A Brother's Debt (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Step used every ounce of his skill as a pilot to delay the docking procedure, while making it seem as if he was complying with his instructions. He couldn’t delay it forever however, and after almost three quarters of an hour the two ships matched velocities and a docking tunnel was extended from the smaller craft.

When the lights across the boards in front of him announced the ships were locked together Step took his hands from the controls. There was no longer any point in him trying to do anything, unless he wanted to risk tearing a hole in his ship. He left the bridge and made his way along to the companionway, descending the stairs when he reached them to wait for the boarding party in front of the access door the docking tunnel had clamped onto.

As he stood there his mind ran over the plan he and Jay had come up with. It wasn’t much of a plan, but given the limited options available to them it was the best they could come up with. All he could do was hope it worked, or at the least didn’t get them too badly injured.

He didn’t have to wait long for the access door to slide open, revealing three men in space suits standing in the docking tunnel, each of them holding a laser pistol. None of the pistols were all that impressive, in respect to size or firepower, but given Step didn’t have one, and as far as he was aware there wasn’t one on board Gambler’s Luck, they were enough.

“Velkin.” Step recognised the thug who had run from the fight with Jay and him earlier that day when he stepped forward into the ship and took off his helmet; his two companions close behind him. “Mr Dollier has sent us to retrieve the package you are carrying. I would recommend you don’t try anything as foolish as this afternoon’s stupidity.”

“I’d hardly call it foolishness, or stupidity, I came out of it almost unscathed, the same can’t be said for your companions of the time,” Step remarked.

“You won’t be so lucky if you try it again. Where’s your friend?” The thug wanted to know, not bothering to introduce himself, which didn’t surprise Step.

Before the last of the trio could leave the docking tunnel the power fluxed. In an instant the lights dimmed, artificial gravity momentarily went off and the door slid closed. The second of the three thugs was hit by the door as it slid closed, and with the lightened gravity he was knocked forward into his companion, as a scream came from behind them. The sudden flux in the gravity, combined with the dimming of the lights and the scream from their friend, distracted the two thugs. Step wasn’t distracted however, the scream was unexpected, but he had been waiting for the sudden drop in power and was ready for it.

Before the leader of the trio could recover, Step produced a metal bar and swung it. He brought it down on the man’s arm with all of his strength, the blow landing as gravity returned. His cry of pain, and the clatter his laser pistol made when it fell from his hand, went unheard, drowned by the scream from his companion.

Without pause Step brought the bar away from the thug’s arm in a backhanded blow that struck him across the jaw and smashed his cheekbone. Dollier’s man fell backwards into his friend and there was the flash of a discharge from his laser pistol. Where the shot went Step didn’t know, but he wasn’t endangered by it so he gave it no thought as he raised the bar to strike at the second thug.

When he saw the man before him lift his arm in a desperate attempt to block the coming blow Step altered his aim. Instead of bringing the bar down on the man’s arm, he drove it into his stomach, smashing several ribs as the man folded over. He followed that blow with a swift chop to the man’s exposed neck with the edge of his empty hand, rendering him unconscious.

The entire attack lasted less than a minute, and Step had both thugs unconscious before Jay could get there from the engine room. “I guess you don’t need my help,” he remarked, coming to a quick stop when he saw the two men on the floor in front of the access door. He ran an eye over the unconscious forms and nodded approval for the swift and effective way Step had dealt with them. “Was it only the two?”

“No, there’s a third, but I think he got caught when the door shut,” Step told him. Bending down he dragged the two bodies away from the door and then activated it. He was relieved the third thug had stopped screaming, but realised the silence probably meant they were going to find something unpleasant.

The door started to open, but stopped moving almost immediately, which made Step worry it had been damaged by whatever had happened. He let out a small sigh of relief when the door began moving again, sliding open fully without further hesitation. Unfortunately in doing so it revealed the third thug.

“HERSCHLA!” Jay couldn’t help uttering when he saw the figure in the docking tunnel.

The door was designed to seal itself in the event of an internal power failure to prevent decompression of the ship, and once it started closing, nothing short of a solid foot of steel or plascrete could stop it. It was a feature that hadn’t been considered by either Step or Jay when they planned the faked power failure to distract the thugs, and give Step a chance against them.

The third of Dollier’s thugs had just started through the doorway when it activated and closed itself. Since he was holding his weapon out in front of him, ready to use it, both his hands and the laser pistol had been crushed by the inexorable progress of the door. His leading foot had suffered a similar fate as well, and his spacesuit had been torn open.

It was several moments before either of them felt able to move. When they could Step moved into the docking tunnel, being careful of his footing. Squatting, he reached out with trembling fingers to check for a pulse, though he knew it was an exercise in futility. The floor of the tunnel was covered in what he guessed to be all the blood the man’s body had once contained. It explained why his screams had cut off so quickly. He doubted it would have taken long for the blood to drain from his body given his injuries.

“I didn’t think of the safety controls,” Jay said once Step straightened up following his vain search for a pulse. “Sorry, I should have realised something like this was a possibility. I should have disabled the safety protocols and made sure this didn’t happen, though saying that I’m not entirely certain how to right now.”

Step shook his head, his eyes still on the body at his feet. “I didn’t think of it either. Why would it occur to either of us, we’re both new to this ship, I’ve only been flying it for a bit over a week, we’ve no idea what features it has, or even what works and what doesn’t.

