The tunnel around him shook violently and knocked him off balance. He slammed into the wall, the crystalline rock cold and damp against his sweaty skin. Just ahead, he saw the flickering lights of the secondary dock. Reserve power at the location was intermittent, but he was able to spot three small, battered, old buses. Personal transport vehicles for mine workers. These vehicles would have few refinements other than a cramped passenger area and a functional drive system, but the drive system was all Boyd needed—that and an airtight hull.
All three of the buses were dark. Boyd hoped he could get power into one. He popped open the boarding ramp of the closest. It slid down noisily, scraping over the mechanism and jamming just before opening to its full extent.
Inside the boarding ramp to his left was the small passenger area with seats and luggage compartments for thirty passengers. To his right was the small, single-man flight deck, simply a seat and a set of flight controls. Boyd leaned over the pilot chair and hit the main power button. Slowly, the console lights blinked into life. The display was dull in a sure sign that it had not had a maintenance run for some time, that power was dirty and low. Boyd hoped he had enough power to get the drive running and enough to get off this crumbling rock.
Boyd looked out of the viewscreen in front of the console and saw a huge crack flicker across the rock. The dock was sealed not with the power of a deflection field but with a composite door, like the outer hatch of a ship’s landing bay. The rock around the composite door was cracking, grit and dust falling to the floor. Boyd checked the console for a way to access the main exit, but there were no obvious controls.
A sound, not far off but rising, called for Boyd’s attention even as he tried to get the bus ready for flight. The noise came from a crowd of people running down the access tunnel to the small dock. Boyd saw them enter, and their eyes light up when they saw the open boarding ramp. Boyd sent the bus to automatic prep and then stepped onto the ramp, his rifle and its remaining rounds leveled at the onrushing crowd.
“I have room for thirty,” Boyd shouted. “Two other buses here. We can get ninety out. Can anyone fly one of these?”
Several hands shot up in the crowd. Someone took charge and began directing people. The crowd was chattering nervously, moving hurriedly but carefully toward the open buses. Boyd did a quick head count, his eyes sweeping over the crowd. There would be enough space for them all, as long as more people didn’t show up. If too many people came here, some would be left behind. Boyd hoped he could move fast and avoid having to decide who would board a bus and live, and who would be left behind.
“We need to get that door open.” Boyd shouted.
“I can deal with that,” a trooper said, stepping out of the crowd. He swung a backpack off his shoulder. “I’ve got enough pulse rifle power packs in here to put a hole in a Union cruiser.”
“Set them against the door and ready them to blow,” Boyd said. “Set time to overload, but give us five minutes to prep these ships.”
The rock shook again and sent several fist-sized lumps falling onto the dock. The noise of the crowd grew suddenly as their nervous voices rose in a wave of fear as the rocks clattered on the upper hulls of the three buses.
“Make it three minutes,” Boyd said to the trooper who was walking over to the main hold doors. “And give me one of those power packs.” He unclipped the pack from his pulse rifle.
The trooper looked at him sideways for a moment and then reached into the bag and pulled one of the packs out and tossed it to Boyd as he walked past. A line of people hurried up the ramp, pushing past Boyd and into the passenger area where they took their seats and began nervously looking around. Boyd checked the final prep. The bus was ready for flight. Boyd hoped it would make it off this rock.
The crowd was now safely packed aboard the three buses. Boyd checked along the line and saw the exterior lights coming on for all three. They began to close their boarding ramps.
The trooper who had set the explosives looked at Boyd from the bus he was about to board. “Only one minute remaining on that timer,” he shouted and then pointed into his bus. “Are you planning on getting aboard, Union boy, or do you want to end up floating in the void? This is your last chance to escape this rock.”
Boyd saluted the trooper from his boarding ramp. The trooper returned the salute and then closed his boarding ramp. Boyd reached up to the boarding ramp control of his bus. Just as he was about to close the door, he saw a group of half a dozen survivors running toward the dock. One was far in front but moving slowly, limping on an injured leg and about to be overtaken by the small crowd.
