Fools Rush In (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 3)

by Donna S. Frelick

  “Let’s see it in real time, Arnett.”

  As the deck below their feet thudded with cannon fire, the viewscreen flickered and changed to show the enemy ship against a background of black space. Laze fire bloomed against the cruiser’s weak port side. The Grays’ shields frizzed and collapsed.

  “Now, Ot! Hit ‘em again!”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  The cannons bucked again. The white light flared, as bright as any sun, and this time the cruiser sustained a crippling wound. An angry red gash opened in her side, near her port engines, flames jetting as she lost oxygen from the hole in her outer hull.

  But like a wounded animal, she would be even more dangerous. Sam wouldn’t stay to gloat, despite the cheers of his crew.

  “Let’s get out of here. Sipritz, set course for C4 as fast as we can go.” He stood and put a hand on the shoulders of his helm and weapons officer. “Excellent work, you two. Extra shares on the next job. You, too, Sip. Good job, everyone. Forget what I said about canceling mashes. You deserve a little fun.”

  Another round of cheers went up at that. Sam used the distraction to call Rayna.

  There was no answer.

  Rayna thought she was wedged solidly between the metal reinforcing beams under the bridge, but how could she know her diabolically insane lover would turn his ship upside down—over and over again? She managed to hold on through the first revolution and half of the second. But when the AG stuttered—making her first weightless, then as heavy as a waste recycler—she lost her grip and was tossed between the crossbeams like a lotto ball in its cage.

  She slapped her hands and feet outward to gain some stability and slowed her tumbling for the moment, but she needed a permanent fix. She had no utility belt—for God’s sake, why not?—so in a brief half-second of quiet she unzipped the top half of her jumpsuit, wriggled out of the arms and tied them to the nearest beam behind her. The metal was ice-cold on her bare back, but she was secure. At least until the ship skewed violently to port, her head jerked into the beam on the opposite side and the lights went out.

  “Rayna, wake up, baby. Come on. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

  “No. Absolutely not. First of all, there’s something warm and sticky dripping into one of them. And that light you’re waving around will hurt. A lot.” Despite what she said, she struggled to do as he asked. It was Sam, after all. She had a bone to pick with him.

  A cold, wet cloth dabbed at her brow. It smelled like bad synthohol and stung like a buzz gun, but when she opened her eyes, she could see.

  She frowned at him. “Don’t you have a ship to run?”

  He only smiled back. “It seemed more important to make sure you were still among the living.”

  His tone was as light as hers, but Rayna caught the lingering worry in his eyes. That he would leave his bridge to find her both warmed and disturbed her. She sat up and fought the dizzy nausea that came with being vertical.

  His hand was warm on her back. “Take it easy. You’ve got a nasty bump. I’m not sure how long you were out.”

  “How long since you took that hard a-port?” She probed the goose-egg over her right eye and winced. “And, by the way, what the hell was going on up there?”

  “Offensive maneuver. I told you to hang on.” He grinned and waved at the sleeves of her jumpsuit, still tied loosely to the beam. “This was your solution? Where’s your utility belt?”

  She scowled at him. “I never wear one. I’m a spy not a plumber. Wouldn’t have done my head much good anyway.”

  He kissed her gently on the forehead. “I’m sorry. But the maneuver worked. We’re on our way to C4 without the Grays on our tail. Come on, Doc Berta needs to have a look at you.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” She pointed up and to starboard. The red light winked like a malevolent eye.

  Sam shook his head. “There must be someone else on this ship who can disarm that thing. You’ve just had your brains scrambled.”

  “Are you saying you don’t trust me to handle it?” Even as she argued her head threatened to float off her shoulders. He had a point, but there wasn’t anyone else, and he knew it.

  He tried again. “Any other time—”

  “There is no other time, Sam.” There was only one way to do this. She stood, ignoring the wave of pain and weakness that washed over her, and made her way toward the blinking light.

  “Rayna—”

  “How long until jump?”

  “We can take as long as you need now. We don’t have anyone behind us.”

