Path to Europa

by Garion Swann

"Engineering this is the bridge, a stealth ship is attaching itself to the ship. Arm yourselves and find a way to alert the crew, is the Captain down there?" After a moment the response came.

  "No, he's not, we're arming ourselves. We can't get out, so I don't see how we're going to find a way to warn everyone." Tina said.

  "We're locked in up here too, work at it, let us know if anything changes, bridge out." Jenny sighed. She moved over to her station and felt around for the compartment where she kept her sidearm in, it was not part of the ship's armoury, this was hers. The weapon was custom built and designed perfectly for her. Everyone on the bridge found their way to the weapons locker by torchlight and armed themselves. It was very dangerous using projectiles on a spaceship but sometimes needs must. Military vessels carried mostly energy based weapons but they were too expensive for a trading ship. Most of the weapons also had some kind of stun setting as well, they could fire several pulses of electricity which would easily incapacitate someone who was not wearing the correct armour, it would also mean no damage to systems. Jenny had learnt that most invaders would wear suitable armour and would not be affected, so projectiles were needed.

  Grant retrieved a weapon and checked the power level, they were fully charged. He wondered if this was the most power any device had on the ship, whoever did this knew what to target with a power drain.

  Grant rechecked the weapons power and had a thought, he'd been thinking how to alert the crew and had figured that he could trigger the tags they wore for the crew monitoring system. He just needed enough power to send a surge, the stun weapons delivered a tremendous amount of power very quickly, and that may be enough.

  "Jenny," he shouted, he couldn't see here, just lots of torch beams.

  "Grant" she replied.

  "I have a way to alert the crew, but it would cut off communications with engineering."

  "Tell me" she replied.

  "I think I can rig the radio to send a message on a frequency these tags would pick up," he motioned to the tag on his wrist. They were small devices that showed basic information and could also display short messages.

  "Do it," Jenny said, although they would not be able to speak to engineering the crew would be able to have some kind of warning.

  After about ten minutes Grant aimed his weapon, making sure to set it to stun, to a conductor he had rigged, it connected to a long piece of wire that attached to the radio. He'd made it so when he pressed the transmit button the weapon would fire and hopefully send out a message.

  "Ready," he said. Jenny and the rest of the crew stood as far away as they could from the contraption. Jenny nodded, and Grant pressed transmit. He felt a surge a pain shoot through his body, he screamed as the electricity engulfed his body.

  Jenny watched as Grant's body dropped to the floor, the contraption he had made exploded into flames, some of the crew rushed over with the fire extinguishers and put out the fire. She felt her wrist buzz, looking down she saw a message flashing in red that said Arm yourself. She rushed over to Grant and checked his pulse, she could feel it, but it was weak. He had burns on his hand, and up his arm, she moved him into a better position and checked the radio. All that was left was a charred lump of metal and melted plastic.

  All the crew on the bridge had received the message, she hoped it had made to the rest of the crew.

  Alex has woken up to complete darkness, he felt his wrist buzzing, looking at it he saw the message saying arm yourself. He jumped up and raised the blinds to let the tiny amount of light from distant stars allow him the smallest amount of vision. He had a torch but had no idea where he left it. The ship was in crisis, and the Captain couldn't find his torch. He finally found it and turned it on, he shone it into the room and jumped when he saw a figure standing about three feet away from him. Recognising the figure immediately he readied for a fight but was charged, he felt a heavy blow on his head and soon everything was black.

  Tina had made sure all the engineering staff had weapons and also made sure they knew where not to fire them, one stray bullet could cost them the ship. She hoped that whoever boarded the ship also understood that they needed to be careful discharging a weapon in engineering. All her crew tags had alerted them to arm themselves, she was glad the bridge had found a way to tell people, it was one less thing she needed to worry about. Tina had a team working on the backup batteries, they were actually under the floor, when the Captain bought the ship he tasked Grey with making sure it had redundancies, this was one of them. It took up half the height of the lowest deck, which was why engineering was an odd height compared to other areas of the ship. The batteries could power ships life support for days if needed. They had been used and depleted once before when the ship was picked up by Lady Jean. She would need to connect them up to the life support at some point, but there was enough air to breathe for about twelve hours before the carbon dioxide became too much for the crew to handle. There were four batteries in total, and two would be needed for the jump start of the ship's engine, it gave them two attempts at restarting the core reaction. If the second attempt failed, they would lose the ability to keep life support running. The risky part of jump-starting the ship was that the reaction could get too powerful to quickly and cause an explosion, which if they were lucky would only destroy engineering, they were more likely to lose the whole ship.

  Another problem she had was she had no one to give her to order to jump-start the ship, communication had been lost with the bridge, and they were locked in, she also had no idea what was happening, for all she knew the whole ship had been boarded and the attackers would soon be in engineering. She had decided to herself that she would make an attempt if she had heard nothing in an hour, or whatever her best approximation of an hour was, without power she had no idea of how much time was passing. She will also make an attempt if she believes someone was trying to get into engineering.

  "Hey," she heard her favourite voice say, "how're you holding up?" Erin asked her.

