“Manually steering a ship the size of the Rented Mule? You’ve got balls, Kira, I’ll give you that!” Sharp said. He leaned back and clasped his hands together, pondering the idea. “You really think you can do it? Some pretty intense calculations have to be made to dock a ship, let alone dodge the rocks floating around.”
Kira shrugged. “I have to try. What other option do we have?”
Sharp nodded. “All right, I’ll think about it. Now, about this damage…”
“It wasn’t just a single hit. Either we’ve been sabotaged or there’s a damn good gunner out there,” Eric said.
“Sabotage?” Sharp’s eyes narrowed. He stared hard at both of them.
“I haven’t been out of the ship yet,” Kira pointed out.
“I damn near had my spine broke when we were hit – I was outside of the inertial suppressor field,” Eric said.
Sharp grunted. His fingers tapped a cadence on the arm of his chair.
“Sir, Tarn came back early from his shift, remember?”
“You think Tarn did this?”
“Does anybody else have knowledge of how to rig an explosion and make it look like an accident or an external attack?”
Sharp opened and closed his mouth. He growled and stood up. “Weapons locker, now. You two are with me.”
“Captain, do you really think Tarn would do this? He’s stranded with us, too!” Eric said, following behind the Captain as he walked briskly down the passage.
“Any chance he overheard you talking about the bounty on your head?” Sharp snapped.
Kira gasped, drawing looks from the other two. She waved her hand. “It’s nothing. I just hadn’t thought of that is all.”
They rounded a corner and stopped at a hatch. Captain Sharp unlocked the door with a retinal scan and then stepped in and beckoned them to follow. He stopped, causing Eric and Kira to run into him. “Son of a bitch! I’m going to kill him with my bare hands!”
“Sir, if he was a FIST, he’s not going to be easy to kill,” Kira pointed out. “Even if he is old and fat.”
The weapons locker was virtually empty. All that remained were a couple of low-grade laser pistols with output ratings low enough to require several seconds for a burn-through on an unarmored human target. An alarm rang through the ship, making Eric jump. Sharp turned with a snarl and started back towards the hatch.
“Sir, wait!” Kira spotted a display and, near it, a data port. She hurried over and pushed her hand against it, and then started commanding the computer to display the source of the alarm. “Our passive sensors picked up an active sensor hit. And there’s another; they’re coming in fast!”
“They? How many are there?”
“Looks like five, no si— nine of them, sir.”
“Nine? Why didn’t you see nine ships out there?”
“Sir, they may not be ships. Could be EVA suits. They disable us and then send in a boarding party to take control of the ship. After it’s secured, they bring in theirs and tow us off for salvage,” she suggested.
Kira saw a strange look in Eric’s eyes. “What? It makes sense! That’s what I’d do.”
“You have a history of disabling and stealing ships?”
“Well, no. I just mean when you think about it and break it down…”
Eric went over and grabbed both of the pistols. He handed one to the Captain and the other to Kira. She looked at it with wide eyes. “I don’t— I’ve never used a gun before!”
“Me either, but I’ve got a hunch you’ll be a better shot than I would.” Eric wouldn’t look her in the eyes as he spoke.
Kira slipped it into the waist of her pants without thinking. She turned to see the Captain watching the two of them. “All right, these things will be useless against an armed and armored boarding party, but maybe if we don’t fire them they won’t know it. You think they’ll override the airlock or blow a hole in the hull?”
“If they’ve got inside help, they’ll use the airlock. Or if they want to use the ship themselves, they’ll need it pressurized,” Eric theorized. “Doesn’t make me a betting man.”
Sharp’s laugh was bitter. “You just wagered all our lives.”
Eric swore. Kira’s eyes widened but she gave him a supportive smile. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll even take off my clothes to show my support.”
“Remember when I said to make sure you don’t disrupt my crew or complicate things? That goes double when we’re repelling boarders!”
Eric chuckled. “Had that talk, did you? Just think of what it might do to the pirates!”
