My Other Car is a Spaceship

by Mark Terence Chapman

  “Your shift.”

  “Already? I must have dozed off. Thanks, Spelvin.”

  In order to keep everyone alert and rested, Hal had decreed one-hour rotating shifts for everyone, beginning with himself. The fact that it was time for his second shift meant that ten hours had passed since they’d anchored themselves to the asteroid. It also meant that they had little more than a day’s air left in which to get inside the fortress. They couldn’t chance that the automated sensors wouldn’t pick up the metal of their suits and air tanks, or the motion of their passage, or the outgassing from their maneuvering packs. So they couldn’t try to slip through the shield walls on their own. They needed help.

  The big question was whether that help would arrive in time.

  “Just to recap, Sue—you, Sonn, and Berjelar are Team 1. You’ll create the diversions.” Kalen said.

  “Right,” she agreed with a head-bob. Shadows on the wall beside her mimed her gesture in the glare of multiple flashlights.

  “Remember, the diversions have to be convincing enough to draw guards away from the lab.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned to Fen Donue. “You, Loc, Slouv, and Pir are Team 2. You’ll go after a ship in the main hangar. That’s where we’ll have the best chance of finding a ship to take; but we’re also likely to meet the strongest resistance there,” Kalen continued. “They’re not going to want another ass-whoopin’ like we laid on them the last time we raided a hangar.” He paused, grinning, for the chuckles.

  The Thorian nodded his agreement.

  “Nude, your job is to keep Merry safe at all costs, right?”

  “As safe as possible under the circumstances.”

  Kalen flashed a wry smile. “A more confident attitude would be preferable, but okay. You two stay back until the ship is secured. The rest of us, in Team 3, will take out the lab.

  “Assuming Fen’s team reaches the ship, they’ll be trapped in the hangar between the guards there and the reinforcements who show up behind them. So Teams 1 and 3, when we’re done with our missions, will swing back and attack the reinforcements from the rear. We have to disrupt their cohesion. If they’re organized, we’re screwed. Any questions?”

  He took one last close look at his team, holding the eyes of each team member for an instant, looking for any wavering of purpose, any hesitation, any overpowering fear. Seeing none and hearing no questions, he flashed a tight smile, then nodded.

  “Good. You all know your jobs. If we do them to the best of our abilities, we might just come out of this alive.” He smiled again, this time with genuine warmth.

  “Let’s do it!”

  Fifteen adults and a seven-year-old girl filed out of the chamber carved from unyielding rock and headed in four different directions.

  “Jern,” MekFensal reported, “the ship arriving with guard reinforcements has signaled they’re approaching the shield wall. They’re asking for clearance to enter.”

  “Perfect timing,” the new pirate leader replied. “Give them the current access codes and have the head guard report to me when he arrives.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Hal didn’t need the tug on the rope connecting him to Mynax to alert him. He’d heard the incoming radio transmission at the same time the sentry on watch did. He couldn’t make out what the call was about—it was scrambled—but that didn’t matter. The subject matter of the call wasn’t as important as the call itself. It meant there was a ship arriving.

  That was what they’d waited almost sixteen hours for. Sixteen long, hungry hours. Sixteen lonely hours in which each individual had been kept isolated from the others. Isolated by vacuum and by the shell of steel and composites that kept out the universe—but also human contact. Sixteen hours to listen to the hiss of oxygen being consumed and count down the number of minutes remaining in one’s life.

  They’d been the longest sixteen hours in Hal’s life. But even the arrival of the incoming ship didn’t guarantee their survival. It merely meant that they wouldn’t die of suffocation out here on the asteroid. There was no guarantee they wouldn’t die from other causes on the way in, or once they reached the fortress—assuming they did.

  The arrival of the ship was merely another checkmark on the checklist of things that had to go right for Hal’s ridiculously audacious plan to succeed.

  Phase 1, the Swoop—the successful insertion of the strike team into the system, undetected—had succeeded. So had Phase 2, the Scoot—reaching the staging area near the fortress shield wall.

  Hal saw a twinkle of light reflecting off metal in the distance—the incoming ship. Judging by the rate of motion, and approximating the size of the ship, Hal estimated that they had about an hour until the ship was in range. That was how long they had until Phase 3 began.

  Hal forced himself to relax. There was nothing else for the strike team to do until they determined which gap in the rock wall the ship was headed for.

  Despite himself, he felt his pulse quicken.

  “You understand the plan, Tel?” Penrod stared into the eyes of the Sestran whom he’d appointed squad leader of his small band of loyal pirates, and gripped his shoulders.

  “Yes, sir!” the other replied. His nod set his antennae bobbing. “It is simple.”

  Penrod’s mouth tightened in bitter memory. “You’d be surprised how hard it is sometimes to get people to execute a simple plan.”

  The Sestran frowned in confusion.

  “It’s nothing. Go. Do your part well and there’ll be a major reward in it for you and your men.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The eight members of Penrod’s diversionary team walked out together, gripping the weapons Penrod had supplied from his personal cache.

  That’s a pretty pitiful excuse for an army. Still, look what Jeffries managed to accomplish with even fewer to begin with.

