by Adam Carter
The small craft moved slowly forwards – for everything in space was not only boring it was slow as well – and eventually the wide docking area began to flow about her. She could see very little in the hangar, although there was a familiar man waiting for her. He was still dressed in his odd green attire and Haskell wondered whether there was something mentally wrong with him.
Landing the craft, she prepared herself for a fight. She had brought no weapons, but to her mind weapons were tools of her enjoyment and simply clubbing someone over the head with a heavy object worked wonders.
She opened the door and hung back out of sight, then shoved her foot through the console and screamed.
“Cass, that you?” Harman said, clambering into the craft. He was halfway in when Haskell kicked him in the face and sent him sprawling. The expression on his face was comical and his landing was so atrocious it was a wonder he did not succeed in breaking his neck.
Haskell dropped out before him and grinned. “Cassiel’s still on the Obsidian, sorry, but who knows? Maybe I’ll allow her back on board a little later.”
Harman scrambled to get back to his feet, but his strange attire got in his way – not to mention his fear – and he fell flat on his face. As he tried to rise, Haskell kicked him in the head and he twisted end over end before striking the wall.
Looking about, Haskell found a wrench in a toolbox and – making careful note of the tools for her future pleasures – twirled her chosen implement as she approached Harman.
With a somewhat limp roar and a surprising burst of speed, Harman threw himself at her, slamming his shoulder into her belly. Haskell was knocked backwards but did not fall. Instead she twisted her body and shoved Harman from her so he went tumbling across the hangar. Flailing about with impotent arms, his fingers caught on her belt and tore away two of her pockets. Their contents spilled across the deck and Haskell laughed at the idea that this was all the man had achieved in his attack.
Her grin broadening, Haskell found herself building up a healthy sweat.
“Wyatt, what’s going on down there?” the same voice as earlier said.
“Wraith, it’s a crazy woman. Help!”
Haskell kicked away his radio, but the damage was already done. Harman grabbed for her again, but she kneed him in the face before bringing the wrench down upon his head. Harman fell with a dull thud and did not move. She did not know whether she had killed him, but since he had raised the alarm she did not have the time to stand around and find out. If he was still alive, she could always return to finish him off later.
Finding a door, Haskell fled into a narrow corridor, likely designed for Carpoan soldiers to march single-file, and debated whether she should head for the Glory’s command deck. Their current pilot, Wraith, would likely have locked the place down already and it would take her a great deal of effort to get through to him. Yet if she did not deal with him soon he would find a way to stop her.
Pulling back with a yelp, Haskell was almost skewered by a horizontal row of spikes which shot across the corridor ahead of her. She supposed it was the Carpoan equivalent of closing a fire door, for the Carpoans were nothing if not mediaeval butchers. It was why she respected them so much.
Quickly selecting a different route, she ran, trying to get ahead of whatever plans this Wraith may have had for her.
Further bars slid across as she continued her journey, along with several doors, and Haskell fully understood she was being herded somewhere. She continued regardless, relishing the promised fight at the end.
She emerged into a spacious room which was some form of mess area, although it looked as though it had not been used for a very long time. The furniture was in disarray and there were holes in the ceiling where repair work had not been finished, with various wires and cables hanging loose. There were several doors leading from the room, and since none of them were blocked it meant this was where Wraith intended to launch his trap, for otherwise he was offering her too much choice. Haskell continued warily through the chamber, her eyes flicking from the ceiling to the floor to the walls, searching for any signs of attack.
Then something leaped out at her from behind the food counter and almost took her head off.
The man was fairly short, with wiry hair and a manic expression. He was wearing thick bronze armour and wielded a two-foot sword which glowed red along its blade. It took Haskell a moment to realise this was not a sword at all, but some kind of welding instrument, which meant Wraith had panicked and seized the most dangerous thing he could find on his command deck before coming out to ambush her. Where he had found the armour she had no idea, but it looked incredibly comical upon him. That he had not utilised everything the Glory had to offer meant either he did not know what his own warship could do or that he had not thought his situation through carefully enough.
Haskell backed off, allowing him to swing the weapon about, disregarding his ferocious screams as the hysteria they attempted to mask. She quickly assessed her opponent’s capabilities and decided he was hardly a warrior. She had not thought to ask Arowana much about the individual members of her crew, but whoever Wraith was he was not a threat.
She tossed her wrench at him on a horizontal axis and it struck his elbow, causing him to yelp and lower his weapon. Then she kicked his wrist, dislodged the tool and slammed the heel of her palm into his face. The soldering tool went one way, the man the other, and he landed as heavily as Harman had.
Lying on his back, Wraith groaned and attempted to roll over, but his armour was too heavy for him.
Laughing to herself, Haskell strolled across to him and said, “You people are pathetic.”
Wraith’s hand managed to find the legs of a chair and he tried to swing it at her, but his angle made such an attack pointless. Taking it from him, she raised it into the air and brought it down with all her might. It struck his armour and exploded into pieces. Wraith gasped as his dented armour pressed painfully into his chest.
