by David Adams
“Twenty minutes,” I said, “we’ll be ready.”
I walked through the airlock welded to the front of Piggyback. Thick cracks ran along its length, a spiders web of damage, although it didn’t seem to be leaking any atmosphere. Still, the journey from the Broadsword to the Al’Farrak was spent staring at each of the long fractures, hoping that they would not pick this exact moment to give way.
It might have been magnetically attached to the inside of the Toralii ship’s hull, but I felt distinctly uneasy about said attachment. A few magnets between me and death. I knew if that happened everyone would have a field day with the dumb jokes. Magnet getting killed by magnets.
Hold tight, my ferrous bros, I silently implored the docking clamp.
When the improvised door closed behind us I felt a certain degree of relief. But then came the next stage of trusting our machine sensors. Everyone still had their helmets on.
“Who wants to go first?” I asked, grinning at all the spacesuited helmets in front of me.
“Sensors show that the gas is gone,” said Scott.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Nobody volunteered. “Fuck it,” I said, “here we go.” I reached up and unclipped my helmet, popping it off with a hiss. Air rushed in; the suits were set to standard pressure, rather than the higher one found on the Toralii ship.
I inhaled, breathing deep. If there were still trace elements of the nerve agent present in this atmosphere, I wanted to get a full lungful, so that death would be as swift as possible. Not that it mattered; nerve agents didn’t need to be inhaled to be effective.
And, of course, death bought on by nerve gas wouldn’t be pleasant in any event, be even if I was chugging it straight from the bottle.
The ship smelt of chlorine, of stale hospital air, and of some other scent I couldn’t identify. It was a cross between roast pork and spiced chicken.
“Smells nice,” I commented, taking in another lungful. “Did we gas these poor bastards during dinner?”
Scott removed her helmet. “I think so. Keller’s unit reported that there was a small fire in one of their rooms. Must have been a kitchen.”
One by one the Piggyback crew took off their helmets, although nobody took off Bobbitt’s, so he just lay there.
“Right,” I said, “let’s make our way to the bridge, establish control of Piggyback from there, and dock her remotely. Shaba, ready to fly an alien ship?”
She looked distinctly unhappy. “Remote’s imprecise. Why can’t I just go back and fly it properly?”
“If the airlock breaks up, Piggyback will decompress. Remote’s safer.”
“My girl would never break on me. Besides, I can just seal the cockpit—”
“And then you’d be stuck in there until we could cut you out. Don’t worry, when we get this ship out of here, the engineers will restore Piggyback to her rightful glory.”
“I fucking hope so.”
“First priority,” I said.
“Hey,” said Bobbitt, pointing up to the window on the improvised breaching door, “what’s that?”
He was laying on the floor so I couldn’t see what he was seeing. I bent over and twisted my neck.
A wall of metal floating just above us.
A white flash caused me to squint, a burst of energy that sliced the breaching airlock in half. A turret on the underside of the massive steel wall turned towards Piggyback and, with two easy shots, blew her to debris.
“GET TO THE BRIDGE!” I shouted, breaking into a clumsy run, the space suit weighing me down. “Scott, Ginger, take Bobbitt!”
Debris rained against the side of the ship, a sound like rain on a tin roof. Everyone ran with me, Scott pulling ahead of us. “This way!” she shouted touching her radio, “Keller, charge the ship’s weapons!”
“I don’t know how to!” The marine’s voice was faint, coming from the helmet under my arm. “Everything’s written in Toralii!”
We tore around a corner, then Scott lead us up a flight of stairs. With heavy metal shoes this proved to be a much more difficult task than I imagined.
The ship shook, lurching to one side. I crested the stairs, unbalanced, and tripped over a Toralii corpse, landing face first on the fuzzy, fur covered chest of another. Someone stomped on my back, almost knocking the wind out of me, but I fought my way up and staggered, gasping and sweaty, into the bridge area at the centre of the ship.
“Report!”