  She stared at him. “Bullshit. We can’t wait around at the jump node while they catch up to us. How long ’til we get there?”

  He glanced at his chrono. “Four minutes.”

  She took a deep breath and looked up at the device mounted vertically on the beam just above her head. Her head swam.

  Okay, remove cover: four screws. Visually confirm components: explosive (plasmion strip), accelerant/catalyst capsules, timer/receiver chip(s), nanoprocessor links, color-coded. The units Chule Fl’x and her team had found had three NPLs, red, yellow, green. Use the laser knife to deactivate the green one first, then the yellow, then the red. Easy.

  She took the screwdriver from her pocket and removed the cover. The light continued to blink without a sound. But inside all was not as it should be. The links were not red, green and yellow. They were black, gray and white. And they were attached to enough plasmion to blow the Shadowhawk to kingdom come.

  “Holy fuck.” Sam stared at the guts of the device from her elbow.

  They doubled the charge, changed the pattern. “They wanted to make sure we didn’t survive the jump.” Her voice drifted out of her mouth as if she had no control over it.

  His hand went to her shoulder and squeezed in silent gratitude.

  Yeah, well, I may have found it, but I haven’t disarmed it. She was surprised he couldn’t feel her heart under his palm; it was pounding hard enough to shake her whole body. Her sweat was already rolling, and she hadn’t even touched the cover yet. All she could see were those twisting threads of living nanos—white, gray and black.

  Mo’s voice broke over their commpieces. “Cap, it looks like that Gray cruiser has put itself back together somehow. They’re on our tail and fast enough to catch up to us just before we hit jump—Sip says three minutes.”

  Sam ran a hand through his hair. “What the fuck did I do to piss these people off so damn bad? It was just one freaking slave ship, for hell’s sake!”

  “Must be your charming personality, Cap.” Mo’s voice indicated complete sincerity.

  Rayna snorted. “To know you is to love you.”

  He told his XO, “I’m on my way.” Then he turned to Rayna and cupped her cheek with one large hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Go. I’ve got this. Just see if you can fly this bucket straight for a minute or two, would ya?”

  “I’ll try.” He bent to kiss her, a kiss warm enough to drive off the chill that iced her bones every time she looked up. “For what it’s worth, I think black equals red. I love you, Little Bit.”

  Sam moved off down the catwalk in a fast crouch. Rayna whispered, “Love you, too,” at his back and took a deep breath. She wanted to be angry at him for tossing off an “easy” solution to the link conundrum, but his was as good as any. She probably would have agreed with him if left to her own devices: white first, then gray, then black. Lightest to darkest, just as the green, yellow, red had a sort of logic. Of course, the Thrane could have chosen to reverse the logic, or to use none at all. But he had been consistent so far—after all, he had to remember which link to connect in which order himself. Rayna prayed he kept within his own parameters.

  As Rayna looked closer at the package design, she saw the nanolinks would not be her only problem. She would also have to remove the two delicate glass catalyst capsules connected to the links and keep them intact. The strips of plasmion at the bottom of the box were mostly inert without the catalyst, but let e
ven a drop of that chemical touch the explosive and the Shadowhawk and all aboard her were history. The heat of the completed circuit was all that was required to break the tiny vials in the bomb’s design; handling them was very tricky work.

  Okay, you can do this. She’d gotten through her training with a minimum of smoke and fire. She knew what she was doing. Still her heart wanted to break her ribs from the inside. Just breathe, Rayna.

  Rayna wiped her sweaty palms on her thighs and grabbed the laser knife from her pocket. The heat of the knife itself presented a danger; a slip could set off the mechanism. Even the electronics in her commpiece were a threat. She turned it off, took it out of her ear and set it aside. She settled herself directly under the package. Then she reached up and laid sure hands on the white link. She sliced it, destroying a section of the nanocolony that maintained the link.

