The damaged Alliance warship filled most of the view, but a swath of starry space was visible in the corner. Another ship was coming into sight in that space. An imperial dreadnought.
Chapter 19
The screech of blazer fire shook Alisa from the stare she had locked onto the imperial ship. She leaped from the pilot’s seat, ignoring the alarms wailing and the lights flashing all over the consoles on the bridge. Leonidas stood to the side of the double doors, shooting down the corridor. If the tug’s soldiers hadn’t known where their intruders were before, they surely did after that crash.
“Mica?” Alisa ran to her station, both to check on her progress with the suits and because it would get her out of the line of fire from the doorway.
“I disabled two of them,” Mica said. “I’m not sure if it’s permanent or not. I tried to make it that way.”
“How many men left to do?” Hiding in the dark cubby on the Nomad, Alisa had gotten the impression of close to twenty men stomping around, engaging in cat and mouse with Leonidas.
“Nineteen.”
“Ah.” Alisa had hoped she had overestimated—that would be a lot of angry soldiers waiting in the cargo hold upon their return. Even though Leonidas had clearly shown he could play cat and mouse with the best of them and that he could handle superior numbers, that seemed a lot to ask, even for a cyborg.
“There are more of them coming,” Leonidas said over his shoulder as he ducked behind the wall to avoid fire. Crimson and orange beams lanced through the doorway, one striking the view screen. It exploded with an angry snapping of electricity. Smoke streamed into the air, and the view went black.
“Can you fight a way through them so we can get to the lift?” Alisa asked. She looked around the bridge, hoping to spot some back door that she had missed, but there was only the one exit.
“Not a chance,” Leonidas said, “but we might be able to get to the first intersection there. They haven’t advanced that far yet. If I remember the layout of this ship correctly, there are some maintenance ladder wells that could take us back down to the airlock level.”
Alisa winced at the idea of trying to navigate rungs in the clunky spacesuit. Would Leonidas even be able to fit inside a ladder well in that big armor of his?
“We better go soon if we want to have a chance,” he added. “Their whole crew will be here in a minute.”
Another red beam sizzled through the doorway, this time smashing into the helm.
“Mica?” Alisa asked. “How much time do you need?”
“Ten minutes and a foxy lady,” Mica said, her hands flying over a set of holo controls.
“I’d get you one if I could. Ah, you are referring to the drink, right?”
“Yes.”
Leonidas unleashed another barrage of fire while muttering something about having used up all his rust bangs on the Nomad. He raised his voice. “They’re regrouping, and I think more men just arrived. Marchenko, we have to go now.”
“Come on, Mica.”
“Just three more.”
Alisa pulled Mica out of the seat. “It’ll have to be good enough.”
They joined Leonidas beside the doorway, staying out of the soldiers’ line of sight. Leonidas fired a couple of shots down the corridor, but he also held something in his left hand, a blazer pistol he had snatched from a fallen bridge officer. In the seconds when nobody was firing, Alisa could hear it humming softly.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, gripping Mica’s arm because she kept glancing back toward the station she had been using.
“Overloading it,” he said as the humming increased. His mouth moved, like he was counting, then he leaned out, and fired his rifle several times before throwing the pistol down the corridor.
It skidded along the deck like a hockey puck belted across the arena. Just before it reached the corner where the soldiers were firing from, it blew up, exploding with enough force to make the walls tremble.
“Come on,” Leonidas said. “Stay right behind me.”
He charged into the corridor, not waiting for a response.
Trusting Mica to follow, Alisa raced after him, running as fast as she could in the awkward spacesuit. She did her best to keep up with Leonidas, who blitzed toward the black smoke filling the corridor, firing as he went. Return shots zipped toward him. One slammed into his shoulder. That one might have struck Alisa if he hadn’t been there.
