Tiger Honor, page 16
I shuddered. “Remind me not to go on vacation there.”
“Just kidding,” Rokuro said, deadpan.
I blinked at them. Was that a joke? Too bad I couldn’t see their face. I wondered how human they looked beneath that helmet.
“I guess no one’s perfect,” Euna said, ignoring our byplay. “Hackers get more and more clever, and you should see some of the stuff digital artists can come up with. Anyway, let’s have a look before we send you out there, Rokuro—” She cursed at the interface, then brought up a view of the bridge.
No one was there.
“Rokuro, can you call Captain Uchida?” I asked.
Rokuro nodded and spoke into a wrist unit. We heard Uchida’s voice speaking sharply, and Rokuro’s response, even more monotone than usual. The captain was still talking when they cut her off.
“What did she say?” My stomach clenched tight with dread.
“She said to remember the blood-debt the clan owes Hwan,” Rokuro said. “I wasn’t there for that battle—I was too young at the time. But this…This can’t be right.” They sounded queasy. “In any case, it seems Captain Uchida and her squad have been called elsewhere.”
“Remember,” I said, trying to fight my unease, “we thought Special Investigator Yi was in that corridor, but they’d jinxed the video feed. And now Uchida suspects us—she may be alerting Hwan even as we speak. We need to check the bridge in person.”
Euna wrinkled her nose at me. “I suppose. At least I still have my blaster. You might want one too, Sebin. And one for Rokuro, since I managed to melt their weapon…”
We performed a quick search of the office. I could add it to the charges that would be leveled against me at my inevitable court-martial. I was pretty sure desecrating a captain’s office counted as some type of vandalism. Even if the circumstances were desperate.
To our relief, we located two emergency blasters. One of them had an empty power cell, which would have made me question Captain Chaewon’s competence, except it also sported deep scratches and shattered optics. Power cell or no, I doubted it worked. She’d obviously kept it as a memento, perhaps from some former battle, rather than a functioning weapon. At least the other blaster looked all right.
“Rokuro, you’d better take this,” I said, giving them the good one. “I’ve got fangs and claws.”
To my relief, Rokuro handled it expertly, making sure not to point the muzzle at anyone as they tucked it into the holster that had formerly held their stunner. It more or less fit.
“I’m going to take tiger form,” I told Euna and Rokuro. “I’ll crouch down so I don’t impede your field of vision or lines of fire.”
Euna gave me a jaunty salute. I wasn’t sure I merited one, under the circumstances, but I didn’t protest. Right now, anything that kept our morale up was welcome. Rokuro merely nodded.
“Here we go,” I muttered, and shifted. It came as a relief, honestly. Everything became more vivid, including the pain in my hind leg, to my tiger form’s sharper senses. But it was the impetus I needed to remind me how much was at stake.
Euna triggered the hatch, since the computer quite understandably wouldn’t respond to orders in tiger roars. Too bad, because it would be convenient if it did.
The hatch hissed open. I rushed out of the office, trusting my reflexes to warn me if there was an attack incoming. Euna and Rokuro would guard my back and, more importantly, Jee, who was doing the important work of hacking into the relay system.
For a brief moment, I wondered if this was how my relatives felt when they had to depend on someone else to do something they couldn’t. Not that I could see Uncle Hwan admitting weakness. Yet even he had allied with the shaman to deal with Min, because Sena had capabilities he didn’t.
Captain Uchida was gone, and she’d taken one of her guards with her. That left two, I assumed to keep us bottled up while they fetched reinforcements. My heart sank. I’d hoped the reason that everything remained so quiet was the cabin’s soundproofing.
Taking advantage of my reflexes, I charged the two guards, knocking one into the other. They went down in a tangle of limbs. With the others’ aid, it was soon over.
“They’re not dead,” I said to Rokuro after I shifted back.
“Thank you,” Rokuro said. I could smell their gratitude. “They might have felt obligated to fight us. This way is better.”
