by Terry Mixon
The woman didn’t seem convinced, but she nodded. “I suppose his presence here isn’t really required. I don’t want to send anyone to search for him until we’ve flipped. Should we notify the bridge?”
Jared tensed. This was the kind of problem that might cause the woman occupying his chair on the bridge to abort the flip.
The man shook his head. “I don’t think we need to bother Jaleesa. I’ll just make a notification over the ship’s internal speakers in the area where Austin is working. It should only take a moment for him to step out and give us a call.”
Moments later, the man spoke again. “Austin. Aren’t you forgetting you need to be somewhere? Contact me at once.”
Jared knew the man’s voice was echoing throughout the area around computer central. The monitors they’d placed throughout the ship told him the transmission was localized to that area.
Meanwhile on the bridge, the woman the man had called Jaleesa was getting an update from her helm officer.
“Two minutes until we’re in the prime flip zone.”
“Understood,” she said. “Bring us to a halt as soon as we arrive.”
Two minutes was such a short amount of time. Jared knew that would drag along slow second by slow second.
The woman was stopping rather than just flipping. That might imply she was going to open communications with someone at the defensive perimeter. Or she might just be a stickler for the rules.
Ships were technically supposed to come to a halt inside a flip point. Traveling at any real speed exacerbated the stress of transiting the wormhole. In practice, experienced Fleet officers knew that only high speeds were a danger to a ship’s integrity.
In an extreme case—like the original Athena—going at very high speed could cause the ship’s spine to warp. He’d wrecked his original command by transiting the flip point at Erorsi at maximum military speed with the Pale Ones in hot pursuit.
That was not something he could risk repeating.
The man in engineering seemed to become more concerned as the silence from his compatriot dragged out. With thirty seconds left before the flip, he shook his head.
“Something’s wrong. I’d best notify Jaleesa.”
Time to pull the plug, Jared decided. He sent the order to trigger the antiboarding weapons in every compartment except for the maintenance tubes.
And nothing happened.
27
Sean was keyed up. The sand in the hourglass had run out and they were either going to flip or all hell was going to break loose.
He’d watched the Rebel Empire’s people in engineering react to the missing man with growing concern, but there wasn’t anything he could do to change the situation. Admiral Mertz had the keys to the antiboarding weapons and would use them when the time was right.
Which really seemed like right at this moment. The unnamed man in command of the engineering compartment was about to call the bridge with a missing man report. That would trigger all kinds of bad things.
“Get ready to deploy,” he ordered Commander Pence, Athena’s rightful chief engineer. “We move as soon as the admiral takes them out. I want positive control of the drives first. We flip on his order.”
“Aye, sir,” she said calmly. “My people are ready.”
He turned in the other direction and focused his attention on Major Adrian Scala, the senior marine on the destroyer. “We need to account for every single enemy as fast as we can. I don’t want anyone slipping through the cracks.”
“I’ve already briefed my people,” the large black man said. “We’re ready as soon as things go down.”
We’ve got a problem, Admiral Mertz said through Sean’s implants. My connection to the ship’s systems isn’t working. No antiboarding weapons. Take them out.
Shit.
On it.
“Major Scala, the admiral can’t control the ship’s internal weapons. Take the enemy out.”
He heard the marine officer’s command go out over the marine command net.
All marines, this is Damocles Actual. Execute Hotel. Execute! Execute! Execute!
Engineering had more than a few maintenance tubes attached to it. All of their hatches slid open more or less at the same time and the marines came flooding out, stunners already in play.
Scala was the first out of their tube, but Sean was on his heels, his stunner tracking on the enemy commander. His first shot took the dumbfounded man down with a blue flash.
He tried to take out the woman he’d pegged as the second in command, but she dove behind a console. Hell.
Internal alarms began blaring and the virtually impervious main engineering hatch slid closed. Too bad for them that Sean and his people were already among them.
“Disable the external coms before they start screaming for help,” he shouted, ducking as someone fired in his direction. The beam from the weapon shaded red, showing it was set in the lethal range. He hoped no one had been hit.
“That control run over there,” Pence said, pointing at a thick conduit on the wall. “We need to disable the transfer station beside it, too. Cover me.”
Scala instead pulled something from his belt and hurled it across the compartment at the transfer station. “Fire in the hole!”
Sean barely had time to clap his hands over his ears and turn away from the danger zone before the grenade went off. It wasn’t a plasma grenade, but it still sounded like the end of the world and half stunned him.
The transfer station was a smoking wreck and the conduit was on fire. New alarms began blaring, just in case anyone had missed the explosion.
“I’d have liked to have been able to use that again sometime soon,” Pence growled loudly. “The ship is just crossing into the flip point. What do we do?”
“Flip the ship,” Sean ordered. “Do it manually.”
“Shit.”
The engineer bolted across the compartment toward the nearest console. A red bolt took her in the back and she dropped, dead before she hit the deck.
