Aden lunged forward, hoping to scoot through the final shelf, but the suit’s power reserves were overloaded and shutting down. He managed to slam into the ground near the exit from the room, but electricity still cracked and arced above his legs and into them. He was beginning to sweat from the heat his suit was building up.
Aden dug his hands into the rock and pulled himself up, using raw human strength and determination to pull the heavy suit out of the lethal trap. The alarms in his helmet continued to grow worse and worse until everything flashed and went dark inside the helmet.
All Aden could hear was the sound of his frantic breathing. He struggled to move, muscling the suit inch by inch up the hallway. Turning over was near impossible, but he had to reach the manual release to get out of the suit. He tilted back and forth, trying to roll the suit while a film grew on the inside of his view plate. Sweat dripped from his brow, running across the transparent viewport.
He finally twisted enough to wedge his hand beneath his chest and hold himself up. He looked around but could only see the hallway’s walls and floor flickering with the light from the traps behind him. He cursed and struggled. He had to find a way to stop the trap from frying his friends. Except he didn’t know how; only Fluvulis did. But Fluvulis had run ahead.
“Fluvulis!” he shouted. The sound, his sound, was too close. Too raw. With his suit dead, he couldn’t hear and he couldn’t speak.
“Starbirth!” he cursed. He tried to punch the ground but the armor was dead and was too heavy to lift without any leverage.
A light began to blink through the haze on his viewport. A few moments later, it turned into a line of words. Aden squinted and then jammed his face forward to wipe the condensation off the helmet. The movement squashed his throat but he had to see. He lifted his head back and gasped in a ragged breath through a burning throat.
“Rebooting from firmware…”
“Fuck yeah!” Aden growled.
The inside of the helmet lit up as system after system came online. A prompt appeared, requesting him to personalize and calibrate the armor. Aden growled and said, “Use defaults…or something. Generic. I don’t know, just turn the fuck on!”
“Initializing defaults,” the display read.
Aden grunted and felt the suit’s environmental controls kick online and then the skeletal assist. The ground rumbled beneath him as he climbed to his feet and staggered forward while the heavy armor continued to run diagnostics and come fully online.
Aden thundered down the passage. He ran at a slow gait but with the mass of the heavy armor it was the best he could do. A list of damaged systems began to appear on his display, alerting him to several failing systems. His comms were down; his targeting was down. His life support was running at fifty percent and his power cells were shot, giving him only a quarter of the juice he needed to perform optimally.
He looked past the damage report and saw that the door to the air lock was open. Somehow Fluvulis had managed to escape. Aden grunted and went after him, bursting through the opening just as he saw a brilliant flash from the air lock. He blinked to help his eyes recover and saw Fluvulis pulling his tentacle and the crystal back inside his suit. The sealed doors above him were glowing though, and the glow was spreading. The Kesari’s suit sealed itself shut and all six legs spread out. Talons on the edges of the pads fired into the rock, securing him.
Aden looked back up at the glowing rock doors. “Oh shit,” he whispered. He threw himself forward, arms reaching to grab one of Fluvulis’s legs. That or anything—it didn’t matter at that point.
The heavy double doors burst upwards, exploding out in the vacuum of space. Air rushed past the flying Terran and carried him with it. He bounced off the Kesari and smashed into the far wall of the air lock before being pinned up against the remains of one rock door. His suit’s external speakers dampened the howl of rushing air to protect his ears in the first few seconds, but then they didn’t need to anymore. The air was gone. He remained pinned against the top of the air lock, confusing him until he realized the gravity was gone too.
Aden shifted and looked over. Fluvulis released his talons and used them to walk up and out of the gaping pit to the surface of the asteroid. Aden grunted and struggled, pushing some rocks and debris out of the way before he had to twist and yank his feet free from where they had been wedged in a corner. The action caused him to float across the asteroid and bounce off the ground.
He flailed his arms and legs, twisting in mid-flight, and collided with the far wall of the air lock. He moved slower this time, taking care to not generate too much inertia as he repositioned himself. He jumped off the wall—slowly—and floated to the stairs.
Grunting and gasping, he caught them and managed to hold on while his suit twisted up and over. Once he was sure he wasn’t floating away into space, he adjusted and used his hands to climb up the stairs to the surface of the asteroid. He grabbed for the handle to the now broken doors and held himself steady while turning slowly and peering across the landscape of the rock.
“This is bad,” he mumbled when he saw the rock that had been on top of the shuttle float away into space, free once again from gravity. The shuttle followed, but instead of floating, the thrusters were turning it and guiding it to escape the asteroid belt and leave Aden and the others, if the others were still alive, stranded.
Chapter 11
Janna focused on her hair, twisting the tendrils around each other and then moving on to another section while the first relaxed and slipped free. It kept her from looking over the shoulders of Twyf or Kessoc. The lack of communications was enough to drive her crazy.
It was stupid. Her sister should have never agreed to that stipulation. They were under contract now; there was nothing she could do about it until the job was over. Stupid or not, the headstrong woman was always trying to prove herself. Competition was the Vagnosian way. Meshelle took it to a new level. To an art form.
