by Selina Rosen
There was a load explosion, and then the thing was flying through the air and out the door. There was a second explosion outside, and its chest seemed to explode, spreading it all over the palace garden.
David ran up to Janad and took her hand. "Come on, we still have one more of those things to kill."
She smiled and followed, sure – at least in that moment – that he could do anything he put his mind to.
Chapter Seventeen
Stratton landed the ship in the hanger. They waited for the hanger doors to close and the green light to blink telling them that they had atmosphere again before they stepped out of the skiff.
"What happened to the rest of your crew?" the guide-on asked as he looked from Stratton to Bradley. He led them toward the decontamination chamber. They wanted to make sure that no germs or spores made it from the planet's surface into the station.
"They heard about what was happening on the ship and went AWOL," Stratton said. She winked at him – a signal that he understood. He nodded back, and Stratton continued, "That's the main reason I didn't keep in constant contact with the Station. I didn't want to have to explain where they were. While we were gathering information, I was trying to find them – and giving them a chance to come back. But . . . it's a big planet."
"Things here have been crazy." The guide-on stepped into decontamination with them and put on the jets. "Safe to talk in here. Captain's left, took a fully loaded cruiser with him."
"I know," Stratton said.
He looked at Bradley.
"He's one of us," Stratton said. "We know everything official because Briggs briefed me on the way in. Tell me what we don't officially know."
"Briggs left the ship because there was a prison break and he was afraid to stay here. Figured he'd be safer with the natives. Made up some cockamamie story about wanting to try to keep trade open or some such shit. He left Yumby in charge, and that little bastard is walking around with a pisser hard-on you could hang a crow bar on. There's been open fighting throughout the ship ever since they spaced Harker. But I have to tell you, Lieutenant, we ain't doing so good. There are more of them, and they have the GSH's. Twenty of them in all. Oh . . . and this is some news they aren't releasing to the general populace. The Beta 4 humanoids they sent to Earth – you know, the ones that were supposed to help them in their war with the New Alliance?"
"Yes?" Stratton prompted.
"They just trashed the camps they were being trained in. Killed all the Reliance personnel and ran away. One can only suppose that they've gone to join the New Alliance in New freedom seeing as that's what the little guy from the New Alliance has been telling us every hour on the hour. He takes over the view screens whenever he wants. Briggs is going to burn."
"If he lives," Stratton said thoughtfully. "Listen very carefully. I have brought help. Take four maintenance uniforms and put them on the skiff we just left. Make damn sure no one sees you do it, and make damn sure no one goes near that ship till you see four people walk out."
"Can do," he said. He looked at Bradley. "I was sorry to hear about Harker. If it's any consolation, he had a lot of friends here."
"Thanks," Bradley said.
The jets shut off, and when the green light flashed they all stepped out of the unit.
Bradley and Stratton walked out of the hanger together. "Good luck, Stratton," Bradley said.
"You, too, Bradley." She started to leave, but Bradley grabbed her arm. She looked at him.
"I'm glad he had someone like you. Someone to care about him, to love him," he said. "No one should die having never had that."
Tears wet her eyes, but she managed a smile. "I'm glad I had him, too, and I'm glad he had a friend like you . . . Now let's go. We have work to do."
They went in opposite directions. She went towards the bridge, and he headed for a maintenance conduit.
* * *
"You suck," Levits said in a disgusted tone as he looked at RJ.
"Excuse me?" RJ said.
"You even look good in coveralls," he said with a smile.
"Be a good boy, and I'll show you how they become un-coveralls," she said.
"You guys are pushing my puke level," Topaz warned zipping up his suit. "Could you try to stay on task at least until we finish this mission?"
"Says the man who ten minutes from now will be looking for flowers in the main reactor room," Levits said.
RJ laughed as she lifted a large pack onto Poley's back.
There was a knocking on the door, apparently their signal that all was clear. They quickly left the ship. RJ led, and they all trusted that she knew where she was going.
"You there!" a booming voice said from behind them. "Turn around."
They did so slowly. "Can I help you, corporal?" RJ asked noticing his rank on his lapel.
"I've never seen you four down here before," he said.
"We were transferred because of the riots," she answered. "We've been here all day."
"Then you know that all maintenance workers are required to submit to pop inspections until the rioting has stopped and all of the prisoners have been recaptured. I want to see your ID's, and I want you to dump the contents of that pack right now. We can't have any more of you sink scrubbers trying to sabotage anything else," he said.
RJ put her hands in her pockets pretending to look for her ID. She looked around and noticed that he was one of only three armed guards in sight, but the three others were moving in. If she could stall him, they'd move themselves into range. She nodded towards Poley, and he started taking the pack off his back slowly.
