Ellen wrinkled her nose. “It’s okay, I guess. Your initialization frequencies are all wrong, and your harmonic stabilizer is all out of whack, but it I suppose it does the job.”
Breamell squinted at Ellen as though inspecting a garden pest. “I’m sorry. No one has bothered to introduce you. What’s your part in all this?”
“Doctor Ellen Granger from GIT. I’m here because…” She glanced at Brent. “To be honest, I came along for the ride. And so far, it’s been a blast. That was nice work with those guards, by the way. Very cool indeed.”
“One tries,” Breamell replied, turning to the others. “Vince, Maisie, if you’re ready, I’ll open the door and we’ll see what’s happening on the bridge.”
“I’m ready too,” Brent offered. “In case you were wondering.”
“Yes, well, I guessed that.” Breamell concentrated on the door’s access panel. “Now, was it a three or a seven next? Ah, yes, it was an F. Silly me.” She stepped back, brushing her hands together. “That ought to do it.”
With a gentle sigh, the door slid to one side, and without hesitation, Brent stepped through. “Surprise! Hi everyone! Fleet Admiral, nice to see you again. It’s been too long.”
Squernshall stared at Brent, but though the admiral’s mouth hung open in surprise, there was no anger in his eyes. His face was as pale as any Gloabon Brent had ever seen, and his expression was haggard and drawn. “You!” he breathed. “This is all your fault. You told us to go after them, you idiot! You’ve killed us all.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” Brent said. “I’ve done some foolish things in my time, I’ll admit, but–”
Squernshall staggered forward, his arms outstretched, his fingers curled into claws. “I’ll throttle you with my bare hands.”
Breamell stepped smartly to Brent’s side, holding up her hand to halt the Admiral’s stumbling progress. “Sir, compose yourself! The Andelian prisoners have escaped, and they’re on their way here. They intend to seize the bridge, and they’re armed and determined.”
“Let them come,” Squernshall snarled. “I’ll murder the flecking lot of them!”
Breamell scanned the officers present and caught Captain Jamangle’s eye. “Please, sir. The Fleet Admiral is not well.”
Jamangle nodded then stepped forward, placing his arm around Squernshall’s shoulders and guiding him to his chair. “Sir, if you could take your seat for a second, we’ll have this sorted out in no time at all.”
“What?” Squernshall looked up at Jamangle as if trying to recall his name. “Can’t sit here. Got some treacherous bastards to kill.”
“Yes, but all in good time,” Jamangle crooned. “Perhaps I might fetch your special tonic.”
A flicker of enthusiasm lit the Admiral’s expression. “Yes. Very good.” He lowered his voice, leaning closer to Jamangle while tapping the younger officer on the arm. “Keep it quiet though, eh? Don’t want them all asking for a tonic ration. That wouldn’t do at all.”
“You needn’t concern yourself with that, Admiral. This is only for you.” Jamangle reached into a small cabinet beside the admiral’s chair and retrieved a small, silvery bottle. “Here you go, sir. Just what the medical officer ordered.”
Squernshall seized the bottle greedily, tipping it to his lips and slurping, a little color returning to his cheeks. Jamangle watched him for a moment, as a proud parent might watch a toddler, then he ushered Brent and the others to the side of the bridge. “It’s this business with the Andel-Kreit ship. It’s broken his spirit entirely. He’s always made a show of being larger than life, and I think he genuinely sees himself as a bold leader, but when it came down to it, all his bluster was a sham. He’s gone completely to pieces. I suppose this station was a cushy posting, and he was serving his time, looking forward to his pension. You know what they say about Gloabons being promoted to a level of incompetence…well, look at him.”
Despite the urgency of the situation, Brent found himself watching Squernshall. The Admiral was shaking the small bottle in the vain hope of extracting a few more drops of whatever liquid had been inside. Brent tore his gaze away and focused on Jamangle. “What is the situation with the Andel-Kreit ship? Are you still headed toward it?”
