Zara's Flight: Book One of the Kato's War series

by Andrew C Broderick

  The silver blobs morphed and stretched in the dark towards the opening in the access tunnel wall. “Get back, guys!” Bruce commanded. They withdrew through the room with the tennis balls, into the first access shaft.

  “Heading your way,” Arthur said, hearing the situation unfold. As they retreated, John attempted to block the machines’ path by throwing the silver spheres at the hole they had cut in the wall. However, this just gave them ammunition. Just as they got out, three shape-shifters burst into the room and smacked the spheres against the opposite wall so hard they dented the thin metal partition.

  Once back in the narrow shaft, Bruce eyed the convex impressions left by the spheres on the other side of the wall, worrying about the machines’ strength. “They’ll be here in seconds,” he said urgently. “What do we have to use against them?”

  “This?” John said, holding up the laser cutter.

  “And this,” one of the others said, holding up a plasma torch. “Not much, I know. They’re too fast and strong—we’ve got to subdue them somehow before cutters will work.”

  Bruce’s mind raced through possibilities. “Knives and tasers. It’s all we’ve got right now, since our robots were smashed up,” he said, grimly. “We just have to make do.”

  “Tasers are worth a go,” John said. “The shape-shifters are electrical, so maybe the charge will have some effect.”

  “Well, now’s the time to try,” Bruce yelled as the multi-tentacled machines broke through into the shaft, next to them, and began to morph again into menacing shapes with daggers sprouting from them. Bruce pulled his taser from his belt, aimed, and fired. The two electrodes did not penetrate the metallic surface. However, the electrical charge still arced over the skin of the robot, with a crack and a shower of sparks. The shape-shifter recoiled and twisted, then started to move in an almost drunken fashion.

  The men looked at each other and, without a word, took the cutting tools, and began to hack away at the menace before it could recover. “Hot damn! It just takes an electric shock to knock them out!” Bruce said. The other two men confronted the other shape-shifters as they morphed and slithered towards them. They fired their tasers simultaneously and knocked the machines out.

  As they dismembered them, Arthur’s crew appeared at the hatch. “Don’t worry—we made it safe for you,” Bruce teased.

  “What the… how did you kill those things?” Arthur said incredulously. He shook his head as he surveyed the scene. “Tasers? That’s their Achilles heel? Unbelievable! I’ll have to tuck that one away in case I ever have to fight them again.”

  Arthur paused, concentrating on what his goggles were showing. “Wait… the bees are picking up somebody on the bridge—only one. We’re going up now.” Arthur and his team propelled themselves up through the still-dark atrium.

  Jin Liao crouched over the edge of the bridge, poised like a spear fisherman. He held a thick one-meter-long cane, plucked from one of the decks below and sharpened to a point. He focused on the sound of the men moving towards him and launched the spear into the darkness.

  “He’s throwing something!” Arthur yelled as he watched the man’s thermal image moving. They scattered into decks nineteen and twenty as the spear whistled past. “That was pretty damn close. Capture this guy—and make sure to check him for more weapons.”

  After Liao was secured and moved away from the bridge, Arthur turned to face the mid-air control panel. “So, how does this thing work?” he asked. “Do you just speak to it?”

  “Preface everything with ‘computer’,” one of his team said.

  “Oh. Hopefully it understands English,” Arthur said. “Computer, turn all the lights on.” The atrium was suddenly bathed in light.

  “Hot damn!” Arthur said.

  “You found the light switch!” Bruce said excitedly, from below. “All of this section’s lit now. This makes things much easier. How about opening all the doors now?”

  “Computer, open all interior hatches,” Arthur said.

  “Outstanding!” Bruce said. “We’ll be able to proceed much faster now. We’re going to go back to the central access tunnel and work out from there.”

  “Copy that. We have two secured so far,” Arthur said. “We’re going to clear the bottom ring—from outside it looked like it was possibly the crew quarters. Then we’ll head down there.”

