Jack laid out the facts of Kate’s death. As he spoke, he distanced himself from what he was saying by wondering what had happened to Eskitul and the rest of the boarding party.
CHAPTER 42
A tumult of alien chatter roused Hannah from her despairing doze.
The voices came from the fake Sony stereo, which Boombox had left at the foot of the bunk where it laid her. The equalizer display pulsed in a range labeled 600 – 2000 KHz. These gutturals and trills must be the aliens’ own language, transposed into the audible range.
She was lying in the chancel where Boombox and its fellows presumably slept, on a bunk near the back of the chancel, head-height off the ground. She sat up and slapped the top of the boombox, trying to turn it off.
Sitting up made her head hurt. She touched the tender place above her left eyebrow. Boombox had sucker-punched her. After all that shop-talk and banter, after it cured her of cancer … it had just up and slugged her in the face. Pow.
The voices grew louder. Giving up hope of escaping once more into oblivion, Hannah lay on her stomach and propped her chin on her folded arms.
From here, she could see out between the other bunks into the center of the bridge.
A tall alien strode into her field of view, wearing a black spacesuit under a weird formal outfit. A bright red split skirt swished around bare, seven-clawed feet. The Roman Empire meets martial arts, Hannah thought. Nifty.
As the alien advanced, its spacesuit flowed away, exposing pale skin where its face and arms stuck out of its toga-style top, and bronze hair.
This must be Boombox’s VIP, Hannah realized. Boombox hadn’t been talking about Kate at all. Hannah had just misinterpreted things. Heard what she wanted to hear. This was the one Boombox had been waiting for.
Boombox itself strutted into her field of view, arms folded behind its back. It wore a formal outfit of its own, a dress uniform, perhaps: a Napoleonic-looking jacket, with orange Bermuda shorts flapping around its thin legs.
A horde of other aliens followed, as many as a hundred of them, some in uniforms, some in spacesuits. If Boombox had not tidied up the bridge, there literally wouldn’t have been room for all of them. They stood in a crowd. Their chatter faded to silence.
The alien in the red toga headed for the forward chancel. Hannah maneuvered herself into a sitting position again. Now she could see over the heads of the crowd.
Red Toga was inspecting the machinery in the forward chancel. Holographic readouts twinkled on the walls. Looked like the power was on. They’d got the reactor online without blowing up the ship; well done, guys.
The alien voices coming from the boombox fell into a question and answer pattern. The questioner was Red Toga, based on the timing of the movements of its bio-antennas. It was mostly Boombox responding. The dynamic made Hannah think of a manager visiting the production floor, pre-disposed to find fault with everything.
Her mind kept throwing up these terrestrial analogies, but she knew it wasn’t helping her to understand the aliens. They were not human. At. All.
One of Red Toga’s hench-aliens pushed through the crowd, heading straight for the chancel where Hannah was hidden. This alien was ‘only’ about seven feet tall, neatly built, with black bio-antennas that gleamed coppery in the light from the starscape ceiling. It slid into the shadows like a knife. Hannah cringed. The alien saw her. Its bio-antennas thrashed. Alien cries exploded from the boombox, and dozens of them crushed into the chancel, staring at her.
Boombox shouldered through the crowd and lifted Hannah down from the bunk. It carried her—in its arms, cradling her like a child—to the forward chancel, where Red Toga waited.
“So you kept one,” the boombox said, somewhere behind her. She assumed the speaker was Red Toga. It had a hollow, mellifluous voice.
“She is a propulsion technician,” Boombox said, hugging Hannah to its chest. Its skin felt like suede, somewhat sticky. She thought about biting or scratching, but she knew that wouldn’t get her far.
“Hello,” said Red Toga. “I am Eskitul.”
Hannah reluctantly met its big, reddish-dark eyes. Eskitul seemed melancholy and kind, but Hannah didn’t trust herself to be right about the aliens anymore.
She freed one arm and pushed her tangled hair out of her face. “Eskitul,” she croaked, “is that alien for asshole? Or lying shithead?”