Euna and Rokuro helped me drag the two fallen mercs out of sight. “They left the bridge in pristine condition,” Euna remarked. “Too bad we can’t ask them to take over our chores for the rest of this voyage. Should we scout this level and figure out where the other mercs went?”
I hesitated. “It’s tempting, but we shouldn’t leave Jee unattended,” I said. “For all we know, they’re hoping we’ll venture out of this area, even though we’re defenseless—or so they think. After all, there are more of them than there are of us, and they’re bigger, too.”
In tiger shape I would have been larger than any one of the warriors. And Euna’s blaster made her smaller size irrelevant, other than allowing her to hide behind cover more readily. I couldn’t imagine those massively armored mercs successfully hiding behind anything, except maybe one another.
Euna opened her mouth, then stopped dead. Rokuro and I did, too. We’d all heard a distant thunk. Had someone gotten careless, or was it a trick to draw us out to investigate?
I realized that we should have been speaking in whispers or in signs. I cursed myself for my laxness. Still, it wasn’t too late to start taking precautions. I dropped my voice to a whisper and said, “We’d better—”
The thunk came again. This time it sounded closer.
“Let’s close the bridge hatch,” I said. “That will slow them down.”
I was worried they’d soon get to us anyway. I remembered the dismaying sight of Captain Chaewon and the bridge crew knocked out by Hwan’s earlier attack. I didn’t want to oversee a reprise.
Get back to the ready room, I mouthed to the others.
I didn’t have to explain my reasoning. Euna and Rokuro nodded.
We hastily retreated. I tapped on the hatch to the office. “Jee!” I said in a fierce whisper. “It’s Sebin. Let us in.”
There was a distracted oath from inside—soundproofing definitely wasn’t the office’s strong suit, good to know—and then the hatch swooshed open to admit us. We hurried in. I caught myself counting the seconds until it closed again.
“How are things going, Jee?” Euna asked.
“Shh!” Jee hissed, and I prodded Euna to get her to shut up.
She was either more easygoing than I’d realized, or she recognized the importance of Jee’s task. She nodded.
Jee’s slate blinked once, twice, and then he straightened, pumping his fist in triumph. “I’m in! Uh—what are we going to tell them?”
“Let me.” I knew exactly what I wanted to say.
Jee handed me the slate. I typed in the necessary salutations, even though I fretted about wasting time. But I couldn’t risk the message failing to go through because of protocol.
Former captain Hwan of the Juhwang Tiger Clan has hijacked the Haetae with the aid of Sun Clan mercenaries, I wrote. He has blackmailed Special Investigator Yi’s assistant Kim Min into assisting him. I wondered whether to mention she was a gumiho, then decided that the authorities must already know. Captain Chaewon and the senior officers are in critical condition. We require assis—
Euna and Jee yelped at the sudden bang as an enormous dent formed in the door. Even Rokuro stiffened. How could the mercs have gotten past the bridge hatch so quickly?
We were under siege.
Drat! I’d been hoping we’d have more time than that. I closed the message with my name and rank, such as it was—Cadet Juhwang Sebin of Space Forces Battle Cruiser Haetae—and hit SEND. My heartbeat jackhammered as I waited for the indication that the message was queued to go out as soon as we exited the Gate.
“Done!” Jee said in triumph when the slate flashed its acknowledgment.
“Folks, we need to get out of here,” Euna said, her gaze flicking to the door. We could see it vibrating as whoever was on the outside slammed something against it like a giant battering ram.
“They’re just doing that to intimidate us,” I said, which may or may not have been true.
“I don’t think that’s the only reason,” Rokuro noted.
It wasn’t the most efficient way to break through a locked hatch on a ship. That would have involved blowtorches to cut the hatch out of the bulkheads, something I’d heard about from Uncle Hwan himself. I assumed the room was reinforced against even supernaturally or magically enhanced attempts to break in, but the growing dents in the hatch didn’t reassure me.
“Now what?” Euna asked, keeping her blaster pointed at the hatch.
I doubted a single blaster would help us much, but if it made her feel better, fine. I wouldn’t have minded a comfort blaster of my own.