Firing wildly, he stopped just past the intersection he had mentioned. Thanks to the explosion, pockmarks damaged the deck ahead of him, and soot coated the walls. The smoke still clogging the air did not keep the soldiers from firing. Alisa sprinted around the corner, ducking as a blazer bolt streaked past Leonidas. As she went, she waved frantically for Mica to follow. She needn’t have bothered. Mica crashed into her in her haste to avoid more blazer bolts lancing down the corridor.
“This way,” Mica said, passing her to take the lead.
Leonidas ducked around the corner, but did not follow them. Instead, he kept leaning out and firing at the soldiers, keeping them from charging up to the intersection.
Alisa hesitated, not wanting to leave him behind. His shoulder smoldered from where he had taken that direct hit, and a dozen other dents and scorch marks marred his armor. Had any of the attacks reached flesh? How injured was he under that armor?
“Go,” Leonidas barked, pointing his chin toward Mica’s retreating back.
Reluctantly, Alisa obeyed. Even if she stayed, what could she have done to help? Besides, he knew the layout of the ship and where they were going. He could catch up.
Mica led them around two turns, almost sprinting past the ladder well.
“Here,” Alisa called, pointing to the compact hole in the side of a corridor.
Mica cursed as she skidded to a stop and backtracked. “Your armored buddy will never fit in that.”
Alisa, staring at the narrow ladder well, was thinking the same thing.
“He’ll have to find another way down then,” she said, though she hated the idea of leaving him where he would be forced to fight so many, forced to kill if he wanted to avoid capture. That was everything she had hoped to avoid by coming along.
Someone cried out in the distance, and the sounds of the firefight continued to echo through the corridors.
Mica swung onto the rungs, her large, awkward spacesuit boots slipping off more than once as she descended. Her oxygen tank banged against the wall behind her, and the welding blowtorch she still carried caught in the ladder.
“You might want to leave that behind,” Alisa said.
Mica grunted, freed it, and continued down, not relinquishing the tool. Maybe she planned to make more doors along the way. Alisa followed her, having little more luck navigating in the spacesuit. More than once, she almost fell, but they made it to the bottom deck, the one that held the airlock hatch.
They did not run into anyone as they raced through the long, white corridors. All of the soldiers must have been on the bridge level, trying to get to their commander, trying to defeat Leonidas. Alisa did not see how he could find his way back down here to join them, especially if he could not fit inside the ladder well. She blinked back tears, focusing on the way ahead. This wasn’t the time to mourn. She needed to get back to her ship.
Mica ran around a corner and came to the dead end where they had boarded earlier. Drying blood stained the deck, but the soldiers Leonidas had shot had disappeared, dragging themselves to sickbay or up to join the fight.
Mica pressed her palms to the hatch on either side of the window, clunking her faceplate as she peered out.
“Can you see the Nomad?” Alisa asked, crowding behind her.
“Yes, but there’s no way the tube will reach over there. You should have been steering us closer to the ship instead of crashing into another one.”
“That other one was about to lock its grab beam onto the Nomad. We wouldn’t have had any chance of getting to it if they’d hauled it away.”
“What chance d
o we have now?” Mica demanded, stepping back so Alisa could look.
“Plenty. We’re in spacesuits, and that’s space.” Alisa waved at the gap between them and the Nomad.
“Are you crazy? We don’t have rocket packs. We can’t steer ourselves over there. We’ll just end up floating helplessly until our oxygen runs out and we die of asphyxiation.”
“Quit being so dramatic. All we have to do is make sure we push off in a straight line.”
“A straight—that ship must be a thousand meters away, easy. Nobody can jump that straight.”
“It’s not like we need to land on a half tindark coin,” Alisa said. “Anywhere on the freighter, and we can grab on, magnetize our boots, and walk along the hull to the hatch.”
“You are crazy. What happens if we miss?”
Shouts sounded down the corridor behind them, along with the firing of weapons. They had left that noise behind as they descended the ladder well, so if they were hearing it again now, that meant that soldiers were down here, on this level. Alisa and Mica didn’t have much time.
“And what happens if we make it?” Mica demanded, grabbing Alisa’s arm. “There’s a huge squadron of very irritated soldiers with boot problems in there. They’ll shoot the first thing that comes in the door.”