  The red light continued to blink. One of the catalyst capsules, no bigger than the vitamin supplements she called breakfast, lost some of its support and relaxed toward the mass of plasmion. Rayna’s heart sped up. She cradled the capsules ever so gently with the fingers of her left hand as she cut the gray link. The vials slipped under her touch, but stayed in place. When she sliced through the last link, the vials would swing free; she held them in her palm like two fragile newborns to make certain there was no chance they would drop downward toward the explosive, come together and fracture, or otherwise ruin her day. She took another deep breath.

  Then she severed the final link, the black one. The red light stopped blinking. The glass capsules nestled into her palm as the dead stumps of the links pulled slightly away from the box. She exhaled, a grin spreading over her face.

  “Damn, I’m good!” She didn’t mind that no one was there to hear it. She had to say it.

  She swiped at the sweat on her face with her free arm, then brought up the knife to cut all the deactivated NPL threads away. But above her head, alarms broke the relative peace. She couldn’t quite make it out, but she could have sworn she heard the call to “Battlestations!”

  “Shit!” She just had time to brace her feet and one hand before the first attack came, rocking the ’hawk and throwing Rayna roughly against the beam that held the disemboweled bomb. She fought to hold the vials without crushing them, to stand upright so she could burn the links free, but the ship was skewing and pitching, bucking and yawing like a demon from Portal’s Hell. The wild gyrations threatened to send her flying until she wrapped an arm and a leg around the beam and clamped on tight. Still the vials were at risk, the whipsawing G-forces pulling at her unsecured arm. The glass clinked in her palm as she struggled not to smash it.

  “Fuck, Murphy, will you please keep this beast steady?” The worst of the fishtailing seemed to ease. With a surge of effort she brought the knife up in front of her face and stripped the links from their attachments. The vials and a snarl of tiny threads came loose in her hand. She dropped away from the beam, staggering as a shot from the Gray cruiser made contact and shook the ’hawk from stem to stern.

  She fell to her knees beside the commpiece, jammed it in her ear and slapped the button at her throat. “Sam, you there?”

  “Rayna!”

  “We’re good to go. Package is disarmed. I’m coming out.”

  “Good job, Little Bit.” There was no mistaking the relief in his voice—and the pride. “Get out of there as quick as you can. Security will meet you to take the components. We’re hitting jump as soon as you’re clear.”

  “Roger that, baby. See you on the other side.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “J minus thirty seconds, Cap.”

  Sam acknowledged the data from his helm officer and opened the comm to Engineering. “Kwan, you ready?”

  “Ready as we’ll ever be, Cap. Just say the word.”

  Mo looked up from his sensors. “They’re backing off.”

  The corner of Sam’s mouth lifted. “They think that bomb will take care of us in jump.”

  Mo’s expression darkened. “We might have missed something.”

  “We know this ship. We’ve covered her, bridge to waste scuttles. We didn’t miss anything.” He ignored the voice deep inside that told him they hadn’t had enough time. There was no other choice. They had to believe they’d found everything that Thrane bastard had left behind.

  “All hands prepare for jump.” Sam heard the order go out, saw the bridge crew settle down. He took his own seat and buckled in, ready for the disorientation that always accompanied jump. Once they’d gone through that door in space they called the jump node, the chronos on board would indicate no time had passed, but their bodies would protest their “instantaneous” appearance in another sector of space with dizziness, nausea and a sense of dislocation. The engines, too, would show the strain if they weren’t optimal, and gods knew they weren’t. The young matrix, which was supposed to hold everything together, might even collapse altogether under the furious pressure of that nanosecond of jump time.

  Time passed in jump, all right. Enough to manipulate with complicated formulas and intricate entry timing, if you were the freakin’ Interstellar Council for Abolition and Rescue, Rayna’s outfit. But mostly enough to blow you to bits if you weren’t careful. Sam swallowed as he heard Dartha count them down.

  “Jump in three, two, one!”

  One second the viewscreen was full of angry Gray cruiser; the next it showed nothing but black space. Sam’s head swirled with a sick buzz, and reddish spots swam in front of his eyes. He ignored the signals from his stomach that insisted throwing up was an excellent idea.

  “Jump complete, Cap. Screens show all clear.”

  “Thank you, helm.” He took a breath. “Stand by for course setting.”