“I hardly even have to defeat you people,” she said as she tossed the chair pieces aside. She remembered Arowana had told her Wraith was a doctor, and she would need him alive. She had thus far showed no sign of suffering from the radiation sickness which was spreading through the Obsidian, but it would be stupid to callously murder the only doctor on her new ship, only to then die of something he might have been able to cure.
Looking up, she tore a length of cable from the ceiling and with it bound him to the food counter.
“I’ll be back for you later,” she said. “Right now I have someone far more interesting to pay a visit to.”
Wraith tried to say something, but it came out an agonised gasp and she left him to locate her final prey: the loveliest plaything on the entire sword-ship. For there was one final crewmember aboard Jupiter’s Glory, and it was the one with which Haskell was going to have the most fun.
She did not know the way to the workshop so stopped to take a look at a noticeboard in the mess area. If this was a military vessel it meant at some point duty rosters would have been posted on the board, and from the scraps of paper which remained from the sword-ship’s previous life she managed to discern roughly where the workshop would be located. Stepping out of the mess area, Haskell knew all she had to do was follow the corridors, for everything was marked up with handy arrows. The Carpoan military apparently never expected to have their warships overrun.
It took her ten minutes to locate the workshop, but Haskell was in no hurry. She could feel the heat emanate from the room and could hear the rhythmic pounding of a hammer upon metal. Her heart beat faster at the prospect of what she would find beyond and she opened the door to be blasted with heat.
The workshop was a veritable heaven for Haskell. It was filled with hammers and tongs, drills and spanners, chains and ropes. And working amongst all this finery was a young woman, barely into her twenties. She stood in trousers and vest, the strain of her efforts and the heat of her workplace causing the sweat to glisten upon her naked arms. Presentl
y she was working over some bent metal with her hammer, although she looked up as Haskell arrived.
“Bethany Hart,” Haskell said to the blank-faced young woman. “I think you and I are going to have some fun.”
Haskell closed the door behind her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Iris!”
“Gordon! Why are you chained to another woman?”
“Long story.” Hawthorn looked out the window as he and Rayne entered the command deck. It was an odd situation to face, for it was nothing like he had expected. Captain Gardener sat in his chair, looking forlorn and sulky, with Cassiel standing close by, her sword drawn as though she was making sure he didn’t go anywhere. Arowana and another woman were beside the main console – Arowana leaning, the other standing – while two crewmembers furiously worked under their instruction. Through the window, Jupiter’s Glory sat motionless, which Hawthorn took to be a good sign. At least it had ceased firing upon them.
“Tomoko, Lexie,” Rayne said. “What’s going on?”
“Just what I’d like to know,” Arowana said.
“I didn’t chain myself to her through choice,” Hawthorn protested as he approached. He could see she was exhausted and injured, her body a bloody mass of bandages and drying blood. “Iris, are you all right?”
“I’ll be better once I know where Haskell is.”
Hawthorn looked to the motionless sword-ship. “She got the drop on us and stole our craft. She’s headed over to the Glory. We need to warn Wraith.”
“Communications are down,” Arowana said. “We’re moving over there. So far he hasn’t attacked again, which probably means he’s still considering what to do. If we’re lucky we can make him realise we’re not a threat.”
“There could be another reason he stopped attacking,” Rayne said. She was still hurt, but hardly anywhere near as bad as Arowana. “Haskell could have got there by now.”
“To the Glory?” Arowana asked, appalled. “Oh no, Beth.”
Fear seized Hawthorn’s heart. He had not even considered that. Haskell was a monster who delighted in torturing young women, and Hart was an emotionally unstable and vulnerable woman Hawthorn had been only trying to help all this time. If anything happened to her he would blame himself, right after pounding Haskell’s head in.
“We have to get over there,” he said. “Captain Gardener, you must have transports of some kind we can use.”
“Captain’s sulking,” one of the crewmembers said – Hawthorn had no idea which one. “Iris and Rosalita are in command at the moment.”
“Rosalita,” Hawthorn said, able to put a face to her name at last. “On our side, then?”
“At the moment,” Rosalita said, “I think the only sides are Haskell’s and everyone else’s. How likely are your people to be able to stand against her?”
Hawthorn thought about Harman, Wraith and Hart, tried to work out what they would be like if they all jumped Haskell together, but the result was terrible to contemplate.
“That bad,” Rosalita mumbled, leaning back over the console to try to help as best she could.
“I need to get over there,” Hawthorn said. “I need to get over there right now.”
“There’s no getting over there right now,” Rosalita said. “Tomoko, does the Obsidian even have escape craft?”
“Escape craft? Are you suggesting the captain would spend money on something like safety precautions?”
Hawthorn thought back to the emergency tunnel with the gossamer wall, and how it had been tucked away in a room no one would ever access. It stood to reason the Obsidian wouldn’t have any decent emergency procedures at all. Running an anxious hand through his hair, Hawthorn stared at the prone form of Jupiter’s Glory and wished he had a solution. Haskell was over there, she had probably already dealt with Harman and Wraith and she would now be chaining Hart to the wall of her workshop while she used her own tools to do terrible things to her body. Hart had been through so much torment already during her young life, even a few minutes of torture by Haskell would destroy all Hawthorn’s hard work. He felt terrible for thinking she would be better off not surviving it.
