Wreck of the Nebula Dream

by Scott, Veronica

  The freighter captain just shrugged, reaching past Nick to adjust a control slightly. “Oh, the Dragon has some – special features, you might say. She was a prototype for a new class of military ships that didn’t get further funding. So we were able to get her for a song.”

  “You bought her still fully commissioned?” Nick probed further, good-naturedly. “Weapons and features, as you call them, intact?”

  Rafferty winked. “Well, it’s amazing how sloppy these salvage yards can be, at times.”

  Mara cut in, “I’m grateful you were willing to come rescue us, Captain Rafferty.” She extended her hand. “Mara Lyrae, Sector Agent for Loxton Galactic.”

  Shaking her hand, Rafferty grinned widely. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. We’ve taken on charters for Loxton from time to time, although mainly we contract through the Frayser Line.”

  “Well, you’ll never lack for work from Loxton in the future, I promise you,” Mara answered fervently. “All the work you can handle.”

  Enough social chitchat. Nick wanted to get down to the business at hand. “You have the LBs in tow?”

  “Come see,” Casey invited them over to the bank of vid screens. “The robo tugs had a hell of a time getting them into convoy formation, but I think we’ve begun moving toward Sector Sixteen in about the last five minutes.”

  “LBs don’t herd like cargo containers,” Rafferty said. “Wish we could simply take the passengers aboard and leave the LBs here, but the Dragon doesn’t have enough room. We only ever carry a few passengers.”

  “There’ll be the salvage value of the LBs to consider,” Casey pointed out cheerfully. “Well worth the trouble, since we have no choice about dragging them home with us.”

  “Are you the whole crew?” Nick was curious, in data-gathering mode.

  “Pretty much, except for the Mxilm couple who tend the engines – Hatesh and his mate, Gilesh.”

  “What’s your running time to Sector Sixteen?” Nick asked next.

  “Ten hours. The liner’s captain was way the hell and gone from where he should have been.” Rafferty’s frown was impressive.

  Nick nodded, tapping one finger on the vid screen, where he could see the signatures of oncoming Sectors vessels. “Any word from Admiral Reston’s group? I contacted them as well with the fastlink, but you were closer.”

  “Yeah, they’ve been in touch. Tried to order us out of Sector Seventeen, but I said nuts to that. Figured you were going to need rescuing sooner than later out here. Every second counts in enemy territory,” he said, directing the last remark to Mara, who nodded. “And we Special Forces types stick together,” Rafferty finished.

  The burly freighter captain joined Nick at the vid screen. “You can see them coming, but maybe a couple of hours out. They’ll fly cover for us, once they arrive. Till then, there’s only the Dragon and her guns to keep us safe.”

  “Good thing there was just one pirate ship, then,” Mara said, crowding Nick a little so she could see the readouts for herself.

  “Well, yes, but the situation is subject to change,” Rafferty reminded her without smiling.

  “Mawreg?” Nick knew the answer even before Rafferty nodded grim agreement. “How long till they reach the Dream?”

  “Hard to say. Who knows what a Mawreg ship is truly capable of?” Rafferty shook his head and gestured them to another vid screen. “This is them,” he said, rapping his knuckles on the far edge of the display grid. “Can’t make out how many yet, but I’m guessing a battle cruiser and three escort ships. Probably hundreds of individual fighters on the cruiser – a typical configuration, as far as we know.”

  He checked with Nick for confirmation and the captain nodded.

  Eyes wide, Mara was horrified. “How long did you say it would be till they arrive? Are we going to be far enough away by then?”

  “I’m planning on it, myself.” Casey joined them. “The Dragon is good, but she can’t take on a battle group.”

  “Not even a swarm of their fighters,” Rafferty said. “They come at you in the dozens, don’t care if they live or die, just crash into you. So yeah, we’re going to be long gone, I hope, tucked neatly under Admiral Reston’s wing. We’re accelerating as rapidly as we can, without losing the tractor beam net on those LBs.”

  Nick reached out to take Mara by the hand, swinging her to face him rather than gaze in terrified fascination at the tiny blips representing the oncoming Mawreg. She stared at him with questioning eyes.