I squeezed my eyes shut, visualizing the ship’s layout. “We need to get to the engine room,” I said. “From there we can disable the ship so that Unc—I mean, so Hwan can’t take the Haetae on a rampage, or escape before the cavalry arrives. If we can drain the Gate drive’s crystals, he won’t be able to jump again after we emerge—that’ll buy us some time.”
“What if he takes it out on the crew?” Jee said, his voice trembling. He was probably thinking back to sick bay and its crowd of casualties.
I couldn’t scrub those images out of my head, either. But then, I didn’t want to. They served as a reminder of what was at stake.
“Hwan’s already done that,” I said soberly. “C’mon. We can’t go back out the way we came, that’s obvious. We’ll have to escape through the ventilation shaft.”
Euna gulped. “I don’t like enclosed spaces.”
Interesting phobia in a spacer, I thought, considering that a starship was nothing but a giant tin can. I had enough sense to realize that pointing this out could prove disastrous. “You’ll be fine,” I said. “We’ll be with you.”
I pointed up at the grate in the ceiling. “We’re going to be court-martialed for dismantling this office, but since that ship has already sailed…Euna, can you shoot out the screws holding that in?” I remembered how easily she had destroyed Rokuro’s stunner. We might as well put her amazing aim to use.
“No problem,” she said, her eyes brightening. “No one is ever again going to tell me that playing shooters is a waste of time!”
Any worries I might’ve had about her ability to perform under pressure dissipated when she made a series of flawless shots, reducing the screws to molten slag. Still, the grate remained stubbornly stuck. All the while the pounding on the hatch grew louder and louder.
I growled and shifted, then leaped up and hooked my claws into the grate, pulling it down. Some of the molten metal singed my fur, and I couldn’t help but hiss.
Jee’s hands flew up to his mouth and he made a stifled noise of dismay. Still, the grate fell with a clatter, and I sent it to the side of the room with a swipe of my paw.
I lowered myself to the deck and tried to purr in a friendly fashion, although this was something that, like all tigers, I’d never mastered. It came out as a chuff instead. I crouched down and raised a paw invitingly.
It was too bad the captain’s desk was bolted into place away from the grate’s opening. I doubted we’d be able to budge it. Fortunately, I had another solution.
Euna figured out what I meant immediately. She climbed onto my back, and then I reared to my full height, allowing her to scramble up and into the ventilation shaft above.
“Careful of the edges,” she called down to Jee and Rokuro. “They’re still hot in places.”
Jee winced. “Too bad I’m not suited up for this,” he muttered, “but there’s no time.” He patted my flank. “Sorry about using you as a stepladder, Sebin! I’ll make it up to you later.”
I chuffed again for good measure.
“My armor will be an impediment,” Rokuro said, sounding displeased.
While Jee clambered up after Euna, Rokuro’s fingers danced on a cleverly recessed control panel on their arm. Their armor sprang open like a sarcophagus—Don’t be morbid, I thought hysterically—and the merc stepped out. It should have come as no surprise that they looked like they smelled: a human only a few years older than the rest of us, with black hair rumpled from being stuck under the helmet, and tawny skin. Their uniform beneath the armor was a simple yellow jumpsuit. They hurriedly stowed the armor under the captain’s desk.
I didn’t think the hatch was going to last much longer. It had bulged inward so much that it looked like a giant’s tongue. Thanks for that gross image, I informed my brain.
“You two should hurry up!” Jee called down, his voice muffled and echoing strangely in the enclosed space.
Because they were taller than the rest of us, Rokuro needed little assistance from me. I was relieved I didn’t have to bear the weight—or spikes—of all their armor.
My turn. I crouched down, then sprang upward. The ventilation shaft hadn’t been built to accommodate a tiger, even a juvenile like myself. So I had to shift back to human form at the apex of the leap. I almost had the timing right, but I ended up clinging by my fingertips to a perilously hot, ragged edge. I yelped.
Rokuro caught hold of my wrist and tugged. With their help I was able to make it the rest of the way up and into the shaft.
