by George Ellis
Griss himself rounded the corner and moved to the front of the welcoming party, so to speak. He was stout and compact, like one solid piece of muscle that had been molded into a mostly normal-looking human being. He looked at Romy and I.
“What happened to your shoulder?” he asked, noting the sling I still had protecting my right arm.
“Fell off the bed during a nap,” I lied.
He nodded. Didn’t really care about the answer, it seemed. Then he checked the corridor behind us. “Where’s the hot one?”
I shrugged, not wanting to give anything away. He appraised Romy, then shook his head.
“Whatever. Let’s go.”
They led us into the main engine room. Griss told us to watch our step. He was referring to a large smear of blood that was still slick. Must have belonged to his lead mechanic, RIP. The blood was pooled in a large puddle, and long red drag marks trailed toward the exit. Romy blanched at the sight of the mess.
I spotted a large object in the corner of the room with a tarp over it. Considering its size and the two burly men standing guard next to it, I figured that was the warp drive. Romy recovered long enough to nod, almost imperceptibly, indicating it was probably what we were looking for. It was connected to the turbines with a host of wires and a wide metal duct of some kind.
Closer to where we stood, Griss showed me a panel on the wall that had been stripped away, revealing the long intake tube of the engine core. This tube was how the reactor transmitted energy from the core to the turbines.
“My guy said the problem was somewhere in here before he was retired,” Griss explained.
I touched the wall and felt the hum of the life support systems. They were still working with no problems. Griss nodded. “The reactor is fine. Just can’t get the turbines to fire. You’ve got two hours. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Two hours?” I complained. It was just for show. I had no intention of being on the ship more than 20 minutes. I’d already spotted a ventilation duct we could use to disperse the Halothane.
“Fair enough. Three hours. If you can’t get us going by then, well, on to the next mechanic, I guess.”
Griss and his entourage left the engine room. The two men guarding the warp drive remained. Damnit. Somehow we’d have to distract them long enough to get the gas into the vents.
I opened my toolbox and grabbed a flashlight to take a look at the intake tube. Romy kneeled next to me, getting close enough to chat without the two thugs hearing us.
“What now?” she asked, nervous.
I looked at the space between the wall and tube, then looked at her. She was skinny enough, maybe. She frowned, knowing what I was thinking. “You have to be kidding,” Romy said.
I handed her the flashlight. She started climbing into the open space of the wall.
“Hey! Where the hell is she going?” one of the big guys asked, his hand moving toward his gun.
“Your boss wanted us to fix this. Well, the problem is in there. Unless you want us to take apart the entire damn engine, I gotta send my girl here to crawl in and do the work. Or maybe you wanna tell Griss you’re the reason we can’t fix it.”
The guy just glared at me for a few moments. Finally, he nodded. Romy started to wiggle into the open space. Once she had cleared the panel, I put my toolbox in behind her. She grabbed it.
“How am I supposed to get up there?” she complained. She was at floor level and the venting was near the ceiling of the room.
“You don’t.”
Ah. She understood me now. I turned to the guys on the other side of the room and told them to prepare for a little steam. “We need to drain the core of some fumes,” I lied. They had no idea what the hell I was talking about anyway. Just as I was about to give Romy the signal, the door to the engine room opened.
A thin man with glasses and a full head of white-blonde hair was pushed inside. He nearly tripped over his feet, but recovered in time to avoid the blood puddle with a gasp. It was Marcum.
Griss stepped in behind him.
“If you have any technical questions, he’s here to observe,” Griss explained. “He’s the one who screwed this pooch in the first place.”
Despite being visibly scared out of his mind, Marcum defended his actions, saying his area of expertise was in installing the device into other types of ships, at which point Griss cut him off. He gave him a look as if to say he better not divulge any more about what was under the tarp.
“If they have questions, you answer them,” Griss snapped.
“They?” Marcum asked.