  Penrod and the other four members of his attack team hunkered down to wait behind the crates and other obstructions they’d stacked in that unused section of tunnel for this very purpose.

  Team 1 split into two. Sue and SonnEzmal turned left, and Berjelar went right. Moments later, waving orange tentacles overhead, Berjelar charged left across an intersection screaming, “They’re after me! The prisoners are after me!”

  One of the guards in front of the pump station remained behind, while the other two raced toward the intersection. They stopped just short of the corner, looked right and waited for the prisoners to cross the intersection.

  A moment later, Berjelar, just around the corner on the left, shot them both from the side.

  The guard remaining at the pump room door was equally blindsided by the Chan’Yi and the Sestran coming from the other end of the corridor.

  Sue and Sonn didn’t even have to enter the room. Sonn tossed the satchel bomb inside as far as she could and the two rejoined Berjelar guarding the intersection.

  An explosion erupted through the doorway seconds later, followed by a geyser of water. A river chased them down the corridor.

  Then it was on to the next target.

  “Sir,” MekFensal called out, “we have another explosion, this time in the air processing plant.”

  “Damn those prisoners! They are going to kill us all! Do they not realize they will die too?”

  “No idea, sir. Maybe they figure they are going to die anyway, so why not take us with them?”

  Ishtawahl stood outside the executive offices gripping the tubular railing of the catwalk in impotent rage. There has to be a way to kill them before they kill us all!

  The outer door of the command center opened to admit a computer tech. “Sir! Mr. Ishtawahl! The prisoners are attacking! They’re right outside!”

  “He is right, sir,” MekFensal replied. I see them on the monitor. Five of them. They are about a minute away.”

  “There is no way they can get in here with hand weapons. The blast doors will stop anything they have.” Ishtawahl paused for a moment in thought.

  “On
second thought, here is a chance to rid ourselves of a few of them. Mek, grab a blaster and get a security team up here. You, technician! What is your name?”

  “TelWentil, sir.”

  “TelWentil, you take a blaster, too.”

  “But sir, I am only a tech—”

  “It does not matter. If the prisoners manage to destroy this fortress, you will die for sure. At least this way you have a fighting chance.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  MekFensal joined the other two on the catwalk and handed a blaster to TelWentil.

  The security Chief manipulated the controls to open the blast doors.

  Ishtawahl gripped his blaster. “Let us see if we can turn the tables on the prisoners, shall we?”

  The trio raced through the doors, weapons at the ready.

  The sound of blaster fire echoed along the tunnel.

  “Get ready, everyone,” Penrod muttered. “They’ll be here any second.”

  The fact that there was gunfire ahead meant that the first part of the plan had failed. TelWentil was supposed to look for an opportunity to assassinate Ishtawahl if at all possible. Failing that, the so-called “prisoners” staging the attack on the command center were supposed to fall back and allow themselves to be chased by Jern’s security team to the ambush point that Penrod had established. It looked like that part of the plan, at least, had worked as designed.

  “Wait until our people get in position so you can shoot past them without hitting them.”

  There was a second set of obstructions arrayed on either side of wider part of the tunnel ahead, allowing a clear killing field down the center of the tunnel.

  A stray blaster beam licked the wall of the tunnel only a few dozen meters ahead.

  “Don’t fire too soon. Make sure they’re in range and can’t duck back around the curve.”

  Waiting was always the hardest. But Penrod was looking forward to seeing the look on Jern’s face when he fell into this trap.

  One, two, three more blasts struck the wall ahead.

  Come on! Where are they?

  Penrod peered intently down the tunnel, watching for the first glimpse of his team.

  Where the hell are they?

  Penrod jumped as the Sestran beside him grunted and toppled over, a smoking hole in his back. A split second later, the Sestrans across the tunnel from him fell as well. A sensation of intense heat on his right cheek caused Penrod to gasp and throw himself left, against the tunnel wall.

  “Not him, you fool!”

  Recognizing the voice, Penrod turned around, raising his blaster.

  “Drop it!” Ishtawahl ordered. “Or die where you are.”

  Penrod took an instant to assess the situation. Six blasters had a bead on his head. Shoulders slumping, he sighed and dropped his blaster. Then he slowly raised his hands over his head.

  Two guards rushed toward him. One kicked Penrod’s blaster away and kept his own trained on Penrod’s head while the other guard applied the shackles.

  Penrod looked at the gloating Ishtawahl.

  “How—?”

  “How did I outsmart you once again?”

  The other grimaced and then nodded.

  “Quite simple, really. I have known all along that TelWentil was loyal to you, as did Mek. When I asked Mek to give your agent a weapon, he knew to give him one with a depleted charge. It was quite obvious that he was trying to lead me into a trap. I recognized some of the so-called prisoners on the monitor as technicians.

  “When he turned the useless weapon on me, it was simple enough to disarm him. With a gun held to his head, he was all too eager to divulge your plans and where you were waiting for me. I radioed ahead to some guards who cut off your people before they reached you.” He shrugged. “The rest was merely theatrics. Quite a performance, no?”

  He let out a throaty laugh at the expression on Penrod’s face.