“Sounds like the hatch is going to crack any minute now,” Jee fretted from ahead of me. I wished he would stop saying things that reminded us of how much danger we were in. But that was his way of dealing with anxiety, different as it was from mine, and I was hardly in a position to scold him. It wouldn’t have eased his mind anyway.
“Euna,” I said, “do you know where you’re going?” This was going to be a hundred times more awkward if I had to navigate for us from the rear.
“I do,” she said. In the confined space, I could smell that she sounded more confident than she felt. However, of the four of us, she had served longest on the Haetae, even if only by a few months, and we had to start somewhere.
“Lead on, then.”
We crawled through the shaft. I was of two minds as to whether to be grateful that the ship’s artificial gravity hadn’t been affected by all the chaos. If it hadn’t been on, we could have easily floated along the shaft as far as we needed to go, instead of laboriously crawling. I was in good shape, but I could tell that my knees and elbows would sport bruises at the end of this.
“The only advantage of being a kid,” Euna said in a stifled voice, “is that I’m not too cramped in here.”
“This is one time I wouldn’t mind being a few years younger,” Rokuro agreed. Their broad shoulders were hunched uncomfortably.
I grimaced my agreement, then remembered that Euna couldn’t see me. Not only was I behind her, but Jee and Rokuro were between us. Breathing the miasma of their stress and sweat wasn’t pleasant, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of complaining. After all, I stank pretty badly myself.
“We’re going left at the juncture ahead,” Euna whispered. This agreed with my mental map of the ship.
We could still hear the irregular thudding of the battering ram, or whatever it was, behind us. It didn’t raise my confidence. How much longer would it be before they figured out where we’d gone?
Worse—and this thought made my breath catch—what if they were banging on the door just to rattle us while they sent someone to intercept us by a faster route? Not only did Hwan have enough troops that he could afford to divide his forces, it was the kind of devious thing he’d do. That he would once have taught me to do.
Unfortunately, we were committed to our current course of action. I didn’t see any better alternatives. The Haetae was a big ship, but we couldn’t simply go to ground, even if we had plenty of hiding places. That would give Hwan a free pass to do as he pleased. We had to stop him.
And I needed to start planning for what we did after we sabotaged the Gate drive. There was no question of if. We didn’t have any choice but to succeed.
Under Euna’s leadership, we climbed several narrow shafts and emerged in new passages. Taking these would lead us directly to the engines. Hwan would be aware of that as well, and I expected he would have the engine room under guard.
The ship was full of unsettling noises I hadn’t noticed before. Granted, my stint aboard the Haetae had involved so many nonstop emergencies that I hadn’t gotten much opportunity to listen to the ship’s normal sounds. I wasn’t particularly musical, but there was an odd sort of melody to its moans and thunks.
Here, in the ship’s very spine, I heard the ship murmuring and sighing to itself. It wasn’t soothing, exactly, although maybe an engineer who knew the Haetae’s characteristic sounds would have found it so. There were long, metallic groans, as though the ship’s structure were under an unseen tidal stress, or the distant percussion of footsteps, or an occasional alarming ping. I wished I knew how to interpret those sounds.
Maybe, the thought occurred to me, I’m happier not knowing.
“Stop,” I breathed to my comrades when a new noise intruded on my awareness. More footsteps, except these were approaching us—well, beneath us—and they were marching in perfect cadence. Call it cynicism, but I hadn’t seen any evidence that Captain Chaewon’s crew practiced that kind of lockstep motion. The Space Forces were disciplined, but they didn’t adhere to infantry practices.
The foreign mercenaries, on the other hand…
Rokuro stopped still. I could only assume Euna and Jee had as well.
I hadn’t realized earlier how stifling the air was. Was it my imagination, or was the temperature getting warmer in here? People thought of space as cold, and that was true to a certain extent. One of the things Great-Uncle Myung had emphasized, however, was that space was also an excellent insulator. The climate control in a starship had a lot to do keeping the vessel from getting too hot, because dumping excess heat was difficult, and masking it from local detection was impossible without magical aid.