Romy, out of instinct, popped her head out from behind the open area of the wall. Marcum’s eyes went wide and for a moment, I thought he was going to get us killed with his next few words.
“What is it?” Griss asked, noting the look of shock on Marcum’s face.
“Nothing. She just surprised me appearing out of nowhere like that,” he said, recovering.
Griss raised his eyebrows and exited the room. Marcum looked warily at the men in the corner by the tarp, then stepped over the blood trail toward me and Romy.
“I’m Denver,” I said, extending my hand.
Marcum shook it and introduced himself. Then I went through the unnecessary process of introducing Romy as my apprentice. I noted a small twinkle in his eye and grin at the idea that Romy had something to learn from a mechanic like me.
Romy looked at him. “Got any tips for us?”
Chapter 21
Marcum went down with the other two guys. There was no way to warn him, but I did catch his body as he passed out. I eased him to the floor. The taller of the men guarding the warp drive landed face first on the metal with a sickening splat.
Romy climbed out of the wall opening with her mask in place. She had released a small amount of the Halothane locally to buy us more time before we knocked out the full crew.
I grabbed a pair of zip ties from my toolbox and secured the hands of the Rox men just in case they woke up earlier than expected.
Then I pulled the tarp away to look at the drive. I was shocked at how compact it was. The whole thing couldn’t have been more than five feet long. It looked like a series of concentric circles folded in on themselves and then splayed out at one end, like a horn. What wasn’t made of metal seemed to be glass, or perhaps lucite, filled with clear plasma.
“This is it?” I said aloud in disbelief. Simply put, it just wasn’t that impressive. Romy sidled up next to me and inspected the device.
“I’m not going to say the days of purely mechanical propulsion systems are over,” Romy commented, her voice slightly muffled by her mask. “Just that you may want to keep an open mind.”
I looked at the drive again, this time seeing it for what it was: a device that was beyond my understanding. My whole life, I’d had a knack for understanding how ships worked. Their turbines. Their gears. Their electrical systems. This warp drive was going to change that. In the not too distant future, wreckers like me would be obsolete. There was no wrench that could fix this thing.
I was so lost in thought, it took Romy two nudges to get my attention. I finally looked at her. She gestured to suggest we needed to hurry.
“The room and drive are secure,” I said into my handheld. “Preparing to push the gas into the main ventilator. Stand by.”
“How’s it look?” Batista asked, referring to the drive. Her mechanical curiosity had been piqued as well.
“It looks fake. Stay off the air until I give the signal.”
Before dosing the crew, Romy and I had to get Marcum onto the lower level of the cart so we could take him with us. It took a few minutes to pull him onto the platform and his legs would still drag as we pushed him across the ship, but it was manageable.
Once I was satisfied that the drive and the genius were secure, I sent Romy back into the wall to find a duct that would disperse the gas into the air recycler. As she searched for it, I watched the door, nervous. I didn’t want any more intrusions. I just wanted to stroll out of th
e ship with the utility cart and get the Stang disconnected as quickly as possible.
“Found it!” I heard Romy yell.
* * *
I’ve been told, most recently by Edgar and Batista, that Halothane was a cheat. Kind of my get out of jail free card. And I think that’s a load of bull, really. It wasn’t my fault nobody else used sleeping gas to their advantage. It seemed like an obvious way to protect yourself against capture.
So when I rolled the cart through the corridor of downed Rox crewmembers, I didn’t feel bad at all (except for my shoulder, which made me wince with every step). Mentally, I felt perfectly fine with my tactics. Edgar took point, keeping an eye out for any early risers, while Romy trailed behind me.
Batista was off looking for Avery. I’d been very clear we were leaving when the timer ran down, with or without them.
Edgar put up a fist and stopped walking. Romy and I stopped, too, remaining quiet. Edgar leaned around a corner and then pulled his head back. He held up two fingers, indicating a pair of threats loomed nearby. He prepared his weapon and spun around the corner.
I heard four or five quick pops, then a pair of thuds.
