by Adam Quinn
“There aren’t too many,” Saifan said, “especially now that they forced a couple dozen of us to sacrifice ourselves in their terror attacks. It takes quite a while for them to enslave each new Firestormer.”
“Good to know,” Marissa said. “I’m moving out with the cargo; mostly light arms and stealth equipment… they want us to bring it in ourselves.”
“That’s good,” Saifan said. “They’ll lead you to the armory, which is not too far from the fire control center… or the shield generator, actually.”
“Which is my priority?”
“Fire control center,” Taylor said. “Shields are problematic, but if that carrier turns its military-grade missile tubes on the Spirit’s civilian-grade shields… we’re going to have a very bad morning.”
“You know, destroying the fire control center won’t destroy the ship’s weapons,” Hezekiah said. “A decent engineer could circumvent the fire control center and fire them from the bridge, albeit less effectively.”
“We only need their weapons offline for a short time,” Taylor said. “Go for the fire control center, Marissa.”
“Wilco,” Marissa said.
“What?” Taylor asked.
“Sorry,” Marissa said. “Harrison’s Earthpunk voice procedure. That means I heard you and ‘will comply.’”
Taylor smiled, remembering the MRSIS director’s exasperation at being linked to that movement—and its predominantly teenage members. “Harrison wouldn’t like you putting it that way.”
“I don’t give a flip what that pave-scraper thinks anymore.” The venom in Marissa’s tone made Taylor confident that “pave-scraper” was a pejorative—another MRSIS-ism? Marissa continued before she could ask. “All right, we have a guide. A human worker… and we’re moving toward the back of the hangar…. There is a cargo lift here, he says… we should not ride it. They’ll take it from here.”
Taylor looked to Saifan.
“Not good,” he said. “You’ll have to slip away from the group. This could take longer, especially if you have to avoid detection along the way.”
“Twelve minutes left,” Hezekiah said.
“Can I take the cargo lift?” Marissa asked. “Is it safe for humans?”
“I don’t know,” Saifan said.
“Most of them have different settings for different kinds of cargo,” Hezekiah said.
“Hey!” Marissa sounded like she was yelling now, though her ceiver dialed back the volume to compensate. “Those are some delicate weapons there—be careful!”
After a pause, she continued, “Yeah, well, your boss isn’t going to be happy if the projectile stabilizers are off because you shook ‘em up in a high-speed elevator, and we’re sure not buying you replacements!”
Her voice returned to a mutter. “I don’t know if there are even any projectile weapons in this shipment, but I don’t think he does either.”
Taylor smiled. “Doubt it.”
“Okay, he’s messing with the controls… I’m edging toward the elevator… waiting for—I’m in.”
A metallic clang came over the transceiver.
“Okay,” Marissa said. “Wait, oh fl—”
Clunk! Whoosh! D-thunk, d-thunk, d-thunk! Sssh!
“Garflands,” Marissa hissed. Taylor recognized that expletive, though she felt sorry for the rather cute Ferosian canines whose name had been appropriated in so coarse a manner.
A male voice in the background faintly said, “What in the—”
The crack of two sear gun bolts cut him off.
“All right.” Marissa grunted as if trying to move something heavy. “Sending this elevator on a quest to visit every deck on the ship… and I am officially on the run. Any advice?”
“Nine minutes,” Hezekiah said.
“Any advice?”
“See any signs?” Saifan asked.
“Armory is to my right.”
“Then you go left,” Saifan said. “You should reach a… four-way intersection.”
The sound of a single pair of boots pounding against metal came through the transceiver.
“I’m there,” Marissa said.
“Turn right,” Saifan said. “The hallway will begin to curve leftward, and you will pass by the main door to the fire control center, but I want you to take the side door, so keep going until you’ve gone about 135 degrees.”
More running—thankfully still only one set of footsteps.
“Found it,” Marissa said. “Someone’s shoe is in the door.”
“Good,” Saifan said. “The fire control center is restricted-access, but they always prop that door open.”