Boombox, holding her tighter, said, “It means Shiplord. Eskitul is my commander. For ten years we have been estranged. But now the Shiplord has returned to the Lightbringer, and our mission can resume!”
From the way Boombox was holding her, like a man gripping a gun, Hannah sensed its excitement. This Shiplord’s return was a huge deal for Boombox, and apparently for all the aliens.
She croaked, “I get it. The rest of you guys were stuck on the surface. The Lightbringer didn’t have enough resources to support everyone. So Boombox stayed up here, holding the fort. There was nothing else to be done … until we got here. Now you’ve cannibalized the SoD’s resources to get your reactor online, you’re back in business.”
“Not exactly,” Eskitul said. “But close enough.”
“What am I missing?”
Another voice said, “Water and power are not everything. Ripstiggr would be helpless to operate the drive without you, Shiplord.”
“Iristigut,” Eskitul said. The syllables came out like a drum-roll, a warning rumble.
Boombox snapped, “I cracked the encryption years ago, for your information, Iristigut.”
“Bullshit,” said the unseen alien named Iristigut. “The universe would contract into a singularity before you got past that encryption, for it was designed specifically to stop you, or someone like you, from taking over.”
Hannah knew this Iristigut person was speaking English for her benefit. It was trying to tell her what she was missing. She wriggled out of Boombox’s arms and landed on her feet. She peered around Boombox’s body to see which alien was speaking. But there was no way to tell; all of them were waving their bio-antennas.
“Enough!” Eskitul boomed. “I will end this, as it should always have been ended!”
Alien yells swallowed the end of this sentence. Hannah’s gaze shot to a disturbance in the crowd. Boombox’s people were piling onto the lone dissenter, this Iristigut, punching and kicking it.
Eskitul’s voice rose over the clamor, calming the crowd. The ranks of the aliens reformed as the unseen Iristigut elbowed its way out of the crowd, abandoning the argument.
Hannah felt abandoned, too. She said, “What was all that about encryption?”
Eskitul glanced down at her, with a suggestion of a sad smile in its eyes. “I am the Shiplord. That means I alone can authorize access to the Lightbringer’s drive controls. I have the car keys, as you might put it … here.” It touched the back of its neck.
“Oh boy,” Hannah said. “An implant.”
“A key. The encryption that safeguards this ‘car’ of ours against unauthorized operation is meant to be unbreakable. However, there’s no such thing as an absolutely failure-proof system. I had to consider that Ripstiggr might have cracked the encryption. More probably, had I refused to return, Ripstiggr would have built a landing craft—now that the reactor is back online, the onboard shipyard can be stood up in a matter of weeks. They threatened to come down to the surface to kidnap me, and kill everyone else. So I gave myself up to save my people. This way, at least they have a chance.”
Hannah laughed until she cried. She was on the verge of an emotional meltdown, anyway. It could go either way. “I thought you were all on the same side?!?”
“We are now,” Boombox said, pulling her into the cage of its arms.
She felt the nearness of the aliens behind them, blocking the entrance to the drive chancel. Those were all Boombox’s people. The Shiplord, for all its fancy-schmancy title, was just as much a prisoner as she was.
Yet Eskitul’s proud bearing betrayed no lack of confidence. It turned to the consoles that
lined the walls of the chancel. Screens and 3D holographic displays lit up, apparently tracking its gaze. Well, that wasn’t magic. Gaze-controlled computers were only about ten years in the future of humanity.
“Reactor output ninety percent,” Eskitul murmured. “Turbines operational. Working fluid sufficient.”
High on the wall at the end of the chancel, a new 3D image appeared. Homesickness pierced Hannah like a knife to the belly. It was an image of Earth. That misty blue-and-white sphere cradled everything she cared about.
“Engage the main drive,” Eskitul sighed.
A new group of readouts lit up. A vibration rippled into the soles of Hannah’s feet—the steam turbines ramping up their output, feeding the unimaginable power of the proton-lithium-6 reactor into the Lightbringer’s gigantic thrusters.
Contradictory emotions of hope and despair ripped into her heart like tidal forces.
The Lightbringer was on the move for the first time in ten years.
Heading for Earth.
Taking her with it.
