“What the hell just happened?” Frankie yelled to be heard above the crackle of static as she rushed to the navigator, who bent over his table and repeatedly jabbed his fingers on the nautical chart. “What’s their heading now? They’re facing us or away?”
“Us.” Lieutenant Bentley blanched when he turned to look at her. “But they’re belly up, Ma’am.”
Shit.
“Comms, try to get them back. Use short-range.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Frankie tamped down the long line of expletives while she mentally listed what resources she had for a rescue mission. They’d loaded the Magellan to the gunnels with ammo. They had precious little else than warheads and charges for the pulse cannons. Still, the Ca Ong counted at least three hundred crewmembers.
“Officer of the watch, deploy the grappling hooks.”
A couple of the more junior crewmembers—a few had chosen to stay behind for this mission—turned to stare but quickly did as she instructed. She was really pushing her good luck this time. The Magellan, loaded with ammo, would attempt to draw in a ship three times its size and hopefully right it. Should the ships collide…
Muffled thuds along the deckhead heralded three jets of steam shooting out of her ship’s prow as the grappling hooks deployed. A trio of able seamen piloted each hook from their stations.
Frankie stood behind her seat and gripped the backrest. Vinyl squeaked plaintively. “Nice and slow, people. Ca Ong is old, we don’t want to puncture their hull. Attitude jets at forty percent. Take us in.”
Gravity fields shifted as the officer of the watch, Bentley, cautiously maneuvered the Magellan closer to the upside-down ship, firing attitude jets at regular intervals to achieve the perfect angle. Something rolled off a workstation and clattered on the grille deck.
“Comms? Anything?”
“No, Ma’am,” a timid voice replied.
She didn’t recognize that one and turned to see who had spoken. An ordinary seaman by the name of Tilak stared unblinkingly at the tacscreens.
“Switch back and forth. Someone on that ship has his finger on the panic button.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Tilak replied.
Frankie wanted to pace. Bad. But such weakness would have to wait until she was alone. Or with John.
“Quarter bursts from now on, Bentley. Ten percent.”
Sweat pearling on his temples, the OOW nodded.
“Portside grappling hook,” Frankie warned. “Aim for their prow, but the underbelly where the hull is thicker. No atmosphere inside that section so it won’t matter if we punch through.”
A zoomed-in portion on the tacscreen relayed in aqua and green the left-side grappling hook as its tiny engine propelled it at the Ca Ong’s prow. Glowing numbers counted down the distance. Almost there.
“Contact,” announced the able seaman piloting the right-side hook.
Frankie let out a surreptitious sigh of relief. One down, two to go.
“…electrical engine room…”
“Was that them?” she demanded. “Comms?”
Tilak nodded. Another burst of message filled the bridge. “…fire…losing…integrity. Mayday!” The woman’s voice sounded high-pitched and tight.
The two other crewmembers piloting the hooks each announced contact. In a voice she willed to be calm, she instructed them to upright the large ship. Beyond the large portholes, the searchlight illuminated the Ca Ong as it slowly—excruciatingly slowly—began to roll right-side up.
“Perfect,” she murmured. Someone would have to use a power tool to pry her fingers off the backrest. “Bentley, reverse attitude jets. Not even quarter bursts, okay. Just think about backing away.”
Some charitable soul laughed at her lame joke. Her smile crystallized when the man piloting the right-side hook cursed under his breath.
“Something I should know?”
“I’m losing—”
A sudden tremor ran along the deck and rattled the workstations. Anything not bolted to the deck—people included—began to scatter around and collect in corners and along anchoring points.
Frankie barely had time to widen her feet. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Both Bentley and her comms tech picked themselves off the deck and slid back into their seats.
“Ma’am. The hook broke off.”
“Losing central hook.”
“…Mayday!” The comms drowned everything else.
Another tremor rattled the Magellan. Shit. That ship was just too large to draw in. Frankie took a deep breath. Bentley looked back at her. As did Qiu, who stood lance-straight near the tacscreen. Aqua light bathed her face in lime-green hues. Both knew what was coming. On a long sigh, Frankie ordered the remaining hooks to retract.