  "I wish Grey were here, I'm sure he would have solved the problem within minutes," she replied holding back tears. Erin hugged her and kissed her forehead,

  "We're getting through this, you agreed to marry me and this damn ship is not going to stop us," Erin said. Tina smiled and embraced Erin.

  "Why are you so awesome?" Before Erin had a chance to respond there was a loud bang, it came from the door.

  "Positions everyone," Tina shouted. The engineering crew ran to the door and went through the plan they had agreed, they laid down there torches facing the door and on the brightest setting. The idea was to blind the enemy so they couldn't see into engineering and stop them opening fire if they were hostile, Tina made sure people knew only the fire once they confirmed they were dangerous, as if they just opened fire they could injure some of the Michelangelo crew. Tina and Erin were in place to attempt to jump-start the ship.

  "Is this really a good idea?" Tina asked, "If we turn the power back on we remove our advantage, they won't be blinded, and they are most likely a lot better with a weapon than anyone on the engineering staff is.

  "You've got a point, but you need to decide now," Erin said as the sound of cutting came from the door. Clearly, they had tried to destroy the door and failed, so they were cutting their way through.

  "We need to give the rest of the crew light, we'll have to hold our own." She replied. Erin nodded, and they got to work, another bang made them jump, and the door to engineering was gone, the torches were far enough away to not be affected so their light wall, as it had been called, was still in place. Tina saw movement, and black-clad figures started to move in, looking for targets through the bright lights, they had weapons and Tina was sure they were not crew members.

  "Open fire!" She shouted. The engineering crew, with their sidearms, shot at and took down the first few figures, the others retreated to the safety of the corridor dragging their fallen comrades out with them, Tina was not sure if they were dead or not.

  "We need to do it now, they
're gonna get around that light wall, we need to call for help if anyone is still alive out there,"

  Tina and Erin picked up a large cable each and connected them to the batteries underneath the floor, Erin moved away as Tina went through the final preparations. She pulled a lever which would allow the power from the batteries into the core, it should heat up the core enough to start a reaction, but not too much to cause an explosion.

  Tina looked through the small window which allowed her to see the core, it was starting to glow. After a few seconds systems began to power up, and light returned to engineering, immediately she started a system-wide message that said engineering was under attacked she had just about managed to click send when everything went dark again, the core's glow got dimmer the ship once again become lifeless.

  "What happened?" Erin asked.

  "I have no idea," Tina replied, that seemed to be the only response she gave to that question at the moment.

  "Batteries one and two are completely dead," Erin said after seeing that the readouts on the batteries themselves were no longer illuminated.

  "Fuck." Was all Tina could say.

  Jenny had managed to get a quick look at the cameras when the ship's power had returned, she confirmed that there were intruders on board, but they were not at the bridge yet. She'd also received a message to say engineering was under attack, the engineers were not soldiers they would not last long in a fight. She sighed, she was useless, they were stuck on the bridge. Without the power to release to door locks she there was nothing she could do. She thought for a moment, the ships had powered up, although briefly, she moved to the door and checked the emergency release, it seemed to have powered up.

  "Mark, you have the bridge, keep it sealed," she said, as she pulled the emergency release. The door opened, and she got out before Mark could reply.

  Jenny knew this ship exceptionally well, she had spent years on it, making sure she knew every bulkhead and that meant she could make her way around it in the dark. Being in the pitch black was strange as your brain tries to show you what it thinks is there if you moved your hand in front of your face in the pitch black, your mind would process that and make you see something, it was kind of like a hallucination. Jenny had spent a considerable amount of her career sneaking around ships going after targets, some of those had been in the dark. She had the advantage, she knew the ship, the attackers would be using torches, so she would see them long before they saw her. Jenny had made sure to attach the silencer to her weapon before leaving the bridge, as she was expecting to take down a few, if not more of the attackers. Her first job was to find out who was attacking them, and for that, she needed to find someone on their own. She had silently dropped down into deck three using the maintenance shafts and moved along the corridor, she saw a flashes of light up ahead, that was moving closer, she backed away to hide around a corner, she peaked the corner and confirmed to herself there were two people heading her way, both carrying a torch each. They got to within 10 meters, and stopped,

  "Hey man, I need a piss, when we cleared this deck I'm sure I saw a toilet around here somewhere," one said to another.

  "Alright, I'll watch your back," the other said.

  "Ah! Here it is," the first said, shining his torch on a door. He entered the door and left his comrade outside, this was Jenny's chance, she moved slowly toward him, her weapon drawn, if she made any sound she would alert him, Jenny got so close that she could hear him breathing, she could also here to sound of the first pissing. Jenny grabbed the man, throwing him to floor quickly, her knee went into his back, and her hand covered his mouth to surpass any noise. She whispered into his ear.

  "Who do you work for." The man stayed silent.

  "You scream you die, you don't say anything, you experience excruciating pain then you will die. who do you work for?" The man was breathing quickly, clearly scared, Jenny pressed her knee harder into his back. She heard him trying to stay something and released her hand slightly.

  "Lady Jean," the man said wincing in pain.