Sean didn’t hesitate. He ducked lower and raced across his friend’s still twitching corpse. He dropped behind the console a moment before several red beams flashed through where he’d been a second before.
Raising his head high enough to see the controls was quite literally the most dangerous thing he’d ever done.
He was no engineer, but he was a command officer, so he knew what needed to be done. It took an interminable three heartbeats to bring the right screen up.
His command overrides disabled the control interlocks and he firmly pressed the button activating the flip drive.
His gut told him they’d transited the wormhole and the risk of the Rebel Empire crew warning anyone at El Capitan was over. That didn’t mean he and his people were any safer.
Scala dropped in beside him. “I see four holdouts. They’re behind the gravitic drive, so our options are limited.”
“I guess we have to do this the hard way,” Sean said, gripping his stunner tighter. “This is going to suck.”
“Welcome to the marines,” Scala said with a dark grin. “We’re always on the lookout for ways to make any given situation suck more.”
The two men came up at the same time as the rest of the marines and everyone charged the holdouts.
Kelsey was nearest the hatch when the call to attack came. Rather than do the smart thing and let the trained fighters lead the way, she came out of the maintenance tube at a run, sprinting for the computer center.
It had a hatch that could hold them off if the crew got a chance to close it. They could wreck the computer if they had time. She had to get there first.
She felt the world start to slow down around her and knew she’d somehow managed to trigger her pharmacology unit into dispensing Panther into her system.
Having a name for the drug and Doctor Stone’s detailed explanation of what it did to her made the experience far less terrifying this time. That was something she supposed.
Intellectually, she knew
the drug itself didn’t really make her much faster, but it felt as if she had all the time in the world to act. That only went so far, though.
Alarms blared from the overheads as she raced around the final corner and pushed herself as hard as she could toward the hatch that was already closing. It was going to be close. If she committed and was wrong, the massive hatch would kill her.
Kelsey bounced off the door frame and made it inside the computer center just as the hatch closed behind her.
Three men and a woman were at the consoles. All were drawing weapons with deceptive slowness.
The odds against her were dire, so Kelsey did the only thing she thought would make a difference. She ordered her Raider implants to eliminate the threats even though the idea of the cold computer controlling her body was her very worst nightmare.
Her implants threw her to the right while shooting the closest man with her stunner. A bolt of red missed her by centimeters as her body twisted. Someone was playing for keeps.
That changed the automated responses she knew. Oh God.
As soon as her body was stable, the powerful artificial muscles in her legs sent her completely over the console. Her left arm swung back and her fist smashed into the head of one of the remaining men with a sound like dropping a melon, killing him instantly.
Two down. Two to go.
The remaining man was out of reach, but the woman was right beside her. The combat computer in Kelsey’s head fired her stunner at the man even as her free hand clamped around the woman’s throat.
The sound of her hand crushing the woman’s windpipe and snapping her spine was far worse than when she’d killed the man.
Her implants released the dying woman and assessed the threats as contained. It released control of her body back to her. She hadn’t really believed it would.
Kelsey promptly threw up even as her body began to shake violently.
Scott Roche and the others were franticly calling over her implant com, but she couldn’t stop the blind terror that smothered her mind and froze her limbs.
That was exactly like being a Pale One and it brought back all the horror she’d suffered. Being a prisoner in one’s body but unable to do anything but scream as it killed.
Kelsey, open the door. Please let us help you.
It was Scott.
She retched again, but managed to crawl toward the hatch. With what felt like the last of her strength, she hit the manual controls.
The hatch slid open and marines rushed it, weapons up. Scott came in right behind them.
Her friend took one look at her, dropped to his knees, and took her into his arms as she started sobbing.
Not being privy to the enemy’s implant communications, Jared didn’t know exactly what had triggered the Rebel Empire commander to hit the alarms, but he didn’t let that slow him down.
At his order, marines blew the micro charges on the three concealed hatches along the periphery of the bridge and charged into the midst of their shocked foes. Blue stunner bolts took everyone down before they could do more than scream in shock.
Jared raced to his command console, dumped the unconscious woman out of his seat, and sat just as Athena flipped out of the El Capitan system. His implants were still locked out of the ship’s controls, but he had decades of experience working without them.
This side of the flip point was blissfully empty. He let out a sigh and waited for his team to get into their seats. The marines were securing the prisoners and were setting up a defensive position inside the main hatch in case of counterattack.
“Commander Hall,” Jared said. “As I recall, this system only has one other flip point. Set course for it at maximum military power.”
“Aye, sir,” she said, her hands dancing over the controls. “Maximum military power. All propulsion systems nominal. ETA fourteen hours, ten minutes. Shall I launch probes to verify the system is clear?”
“Do so. Let me know if you find anything interesting.”
Jared turned his attention to his ship. There was fighting in engineering. His people had the upper hand, though. Computer central was in loyal hands, though it looked as if Princess Kelsey had been hurt.
