by GARY DARBY
“Perfectly, sir,” the man replied.
“Report back to me when all ships are in position, and ready to attack,” Peller commanded and cut the transmission link between the two.
He stood motionless, his body rigid, his mind burning with rage and hatred at what the Marrels had once again done to him.
Flexing his hands as if they were talons, in his mind’s eye he pictured them ripping and tearing into Marrel flesh to strip their bones clean of skin and muscle.
“Sir,” the captain called out, breaking into his vengeful reverie, “the escorts are forming up around us, ten Marauders.”
“Excellent,” Peller answered. “Have them stay on station and await my orders.”
The captain gave a quick nod and turned back to his console to issue Peller’s orders to the circling dreadnoughts.
Peller had no doubt that the Marrels would be on Sarpens Two attempting to rescue the marooned Star Scouts.
He considered activating the nova device and sending it into Sarpens, but he cast that thought aside. He didn’t want to give the Marrels the pleasure of a practically instantaneous death.
No, once he had his fleet assembled, he would send them in with the explicit instructions to capture the Marrels alive.
And whichever captain and crew did so would be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams, which meant that he would see his own dream come true, to have the Marrels suffer in a slow and agonizing way at his hands.
In the end, they would come crawling to him, not begging for mercy and life, but for death and an end to their miserable existence.
His lips curled in a sardonic smile. And that indeed would be a dream come true.
Chapter Twenty-One
Star date: 2443.115
In the Asteroid Field
Feverishly, Dason and Alena worked the pilot controls, trying to right the out-of-control craft before it slammed head-on into the oncoming asteroid. “The nucleonic engine shut down!” Alena cried out. “All we have is thrusters.”
Red peewee lights spread across the control board, an array of glittering lights signaling severe damage in most of the craft’s operating systems.
“We need to work this together,” Dason called over to Alena. “You take the pitch and yaw, I’ll work on feathering out these rotations.”
“Got it,” Alena replied.
As the ship spun around, Dason could see an enormous, crater-pocked asteroid dead ahead. With each second, it loomed closer and closer.
He had no illusions as to their fate if they failed to right the ship in time; they would crash into the plas-steel-hard rock, and not even the Zephyr’s sturdy body would withstand the crushing collision.
Second by second, the craggy-shaped giant boulder loomed ever closer, but Dason and Alena were gradually righting the ship.
With one last burst of a rear thruster, Dason brought the ship to an even keel with the bow facing the enormous asteroid.
“Full forward thrusters!” he shouted.
Streaks of hard-blue flame and light shot out from around the craft’s bow as he and Alena brought all eight forward thrusters into play.
Slowly, slowly, the ship began to decelerate. Dason pressed his fingers as hard as he could against the thruster controls, turning them white from the continuous pressure.
Next to him, Alena’s voice was an animal-like snarl. “Stop . . . stop . . . stop . . . stop . . . you . . .”
The little craft slid closer until in a melodramatic moment the bow gently bumped against the rock.
The pressure from the thrusters sliced off bits of gravel and dust from the rock and shot them out into space. The Zephyr sat motionless before it began to ease away from the granite surface.
Dason and Alena both leaned back in their chairs and both let loose a nervous laugh.
“I think you two can shut down the thrusters now,” Shanon muttered in relief from behind them. The two let off their individual controls, and the eight small thrusters stopped spewing out white-hot gasses.
The Zephyr floated several meters away from the huge rock while Dason and Alena took stock of the craft’s damage.
“Shanon,” Dason directed, “take Nase with you and check the ship’s aft part. Have Sami and TJ check the belly compartment. Alena and I will work up here on communications see if we can’t at least get the nucleonic engine up and working.”
Shanon gave a quick nod. “On it,” she replied.
Leaning over her console, Alena muttered, “I sure hope someone on at least one of those Nav ships took notice that we were in trouble and will turn around and come looking for us.”
“Don’t count on it,” Dason countered. “They had their hands pretty full with those three dreadnoughts. I don’t think we would be too high on their priority list.”
“Just a thought,” Alena returned.
“And a good one, too,” Dason replied. “In the meantime, we’d better just count on ourselves to get out of this jam.”
Several minutes later Dason sat back and ran his fingers through sweat-soaked hair.
“The whole communication console is fried,” he announced. “Nothing less than tearing out the entire guts and replacing it with new nano-wiring and circuits will make this system even come close to working.”
Biting down on her lower lip, Alena reported, “We’re good on backup power, but you’re right, we certainly don’t have the replacement parts to do the job.”
She craned her neck to peer out the windows at the nearby asteroids and in mock jest gestured outward. “See a friendly repair ship anywhere close? If you do, I’ll suit up and zip over to see if they can lend us a hand.”
Dason gave her a crooked smile in response. “Just as soon as I spot one, I’ll let you know.”
Just then, Shanon stuck her head in and announced, “The stern is pretty beat up, but she’s holding pressure, same with the storage compartment. How about up here?”
“Not good,” Dason answered frankly. “We have no communications whatsoever. We’d need a full-up repair station or ship to get them working again.