And Janna found a way to one-up her every chance she got. Why didn’t her older sister just accept that Janna was better? That’s why she’d been given the position of captain of the Uma. What more did Meshelle need to prove that she should accept their roles? Accept that Janna was better than she was?
“Captain! I’ve got a contact!” Twyf reported. “One thirty by twenty-five degrees, relative.”
“How did they get around us?” Janna wondered out loud. Her eyes widened. “Is that the other contact?”
“They’re firing!” Twyf responded. “Scans show mass drivers.”
“Evade!” Janna snapped. She leapt out of her chair and moved to the weapons console. “Bring us around for a firing solution!”
“Janna, I’m getting a size on that thing—it’s bigger than us. Looks like it’s almost corvette size. Lots of weapons and it can cloak.”
“Who has a ship like that?” Kessoc asked.
“Their projectiles are tracking us,” Twyf said, her voice rising in panic.
“What? Mass drivers don’t—starbirth!” Janna cursed and focused on the console. Her hands flew over the controls and brought up a three-dimensional view of the enemy ship. She stared at it and scowled. “Kessoc, take us into the asteroids.”
“Captain? That belt is thick—we’re going to get torn apart in there.”
“Do it! We’ve got seventeen seconds,” she snapped. She held down the intra-ship speaker system and added, “And strap yourselves in.”
“Strap—why?” Twyf asked as she reached for the restraints.
Janna focused on the console before she answered. She felt her stomach rise with her feet a few button pushes later, answering for her.
“You turned off the gravity?” Twyf cried.
Janna pulled herself down and slipped her feet under the console and pressed them against the sides of it so she could hold herself steady. “I reversed the gravity to help push the rocks away. It should help against whatever they’re firing at us too.”
“Better get your helmet on, Captain,�
� Kessoc suggested.
Janna snapped her head around to stare at her helmet. It was floating above her chair, out of reach. She looked back at her console and replaced the holographic image of the enemy ship with the Uma. Bright flashes appeared and streaked towards it, only to veer aside a moment later. Some disappeared in a flash as they struck the hole and shattered or bounced off. Each strike coincided with a pinging noise that echoed through the ship.
“Captain, shields?” Kessoc asked.
Janna cursed and hit a series of buttons that caused metal shields to slide over the windows of the bridge and bow lounge. Smaller portholes around the ship were covered as well. She glanced at a display and winced. She activated the ship’s PA system and announced, “Prepare for impact! Three, two, one…”
All three members of the bridge crew cringed and grabbed onto their stations. Two more seconds passed before the sharper sound of metal striking metal echoed through the ship. The impact wasn’t a single clang but several smaller ones.
Janna swiped her hand across her console and studied it. “The first missile ran into some rocks and never reached us! The second got us, but I’m not sure what it was.”
“Sounded like a flechette round striking armor,” Kessoc offered.
“Who uses flechettes against ships?” Janna asked.
“Guided,” Kessoc added. “Flechettes aren’t guided.”
“So what was it?” Janna snapped.
Kessoc grunted and worked his controls for a moment. When he’d dodged a large rock floating in the Uma’s path, he said, “I don’t know. We’ll have to investigate. Any breaches?”
“No,” Janna said. “And they don’t seem to be coming after us.”
“Captain, I’m getting another spotty contact,” Twyf said. She tapped her controls to bring active scans against it. “It’s our shuttle!”
“They’re flying into an ambush!” Kessoc growled. “The Kesari warned of this.”
Janna’s hair rose up, betraying her anxiety. “Change course! Go after the shuttle!”
“We’ve got no comms,” Twyf reminded her.
“I know,” Janna snapped. She slammed her hand on the PA again. “Chuck, can you bypass the communication locks?”
Precious seconds passed before the Argossian responded, “Couple of hours. The client didn’t think it would be a good idea to share the encryption keys with me.”
Janna’s hair rose higher. She returned her attention to the console and fumbled through the controls. “One time I need Meshelle,” she mumbled. Her older sister had more experience running the weapons and was a better shot. The one thing Janna conceded to her. A few thousand years ago, that might have counted for more in the never-ending contest between the sisters. Ever since the Kesari visited Vagnos and introduced their people to decent technology and space travel, putting food on the table wasn’t as difficult or important a task.
She cycled through the weapons on the Uma and selected the pulse laser. It had the most flash and would be the easiest to see. “I’m going to fire a few warning shots to get their attention,” she warned.
Twyf gasped. “Don’t hit them!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll aim,” the captain muttered.
“At them or away from them?” Kessoc asked.
Janna ignored them and pushed the reticle across the display until she tapped the firing button. A stream of a dozen bursts that traveled near the speed of light flashed through space. Two asteroids were struck, superheating the rocks and causing them to shatter as frozen ice trapped in the rocks boiled and evaporated.
The shuttle dodged and, after a few moments, it moved to put larger rocks between it and the Uma.
“What are they doing?” Janna wondered.
“There’s a tunnel through the asteroids,” Twyf said. She brought up a 3D display at her station and rotated it so they could see the layout of the asteroids. “The same route they took coming into the belt.”
“They have to know it’s us,” Janna muttered.