  “Now, let us get you safely installed in a holding pen so we can take care of this prisoner nuisance once and for all. I am so looking forward to putting you board a slave ship—you with your superior attitude. Not so superior now, are you?”

  Hal gave the signal to move out, in formation. Phase 3, the Trojan Horse, was under way.

  The pirate ship clearly was heading for a gap in the asteroid wall several kilometers from their position. The strike team would have to hustle, using their compressed gas maneuvering packs, to reach the gap at approximately the same time as the ship.

  The only way to ensure safe passage through the automated defenses of the shield wall was to go through when the ship did, close enough to the ship that the defenses either couldn’t pick them out as separate targets, or couldn’t fire without risk of hitting the ship.

  Ordinarily, maneuvering packs couldn’t hope to keep up with the speed of a ship. However, because the labyrinthine path through the wall was designed to force a ship to proceed at low speed—as a defense against a quick-strike raid—the packs should be sufficient for the team to keep up. At least, that was the theory.

  The nine were roped together against the possibility that someone’s thrusters might fail. Still, there were plenty of other things that could go wrong: the ship’s pilot might spot the “leeches” attempting to ride his coattails, someone could find themselves in the path of the ship’s engine exhaust and get cooked, part of the connecting rope could get caught on a projection from an asteroid and hang up the entire team, the maneuvering packs might prove insufficient to keep up with the ship—there were a whole host of possibilities too depressing to enumerate.

  Stay positive. This is going to work. It has to. Too many people are depending on it to work.

  Tense minutes passed as the team and the ship each closed on the gap from different directions and at different speeds.

  Two klicks to go. The ship’s right where we need it to be. This might actually work!

  Of course, then there’s Phase 4.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Kalen knew immediately that gaining entry to the lab wouldn’t be as easy as the other attacks had been.

  A squad of Melphim stood guard at the intersection leading to the lab. Before Kalen even got close enough to attempt to use gas or a bomb, the guards opened fire. Kalen and the others ducked back around the curve in the corridor. A faint electronic squawk echoing down the corridor told Kalen that the guards were calling for reinforcements.

  Shit!

  The sound of blaster fire in the distance indicated that the other half of his team had encountered similar difficulties at the intersection on the other side of the lab. This time, divide-and-conquer hadn’t worked.

  “We can’t stay here like this, Tep,” he said to the Thorian beside him. “We have to get to the lab. Hand me a couple of smoke grenades.”

  He took the proffered items, armed them and tossed the first grenade around the corner and down the corridor, followed by the other. Within seconds the corridor was veiled in white. The guards, rightly expecting an attack, began firing randomly into the smoke.

  “Okay, they’re firing high. Tep, you stay here and fire back from around the corner to keep them busy. Shoot at different heights, from waist to chest level, to keep them aiming high. Use two weapons, to make it look like there’s more than one of you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Tep Movoo swallowed hard, clearly nervous at the proposition.

  “Pelk, you and I will have to crawl there. Don’t fire until I give the word. We’ll only get one shot before they zero in on our position. Once they figure out we’re firing from down low we’re exposed with nowhere to hide.

  The Sestran nodded.

  “All right, then. Let’s go. Tep, start firing.”

  The Thorian did as he was told. The smokescreen was complete. Nothing was visible through the pall but the blue beams of the blasters.

  Kalen and PelkSetmal crawled as quickly as they dared. Too fast and the sound might give away their position; too slow and they risked the smoke dissipating too soon. Overhead, blaster shots tr
aded sides.

  After a minute, Kalen estimated that they were halfway to the intersection. He could hear the sizzle-snap of the guards’ guns as the muzzle crystals heated, then cooled.

  Just a few more meters and we should be close enough to make them out through the smoke and draw a bead. We have to hurry—the reinforcements could be here any second.

  Its time for this Mongoose to go after some snakes in the grass.

  Hal gave the hand signal that it was time to close in on the ship. A hundred meters, fifty, twenty. Hal moved to within five meters of the hull. Any closer and they ran the risk of touching the hull and possibly triggering a sensor. As it was, they might be spotted by any of a dozen types of sensors. The rest of the team matched his trajectory. Within seconds, all nine were flying alongside the hundred-meter ship.

  This was the most unpredictable part of the plan. An alert pilot might register their presence. On the other hand, distracted by the task of threading the needle through the closely spaced asteroids, it would be easy to overlook or ignore a few matte-black specks that could be mistaken for debris, especially against a backdrop of shadowy asteroids. At least they didn’t have to worry about running afoul of the shield wall’s automated defenses anymore, not this close to the pirate ship.

  Seven minutes later, they breached the outer wall and entered the killing field between the inner and outer walls. Now it was time to worry again.

  We don’t have the asteroids to hide us anymore. If the pilot spares even a second to check the sensors, he can’t help but spot us. It may be gloomy in here, but not to infrared. There’s no way debris would be emitting any heat—not even as little as we are, and it certainly wouldn’t be shadowing the ship.

  The next two minutes were tense ones. At any moment, the pilot could flick them off like flies with his APCs.

  They reached the inner wall.

  So far, so good. Hopefully he’s so confident there can’t be any threats inside the shield wall that he won’t even bother to check his sensors.