“You take care of business and leave Walker to me.”
Jetaar nodded as the screen went dark. A few seconds later the warning claxons started.
Picking up his shirt he tapped back into his comm. “Thorgood, get some distance in case they do lose containment, but make sure you don’t let that ship out of sight.”
“Yes sir, but all hell’s coming unhinged down there. Everybody’s pushing back and I don’t know if I can keep a lock on it with all the traffic.”
“If they stay tied off, what’s the chances of slicing them up enough to kill their reactor without their reactor taking out the stanchion?”
“Zero, Sir. They’re so far above their flow limits that it’s a miracle they haven’t lost it already.”
“If they try to move off, let them get to a safe distance and then cut through anything that gets between you and taking them out. If they want to be noble, let them get some distance. Just don’t let them get away.”
“Understood,” Thorgood said.
“I’ll get some answers from this end. Keep me updated.” He cut the comm and glanced back at the girl. She was pulling her clothes back on. From the terrified expression on her face she was smart enough to know what was going on.
Chapter Forty-Three
Ethan woke up staring at the ceiling plates. He was all the way across the room from where he’d been sitting beside Marti. “What happened?” he whispered.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Kaycee said. She leaned forward into his line of sight and pressed her hand onto his forehead. He could feel she was using her Urah Un to check out his nervous system, but because she didn’t connect to his, he couldn’t tell anything other than that it was scanning him.
He realized his glove wasn’t on even though it had been when he was connected to Marti. Pulling his hand up in front of his face, he could see the singed edges of where it had been on his hand.
“How’s Marti,” he asked, rolling up onto his elbow and looking back toward where they’d been sitting.
“Dead maybe,” she said. “She went flying in the opposite way when you broke connection.”
She tried to push him back down onto the floor, but he shoved her hand away and sat up. His muscles fought him for every inch of motion, and he could feel his arm and the side of his body twitching.
“Marti are you with us?” he asked. Even his voice sounded strange. Hollow and distant in his own ears.
The automech laid in a crumpled heap against the far wall and Ethan crawled across the room to check it out. Kaycee was right. It looked dead. There was a small crack in the dark and lifeless faceplate.
Its arms and legs were locked in position and when he tried to roll it over to get to the back-access panel, the limbs wouldn’t flex enough to get it out of the corner. “This isn’t good,” he whispered as she helped him try to move the body.
“Do you know what happened?”
He shook his head, and the room spun. He collapsed back against the wall and closed his eyes until the dizziness eased a little. “I was linked until they fired the pulse. After that, I don’t remember anything until I was looking up at you.”
“The warning sirens started about a minute before you got tossed,” she said, she was still holding a medical scanner up to his head and frowning.
He nodded... gently. “That makes sense. That was about when they talked to the first officer on the Shadowhawk. I think they were trying to—”
The door slammed open and a wave of furious chaos exploded into the room in the form of Captain X. He shot across the room and hurled Kaycee back against the wall. Ethan tried to respond, but before he could move, the captain had grabbed him and was slamming him against any convenient solid surface. Repeatedly.
“What the fuck are you trying to do, Walker?” he roared as he stopped slamming Ethan into things and just held him pinned in place on the top of the table with a forearm choking the air out of him.
Ethan croaked and shook his head. “Can’t… talk,” he managed in the brief instant when Constantine eased up to draw his sidearm and point it in Kaycee’s direction without turning.
“What are you talking about?” Ethan gasped, twisting to look at Kaycee and shaking his head. She’d frozen in place, but she was ready to launch in spite of the gun pointed square at her chest.
“Your ship was trying to hotrod its coils and blew itself up,” he said. “What were they trying to do?”
“Blew itself up?” Ethan gasped, glancing over at Marti. That would explain her lifeless corpse.
“Smoked her engines and took the entire grid down with it.” He pulled Ethan up by the front of his coverall and threw him down in a chair. “My first officer said the primary coils and both your DSL exploded. I don’t know what they were trying to do, but they screwed it.”
“Are my people alright?”
“I doubt it. There’s no power on your ship. None. And it’s venting air. As far as I’m concerned, if they’re not dead now, they will be once we pull them out.”
“Why?” Kaycee asked her voice almost a shriek.
He turned to face her and switched his gun to the other hand so he could point it at Ethan. “They were trying something stupid. Stupid people need to be dead. Or they weren’t following orders, and that makes them insubordinate. Insubordinate people need to be dead because they’re stupid, too.” He glanced back at Ethan and laughed. “You see the pattern here, don’t you Walker? All roads lead to dead.”
“I need to check on my crew,” he said.
“If they survived, then that’s a transient state. I thought I’d made that clear enough. I even used small words since you seem to like them better.”
“Fuck you,” Ethan said.
“You aren’t my type,” Constantine snarled, looking back at Kaycee. “But she is. In fact, I was about to get me some nice ass when your crew went stupid and interrupted my playtime. Maybe she’ll do to make up for that. She’s not racked like the one I let go, but she’s got decent lines. Do you think that’d be a fair trade?”
