The men and women on the bridge shouted with alarm as the shift in gravity threw them from their cover and into the left wall. I would have thought that they would have been prepared for the movement since this was the third time Eve had spun their ship, but then I realized she was rotating it clockwise, and the previous movements had been counterclockwise.
I twisted to my right as I slid down the floor. A quick glance showed me four armored soldiers, and I lined up a shot at the closest. The man was also aiming toward me, and our weapons fired in unison. My slug punched through his armor like it was made of plastic, and his innards exploded out of him with a spray of red blood. His bullet hit me in the chest near my right shoulder, but the caliber of the bullet was either too small, or my new armor too thick, and I felt the thing bounce off me.
The hit of the bullet still spun me away, and my back turned to the room of hostiles. Fortunately, none of my enemies could get another aimed shot off. Eve had continued her spin of the carrier, and everyone in the room was now falling toward the ceiling.
My shoulder bounced off the back of a terminal chair, and then I smashed completely through one of the gunner screens. I landed on the ceiling amongst a rain of glass and tried to roll through my fall. There were dozens of cuts on my neck, head, and face, but they healed almost instantly.
Everyone in the bridge had landed on the ceiling, and I swept my shotgun over the dozen people. I quickly found the three armored soldiers and managed to punch a slug through the closest soldier’s helmet before he could point his rifle at me.
The ceiling-floor stopped vibrating, and I flipped up into the air. I’d guessed the precise moment that the carrier’s gravity tech caught the new position, and I hovered at the apex of my jump for half a second before I continued my trajectory to land on the original floor.
The rest of the carrier’s crew wasn’t ready for the change, and they all screamed as they dropped straight down from the ceiling.
I fired off two more shots as soon as they landed and killed the remaining soldiers. There were ten more Alloprize employees on the bridge, but three looked as if the fall might have broken their necks and two had limbs twisted the wrong direction. It didn’t appear the remaining five were going to do anything aggressive at the moment, so I moved toward the man with the nicest uniform.
“Are you the captain?” I asked as I set the business end of my shotgun against his nose.
“Yes!” he gasped. The man’s eyes were wide with horror, and I surmised he’d never seen a two and a half meter tall tiger-man in space armor with a shotgun before.
“You should surrender,” I growled.
“I surrender!” he said as he prostrated himself on the metal ground.
“Good.” I grabbed the back of his uniform by the neck and picked him off the ground as if he was a newborn puppy. Then I carried the man to a cluster of terminals set below the plush captain’s chair.
“You need to call off the other ships,” I explained as I tossed him toward the terminal.
“I do not know how to use the comm--” he started to say, but I pulled the trigger of my shotgun. The barrel was next to his head, and the slug missed his skull by fifteen centimeters.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you over the sound of my shotgun. I believe you were saying something about calling off the other ships in your fleet,” I growled.
“Yes!” I didn’t think the man’s eyes could get any larger, but they did, and he laid out his trembling hands over the controls of the terminal I’d thrown him into.
A few moments passed, and it became apparent that the man had no idea how to use the controls. He might have worn the uniform of an officer, but I assumed he’d transferred to the position from some comfortable corporate desk job. The thought of such an incompetent man commanding a fleet, even one this small, made my blood boil, and I almost ended him.
“I’ll help.” Z must have sensed my frustration because she set her hand against the armor on my arm and pushed my shotgun away from the man.
“Thank you,” I hissed.
She nodded and then jumped into the seat next to the man. Her fingers drummed across the keys of her terminal and then she chuckled.
“See on your screen where it says ‘open communications with fleet’?” she asked the disheveled man sitting next to her. “Press that button.”
“Attention First Fleet. This is Admiral Paven. We’ve been overrun by the Children of Rah and have surrendered. Please disarm and fall into position behind the carrier.”
“Is this going out to the ground troops?” I asked.
“No, just the fleet,” Z answered after she looked at her screen.
“Admiral Paven, we have orders to--” A woman’s voice came over the speaker, but the man interrupted her.
“I’m overriding those orders! Surrender or I’ll be killed!” the man shouted at the terminal.
“Sorry, Admiral,” the woman said. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“Uhhh. This isn’t good,” Z moaned a half second before the red lights above the bridge started pulsing.
“What is going on?” I asked her as a siren began to shriek.
“The destroyers are launching warheads. They are targeting this carrier!”
Chapter 13
The display screens on the bridge flashed, and I could see a swarm of missiles leaving the pair of destroyers. There were way too many of them to count, so I guessed the number was over fifty. They were probably blowing their entire payload to make sure we didn’t capture their carrier.
This was the exact opposite of what I expected would happen.
“What is going on? Why are they firing on us?” Jatal shouted to me from the other side of the bridge, but I ignored the man.
“Distance?” I asked Z as my stomach dropped.
“Eleven kilometers. What do we do?” I could hear the hopelessness in her voice.
“Activate shields, and see if you can deploy drones,” I replied as I fought back my own despair. Missiles weren’t usually much of a problem if a ship was properly crewed. They could easily be caught by drones, shot down by plasma cannons or laser arrays, and most shields could block a good chunk of the damage. The problem was that this carrier only had a skeleton crew and said skeleton crew was mostly incapacitated by the fall from the ceiling. No one knew how to fly this carrier or use any of the cannons.
