by Angie Arland
Finnegan knew he must act fast before anyone got wind of his plan. Being an engineer and pilot gave him a slight advantage. He grinned. It made his face hurt. He wasn’t used to smiling.
The man grabbed his holo and snapped it on his good arm, then left the mess hall. He headed directly to the armory. The door was sealed. Not a problem for a crafty old ship’s mechanic. He grabbed a set of magnetized Emory calipers from his utility belt.
In less than ten seconds, the armory door slid open, and he darted inside. He moved to the weapons rack and, with one hand, searched for the EVA discs. There were none. He grumbled and swore, then the ship’s engine vibrated the floor. There wasn’t much time.
Finnegan snapped his fingers. He knew McNeill would still have his suit while in the cargo hold with the new toy they’d brought aboard.
A terrible idea, that, he thought regarding the cryo-tank with the human inside it, but he knew there’d be no talking Lomax out of hauling it back to fleet.
Leaving the armory, he rushed down empty corridors to the cargo bay where McNeill, still in his EVA suit with the helmet retracted, pored over the tank woman with a medical data-holo in his hands.
The doctor looked up. “Eamon, I’m glad you’re here. I was just about to—”
Finnegan walked directly at McNeill with such purpose, the doctor backed a step away with a confused expression.
“I need to borrow your suit. Now.” Finnegan reached out and thumped the disc on McNeill’s chest. It did nothing.
“What are you doing?”
“I need the suit, William. No questions.”
“Well, you can’t just walk up and thump someone in the chest. There’s a security identicode and—”
“Bill!”
“Fine. And not to mention etiquette,” McNeill said while pushing the disc on his chest. The suit retracted, and Finnegan grabbed the disc.
“Thank you kindly.” Finnegan knew the chances of him ever seeing the doctor again were slim, but William didn’t know that. The only thing on his mind now was saving his grandson, and, yes, the bloody crew too.
As Finnegan left the hold, he activated the EVA suit. It fit, as they say, like a glove, even adjusting for the splint on his injured arm. He slipped into the cargo bay airlock. Obviously, the dinnarei would be notified at this point. Finnegan merely looked at the security feed and waved as if everything was A-OK.
The outer door unhinged and opened. The ramp lowered to the hangar floor.
Not even a question. That dinnarei is either too well-trained or not trained well enough.
He walked across the hangar bay straight for a single-pilot Terudithan fighter. It floated ass-end up and, aside from a few scrapes on its exterior, seemed intact. Useless arm or not, old Mister Finnegan had one last chance to help. It was time. Time to go out with a big bang. Davin would forgive him—eventually. Rather than a slow death in the belly of a whale, Eamon Finnegan would go out heroically.
He deactivated his boots and pushed off, drifting to a narrow ladder on the side of the compact ship. He stepped up to the first rung and hesitated, doubt curdling the lump of pasta in his belly. It wasn’t fear of dying—he’d been ready for that cycles ago—he just didn’t know what to expect when he climbed in. He’d seen enough Terudithan horrors to break a weaker man’s mind.
But it’s up to me to protect the crew, he thought. To protect my boy’s boy.
Eamon knew the stakes. Aiden and company could live to continue the war and end it, they could die today, or they could spend the remainder of their lives probed and tortured by squid scum. But this was something within his control, a parting gift to see them on their way, safe back to fleet.
Checking the O2 on his holo, the level remained steady at nineteen percent. That wouldn’t give him a lot of time, but enough. Swallowing hard, Finnegan proceeded, the EVA’s kinematic assistance and zero-gravity aiding his one-armed ‘climb.’ With each rung, he said goodbye to every person he ever cared about, which was only a handful. Most were dead. He was ready—no, he was beyond ready—to join Mei in the next evolution, whatever that may be.
As he reached the top, he found the cockpit canopy unlocked and open just enough to get his fingers beneath the edge. He peered inside at an empty seat and breathed a sigh of relief.
No nasty surprises…not yet anyway.
The console, or lack thereof, held an array of curved ridges that wound around the inner shell of the cockpit.
More alien engineering…what did you expect, you old ninny?