Heavy footfalls thundered in a corridor near them, someone running in their direction.
“Inside,” Alisa whispered, tugging open the hatch to the airlock. The outer hatch remained shut—it would take a minute for the ship to depressurize the inside so they could jump off. She hoped they had that minute.
Mica unleashed a stream of curses as she shoved herself into the airlock. As Alisa stepped across the threshold after her, a familiar figure raced around a corner and sprinted toward them. Smoke wafted from the back of Leonidas’s crimson armor, his faceplate was cracked, and he was limping. None of that slowed him down.
Someone fired around the corner toward his back, but he spun and loosed a few bolts, driving the soldier back into hiding. He lunged into the airlock, barely keeping from knocking Alisa over as he hit the button that made the hatch slide shut behind him.
“Cycle the lock,” he barked.
“Already on it,” Mica said.
Alisa made sure her magnetic boots had a hold on the deck as air hissed out of the chamber.
“I can’t help but notice the tube isn’t extended and that your freighter is way over there,” Leonidas said, breathing only slightly heavily after his crazy run.
“That’s because cyborgs are extremely observant,” Alisa said. “We’re jumping.”
A red beam streaked down the corridor, slamming into the thick door.
“Soon, I hope,” Alisa added. “Mica?”
“Any way to keep them from overriding the hatch controls?” Leonidas said, facing the window.
His shoulder blocked most of Alisa’s view, but she glimpsed armored soldiers sprinting down the corridor now that Leonidas couldn’t shoot them.
“Move,” Mica said, hefting the blowtorch.
Wordlessly, Leonidas did so, flattening his back to the wall. Mica welded the metal around the spot where the hatch slid into the wall. The first of the soldiers reached the controls on the other side.
“I’m opening the door,” Leonidas said, shifting to the outer hatch while Mica continued to work.
Alisa knocked on the window. The soldier trying to open the inner hatch looked at her. She had absolutely nothing to say to him and was only trying to buy Mica time, so the metal would melt—or harden. Alisa didn’t know exactly what Mica was doing, but she widened her eyes and pointed behind the man. He scowled at her and returned to the controls.
“Well, that bought us almost a second,” Alisa muttered.
Mica backed away, turning off the blowtorch as the outer hatch opened, and the vastness of space stretched before them. Since the airlock chamber was already depressurized, there was no tug or any sensation of currents stirring. However, a faint hiss reached Alisa’s ears.
She crept up behind Leonidas, touching a hand to his back. “Is that you? Is your suit damaged?”
“Is it damaged?” Mica asked, joining them at the outer hatch. “He looks like he got run over by a herd of Senekda buffalo.”
Clunks and thuds came from the hatch behind them. Mica must have succeeded in jamming it. Either that, or the men realized they couldn’t open it now, not with the outer hatch open. Of course, they might be able to override the interior controls and close that outer hatch.
“I’m venting air,” Leonidas agreed. “We’re jumping? Is that the plan?”
“Yes, how’s your aim?” Alisa asked.
“Probably better than yours. Hang on to me.” He grunted and stepped to the edge, gripping the jamb with both hands and looking back at them.
“Your cyborg isn’t modest, Captain,” Mica said.
“I don’t think modesty is listed as a desirable attribute on cyborg recruiting posters.” Not sure where to grab him, Alisa opted for the strap of the rifle slung across his torso. He wouldn’t let that fall off, she was sure.
Mica, still carrying the blowtorch, wrapped her free arm around his neck and climbed onto his back. Alisa almost made a comment about her revising her bedroom fantasies, but more thuds came from behind them, and Leonidas crouched to push off. Alisa swallowed, fear riding in her chest despite her proclamation that the freighter was huge and hitting it would be easy.
Leonidas pushed off more gently than she expected, stretching his arms out above his head, like a swimmer diving into a pool. They sailed into the blackness of space, stars suddenly visible in all directions. The view took Alisa’s breath away even as it terrified her.
