“I doubt they’ll learn anything earth-shattering from watching CSPAN broadcasts,” he said wryly.
“One can always hope, Sir,” she said stoutly.
“There is that,” he agreed. He thought he knew where Admiral Montagne was located, although the stupidity of it almost defied human belief. But what he did not yet know, was precisely how he was supposed to get all the way from the hyper-limit to the Dungeon Ship, break the Admiral out—without getting him killed, assuming McCruise was no long in control of her ship—and then escape back to the hyper-limit with the majority of his forces still intact.
So since he did not yet have a handle on the big picture, he was stuck staring at the screen and worrying about the Officer he had sent to get herself positioned in close to the belly of the beast. Why aren’t you answering, Captain McCruise, he wondered once again. Is it that you can’t because you are constrained somehow? Or that you won’t…if so, why not?
He kept staring at the screen, hoping against hope that something would break their way. It had to; they had already been spinning their wheels for a week, lying doggo, waiting for their chance. Something was going to break their way…he just knew it.
Because it had to.
Chapter 34: Arriving on the Dungeon Ship
The shuttle set down within a landing bay on the dungeon ship and its three passengers quickly stepped down and off the exit ramp.
“It’s been swell,” the lead petty officer of the shuttle said down to them, his face twisting up into a grimace of a smile before slapping the controls that caused the ramp to start closing back up, “now have a good life.”
Seeing the shuttle start to rock back and forth as it hovered up off the floor, the trio quickly headed for the large cargo door leading further into the ship.
Cycling the hatch open they stepped out into the ship proper. “Why did no one meet us in the cargo bay,” Mike wondered aloud.
Hierophant stiffened. “Because it’s a trap,” he growled snatching out a length of pipe he had found on the shuttle and pushed through his belt to hold it, “we’ve been lied to.”
Steiner pulled out her round, suppressive field sphere, and quickly clicked it on and a hazy distortion started to appear around them. “Maybe we can confuse their internal sensors long enough to get further into the ship and hide,” she said hurriedly.
“Oh Murphy,” gasped Mike.
“Hold it together, Mike,” she snapped, “we can’t lose our nerve now!”
“It’s not that, Lisa,” Mike said, pointing a shaking finger down the corridor to their right.
There was the sound of multiple weapons cycling up. “You should listen to your friend,” said a harsh female voice from off to their right. From their left came the sound of weapons cycling up a charge.
“We’re surrounded,” Heirophant muttered.
“Blast,” Lisa said gulping as her eyes sought out and found at least a half a dozen crew on either side of them.
“If they all fire at once, there’s a great risk they’ll hit shot through us and hit each other,” Heirophant said urgently in a low voice, “they have no armor, so they’ll be hesitant to shoot without picking their targets first. We have a chance if we rush them now.”
“Don’t even think about it, Tracto man,” the harsh female voice said even as Heirophant started to tense.
“There’s too many of them, Heirophant Bogart,” Lisa said using his full name to emphasis her point, “if we fight, we lose, so let’s try talking first. Please,” she finished, looking into his eyes with a desperate plea.
“Listen to your friend and stand down, Lancer,” said the harsh voice, causing Heirophant’s muscles to bulge.
After one last pleading look, Lisa turned in the direction of the voice. Her eyes landing on the hatchet-faced woman in a simple crewmember’s uniform, and she placed a steadying hand on the Tracto-an.
“Let’s talk, Ma’am,” Lisa said, trying to suppress the tremor in her voice.
“First put down your weapons, or we’ll blast you to the Demon’s Pit first, and sort you stowaways out later,” the crewwoman said sternly.
“We’re not stowaways,” Lisa said indignantly, her back stiffening with outrage.
“Yeah right sweet cheeks; why don’t you try telling another,” the woman scoffed, and the men around her started laughing. The men on the other side of the corridor started chuckling.
Lisa just pressed her lips together and glared.
“If you want me to hear you out then have your man put down his weapon and start talking,” barked the woman, causing the laughter to cut off mid chuckle.
