Preemas was going to use eight—on the lowest setting as he had said—but eight, in a small alcove, where the explosions would send debris and shrapnel into the alcove and the corridor, probably injuring the idiots who were standing side by side with Preemas.
Crowe tried not to look at the faces of his colleagues. His former colleagues. People he had helped, people he had worked with. He had to think of them as something other now, which he hadn’t had a lot of experience with. He had spent his life in engineering so he wouldn’t have to make these kinds of decisions.
There was so much equipment built into the walls, so many connections between the control panel Preemas was going to blow and the control panels throughout the ship, that the greatest threat to the ship had just become her captain.
Everyone in engineering knew it. Tosidis had said something under his breath about fools. Willoughby had contacted a friend or a lover, telling them to brace themselves. Bakhr actually muttered what the hell? when the shape charge appeared on the screen, as if he too couldn’t believe what the ship’s captain was planning to do.
Crowe moved closer to the controls he had modified. He was going to execute his own plan. No one else. And if they ever made it back to the Fleet or if someone challenged what they had done, he had already instructed his engineers to say that he had coerced them. He had to, because his plan was extreme.
The situation was extreme.
He tried to remind himself of that, but it still disturbed him on a level he wasn’t sure he wanted to analyze.
Preemas walked to the control panel and pulled it open—the damn idiot. That would make things even worse.
Then he grinned at the camera above the door again, even though his face was five times larger in the cameras around the control panel.
That grin said, Try and stop me.
“Okay,” Crowe said. He clenched his fists, knowing he couldn’t turn back from this.
None of them could turn back from this.
Then he punched the controls, and braced himself.
The Renegat
100 Years Ago
Captain Preemas had opened the control panel. Then he grinned at the engineering camera, his right hand still clutching that shape charge. He held the control panel door with the other hand, then stepped in closer, bracing the panel door open with his shoulder.
The threat was clear. He was going to place the charges if no one opened the doors.
Romano held her breath. Her heart pounded. Part of her prayed that the engineering crew would open the doors now, but of course, they weren’t going to.
Then Preemas raised that single shape charge and pressed it into the top right corner of the control panel. He was actually whistling, some kind of jaunty tune she didn’t recognize.
He was enjoying this. She couldn’t believe that. She just wanted it to end.
Oshie was crouching near the edge of the door, pulling a shape charge off his bandolier.
Everyone else was shifting, moving ever so slightly, all that nervous energy, just like Romano had.
Preemas turned slightly, grinned at them, and said, “First charge is in place.”
And then he reached for the next, when burning orange light came out of the panel and drilled into his forehead. The light went right through him, like some kind of projectile, slicing a neat round hole through his head.
People scattered, moving out of the way as the light continued across the corridor, narrowly missing Romano. She felt its heat sear past her left arm, adding to its ache.
Preemas remained standing for a good long moment, his hands dropping to his sides. And then he fell over backwards, landing with a loud thud.
The light had vanished. Romano looked behind her, because she couldn’t help herself. The light had not drilled a hole in the corridor wall. The only damage that light had done was to Captain Preemas himself.
A targeted shot, from inside engineering.
Oshie was also on the ground. The hole in his head was at the top. Apparently, another light beam had struck him, but on the crown of his head, not the forehead.
He huddled in a fetal position, and for a brief half second, she thought he was still alive.
But he didn’t move.
Neither did Preemas. But he wasn’t ever going to move again. His eyes were open. The burn hole in his forehead was black around the edges and dark as it went through.
There was no blood.
The stench of cauterized flesh filled the alcove.
No one moved. No one said anything. The silence was as damning as the action had been.
Romano looked at that panel, and for a brief moment, she wondered if Preemas had touched something that had sent out that beam of light.
But he couldn’t have. Because a similar light hit Oshie in a completely different position and killed him too.
A woman to Romano’s right made huff-huff-huffing sound as if she were about to start sobbing. A man behind Romano said softly, “Oh, my God.”
And his words seemed to galvanize everyone else. A few ran, but the rest looked around as if they expected someone to tell them what to do.
There was no one to tell them what to do. No one to lead. The First Officer was Nadim Crowe and he was behind that door, perhaps even the one who had sent out that charge.
Perhaps? He was the one.
And that thought caught Romano. Her fury returned. She looked at Preemas, on his back, his eyes open, a hole in his forehead, and then she looked at the door, trying to see the cowardly first officer hiding behind that door, and she raised her laser pistol as high as she could.
“Get them!” she screamed.
Then she fired into the ceiling before leveling her pistol at the doors. Debris and bits of ceiling panel rained down on everyone.
It didn’t matter that they no longer had someone who knew how to use shape charges. They would shoot their way into that engineering bay, and they would make sure the traitors died.
She shot into the panel, at that thing whatever it was that had killed Preemas. The red light from her shot expanded across the panel and then dissipated.
At that moment, everyone else started shooting too, except for Lakinas, who grabbed her rifle and used its butt to pound on the doors.