“From what we can tell, the nuc engine is in one piece, but everything we’ve tried to restart it has failed.”
Sami squeezed in next to Shanon. “I’m willing to get out and give it a push if that’ll help.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dason replied dryly. “It just might come to that.”
He glanced out and noticed that the ship’s position had shifted. He realized that the asteroid had enough mass that it was drawing the ship closer in minuscule amounts, and it was carrying the ship with it as it revolved, albeit ever so gradually.
“What about the ship’s auto-distress signal?” Shanon asked.
“The antenna isn’t working,” Alena replied.
“Can we reroute its signal to an antenna that is working?” Shanon asked.
“We already tried,” Dason answered. “None of the antennas are operable. That blast we took from the battleship and our slide across the rock seems to have taken them all offline.”
“What about the P-suits?” Shanon asked. “Their emergency beacons are still working.”
“Good idea, Shanon,” Alena replied. “And one that we discussed. We’re saving it for our last, best option if we can’t get anything else to work.”
Dason reached out and gave Shanon’s hand a squeeze. “Keep throwing those ideas out. At this point, I’m all ears.”
Shanon gave him a small smile. “In other words, we need a new ship.”
Dason gave her a little nod in response. “Something like that.”
Sami screwed his mouth to one side and gestured out the forward windows to their left side. “You mean something like that ship?”
“What?” Dason muttered and squirmed around in his seat to peer outside. A few hundred meters away, a sleek, dark ship was just coming into view over the asteroid’s tiny horizon.
Dason gaped at the view before he engaged his thrusters and dropped their vessel back out of
sight from the other ship. “Hey,” Sami protested, “why’d you do that for? They could be friendly, you know?”
“Uh huh,” Dason replied, “and they might not. Call me overly cautious, but until I know for certain, I’m not willing to take that chance. Remember, this place could be crawling with Faction.”
He glanced around and asked, “What did each of you see? Any markings to identify who it belongs to?”
“No,” Sami and Shanon replied.
Alena spoke up to say, “Small ship, about our size or slightly larger, no markings, but the airlock door was open.”
“You’re sure?” Dason asked.
Alena nodded at him. “Yeah, I got a good look at it before we dropped below the horizon. It was definitely open.”
“Hmm,” Dason mused, “that’s interesting.”
“Maybe someone is outside taking a little walk,” Alena declared.
“Maybe it’s a dead ship,” Shanon offered.
“Maybe the crew had to abandon it,” Sami responded.
“Maybe,” Dason returned with a little laugh, “we got way too many maybes.”
No one spoke for several moments until Dason announced, “I’m going to bring the ship up again. Everyone take a good look before I drop her again.”
He glanced around. “Ready?” The three nodded.
With a light touch to his thruster controls, Dason brought the Zephyr up until it just peeked over a dark hummock that protruded out of the granite asteroid.
Dason leaned forward in his chair to get a better look at the unknown ship. He held the Zephyr steady for several seconds before he reached out to tap on the thruster controls to slide them back down again.
Shanon’s hand shot out and held tight to his wrist to stop him. “Wait!” she snapped. “Look! A hundred meters to the left of the ship.”
His fingers still poised over the control board, Dason turned to stare in the direction Shanon indicated.
He peered with an intent expression, at first not seeing what had caused her excitement. Then he pulled his hand back and leaned even farther over the console board.
“Do you see it?” Shanon asked, her mouth so close to his ear that he could feel her warm breath against his cheek.
“Yes—but it can’t be, can it?”
“You know what they say,” Shanon replied. “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.”
“Wait,” Sami replied. “You guys see ducks? That’s crazy.”
“Not any more crazy than what I’m seeing, Sami,” Alena answered. She shook her head and murmured with just a hint of awe in her voice, “That can be only one thing.”
“The Faction nova device,” Dason whispered.
“What?” Sami spit out and pushed his way farther into the pilot’s pod to get a better view.
He stared long and hard for several seconds before gesturing toward the asteroid. “Yep, it’s a duck all right.”
Dason tapped the console board several times and slid the Zephyr behind the asteroid. “Sami,” Dason ordered, “get Nase and TJ up here on the double, we all need to be included in this discussion.”
Moments later, the scouts crammed into the pilot’s pod. For Nase and TJ’s benefit, Dason recounted what they had found and their situation.
“The n-space and local communication consoles are completely useless and both engines are dead,” he explained. “That means we only have the P-suit distress beacons to let anyone know we’re still out here.”
“But that could take hours, days,” TJ objected. “We need to do something fast, before that thing starts moving.”
“I wholeheartedly agree,” Dason replied.
“So what’s the plan?” Sami asked. “You and me hot-jet it over to that other ship, commandeer it, and start yelling for help?”
“That’s part of the plan,” Dason rejoined, “but what we need to do is to incapacitate that device so that it’s virtually dead in the water.”
“Dason,” Shanon questioned, “is it possible that the reason that that ship is just sitting there is that the crew is inside the nova device?”
Dason raised his eyebrows at Shanon’s suggestion. “Guards,” he stated.