Jamangle blinked. “Don’t be ridiculous! We had to change course. We couldn’t risk any contact with the alien biohazard. And destroying it might have spread the contamination. We’d have been hit by debris, and anyway, that would’ve been against protocol.” He sighed. “That’s what did for Squernshall. We were playing chicken on the biggest scale in history, and we were the ones who had to turn tail. We were armed with the might of this enormous station, but there was nothing we could do except retreat. It was the last straw.”
“Alien biohazard?” Ellen asked. “Back up a minute. What kind of biohazard? And where is it exactly?”
“On the Andel-Kreit ship. Their emergency beacons launched, their shields are down, and if they have any sense, they’ll be abandoning ship as we speak.”
“Our friend is on that ship,” Vince blurted. “Rawlgeeb is over there. You need to send someone over to grab him.”
Jamangle’s hand chopped the air. “Out of the question. Their beacons are registering a level two alert, and that means the ship will be purging itself at any moment. Once that begins, any living thing on the ship will be destroyed. The purge will cycle itself over and over until the job is done.” He shuddered. “I’m sure Rawlgeeb will leave the ship along with the crew, but if he doesn’t, there’ll be no way of saving him. None at all.”
Brent stood in silence, looking around the bridge as if hoping for some inspiration to strike. But all he saw were the myriad bright lights of the displays. And the whistles and whirring sounds emanating from the consoles were no more meaningful than the chirring of the mutant crickets that leaped across the rooftops in summer in the playful pursuit of small birds. “We have to try,” he said but without much conviction. “We can’t just leave him over there.”
“That’s right,” Breamell cried, glaring at Jamangle as though she’d very much like to try out her roundhouse kick one more time. “There’s always something we can do.”
Jamangle lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “That sentiment might sound laudable enough, and in my younger day, I might have scrawled it on the walls of a toilet cubicle at the academy, but I’m afraid that it has not been borne out by my experience in the field.”
“You said that their shields are down, so you can zing me over to that ship,” Breamell insisted. “I can be there and back in two minutes.”
“No. That would risk your life for no logical reason. Even if you weren’t caught in the purge, you could be contaminated by the biohazard. We couldn’t possibly let you back aboard the station. And anyway, you’d probably find the damned ship empty when you got there.” Jamangle wrinkled his nose as he studied Breamell. “Sometimes, there is nothing you can do. Nothing.”
For a moment, Breamell chewed on her lower lip, but then she tilted her head, listening. A smile twitched at the corner of her lips. “On the other hand, I can do this.” She darted to the door, throwing herself at the access pad, and as she pressed it hard with both hands, the door hissed open to reveal to a dozen armed Andelians, all of them sweaty and disheveled, their faces twisted in rage, their eyes burning with the promise of a swift and very violent retribution to anyone who stood in their way.
Stanch strode onto the bridge, his parton pistol held at shoulder height, and yelled, “Nobody move, or I’ll execute every single one of you. This station is now under the control of the Andel-Kreit Coalition. Stay at your posts until relieved of duty. Until then, keep your hands away from the controls, and nobody will get hurt.”
“Except you,” Breamell said to Jamangle, and with movements so fast they deceived the eye, she darted across the room, delivering a punch to Jamangle’s jaw that laid him flat on the floor.
“Nice,” Ellen murmured. “I must admit, I’m a little frightened right now, but even so
, that was nice.”
Breamell dipped her chin. “I can show you how to do a roundhouse kick if you like. The main thing is to clear the area before you start practicing. You don’t want to smash your favorite vid screen. Or accidentally kick your prize-winning iguana. Or your neighbor’s eldest child. Even though they should never have been sneaking up on you like that.” She shrugged. “Anyway, children are resilient, aren’t they? Their teeth grow back, and even if they might have a nervous tic or two, they recover the power of speech remarkably quickly.”
“If you say so,” Brent said slowly. “But we still need to figure out a way to get Rawlgeeb back.”
CHAPTER 32
Aboard The Kreltonian Skull – Andromeda Class Battle Cruiser
Official Status: Abandoned.
Ship’s Log: No Log Record Found.