“You just shot at them,” Kessoc said. “Maybe Meshelle thinks you’ve finally decided to beat her one last time.”
Janna stiffened. Her sister was her sister; they would stick together through the best and the worst. “That’s enough!”
“Captain, they’re about to leave the asteroids,” Twyf warned.
Janna’s hair tendrils were as close to sticking straight out as they’d ever been. “Get us out there. We’ll have to buy them time.”
“We can’t make it,” Kessoc snarled. “The rocks will tear us apart if I go that fast.”
“Do it!”
“Weapons fire!” Twyf announced.
Janna gasped and turned to her console. She looked back and forth over the displays and then back up at the Tassarian. “Confirm? I don’t see anything headed towards them.”
“I track one object. It’s a missile,” Twyf said after double-checking her sensors.
Janna went back to her station and grunted. “I’ve got it. Tracking…it’s not on a trajectory for the shuttle. It’s coming towards us.”
“In the rocks?” Kessoc asked. He laughed. “Good luck!”
“Get us out of here,” Janna snapped. “We have to stop them!”
Kessoc snarled and shook his head. He adjusted the ship’s heading and bared his teeth.
“Evade on the way out; it’s tracking us,” Janna demanded.
“This is insane,” Kessoc said.
“If you can’t do it, get out of the seat!”
“I’m doing it,” he hissed back at her. “But I’m saying we’re fools for doing it.”
“Noted. Now fly!”
Kessoc snorted and then winced as a louder clang echoed through the ship. Janna checked her display and then shook her head. “No breach,” she said. “The missile isn’t adjusting course as fast as we are; probability of a miss has increased to seventy percent. Must be all the rocks are interfering with the guidance system.”
“They’re interfering with my guidance too!”
Janna jerked as a clang of a rock striking the roof of the bridge drove the message home. She returned her focus to her display and watched as the missile entered the asteroid field. It lasted less than three seconds before it was skewed off course. Two seconds later, it exploded. Janna’s eyes widened as her tactical sensors measured the explosion and reported it on the screen. She slapped the PA and shouted, “Take cover—multiple inbound!”
Her words were still echoing when the first of the displaced asteroids hammered against the hull. The strikes kept coming and the Uma twisted, rocking them against their restraints. Kessoc struggled to roll the ship and guide it away from the cloud of debris. “What was that?” he growled.
Red lights flashed and alarms sounded. Janna cursed and slammed her hand into the console, securing breached areas of the ship.
“Captain!” Twyf shouted and then let out a loud grunt.
Janna turned and lashed her arm out, catching the helmet that the Tassarian had thrown. She pulled it over her head, forcing her tendrils down, and secured it before kicking away from the console to grab the Tassarian. Twyf had launched herself across the bridge to grab Janna’s helmet.
“Twyf! You stupid fish, what are you doing?” Janna growled as she pulled the Tassarian away from where she’d hit the bulkhead above them. “Get back to your station!”
“Sorry, Captain, I—”
Metal groaned and pinged above them. A red warning light burst as the roof bulged in. The metal skin held but the Uma was rocked hard enough to send both woman crashing into the wall and then the floor. Twyf cried out but Janna grabbed her ankle with one hand and a bar with the other. Twyf slammed back into the ground and scrambled to grab the base of the captain’s chair.
“If you two aren’t dead, it would be nice to know what’s going on!” Kessoc snapped.
“Go!” Janna grunted and gave Twyf a push. She pushed herself towards the security console. She studied it before announcing, “We’re through th
e shockwave. Turn us around—”
“Captain, the enemy ship is heading away. The shuttle’s been abandoned.”
“Scuttled?”
“I don’t think so. It’s still got power but there’s a lot of hull damage.”
“What about my si—the crew?”
“Hang on, let me check back,” Twyf said. She waited a few moments and then spoke up. “Okay, I’ve got one body. I missed the event so I can only do so much but…none of the transponders on the suit match ours.”
“The Kesari?”
“That’s my guess.”
Janna reverted to her language to swear loudly. “Where are they?”
“No readings from the shuttle.”
Janna’s hair struggled against the confines of the helmet. “What’s left, the asteroid?”
“I’ve got the coordinates,” Kessoc said.
Janna nodded. “Let’s go then.”
“We’re beat up pretty bad.”
“So go slow,” Janna said.
Chapter 12
Aden’s reflexes kicked in and made him duck when he saw the brief flash of light and fire in the distance. Was that the shuttle? Had it hit a rock and exploded? Tiny motes of dust and slivers of rock struck the asteroid around him and pinged off the armor of his suit. His display flashed a warning inside his helmet.
“Uh oh,” he muttered and started to turn back towards the blown open alien base. He saw someone at the inner lock door. An arm thrust out and was followed by the large helmet that accommodated Garf’s head and horns, followed by the rest of his suit. The armor was scratched and dented, but still intact.
A large piece of rock sailed past Aden so fast he caught no more than a glimpse of it. He followed it and saw it strike the lip of the hole in the ground and shatter into dozens of smaller fragments. The rain of asteroids was getting worse.
Into the Dark (Dark Universe Book 1) Page 6