“Let’s not go there,” he said, clenching his teeth and growling.
“I figured that might be your opinion,” he laughed. “I’m guessing with your crew out of the picture, you’ve probably lost most of your reason to keep working. Then let me give you something new to keep you motivated.”
He grabbed Kaycee and headed toward the door. “The longer you take to finish this, the more fun I’ll have with your girlfriend here.”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” she said, struggling pointlessly against his grip.
“Makes me no difference,” he laughed. “What does matter is that your captain keeps in mind that I enjoy all manner of unseemly things. Up to and including killing a pretty little piece like you.”
“You don’t want to do this,” Ethan hissed, standing up and bracing himself to launch.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I really do want to do this.” He jammed his pistol up under her chin and shook his head. “Now or later is up to you, but if you want me to keep her alive, you finish the job before I finish with her.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Ethan was on his feet and across the room before Jetaar saw him coming. Fortunately for the pirate captain, the two handlers he had with him were quick, or it might have ended badly. He wanted blood. Blind rage fed him, and he had nothing in mind other than killing anything that got between him and Captain X.
He’d lost his crew and his ship, and he had no doubt that Kaycee would be next. It didn’t matter if he died at this point. He was willing to accept whatever happened to him as long as he could settle the score.
It took two stunner rounds to drop him. Whether that was because of the drugs that Kaycee had been pumping into him or the adrenaline-driven rage that was burning him alive from the inside didn’t matter.
He woke up in a chair sitting with his hands taped to the arms and Jetaar staring at him from well outside arm’s reach. The two guards stood of
f to the side and both of them held their stunners ready to toast him again.
“What were your people doing?” he asked.
“I have no clue,” Ethan said. His voice rang inside his skull and he shook his head to try to clear the jangling of his brain. It wasn’t helping.
“Where’s your doctor?” he asked.
“Constantine took her.” Ethan spat out his name. “He said I needed motivation. Trust me on this Jetaar. I’m motivated. I’m going to kill him.”
Jetaar laughed, looking at his guards who both forced a chuckle in response. He leaned back and scratched his beard. “It’s not surprising he’d fancy her. It’s also not out of his playbook to think taking her would move you in the right direction.”
“Well he played that wrong.”
“He’s a bit simple sometimes but he does get things to happen,” he said. “I think it would’ve been far more effective to just tell you that your crew is alive and asking to abandon ship.”
A wave of relief washed over him. He dropped his head down and stared at the floor while he tried to breathe enough air to calm himself. Maybe Jetaar was reaching out to him. If there was any hope of saving Kaycee, he had to take what he offered.
“What happened?”
“Your engineer said their antimatter injectors locked up and the reactor went critical. Somehow, he kept it from blowing up, but it took out the Dawn’s entire power grid and vaporized the drive coils and half the superstructure back to engineering. Your ship is scrap, but at least your crew is alive.”
Ethan nodded.
“That brings me to my problem,” he said. “I’d be inclined to let them shelter in Tortuga, but Captain X will just take them if I don’t intervene.”
“And you want something to do that,” he said.
“I want what I’ve always wanted, Walker. Nothing more. Just show me results.”
“I think we were close, but I need Kaycee back,” he said.
“Bullshit.” He shook his head. “I know you have the ability to access the technology by yourself. Constantine thinks she’s redundant and more useful as leverage. I hate to say it but he’s probably right in that regard.”
“It’s not bullshit,” Ethan pleaded. “You were STI trained. You know that I have to learn the language first. I don’t speak Shan Takhu. Without her I can’t make any of this happen.”
“And you know we’ve been watching you,” he said. “I haven’t heard her speak even a word of Shan Takhu, but I have seen you make all of these things operate.”
“You know how the link works when you have an Urah Un,” he said. “She doesn’t have to say it out loud for me to know the words I need. Without her I don’t know how to push these things any further than I have.”
That same expression of pain flashed over Jetaar’s face again and then the wall of ice crashed down over his features. “I do remember the link. My wife and I shared it. I remember how it felt. And I remember when they took that away from me, too. I might not remember my wife so well anymore because they stole that from me, but the hole is still inside of me Walker. That’s what made me into the bastard I am now.”
“I’m sorry for what they did to you, but don’t—”
“Quit talking, Walker, while I still think you might be worth the effort to save.” He stood up and turned toward the door but stopped before he took a step. “I will try to keep your crew alive, but as cruel as STI was to me, you need to understand that Captain X is infinitely worse. If you ever want to see your doctor again, with all her body parts attached to each other, you need to give us results before he tires of her.”
He shook his head and walked away. “Cut him loose and let him get back to work. But keep yourselves outside the door in case he tries to do anything stupid.”
One guard stepped back while the other spun his chair around and pulled a knife. As he waited for him to saw through the tape, he started formulating an idea for how he might take them out and escape.
If he could surprise them, maybe he could get to one of their stunners. Then he’d need to get access to a comm to locate Quinn or Angel.
