THE PRIZE: BOOK TWO - RETRIBUTION, page 25
“Where the hell is the hatch!” She muttered, cold sweat beading her brow as a glacial chill bit into her leg. Thankfully she spotted the telltale fluorescent yellow markings of a maintenance hatch. It wasn’t her intended target, but any port in a storm would do, she thought, as she shuffled towards it.
The airlock cycled open and she quickly dropped through the opening as the cold knifed into the muscles of her thigh, waiting for what felt like an eternity before the hatch closed and the airlock flooded with life giving air.
“Who the hell are you?” A disembodied voice asked out of thin air as she removed her helmet.
“Station maintenance - this shitty suit gave out on me and I had to get back inside - couldn’t make it back to the station,” she answered, thankful she’d prepared her answer just in case some nosy prick noticed her entrance.
“What the fuck were you doing out there in a shitty suit?”
“Didn’t know that until I got outside. The boss just told me to get out there and fix the comm antenna.” As she answered, Ellis massaged her thigh that felt as if someone was stabbing her with a knife.
The inner hatch cycled open and a man dressed in an engineering soft suit entered, and helped her to her feet. The Good Samaritan helped her off with her air pack, and as a ‘thank you’ she stunned him instead of killing him outright. Her fake Imperial Marine undress greens weren’t in too bad a shape, and after straightening them and attaching her rank and ribbons she didn’t look too bad. As a precaution, she gagged and tied the unfortunate engineer, and dragged him to a utility locker. Putting her side hat on, she straightened her shoulders and marched out of the engineering space as if she owned it. Imperial designs being what they were, it wasn’t difficult to negotiate her way through the ship and down to the Marine deck. Upon entering, the first thing she found were two Tellurian Surls lounging about in the mess playing some sort of card game. They both looked up at her as she entered, and for a moment didn’t do anything.
“On your feet Marines, and stand to attention!” Training being what it was, both complied, shooting to their feet and coming to rigid attention. “You should know better than to sit around when an officer enters. As of now you are both on report.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” They both replied.
“Where are the rest of your squad, and your Sergeant?”
“Sleeping, Ma’am.”
“Sleeping! What the hell are Marines doing sleeping at this hour of the day! I can see a few hours of close quarter drill are needed here. Get them out of their racks and in full battle dress in five minutes or less and have your Sergeant report to me at once!” She didn’t raise her voice—there was no need. The mere fact an officer had caught them lollygagging around when they should have been dressed and working at something was sufficient reason to forestall any question of how she’d got here. Both scrambled out of the mess, yelling to wake everybody up. Ellis paced back and forth across the bay, as if pissed, hearing boots pounding on the deck as their Sergeant rushed in, still doing up his tunic. He skidded to a halt and came to attention just inside the door, almost forgetting and starting to salute without his cap on.
“Sergeant Rook reporting Ma’am.” Ellis continued pacing back and forth for a moment before stopping and looking at the bulkhead.
“Is it customary for Marines to come into the presence of an officer only partly dressed Sergeant?”
“N…no Ma’am.”
“Then I strongly suggest that you remove yourself and return when you are properly dressed. Now move it!” She snapped. The Sergeant scrambled back out of the mess, yelling at the troopers who came rushing up, dragging their equipment. Most turned and finished dressing and she could hear the muttered swear words and general bitching out in the squad bay as they did. A few moments later the Sergeant came back in, completely dressed with his cap on and came to attention and saluted. Ellis gave him an off-handed salute in return. She sniffed and frowned, eyeing the man up and down in disapproval.
“Troops ready for inspection, Ma’am.” He growled, none too happy to be caught off guard by an officer, and a human one at that. The Tellurian Vars were bad enough, but a human officer was ten time worse. They all seemed to have been born with a broom handle shoved up their asses and a shitty attitude.
“My name is Ellis, Sub-Major Ellis, and so far I am not, repeat not happy with your performance. Let us hope it improves as the day progresses, Sergeant.”
“Y…yes, Ma’am… Sub-Major.” Even so, the Sergeant was starting to frown as he looked at her. Ellis noticed and immediately strode across the deck and stood nose to nose with him.
“Are you eyeballing me Sergeant? Do you fancy me?” She growled, rocking the Tellurian back on his heels. She couldn’t give the man time to think and start wondering.
“No… no Sub-Major, I…”
“Is your pathetic little dick getting hard wondering what I’m like in the sack?” She heard the troopers out in the squad bay snickering, much to the Sergeant’s embarrassment. His dark skin turned an unhealthy shade of baby shit brown.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect, Sub-Major… it’s just..”
“I should hope so Sergeant, disrespect me and I’ll have your guts for garters! Now get the men lined up for inspection and be quick about it, unless you want to find yourself a trooper again.”
The Sergeant saluted and scrambled out of the mess, shouting orders as he did. Ellis performed an inspection, writing half of them up and threatening to put them all on report. By now, any thought of questioning her authority or orders were forgotten, but even so, she had to keep the momentum going.