“Hey Admiral Asshole, you don’t know how to turn on the shields, do you?” Z growled as she ran her fingers across the control interface.
“No, I just give the orders,” the man whined.
“How many escape pods do you have?” I asked.
“We have a two hundred and forty,” he said as he pointed to the pair of chute doors on the wall of the bridge.
“Adam, there are sixty-four--”
“Extract the tube and get off of the carrier!” I interrupted Eve’s voice coming across the transponder. “We are going to take the escape pods,” I yelled loud enough for Jatal and his people to hear me, and the men sprinted toward the doors leading to the chutes.
“I will disengage and try to pick you up from space,” Eve said.
“Can you destroy the other ships?” I asked. “We will aim for the moon, but they might shoot us down before we get there.” Z was already out of her chair, and I motioned for her to follow me.
“I will--” the Alloprize officer began to say, but Z interrupted him with a shot from her rifle. The man screamed as a bullet tore through his leg, and he fell to the ground with a spray of blood.
“Captains go down with their ship, asshole.” Z spat on the man, and then we turned to run.
We made it a few steps before the missiles hit the carrier.
We both lifted off the floor as if we were insects trapped inside of a thrown bottle. I managed to grab the blonde woman with my left arm as soon as we left the ground, and I tried to do my best to wrap my larger body around hers.
I felt my shoulder slam into something and break into a
hundred pieces, then my back collided with metal and my spine shattered. My arms were cut by razors, and while my new armor protected me from most of the damage, I knew that both my elbows were broken. Something punched my skull once, twice, three times, and I felt my right eye rip out of its socket.
I knew Z would die if I let go of her, so I focused all of my willpower on the task of keeping my broken arms wrapped around the woman’s lean body. She screamed into my chest, or maybe it was the screech of the sirens of the death wail of the mini-carrier drowning out the last thoughts of my mutated brain.
“Come on! Why the fuck are you so heavy! Damn it! Get up!” I heard Z shout, but she sounded so far away.
I opened my left eye, but I couldn’t really see through the blood pouring out of my face. Or maybe it was the smoke. Or maybe it was the endless flow of sparks pouring out of every surface of the bridge. I was lying on my stomach, but my left arm was raised in the air, and I felt someone tugging on it.
“Adam, please get up. I can’t carry you. Damn it. Don’t fucking die. Please get up! Fuccccckkkk!” I heard her say again, but my ears seemed to be confused as to which direction she spoke from.
I forced my neck to pull my head up more, and I made out the faint outline of the blonde hacker pulling on my left arm. It looked like she was really tugging on my limb, but she might as well have been trying to tow Persephone with a rope. I probably weighed over a hundred and fifty kilograms in my half-tiger form with my armor on.
“Go,” I said, and I felt way too much blood pour past my fangs and out of my mouth.
“No! Get the fuck up!” Z screamed at me. “This whole thing is going to disintegrate in half a minute. Get up! Damn it, Adam! Get up!”
I tried to push against the floor with my right hand, but I couldn’t seem to put any strength into my arm, probably because it was beyond broken. Then I tried to move my legs, but nothing happened. Everything hurt beyond the shock of numbing pain that I was used to.
Even the beast inside of my soul whimpered.
“I can’t move.” More blood poured out of my mouth, and the ship lurched to the side. We both started to slide away from the hatches that led to the escape pods, and Z cried out with dismay.
“Come on, Adam. Please get up.” The air was filled with the scent of smoke and burnt ozone. It was hard to see, but the tears rolling down Z’s pretty face sparkled with the orange light from dozens of bridge terminal fires.
“I can’t go. Save yourself.” I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted to close my eyes. Despite my armor, blood was pouring out of me.
But I also itched with the power of my strange healing ability. It would never let me die. It would never let me rest.
“Fine. Fucker,” she huffed and then sat down on the rocking surface.
“No. Go,” I gasped.
“No, Adam,” Z said as more tears came down her face. “You’ve saved my life too many times to count. I’m not going without you. We’ll die together. Kind of romantic, huh?” She tried to snicker, but snot was running out of her nose now, and she was sobbing out the words.
Both of her hands held onto my left paw, and she squeezed my fingers twice.
The beast in my stomach growled, and the edges of my vision started to shift from their normal yellow hue to red. I told my legs to move, but they didn’t. Then I punched the floor with my right fist, and the blonde hacker let out a surprised yelp.
“Yes! Get up! Come on tiger-man. You can do it! Yes!” Z screamed through her tears as my right leg started to move.
I moaned against the agony and then tried to move my left leg. This one also worked, and I felt the discs in my spine itch like crazy as it began to reform around my vertebrae joints. Fire descended my back, and I spit out what felt like another gallon of blood.
“Stand up!” Z shouted as she pulled on my hand. “Get a move on, marine! We have to get the fuck out of here!”
The bottom of my right boot found the floor, but the ship started to slide the other way, and I tipped over.
“Lean on me,” Z said as she slipped her shoulders under my left arm.