Rawlgeeb jumped up with a start as the siren blurted out its stark warning. He dashed to the cell door, straining to hear the recorded announcement that was reverberating along the corridor outside. Like most Gloabons, he’d studied Andelian at school, but he’d always hated its guttural groans, so he’d dropped the language as soon as he could. Now, he regretted his decision.
“Echamech,” he muttered. “That’s either danger or a warning, but if you make the last syllable softer, it forms the past participle of…of the verb to somersault.” He shook his head. Unless the crew were putting on a singularly spectacular circus act, something pretty bad was happening.
A hollow clunk sounded from within the door, and placing his hands cautiously on its smooth metal panels, he gave the door an experimental shove. With a metallic click, the door swung open, and a phrase from the recorded warning drifted back into his mind. To leave behind, he thought. To flee from. He clenched his fingers into fists. Abandon ship. That’s what it meant. “Unless you extend the initial vowel,” he murmured. “Then it becomes enjoy the ship, but that wouldn’t explain why the door unlocked itself.”
He stepped out into the corridor. It was utterly empty. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
His voice echoed from the hard, white walls and the metal floor, the sound dwindling into the distance, but there was no reply.
“Right. Well, I suppose I’d better go then.” Rawlgeeb glanced up and down the corridor, but there were no distinguishing features on either side, and during his march to the brig he’d quickly lost all sense of direction. He pointed to his left, and then to his right. “That way,” he said, hearing, with some surprise, the certainty in his own voice. Having made a decision, his confidence grew, and he set off at a brisk pace, scanning the walls for clues as he went. A shocking lack of signage, he thought as he went along. Not a single evacuation plan in sight. Don’t these Andelians have health and safety regulations? He made a mental note to look into the matter later; Rawlgeeb didn’t know much about commerce, but he knew an underdeveloped market when he saw one. The training contracts alone could be worth thousands of credits a month, he decided.
He stopped at an intersection, peering into a side corridor, but his confidence was quickly fading. Compared to the broad and carpeted corridors of The Gamulon, this ship was a rats’ nest of intersecting routes, some of them with ceilings so low that he’d have to duck to step inside. Those tiny corridors could be dismissed, but here, four possible routes stretched out before him, and there was nothing to choose between them.
Rawlgeeb frowned, and in that moment, a second siren battered his eardrums, and now, the overhead lights switched from white to a deep shade of red. Very dramatic, he thought disdainfully. Disorienting and confusing, but very effective—so long as your aim is to instill a rising tide of blind panic throughout your ship. But his wry smile vanished when he heard the second announcement, his ear becoming attuned to the machinegun rhythm of the announcer’s tone. I have to get off this ship right now, he told himself. Because as far as I know, there’s only one word in the Andelian language for purge.
Choosing a corridor at random, he set off at a run, desperate to find some clue that might lead to a safe exit. He lost all sense of time and distance, but then a new voice boomed out on the ship’s speakers—a voice he recognized—and he staggered to a halt.
“Rawlgeeb, it’s me. Breamell. I hope that you can hear me. I have someone here who can tell you what to do. Listen to his instructions, and you’ll be fine. Trust me, Rawlgeeb. You must act quickly. I’ll be waiting for you, Rawlgeeb. Good luck. I–”
Breamell’s voice seemed to catch and break up, but immediately, a male voice came from the speakers:
“This is Captain Stanch. Here’s what you need to do. Go to the first door you can see and find its keypad. If you can damage it in some way, that should do the trick. Hit it with something or try to break into it. Ignore any messages on the keypad. Just keep trying. The system will register it as a security breach, and we have a patch rigged up over here. Hopefully, we’ll be able to pick up the breach and work out where you are.”
“Hopefully?” Rawlgeeb muttered. “I don’t like the sound of that.” But there was a door on his right, and he dashed across and began pounding on its keypad with his fists, striking out with all his might. A crack appeared at the keypad’s edge, and Rawlgeeb worked his fingers into the gap and ripped the front panel from the wall. Keys popped out and fell to the floor, but Rawlgeeb kept going, tearing at the exposed wiring until it lay in ruins, a faint curl of blue smoke rising from the mechanism.