Finnegan lifted the lid and drifted inside. He eased into the awkward seat, bringing his knees to his chest to fit. The console was made of strange thick organic strands.
“What in Christ’s name do I do with this shite?” he muttered inside his helm.
The cockpit roof closed on its own, sealing him inside his tomb. He looked up and around, a bit disoriented by the hangar floor straight ahead of him. He searched for a bloody flight stick or engine starter and found none.
Through his visor, something moved across the curved console. He gazed around and spied a thick strand of something that looked uncomfortably organic and serpent-like slither away from the console and toward him. Then, a series of blood-red tendrils wound their way around his body and forced him back into the seat, which molded around him. Pinned and unable to move, he couldn’t reach to activate his comms.
Finnegan grunted and cursed.
The armor would protect him from harm. That Kellanie Leigh woman spoke highly of the Dinnarei tech. The tendrils continued to restrict his movements. They moved up over his helmet until his vision was obscured.
Finnegan grit his teeth. “Freck…off…”
This wasn’t how he imagined dying. He was supposed to go out saving the bloody day, not squeezed to death while pinned inside an alien fighter. Every damn time he struggled or fought, the tendrils tightened their hold. Holding his breath, he played dead, but the tendrils remained. At one point, he must have blacked out. He shot awake, drool on his lips and chin.
His suit retracted into the disc.
“No, no…no!” He was fully exposed and without oxygen. Holding his breath for as long as possible, he felt blood rush to his face. Giving up, he tried to suck air, expecting the temperature of space to freeze his insides. Yet, the cockpit must have been equalized with O2. He could breathe! The air had an acidic tinge to it, but he could breathe.
The tendrils released their grip around his head. Maybe they were letting go?
Red-hot pain seared through his skull. Screaming out, his muscles contracted and relaxed over and over, sending his body into a meltdown. He could do nothing but grit his teeth through the pain, squeezing his eyes shut, gurgling.
After an eternity, it seemed, the tendrils relaxed. A serene feeling washed over him. Finnegan had full control of the fighter’s systems. With a thought, he engaged the startup sequence. The engine thrummed through his circulatory system, an extension of himself. He somehow knew the cabin environment had altered itself for his physiology. He couldn’t help but marvel at the smart tech, then corrected himself. This was bio-organic, no, biomimetic, not technological.
Symbols popped into his mind in an alien language, yet he understood.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the AEV Mark-I prototype ship resting on the hangar bay deck, the engine in startup sequence. His targeting array lit up automatically.
Enemy detected.
No, he thought, and the array blinked off.
Finnegan relaxed a little, knowing at the very least, Davin would be safe. When the terudithans attacked, he’d kill them all. Kill them all.
Thirty-Five
Aiden waited, eyes shut tight, to be run through or torn in half. Instead, he heard the muffled sound of…barking?
He opened his eyes to see Spero launch herself from the central deck at the crab-creature. The retriever rammed into it, forcing the thing to scrabble up the side of the wall and away from Aiden. The hound pushed off and landed back on the dec
k. In full attack mode, Spero leaped off the deck a second time, inertia pushing her through the air. She growled, and barked—not the ‘hey, here I am’ bark but the vicious bark of a primal animal defending its pack. Her lips curled back, and her canines snapped inside her helmet.
“Spero!”
The crab creature swiped a massive pincer at his dog. As wild as she’d just sounded, the yelp she emitted when struck, her body flying through the air, made Aiden’s stomach drop. He pulled again at his rifle, ready to exterminate the bastard creature.
It came down the wall at him, head armor flared, mouth parts clicking, both pincers snapping. Aiden howled at the creature, a howl of frustration and willful rage.
Thwap-thwap-thwap!
Streaks of light smacked the creature’s thorax. It reeled, screeching, and another barrage of projectiles peppered its full length. It shattered into chitinous parts and limbs, tentacles and goo-spiraling ribbons of internal organs churning out and crystallizing in the deadly chill.