“Hierophant,” Lisa said giving the former Lancer’s arm a squeeze.
The Lancer glared at the armed crew on either side of them, and then threw his bar against the nearby joint between the wall and the floor in disgust.
“I see at least one of your party has the intelligence the space gods gave a space rat,” said the harsh-voiced woman.
“Can I have your name, crewwoman? I don’t like talking to nameless persons holding weapons on me,” Lisa said stiffly, trying to ignore the way her lower lip was trembling.
“Oh I think you’ll be doing a few things you don’t like before this day is over,” the woman scoffed, “but you can call me Synthia, for my sins.”
“Well Synthia, it’s good to meet you,” Lisa, said not knowing the proper way to address someone holding a gun on you when you weren’t fighting back. She just prayed she wasn’t about to be tortured again. If it looked like things were going down that way, she would let Heirophant have his head and give in and just follow him in some kind of blind charge of the doomed and thick headed. Anything was better than facing that again.
“Can you believe the cheek on this one, boys,” the woman called Synthia said in a mocking tone all the while shaking her head. Then her voice hardened, “You can tell us what you’re doing here, or you can be added to the prisoners in our cells, and that’s a fact you can take to the bank, girl.”
Lisa paused and then tried a weak smile, “Would you believe it if I said we were smugglers?” she asked.
“With an answer like that, I’m more likely to start believing you’re nothing but a trio of penny ante pirates,” Synthia started to scowl.
Jerking as if stung, Lisa’s mouth tightened and then her shoulders slumped, “This is a rescue attempt. We’re here to save the Admiral,” she said, the admission feeling as if it was wrung from her. It was almost a relief to finally declare themselves to the world, and her shoulders squared almost unconsciously. Filled with a feeling of acceptance start to settle on her, Lisa tried to meet the older woman’s gaze measure for measure.
The crewwoman’s face tightened, “Well now,” Synthia mused, “isn’t that just the daintiest dish you’ve set before me?”
Steiner blinked, “Come again?” she asked in confusion.
“Not up on your historical references?” the hatchet-faced woman asked with a rhetorical air about her, “I thought you royals would have been all over teaching that sort of thing in primer school.”
The little com-tech mouth turned down at the dig. “I just wondered at you seeming to refer to yourself as some kind of Queen,” she said tightly.
The other woman shot her a penetrating look, and started to lift her weapon but something in her searching gaze made her scowl, and she lowered the blaster pistol. The middle-aged woman had just started to open her mouth when she was interrupted.
Out of the corner of her eye Lisa saw Mike’s head turn and then his jaw drop open. “Jimmy LeFlair, is that you?!” he exclaimed breaking into the conversation without warning.
One of the men on the other side of the corridor from the woman and her group stirred in response. “I don’t know you,” the man called out sharply.
“You’re one of the men who transferred over to the Dungeon Ship prior to our first time leaving Easy Haven,” Mike said, pointing an accusing finger at him.
“Anyone could have known
that just by looking me up in a database,” the man, Jimmy LeFlair, said with a thunderous scowl.
“Your mate Timothy still owes me five credits for debugging his data-slate!” Mike continued, his voice rising slightly and the words quickening as he tried to make his case.
“Tim’s no mate of mine, lad,” Jimmy said sharply.
“I saw you eating food with him in the mess,” Mike retorted.
“That bugger’s a card cheat and a liar; he’s no mate of mine, man,” Jimmy said hotly.
“This Timothy, is he on this ship?” Synthia demanded, cutting through the burgeoning conversation like a vibro blade through fresh meat.
Jimmy scowled at Mike before looking over at the older woman respectfully, “The blighter works down in Enviro,” he said, bracing to attention as he reported.
The older woman blinked, “T. Sullivan is this Timothy that he claims to know him?”
The crewman gave a nod.
“Then let’s get him on the holo- and we can sort these blighters out in nothing flat,” the crewwoman, who seemed to be in charge of both groups ordered, her voice taking on the whip crack of command.
In just a moment, the group had pulled out a com-link and tapped in a link-code.