Leaving the SoD behind, and her crew dead or dying.
That’s what you get for trusting an alien, Hannah-banana.
CHAPTER 43
The SoD jolted. Jack’s fingers slipped as he worked the drive controls console. He’d been checking on their reaction mass status—zero, as expected. He cursed and floated out of his seat. “What the hell now?” he asked.
No one answered him. Skyler huddled in the left seat, snivelling. Kate sat in the center seat, dead. Jack had strapped her in so she wouldn’t float around. Her head lolled, her mouth hung open. As for the two dead Krijistal bumping around behind Jack’s seats, their brains had been vaporized, so they weren’t talking, either.
“Alexei?”
Alexei was stuck in the rear of the ship. There were eight Krijistal in the main hab. The internal monitoring camera feeds that Jack could access from the bridge showed them squashed into the axis tunnel. They weren’t moving, they weren’t talking; maybe they were dead, but that would be a risky assumption to make. Anyway, Alexei couldn’t reach the bridge without going through them. He was marooned aft.
“Did you feel that?” Jack said.
Instead of Alexei, an unknown rriksti voice spoke in his headset. “Bye bye, suckers,” it said sepulchrally.
“Eskitul?” Jack yelled. But the voice was wrong.
Alexei came on the radio. “The Lightbringer’s moving.” he said. “What we just felt is the SoD tumbling off the hull.”
The bridge tilted slowly around Jack. “You know what this means?”
“Yeah,” Alexei said. “Eskitul’s gang got slagged. They were civilians. They never had a chance.”
“I wonder what happened to Keelraiser.” Jack settled his rriksti mouthpiece over his lips.
“Fucked off back to the surface, I’m sure. If I have a working shuttle, I do the same.”
“We’re still connected by the umbilicals. Steam hose, electrical cables.” As Jack spoke, he was digging his fingers into his left wrist. Intermittent pressure for doffing, continuous pressure for donning. The rriksti suit’s smart fabric flowed up over his head and sealed itself.
“Steam hose won’t hold for long,” Alexei said. He sounded very tired. Jack knew he was wounded but Alexei refused to say how badly. “We’re not getting a ride, Jack. They stole our water and electricity, now they’re done with us. Fuck it, we’re full … bye, fools. And they drive off with the gas pump hose still in the tank.”
“I know,” Jack said, tearing open the lockers. The Krijistal’s shooting spree had holed their doors. The contents had been partially melted, partially vaporized. He found what he was looking for and seized it with a grunt of relief. “I’m going out,” he told Alexei.
Skyler—who also had a headset on; in fact he had not come out of his rriksti suit the whole time—mooed in fright.
“If I don’t come back,” Jack told him, “you’re in charge. Ha, ha.” He tasted blood when he laughed. Shaking his head, he floated into the airlock and pulled the hatch shut after him.
Alexei said, “No, but really.”
“And you’re in charge of killing Skyler,” Jack said. Curled in darkness with his awkward burden, he cycled the airlock. The sides of the chamber bumped him. He couldn’t tell if he was tumbling, or the SoD was.
“Start the drive,” Alexei said. “We’ll land in the hole in the side. They will take us with them if they like it or not.”
Jack didn’t bother to say that there was no water left to start the drive with. The aliens had drained the primary tank. Alexei knew it. He was just being Russian, acting like machines could run on willpower alone. “Start it yourself,” he said. The cycle finished. He undogged the outer hatch. As he rose into space, Alexei’s swearing cut out. The alien headsets could barely transmit through the SoD’s internal pressure doors, and could not transmit at all through the hull. He heard a burst of static, and then nothing.
The universe was a fast-moving 3D jigsaw of metal and darkness. Willy-nilly, his brain organized the puzzle pieces into reality. Jupiter scudded across the sky like a meteor. The SoD was falling towards the Lightbringer. Its hull bulged up at him. He clutched the grab handle outside the airlock.
The SoD’s main hab crashed into the side of the Lightbringer. Jack’s teeth jarred together. Steel scraped steel in a shower of sparks. The SoD rebounded into space.