It was Thresh.
Boyd’s hand hovered over the door controls. Someone in the passenger area shouted, their fear turning to panic. “Just close the kravin door!”
Boyd watched Thresh limp and struggle forward, her eyes glancing up to the busses, to safety, as she pressed on, hand cradling an injury on her leg.
Boyd wanted to call out, but his voice caught in his chest. The small crowd caught up with Thresh and rushed past her, all their eyes wide and staring desperately at the last open bus. She winced as she gripped her right knee and continue to bravely limp forward. The half-dozen survivors came toward Boyd’s open bus. He leveled his rifle and waved to the two buses next to him. He shouted as they ran across the dock toward him. “No room on here! Room on those buses there.”
The crowd seemed unable to hear, panic over their faces, and rushed onward.
A quake ripped through the hold and a slab of rock fell from the ceiling. It dropped onto the small crowd, instantly crushing the survivors just meters from the safety of the bus.
Boyd looked into the dust thrown up by the collapse and saw Thresh, still limping forward, struggling and wincing. Tears streamed down her dirty face, her hair caked with blood and grit. Her jacket was shredded and charred by the fires that still raged in the central chamber. She was missing one boot and that foot was dirty and bloody.
Boyd watched her limp forward then she looked up and saw Boyd staring at her. Boyd heard the trooper over the bus communicator.
“Thirty seconds.”
Boyd watched his brother’s killer limping forward, bloody and battered. She slowed as she looked up at him, her face full of sadness. Boyd could see she knew she was finished. Out of energy, out of time. His hand reached for the ramp control.
14
Hand hovering over the panel, Boyd hesitated. A civilian woman came out of the passenger area next to Boyd and reached up for the controls.
“Close the door and get us out of here! You will kill us all!”
Boyd turned on the woman and pushed her back firmly into her seat. “Stay in your seat, ma’am, or you will be flying out of here without a bus.” Boyd turned to the open ramp and held his hand out to Thresh. She had slowed almost to a halt, but seeing his hand reaching out renewed her determination. With tears running down her cheeks and with fire in her eyes, she eagerly struggled forward on her injured right leg and bloody left foot. She reached the ramp. Boyd grabbed her hand and hauled her off her feet and into the bus. He slammed his hand onto the control panel, and it began to screech shut. Thresh collapsed to the deck. She looked up at Boyd.
Boyd looked down. He had nothing to say. He turned his back on her and dropped into the pilot seat just as the explosion ripped through the outer door of the small dock.
As soon as the explosion cracked the composite, the force of the blast together with the pressure of the atmosphere from within the dock blew the door out into space, ripping chunks of rock with it. Boyd hit the maneuvering thrusters. He felt the bus being twisted and lifted. The rock all around the dock began to disintegrate. Power to all grav plating failed, so the crumbling rock hung aimlessly in the air. Boyd maneuvered out into space and the debris of the asteroid mining community.
Boyd watched the asteroid break up around him. It cracked into boulders the size of mountains and drifted apart. The rocks shot through with explosions as small local reactors
failed and were instantly turned into small plasma fires that lit up the fragments. There were many hundreds of smaller bits floating between the larger chunks. Boyd couldn’t be sure if they were smaller rocks or the bodies of the dead. He looked behind him at the few survivors on his bus.
Sitting on the deck behind the pilot seat was Thresh. She shifted awkwardly, trying to find a place to avoid causing further pain. She looked up at Boyd in the pilot seat.
“I didn’t think you would wait for me.” Her voice cracked as she spoke and then she looked back to her swollen, bruised knee.
Boyd looked down at her, then he turned back to the flight console.
One of the buses to escape the asteroid was losing power. A message came over Boyd’s flight console.
“Has anyone got room? I’ve got half a load of survivors on this bus, and I got power fluctuations all across the board.”