Turning the com-link now in her hand so that the pickup was facing the trio from the Lucky Clover, Synthia spoke loudly to be caught in the microphone pick up, “The man to the left claims you owe him money. Five credits to be exact,” she said evenly, before turning the link back so she alone could see the screen.
“That’s a lie!” exclaimed the tiny voice on the pickup and Lisa felt as if her heart had plummeted down into her boots, “we settled up when I gave him speaker attachment, Ma’am!”
Looking suddenly furious, Mike leveled a finger at the com-link, “You promised me a 3000 series ‘Boom Box’ attachment, but when I checked the registry the speaker you gave me was only a 2890! You’re lucky I only demanded five extra credits to pay for the licensing upgrade on the new software I needed,” he finished with a scowl.
The hatchet-faced woman clicked off the link. “I guess this means we can take your identity at face value,” she said, eyeing the newcomers with renewed interest, before sliding a glace over at Jimmy.
“That man’s a cheat and I got nothing to do with him, Captain,” Jimmy grumbled.
“Captain?!” Lisa jumped doing a double take. Taking a second look at the middle aged woman, she realized that with a crew hat on her head and the utility uniform on the Captain of the ship, Synthia McCruise was in fact the woman they had been speaking with all along. Without her Confederation uniform and stiff, professional bearing, Lisa had completely missed it. “I’m sorry for not recognizing you right away, Sir,” she said, still kicking herself.
“It seems the cat’s out of the bag; I should have known better than to involve the lower deck at this juncture,” McCruise muttered, and then twirled her finger in the air in a hard savage motion. “Mr. Wilks, please escort our new guests to an appropriate accommodation,” she said, turning away.
“Wait,” Lisa said desperately, then gave the Caprian crewmen and women now moving in on them a desperate look, “we’re all on the same side here!”
Looking weary the Captain turned back to her, “Go along with my crewmen, and I promise nothing will happen to you as long as I’m in command of this ship,” she said with an official looking nod.
“But what about the Admiral, we came here to rescue him,” Lisa said urgently, “he needs our help.”
“The Admiral needs more than a trio of would be rescuers to save him,” the Captain said coldly, “I’ve got a ship and an entire crew at my beck and call, and that’s still not enough. However, if we reach a point where your help is required I personally assure you that it will be called upon.”
“But he’s set to be executed,” Lisa cried, “we saw it on the news feed!”
“Mr. Wilks,” McCruise said sharply and the crew’s faces stiffened. The crewmen and women started moving forward again.
“Confine them to quarters until or unless I call for them,” the Captain said with authority laden in her voice, “the last thing we need are a bunch of holo-vid heroes running around and setting off the Provosts—until we’re ready to deal with them, and the remaining Imperial prisoners.”
“If we’re ever ready to deal with them,” one of the crew muttered as he came up and tried to grab Heirophant with one arm and apply a pair of restraints with another.
With a roar, Heirophant threw him against the wall and grabbed for another man’s weapon.
“He’s loose,” cried a crewman right before he was thrown up against the wall.
Seeing a blaster weapon being brought around to be pointed at the Tracto-an’s head, Lisa jumped over the crewman’s arm and drug it down with both hands.
The Captain leveled a stunner and in three precise shots, Lisa and Mike lay twitching on the floor, while Heirophant only staggered. It took another two shots, the application of a pipe to the head and two broken arms amongst the crew, to finally put the Tracto-an down.
“It seems their reputation for toughness is well earned,” McCruise finally said, standing over the top of the three fallen companions.
Unable to do anything but watch, her muscles no longer under her control, Steiner lay twitching on the floor.
“You’ll be kept in isolation, for now,” said the Captain, staring down at her coldly before bending over and retrieving the anti-surveillance device.
“The Admiral,” Lisa choked.
Captain McCruise hesitated. “You’ll be called upon when the time is right,” she said and then stood up. Turning on her heel, the Captain began striding away, “Get them out of here before the Chief Provost starts to get suspicious and comes looking.”