“IMPSEC has it on good authority that the low life scum on this station want to take over this ship. They plan on assaulting the lock sometime today. I want all of you out front guarding the lock as a show of force. If any of these assholes sticks his or her nose into the docking area I want you to shoot it off and ask questions later. Is that clear!”
“Yes, Sub-Major they chorused.
“Good. Get to it on the double.”
With that they pounded out of the Marine deck without a second’s thought. Ellis followed, making it appear she was going with them. As they vanished around a corner she changed directions and headed to the bridge, finding it empty much to her surprise. Walking to the comm station she keyed the Marine frequency.
“As a precaution, I’m going to lock the ship down and put the defense system on auto, Sergeant.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” The Sergeant might be wondering at this point why the auto cannons weren’t sufficient to stop any would-be boarders from storming the lock, but as the main hatch closed and locked it was far too late to do anything about it.
Ellis breathed a sigh of relief. She’d done it. Now all she had to do was get everyone aboard and get the hell out of here without the station blowing the ship to bits with their weapons. She had ideas about that as well. It didn’t take long to get the shuttlecraft aboard and have the girls sweep the ship for any remaining crew attempting to hide. As reported, the crew and officers were on the station for a liberty weekend, so the ship was theirs. Now came the tricky part of getting away.
“You want to do what?” Gary Asher asked in amazement.
“I need you to dismount one of the warheads off a torpedo.”
“What! Those are bloody nukes you know.”
“I do. After that I’ll need someone’s help in dragging it over to the hull of the station and fixing it there.” Gary Asher looked at her and she could see the wheels turning in his head.
“Oh right. You want them to think you’ve got a remote trigger. If they start shooting at us, the nuke blows.” Ellis winked at him.
“Right on.”
“That’s downright sneaky.”
“Can you think of another way for us to get the hell out of here without getting shot up?”
“Off hand, no, but you’ll have that place in a panic once they find out.”
“All the better. We are almost out of the gravity well, so it shouldn’t take us long to get far enough away to jump.”
“Good point, but to where?”
“I’ll have to have a word with that navigator to answer that. Between him and the star charts I should be able to figure out a direction to jump in.
“I’ll get on dismounting that warhead and getting it glued to the station.
“Hurry. I don’t think they are going to give us much time, and I can only stall for so long.”
“Ten-four, major.”
“Now all I need is a little diversion,” she muttered, keying her wrist unit.
“Now would be a good time.”
“Received and understood. May the eternal stars guide your path.” Came the reply.
“Go in peace, good friend.” The strange alien in the shop on the station was more than willing to do as she’d asked, but she did add that it might be better if he, or it, found a different place to conduct business.
“I understand and I will leave once I have completed your request.”
“Major! What’s going on?” The Marine Sergeant demanded over the comm.
“Nothing much. As a precaution, I’m undocking the ship and standing clear. Ellis - out.” As she spoke, she hit the alarm, seeing the bright yellow warning light start flashing as the Marines scurried clear of the armored docking hatch as it rumbled closed.
There wasn’t much the Marines could do about it, other than get out of the way, not wanting to be caught on the wrong side of the door between them and the ship as it undocked and put the connecting gangway in vacuum. Ellis kept her eyes on the monitor showing the view inside the docking area, seeing all the Marines looking at the hatchway. They didn’t see the hatch at the end of the short passageway open and three objects come sailing in. All three exploded with a flash of bright light and a hull-shaking blast. The Marines turned and opened fire as they were trained to, not that there was anything to shoot at, nor that they could see through the eye searing brightness. That brought an immediate response from station security and a few minutes later a heavily armed security team opened the same hatch and tried to enter the docking bay. The Marines didn’t wait this time and started shooting, thinking they were the boarding party they’d been forewarned about trying to take the ship. In moments, a full-scale firefight broke out, with station security screaming for medics and more men.
“That should keep them busy for a while.” Ellis grinned.
“You’re so bad, Mom.” Jenny chuckled. “Dad would be proud of you.”
“Thank you dear. I do have my moments.” She smiled, fluffing her hair. “Where’s that pathetic excuse for a navigator?”
“I’ll go fetch him.”
“Listen to me you pathetic little runt. We are leaving the system by the shortest route possible. I need you to put up the star charts of this region for me to see and work out a jump to somewhere safe.”
“B…but I don’t know anything about this space… I… I only know how to jump from Earth to a couple of places, and back to Earth. I can take you there.”
“No you can’t. If you check you’ll find the return course to Earth is gone.”
“That’s impossible… the Nav Buoys would know…” He stuttered into silence seeing Ellis shake her head.
“Gone. Erased. You don’t believe me, punch up the Nav data and check.” The navigator did, a look of horror spreading across his face as he checked the mainframe and then the backup copy of the Nav data. It was blank.