  “I have to go back,” Nick said, speaking directly to Mara as if the others weren’t present.

  She shook her head slightly, blinking. “You what?”

  “I have to go back to the Dream. There’s something left to be done, something I have to do.”

  Eyes wide open, Mara was left speechless.

  “Don’t be a damn fool, man!” Casey’s reaction mirrored Mara’s.

  “We can’t wait for you.” Rafferty’s assessment was cold but practical.

  Nick concentrated on Mara, addressing his words only to her, wanting, needing her understanding and blessing. They could have been alone on the Dragon’s bridge. “I can’t leave yet, Mara.”

  She closed her eyes, obviously striving for calm, anger and fear close to the top of her emotions, and then raised her head. She chose her words carefully. “What does it matter if the Mawreg get their claws or tentacles or whatever on the Nebula Dream? It’s only a ship. Not worth risking your life for. Again!”

  Drawing her into a hug, which she resisted for a moment before allowing herself to snuggle into the curve of his body, Nick tried to explain. “If it was just the ship, I’d agree with you.” Nick shook his head impatiently. “I’m not big on suicide missions, but there are eight hundred and fifty helpless people on board the Dream. If I don’t return and do something about it, all of them are going to wake up in a Mawreg experimentation camp.” Nick paused, swallowed hard, trying not to remember any details from his one encounter with the horrors of such a place.

  Even Rafferty and Casey paled at the mention of the well-known evils of the Mawreg “scientific” stations.

  “How do you know there’s anyone left? Much less such an exact –” Mara stopped in midprotest, eyes widening. “You’re talking about Level Six, aren’t you? The cryo sleep pods?”

  Nick nodded, relieved she got it so quickly. “I can’t sail away from here, knowing those innocent people are in jeopardy on that cursed ship. Knowing what will happen to them? Admiral Reston will never get here in time to attempt a rescue. The Mawreg will be in full control of the Dream by the time he could arrive.”

  “The level wasn’t jettisoned in the first evacuation?” Rafferty asked in disbelief. “It’s required by ICC regulation.”

  Nick shook his head, disgusted. “Yeah, well, someday when you’ve got a few hours, I’ll be happy to tell you about all the ICC regulations the Dream’s captain was breaking. Hell, the man murdered some of his own bridge crew in cold blood to ensure we’d never be found. So the passenger cryo sleep pods were the least of his concerns.”

  “We debated where it was, but we figured maybe it’d been hit by an asteroid, or drifted off,” Casey said. “What the hell happened on that ship?”

  “If I can get the level to jettison, can the Dragon take it in tow, too?” Nick asked Rafferty and Casey.

  The freighter captain shook his head in definitive negative. “No, we’re straining capacity as it is to handle the LBs.”

  “But the robo tugs could shepherd it, sir,” Casey offered. “They have enough AI to handle the unusual job. We could leave you the robo tugs on standby.”

  “Yes, because we have to keep blasting for the Sector border with the rest of the survivors,” Rafferty agreed. “The one thing we can’t do is wait.”

  “All right, then,” Nick said. “It’s settled. I’m going to take The Sigrid and head over to the Dream. Get the level to jettison, set the Yeatter engines to self-destruct, and then get myself the hell out of here. You can ask A
dmiral Reston to send a squad of long-range fighters to fly cover for me when he gets close enough, all right?”

  Rafferty and Casey were nodding, accepting Nick’s decision as the only reasonable course of action.

  Mara placed herself between Nick and the grav tube.

  “I’m going with you.” Her tone brooked no argument.

  Nick disagreed anyway. “Like hell you are! You’ll stay here on the Dragon, where I know you’re safe – as safe as it is anywhere in Sector Seventeen – and I don’t have to worry about you.”

  Hand on his chest, Mara stood toe to toe with him, her face set in stubborn lines. “You can’t do this by yourself. You’re going to need help.”

  “She may be right,” Rafferty said, earning himself a blistering glare and an oath from Nick. He tilted his head apologetically. “Takes two people to release a cryo pod, Captain Jameson, working independently, but simultaneously. It’s a fail-safe, to prevent an accidental jettison.”

  Nick stared at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Rafferty nodded again. “Standard configuration on any ship carrying cryo pods. Even here on the Dragon.”