Everyone ran for a console. We knew the layout, it was part of the Major’s handout, but the marines of course had not been briefed on how to operate the ship. I took the Captain’s position on a raised dais at the centre of the room. The moment I stepped onto the platform, the holographic display above me lit up, showing the steel wall only metres away from our roof.
“There’s a Toralii ship out there!” said Mace, tapping on the weapons console furiously. “Bringing up the plasma cannons!”
Obviously there was a ship. “Hurry,” I said. “Faster would be better. Damage report?”
“Assessing now,” said Scott, “minimal hull damage. It looks like they just shot Piggyback, not us. They probably still think we’re friendlies.”
“How’s my ship?” asked Shaba. “How bad is it?”
“Piggyback’s debris,” I said. “They got her right in the reactor. I saw her blow.”
“Those mother fuckers!” The acid in her voice could have melted the deck below her feet. “Alevai eize kelev ya'anos et ima shelha ve otha gam, mi iten ve kol a haim shelha ye'afhu le ge'inom aley ad—”
“Focus!” I shouted over her. I could tell how upset she was by how much Hebrew she used. “Shaba, focus! Scott, what was that shake before?”
“A docking clamp,” said Scott. “They’re attempting to board us. The Toralii computer’s letting them aboard.”
“No thank you.” I could see it on the holographic display, a long thin tube reaching out to us. “Scott, close that airlock. Mace, arm plasma cannons, get ready to blow the docking clamp away. Shaba, power engines; we’re going to want to get the hell out of here real fast. Plot a course through the debris field and use it for cover.”
Although none of the crew had direct experience with Toralii hardware, Shaba had clearly studied the briefing. She touched each one of the keys with calm, measured precision, although I could sense the rage, the loss, bubbling inside her. I knew what she was doing. Her warrior side was putting Piggyback’s destruction out of her mind. It was one of the military’s unwritten rules.
Fight now. Grieve later.
The rest of the crew went to work with precision and dedication. Our stolen ship swung around without even a hint of inertia. Their technology was better than ours.
Mace turned to me. “Plasma cannons online.”
“Do the Toralii know we’ve got weapons on them?”
“They will in a moment,” said Scott. “The boarding party’s coming across. They’re going to start to wonder why the door’s closed.” Something flashed on Scott’s console. “They’re hailing us.”
“Well,” I said, “it’d be rude to not answer. Mace, fire everything we’ve got at the docking clamp. Shaba, punch it as soon as we’re clear.”
The ceiling of the commander’s station lit up as the ship obeyed our orders, showing us a holographic composite image composed from shots from various cameras. I saw our turrets swing towards the thick tube attached to our ship, bright flashes as superheated plasma severed it. Purple Toralii blood mixed with a white plume of oxygen and splattered all over the hull of our newly acquired prize.
“Shaba, go!”
Our ship descended and moved, pushing its way through the debris field. The hostile ship shrank in the large monitor, slowly becoming a tiny dot in the metal sea and eventually disappearing.
“Where are we headed?” It seemed odd for the commanding officer to ask such a question, but I put trust in Shaba’s judgement.
“Location Alpha. The planet that’s near this jump point.”
That seemed to be a logical place to go. It was the nearest body. We could use the planet’s mass as a shield, then swing around to the Lagrange point. But it was a long way away.
“Are they pursuing us?” I asked.
“No idea. We’re just as blind as they are. Safe to say they’re a little pissed, though.”
Our captured ship sailed on through the debris but we didn’t relax. I used this time to accustom myself further with the commander’s position. How to manipulate the ceiling overhead. How to relay information between terminals, and how to operate the various parts of the ship. It, much like everything the Toralii seemed to have, was as simple as could be. Even with my fairly poor Toralii each button seemed obvious in its function.
We could learn a lot from these fuzzy fuckers.
“Scott, how’s the cleanup going?”