“Clear,” Edgar said. As I moved the cart forward, a tiny stream of blood trickled across the floor under the wheels. It belonged to one of the now-dead Rox crew members. They were in exo-suits and must have been off ship when the gas was deployed. Edgar had tapped each of them in the head with a hollow point. They were murderers, anyway, I told myself, reminding myself of Jiang’s assurance that I was a good man. I was still torn on whether to believe him.
“Are you okay?” Romy asked Edgar, looking at the blooming wound on his upper thigh. He smiled through a grimace and shook it off.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” a muffled voice said from behind us. “Turn around slowly, weapons low.”
We did as instructed. There was a Rox crew standing there with an automatic weapon pointed at Edgar. He had us all dead to rights if he was fast enough. The man was roughly my size and had curly brown hair. He scanned the scene from Edgar to Romy, finally settling on me and the utility cart. He smiled from behind the mask.
“Hi Denny,” my brother said. “You look like shit.”
If I’d been wondering how I was going to react to seeing Avery alive and well, the answer came in the form of a tightness in my chest and a tense jaw. I wanted to scream at him and smile at the same time. I did neither. I just stared at him, stunned.
“It’s good to see you, too,” he cracked, lowering his weapon.
Edgar snapped his own gun back up, aiming at Avery. I raised an arm to calm the situation. “It’s my brother, Edgar.”
“I know it’s your brother, dumbass,” he said. “I was on this ship with him, remember? I’m pointing my gun at his face because I’m not sure we can trust him.”
“That’s too bad, tough guy,” Batista said. She was standing next to Edgar, her own gun touching his temple.
Avery smiled once again and started walking toward us. I could see Edgar seething, but he lowered his weapon.
My brother stopped about a couple feet from me. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I went for snark. “I told you not to call me Denny.”
He pulled off his mask, smirked and we shared a look that said we’d find time to discuss things after we were back on the Stang. Then he turned to Batista. She came in for a hug.
“Aw, puke,” Edgar said.
“Shut up, Boom-Boom,” Avery replied.
I watched as Edgar turned dark red. For the first time since I’d known her, Romy laughed. Well, it was more of a snort.
“Boom-Boom?” she snickered.
“I guess we know why he went AWOL,” I joked.
The light-hearted moment was interrupted by a torrent of bullets that shredded the wall next to my head. Fragments of metal ricocheted off my body as we all dove for cover.
“Watch the drive, you idiots!” Griss yelled at his crew.
I couldn’t see how many were with him, but there should have been none. In my haste, I must have messed up the formulation for the gas. Edgar returned fire as Batista and Avery scrambled behind the utility cart next to me.
“This part of your plan, Denny?”
“Call me that one more time and I’m leaving you here,” I hissed.
He put his hands up in mock surrender. Meanwhile, Marcum stirred to life. It took him a moment to orient himself.
“Why am I being transported like chattel?” he asked.
“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Just stay put for now. I mean, the closer you are to the device, the safer you are anyway.”
“In theory!” he cried.
“Avery, tell me there’s an easier way to get back to the airlock without going through Griss and his men,” I said.
“We could just jump out the side door,” he said.
I walked into that one. I had forgotten how similar our senses of humor were, a fact that never helped us bond; we were always just poking at each other.
“Let’s pretend I wanted to get back to the Stang alive,” I said.
“Ohhhhh…” he mocked. “We could go right up the gut.”
Edgar fired off a few more shots, wounding somebody based on the scream at the other end of the corridor. He looked at us and agreed with Avery. “Let’s go up the gut.”
“Am I missing something?” Batista asked. I had the same question floating in my head.
“The Rox has a single corridor that spans from front to back, or face to ass, if you will,” Avery explained. “It goes right through the bridge and the galley. Right up the gut. The shortest distance between two points and all that.”
Romy leaned closer to me, nervous. I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it probably looked more like a pained grimace. We all backed up a few feet so we were behind Edgar and Avery, who were sending the cover fire at the enemy. During a break in the maelstrom, Griss laughed.