Chapter 35: Knee Deep In It
“Sir, the hyper drive was never intended to be hooked up like this; it’ll explode!” Brence sounded just about ready to cycle off the bulkhead.
“Now, just settle down, bucky-me-boy-o. It’s all going according to plan,” Spalding said, bestowing a benign, and hopefully calming, look upon his wayward space hand. Why he went and made Brence a team leader escaped even Spalding every now and then. But at least he had managed to stay off the sauce with that no good, thievin’ Castwell in his grave.
Out chasing liquor in the middle of combat like an addict desperate for his next fix! Why, the Clover was well rid of- Spalding pulled himself up short, reminding himself for perhaps the hundredth time today that this was not his Lucky Clover; this was a broken down, ill-maintained, piratical version of a half-way decent (if petite, compared to a real lady, like the Clover) Hydra.
“You can’t directly connect the lines between these systems, Chief; it’ll burn them all out in nothing flat,” Brence argued urgently.
“Come now, lad,” Spalding chided sternly, “It’s not like the grav-system and the hyper-drive are entirely unconnected. Why, if it were, we might all go splat when we come out of hyperspace; it’s been known to happen, you know,” he warned, surveying the very large trunk lines filling the service corridors of this poorly lit contraption they called a Hydra Class Medium Cruiser.
“They monitor each other; there’s not a direct connection! And even I know better than to hook them both directly to the Shield Generators,” Brence cried.
“Now, now, just because everyone went and jumped off a bridge, saying it was safe as sin, does that mean you’d just cave in to peer pressure and jump as well, Brence me boy?” Spalding asked with a frown.
Brence did a double take. “What I’m trying to say, Sir, is that we shouldn’t be jumping at all! This looks dangerous,” he insisted, his face scrunched up into an expression more appropriate to a field mouse than an Engineer.
“She’ll be right, don’t worry that thick little head of yours,” he soothed and then turned to Parkiny.
The Chief Engineer checked one last time to make sure his particular connection was solid, and whirled his hand in the air.
>
“Let her rip!” he barked.
“Sure thing, Chief!” shouted Parkiny, tapping away on his console for several seconds, before getting up and running over to a large lever on the side of the fusion generator.
Behind him, Spalding could hear Brence muttering nervously under his breath. “Sweet Murphy, in whom we trust, turn not your gaze away from fellow Engineers still on this Earth, but instead shelter us within your grace from the monkey in the works, from the fly in the ointment, from—” was all the further Brence got in that particularly dire catechism.
Parkiny reached up and pulled with all his might on the lever. The red-knobbed arm clicked down into place, and for half a second, nothing happened. Then there was flash, and several nearby panels exploded, followed by absolute darkness as the ship’s lighting went out.
Spalding stared into the pitch blackness for a brief moment, before activating his right eye. After more fumbling than was proper—even with buggy equipment like his new eye—he switched to the frequency he wanted. Quickly scanning the pitiable space that passed for Main Engineering on the ship (it was nothing near as good as the Clover’s) a look on the infra-red frequency revealed all was not as well as one might have hoped.
“Shut it off,” he hollered, waving his hands in the air, forgetting for a moment that no one could see him.
“It is off, Sir. The whole ship’s shut down,” Brence said, looking blindly in his direction with a com-link held against his ear. Then he pulled out a data slate, and activated the basic illumination properties, causing a faint glow to radiate from its screen. As if a switch had been hit, similar glows appeared all around Main Engineering.
“No, no, no; it’s still going!” Spalding yelled, starting toward the fusion reactors.
“I tell you, everything’s shut down. We’re lucky just to be alive!” Brence called after him.
“If it’s all shut down then why are the—” his stride hitched, and with his new droid legs that meant he lurched into the wall with punishing force, as it suddenly struck him what was wrong, “the computer regulator for the Fusion Core’s is shut down, and the manual cutoffs must not be working! We’ve got to perform an emergency shutdown, or they’re going to blow!” he cried, coming to a sudden stop, crouching down and then with his nifty new droid legs, shot a good ten feet into the air, where he caught hold of the nearby catwalk.
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