  “I’ll go,” Casey said.

  “No, you won’t.” Rafferty’s voice was ice cold. “I need you here, to help me. Between watching the damn LBs try to break free from the tractors, flying the Dragon, and directing weapons fire if we’re attacked, I actually need a third person besides you and me. I certainly can’t spare you! You and I can barely handle it all. Miss Lyrae doesn’t have the right kind of experience, is my guess, for all she can co-pilot a shuttle.”

  Mara shook her head.

  “Which means you stay aboard the Dragon,” Rafferty told Casey flatly. He gave Nick an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to balance the greater good here as well.”

  “No problem.” Nick understand where Rafferty was coming from, would have made the same decision in the other man’s boots. “Maybe Khevan –”

  “We’re wasting time,” Mara said. Her voice had a slight tremor in it, but her face was calm. “Khevan is too shattered from his near miss with the Red Lady, and you know it. Now let’s get ourselves to The Sigrid and get on with this craziness, okay?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  With Nick at the controls, The Sigrid dropped easily from the Dragon’s cargo bay, heading along the lines of lifeboats tethered to the freighter by tractor beams. Nick could see in the vid screens how the LBs bobbed and wove in the hold of the tractors, their AI’s attempting to fight free. The Dragon’s AI was trying to transmit a cease-and-desist command to the LBs, Nick knew, but had yet to find the right level of ship-to-ship communication. In the meantime, the crew was exercising constant vigilance to keep the lifeboats from crashing into each other, or the Dragon, or drifting off into Sector Seventeen on their own. Nerve-racking work.

  “There are the three robo tugs, waiting as Rafferty promised,” Mara said, intent on the vid screens.

  “This return flight should take less time than our trip out.” Nick tried making conversation. There was a tense, strained atmosphere between the two of them that hadn’t been present before. Nick was deeply unhappy he’d been forced to accept Mara’s help, not wanting to risk her life again. Mara was equally upset any necessity existed for Nick to venture into the treacherous nightmare that was the Dream, as she’d told him several times while getting The Sigrid ready to launch.

  “Robo tugs falling into formation with us,” Mara reported a minute later.

  “Rafferty and Casey are pretty damn good,” Nick commented with appreciation. “Efficient.”

  “So tell me the plan again.” Mara’s request was terse, and she didn’t look at him.

  “We dock at a lifeboat port on Level Nine, since there aren’t any davits on Level Ten. Then we take the grav tube up to Level Six, figure out the jettison controls for the cryo pod –”

  “What if the pod has failed? What if they’ve all died? Then this whole trip will be for nothing.”

  Nick didn’t take offense at her argumentative tone. “I instructed the AI to maintain power to the cryo pods and the grav lifts above all else, remember? The Shemdylann wouldn’t know how to countermand those orders. And they wouldn’t mess with the cryo pods, not with eight hundred and fifty potential slaves at stake.”

  Mara shuddered but didn’t say anything further. After a minute, Nick continued on, outlining his plan. “So, we get the pod on its way, the Dragon’s tugs take it over, and you and I go to Level Ten. Where I take the Yeatters out of sync, give ourselves about a half hour’s head start before the engines blow, and then we’re on The Sigrid and heading home, to Sector Sixteen. Admiral Reston’s group’ll pick us up most likely. Easy.”

  Mara wasn’t having any. “Did any of your missions behind the lines ever go easy? Ever go exactly as planned?” Her voice held skepticism. “I wish we could have dealt with the cryo pod while we were aboard the first time. I have a bad feeling about tempting the favor of the Lords of Space a second time. It scares the hell out of me,” Mara said frankly, turning to him at last.

  “Yeah, I know. Me too,” he answered softly. “But we never had a spare moment to go off to Level Six and do anything about it. Maybe if we hadn’t been captured by the pirates –”

  After a minute she nodded, once. “Do you think any pirates are left aboard?”

  “Maybe.” He gave a frank answer. “Their ship disengaged and came after us pretty fast, too fast to have picked up all the crew first. Besides, I’m sure they were spread out on the passenger decks, looting, each pirate out for himself. But we have our blasters. And they won’t know we’re coming.”