“B…but how… that’s not possible.”
“My husband erased it from the imperial data banks on Telluria Prime, as well as from all the imperial Nav Buoys. That means we have to get somewhere safe.”
“There isn’t anywhere safe near here, except maybe Tellurian space.”
“Tellurian space is out. How about Silurian space?”
“Them? They aren’t any friendlier to humans than the Thrakee.”
“Oh I don’t know about that. If my husband was successful in his mission, we might find a friendly port in Silurian space.”
“You willing to bet your life on it?” The man said, showing a little backbone for once. Ellis smiled.
“Yes I am, and the lives of everyone aboard.
While the firefight raged, Ellis watched the outside hull cam and the progress of the three suited figures towing the warhead to the station. To her they were taking far too long, but she knew there was no way to rush them. While she waited she check the sensors to see if any ships were leaving, spotting three. Hopefully the strange alien was aboard one of them, not wanting him to be implicated in the donnybrook going on in the docking bay. Gwen came onto the bridge looking pleased with herself.
“We got all the families settling in, but it’s a bit crowded in places.”
“We need to start getting them sorted out and jobs to do. Cooking for a start and figure out a mess routine.”
“Ten-four to that, what else?”
“Weapons training. I’ll need some of them to load the torpedoes and fire the main guns if need be.”
“Wow! That’s a tall order. None of them know a damn thing about that.”
“Hopefully the engineering crew can teach them before we run into something we can’t run away from.” It was a bleak thought
“You know anything about firing those weapons you’re talking about?” Ellis smiled slightly and nodded absently.
“Yeah, a little.”
“Remind me not to get on your bad side, Major.” Gwen grinned and gave Ellis a sort of salute before she left the bridge.
“I have the local star charts.. or I think I do.”
Ellis walked over and looked at the three dimensional holo-screen, seeing the local sun, a dim, blue-white star, guessing it was on the small side as stars go. Other than a couple of rocky, lifeless planets and an asteroid belt, the system didn’t have much going for it. The only reason for the old station to be here was the fact that once upon a time this system had been at the very edge of the Tellurian Empire—the edge now being many parsecs away. Now, this was just some forgotten backwater with little of interest to anyone in the Empire, other than IMPSEC as a monitoring station. Ellis was betting the local IMPSEC commander was making sure the Empire and himself were getting rich from all the business going on here. Just then the short-range comm systems came to life.
“Imperial ship Capron! This is station control. In the name of the Mother, what’s going on out there?” That answered the question about whether this was an IMPSEC ship or not. Ellis tapped the console.
“Oh, nothing much control. We have a firefight going on in the docking bay to repel boarders.”
“What… what boarders! Station security is responding to reports of weapons fire in the docking bay,” the man spluttered.
“Really. That’s news to us. As a precaution I’m standing off and preparing to leave the system.”
‘I’m ordering you to stand your men down and surrender the ship.”
“I can’t do that. I don’t have the authority.”
“I’m ordering you to stand down… who is this?” They’d finally got round to asking the one question Ellis wasn’t about to answer.
“Sound to me as if this is another attempt to seize this ship!”
“If you try to leave, I’ll open fire on you.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Right now, there is a twenty-megaton warhead attached to the hull of your station. It’s also rigged with an anti-tamper device and a dead man switch… or in this case a dead woman switch. You fire on this ship and it will take out a major portion of your station, same if this ship is destroyed.” Silence greeted her statement. “I take it you’ll want to check while we are exiting the system, but remember, any tampering will detonate the warhead.” This was the ultimate game of ‘chicken’.
“Back us away slowly.” Ellis ordered the helmsman.
The distance between the ship and the station slowly widened and as more of the hull came into view, she could see the station weapons swiveling around to point at her. The pucker factor increased and she could feel her butt gripping the seat cover even tighter. A drone came sailing around the curve of the hull and after a few moments searching around it locked onto the warhead. It hovered there and Ellis could imagine what the station commander was thinking. Was she bluffing or was the threat real. A twenty megaton warhead could take out a good section of the station if it went off, not to mention the massive decompression that would ensue. Even sealing the internal bulkheads and pressure doors wouldn’t stop the runaway loss of air. With luck, he might be able to save five percent of the station’s occupants, not that he cared about a bunch of low life slavers, pirates and assorted scum, but it was his own life he’d be thinking of. Ellis was betting he wouldn’t take the chance. She was right. As they drifted further away, none of the weapons fired.
“I’ll be leaving now. Once I reach the jump point I’ll deactivate the warhead, but not before.” By that time they’d be so far out that no missiles would be able to reach her before she jumped. The tension slowly diminished the further away they got, until she felt reasonably safe.
“We’ll be able to jump in one hour, Ma’am, but where do you want to jump to?” The navigator asked. Ellis turned her attention back to the holographic star chart, slowly stepping out until she had a better view of the surrounding star systems.