“But, Ma’am,” one of the able seamen protested. He spread his feet wider when the ship began to lean to portside, drawn by the Ca Ong’s inert mass.
“Retract the bloody hooks!” Bentley roared. He’d always been all about tact, that one.
“Comms, kill the link,” Frankie murmured. General silence followed her order.
Tilak switched off communications. The last words from Ca Ong floated on her bridge like a stench, like a restless, lost soul. “Unable to launch cruiser. Hull integrity breached.”
While the OOW backed the Magellan safely away from the doomed ship, Frankie walked around her seat and sat on the very edge. The least she could do was bear witness. To three hundred deaths. To humanity’s best chance of reclaiming their home.
The searchlight rendered the scene in sordid details. First the mammoth ship rolled another quarter turn before beginning a slow rotation on its lopsided axis. In vibrant colors and soundless, the view from the portholes made Frankie want to turn away. But she didn’t. No one did. A series of white crackles appeared along the rounded hull and congregated at the extremities. Aft and fore began to glow white-hot. Then the ship’s hull burst like an overripe melon. Silver skin ruptured to spill gray metal flesh. Little black dots—pits—sieved out of the many tears. Everyone knew what these dots were.
Frankie sat in her seat as she watched Ca Ong disintegrating, along with the precious stealth cruiser and her grand plans of insurrection. A mirthless laugh bubbled up her throat. Nerves frayed from months of preparation and sleepless nights pacing her tiny cabin threatened to make a fool of her. She stood, shoved her hands in the pockets of her coveralls. John’s gift poked the pad of her index finger as she pressed on the ends of the candy wrapper. Small thing. Normal thing. While three hundred people were being sucked out into space. Cold, pitiless space.
“Heading, Ma’am?”
She cut a glance at her nav. “Resume heading. We’re carrying on with the mission.”
“But the mission… With the Ca Ong gone…” The able seaman who had protested turned accusing eyes to her. Impertinent little jerk. She’d have a talk with his section head.
“We all know what was on that ship.” Frankie looked at her crew.
“People,” Qiu murmured somewhere behind her.
“Yes,” Frankie conceded. “People. People who believed in what we’re doing. We’re all volunteers on this ship.” She threw a sharp glance at the man who’d be scrubbing the heads for a week. “We all believed in the mission. And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to just keep on going. Until we’ve rebuilt what was destroyed, until we don’t need to abandon a crippled ship because we can’t afford the additional loss. Until we’re home.”
Frankie felt cheap for not thinking of the crew first. But her cruiser was on that ship. The one craft with no heat signature. The one craft that could sneak under the Imber defense grid. What would they do now? They’d come a long way, had made sacrifices and lost a lot of people. For what? Turning back barely a light-year from Earth? They couldn’t even afford to turn back, not with failing hydroponics crops, with tainted water supplies and crumbling infrastructure.
She left her officer of the watch in charge. Womack and she would need to find another vessel
to carry the bomb. They’d have to find a way.
But first, there was a person she wanted to see. Needed to see.
Chapter Two
Just as John was about to turn everything off except the cooker and return to his cabin for too few hours of sleep, a tremor rolled along the deck and sent pots and pans clanging against their anchors. Inside his largest stockpot, sixty liters worth of soup sloshed back and forth. Damn.
“Frankie, you madwoman,” John grumbled as he wiped liquid from the stainless-steel counter. He threaded another chain into the handles and secured the pot to the stove casing. There, even Frankie’s bad piloting wouldn’t budge that thing. They couldn’t afford to lose a single serving. Everything was precious on the Magellan.
“Starting with its captain,” he murmured then shook his head.