  “Well, certainly the last thing anybody would expect would be us going back,” Mara said, with a hint of laughter.

  “Any sane sentient, anyway,” Nick answered. He reached over and held out his hand to her. After a minute she took it and they sat quietly, waiting as The Sigrid’s autopilot brought them ever closer to the disabled liner. Mara worked the vid screens, bringing the Dream into better focus as they flew nearer and nearer.

  Nick whistled. “Check out the damage on the starboard side! We were damn lucky the whole ship didn’t go to pieces after an impact like that.” Taking control of the ship from the AI, he began the tricky task of working their way closer in.

  “Nick –” Delicately she touched his arm to get his attention.

  “Yeah?”

  “There are still a few lifeboats attached. See, there’s one on Level Three? And two more on Level Two.” Mara’s face mirrored her dismay, verging on horror. “Do you suppose anyone is aboard?”

  He spared a quick glance for the vid screen as he manually piloted the small cutter through a debris field and toward the lifeboat port he had selected on Level Nine. “Tell you what, if I can connect to the AI while we’re up on Level Six, I’ll try ordering a universal jettison, okay?”Mara sighed. “Remember those looters? In the hold? They said they had a lifeboat waiting.”

  “Well, if they’re still stuck on the Dream, and we do succeed in setting them free, the military will be able to deal with the situation properly at Sector Hub.” Nick adjusted the angle of approach. “Brace yourself. This may be quite a rough dock.” The next few minutes Nick worked in silence, concentrating on aligning The Sigrid with the aperture vacated by – or never filled with – a lifeboat.

  Shuddering through her entire length, the ship finally connected with the lifeboat davit. After powering down the engines, Nick got out of the pilot’s seat. Mara followed suit.

  “Let’s do it,” she said grimly, before he could utter a syllable. “So we can get the hell out of here again. I liked the accommodations on the Dragon a whole lot better.”

  “Mara, I –”

  She shook her head, forestalling whatever he was going to say. “We’re here, so let’s just get the job done and leave. Before I lose my nerve! Okay?”

  He wasn’t satisfied, but he had to leave it at that. Drawing his blaster, watching to make sure
Mara followed suit with her weapon borrowed from the Dragon’s amazingly well-stocked armory, Nick led the way through The Sigrid’s passenger compartment. Double-checking the readouts to be sure they had made a clean dock with the slightly different configuration of the lifeboat port, he triggered the hatch. Weapons ready, they crouched at either side as the mechanism cycled, both peering anxiously into the short, dark corridor beyond the sanctuary of The Sigrid’s friendly, brightly lit interior.

  Stepping out cautiously, Nick headed toward the sealed access portal to the main body of the Dream. Mara came a few paces behind. At the entry to the corridor on Level Nine, Nick stared intently through a fisheye lens out into the main corridor before he hit the controls. They held their breaths as the hatch slowly slid aside.

  Nick went first, sweeping the empty corridor in both directions, blaster at the ready. “Clear!” he whispered to Mara.

  She had to force herself to take the first step across the threshold but then walked out into the hall and quickened her pace to keep up with Nick, who was already heading rapidly for the grav tube. “The air smells pretty bad, doesn’t it?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “Not circulating or scrubbing properly. Too many sections closed off by blast doors, I imagine,” Nick answered without much interest. “Your nose will get used to it soon and you won’t even notice the stench. Ah, good, the grav lift is still working,” he said, as the access door to the tube slid aside at his command. Checking the tube out cautiously, staring upward and then down again before allowing Mara to step inside, he got them floating up to Level Six as rapidly as the automatic settings of the leisurely cruise liner would permit. Nick longed for the crisp, no-nonsense efficiency of the Dragon’s grav lift. Every second of this return trip to the Dream is like an hour.

  Mara’s stomach rumbled and she rubbed at her abdomen with her free hand. Nick glanced over at her, eyebrows raised. She grimaced. “I’m nauseous, and the foul, stale air doesn’t help.”

  Nick motioned curtly for her to stay low. He opened the door to Level Six, rolling into the corridor and off to the side in a blur. There was a long moment of silence.”Nick?” Mara whispered anxiously. “Nick, what’s going on?”