  They floated down to deck eighteen, and out along one of the five spokes that led out to the ring. “Looks like each spoke leads to two rooms,” Arthur said. “We’ll just work our way around the ring from here.” In so doing, they found three more crew members, cowering in their quarters. The team secured them on separate decks of the atrium, as far apart as possible. After that, they headed down to help the others.

  The sun began to rise, sending its blinding rays into the Eris and illuminating Dawn’s huge hull. Zara, Christopher, and Aleksandr, still on board Eris, listened to the proceedings inside with fascination.

  “They’ve secured the atrium and rings now,” Christopher said. “I think we ought to go up to the bridge and start looking at how to operate this thing.” They set off through the holes of scorched metal and up into the first level of the atrium, still littered with smoldering robot parts. The sunlight slanted in through the glass decks, illuminating the plant life in all its brilliant colors right up to the bridge.

  “Wow…” Zara said, looking up.

  “No time to waste,” Christopher said. “You’ll have plenty of time to admire the view later.” They pushed up from the bottom, passing the glaring captives as they ascended.

  “Computer: display console,” Christopher said on reaching the bridge. A panoramic display of windows appeared that stretched halfway around them, showing all kinds of diagrams, charts, data readouts and controls—all in Chinese. “Visiglass: translate to English,” he said. Christopher stroked his chin, trying to make sense of it all. “We have our work cut out.”

  Within half an hour, two more crew members had been captured, bringing the total to seven. Bruce said, “Christopher, I think we found your equipment bay. It’s a largish compartment at the bottom of access shaft three, and it’s the only one on this side that’s still closed. Somebody locked it from the inside, it seems.”

  “On my way down,” Christopher said. When he reached the end of the shaft, he shielded his eyes as a laser burst into life. “You could have warned me!” he said in irritation.

  “Sorry.”

  “Why’d they make this hatch so damn thick?” John asked as the laser he was wielding cut slowly through the metal. Bruce braced himself against the opposite wall, with his boot ready to kick the hatch through. “Clear.”

  Bruce kicked, and the heavy chunk of metal floated inwards, spinning as it went. A face, bearing an evil grin, greeted them.

  “Seung Yi!” Bruce said. The balding Seung didn’t reply. “Cuff him and take him up.” Seung didn’t resist. His muteness and incessant smugness were unnerving.

  Bruce and John looked at each other in concern, each one wondering whether Seung had something up his sleeve.

  Zara heard Seung Yi’s name through her earpiece. “He’s mine,” she muttered through gritted teeth. She launched herself from the roof of the bridge and down through the decks, nearly hitting the edges. At the bottom, she moved across and down the access shaft as the slyly grinning Yi was being maneuvered out of the equipment bay.

  “You…” Zara said, her voice thick with hatred. Their eyes met. The lifeless look of his black eyes, much like a shark’s, made her shudder. She clenched her right fist and hit him squarely in the jaw. He flinched. “That’s for my dad,” Zara growled savagely. “And this one’s from me.” She hit him again.

  “You’ll die a slow, painful death. Every last one of you,” Seung said. “Or, maybe it’ll be quick. You will see when the time comes…”

  “Please enlighten us,” Arthur said, in an almost weary voice.

  “There are explosives aboard the ship, rigged to go off at a time of our
choosing,” Seung said. “Closing all the interior hatches to stop it from depressurizing won’t help, either, just in case you were wondering.”

  Arthur’s eyes narrowed in anger as Seung seemed to have read his mind.

  “Search the ship immediately for explosives,” Arthur said urgently into his microphone. “Concentrate on the atrium first.”

  “Copy that,” came the reply from Bruce.

  “Will you find them in time?” Seung hissed. “We don’t mind dying. Question is, do you?”

  “Back up, Zara. We need to get up this shaft,” Arthur said. She did so, moving from the shaft into a utility room to let everyone past. Seung’s crazy grin remained. He locked eyes with her as the team moved him up towards the atrium. Zara shuddered.

  Aleksandr floated in the Eris, watching the view from Christopher’s goggles as he and Christopher conversed about the controls and displays. The ship’s layout and systems were slowly starting to make sense.

  Then, they heard the announcement about explosives. “Oh, crap,” he sighed, mostly to himself. “It’s all over.”