The feel of her fingers as they grazed his still sent shivers down his spine. He’d never dared touch her that way. In case she didn’t react. In case she did. Oh, he’d thought about touching her—more than touching on several sleepless nights—since day one. She was his type of woman. Strong, smart, independent and driven. A woman who didn’t need a man. Maybe he should rethink his type. He hadn’t wanted to ruin what they had, the friendship and trust that had developed over the years. What if he reached out one time, and let his affection, his true feelings, show? What if it soured their relationship, made everything awkward and tense? What if he lost her?
No way.
He wouldn’t gamble what they had. Even if it meant he had to watch from afar.
As John muscled the heavy cast-iron grid back over the cooker, a smell drowned even the aroma of simmering soup. He’d recognize that scent anywhere, anytime and under any circumstances. Jasmine and cucumber lotion. His belly cramped with need as he forced the mocking grin back on.
“You sure you don’t need glasses?” he threw over his shoulder. “That was one fine example on how not to pilot a ship.” He turned to wait for the repartee that’d surely follow. His grin died when he saw her standing in the embrasure, biting her thumbnail, dark eyes rimmed red and looking glassy.
“Sit.” He pointed to his stool bolted along the bulkhead. Sometimes he could even use it for five whole minutes during his shift.
Frankie did as he instructed. No argument. No debate. She just sank on the stool, leaned her head against the bulkhead and closed her eyes.
“It’s gone,” she breathed. “Everything. Everyone. All gone.”
“What is?” It slayed him to see her this way. “What’s gone?”
“The Ca Ong. I just watched it disintegrate. All those people… And the stealth cruiser. And I couldn’t do shit.”
Usually, this would be the point where pain would turn into anger. But the flare of temper never came. His heart hammering, John grabbed a crate of fresh produce he’d acquired from someone who owed him and brought it in front of her. He sat and took both her hands—so cold—in one of his. They seemed small in his palm. In fact, Frankie had never appeared so vulnerable, so badly shaken by events that were sadly all too common. They’d lost other ships. Although none of them carried a stealth cruiser destined to break—or at least bruise—the Imbers’ back.
“Look at me.” He searched her gaze. “Hey, look at me.”
A stubborn lift of her chin made him want to hug her. Kiss her, push her against the wall and tear all her clothes off.
“There’s nothing you could’ve done. I know you think otherwise, but you can’t keep a ship from blowing up just through sheer willpower.”
“John, three hundred people just died.”
“People die all the time, it’s how things work.”
Dark eyes flashed dangerously. Man, he was turned on. “What the hell’s wrong with you? People die all the time?”
“What, you hadn’t noticed? And people will keep dying even if we manage to somehow strike a lucky blow to the Imbers. Nothing will change that.”
“Yeah, just keep cheering me up, John. Man, you can be such an asshole.” She pulled her hands from his and ran them through her hair. It stuck up at odd angles. “We need another ship to get us close to that pipeline. Something with no signature heat, a thick hull and maneuverability. Got one like that?”
John sat up straight. Something had just occurred to him when Frankie said “thick hull”. Maybe it’d work. Or maybe he was desperate to have his old fiery friend back.
“What?” she asked, eyes narrowed.
“Come with me.” He took her hand and led her out of the galley and down the passageway, deserted at this time of the night. Those who slept would learn of the Ca Ong’s demise the next morning, and those on duty had probably decided to sit at their stations and reflect on the loss.
“Where are we going?”
John kept tugging her behind him as he rushed across the Magellan’s smallest cargo hold, where he received perishable commodities for the galley. Commodities that required a temperature-controlled vessel to ferry them from ship to station to faraway colony. Black and yellow placards enjoined workers to keep well away from the glacial bulkheads, where skin tended to stick and freeze in a matter of seconds.
“There.” He pointed at the closest porthole. He tapped his index finger against the quartz glass. “What do you think about this?”
Frankie leaned closer to the glass, squinted. “About what? There’s nothing there.”
“My reefer. It’s temperature-controlled, it has a thick hull and I can turn that thing on a coaster, sideways and edgewise.”