Kira turned, having heard it first. Her pistol was out of her pants and pointed at the open hatch before Tarn rounded the corner and pulled up short. Sharp swore and pointed his own pistol at the man. “We beat you here, Tarn?” he asked.
“Yeah. Now put those useless things down. You wasn’t on the bridge so I brought you these.” Tarn grabbed the straps over his shoulder and pulled off two assault plasma rifles. “Anybody ever shoot one of these?”
Kira noticed Eric was looking at her out of the corner of her eye. She glared at Tarn a minute longer and then lowered her pistol. She glanced at her lover and saw him still looking at her. “What? No, I’ve never shot one. I don’t even know what kind of gun it is!”
“You handled that pistol pretty well,” Tarn observed.
“Beginner’s luck,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Give me one,” Sharp said, stepping forward and taking the rifle. He checked the weapon over quickly, and then looked at Tarn until the ex-Marine gave him a quick rundown of the weapon. When he was finished, the Captain fixed him with a stare. “What happened to the rest of the weapons?”
Tarn pointed at the two plasma rifles. “Traded ’em for these. These babies are mil-spec. Not heavy duty like I’m used to, but good enough for pirates. Not what they use these days; that’s how I could get a break on ’em.”
“All my weapons for these?” Sharp persisted.
Tarn shrugged. “Wait till you see one in action.”
Sharp scowled and turned to Eric. He handed him the laser pistol. “Kira, patch back to the computer and let Jeff and Kevin know to grab whatever they can for a weapon and lay low.”
Kira did as she’d been told. A moment later the synthetic voice of the ship’s computer came across broadcasting throughout the ship. While she was there, she checked on the progress of the boarding party. “Sir, based on the rate of closure they should reach us in a few more minutes.”
“Don’t you want them to be with us?” Eric asked.
“You left ’em on the hull or are they on the ship?”
“Shit!”
“Yeah, that’s why Kira sent out the message. The computer will have broadcast on the suit’s frequency as well,” Sharp said.
“That’s why he’s the Captain,” Kira said.
Eric shot her a dark look but couldn’t hold it.
“Main airlock, let’s go!”
They filed out, falling in behind Tarn and the Captain. Kira’s eyes went to Tarn’s rolls, noticing the higher quality pistol at his hip. She also picked out a bulge in his boot that she assumed was a backup gun. A moment later as he stepped over the entry to another hatch, she saw his shirt rise enough to display the handle of a high tech combat knife.
She gasped as Eric grabbed her hand. She glanced at him and he nodded for her to hold back with him. She did, asking him the question with her eyes that she dared not utter aloud. He pulled her after him, turning down a passage to the crew’s bunkroom.
“Baby, this isn’t the best time for this,” Kira said. “I’ll admit, I can’t think of another time when we’d have the bunks to ourselves, though.”
Eric snorted. “Open your locker.”
“Eric?”
“Do it!”
Kira jerked back at his tone. She nodded and turned to the wall with the crew’s storage lockers in it. It scanned her eye, releasing the lock, and she opened it up before stepping back. “There, you want
to go through my underwear now?”
“Maybe,” Eric said. He scanned everything quickly, and then started pulling open the drawers and rooting around in them.
“Eric, seriously, what are you doing?”
“I knew it!” He gloated. “This drawer doesn’t track right. Hang on.” He fiddled with the drawer for a moment before he pulled it out of the locker and set it on the floor. He reached back in and pulled out a slim box that had been stashed beneath it. “Open this.”
Kira looked at it and felt herself start to retreat inward again. She shook her head, not at the action, but at the thought of losing herself. With a mewl of frustration, she swallowed past the lump in her throat and reached forward to press both her thumbs against the ID scanners on it. It chirped and clicked, letting her know the locks were released.
She opened the case and let loose the breath she had not known she was holding. Inside was a folded piece of cloth that shimmered in the light. Eric let out his own gasp, drawing Kira’s gaze. “I thought there’d be something else.”