"It's just some tools we need for working on these ships." She snapped her fingers making the guard jump. "You know, I must have put it in my pants under my coveralls," she said. "I'll just have to take these off."
"What about the rest of you guys, or do you all have as lame an excuse as the hybrid? I think we'll just run all you guys in."
RJ quickly pulled her coveralls down, and the guard saw the chain. "Ah, fuck!" he screamed and turned to run, but the chain caught him around the ankles and she pulled back slinging his face into the floor and crushing it.
Poley slung the pack into the head of one of the others while RJ was killing the first one.
RJ spun quickly around, and her chain whipped out catching the third guard in the head and crushing her skull instantly. RJ had already wrapped her chain back around her and was pulling up her coveralls when the guide-on ran over to see what all the noise was about. He looked from the bodies to the woman with the chain, and his jaw dropped.
"We . . . We'll take care of the bodies. You just go," he said. He motioned, and some of the maintenance people ran over and started carting the bodies towards an air lock. When he turned back around they were gone. He looked up at the camera, sighed and then screamed. "Bar the doors! Secure the hanger. No one gets in! This is it, boys and girls! It's show time." He picked up one of the weapons the guards had dropped and shot out the camera. "Take a look at that, shit heads!"
* * *
Stratton walked onto the bridge as if she owned it. She walked over to where Yumby was sitting in the Captain's chair and coughed loudly till he looked up and regarded her with mild annoyance.
"So, are you in charge around here now, Yumby?" Stratton asked.
"Till the Captain gets back . . . If he does. We haven't heard from him, and we've recorded several large explosions on the planet's surface," Yumby said.
"You know that according to the Chain of Command, as Security Chief I should be in command in a time of crisis with the Captain absent," she said.
"You weren't here. You were out on your important mission. How did that go by the way?" he asked sarcastically.
"Not well. There is a language barrier that makes it almost impossible to learn anything of value. Therefore it's difficult to learn much from the data you've gathered – if you can get your equipment to work at all with all those damned magnetic pulses. To make things even better, three members of my away te
am went away, spelled A-W-O-L," she said walking over to her own consol and seeming to check things out. "But, gee! It looks like things have been going worse for you here. A prison break, large scale rioting, dead bodies everywhere, turds floating down the hallways . . .."
"Here's something for you, Security Chief, Sir. How does someone with a record like yours allow a huge spy ring and a conspiracy of mutiny go on unnoticed and unchecked? Roughly half the crew on this station is running completely amuck. Are you going to stand here and tell me that you – you with the perfect record – didn't know what was going on right under your nose?" Yumby asked sarcastically. He nodded, and the two guards at the door moved forward and grabbed her, immediately taking her side arm from her holster.
"Gee, Yumby. I always thought you were kind of a puppet person. Turns out you actually have a brain up there somewhere," she said. "Too bad Briggs didn't leave you in command a long time ago, because it's too freaking late now. That's the New Alliance down there on the surface of the planet blowing all hell out of Briggs and his troop. And when they're done there, they're going to come up here and blow this station to pieces."
"Then why did you come back up here, Stratton? You can't bluff me." He looked past her at the guards. "Throw her treacherous ass in the brig," Yumby ordered. "I'll enjoy seeing you spaced Stratton."
"Not as much as I'm going to enjoy seeing you burn," Stratton spat back.
They drug her to the brig.
"Come on, guys. Do you always want to be one of the bad guys?" Stratton asked. "Don't you just once want to be one of the good guys? Let me go. Join us and we'll take the station away from them. Make it ours."
"Shut up," the one on the right said hitting her in the head with the heel of his hand.
Stratton was quiet. She went through the degrading full body cavity search, and then they slung her in a cell in the brig with ten other people. They really weren't doing very well. It looked like the Elites were capturing them faster than they could break out.
Stratton took off her shirt and threw it over the camera. She had to work quickly. God, she hated this! She got down on her knees and stuck her finger down her throat, forcing herself to throw up. It wasn't a pretty sight.
"Stratton! What the hell are you doing?" one of the men in the cell with her asked.
"Quiet, Mallory," she ordered. She dug quickly through the vomit and drew out a half a dozen little round balls not much bigger than a dime.
The guard ran over to the cell. "OK, which one of you traitors covered up the camera?" He looked at her and frowned. "You, hey, Stratton? Well, you got about six seconds to take the shirt off the camera, or I blow a hole right in your pretty little head. Don't think that rank is going to save your ass down here, Stratton. Down here the only person whose rank counts is mine."
"I'm sick," she said.
He looked past her at the vomit.
"That's cute," he said making a face. "You maggots can just live with it. I'm not going to tell you again. Take the shirt off the camera."