The line went dead. Out of the corner of his eye, to the left of the viewscreen, Boyd saw the sudden flash as the bus exploded. The igniting drive assembly engulfed the entire vessel in a super-heated plasma fire, incinerating it in a fraction of a second.
Boyd checked the controls on his bus. Every system was showing some level of malfunction, the panel awash in yellow warning lights, but nothing serious enough to give him a red one. Everything from the boarding ramp to the main reactor shunt needed a serious maintenance overhaul.
Boyd reduced power to the drive to avoid any overload and hopefully prevent his bus from exploding. He limped away from the destroyed asteroid. No heading set yet, just hoping to get away. He was considering where to take this busload of survivors when a flash of fire across the front of the bus caught his attention. A Blade raced overhead, turned, and fired it guns again, narrowly missing the front of the bus. The Blade sent a message on a narrow-width band that came over the bus speaker system.
“Attention, Faction vessel. The Union demands your surrender. There will be no further warning.”
Boyd looked at the Blade sitting directly in front of him. The bus was in no state to outrun them, and even if it was in perfect working order, the fighter craft would be able to destroy the bus instantly. Boyd looked over his shoulder at the survivors. There were several Faction civilians and a handful of troopers, along with a couple of Union Marines sitting nervously at the back of the bus. They had their pistols in their hands and were watching the troopers suspiciously.
“Surrender the bus, Blue Star,” the Marine regular in the back of the bus stood up and called.
Boyd turned back to the flight panel. He had maybe one chance to escape. He turned to look at Thresh. She was the best ship engineer he had ever worked with. If anyone could help get this busted old bus out of danger when facing an elite Union fighter, it was Thresh. Boyd trusted his piloting skills above anyone else’s. He didn’t assume he was the best, but he knew he was the best he’d ever seen. He’d happily take on this fighter pilot, but the Blade had the bus massively outclassed. Boyd looked down at Thresh. She was picking fragments of composite from her left foot. The girl had run through shards of broken material with no boot and the foot was cut to ribbons. She didn’t complain about it as she pulled out a centimeter-long shard of composite from between her toes.
Thresh turned and looked up at Boyd. Tears had cut clean lines through the dirt on her face. She turned and gave Boyd a half-smile as she shook her head.
“There’s nothing I can do with this bus to get us out of this one, Will.” She looked back to her bloody foot.
Boyd turned to the flight console. He wasn’t about to give up. This bus was old and battered, but he could turn that to his advantage…somehow. He scanned the flight console, taking in all the systems, every one of them needing some level of attention. Somewhere in there was the key to the puzzle. Somewhere amongst this array of worn out and battered equipment held together in the guise of a bus was the secret to how he would evade a fighter and escape deeper into the belt, away from the Union.
The bus shuddered, and a dull blue glow covered the viewscreen. Boyd knew instantly he was caught in a grapple beam. There was only one ship in the area that was able to generate a grapple beam.
It was the Resolute.
Boyd looked at the control panel and saw one of the systems—the hull stability field—start blinking red as it failed. There was nothing he could do. He could not fight the Resolute’s grapple beam in this battered old bus. If he continued to fight, it would just mean distraction for the bus. He sensed the people sitting behind him, thirty innocent people. Their lives were in his hands. Then he thought of the one guilty person sitting behind him. Thresh deserved to die, he thought, but he instantly regretted it. She was as innocent as any of them. She had pulled the trigger on the pistol that had killed his brother, but she was just the weapon that Kitzov had used to commit the murder.
It twisted his gut to think that the woman he loved had watched his brother die, but she had been a child, he reasoned. Kitzov had made her do it. The vid that Bellini had showed him had proved it. She had been reluctant, she hadn’t wanted to kill. Kitzov had made her do it, convinced and cajoled her to do it. Kitzov was charismatic and able to convince people to do things, sometimes the right thing but often as not the wrong thing—anything for him to gain more power and control, anything to grow the Faction, anything for him to become as powerful as the Union.