Kira reached in with trembling hands and picked it up. It unfolded, hanging loosely in her hands until she stretched it taut as she held it up.
“What is that? Lingerie?”
She shook her head. “It’s a bodysuit designed to diffuse energy weapons. It offers protection against any radiant beam weapon, but not something like a plasma weapon. Those have a highly energized form of matter.”
“How do you know that?”
She looked at him and saw the pale color of his cheeks. “Eric, this is mine. I don’t know how—I’ve never seen it before, but it opened to my thumbprints. And I can’t think of a better time to find out.”
“Find out what?” His question went unanswered. She stood up and stripped off her clothes, standing nude in front of him in the single least sexual moment she could ever remember being in. She slipped the diffusion suit on, pulling the shimmering material into place and noting how it fit her perfectly.
“Wow,” Eric whispered. “Pretty crude of me, but you’re beautiful.”
Kira smirked. “That is crude, but there’s never a bad time to tell me I’m beautiful. What I need to know is how you knew it was there?”
Eric fell silent. She saw him struggling internally. His eyes dropped and he gasped. She followed his gaze and saw what had stolen his breath. She dropped to her knees and reached in, pulling out the strange pieces of metal that the bodysuit had hidden. Her hands slid across them, feeling a sense of familiarity even though she had no idea what she was doing. She looked at Eric, meeting his gaze, and then closed her eyes. Her hands worked the items, putting them together in a smooth and practiced manner that left a dryness in her mouth.
When Kira opened her eyes she held a rifle in her hand that was lightweight and possessed a deadly beauty. Her eyes went to a magazine that was loaded full of ellipsoid shapes, with each narrow end coming to a point. She slipped it into the rifle and cycled a round into the chamber.
“Damn…”
“Yeah,” Kira said softly. She looked up abruptly. “Shit! The others! We’ve got to help them.”
“You really know how to use that?” Eric stood up and asked.
Kira rose as well. “No, but I’ve got a hunch I’ll figure it out. Come on! And Eric, you’re going to tell me how you knew about this later. I don’t even want to think about it right now, but as soon as this is over I’m going to seriously freak out and either I’m going to need you there to hold me or I’m going to need you there so I can slap you silly.”
Eric grinned. “So long as you need me.” He followed her out of the bunkroom and back towards the main airlock where their shipmates were presumably waiting for them.
Chapter 9
Kira knew Eric was following her down the stairwell towards the airlock but she didn’t wait. It was exciting and terrifying, but she knew what she had to do. She burst through the open hatchway into the passage and threw herself into the far wall. She felt the heat of a passing energy weapon blast and it brought the reality of the situation to her. She’d already seen several of the invaders through the open door to the airlock: one on the inner side of the door, two on the outer side, and a fourth kneeling further back in the middle. She had also seen the twitching leg of a fifth on the ground.
Tarn was kneeling behind an open panel that he’d removed from the wall. He was also sporting multiple scorch marks on his clothes. The panel glowed where the raiders energy weapons had struck it. Captain Sharp stood in another hatch, trying to angle for a shot. She could see the Captain was being driven back each time he moved.
Kira threw herself forward, springing off the wall and crashing on the floor in the middle of the passage. Her rifle was held ready for the moment she stopped moving. She pulled the trigger mechanically and jammed her right hand and right knee into the floor.
When next she came to rest she was kneeling with her left hand on the deck and her right knee spread wide for balance. She sensed more than felt the beams from the pirates’ lasers that missed her spinning form. She held her breath long enough to send another high density magnetic sliver at supersonic speeds through the faceplate and head of the pirate that stood on the right side of the hatch, then she dove forward into a roll. She felt the heat along her buttock and thigh from a highly focused light beam that grazed her. The suit fragmented and disbursed the energy, causing discomfort but not injury.
A cry behind her proved far more distracting. She risked a glance back; her only fear was that Eric had been hurt. She saw him clutching his forearm and scrambling backwards. Another shot hit her, this time squarely in the side beneath her left arm. Her bodysuit prevented it from burning through but the heat blistered her flesh beneath the second skin.
