by Adam Drake
“They must really want this old bucket,” Femke said shaking her head. Ships rarely entered these clouds unless on their way to making orbit. For these scouts to even stay on their tail and risk a system killing lightening strike was baffling.
A shot from the second ship hit them dead on. The cockpit lights dimmed briefly.
“Shielding is almost an afterthought now,” Ash said. “Barely 16%.”
“They've slowed their rate of fire,” Femke said. “Maybe they realize we're close to becoming slag. They don't want to destroy us, just wound us enough to drop out of the clouds.”
“Well, their plan is working better than ours,” Ash said. “We need to get out of this crap and fast!”
As if to emphasis the fact a violent shaking suddenly rippled up the length of the transport. Another red warning indicator appeared on Ash's screen.
“We just lost a cell!” he said. He looked expectantly at Femke.
She sighed. “You're no fun, honey!” she pushed at the flight-stick controls and the ship dipped forward at a steep angle. In seconds, they emerged below the clouds and the shaking subsided.
Some of the flashing warning lights winked off, but many damage indicators persisted.
Cannon fire streaked over them.
“Now we've given them a clear view, it should make shooting us down a little easier,” Femke said with a maniacal grin.
Ash pointed toward the ground. “Not if you take them for a ride.”
A series of canyons crisscrossed the wastes ahead of them. According to the map, they led everywhere and nowhere.
Another shot struck and the ship's entire structure began making terrifying cracking noises.
“If we're gonna crash and burn, then maybe we can take them with us!” Femke said and banked hard into a steep descent. Pulsing cannon fire followed them downwards.
The transport dipped into a narrow chasm barely avoiding a tall butte.
“Whoa!” Ash said, gripping the armrests of his chair. “That's some serious piloting skills.”
“You know it,” Femke said with a grin. Her eyes never left the forward screen. “But this crate is like a flying albatross!”
“What's an albatross?”
Cannon shot narrowly missed them, striking the chasm wall directly ahead and above their flightpath. Huge rocks erupted outwards and cascaded down.
Femke shouted in alarm and banked away from the avalanche, but had little room to maneuver.
Ash cursed as rock and debris smashed into the port side. The resulting noise and shaking was bone rattling. Thankfully, Femke had shifted over enough that the large chunks didn't strike them.
The transport blew out of the falling debris cloud and a sheer rock wall blocked their way.
Both of them screamed in unison and Femke pulled hard on the controls. The transport screeched and popped in protest as the ship suddenly tried to make a steep ascent.
“No! No! No!” Ash shouted. The top edge of the wall raced at them.
Femke gritted her teeth and kept pulling back.
The undercarriage of the transport glanced off the cliff's edge. The impact was the worst yet. The cockpit lights flickered off, and the engine died.
“We're gliding!” Ash shouted with fearful amazement.
The transport had become a giant flying piece of metal with no thrust. Momentum kept it moving forward but speed dropped in half in an instant.
Femke cursed and her fingers flew across the console. “Switching to side thrusters!”
“They're not enough!” Ash said as he hammered at his screen.
The ship began to arc downward, rocky terrain filling the view screen.
“Engines!” Femke shouted.
“Trying!” Ash shouted back.
The side thrusters fired up with full power, but were not meant to keep something so heavy airborne. Instead, the ship's arc of descent was simply stretch out over a longer range. They were still going to crash.
The two scouts suddenly appeared above them and banked away from view in different directions. They'd overtaken their prey unexpectedly and were circling back.
Ash looked up from his console to see the ground racing up at them. “Honey,” he said.
“I'm on it!” Femke said jabbing at her screen with one hand while pulling back on the flight-stick with the other.
“Honey!” Ash said, eyes wide. Ahead, he could see a giant waste-worm moving across the ground.
“Got it!” Femke said, and the engines roared back to life. The ship's arc of descent leveled out but they were too close to the ground.
Both Ash and Femke shouted in alarm as the transport hit the ground and scudded across the valley floor.
They had an intimate view of the transport slamming into the waste-worm and rolling over it.
The engines, coupled with the side thrusters, fought to lift the ship up, but it only served to accelerate their slide across the ground. Purple plants and waste-worms created a bizarre wake behind them.
The level valley floor suddenly dipped and the transport shot at a downward direction picking up speed with every second.
“Oh, no!” Ash said.
They were slaloming toward a sudden drop off. The vast open plains of the waste opened up before them.
“More thrust!” Femke said through gritted teeth, pulling at the flight-stick.
Ash's fingers flew over his screen. Everything on it was a red flashing light or a severe damage indicator.