If Leonidas miscalculated and they missed…
Fortunately, they seemed to be on track to hit the freighter. It grew larger as they sailed across the void, the other Alliance warships, along with two imperial vessels, coming into view to the sides.
“We’re going to make it,” Alisa said.
She gripped Mica’s arm with her free one and caught an amazed expression on her engineer’s face as she gazed around them. Alisa felt that same sense of wonder. She knew they still had to deal with the soldiers inside the Nomad, but for now, utter peace and silence surrounded them, their suits protecting them from the cold.
Until Alisa felt something pop.
Alarm surged through her. Had something happened to her suit? No, a reverberation came through her hand where she was touching Leonidas. A tiny stream of air shot out from his damaged suit.
Alisa’s first thought was to worry that he wouldn’t have enough oxygen to make it. Then Mica patted her frantically on the shoulder and pointed ahead of them. That tiny stream of air, released under pressure, was altering their path slightly. And they were still far enough from the Nomad that a slight change of angle mattered.
Alisa’s earlier alarm turned into terror as their path changed—it would take them over the top of the ship and out into space. She shifted her grip so she could clamp her hand over the leak, but it was too late.
They would overshoot the Nomad and be stranded until someone noticed them and picked them up. Or didn’t.
Leonidas’s helmet swiveled toward Mica. As they continued to sail through space, he reached back and grabbed her arm. Alisa frowned in confusion. Then she realized it wasn’t her arm that he had snagged but the blowtorch. She let him have it. He must have pressed something because a razor popped out of the wrist of his armor. He jabbed it into the gas tank on the blowtorch, then twisted it and his arm back at an awkward angle. The force emitted from the tank must have been greater than what was coming out of his suit, because their course soon adjusted. Once again, the Nomad lay within their path.
Mica grinned and thumped him on the shoulder.
Alisa smiled smugly at her, wishing she could say that her cyborg, as Mica had referred to him, had no need to be modest.
They approached the hull of the freighter, Leonidas angling them toward the back of th
e craft. Alisa lost all feeling of smugness, of anything except for shock, when the cargo hold hatch came into view. It wasn’t shut, as it should be. Instead, it gaped open, the dark interior of her ship open to the elements of space.
Chapter 20
Alisa crawled as quickly as she could along the exterior of the Nomad without losing her boots’ magnetic grip on the hull. She had to get to the cargo hold, see why the hatch was open, and figure out if the rest of the ship had been closed off or if… it hadn’t. If it hadn’t, everything would have been blown out into space. Even if it had, everything in the cargo hold would be gone. She grimaced, thinking of Yumi’s chickens.
Leonidas, who was leading their crawl along the hull, stopped, tapped her shoulder, and pointed down. Though impatient, Alisa paused to look. And gape. A soldier in combat armor drifted past, arms waving, a rifle still gripped in his hand. She tensed, thinking he might manage to shoot, but he appeared too distressed by his situation to notice them.
Leonidas continued toward the hatch, maneuvering around the edge and disappearing from sight. Mica and Alisa reached the spot at the same time. Alisa poked her head around the edge, not sure what to expect. She glanced at the dim corner where the chicken pen had been kept. The birds and the makeshift fencing and netting Yumi had erected were gone, as were some items that hadn’t been bolted down.
Shaking her head, she climbed down the edge of the hatch until she could set her boots on the deck. Leonidas was already halfway across the hold, heading for the stairs leading up to the walkway. Landing behind Alisa, Mica planted her feet, then hit the button to close the hatch.
Alisa barely noticed. She strode after Leonidas, trying to see up to the corridor leading into the crew areas. Was the hatch up there open? Closed?
With his long legs, Leonidas made it up the stairs first. Alisa scrambled after him, almost tripping. She cursed the awkward suit, even if it had kept her alive so far in the vacuum of space.
She caught up with Leonidas at a hatch that was thankfully closed. He was knocking at it with the butt of his rifle, probably ready to spin the weapon around if anyone unfriendly came to check on them.