  "Thank you, one hundred and twenty-four," she said, she quickly aimed and fired a round into his skull. The door to the bathroom quickly opened, and the first man was frozen with fear when he saw Jenny getting off his dead comrade. Jenny quickly raised her weapon and shot the man in the eye. She caught him falling and lowered him down quietly,

  "One hundred and twenty-five." She said quietly.

  She pulled both bodies into the bathroom, turned their torches off and took one of the radios. She moved down the corridor and found some quarters that were empty, she went in and closed the door as quietly as possible, she turned the radio on to the lowest volume and listened in.

  Alex felt another punch land on his face, this guy had a mean right hook. He was pretty sure he'd lost at least two teeth.

  "Betrayal is one of the worse things you can do to someone," The man said, punching Alex again. Alex had never been in this much pain in his life, his hands were tied behind him, and his feet tied to the chair in his quarters, which was bolted to the floor so he couldn't move.

  "I assume you're working for Lady Jean?" Alex said weakly,

  "So the subject is aware of his transgression, he asks who I am working for, I tell him I work for the truth." The man said.

  "You work for a criminal, how's that truth?" Alex responded,

  "I do not decide how the truth is presented, I only seek it when it wishes to be found. There is a truth in you which must be found."

  "What drugs are you on?" Alex asked,

  "I punish another transgression!" The man said, he lifted his leg and swung a snap kick into the side of Alex's head, the man was wearing some heavy boots.

  Alex was dazed and started drifting in and out of consciousness, he heard the door open, but couldn't focus on it to see who had entered. He heard voices but couldn't understand, he recognised one of the voices, it was so familiar, but he couldn't work out who it was, the world went black again,

  Jenny had been listening to the chatter in the radio for a few minutes, she had figured out that they had the Captain and were interrogating him, they didn't want to move on engineering due to the risk of explosion, that was at least a good sign. Jenny decided that was the next place she should go, she needed to see how many people were on board. It would not be long before the two missing intruders would be noticed, so she needed to move quickly. Leaving the room she had been hiding in and turning off the radio she walked silently down the corridor towards to aft of the ship, the maintenance shaft would lead her to engineering, and she was sure she could also get a good look at how many people were outside engineering. She climbed down the ladder to deck two and followed a crawl space for a few minutes until she came across a grate she could look through. From here she could see the entrance to engineering and six people waiting outside, they didn't look like they were readying to move straight away, so that gave her a little bit of time. Moving further down the crawl space she put too much pressure on the grate with her foot to move off, and the grate fell open, her leg dangling from the ceiling, the group of six intruders immediately turned and started shouting, they opened fire. Jenny moved quickly pulling her foot up and crawling as fast as she could to get out of the line of fire she just needed to crawl past the next bulkhead, and she'd be safe. Bullets were flying through the shaft, some narrowly missing her, she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder and thought it must be from the crawling, it was very tough to crawl at speed. Jenny was relieved when she crossed the bulkhead and knew the bullets could no longer get to her. The group was still shouting, they would be very vigilant now, she suddenly had a lot less flexibility in where she could go. Jenny tried to move towards the grate that would drop her into engineering but winced in pain, she checked her shoulder and saw the wound where a bullet had entered. It was nothing major, but it hurt like hell, she'd had much worse before. Jenny silently vowed to kill whoever had shot her but she'd have no idea who that was, she'd just have to kill them all. Moving in a way to avoi
d aggravating the shoulder she made her way to the grate that overlooked engineering, it was a long drop equivalent of one and a half decks, dropping would quickly put her out the fight, and that wasn't an option. If her shoulder were okay, she would have just held onto the ledge lowered herself down and dropped she could break the fall with a roll so it would be unlikely to cause any damage. Her injury though would make that extremely difficult, she sighed and looked through the grate, she could see the torches all pointing at the hole where the door once was and a few other lights moving around engineering, they'd set up a reasonable defence, she was impressed.

  Fed up of wasting time Jenny opening the grate she shouted,

  "It's Jenny! Don't shoot." Several engineers were pointing their sidearms at her. "I need a soft landing I'm hit," she said quieter as people came nearer.

  "The fire blanket," an engineer said, while half remained to keep an eye on the door the other defenders plus Tina and Erin retrieved the large fire blanket which would be used to put out fires on large equipment. They stood in a circle and held the blanket tight, Jenny dropped onto the blanket back first, they'd managed to stop her hitting the floor which was a relief.

  "Nice of you to drop by," Tina said helping her up from the floor. They both smiled at the pun.

  "How're we doing down here?" She asked as Erin came to attend her wound.

  "They've tried to get in once, I'm sure they'll try again, we heard some shooting a moment ago, I guess that was at you?"

  "Yeah, the bastards managed to get me, only the seventeenth time I've been shot though." She replied, "I've killed two of there's, but they have the Captain, I'm not sure where though. I think they're going to focus on engineering once they've swept the ship, then they'll go for the bridge. We don't have much time, keep them out as long as you can, but if the risk to the ship or crew becomes too much surrender, that's an order. There were six of them outside when they saw me but no doubt there will be more soon."