“That’s what I think, too,” she replied. “Obviously they hid their device out here among the asteroids just like we did with our fake one, but would they go off and leave it sitting alone and unguarded?”
“I don’t think they did.” Alena replied slowly. “I suspect that was the mission of those three dreadnoughts before someone ordered them to intercept our Mongan ship.
“Only they didn’t count on being caught in a shootout with the Intrepid and us, not to mention our rescuers.”
“If that’s the case,” Nase observed, “then most certainly they’ve got other ships inbound at full speed to take their place.”
“Which means,” Alena returned, “we’ve got to act fast before another set of battlewagons shows up for guard duty.”
“No kidding,” Sami stressed, “’cause we’re in no shape to take on much more than a flight of battle-mosquitoes at this point.”
Dason glanced up at his team. All eyes were on him. They were ready to hear his plan, willing to do whatever was needed to stop the nova device.
Dason’s mind was a blur of thought, running over a range of options before he finally spoke. “Here’s what we’ll do. Shanon, TJ, Sami, and I will climb into P-suits. Shanon, you’re going for a little space walk. Once outside, push away from the ship and activate your distress beacon.
“We’ll fly the Zephyr over to the other ship. Alena, you and Nase will stay with the Zephyr, continue to work on getting our systems up if you can.
“Sami, TJ and I will board the other ship. Once aboard,” he stopped to exhale a puff of air and raised his hands in a gesture of indecision. “Once aboard, we’ll play it by ear from there, I guess.”
He looked around and asked, “Anyone have a better plan?” No one answered, so he gestured toward the airlock. “Okay, let’s do this.”
A few minutes later, Shanon stood next to the airlock, her helmet pushed back from her short, brunette hair. Dason stepped close to search her lovely face.
“Beacon working?” he asked. She nodded in response. “Water topped off? Filet mignon for rations? Batteries at full—”
“Dason,” she interrupted firmly, “I’m not a newbie at this, you know.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “Sorry,” he murmured, “I know that, it’s just, well . . .”
One corner of her mouth raised in a tiny smile. “Hey, it’s okay, I understand. If it were the other way around, I’d probably be doing the same to you.”
“Take care of yourself,” he stammered. “Please.”
“I will,” she answered in a whisper. “You do the same.”
She squeezed his hand, and then brought her helmet over her head. She stepped into the airlock and gave a small wave before the door slid shut.
Dason turned to the starboard side window, and seconds later watched as Shanon floated free from the ship. Once she was away from the ship, she raised a hand to give a thumbs-up that she was okay, and the distress beacon was operating.
Taking a deep breath, Dason turned to the remaining scouts. “Let’s go, we’ve got a nova to stop.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Star date: 2443.115
In the Asteroid Field
Slipping into his seat in the pilot’s pod, Dason glanced over his shoulder and asked, “Everyone set to go play bomb busters?”
Hearing mumbled assents from his teammates, Dason tapped on the pilot’s console and using his thrusters raised the ship up and over the giant asteroid.
Engaging his rear thrusters, he moved the Zephyr toward the mysterious, darkened ship in the near distance.
All around them, rocky, pockmarked asteroids, large, small, and minuscule floated, seemingly motionless, but in reality they weaved in eons-long intertwined orbits.
At not more than a fast w
alking pace, Dason wove the Zephyr through the space boulders, creeping ever closer to the ebony-colored ship.
“Sure hope nobody’s got an energy weapon trained on us,” Alena murmured. “Because, speaking of ducks, we are a sitting one about now.”
The Zephyr closed the distance between the two ships until Dason used short, quick bursts from his forward thrusters to bring the ship to a full stop just meters away from the darkened craft.
“Okay,” he called out softly, “Alena, Nase, you’ve got the con. TJ, Sami, let’s see if anyone is home.”
Dason brought his helmet up over his head, letting it expand until it turned into a solid see-through sphere around his skull. With practiced ease, he checked his suit’s pressure seals before asking of his two companions. “Tight?”
“Tight and right,” Sami replied.
“I’m good,” TJ answered.
Dason strode toward the airlock, flipping on his exterior lights. “I’ll go first,” he directed, “you two follow.”
He stepped into the airlock, sealed the door, waited for the air pressure to vent to pure vacuum before opening the outer door.
Standing on the metal door frame, he demagnetized his boots and peered outward. “Seems like I’ve been here before,” he muttered to himself.
“Yeah,” Sami replied, “only this time, you get to play with rocks and a big bomb.”
“Thanks for reminding me, Sami,” Dason replied, leaned out, and with a gentle push sailed away.
His arms spread outward and forward as if he were flying; Dason soared the short distance between the two ships.
Approaching the mystery ship’s open doorway, he fired two of his micro-thrusters as and slowed himself to a dead stop in front of the open hatch.
His suit lights shone into the dark aperture and Dason inspected the metal framing. He turned at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. “How’s it look?” Sami asked over the suit transmitter.
“Nothing amiss that I can see,” Dason replied, his voice sounding a bit grainy over the suit communicator. “Appears that both doors are open and we have a straight shot into the ship.”