“Ha,” I spat as I regained my balance. There was no way she could support my weight, but her gesture gave my spirit strength, and I stood.
“Let’s go, Adam,” she took a step and pulled on the arm she had draped over her shoulders.
The ceiling exploded in a fireball of smoke, magma, and lightning. The mass of twisted metal fell two meters in front of us, and we had to pause our walk.
“Around it!” Z groaned and pulled me to my left.
I moved my boot, almost fell over. Then took another step. This one was better, and I realized that I actually was leaning on Z a bunch. The mass of fire had blocked our route to the escape pod hatch and probably added another fifteen seconds of time to our escape.
We probably didn’t have more than ten seconds to get to the pod.
“Can you see? I can’t see anything!” Z shouted as a blast of black smoke erupted from the ceiling.
The carrier lurched again, and it tipped us right into the mass of twisted, burning metal we were trying to walk around. My friend screamed and tried to hold onto me, but she tripped over my big feet, and we both crashed to the bucking floor.
Then we started to slide toward the molten metal.
“No!” She shouted as she tried to grasp my chest.
“Hold on,” I growled as I slammed my right hand into the metal of the floor. I was looking for seams in the metal that my cat claws could hook onto, but instead, my claws actually punched into the metal as if it was made out of a cheap aluminum can. We stopped our slide, and then the carrier lurched back in the other direction a few seconds later.
Now the molten ceiling metal was rolling toward us like a fiery tumbleweed.
I yanked my claws out of the metal and pushed Z off my chest. The woman landed on her feet, and then I rolled to the side before the ball of smoking ship ceiling could crush me.
The escape pod chute was still fifteen meters away. Or at least, I thought it was. I couldn’t really see through the smoke anymore. I could only see Z, and she was yanking on my arm to help me stand.
The ship lurched as soon as I made it to my feet, and we were flung forward. I wrapped my arms around the blonde woman again, but we just bounced off the floor instead of pinballing around the bridge.
Damn. I was tired. So fucking tired.
“Get up!” Z’s voice yanked me from my thoughts of sleep, and I managed to stand again.
My friend was coughing, and my own breaths were coming out in painful gasps. I couldn’t tell if it was because there was too much smoke in the air, or if it was because we were losing air to the bridge. Either way, my estimate of ten seconds was nearing its end, and I didn’t think we’d live much longer.
Then my hand closed over the handle of the escape hatch.
“Get in!” I ordered Z as I yanked the latch down.
I half expected the hacker to argue with me again, but she jumped down the slide without a word, and I tumbled down after her. The slide down the chute was only ten meters, and we came out in the starboard nest of escape pods.
These escape pod nests were located all over military ships so that passengers could get out. This one probably served the bridge as well as a few other nearby areas of the ship because I saw other chutes leading into the room. There were spots for at least forty pods, and only five of them had been taken. Z headed toward the closest, but then the gravity tech on the ship cut out, and we were floating above the ground.
“Damn it! We were so close!” the blonde woman screamed as she tried to kick-swim toward the far wall. We were five meters away from the nearest pod, but we hadn’t been able to kick off the ground correctly, and both of us were just floating until the gravity tech turned back on.
I doubted that the gravity would actually turn back on.
The carrier was on its death bed, and the systems probably couldn’t keep the power up.
“Hold on to
my chest,” I ordered Z, and she wrapped her arms around my neck.
I pointed my shotgun behind us, adjusted the angle a tiny bit, and then pulled the trigger. My eye socket hadn’t healed yet, but I didn’t really need to aim with my usual precision. The blast from the weapon launched us through the zero gravity with a speed almost equal to the slug. I twisted my body in the air to protect Z again, and my back took the brunt of the impact when we hit the interior of the pod I had aimed us at.
My breath exploded out of my mouth with a spray of hot blood, and the world darkened to a shade only a few tints lighter than black. Z wiggled loose of my arms, flung down the door, and then punched the giant red “Launch” button with her fist.
“Go! Go! Go! Goooooo!” she prayed as the pod detached from the anchors holding it to the wall. There was a hiss of hydraulics that filled the interior of the pod like a room full of snakes, and then the top thrusters hit.
“You are really fucked up. Hold still. I’ll strap you in,” Z said as she pushed me against one of the four chairs. I didn’t have the strength to resist her, if anything, it was taking everything I had to keep my eyes open.
“Okay. You are in,” she said I heard the last buckle click across my armor.
“Thanks,” I whispered. My vision was getting blurry, but I saw Z strap herself into the chair and then plug her data cord into her skull.
Then we were in space, and the massive purple gas giant filled the view windows of the escape pod.
“Eve? Can you hear us?” Z said into her transponder.
“Yes! You are alive! I knew it!” I heard Eve’s voice come from both of our transponders, and I was able to get my lips to smile. She sounded overjoyed.
“We just got off the ca-- Oh, shit!” Z screamed.
The carrier exploded.
Or more appropriately, it imploded, since it was space. There was still an explosion type fire because of the massive engines of the craft giving up the ghost, but the rest of the ship crumpled toward its drives as if it was being pulled into a black hole.
Space Witch: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 2) Page 12