“Got you pinned down, Avery!” he barked. “And I can see your ugly mug on the cameras too, Boom-Boom! It’s going to be fun taking you both apart, piece by piece.”
“Come and try it!” Edgar dared. Then he whirled and shot out the two cameras in the vicinity.
Griss laughed. “You’ll never make it, boys. Give up now and I promise I’ll just space you. I’ll make it quick. This is a limited time offer!”
Edgar responded by rolling a grenade down the corridor. It exploded into a ball of gas and fire, and the percussion stunned me for a moment. The next thing I knew Edgar was next to me, pulling me toward the “gut” corridor.
“Boom-Boom…” I stammered, dazed.
He slapped me hard across the face to wake me up. It worked, but damn if he didn’t hit me hard enough to break my jaw. I checked it a couple times and it merely clicked.
Edgar looked at me, Romy and Marcum, who had finally climbed out of the cart. “Get to the choppa!” he yelled.
Marcum and Romy just looked at him.
Batista bit. “What the hell is a choppa?”
I rolled my eyes and explained he was going through an Arnold Schwarzenegger phase. Nobody knew who that was. We all turned toward the gut and started making our run for the airlock. Avery led the way, clearing a path through the (mostly) woozy crewmembers. Edgar was at the tail, pouring gunfire at Griss and his men, but also dropping a grenade every 100 feet or so to create more smoke and rubble for the followers to go through.
We were making good progress until we hit the galley, where a group of half a dozen Rox crew pushed us back. We were suddenly caught in a deadly crossfire, and I knew we were running out of ammo.
Avery looked at me. “Got any more tricks up your sleeve?”
As a matter of fact, I had one. “You know which sector lock that is?” I asked, pointing to the doorway separating us from Griss, about 30 feet behind us. Avery told me it was lock 8A.
I clicked my handheld and barked into it. “Okay Gary, hit the lights and shut 8A. Now!”
“Roger dodger!” he r
esponded.
“Edgar!” I shouted, just as the gate slammed down and the ship went pitch black. “Do your thing! We’ve got 30 seconds, tops!”
See, right when the whole crew went to sleep, I’d signaled Gary to sneak into the on-board AI and just…wait. Infiltrating the system was easy enough, but once the Rox was alerted to his presence, they’d eject him in no time. So I had to choose just the right time for Gary to wreak havoc.
Edgar flipped on the night vision glasses I’d given him for this very moment. Then he yelled to Gary on his handheld. “GNR!”
I wasn’t sure what that meant when he said it, but a second later the Rox’s intercom began blasting an ancient rock song from a band called Guns N Roses.
As the strains of “Welcome to the Jungle” began to blare, Edgar moved to the front of our raiding party and his gun muzzle added the light and sound show to the music as he laid waste to the Rox crew, who were stuck in the dark without night vision glasses. Avery switched and took the rear guard.
We all hustled behind Edgar, through the galley and into the last stretch of the corridor. Bullets whizzed by my head, but our enemies were firing blind and I was pretty damn energized by the guitar riffs, to be honest. Even Marcum seemed to be keeping pace, at least that’s what I thought every time I saw a half-second of the ship thanks to one of Edgar’s gun blasts or grenade explosions.
“Oh, they found me –” Gary said, just as the lights flipped back on. No matter. I could see the airlock ahead of me. My legs burned from pushing the heavy cart, but there was no stopping me. I picked up the pace and flung myself and the cart through the door behind Romy and Marcum.
Batista was right on my heels and Avery was on hers. Once he crossed the threshold of the airlock, Batista slammed the red button and the door came down like an anvil. The Stang’s airlock door opened automatically and we hustled through.
Well, all of us except Avery, who had face-planted in the airlock connecting the Stang and the Rox. There was a slick, dark patch of fabric on his lower back. He’d been hit, and it wasn’t a glancing blow.
Chapter 22