“There has to be something,” he said. “Carla, how can I get over there?”
“You can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, Gordon, but we’re going to have to go over there the slow way. The Obsidian will approach your ship and we’ll send out the docking tube.”
“If we do that,” Tomoko said, “surely Haskell will just be waiting on the other side with a blowtorch or something.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Rayne said. “Gordon’s right. If there’s a young woman on board that ship we can’t leave her to Haskell.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Tomoko said.
“There has to be a way,” Arowana said, the pain of what she had gone through driving her to find a solution. Hawthorn watched her, could see in her face that she was frantically sifting through the superior database in her brain, searching for a means of getting from one ship to the other. But she could find nothing, which likely meant there was nothing to be found.
Yet information in a database was founded on fact and logic, for Arowana knew nothing else with regards to the way spaceships were built. Hawthorn was an engineer, which meant he knew far more than she, and if there was a solution he was far likelier to think of it than …
“The engines,” he said, an idea excitedly forming in his mind. “You have multiple engines.”
“And?” Rayne asked.
“And they’re designed so the Obsidian can function without all of them. It helps keep you running, keeps you on schedule.” He glanced at Gardener as he said this, for that was the captain’s obsession. “You don’t need them all, and if one fails or goes critical you can eject it into space and leave it behind.”
“Gordon,” Arowana said nervously, “you can’t possibly be suggesting …”
“Why not?”
“Why not what?” Cassiel asked.
“He wants to be on the engine when we eject it,” Arowana said.
“It’ll work,” Hawthorn said. “The momentum will carry the engine to the Glory, and as we’re so close it’ll be drawn in by the Glory’s gravitational pull anyway, what there is of it. But I’d have to be inside the engine, not on top of it.”
“Inside?”
“Which brings me to asking Miss Rayne a very important question.”
Rayne frowned; then her eyes widened. “Oh no. No, no, no. I get why you need to be inside the engine – because you can’t be on top of it since you won’t be able to wear a spacesuit. What if the engine’s not airtight?”
“Then we die.”
“I’m not dying for this girl, Gordon. Captain, the keys?” She jiggled her manacles.
“I get the impression,” Hawthorn said, “Haskell doesn’t give out copies of her keys.”
Gardener narrowed his eyes at Hawthorn. “You’re correct. Miss Rayne, I forbid you to do this.”
“You forbid her?” Hawthorn asked. “After everything we’ve been through because of you and a madwoman you hired, you think you have the right to forbid anyone from doing anything?”
“I am still Carla’s owner and I forbid her from doing this, yes.”
“Carla?” Hawthorn asked her directly. “I won’t force you to do anything, but I’m begging you. Please. Help me save Bethany. Help me save the life of an innocent, tormented girl.”
Rayne bit her lower lip. She looked to her captain, to the sword Cassiel was keeping upon him, to Arowana and Rosalita, to Tomoko and Lexie, and finally back to Hawthorn. None of them could make the decision for her and Hawthorn could see it dawning on her that finally in her life she was faced with a genuine decision. The first she had had to make in a long while, and one upon which hung the life of an innocent.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’m sorry, Captain. I may be a slave but I’m still a human being.
“I’ll need someone to eject us,” Hawthorn said. “Would any of y
ou ladies like to volunteer?”
“I’ll do it,” Arowana said, although winced as she moved.
“Sorry, Iris, I need someone who can run all the way there.”
“That’d be me,” Rosalita said. “I don’t know what I’m doing, though.”
“I can talk you through it.”
“Wait,” Arowana said. “Gordon, you could be killed doing this.”
“Iris, we don’t have time to …”
“Make time.” She seized him by the arm and marched him through the door so the two of them could be alone. “I know you’re angry,” she said. “I know you’re blaming yourself for having brought Beth onto the Glory in the first place, but getting yourself killed is not going to save her.”
“Nor is taking the snail’s route to rescue her.” He took one of her hands in his own and felt a somewhat inappropriate thrill at the concern in her eyes. “I’ll be fine, Iris. I know these engines. They’re airtight, they have to be to do what they do. There’s not a lot of air inside them, but I’ll only be inside for a minute or so. Trust me.”
“I do trust you.” She placed a hand upon his cheek and looked more pained now than she ever had through her injuries. “I just know you too well. You’re not as certain of this as you make out and I’m afraid I’m going to lose you.”
“You won’t lose me, Iris. I’ll never leave you, I promise.”
She kissed him. It was fleeting, for they had no time for anything else, but it was enough to remind him that he had better not get himself killed. She said nothing, however, for she knew full well her meaning had been received.
“Jeez, you two,” Rayne said from where she was pretending to mind her own business. “Someone pass me a hacksaw for these handcuffs.”
“You’d best get going,” Arowana said and walked back onto the command deck, passing Rosalita on the way. Hawthorn and Rayne ran ahead of her, for Rayne knew the quickest route to the closest engine. The familiar odours of motor oil and grease made Hawthorn almost smile, but he was not there to relive his best days. Pulling open the main panel, he helped Rayne inside before clambering in himself.