Shots hit the walls around her, doing some damage.
They were going to get in. They were going to get in.
And then everyone inside would die.
The Renegat
100 Years Ago
So far, no one else had died. But they sure were trying hard.
The idiots were firing laser weapons in a small space, their bodies jumbled together, the weaponry aiming at nothing as far as Crowe could tell.
The shots had surprised him. He had thought everyone in the Fleet had enough training to know that firing in that contained area was a terrible idea—for the shooters—but apparently not.
He was about to order his crew to activate the shields, but before he could even voice the order, the standard shields in front of the engineering doors activated.
The shield in front of the control panel had activated the moment Crowe had fired those shots, killing Preemas and Oshie. That shot India Romano had fired had dispersed throughout the shield, adding power to that shield.
Now, the shots were ricocheting back on the small army that Preemas had assembled. Someone screamed in pain, and Crowe didn’t even bother to look to see who had been hit.
There would be more screams and more deaths from those idiots, if he didn’t stop them.
“Now,” he said to Tosidis.
Tosidis nodded, then surrounded the entire corridor in shields. Now the entire space where the small army was gathered had become a shooting gallery. More people screamed, and a few fell, screaming and clutching their arms, their torsos, their faces.
If Crowe didn’t act fast, the entire army would kill themselves.
Using the environmental system, he isolated the area inside that killing chamber, and then he care
fully removed the oxygen content. A few more people dropped immediately, but others kept shooting, their eyes wild.
Romano whipped around, as if she had just realized what she had unleashed. She started shooting at the edges of the shields, as if she could break them.
Crowe kept lowering the oxygen content but only a few people were dropping. He didn’t know what he could send into that shielded area to make everyone else pass out.
It was as if the adrenaline released in the fighting was giving them extra strength, was making their bodies’ use of oxygen even more efficient.
And then he realized: It was.
The longer it took him to lower the oxygen, the greater the chance that those who had already passed out would die.
So he just removed the oxygen altogether. He was watching Romano’s face throughout. It turned purple, then she gasped like someone dying in space, and then, finally, she fell.
The others fell as well. Crumpling onto each other, laser pistols skittering on the floor, and bumping against the shield.
He brought up the oxygen just enough to keep everyone inside that shield alive, but not enough to wake them.
Then he staggered backwards, leaning against the pointed corner of his own alcove, trying not to fall as well.
He had no idea how many of them were dead. But there were more injuries than he had seen in years. Blood was oozing everywhere, and somewhere in the middle of that pile of humans, blood spurted.
“We have to get to them,” Willoughby said.
She saw the spurting too.
He nodded. He couldn’t think about what he had just done.
He had to save lives now.
“Use oxygen masks. You won’t need full environmental suits,” Crowe said. “I’m going to keep the levels in the corridor low.”
He sent for automated gurneys from the med bay. He had no idea who was working the med bay right now, or whether any of those people were now lying on the floor, dying.
Dying.
His team was already gathering their masks. He had to give instructions.
“Remove the weapons first,” he said, surprised at how authoritative he sounded. “Get those inside engineering. We’ll continue to use this as a base, just in case this was only the first wave.”
“Someone’s dying out there. We have to get out there,” Willoughby said. “I don’t give a damn about weapons.”
She already had her mask on. Her voice was muffled by it.
She used the side of her fist to activate something on one of her screens, but it didn’t work, because Crowe controlled the shields.
“Go,” he said. “Get that bleeding stopped. The rest of you, take care of the weapons first. Then restrain those who aren’t visibly injured. We’re going to have to move them to the brig.”
He would probably need more gurneys for that, but he’d worry about that after everyone was restrained.
He unlocked the doors, and shut down the shield protecting engineering. He hadn’t even finished giving the command when Willoughby left her post at a full run. The doors had only hissed partially open, as she squeezed through them.
Others followed. Tosidis held a mask to his face and followed. As he passed Crowe, Crowe grabbed Tosidis’s arm.
“No,” Crowe said. “I need you on the bridge. You and Bakhr.”
Tosidis shot a worried glance at the door, as if he would rather go through and work to save his former colleagues.
Then he blinked and turned to face Crowe, arm still trapped in Crowe’s hand.
“I’m not an anacapa expert,” Tosidis said, then looked at the pile of humans outside the door again.
Through the corner of his eye, Crowe could see his team moving through them. Willoughby was crouched in the middle of the bodies, hands down. He could hear her voice faintly, as she shouted orders at the others who were working around her.
Tosidis leaned toward them all, and Crowe wondered if someone special to Tosidis was in that pile.
“I know,” Crowe said, “but Stephanos—”
Crowe stopped himself, reconsidered telling Tosidis that Stephanos might be badly injured (or dead), and instead said, “Stephanos—I can’t find her. She’s not in that group, but she’s not on the bridge.”
“I’m not half as good as her,” Tosidis said. “Surely, you have someone else.”