SigsOp Harper stood on the central deck, a plasma rifle tethered to each shoulder. After killing the mother of all crabs, he turned his weapons on the erupting cocoons and whatever slug-like things were emerging. His mouth moved as he fired, but his voice was muffled inside his helmet and shrouded by the reports of his plasma rifle’s ionized rounds.
Aiden activated his comms to hear Harper yelling, “Shit yeah!”
“Harper!” Aiden yelled. “Harper, you did it! Stop firing! Harper, Christ, stand down! We’re done here!”
The SigsOp finally laid off turning cocoons and slugs into frozen chunks. He was breathing heavy and looked white-eyed at his C.O. “Shit…yeah…”
“All right. That’s what you’ve got? Shit yeah?”
Harper laughed, a tinge of his usual anxiety in the sound. “Sorry…. How about ‘let’s get you the hell out of here, sir’?”
Aiden turned to look for Spero. “We need to get Spero…check on her…I think, I…the creature—” Tears threatened to spring from his eyes.
Harper stood over the trench and aimed his rifle at Aiden’s tether. “First, let’s get you out of here, sir. Lean back just a little.”
Aiden quickly did as the man said before he fired a round at the tether, freeing him from the lodged rifle.
“Too easy.” Harper said and lowered his hand, helping Aiden up to the central deck.
“Sir, look who I found.” Ryder was walking across the deck. She had Spero in her arms. “Covered in slime and with a hurt leg.”
Aiden’s boots magnetized to the deck and Ryder rushed over with his dog. Spero licked the inside of her visor trying to get to him, and the rush of everything—being alive, Spero being okay, Zoe’s injury and Billy’s death, Harper rescuing him—made him start to shake and feel weak. Aiden’s eyes filled with tears, and he didn’t care that Harper and Ryder saw him.
“Mason, he’s …” He glanced at Mason’s lifeless body, but he couldn’t make himself look for a moment longer. How were they going to tell his relatives?
Aiden saw Harper flinch at the sight of their dead companion, while Ryder kept her gaze on the living. “Sorry I wasn’t here sooner, sir…”
Aiden opened his mouth and closed it again.
“Harper charged here before I even got to the computer core,” Ryder said, as if she needed an excuse for not arriving at the same time.
“Let’s just get out of here. We can worry about reports and follow-ups later.” They’d lost a good crewman today. He accepted Spero into his arms and nodded at Ryder and Harper. He wasn’t going to lose any more.
They made their way to the exit. As they went up the stairs, Aiden said, “So, where’s my SigsOp James Harper, and what did you do with him?”
“Sir?” Harper furrowed his brow, then got the joke. “I don’t know what came over me. I got the data from the core and then just felt like I’d had enough. Enough of this place, enough of being afraid. Maybe all this stress just forced me to decide…”
“Decide what?”
“Between death or choosing to fight back. And all I could think about was our motto, ‘Keep Fighting Forward’…and that was that, I guess.”
Harper was certainly full of surprises today, maybe his faith in people was restored, just a little.
“It sucks about Mason and I hope Grimes recovers fast,” Harper said. “Billy always laughed at my jokes, even the lame ones.”
Aiden noticed through her visor, that Ryder had tears in her eyes. He knew she and Zoe had bonded, being the two females of the crew—other than Spero, and he was probably the only one who saw his dog as more than, well, a dog. “We’ll honor him,” Aiden said, stopping and looking back toward the central deck below, where Billy Mason had fallen.
His visor darkened. From that angle, the glowing ball of light seared his eyes. “Any idea what that’s made of?”
“According to my holo,” Harper said, “it’s essentially a compact hydrogen factory.”
“Exposed like that? How’s it contained? And why aren’t we dead from radiation?”
“Not a darn clue.”
“You’re starting to sound like Karson,” Aiden said as they entered the pressurization chamber between the alien hub and the corridor to the hangar bay. “Right now, let’s get out of here. I want to get Spero to the med bay, tell Kellanie… Captain Leigh, the new fancy armor has a major design flaw. After that, we need to recover Mason’s remains…”
Ryder flashed a look at Harper, then at Aiden. “Sir, haven’t you been listening to comms?”
Aiden shook his head. “Been a little occupied.”