“I’ll be damned,” Stanch said over the speakers. “It actually worked. Yes. Well done, everybody. That’s great work. Yes, I do owe you a drink. Ha-ha!”
Rawlgeeb ground his teeth together. Any time now would be nice.
“All right, we’d better get on with it,” Stanch resumed. “Oh. I don’t know which way you’re facing. What was that? Yes, let’s assume you were headed away from the brig. If you keep moving in the same direction, you’ll see a side corridor on your right. Take that route and follow it. After a short while, you’ll see a double door on your right. Open it, and you should see a number of smaller doors, each one leading to an escape pod. Hop inside a pod, strap in and then hit the large, red button on the control panel. After that, it’s just a matter of hanging onto your lunch. Things will get a little rough, but at least you’ll escape from the ship.”
“Anything’s better than listening to you,” Rawlgeeb snapped. But he was already running hard, the route memorized. I’ll make it in time, he told himself. I have to make it.
CHAPTER 33
Gloabon Space Station The Gamulon – Returning to Earth Orbit
Breamell stepped toward Captain Stanch, her arms outstretched, but when the Andelian backed away, she dropped her arms to her sides. “I’m sorry, Captain. I wanted to say thank you. Without you, Rawlgeeb would never have got off that ship.”
Stanch straightened his tunic. “It’s nothing, ma’am. I only did my duty as an officer. We Andelians aren’t all belligerent savages, you know.” His eyes clouded as if at an unpleasant memory, but he looked away, making a show of scanning the bridge. “If you’ll forgive me, I have duties to attend to. I must oversee the Gloabons and make sure that The Gamulon returns to its usual orbit.”
“Go get ‘em,” Brent said. “And don’t forget that drink you owe me. I’ll hunt you down if necessary.”
Stanch nodded then turned smartly away to march across the bridge, lifting his feet high to step over the unconscious form of Jamangle. “Mr. Bolster,” he called over his shoulder, “an Andelian never forgets.”
“I always thought that was elephants,” Vince said from his seat at the comms console. “They were the big, gray creatures that could fly, weren’t they? Before the Dawn of the Big Desert, I mean.”
“Actually–” Maisie began, but Brent cut her off. “Something like that,” he said, patting Vince on the shoulder. “By the way, you did a damn fine job of patching through to that ship’s PA. I don’t know how you did it, and please, don’t even think about explaining it to me, but I have to hand it to you, Vince—you r
eally delivered the goods.”
“It wasn’t too hard,” Vince replied, running his hands along the console’s edge in a proprietorial fashion. “You know, I could get used to this kind of set up. It’s way ahead of anything we have back home. I wonder if they have any vacancies.”
“The admiral went for a lie down, so you’ll have to ask Jamangle when he wakes up.” Brent glanced at the prostrate Gloabon captain. “Maybe don’t bother the guy immediately after he comes around, though. At least wait until he stops seeing double. And give him a chance to smarten himself up. I’m no expert on the way the Gloabons do things up here, but I’d say that’s an uncommonly large quantity of drool he has down the front of his uniform.”
“I hate to think what the captain is going to say to me,” Breamell said. “I’m bound to be demoted. I just hope they don’t send me down to accounting. They give you the creeps down there. All that quantum-level bookkeeping. Everything’s a debit and a credit and all possible states in between, all at the same time. And they say you can never tell which is which. I couldn’t live with that level of uncertainty day to day.”
Vince grunted. “You should try working for an investigator. Brent’s accounting is so creative you wouldn’t believe it. Once, his tax return got misdirected and wound up getting sent to the library service by accident. They filed it under crime fiction, and it stayed on the shelves for months.”
“What happened?” Maisie asked. “Did the IRS send a snatch squad? That’s what usually happens if you don’t file in time.”
“No, a keen-eyed librarian found the damned thing in the end,” Vince went on. “They passed it on to the tax people, but it had been read by so many of their members that the library decided to keep a copy for themselves. Turns out that people thought it was an experimental novella, so they refiled it under literary. There was even some talk of it winning a prize. The organizers sent someone around to the office, but the poor guy took one look at Brent’s ugly mug and changed his mind.”
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