Frankie took another longer look into the porthole, which offered a view of a line of ships, some small, others smaller, docked along the Magellan’s interior quays. At the very end, moored on its retracted skids, his reefer ship resembled a giant wasp. Four attitude jets on either side and a pair fore and aft, as much torque as a tug and a bubble bridge that allowed a three-sixty view. That thing was older than he was, but it still pulled its weight and did its job.
From morose, Frankie’s expression turned doubtful then guardedly optimistic. He could see each emotion gradually giving way to the next. Like layers being peeled off. How her expressive eyes narrowed or her lips thinned as she evaluated the situation, dissecting it and looking at it from all angles. That sharp mind of hers gauging on the fly which option would work best or not at all. It’d been the first thing he noticed when he first met her. Most men had only been interested in her killer physique. Nice, sure. But physiques eventually went, whereas an incisive mind tended to last much longer. And hers was one of the sharpest he’d encountered. No argument was boring with her. He wondered if she also fought in bed.
John held his breath. If he reached out a hand, he could touch her back as she stood a few centimeters in front of him, looking out the porthole still. Her smell made him feel drunk. Such proximity to the woman who gave him a serious case of testosterone fever made him swallow repeatedly. Without meaning to, he raised his hand to touch her hair.
Don’t touch her, man. It’ll mean trouble.
Maybe just an accidental brush?
Fuck, O’Shaughnessy, keep it in your pants.
All that curly black hair that glistened like old-fashioned ink. His index finger lifted a ribbon. So soft. His heart jackhammered against his sternum hard enough to hurt. So beautiful.
Even if he was a civilian onboard the Magellan and free to change ships as often as he did shorts, he still would follow that woman to the end of the universe. He would do a lot for her. Usually a lover-not-fighter type, he’d even do violence for her. In fact, the only times he’d ever been involved in fights had been for Frankie. Years ago, one particular ex-flame of hers had aired a bit of dirty laundry in public and shared details of Frankie’s anatomy, to his buddies’ vociferous delight. Right in the galley. Maybe he thought John would laugh with the rest of them. He hadn’t laughed. But what he’d done was vault over the counter, grab the prick in a headlock and pound until he couldn’t feel his hand anymore. Good thing God had given him two. To this day, Frankie had no
idea why John had suddenly attacked her ex. No-good piece of shit who didn’t deserve such a lady and would never know what to do with all that woman. Asshole.
John inwardly cursed his timing again. Maybe he should’ve made his move right away, when they’d met during an argument in the galley of New Ankara Station. She’d looked magnificent as she restrained one of her crewmembers from jumping over the table and attacking someone from another ship. After helping to restore order, John had introduced himself as the cook, instead of just as some guy in the galley. Maybe he’d killed his chances right then and there. “Cook” must not have been first place on a lady’s sexy chart. Oh well.
“A reefer,” she breathed, nodding.
“It’s old but still good. I never would’ve thought about it if you hadn’t mentioned the hull. A refrigerated ship carrying produce isn’t your first thought when you think of attacking Imbers.”
When she turned sparkling eyes to him, John hurriedly dropped his hand. “You know, this just might work.”
“Glad to be of service.”
“Yeah, why this sudden interest in the mission, hmm? You couldn’t care less five minutes ago.”
“Maybe I’ve seen the light.” Or maybe I’m moronic enough to do anything to make you smile again.
“Right.”
She pressed her forehead against the porthole and sighed, which created a halo of condensation that irised out around her head. John’s world narrowed to a sliver that only Frankie occupied. He stood so close he could see the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise with the cold environment of the hold. Nothing moved except her shoulders when she breathed in deeply. No one else was up in this part of the ship. Just the two of them and space. The intimacy elated and scared him.
“I have a confession to make,” she murmured without turning around. She drew a sad face in the bit of condensation still whitening the porthole. “I’ve always been on your case for that insufferable grin. You know the one?”
John swallowed hard because he couldn’t say a damn word. Where was she going with this? Confess what?
“I like it on you. That mocking grin and the attitude that matches. You’re one of a kind, John O’Shaughnessy.” She repeated “one of a kind” under her breath.
Metal Reign: An Impulse Power Story Page 2