Jack clung for dear life to the grab handle, so he seemed to be standing on his hands as the SoD swung away from the Lightbringer on the umbilicals that tethered it to the larger ship.
If the Lightbringer were an airplane, the SoD would bobble back and forth like a pendulum until the lines tore loose. But with zero atmospheric pressure in play, the SoD would just keep swinging around, against the Lightbringer’s direction of travel, until it crashed into the hull again. Then the umbilicals would tear loose.
Jack had been told by flight instructors in the RAF that he had the best spatial perception they’d ever seen.
He hoped they’d been right.
Going on sheer instinct, he visualized the arc of the SoD’s slow swing. They were going to strike the hull … there.
Right on the edge of the hole in the Lightbringer’s side.
A bit further forward, and they’d go over the cliff. The aliens would end up with unwanted hitchhikers. That’d be nice. But Jack could see they weren’t going to make it.
So it was a good thing he’d brought a little helper.
The SoD’s magnetic harpoon gun.
It was one of those gotta-have-it toys foisted on them by the eggheads at NASA. It had come in handy when they were refueling in Earth orbit, but had just been luggage ever since. At one point, Jack and Alexei had taken it on a spacewalk and played with it, shooting at garbage they released into the vacuum. It was tricky to hit anything with the magnetic grapple …
… but the Lightbringer was a flipping huge target.
The SoD reached the peak of its swing and heeled over, falling back towards the alien ship.
Jack knelt and jammed the muzzle of the harpoon gun against the grab handle.
He was upside down.
Completely disoriented.
Not aiming. Just praying.
He fired the harpoon gun through the whole row of grab handles. The harpoon arrowed into the void, trailing its spun graphite / aramid fiber-core cable behind it. It vanished over the edge of the cliff.
The SoD struck the cliff with shattering force. Jack wrapped his arms around the grab handles. The impact nearly jarred him off the hull. His teeth clicked together. He tasted blood.
Relentlessly, the SoD rose into the void for another go-round of its wrecking ball impersonation …
The harpoon cable jerked taut.
“Come on. Come on,” Jack begged. His mouth was full of blood. He swallowed it. “Hold, damn you …”
The cable vibrated, soaking up the SoD’s momentum.
Whatever the harpoon had snagged on, below the clif
f-edge, in the icy chaos of the Lightbringer’s shattered decks, it was holding.
For now.
The barrel of the harpoon gun—a CO2 canister in a steel housing—ground against the first grab handle, like a toggle on a duffel coat.
Jack didn't even try to retract the cable. The harpoon gun’s crank-and-spool mechanism could not possibly haul the mass of the SoD through space. It would be enough if it held.
He began to climb down the cable.
It looked like down, down to the edge of the cliff, but of course it wasn’t really, so he pulled himself hand over hand along the cable, ankles locked around it for stability. His guns floated out, getting in the way of his knees. Hope Alexei figures it out. We’ve stopped swinging. It’s all I can do.
Nearly there, only a little further, and light dazzles me. What the hell? Jupiter’s gotten bright.
The light is down in the hole.
The wheel of the SoD’s main hab, above me, acquires a case of red-hot measles.
Lovely. Nothing says ‘nice to see you’ like fireworks.
I’ll give them fireworks.
Swinging hand over hand, Jack twisted his head around to see how much further he had to go.
A four-legged spider, octopus-headed, swarmed up the tether towards him.
Not human, not human at all.
Jack took one hand off the cable and reached for the nearest of his guns. It had to be the damn blaster, which he could only fire with two hands. No time to fumble for one of the Super Soakers. He took both hands off the cable, swinging by his knees, and fired at the alien shape scrambling towards him.
As likely to hit a real spider, upside-down, in the dark..
The alien threw itself on him, pinning his arms in a hug.
Jack struggled, the alien came off the cable, and they both swung free, the cable slicing into the backs of Jack’s knees.
He never knew if the grapple tore loose, or if the aliens below sliced the cable.
It went slack.
The SoD leapt into space.
Jack and the alien slid down the trailing cable, while the Lightbringer surged past like a metal shore, getting further away.
Lifeboat: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 2) Page 30