They shot over the edge with incredible speed, the wastes far below. They were still flying forward, but couldn't gain anymore upward thrust.
In seconds, they descended to the wide open plains.
“We just lost cells eight through twelve!” Ash said.
“Good to know!” Femke said still holding the flight-stick back for what little good it could do now. They were going to land whether they wanted to or not.
The transport hit the ground, but at a shallow angle. Both Ash and Femke were thrown violently against their seat restraints as the ship rattled forward. All the lights went out and the power across the entire ship died. There was no controlling it now.
With a final flourish the ship banked skidding along the ground and kicked up a huge orange fan of sand into the night sky. Then it stopped.
Femke blinked awake as the emergency lights winked on. Ash was slumped forward in his chair.
“Honey!” she said as she unbuckled herself and went to him.
She gently tilted his head back, and he groaned. “Honey, are you okay?”
Ash's eyes fluttered open, and he gazed up at her with a dopey smile. “So pretty.”
“You're okay,” she said with relief. “Thought you were out for the duration.”
“Duration?” Ash peered around in confusion.
Femke went to the console and tapped at the screens. What exterior cameras that were still functioning showed the horrific damage across the ship's entire hull and undercarriage. The orange dust they'd kicked up muddled the view, but it was clear the ship's cliff diving days were over.
“Wow,” Femke said, impressed. “We got completely mauled. I can't believe we survived all of that.”
Vast sections of hull plating were gone, revealing the ship's inner casing which was streaked with cannon blast points and severely warped out of shape.
“Guess we don't need to worry about that missing strut now, do we?” Ash said as he tried to unbuckle the restraints.
Femke went to him. “Take it easy. You got thrown around pretty good.”
Ash looked at the main view screen. “Guess we didn't make our escape like we wanted to, huh?”
Femke looked to see the two scouts arriving at the transport's final position. “We gave them a good chase, at least.”
“What's the prize for that?”
“Prison or a desert execution.”
One of the scouts landed while the other remained in a low hover, its main cannons locked on the transport. Both kicked up more dust which
got carried away by a low wind.
Ash shook his head and blinked his eyes. “Okay, we need a game plan, honey.” He held up the scatter-pistol.
Femke's heart melted a little looking at him. “Always ready for fight.” She kissed him on the forehead then went to the console. “But we won't be fighting anyone today.”
“Wait, what?” Ash said, confused. “My brain must be really scrambled because it sounded like you wanted to back down from a fight.”
Femke shook her head. “No, there will be no need for it.”
From the landed scout emerged two men, who descended the hatch's ladder. They walked toward the transport a short distance then stopped. One of them was Klayd. He waited expectantly.
“Why no fighting?” Ash said. “We didn't go through all that hell just to give up now.” He waited for an answer, then said, “Did we?”
“Now, honey, when did you lose faith in me?”
Ash shrugged. “I dunno. When you almost crashed us into the side of that cliff?”
Femke chuckled. “There will be no fight because we say there won't.”
“And they'll listen to you... why?” Ash was genuinely incredulous.
“Because we have what they want which gives us a solid negotiating point. One that will get us out of here.”
Ash thought for a moment. “This crappy transport?”
“No,” Femke said with an evil grin. “Stacks.”
“Should we grab him now and bring him out?” Ash said watching Klayd and the other man on the screen. Both appeared gray in the ship's night vision.
Femke frowned in thought. “Let's wait a moment, first. Klayd isn't in a rush to blast through the hatch right this second. We need a plan.”
On screen, Klayd lifted his wrist-comm to his mouth.
A signal beeped on the cockpit's communications screen.
“He wants to talk,” Ash said. “That's better than blowing us up.”
“He wants to negotiate,” Femke said. She reached to open the comms, but paused. There was no telling what this guy would try, so she needed to be extremely careful with what she said. As long as she held the upper hand, she'd control the conversation. And their fate.
She tapped the comms open. “Why, Captain Klayd. What a wonderful surprise to run into you way out here in the wastes. Care to offer us a tow?”
Klayd snorted over the channel. “You know who I am, but who the hell are you?” His voice was deep, gravely and dripping with annoyance.
“That's not important right now,” Femke said, using a stern tone. Ash always caved to whatever she wanted when she used it. “What's important is what you're going to do for us right now.”
Klayd did not respond right away. On the screen his head tilted in confusion. “That's not what I asked. Who are you? What crew do you run with?”
“Our organization doesn't answer to your kind or anyone else on this crappy little moon. So the only question you should be asking is to yourself.”
“And that would be?” Klayd said.
“Do I want to survive this?”
Ash looked at Femke with confusion.