Boyd deactivated the power systems. He sat back and let the grapple beam pull the bus into the landing bay of the Resolute. He had a thought race over his mind that brought fear and joy, a kind of panic. Had he just thought to himself that he loved Thresh?
The hull of the Resolute closed around the bus as it was drawn into her docking bay. Boyd knew instantly where he was. He glanced through the viewscreen and watched the outer doors slide shut.
Boyd was back aboard the Resolute. This had once been home. He didn’t expect he would be welcomed back this time. He had left with a promise to bring Kitzov to justice. He had failed.
The boarding ramp of the bus screeched as it opened. The sound sent a shiver down Boyd’s spine. It was a shiver of dread. A voice from outside shouted in, “Come out with your hands up. Toss any weapons.”
Boyd recognized the voice instantly. It was his old friend and Blue Star Marine brother, Sergeant Dorik.
Boyd stood up and looked into the back of the hold. The two Union Marine regulars were on their feet and moving forward. They had their hands in the air and were holding their pulse pistols by the trigger guard hooked over their left thumbs. As they stepped into the doorway, they were called down by the Blue Stars.
Boyd looked at the terrified faces of the Faction civilians. He held his hands out to comfort them.
“It’s all right. They won’t hurt you,” Boyd said as convincingly as he possibly could, but deep down, he knew he might not be so safe. As he ducked out from behind the pilot seat, he helped Thresh to her feet. He looked at her and her sad smile. She would not be treated like a civilian if it was discovered she had been a raider engineer.
Boyd helped Thresh down the ramp. As they came to the deck, a pair of Blue Stars came and took Thresh to one side, leaving Boyd standing before Sergeant Dorik. Dorik placed his fists on his hips and smiled broadly, looking Boyd up and down.
“If it isn’t little Will Boyd. Welcome home, Will. Are you okay?”
“As well as could be expected, old friend,” Boyd said.
A pair of Marines came and stood either side of Boyd, Marines he knew well. They took the pulse rifle off Boyd’s shoulder and tossed it to Dorik.
“A fresh pulse power pack,” Dorik said, inspecting the weapon. He smirked. “Did you plan to come here and take over the Resolute?”
“I will leave command of the Resolute up to the major, I think, Sergeant.”
Dorik took a few steps forward and stood square on to Boyd. His smile dropped.
“Will Boyd, I place you under arrest. You are a deserter, a traitor, and a rogue Blue Star. You will surely hang for this, Boyd.” Dor
ik waved a finger to one side. “Take him to the brig. And take his little Faction wench too.”
15
Boyd stepped into the cell and sat on the narrow bunk as the confinement field over the door was activated. Dorik looked in at Boyd through the flickering containment field and grinned.
“You made a big mistake running out on this crew, Boyd,” Dorik said. “But it was an even bigger mistake to get caught. Have you seen them hang a Faction pirate captain outside the capital building on Terra? You know how the crowds roar and cheer? Well, that’s nothing compared to how they act when we hang traitors.” Dorik made two fists and mimed a rope pulling tight.
Boyd turned and put his feet up on the bunk, stretching out on the cold composite slab. He tucked his hands behind his head.
“I am no traitor, Sergeant Dorik. As soon as I explain myself to the boss, I’ll be out of here.”
“But not your little friend. That is the problem with sending someone like you undercover: you get too close. You get too involved. You start to believe you are Faction. You start to think you are better than the Union, better than all of us, and then you fell for that little honey trap they set you. Krav it all, Boyd, you’ve been converted by them and you don’t even know it.” Dorik laughed.
Boyd told himself he didn’t care what Dorik said to him, or what happened to him. He knew he had always done the right thing. But he worried about Thresh. He knew the danger she was in, the fate that awaited her. She had become more important to him than he ever thought anyone, Faction or Union, ever could be.
A ship-wide alarm sounded in a sudden, sharp burst. The major’s voice came over the ship’s speakers.
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 59