"Now that isn't very nice," Stratton said backing away from the door. The people in the cell with her did the same.
"What are you lot up to?" he asked.
"I wanted to use you as a shield," she said with a smile.
"Shield?" he asked in confusion.
"Yeah, I wouldn't want the people across the way to get hurt." She threw one of the balls as she and the other prisoners turned their back to the door. The ball landed at the bottom of the door and exploded. The bars blew apart sending scrap metal into the guard and slinging him against the cells on the other side of the hall. Sirens started wailing, a music the crew was starting to get way too used to.
"Come on, let's go," Stratton said to the others.
"It's no use, Stratton," Mallory said. "They just activate the GSH's and Elites, recapture us or worse. We can't win."
"Yes, we can," Stratton screamed. "Now just come on. We have to bust everyone out of here. We have to make a diversion so that someone else can take care of the GSHs." She reached down and took the com-link from the twitching disembodied arm of the dead guard. She held it up. "Hey it still works!"
* * *
"In here," Bradley said, removing the cover from the conduit. The four walked in and he shut it back again. "This way." He led them to a huge junction where six service conduits met. About two dozen maintenance men were there waiting for them.
RJ smiled, glad to see them. She started pulling the camera looking units from the bag. "All right. Now half of you will go with Poley, and half will go with Topaz. This is what you're going to do . . ."
* * *
Stratton had used the explosives to blow the main gate. After overpowering and killing the guards posted there, they were sitting in the brig's main control room, systematically deactivating every lock on every cell in the brig.
Soon all the prisoners were out again, but this time they had a specific purpose and informed leadership. This time they would do something more than just cause a little trouble.
* * *
"Are you sure that this damn thing is not going to affect us?" Levits asked for the third time as they walked down the hall.
"Of course I'm sure," RJ said. "I wouldn't be messing with it if I wasn't completely sure."
"There are guards posted outside the front door," Bradley said. Just then the sirens started blaring, signaling that Stratton had successfully accomplished her part, and that they were running a little behind.
They stopped at the door to the bridge, and Bradley showed the work order.
"I'll need to see your IDs" he said.
Bradley pulled his out and showed it. Then the guards looked expectantly at Levits and RJ, and they handed him the IDs they had just taken from two of the other maintenance people.
When they scanned through as being clean the doors opened, and they walked in.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Yumby demanded.
"Moving the emergency switch as ordered by Briggs, Sir," Bradley said.
"I'm in the middle of yet another prison break!" Yumby screamed. "Whole damn place is falling to pieces, and you're moving a freaking button!"
"Just following orders, Sir," Bradley explained.
"Damn! Well I guess it won't be any real problem. You need all that stuff?" Yumby asked, looking in disbelief at the two large toolboxes and the armload of equipment..
"It's more complicated than you would think," Bradley explained.
"Well, just do it and get it over with then," Yumby ordered. "If Briggs gets back alive, we wouldn't want him to have yet another thing to bitch about."
RJ smiled and she and Bradley went to work as Levits, trying to act like he was handing them tools, watched their backs.
"Can you believe it, Drex? They're actually moving the damn button! We have to threaten to blow them out of the sky to get them to fix the hole in the side of the ship, toilets backed up everywhere and food services completely non-operational, but the button they're going to fix. Right now, no less!" Yumby said.
Fifteen minutes later when they were still working on it, Yumby asked impatiently, "How long can it take to move a freaking button?"
"It's tied into emergency systems, Sir," Bradley explained. "As such, you have to override a lot of safety features."
Yumby walked a little away and started pacing. It didn't seem to Bradley that he was doing too much to solve any of the problems on the station. Mostly he was just walking around trying to look important.
Bradley smiled. He looks like a freaking idiot. Pompous ass. He's so ignorant you could tell him anything. He doesn't know how anything works, so he doesn't know that a switch could be moved in less than five minutes, and he certainly can't tell that we are planting an ancient alien weapon on the bridge of his ship.
Ten minutes later Yumby said, "Aren't you finished yet? I have a commanding officer in a possible fire fight on the surface of a third class planet, mass class riots all over my station, and a huge hole in my transport
bay to deal with. I'm really getting a little tired of having to step over one of you every three seconds."
RJ finished the last splice on a fiber optic, looked at Bradley and smiled. She brushed her hands off on her coveralls and stood up.
She raised her com-link to her mouth. "Poley?"
"Yes?" he answered.
"Have you finished yet?" RJ asked.
"Yes, we have finished," he answered.
RJ lowered her arm. She took a pair of headphones from her pocket, put them on her head and clicked them on. She turned, looked at Yumby and smiled. "It's ready to go, want to try it?" Not waiting for his answer, she punched the button they had just installed.