With teeth clenched, Kira fired a round blindly and then let her mind go enough to drop supine to the deck. Her rifle hummed as the magnetic rails in the barrel sent a round into the crouching invader on the left side of the airlock door. It hit him high on the left side of the chest, near the shoulder, but the spray that coated the wall of the airlock behind him and the way he spun away from the impact gave proof that he was out of the fight.
With only one visible attacker left, Kira knew what her next move should be. She gathered her legs in preparation to spring and then noticed the spherical ball that was only now slowing its roll toward her. It had just passed Tarn, leaving it half a dozen feet behind Captain Sharp. With less than ten feet until it reached her, she drove her hands into the deck.
The concussive blast from the grenade swept over her, knocking her off balance and leaving her disoriented. It was a LF grenade, or Low Frequency, which let loose a powerful subsonic blast that was great for disorienting people and damaging delicate electronics. She tried to make sense of how the floor and the ceiling seemed interchangeable, fighting back a wave of nausea at the same time.
The remaining pirate held his position while five others rushed past him and down the passage. Tarn was slumped against the wall, the steel panel resting on him. Captain Sharp was rolling on the ground, trying to find his feet much the same as Kira. She rolled onto her back, clamping down on her lips to prevent her stomach from emptying. She tasted the bile and screwed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she saw one of the men pointing their laser rifles at her.
Their weapons had been modified, she noticed instantly. Without knowing how she understood the bulky modifications amplified the power considerably. As a trade-off, she estimated the guns had to cool longer between shots or, if ignored, would shut down to prevent damage. That or the pirates went through a lot of weapons.
Tarn and Sharp were also being covered, though Tarn was only beginning to show signs of coming out of the grenade-induced stupor. The fourth boarder walked up to Kira and chuckled when he saw her rifle laying in the passage. “Well, well, what have we here?” he said. He’d opened up the external speakers on his suit to allow his voice to be heard.
The man guarding her turned to look at the other pirate as
he bent down to pick up her rifle. Kira realized that if any life lay ahead of her it would be short at best, or long and filled with pain and suffering. Her body wanted to act now that the dizziness was fading. She was terrified of having another one of her black outs, but living through what was about to happen scared her more.
“One last time,” she thought to herself. She was surprised at the thought and the fact that she wasn’t sure it had even come from her. Kira let out her breath and fell back within herself.
She watched, almost as though she was staring at a display screen, as her body spun on the floor so her legs were between the man’s standing above her. She scissored her legs open, hitting his at the ankles and sending them flying. He fell, so surprised he barely had to time to yelp. He slammed into the deck roughly.
Kira, or her body at least, sat upright and grabbed the laser rifle from his hands. She lay back down and planted both feet on him, and then propelled herself across the floor even as she sent him rolling into the pirate that was rising with her magnetic acceleration rifle she’d dropped. As she slid, she oriented the laser and fired, burning through the soft portion of the pirate’s suit at his neck and making him lurch backwards. Off balance, he crashed to the floor.
Kira felt another wave of nausea hit her as her body flipped up into the air, driven by a powerful convulsion of her back and legs. Then she was on her feet and running forward. Distantly, she smelled scorched hair and she knew her head had been narrowly missed. Another beam struck her in the chest, burning her badly and charring her bodysuit with the direct hit.
She fired her laser with one hand, puncturing the suit of the pirate that stood near Tarn but doing no damage. He pulled himself back into a crouch, an instinctive reaction that Kira suspected whoever was controlling her body had expected. Her free hand grabbed her own rifle from the wounded pirate, which she fired point blank into his chest.
Spacesuits were designed to be radiation and energy resistant. Against a sharpened ballistic projectile travelling close to three thousand feet per second, they were no better than paper-mâché. He collapsed onto the deck, gasping for breath and clawing at the hole in his suit over the hole in his chest.
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