  Suddenly, a pulse of light brighter than the Sun flashed through Aleksandr’s vision, and a section of the padding on the inner wall opposite him caught fire. He felt as though he had been kicked in the face by a mule. Half-blinded, Aleksandr’s training kicked in. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and started to tackle the flames.

  Chapter 26

  “Dawn to Eris: that was a one microsecond pulse. How about a full second the next time?” The voice came over the comms. Aleksandr looked around in panic. As he squinted painfully against the sunlight as his eyes pulsed with pain from the laser blast, the sight outside filled him with dread: an oval pod, hovered ten meters away. Its exterior bristled with all kinds of scientific instruments. Inside, two figures were seated.

  “We have lasers on board that can vaporize rock,” its pilot said. “We can start by melting your console. Then, we’ll cut off wings and stabilizers. You will then be stuck on Dawn until our return to the ISS2 for repairs, where you will promptly be arrested. We think we are being more than fair by allowing you to leave peacefully, since you have done so much damage to our ship. You have fifteen minutes to free all captives and leave the Dawn.”

  Aleksandr hurriedly explained the situation to the others. Zara vomited into a nearby closet. Christopher groaned. “That’s where our last two were hiding,” Christopher said. “They have planetary exploration vehicles, and two of them hid out in there when they knew we were coming. They then launched it while we were all in here.”

  “Yeah,” Aleksandr replied, with a heavy sigh. “Makes me wonder if there really are explosives, though. Why would they scuttle the ship and threaten us with lasers?”

  “Don’t know,” Arthur chimed in. “Bruce, how is the search going?”

  “Nothing so far,” Bruce said.

  Seung Yi was secured at the bottom of the atrium. Arthur and the team knew that war didn’t allow the luxury of feeling sorry for oneself—it would only cloud the brain for precious seconds that could be used to think of a way out. “Let’s get up to deck two and huddle,” Arthur said. Christopher joined them there.

  “They were right,” Aleksandr said from the Eris. “If we can’t get off here, the only option is to return to the space station. There won’t be enough food and oxygen on Dawn to support twenty-two people for the years she’ll be in deep space—not that I think they’d let us tag along anyway. That’s all assuming we aren’t blown up first.”

  “Right now, Yi’s holding all the cards,” Christopher said, nodding in Seung’s direction. “That’s why he’s sitting there grinning like a moron: he had this ace up his sleeve all along.”

  “Dammit,” Bruce allowed himself. “How do we get rid of that space pod thing, without killing the people inside?”

  “No way I can think of,” Aleksandr replied. “Same applies if we move Dawn away from the pod. The pod can’t get back to Earth or the ISS2 by itself. It’s probably only got one kilometer per second of fuel.”

  “Undock the Eris and chase it?” Zara suggested.

  “How would we disable it and/or its occupants though?” Christopher asked. “Again, no way I can think of to make them get back on board Dawn. They’d be stuck in space, and eventually run out of oxygen.”

  “Threaten them with a laser cutter?” Zara said.

  “Well… that might have some merit,” Aleksandr said. “Except that their laser is much more powerful than ours. I suppose we could blind the occupants, and pilot it back remotely—God knows they nearly blinded me—but I’m fundamentally against that.”

  The others agreed. Silence reigned for a while as the minutes ticked by.

  “Stumped?” Seung taunted from below. “Never underestimate the East. We can run rings around you mentally. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”

  “Eureka!” Christopher said excitedly, ignoring Yi. “I know what to do! Three of the pushers have a little bit of fuel left. They can be undocked from their sticky pads, just in case they need to be moved and flown manually. Then, there’s another sticky pad underneath, to reattach them.

  “Only, instead of attaching it to Dawn, we attach it to that pod and push it well away. They were built to control a four-thousand-ton ship, so it’ll be plenty strong enough.” Some of the others nodded slowly as they digested the idea.

  “Isn’t that still going to kill them, though?” Aleksandr said. “If they can’t redock, they’ll just drift in space until their oxygen runs out.”