The balance of forces in engineering dictated his people would come out on top, though he saw people on the deck, either unconscious or dead. That meant he needed to focus on the rest of the ship.
Athena’s internal scanners located sixteen intruders scattered across the ship, mostly alone or in very small groups. None of them seemed to have a clue what was happening. He planned on keeping it that way.
“Lieutenant Laird, take a team and apprehend the intruders. Hit them in whatever order you see fit and coordinate with Major Scala. I want my ship back without anyone else being hurt or causing a ruckus.”
“Aye, sir,” the red-headed marine said as she gestured toward two-thirds of her people. “We’ll take care of them for you.”
By the time her team had departed the bridge, the fight in engineering was over. Jared called Sean over the ship’s internal com. The other officer appeared on his console a moment later.
“Status?”
“We have control of engineering, but not without some problems,” the other officer said tiredly. “These bastards went right to lethal weapons.
“Commander Pence and half a dozen others are dead. And we blew up the power transfer unit feeding the ship’s external com system. I hope you don’t need to talk to anyone for a while.”
The news about his lost personnel was a gut punch.
“Dammit,” Jared said bitterly. “Send Major Scala to assist the rest of the marines in rousting any other holdouts. Use lethal force if they show any sign of resistance.”
“No argument from me. I vote we space these bastards as soon as we get what we need from them. The indiscriminate use of lethal force is a violation of Imperial Law and Fleet regulations. Both Fleets.”
Jared shook his head. “As much as I’d love to let you handle that little detail, these people are intelligence sources. Important ones, I suspect.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t lock them down tight. Arm and leg restraints. Two marines each when they wake up. Very restricted movement and isolation from one another. No information about us at all.”
“Are we clear?” Meyer asked. “Did we escape El Capitan clean?”
“So far, but that could be because we surprised them by leaving so quickly. They might dispatch a ship to find out what made us so standoffish at any time. Get that com system back up in case we need it.”
“Will do. Do you want me to take the lead on questioning the prisoners? I really want to know why they were so trigger happy.”
Jared considered that for a moment before shaking his head. “Let Olivia take the lead. Have her make up whatever story she likes. She knows these kind of people far better than we do. Let’s use that familiarity.”
He really hoped she could get to the bottom of this without setting the prisoners off. If they triggered someone, they wouldn’t be able to undo the damage.
Whatever the reason, these people had started out shooting to kill. He needed to know why as soon as possible. Their lives might depend on it.
28
Elise rushed to Kelsey’s side as soon as Jared sounded the all clear. Doctor Stone had called for her as soon as she had the princess from another universe in the medical center, but the marines had flatly refused to let her out of the maintenance tube until the ship was cleared of intruders.
She passed one group of marines carrying the unconscious or dead bodies of some of those intruders on the way to the medical center, but didn’t stop to ask questions.
Commander Scott Roche was waiting for her outside the medical center.
“How is she?” Elise asked, a little short of breath.
“Bad, but nothing physical,” the Fleet officer said softly. “She used her combat mode function. Having her implants control her body was too much like being a Pale One and it hit her hard.”
&
nbsp; Elise felt herself blanch. Her people had dealt with the savage Pale Ones for five centuries. She knew far too well what the other princess had to be feeling.
“I’ll see if I can help.”
“Thank you.”
She strode into the medical center and found Kelsey sitting in a chair, wrapped in a blanket. Lily Stone was hovering, but remained a few steps away.
Elise rushed over and dropped to her knees beside the chair. She took Kelsey’s hand in hers. “I hear you had a little trouble at the computer center.”
The other woman’s damp, haunted eyes came up. “You could say that. I killed two people.”
“But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it? Not really.”
“I had to let my implants control my body. I had a panic attack when it was all over.”
“You did what you had to do,” Elise said soothingly. “Your people had already overwritten the corrupted code and we upgraded your implant hardware. No one will ever do that to you again. You were ultimately in control.”
The blonde woman wiped her wet eyes. “I understand that, intellectually, but I was one of those monsters for weeks. I have nightmares about spending the rest of my life like that and I couldn’t breathe when it was over.”
“Our Kelsey has nightmares, too. I realize she didn’t suffer the way you did, but it will get better. I’ve seen you do it before.”
Kelsey shook her head and stared at the bulkhead. “I can’t imagine how I ever get past this. Your Kelsey sounds like a hero from an old story. I’m not like that. I can barely stay sane.”
“You’re stronger than you think.”
The other woman’s eyes shot up, filled with sudden heat. “I am not her. You all insist I am, but she didn’t break like I did. She had all the good luck and I got the bad. I hate her.”
The bitterness in her friend’s voice was heartbreaking. Elise squeezed Kelsey’s hand tighter.
“My father once told me that you get through the tough times by focusing on small steps. One after the other, they will take you through the flames and to safety.”