“That’s one of your ‘few and far between’ memories?” Taylor asked.
“I found it very unusual and irresponsible, so I remembered it,” Saifan said, “but that’s not important. Marissa, the fire control center is split into four quadrants, with an Alliance officer operating a workstation in each quadrant. I don’t remember where in the room the guards are stationed, but I think there are three or four of them, so you’ll want to be—”
A door slid open, and three clean sear gun bolts were fired.
“Definitely three,” Marissa said.
Saifan blinked. “You got them?”
“Hello, ladies and gentlemen. If you value your lives, you will step away from the controls.” Marissa dropped her voice back down to a mutter. “How do I take this place permanently offline?”
Saifan glanced up at Taylor. Taylor looked at Hezekiah.
“Based on my vast technical experience,” Hezekiah said, “I’ve found that computer systems tend to stop working when you shoot at them.”
“Excellent point.” A volley of sear gun fire followed Marissa’s words.
“Also, we have six minutes left,” Hezekiah said.
“More than enough—” Marissa was cut off by roaring, whooshing sound that Taylor recognized all too well—the sound of a Firestormer’s heat stream arcing through the air.
“Marissa?” Taylor said.
Marissa grunted. Two cracks sounded—sear gun bolts—then another whoosh.
“Come on,” Marissa muttered. “Come and get me. I know you’re—”
Crack! A choking, gurgling noise came over the transceiver, and for a second Taylor thought Marissa had been hit, but then the rogue MRSIS agent spat a derisive, “Pave-scraper.”
“Are you injured?” Hezekiah asked.
“I’m fine,” Marissa said. “What’s my next target?”
“Shield generator,” Taylor said. “Saifan, you said that was nearby?”
“Yes,” Saifan said. “Head back to the elevator shaft—and quickly. Reinforcements could turn up any minute.”
A door slid open; boots slapped metal; sear guns fired.
“I think they just did.” Marissa grunted. Thunk! Somebody in the background cried out in pain.
“Three minutes,” Hezekiah said.
“You need to get to the shield generator,” Saifan said.
“A little busy here.” Battle noises streamed out of the transceiver. Marissa’s voice did not sound pained, but if the volume of the struggle was any indicator, more Alliance forces were arriving.
Taylor’s armored hand crushed her almost-empty Space Feet bottle. Marissa needed their help, but until she managed to disable the shield generator, there was nothing they could do—Brook’s plan to use drones as kinetic weapons against the Frankenstein’s flip drive was smart, but the Spirit could exhaust its entire drone reserve before penetrating the Frankenstein’s military-grade shields.
Which meant that, when the Kindred Spirit flipped in, and the Alliance realized Marissa was not acting on her own, there would be nothing to stop them from flipping away, foiling the entire plan and ensuring that Marissa would eventually be captured or killed.
In less than three minutes.
“Someone call the captain!” Taylor jumped up, dropping her Space Feet. “Scratch that—get out of my way!”
Taylor telekinetically shove
d the boarding party to either side of the hallway and flicked on her SX-7’s thrusters, rocketing past them and out into the center of the barrel. The uneven gravity shifted her insides unpleasantly, but that did not stop her from swooping across the space, ignoring stunned onlookers, to land unsteadily in the regularly-oriented back part of the ship. A pair of IES officers were about to board a personnel elevator, but Taylor pushed them out of the way and stole the elevator car, punching the icon for the bridge and then the button to close the door. The car zipped across the ship, its hoverlifters keeping it stable even as it twisted and turned across decks, until its doors opened onto the bridge.
Brook and JP turned around as Taylor stumbled out of the elevator in her full SX-7 suit. “Captain, we need to stop the—”
The abstract membranes of the seventh dimension were replaced by a whole lot of stars, Trascion itself in the distance, and the fully-shielded Frankenstein directly in front of them.
Brook glanced at Taylor but turned back to her officers. “Launch the drones.”
The viewport that dominated the front of the bridge switched to a view of three white spheres soaring out of one of the Kindred Spirit’s hangar bays.