She inhaled, pinching her nose and rubbing her eyes before speaking. “Good, Captain. The marines have piled the corpses into the airlock and we’re just waiting to make sure we get everything. Then we just need a good opportunity vent the airlock to space. ”
“What’s left to search?”
“Reactor room, storage lockers, cargo hold. It’ll take a few hours to search the cargo hold on its own, since there’s so much stuff in there.”
Nothing that would be likely to have crew in them. The idea of having the Toralii corpses sit in the airlock for hours didn’t sit well with me. “Well, there’s no time like the present. Let’s flush the corpses before they smell up the joint. We can do a second pass later.”
“Very good, Captain,” said Scott. She began to give the orders, talking to Keller and the others, and then Mace spoke.
“Mags? I’m getting some odd readings from the reactor core.”
Why did nothing ever go smoothly? “Odd?.”
He tapped a few keys on his console. Immediately the ceiling above, previously a blank starfield, was replaced with a sea of information. A schematic of the ship in three dimensions. A section was highlighted purple, flashing on and off.
“So?” I asked.
“See that purple bit? It’s an alarm.”
Humans used red as their alarm colour. Toralii blood was purple. The connection made sense.
“Okay,” I said, “so what am I looking at?”
“The reactor’s losing power. About 3% an hour. It’s been doing this for a while, before we even came aboard. Pretty soon the ship won’t be able to jump, then manoeuvre, then obviously we’ll start losing critical systems like life support.”
“Is there anything in the ship’s log about this problem?” I stopped myself. “Do the Toralii keep ship’s logs?”
“Often,” said Scott, “but transport ships are notoriously bad at maintaining them, and this is a relatively new problem.”
“Great,” I said, “we inherited a broken ship.”
“Technically,” said Mace, “we stole a broken ship.”
“Thank you for your contribution. Scott, how do we unfuck this fuckery?”
She shrugged helplessly. “The Kel-Voran gave us lots of good intel on operating the ship, but maintenance wasn’t something they covered in great detail. All they said was that the ships were tough, self reliant, and shouldn’t need much guidance. I imagine the constructs do the work.”
I hoped we had more aboard than the one Keller had slagged. It had been done on my authority after all. “Would your contacts know how to fix it?” I searched my mind of the name. “The Kel-Voran, the woman who we delivered the fucknugget to?”
“Possibly. The Kel-Voran do operate extensive shipyards and are much more familiar with Toralii technology than we are. Unfortunately, our jump drive is going to give out in less than one hour, and it’s going to take four at least to get to another jump point. Plus there’s the diplomatic problem of getting to talk to the Kel-Voran without getting blown to tiny little pieces; they might hold their fire if we sent a Broadsword, but well, we don’t have one anymore.”
I could feel, rather than see, Shaba trying to hate Scott to death.
“Well,” I said, “then I guess we’re going to try and fix it ourselves.” My legs ached from standing up all the time, but as the CO, this was my responsibility. “Let’s go take a look, shall we?”
Scott and I walked to the reactor. This ship was much larger than our Broadsword; it felt like home, like the Sydney. Comparatively wide corridors. Tall ceilings. As a taller than average man, this made me feel quite comfortable.
What a mission. I was warm and I wasn’t stooping. Apart from the loss of Piggyback, which affected Shaba more than it affected me, everything was going not entirely horrible.
Aside from the leaky reactor that might leave us stranded deep within Toralii territory.
And the faint smell of Toralii corpses mixed with alien cooking.
And any lingering nerve gas that might be slowly killing us.
And any other consequences “leaky reactor” might have, like radiation invisibly poisoning us.
Well, nobody had died yet. That was always a plus.
We arrived at the large reactor. It was sealed by a heavy door which was outlined in purple and green stripes.
“Did we bring radiation suits?”
“Our spacesuits are hardened against cosmic radiation, but I don’t know how well they’ll work in there. It might be enough. We had one that was extra shielded, in case we needed to work on Piggyback’s reactor, but that was aboard the ship.”
I grimaced. “Let’s not let Shaba know that.”
