Ethan’s commlink chirped. It was Kai. “Captain you’re about to have…”
“I’ve detected a spike in the gravity plating,” Marti announced, its voice cutting her off.
“Stand by,” he barked, dropping off the commlink and glancing at Nuko on the screen as he pulled his seat forward into position. “Where is it?”
“I can infer that it is in main engineering. Internal sensors are detecting a heat build-up,” it reported. “Engineering deck two, near the starboard power couplings.”
He slapped his hand down on the command comm controls. “Rene, are you in engineering?”
“I’m in the galley,” the engineer said.
“Frak. Somebody’s in engineering,” he hissed.
He tapped over to the security channel. “Quinn, we’ve got an intruder. Engineering.”
“On my way. Ten seconds.” He heard what sounded like a table exploding and chairs flying as the handler launched himself toward the engine room.
Checking the intership commscreen Nuko had looked away and was talking to someone else. “We’ve got an intruder,” he said.
She nodded but didn’t respond.
“I just detected the inverted spike,” Marti announced.
Door’s closed. “They’re done.”
The image of the conduit rupture in the habitat container flashed through his mind. The Dawn’s engine room was a lot more open, so a fireball like that could be deadly. “Quinn stand down! Do not enter Engineering!”
The lights flickered as the primary drive coils dropped offline. Ethan felt it before he glanced up at the main screen and watched the crystal film display go transparent to show him a view of the photon cascade and then a view of normal space. Alarm claxons roared and a second later a faint shudder rattled the deck plating confirming they’d lost main power.
He felt the gravity bounce as the ship’s plating shifted to the remaining couplers. At least they were still intact, so that meant they had life support too.
All around him the screens were dark, and he growled in frustration, slamming his fist down on the console.
Secondary lights came on and the emergency management screen console booted up. He cut the alarms and waited for them to fall silent. “All hands, we’re under attack. We are dead in space,” he reported over the shipwide comm. He’d have preferred not to make that as a general announcement, but it was the only comm system operational in a crisis.
“What happened?” Ammo asked, as she barreled through the ConDeck door.
Ethan held up his finger. “Quinn what’s your status?” Silence and static answered him.
“Quinn, report?”
“We’re good, Cap’n,” the handler said, sounding like he was pumping antifreeze through his veins. “We’d just reached the door when the pressure locks engaged. It looks like we might have a hull breach.”
“There is no hull breach,” Marti said. “Fire suppression is containing the incident, but I triggered negative pressure in engineering to seal the deck and prevent crew entry into a dangerous environment.”
“Quick thinking,” Ethan said, glancing over his shoulder at Ammo.
He pointed at the copilot’s seat. “We’re on backups. We don’t have instruments, but it looks like they targeted the starboard primary coupler. It might have ruptured so there could be other damage.”
She jumped into her position and logged in. Power was coming up as Marti rerouted around the offline systems. She assessed their status. “We’ve got no external sensors on the starboard side either. We’ve lost sight of the Sun. Do we know if they’re alright?”
“Not my first priority.” He shook his head trying to stay focused on managing their crisis and not what might be going on with Nuko. “If we’re blind to the right, we must have blown both couplers on that side.”
“That means we’re likely to have substantial collateral systems damage,” Rene said. Ethan could hear several voices in the background over the link. He was probably standing with Quinn at the main doors to engineering.
“How long until they can get in there?”
“Two minutes to complete the thermal suppression, and then another three to restore oxygen levels,” Marti said.
“Can you tell how bad it is?” he asked.
“All system diagnostics for the starboard power distribution grid are offline.”
“We’ve got no way to assess what happened until we can get in there?” he asked.
“Not necessarily,” Ammo said. On her left-hand screen, she was scanning through the internal optic feeds looking for live channels into engineering. There were several that were still operational, but none seemed to show the area where the problem occurred. With her right hand, she was scrolling through data files.
Abruptly she stopped and called one to the main screen. She stared at it for several seconds before she nodded. “We definitely had an intruder.”
The file was the archived optic feed from the workstation console above the power conduit. She scrolled it back and forth several times, stopping about twenty seconds before the explosion. She held her finger on the control to keep the image right where she wanted it.
Nothing but the console’s display was visible. He shook his head. “How do you know?”
She pointed at the screen and drew her finger in an arc as she called his attention to a dark portion of the readout. “Look there. Don’t you see it?”
Suddenly Ethan picked it out. There was a face reflected in the shiny surface.
He was wearing what looked like a Pressure Support Exosuit and a tactical helmet. It was the kind of fighting rig used by soldiers. He was also sure the face didn’t belong to anybody he’d seen on either ship.
“How’d he get aboard?”
“I don’t know but watch,” she said lifting her finger off the pause icon to let the image resume playback.
As they watched, the man turned his face to the side and said something, like he was talking to another person in the room. He nodded and took a step back.
And vanished.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Olympus Dawn, what’s your status?” Nuko’s voice came over his collarcomm.