After that he’d figure out how to square up with Constantine.
Taking a deep breath and trying not to broadcast his intent, he blinked in surprise as Marti’s body twitched and the faceplate flickered as it started to reset.
Change of plan.
Chapter Forty-Five
Ethan leaned close over the faceplate of Marti’s Humanform body to block any view an observer might have from the optic in the room. As soon as the guards had cleared out, he’d frantically shuffled through the pile of Shan Takhu hardware, throwing things around until he found one of the Urah Un.
Dropping the sensor glove into his hand, he let out a heavy sigh as it uncoiled and fused to his palm. It did feel different, but it wasn’t as hard to adjust to it as he’d expected. Or maybe whatever discomfort it was causing was far enough below his background level of pain that he didn’t notice.
He grabbed Marti’s hand and waited as the automech synchronized with his mind. Keep your faceplate off. Don’t move. They can’t know you’re active yet.
Understood, Marti thought as the link finally synced. We are inside the Tacra Un.
Good. Are you both alright? He closed his eyes and allowed himself a quick moment of relief.
We managed to get through the door before it closed, Ammo said. Barely.
I need to make it look like I’m trying to get you restored while we plan what to do, he thought. I’m going to move your body over to the conference table. Try to not let on that you’re alive.
He pushed down on the automech’s knees and this time rather than being stiff and lifeless, Marti helped him move them into place. And then again as he did the same thing with her arms. Rolling her body over, Ethan heaved it onto its feet. As he moved her around, he made sure never to break contact along the way. Frak, you’re heavier than you look.
Even the light alloys used in my construction are substantially denser than muscle and bone, she said. Please be careful not to hurt either of us when you place me on the table.
You’ve already got a cracked faceplate, but it’s probably cosmetic, he said, dropping her face down on the table with a heavy thump. Now if it’s not too personal can you let me get your service panel open so I can look like I’m rooting around in your innards without attracting too much attention?
You’re such a gentleman, Ammo said. He could hear her laughing even though she was over the link.
I understand. The back panel popped open as Marti released the latches so he could swing her body open. Please be careful as there are many sensitive systems inside that access panel.
I’ll be gentle, he said.
I assume the situation out there has changed substantially since we jumped in here, Ammo said.
Yah. Things are bad and we need to figure out what we’re going to do.
He leaned over and looked inside the automech and blinked several times trying to figure out what he could safely touch. If he didn’t know better, he’d have guessed what he was looking at was Shan Takhu technology. He decided the door was about as far as he dared risk inserting a finger.
The Dawn is a total loss, he said. Making the jump slagged everything, and they had to abandon her.
That is unfortunate, but we did anticipate that possibility. It also explains why I cannot access any of the ship’s systems. Marti said.
I think Jetaar is holding the crew prisoner. He paused and shook his head. At least I hope for their sake he’s got them.
For their sake? Ammo asked.
Constantine’s taken Kaycee. She’s the one I’m most worried about. He made it clear when he took her, that he planned to kill her… after.
Oh. It was all Ammo had to say to make it clear she understood that there might be things worse than dying.
Right. What’s your status in there? Ethan asked as he leaned in and tried to make it look like he was messing with things he had no clue how
to mess with.
We have accessed the archive’s command interface, Marti said. It appears when the red dwarf entered the CG-670 system that the Tacra Un self-terminated its awareness. All the higher functions are dead.
Then we’re frakked? Ethan deflated into the seat behind him and broke contact with the automech. Marti twitched a foot to remind him to restore the link.
Sorry, he thought. We can’t give up but I’m just tired of… everything.
Understood. He could feel the AA reaching into his mind deeper and trying to sense his condition. You appear to be suffering from exhaustion. However, to answer the question, I do not believe we are without options. The data storage systems are intact, as are all autonomic functions. Only the highest-level awareness seems to be inaccessible and unrecoverable.
How long will it take to get enough functioning to be able to do anything? he asked. Kaycee doesn’t have much time.
We have control of most of the autonomic systems already, Ammo said.
I will need to spin up a new core to access the rest of the facility. Unfortunately, that will take several days, Marti said.
Get that started, since I think we’ve got no way home unless we climb up and over, Ethan said. What exactly do you have working now? Would it be enough to convince them there’s more to come? He stood back up and drummed the fingers of his other hand on Marti’s back.
Several aspects of the facility operate on lower power and are available without the singularity core. They include life support, sensors, transportation, and many other systems that I do not currently comprehend.
Transportation? he asked.
Doors, Marti clarified. It would be possible to extract our people from Tortuga and retreat into the Tacra Un indefinitely.
Good! He grinned as a plan began to coalesce in his brain. Then I think I’ve got a better idea. Unless we want to live in hiding, I think we need to take the high ground.
What’s the plan? Ammo asked.
Let’s take a play from the STI book. He formulated the image in his mind and made sure they got what he was thinking and why. Imagine a couple grams of chaos in the worst possible place.
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 106