  “We won’t just send them off randomly into space,” Christopher replied. “Luckily, we’re still in the same orbital plane as the ISS2. We’ll boost them into a lower orbit. They can then use their thrusters to get lower still, until they’re within range of a regular shuttlecraft. The Chinese can scramble one of those quickly to go and get them before they run out of air.”

  “Genius!” Arthur said, even though he didn’t fully understand orbital mechanics.

  “Well, we have roughly ten minutes before they start burning holes in us,” Aleksandr said. “Better get on with it. Can’t let them see it coming, though, else they’ll open fire.”

  Christopher removed his tablet from his pocket and opened a program. He commanded one of the pushers at the rear of Dawn, out of sight of the pod, to undock. “Four percent fuel left,” he said as he maneuvered it out into space, where it wouldn’t be seen, and then closed in towards the pod from behind.

  “Watch out, Alex,” Christopher said. “It’ll bump the pod forward—straight towards you. I’ll have to count on them being too shocked to fire before I can turn it away from you.”

  “One minute to go,” Aleksandr said. “I’m getting back on Dawn, just in case. I’d like to have some chance of surviving if they open fire.”

  Christopher maneuvered the pusher slowly and carefully to within half a meter of the pod. The occupants seemed unaware of its presence. There was a sudden jolt as he bumped it against the pod. It stuck fast.

  The pod’s occupants were caught completely unaware. By the time the copilot’s finger reached the button for the laser, the pod was already halfway through its violent turn to the right. The laser beam missed the Eris and scorched the rear, metallic section of Dawn. The hull, however, was so shiny that most of the beam’s intensity was reflected.

  Even though the pusher’s main engine could be delicately throttled, Christopher lit it up at maximum thrust. Its stunned occupants barely had time to see the rear of Dawn flash by before they were kilometers away. They were pushed back in their seats, frightened out of their minds as the savage acceleration—several times more than the capsule had been designed to withstand—began to lower their orbit.

  “And we’re out of fuel… now,” Christopher said thirty seconds later as the engine shut down. “A one-point-one-kilometer-per-second kick in the pants, and they’re on their way home!”

  “Bravo, sir!” Aleksandr said. A cheer rose up from the group of conspirator
s.

  Seung Yi looked crestfallen but soon regained his snakelike composure. “Tick, tick, tick,” he said to them. “Not much time left.”

  “Right, not a minute to waste,” Bruce said. “All hands get looking for that bomb! Three of you come with me, and we’ll question the rest of the crew.”

  The rest of the team spread out in all directions, covering the areas not yet searched by Bruce’s team. Zara didn’t even really know what she was looking for, but she looked anyway, flying down access shafts and searching every nook and cranny. Panic rose in her chest at the thought of an impending explosion.

  “You wouldn’t believe where we hid it,” Seung Yi said as they passed by. “Better make sure you find it!” Several tense hours passed, and no bomb was found. Arthur, Bruce, Zara, Aleksandr and Christopher convened on the bridge.

  “Our window for reentry is closing,” Aleksandr said. “If we don’t go soon, we’ll have to wait another six orbits—roughly nine hours—to depart, if we’re to make it to the landing site. Bomb or not, we’re going to have to get out of here.”

  Christopher sighed. “Okay,” he said, dejectedly. “Then the laws of physics have clinched the decision. Let’s get the cargo transferred and prepare to get out of here.”

  Get out of here. The words hit Zara like a ton of bricks as the enormity of her decision began to hit home. She would be utterly alone.

  Four of the assault team began transferring the cargo in from the Eris. They formed a human chain, passing crates and drums in through the tunnel, and shoving them temporarily down the main access shaft toward the rear of Dawn. Zara would have plenty of time later to put them away and could move even the heaviest ones with ease in the nearly zero gravity.

  Maneuvering the items necessitated being in the constant presence of Seung Yi, as he was detained at the bulkhead between the atrium and the rear section. He alternately grinned evilly and glared at them. “Tick, tick, tick,” he said. Eventually, Arthur had had enough. He pulled a roll of duct tape from his belt and taped Seung’s mouth shut. This humiliation served only to enrage Seung further, but at least he was now confined to muffled screams.