He looked over at Ammo and raised an eyebrow. “They’ve got to be right on top of us.”
She nodded and pointed out the forward window. The sensor overlay was still offline, so the window remained transparent. Leaning forward he saw the side of the Elysium Sun several hundred meters to port. It was facing to stern and almost impossible to see against the blackness of space. Their marker lights were off, and she was running dark. But at least she looked to be in better shape than they were.
“We’re dead and drifting at the moment,” he said.
“I can see that much, Boss,” she said. “You said you were boarded?”
“That we know for a fact,” he said. “It looks like they took out both starboard power couplers but until we can get back into engineering, we don’t know what else they might have damaged.”
“How’d they get aboard?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve got an optic record that shows without a doubt that at least one man was in engineering,” he said.
“Did you catch him?”
“No. He did the deed and then just disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Elias asked. He had to be on the Sun’s ConDeck with Nuko. “Like he walked through a door and vanished?”
“Yah a bit. The one we saw looked like he stepped back and just… stepped into the darkness. He faded out.” Ethan knew that wasn’t quite the best way to describe what they’d seen, but it was as close as he could get. “Marti, can we send them the file?”
“Not until we get the intership comm restored,” it said.
“Stand by, Captain,” Elias said. “I want to check something.”
“How long until you know the extent of your damage?” Nuko asked.
“We vented atmosphere to stop the fire and locked down the engineering deck, so we’re locked
out until we repress,” he glanced over at the chrono. “Another minute at least until they can get in there and then it depends on how bad it is.”
“What can we do to help?”
“Right now, we’re stable. We’ve got life support and Marti’s patching systems across to the port side grid.”
“You won’t have drive coils until you get the systems repaired,” she said.
She was pointing out the obvious, but Ethan just shrugged. “If it did take out both of them, it will leave us running without a plan-b. I don’t think we stocked more than two couplers.”
“We’re in,” Quinn said over the internal comm.
“Nuko stand by, they just got into engineering.”
He tapped over to the internal commscreen. “How’s it look in there?”
“I’m no engineer, Cap’n, but if it’s any measure, I didn’t know Rene knew all them fancy foreign words.”
Ammo laughed. “You want me to translate for you farmboy?”
“No, I think it’s best we don’t know. But he’s not looking as fragged as I expected.”
“Shock will do that. For a while,” she said. “I’m sure his demeanor will change as soon as it sets in. It is his baby they gutted after all.”
“True beans,” the handler said. “One of the plusser engineers is down there with him and they’re both already tearing at parts. It looks like they know what they’re doing.” He paused for several seconds and then came back. “He said both couplers are slagged and he’ll let you know as soon as he has a firm repair estimate.”
“At least that’s good. It tells me he thinks he can repair it,” Ethan said.
“Or that he’s an optimist,” the handler added.
Ammo rolled her eyes. “Quinn, honey. Shut the frak up.”
Tapping back into his collarcomm he said, “Hopefully, it’s reparable, but it’s Quinn’s considered opinion that Rene’s an optimist.”
“How long until you know?” There was a strange edge to her voice that Ethan caught.
“A while yet. Problem?”
“Don’t know, but Elias says he knows where they are.”
“Where?”
“Almost eight light hours to the rear. It would have been in your sensor shadow so you wouldn’t have seen it.
Ethan let out a slow whistle. “How does he know that?”
“He says, our sensors picked up a high frequency gravity pulse at that location just before you got hit,” she said. “We’re scanning the area now but there’s nothing there we can detect.”
“A high frequency gravity pulse?”
“That might explain the spikes in the plating,” Ammo said.
“Do you want me to investigate?” Nuko offered.
“No. If they can reach out eight and a half billion kilometers and smack us, there’s no way you’re a match for them,” he said. “Don’t take your eyes off that spot and bring all your guns up.”
“Marti do we have weapons?” Ammo asked.
“Rappelling lasers on the port side only,” it said. “We could take gravity plating offline and reroute that circuit to power up the main gun, but it would be slow to charge.”
“So, we’re blind and naked on the starboard side. And mostly defenseless.” He bit down on his lower lip and thought about their decidedly lacking number of options. “Nuko, cross the Sun over to our opposite side and cover us while we make repairs.” It was all they could do.
“Boss, I’m suggesting that we post handlers around all critical systems,” Ammo said.
He frowned. “We’ve only got four each. That won’t do much good.
“I think that’s a prudent plan,” Kai said, startling him as she appeared on the deck behind him. He spun in her direction and realized that the door behind her was open and she’d walked in while he was distracted. “My people will volunteer.”
Ethan glared at her for several seconds before he nodded. “Do it. We can’t afford to let it happen again.”
She pulled out her tele-amplifier comm and sent the word to her people. “Let your other crew know that they can deploy any of my people for any task they need.”