Taylor opened her mouth to tell her to wait, but the drones had already completed their journey across the short span between the Spirit and the Frankenstein… and vaporized themselves against the latter’s shields in a trio of tiny flashes of light.
The look Captain Brook gave Taylor this time was longer—and wryer. “Shall we tell them that was a warning shot?”
“No.” Taylor’s eyes were focused on the Frankenstein, waiting for it to activate its dual-spun flip drive and disappear, carrying Marissa away and obliterating their carefully-laid plan.
It didn’t.
Instead, the massive vessel’s main thrusters flared to life, propelling it away from the Kindred Spirit. A giddy tide of hope rushed through Taylor. What if Marissa’s destruction of the fire control center had somehow damaged their flip drive? They could still pull this off—sure, it could have gone better, but as far as she knew, Marissa was still in there fighting. Surely, after singlehandedly taking down the fire control center, she could make her way a few meters down the hall to the shield generator and disable it as well, letting Taylor’s team storm the ship—so long as the Kindred Spirit was in position.
“Follow that ship!” Taylor said.
The bridge officers glanced at Brook.
“You heard Ghatzi,” she said. “Thrusters to full. Operations, let’s get another couple drones ready.”
“Captain, the Frankenstein is fleeing toward Trascion,” JP said, “which is currently defended by a Kaleknarian fleet.”
“We’ll stop them long before they get there,” Taylor said. They had to. The alternatives—flying their Meltian ship into a political flashpoint or giving up on stopping the Alliance—were unacceptable.
Hezekiah and Saifan stepped onto the bridge.
“What’s going on?” Saifan’s hostile gaze swept the bridge as if its occupants were the ones between him and the Frankenstein.
“Everything’s fine.” Taylor saw that Hezekiah was still holding the boxy transceiver. “Marissa, what’s your status?”
“I’m out of the fire control center.” Marissa’s voice was breathy, and her words were punctuated by sporadic bursts of heat streams and sear gun bolts. “I’m trying to circumvent them, but they’ve got probably half a dozen Firestormers after me.”
Half a dozen? Taylor, Fanu, and Joseph together had barely held their ground against nine Firestormers. If those six engaged Marissa alone… “We’re following the Frankenstein. Just get the shields down, and we’ll be there!”
“Working on—” The whoosh of a heat stream was followed by a pain-filled grunt from Marissa. “Working on it.”
“Captain!” an IES officer said. “The Kaleknarian fleet is attempting to open a communications channel with us.”
“Ignore them,” Taylor said. To accept the communications channel would be to acknowledge that they were interfering in the crisis surrounding Trascion, but they weren’t. Taylor had to believe that. Marissa could not be more than a few seconds away from the shield generator.
“Ghatzi.” Brook sounded concerned—a tone Taylor had never heard from her before. “I know I helped come up with this plan, but occasionally there comes a time when it’s better to cut your lo—”
“We’re in targeting range of the Kaleknarian fleet!” Fear edged the officer’s voice—enough, apparently, to make him cut off his own captain.
Taylor was about to reply when a grating, excruciating noise came over Hezekiah’s MRSIS transceiver. It was such a vulgar, aggressive sound that it immediately seized Taylor’s mind and hurled her back into her dream of the howling transceiver. Instinct propelled her hand outward to telekinetically crush the transceiver, silencing its cry.
Only half a second after the device was destroyed did Taylor realize the noise coming over the transceiver was not the howl from her dream—it was the output of a Sonic Suppression Device, a cruel weapon developed by the old Galactic Government that incapacitated humanoids using sound waves. Which meant that Marissa was currently writhing in pain on the floor of the Frankenstein.
For half a second, Taylor wondered why the Alliance had waited so long to use such a potent weapon. Then the Frankenstein kindly answered her question by flipping away, leaving nothing but empty space between the Kindred Spirit and the oncoming Kaleknarian fleet.
“Cut thrusters and divert power to shields!” Brook said.
