad on the control panel for the air lock.

  A shrill alarm pierced the stillness. The pressure doors to each of the adjoining passageways slammed shut. Dante raised his rifle at the figure, but an explosive burst of escaping air stole his attention away.

  The inner hatch to the air lock cracked open. Dante cried out in terror. His finger tightened on the trigger of his rifle, searing the floor with bolts as his body was dragged toward the opening. A millisecond later, he was thrust into a never-ending darkness.

  A gasp came from Spider, followed by a scream. Daniels turned in time to see his aide lose his grip on the hull. Spider drifted outward, stopping eight feet away, held back by the safety cord tied to his belt. His arms and legs swung about as if they were trying to break free from his torso.

  “Stop struggling,” J.R. yelled out. “You might break the cord.”

  Spider’s breathing became rapid and quick, signs of hyperventilation.

  Using his arms, Daniels launched himself from the bulkhead. His right hand caught hold of Spider’s arm. He wrapped the left one around his friend’s body. He groped for the control box and lowered the oxygen content in Spider’s suit. Spider’s breaths became more regulated, but he continued to sob and thrash about.

  “Stop it, or you’ll kill us both,” Daniels told him.