“I heard,” Nuko said. “But there’s one more thing you need to know Ethan.” The edge in her voice pushed up again, and he knew it wasn’t something that was going to make him fuzzy.
“Elias found the gravity pulses because he knew what to look for,” she said. “It’s Shan Takhu technology.”
“Understood,” he said, swallowing a sudden ball of acid.
“Kai, wait for me in my office,” he said, somehow managing to sound calm in spite of the demon that was swimming in the lake of fire in his gut. As soon as she disappeared through the door, he tapped the comm screen. “Kaycee report to my office immediately.”
“Is it safe to come out of my room?” she asked.
“Hell no, but I want you in my office NOW.”
Ammo let out a slow whooshing hiss. “That’s going to be no fun.”
“It’s time we get some answers,” he said, shooting her a glare as he pushed himself to his feet.
“I’ll hold the deck.”
“Not today, coward. I need you to referee.”
“Marti, the deck is yours.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ethan got into his office with Ammo on his heels. Kai stood inside, holding her TAC with her eyes closed and facing the wall. Kaycee hit the door behind them and skidded to a stop as she realized that they weren’t alone.
“Sit down,” he said as she looked like she was about to back out of the room and run.
Kai nodded and took the seat nearest the corner, but the doctor remained standing.
“I said sit!” he growled. He had no patience for her resistance, and she got his intent. She dropped into the other chair as Ammo took a perch on the corner of his desk.
He drew in a deep breath and regretted it. The fog was already getting thick. “I don’t care what your politics are. I need answers, from both of you. I’ve got to know what’s going on.”
Kai nodded and Kaycee sighed, shrugging and looking down at the backs of her hands where she held her thighs with enough force to make her knuckles white. She was trying to keep from lashing out at him and he knew it.
Focusing on Kai first, he asked, “You knew we were about to be boarded before it happened?”
She tapped the side of her head. “Unfortunately, not far enough ahead to stop it.”
“Will you be able to tell if they’re coming at us again?”
She wobbled her head from side to side. “Maybe. Those abilities are erratic. We were… lucky.”
“Luck is a fickle consort. I’ve got no room for it on my ship.”
“I understand that. The problem is that we’ve never been able to engineer specifically for telepathy. It’s a byproduct of enhanced cognitive ability, but only some augments manifest it at all. And even then, it seldom rises above intuitive awareness.”
Kaycee nodded, not looking towards Kai as she spoke. “That’s what I got from my proxy chamber modification. It’s the result of increased parallel synaptic pathways in the Broca region of the—”
“That’s interesting, but it doesn’t tell me how you knew.” He glared at Kai.
“Some of my people can sense someone’s thought at range. Qara Wills is exceptional. She was in a group meditation session in her room and felt an unexpected wave of external anxiety. When she focused on the source, she managed to link back to it. As soon as she realized it didn’t come from anyone aboard either of your ships, she called it to my attention.”
“Could she tell who it was?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Someone that doesn’t want us to establish a sanctuary.”
“I can tell that much and I’m new in this game. I need to know who’s after us.”
“We’ve got enemies in the Coalition, Captain.”
She glanced at Kaycee and Ethan pounced on it. “Why do you think she’d know who it is?”
“I�
��m not saying she does, but he locked down his thoughts as soon as we made him.”
“What exactly does that mean?” he asked.
“He was a trained telepath,” Ammo explained.
“It has to be one of your own people,” Kaycee challenged without hesitation.
Kai shook her head.
He stared at her for several seconds. “Who else has telepath—”
“Maybe you should talk to your doctor about that. She’s a STIF,” she said, never breaking eye contact.
“What?” Kaycee nearly jumped out of her seat and Ammo tensed like she was ready to block the door.
“Your own engineer said it looked like Shan Takhu technology,” Kai said.
“Elias would know that, too,” Ammo added.
“Who else could it be?” she asked.
“Jetaar,” the doctor said. “You know he was trying to get a Shan Takhu Ship operational.”
Ethan’s blood froze. He’d not been far from that idea either, but he’d wanted to believe Kai’s take on the situation because it might have been the less disturbing reality.
“Who’s Jetaar?” Kai asked.
“A pirate captain we ran across almost a year ago,” Kaycee said. “Against my better judgment Ethan let him live.”
“He has a Tahrat?”
“So, the story goes,” she said.
“A Tahrat? If that’s what you call a Shan Takhu ship, then it’s possible. We don’t know that’s a fact though,” Ethan admitted.
“Whoever it was they targeted the power couplings. Same place we hit Jetaar,” Ammo pointed out. “Something in that sounds like his twisted style of poetry.”
“A Tahrat class ship has no weapons,” Kai said.
“How do you know that?” Kaycee asked.
“I’ve piloted one,” she said. “It would be almost impossible to outfit it with weapons. They’re designed to be a transportation ship and not much else.”
Kaycee raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re a plusser. STI has never let a crèche augment pilot the Tahrat Shan Che.”
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 76