An opening barrage of sear gun cannon fire raked across the Kindred Spirit’s hull.
Hezekiah moved to the front of the room, looking over the shoulder of one of the bridge officers. “How long to warm up our flip drive again?”
“A few minutes,” the officer said.
A cluster of Kaleknarian missiles exploded against the Spirit’s shields.
“We don’t have that,” Brook said. “Go back to full thrust; head into the Trascionese atmosphere. We’ll see if we can lose them near the surface.”
The Kaleknarian fleet was closing quickly on them, its ridged and spined cruisers looking deadly and yet elegant in a primal way that Meltia’s advanced but utilitarian warships could never match. The sensor readouts Taylor could see showed volley after volley of Kaleknarian missiles closing in on the Spirit. How had this gone so far downhill so fast?
“Shields offline!” an Archavian officer said. “Another hit and we go down!”
“Not again!” Brook said.
Taylor threw an incredulous look at her. “Does this happen to you often?”
“You have no idea how much paperwork it takes to procure a new starship,” Brook said.
Boom!
With the Spirit in Trascion’s atmosphere and its shields down, the next impact reverberated throughout the ship, throwing Saifan into Taylor. The knee of her SX-7 struck the floor with a metallic clang.
“Damage?” Brook asked.
“Serious hull breach—launch bay five is—”
A trio of explosions rocked the ship.
“—make that multiple hull breaches. They’ve hit our flip drive, and we’ve got a spike in EDR.”
Brook said, “Somehow I don’t think radiation is going to—”
The bridge of the Kindred Spirit dropped away, leaving Taylor in the middle of a forest of string. That was the best way she could think to describe it, though the word “forest” did little justice to the surreal scene. There were thousands—maybe millions—of luminescent strings all around her, descending from a canopy far above to a collection of perhaps a dozen knotted trunk-like structures arranged around her. These “trees” had no roots of any kind—they appeared to be suspended from the canopy by the multitude of strings that composed them.
One of the surreal trees shifted toward Taylor.
She moved toward it.
Taylor was overcome by a wave of incense, and suddenly found herself standing on the
beach from her dreams. She stood there for barely a second before pitching over backward.
The Spirit’s bridge formed the background behind Hezekiah’s concerned face. “Taylor!”
He extended his hand, and Taylor took it, allowing him to help her back to her feet, though her SX-7’s mechanized muscles were more than sufficient for the task.
The forest of string flashed again before her eyes as she rose. Taylor was relieved to find she could shove it away.
“Are you okay?” Hezekiah asked. “What happened?”
A traumatic brain injury? Some kind of disorder triggered by radiation? Taylor knew that young, healthy women did not have vibrant hallucinations for any good reason, but she also knew that this was not a good time to get to the bottom of that.
Taylor stumbled toward the Spirit’s viewport. “What’s our status?”
The fringes of a Trascionese city were spread out below them.
“Five thousand meters,” a human officer said.
Taylor moved to that officer’s control console, which displayed a schematic of the Kindred Spirit that was smothered by warning indicators. At least she had not felt any more Kaleknarian missiles slam into the ship in the past few seconds; they must have been content to let gravity finish the Spirit—a move Taylor hoped she could make them regret. “What do we have left?”
“A few aux thrusters.”
Taylor could see the officer was trying to pull all they could get out of those thrusters—but she could also see an indicator of the ship’s velocity and altitude, and neither was getting any better. Taylor visualized the shape of the Kindred Spirit. “Turn us on our side and open all the hangar bay doors.”
The officer complied, using the remaining auxiliary thrusters to stabilize the ship in that high-drag orientation. Air roared outside, and the bridge began to shake as the Trascionese atmosphere encountered the broad sides of the Spirit rather than its nose.
“We have heat buildup across the hull!” someone said.
The volume of the roar increased, but the Spirit’s velocity ticked downward.
“Okay, let’s tilt a little forward—we want to come down at an angle—you see that street?” Taylor pointed at an apparently deserted boulevard. “That’s our target. Easy—”