She silenced the comm, then said to him, “We're really in a tight spot and he knows it. But I need to play it like he's the one in trouble. Make him think he's tangling with someone a lot bigger and scarier than him and his goons.”
“Bluster,” Ash said. He tried to not sound too doubtful.
“Yeah, bluster,” Femke said. She opened the comms and said, “Well, Captain. Do you want to survive this?”
Klayd shook his head. “You're full of it. You're sitting in a dead ship out in the damned desert. There's no angle to play here. Either open up, or we'll just come in, anyway.”
“My bosses won't be pleased if you tried something stupid like that.”
“What bosses?” Klayd scoffed.
Femke counted to three then said with emphasis, “You know.”
The man beside Klayd spoke to him, but the wrist comm muted it.
“You've got him thinking,” Ash said.
Trying to keep the momentum going Femke said into the comms, “We go where we want. We take what we want. And anyone who messes with that paradigm gets slagged.” She hoped she sounded menacing enough.
After conferring with the other man Klayd said, “Okay, then. What do you want?”
Femke couldn't read into Klayd's voice. Was he fearful or just playing along?
“Yeah, what do we want?” Ash said.
To Klayd, she said, “First, we need transport to Threx. Our people will arrange for us to get off planet from there. Once we're at the port, we'll hand over what you want. But before any of that happens, I'll need you and your ships to move well out of radar range. You'll be contacted from Threx.”
She muted the comms and smiled Ash. “I like being bossy!”
“You don't have to tell me that,” Ash said. “Do you think this guy is going to buy all that stuff you're shoveling him?”
Femke shrugged. “It's like cards, honey. I may have a hand of black holes, but I need to make him think I have a flush of novas.”
Klayd had turned to the other man and conferred animately. Then Klayd spoke into the comms, his voice edging on genuine bewilderment. “You want to make the hand over at the port? In Threx?”
“Did I stutter?” Femke said. “That's what I said.”
Klayd shook his head. “How do you propose to do that? We can do it right here.”
“We'll worry about the hand over and you just worry about getting us transport. Call in a drone shuttle to this location. Then you and your flunkies will fall back.”
Annoyed, Klayd said, “How do we even know everything is okay in there?”
“You can take me word for it,” Femke said. Ash chuckled beside her.
“No, we want to know you're dealing in good faith,” Klayd said. “You talk big, but you need to show us things are on the up and up or no deal.”
Femke silenced the comms. “He wants to see Stacks. Can you go get him? I'll keep breathing on Klayd, make him sweat more.”
As Ash stood to leave Femke said, “And be careful.”
“Always,” Ash said and ran down the hall.
He keyed open the utility closet's door to reveal Stacks jammed up in a corner. His head was at an alarming angle and blood trickled from his mouth. Being unsecured, the chase and subsequent crash didn't go so well for him.
“Oh, no!” Ash said as he leaned over him. “This is not good.”
Stacks opened his eyes and looked at Ash.
“Sorry, guy,” Ash said with genuine regret. “Things got bumpy and there wasn't any time to-.”
Suddenly, Stacks kicked a leg out and struck Ash on his wounded side.
Gasping in pain Ash fell back, caught by surprise and slammed into the wall.
In an instant, Stacks was up on his feet and moving.
Alarmed, Ash reached to unholster his pistol, but Stacks ran out the door and down the hall in a flash.
Ash stumbled into the hall after him. He raised his pistol at Stacks's back. “Stop or I'll...”
But Stacks slapped the airlock's inner hatch open and raced inside.
“What's going on?” Femke's voice came over the ship's open channel.
“Nothing I can't handle, honey!” Ash said as he ran up to the hatch which swished closed and hit the keypad. It didn't open. “Shoot!” he said and looked up at the airlock screen above him.
Stacks had already opened the outer hatch and was climbing down the emergency ladder.
“No! No! No!” Ash said trying to work the keypad. Stacks had used some kind of emergency lock out code. Ash would need time to hack it again.
Femke looked on in surprise as Stacks suddenly appeared on one of the outer screens, running down the length of the transport. “What the heck?”
Ash ran into the cockpit looking sullen. “I wasn't careful.”
Mortified, Femke looked to the screen. Knowing he was safe now, Stacks jogged toward Klayd, looki
ng triumphant.
“This is not good,” Femke said. “We just lost our only leverage.”
As Stacks approached, Klayd nudged the man beside him. The man quickly raised his rifle and fired.
The shot struck Stacks who didn't have time to react. Instantly, his entire body glowed brightly then vanished. A bubbling puddle of goo formed on the ground where he had been.