To my relief, Scott just nodded. “Okay.”
Through the door’s window I could see a set of Toralii-shaped spacesuits inside, thick and reinforced. I tried the door but it was locked.
“Mace?” I asked through the radio, “Can you open the outer reactor door?”
“I can’t let you do that, Dave.”
There was the faint sound of sniggering through the microphone. Scott gave me a dark look.
“Just open the door,” I said.
“Sure. Hold on a moment.”
Through the window I could see the inner door being opened. “Mace, that’s the inner door.”
“But I didn’t do anything yet!”
The inner door continued to open, and a helmet appeared, identical to the ones on the rack. I realised, at that moment, that one of the suits was missing.
“Back!” I said, pulling Scott away from the door. The marines, however, moved faster than I did; they readied their weapons as the inner door shut, and some unknown gas filled the tiny airlock, obscuring the inner window.
“Dammit,” she said, “the nerve agent wouldn’t have gotten through the reactor doors. How long has that guy been in there?”
“No idea.” I signalled for the marines to lower their weapons. “When he comes out, grab him.”
“What?” Scott stared at me. “Belay that, kill him.”
“He’s clearly working on the reactor. He might be able to fix it for us if we let him work.”
“Would you help a bunch of Toralii you found on your ship?”
It was a good point, but I felt that keeping whoever it was alive was for the best. “If we keep him alive, we can kill him later. If we kill him now we learn nothing.”
She considered and I knew I’d made a good point. She nodded to the marines. “Takedown, then. Use the Toralii strength handcuffs and feet bindings.”
The marines changed magazines on their grenade launches, loading dull orange ones. Then they waited.
The gas inside the airlock faded and the door opened. Immediately I could hear singing in the strange Toralii language, muffled by the helmet.
[“Once could fly,
But now I see,
The ground is beautiful,
And life down here is simpler.”]
That was a rough translation and it sounded better in Toralii. The occupant stepped out into the corridor.
The marines both fired, throwing rubber slugs into the suited Toralii. He fe
ll over in a heap, groaning. They shot again and again, eight rounds in total each, until their magazines were empty. They reloaded with blinding speed.
“Strip his suit,” said Scott, “we might need it later.” The two marines did, then they handcuffed him. They did the same to his feet, then used a third set of cuffs to restrain him to the wall.
“His claws, Major?”
“Use the clippers.”
They squeezed his paws, then snipped off the sharp ends of his claws, leaving blunt nubs.
“How long until he wakes up?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Scott regarded the prone Toralii. “They heal faster than humans and are more robust. Probably not long.”
“Well we’re going to need him up and awake, sooner rather than later. Maybe Smoke can wake him up.”
Scott touched her chin with her fingers, then reached for her radio. “Major Scott to Lieutenant Berkovic.”
“Smoke here.”
I grinned at his use of his callsign. Scott did not look amused.
“Lieutenant Berkovic, we have an unconscious Toralii outside the reactor room. Please come as soon as you are able.”
Minutes later Smoke arrived. Ginger was not with him; presumably he was tending to Bobbitt.
“Wow,” he said, “you’re not kidding.”
“Of course not.” Scott pointed at the prone Toralii, who groaned. “We need him awake.”
Smoke crouched beside him, examining the bruises and swelling with a critical eye. “Well, I didn’t exactly train on Toralii physiology, but I’ve read Doctor Saeed’s paper regarding Saara’s treatment. Apparently, for the most part, they’re just tougher than we are and will recover in time.” He opened his bag, fishing around inside. “A shot of Monday Morning should do the trick.”
“Monday Morning?” said Scott. “Some kind of advanced drug?”
Smoke’s smile said everything. “One third vitamin B12, one third caffeine and one third adrenaline. Comes in handy when you have pilots who come in still plastered after a 48 hour rec leave in Bali.”
“It feels so fucking weird,” I commented.
Scott said nothing, rolling her eyes and looking at the bulkhead.