  “Aye, Cap. Standing by.”

  He hit the comm button for Engineering. “Kwan. What’s the news?”

  “The worst, Cap. Matrix is fried.”

  Sam raked a hand through his hair. “Engines?”

  “Oh, no problems there. We can tool around the galaxy at ion speed all you want while we grow another jump matrix. My poor babies. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  “You’re blaming me for this?”

  “You’re the captain. Who else should I blame?”

  Sam could hear the grin in Kwan’s voice, but the truth stung just the same. “You should thank me for making sure that Gray ship didn’t blow your ass out of space.”

  “Well, there is that.” Kwan sighed. “At least I can collect on that drink you owe me. They do have a bar or two on LinHo, don’t they?”

  “Yeah. One or two.” The dump. An armpit of a place, and now they would be stuck there for days while Rayna . . . damn it! “Finding RES fluid is going to be the trick.”

  “Leave that to me, Cap. Every rock in space has its black market.”

  “Roger that.” He switched off and turned back to Sipritz. “Set course for LinHo station, Navigation. Full ID.”

  “Setting course for LinHo station, full ion drive, Captain. Estimating arrival in . . . 12 hours, 42 minutes.”

  “Go when ready, helm.”

  “Aye, Cap. New course now.”

  “Okay. Mo, I want damage reports from all sections and the casualty list from Doc Berta as soon as you can get them to me. Arnett, stand down from battlestations.”

  The next few hours passed in a blur of orders given and decisions made, some of them difficult; of questions asked and answers returned, some of which he didn’t want to hear; of reports and responses and proposed workarounds for impossible disasters. His ship was cut and bleeding in a dozen places, not to mention the serious limp represented by the lost jump matrix. Worst of all, Sam had lost family—three of his crew dead on the Shadowhawk alone, five more seriously injured, a couple dozen banged up enough to need attention in Sickbay. And the Fleeflek . . .

  What they needed was a long rest in a decent watering hole, not a forced layover in a garbage pit like LinHo. But it was the middle of the third watch, and Sam was too tired
to think about that now. He rose from his seat on the bridge and stretched.

  He put a hand on Mo’s broad shoulder. “I’m hitting the rack.”

  Mo straightened from his data screen. “I’ll be here.” He had the next watch, but Sam knew the XO wasn’t referring to his location. “How long until they come after us?”

  “Hell, I don’t know why they came after us the first time. Maybe they’ll let us go.”

  Mo shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe we’re carrying something they want to get rid of.”

  Sam stared at him. “Rayna? Kind of a lot of trouble just to kill one agent, don’t you think?” No matter how tough she is.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe she’s just bad luck.”

  Anger flared, bright and hot. A sailor’s luck was a touchy subject; Rayna was a touchy subject.

  “Not for me. Or for the ’hawk either. If it hadn’t been for her we’d have been blown into a thousand pieces today, and don’t you forget it.”

  Mo’s dark jaw clenched. “Oh, it’s like that, then.”

  “Yeah, it is most definitely like that.” He waited.

  The Pataran shook his head, giving up, and returned to the original question. “I expect to see that Gray ship at LinHo. For some reason, I think they’ll have business there.”

  “The same business Rayna has?” Something twisted in his gut.

  Mo’s gaze drilled into him. “Only you and she know what that is.”

  “Ha. Well, I can tell you that plan went to hell when the Fleeflek was lost.” Hot pain slashed through his chest at the thought of the people he’d lost along with the doomed ship—not only Manneh, one of his best and brightest, but 15 others, along with 560 lucky ones, now not so lucky, and ten of the ship’s original crew. So many.

  “Cap?”

  He stared at the viewscreen, but it showed nothing but a few pinpricks of light. “Did you say something?”

  “The partingways. For Manneh and the others. I thought it best to get it done before we hit LinHo. Say 0930 tomorrow morning?”

  “Yeah. Put the word out.” He swallowed, but couldn’t seem to get past a lump in his throat. “You know I’ve got to contact Drew Vort to get the permissions to dock on LinHo.”