Me, Crowe thought, but he couldn’t stretch himself that thin. “You know what the problem looks like. I want you to take Bakhr and go to the bridge. You’re authorized to do whatever it takes to keep the anacapa from malfunctioning.”
Tosidis was shaking his head. “It’s not my specialty. I don’t know what I can do.”
In that moment, Crowe realized that the shooting had caused Tosidis to panic. Or maybe, the death of Preemas had done that.
Odd. After the initial discomfort, it had calmed Crowe down.
Crowe grabbed Tosidis by the shoulders and shook him. Tosidis raised his head to Crowe, eyes cloudy.
“You have to hold it together,” Crowe said. “I need you. You’re the only one who knows what the communications anacapa has been doing. We don’t have a lot of resources right now, and we’re all a little out of our depth.”
Including Crowe, but he didn’t say that.
“I need you calm. I need you thinking clearly. And I need you on the bridge.” Crowe shook Tosidis again, although not as hard. “Is that clear?”
Tosidis blinked, then a frown covered his face.
“We’re not up for this, are we?” he whispered.
Crowe felt a flash of anger. “If we’re not, we die.”
Tosidis swallowed, then glanced at the pile of passed-out people. Since the shield had gone down, more oxygen was probably getting into that area. That meant some of them would be waking up.
But a few of his crew were already carrying weapons into engineering. Colin Vezner held up a laser pistol and, with his other hand, pointed down an alcove, clearly asking if Crowe wanted the weapons stored in that direction.
Crowe nodded, then turned his attention back to Tosidis. Tosidis had been watching everything Crowe did, eyes wide.
“I need you to do this,” Crowe said as firmly as he could. “I need you to do whatever you can to keep the ship safe, while I’m dealing with the crew crisis.”
“And find Natalia?” Tosidis asked.
Crowe realized in that moment that Tosidis didn’t trust himself. He didn’t believe he was up for the job, and he needed to believe he would have backup.
“As soon as I find her, I’ll send her to you,” Crowe said, mentally adding, if she’s even capable of coming to you. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say any of it, because he needed Tosidis working. He needed everyone at their best.
Tosidis’s shoulders relaxed. He almost smiled, and then seemed to stop himself, probably because he believed the expression was inappropriate.
“Please send her,” Tosidis said. “I don’t have the training, and I doubt Bakhr does either.”
“You are going to have to do your best,” Crowe said, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. He needed to stop this damn pep talk and get back to work.
He let go of Tosidis’s shoulders, and resisted the urge to give Tosidis a little shove.
“Now,” Crowe said. “Go. Get that done.”
Tosidis stepped back, then looked at the pile in front of the door. Getting around everyone would be difficult, and it might send Tosidis over the edge again.
If Tosidis couldn’t do the job, Crowe didn’t know who else to send.
He scanned around the room, looking for Bakhr, then realized that he was helping with the people pile.
Crowe almost told Tosidis to get Bakhr, but that would mean that Tosidis would have to wade into that pile of people, and their presence already disturbed him enough.
Crowe walked over there himself.
“Benjamin Bakhr,” he said, making sure his voice had a bit of command in it. “Tosidis needs your assistance.”
&
nbsp; Bakhr lifted his head. Some blood was smeared along his cheek where he had clearly been wiping at his own face. Crowe almost said something, and then decided against it.
“I prefer to help here,” Bakhr said quietly.
Was everyone going to question Crowe’s command now?
“I don’t care what you prefer,” Crowe said. “We need your expertise. Go. Now.”
Bakhr bit his lower lip, then glanced down at the people pile all around him. Crowe couldn’t tell who Bakhr was looking at, but clearly that person meant something to him.
Then Bakhr nodded. He stepped around some bodies, and worked his way to the edge.
Crowe watched him for a moment, then turned his attention to the mess in front of him.
The weapons were already gone, except for the bandoliers around Preemas and Oshie. A laser pistol was on Preemas’s hip, and his body was partially resting on a laser rifle.
Clearly no one had wanted to touch their dead captain.
So Crowe did.
He bent over and slipped his hands under the bandolier. Preemas’s body was still warm, his eyes open. That cauterized hole in his head, though, made him look smaller somehow.
And the smell of burned flesh near the body made Crowe gag. It wouldn’t do to have the man who had murdered his captain vomit all over him.
Crowe willed his stomach to behave, then grabbed the bandolier and worked it over what remained of Preemas’s head. Crowe tried not to think about what he was doing, because that was the only way to keep himself calm.
He slipped the bandolier over his left arm, then bent down again, and lifted Preemas’s right shoulder. The body was ridiculously heavy—not a person any longer, but a thing, with no tension in its muscles at all.
Using his foot, Crowe pushed the laser rifle away from Preemas, and onto the main part of the floor. He let Preemas’s shoulder fall. It landed with a faint meaty thunk.
Crowe grabbed the laser rifle, then took the laser pistol off Preemas’s hip. Crowe carried everything inside engineering and placed the bandolier, rifle, and pistol in the alcove he had been using, rather than having the shape charges anywhere near the rest of the crew.
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