“A Terudithan escort vessel is on its way to our location,” she said.
This was getting to be too damn much. “What? How close is it?”
“Too close,” Harper said.
“Cendent Flea sent out a distress signal in case any Dinnarei ships are in or near our sector,” Ryder told him. “But unless they’re within thirty or so ems…”
“That’s a long shot.” Aiden said, activating his comms as the outer door slid open and they were once again in the soundless vacuum of space. “Aiden to Karson, you copy?”
“I hear you, sir,” Karson sounded out of breath. “I’ve just secured Grimes into the med bay and the AI is working on her leg.”
Aiden breathed a sigh of relief, but they weren’t out of trouble yet. “I understand we have the enemy closing in on us?”
“You understand correctly.”
“Is everyone else aboard? Other than us,” he paused, “and Mason?”
“Well, uh…most everyone,” Karson said, an uptick at the end of the sentence as if he expected to get yelled at.
Aiden’s jaw tightened. Harper and Ryder both looked confused.
“Who is missing?” he asked, somehow keeping cool.
“Well, seems Mister Finnegan left through the airlock, oh, almost ten ems ago.”
“Mister Finnegan! Do you read me?” Aiden yelled. “Finnegan, where the hell are you?”
“Uh, yeah,” Karson cut in. “He’s not answering comms, sir.”
Aiden accessed his holo and scrolled through the menu, scanning for life-signs outside the AEV Mark-I. Something showed up inside the hangar bay. “Sit tight, Karson. We’re on the way.”
Thirty-Six
Davin’s voice cut through his subconscious mind.
“Grandpa, what in the hell are you doing? Get outta there!”
The sheer panic in his grandson’s voice sliced through Eamon’s heart. Unable to bring himself to speak, he concentrated on the ship; otherwise, he may just change his mind.
He thought it, and the ship reacted just a fraction later. The Terudithan fighter elevated from the deck and leveled out. The underwing engines tilted into position at his whim. He lifted twenty feet higher, then turned toward the gaping hole in the cruiser’s outer hull.
“Let’s bloody do this,” he said.
It was time to get in some practice before the shite got real.
T
hirty-Seven
As soon as Aiden was on board, he retracted his EVA suit. Slime dripped to the floor as Karson met them beyond the airlock. Aiden had no idea he was covered in so much alien goo. Harper, Ryder, and Spero were similarly disgusting.
A wall hatch behind Aiden opened and a glossy chrome armature extended, which set to work on scanning and analyzing the slime; he assumed for clean-up. Spero, out of her EVA, growled at the bot arm.
“I admire your spirit, girl,” he said, “But you need to have that leg seen to. Where’s Doctor McNeill?”
“In the hold still,” Karson responded, “with the Tank Girl. Our startup sequence is in progress, sir.”
Spero limped over to the Weps and licked his hand. He smiled down at the retriever and scratched her head. “You’re one tough dog, Spero.”
Ryder stepped forward. “I’ll get her secured in the med bay, sir.”
“Thank you, Ryder. Go on, girl. Go with her.” He glanced at Karson. “Where’s Kellanie?”
“Command Hub.”
Aiden headed in that direction while both Karson and Harper fell in behind him after silently appraising one another. Entering the hub, he saw Kellanie get to her feet from her Command chair, and Harper made a beeline for Flea, joining her at the Signals console. Aiden strode straight to Kellanie, making her scowl at his direct approach.
He fixed her with an equally dark look. “Why the hell didn’t your ship warn us about the Terudithan escort?”
“Eve didn’t pick it up. I don’t know why. The sensors reset themselves to short range for some reason. It’s a glitch. I should have double checked.”
Aiden ran his fingers through his hair. “Glitch?”
“Yeah, Aiden. We’re field testing, if you didn’t recall.”
“Field test? This is not a field test, Kellanie. People are dead!”
Reece stopped from pacing the hub. “And more are about to die. We should be discussing how to save my grandfather!” The co-pilot looked on the verge of a meltdown.
Aiden wasn’t doing so great himself. Why did the old man take such a risk? “We need to pinpoint Mister Finnegan’s location before we take off.”