“Dammit!” He swore. “Now Dollier’s going to have even more reason to come after me.”

“What do we do now?” Jay wanted to know, like his friend he couldn’t take his eyes off the body in the tunnel. He had seen plenty of gruesome injuries resulting from engineering accidents during his time in the navy, but it was another thing entirely to see one that was the result of something he had done.

“We finish what we started.” Step tore his eyes from the body and carefully stepped out of the tunnel. “We don’t have any other choice.” From beneath the stairs leading up to the main deck he retrieved his spacesuit, the one that had previously belonged to his brother. It wasn’t a perfect fit, since they hadn’t been identical, but it was close enough that he could use it without too many problems, at least until he was able to get one that fitted him properly.

Step pulled the spacesuit on as quickly as he could, not sure how long they had before the pilot decided to check in with his companions. “I’ll be back shortly to help you with these guys.” Securing the helmet he bent to pick up one of the dropped laser pistols, with it in hand he returned to the tunnel and, once he was sure Jay was out of the way, closed the door.

Making his way through the short tunnel he was relieved to discover the door on the smaller ship wasn’t secured. It opened at the touch of a button and he entered the airlock. Once the airlock had cycled and he was inside the ship Step made his way forward to the bridge. There wasn’t much to the ship so he didn’t have to worry about getting lost, the companionway led straight to where he wanted to go.

“That was quick, after what happened this afternoon I expected it to take longer for you to convince him to give up the package.” The man in the pilot’s chair spoke before he turned, and when he did he found himself looking into the muzzle of the laser pistol in Step’s hand.

“I guess you’re right, because I haven’t given it up yet,” Step said before striking the man on the side of the head with the butt of the pistol. The pilot slumped and slid off the chair, hitting his head on the console next to him as he fell to the floor.

Step had just begun the struggle to get the gloves of his suit off so he could check the man was still alive when he saw his chest rise and fall. Relieved, he left the gloves on and made his way back to Gambler’s Luck, where he assisted Jay in bringing over the two unconscious thugs and their dead companion.

Once that job was complete Jay crossed back to Step’s ship, leaving Step alone on Dollier’s, where he returned to the bridge. It took a bit of searching among the unfamiliar controls for Step to find the right one, and when he did he disconnected the docking tunnel that locked the two ships together. After that he entered a course for the far side of the solar system into the nav computer and activated the autopilot.

The engines started after a moment and he left the bridge, reaching the airlock as the autopilot turned the ship to start off on its programmed course.

Once the airlock had cycled, and the outer door had opened, Step launched himself in the direction of Gambler’s Luck. When he collided gently with the hull of his ship he used the various handholds built into it to make his way round to the airlock, entering the moment the doors slid open. EVA’s were not his favourite thing to do and he was relieved when the doors slid closed behind him and he found himself once again within the grip of the ship’s artificial gravity.

“Where did you send them?” Jay asked when the inner door slid open and Step joined him in the cargo bay.

“On a short trip across the system; they’ll probably get to the other side before any of them wake up,” Step told him. “I think we’re safe for the time being. When they do wake up they’ll have to return to Barth to deal with their friend and get a different ship before they can come after us; that ship doesn’t have the range to chase us to Onegal 3.”

“We should be alright until we actually get to Onegal then,” Jay remarked, helping his friend out of the suit. “By the time they wake up, get to Barth, and return here in a different ship, our trail is going to be all but dead, assuming they come in a ship that is actually equipped to track our ion trail.”

“We certainly don’t need to worry about being attacked again while we’re en-route, but I think we should expect trouble when we get there. If I was Dollier, and I knew all about the package, and where it was going, I would take the fastest ship I could and get there ahead of us. The more time he has there before we arrive, the worse the surprise he can arrange.” With the suit off Step screwed it into a ball and made his way up the stairs. “I’ll see if I can get a message off to Carboni, he should know one of his rivals is aware of the package. Plus, he might be able to sort something for when we get to Onegal so we don’t have to worry about dodging Dollier’s men.”

While Jay resumed his work in the engine room Step made his way to the bridge, tossing the spacesuit into his cabin as he passed it.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Step woke with a start when the computer’s warning alarm, loud enough to be heard throughout the ship, even over the noise in the engine room, sounded. He almost fell out of bed, stopping himself just in time by reaching out a hand to the small shelf by the head of his bed, though in doing so he bent his hand back painfully.

It took him a couple of moments to realise what the noise was, not having heard it before, and when he did he threw back his covers and stumbled, bleary-eyed and in his underwear, from the cabin.

Almost falling into the bridge Step tried to get his eyes to focus well enough for him to turn off the alarm. By the time he succeeded, it took him the better part of a minute, Jay had joined him; he was no better dressed and looked even less awake. “What’s going on?”

“No idea, yet,” Step answered dropping into the pilot’s seat, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Gods, it’s the middle of the night,” he remarked when he caught sight of the time. “Here we go,” he said when he succeeded in getting the computer to display the reason for sounding the alarm. “The short range sensor has picked up an emergency beacon from an escape pod.”

“Pity we couldn’t get the long range sensor working,” Jay remarked, leaning on the back of the co-pilot’s chair he scrutinised the information on the screen. Together they had spent the last six days, almost the entirety of their journey from Barth, working on the engine, and whatever other of the ship’s systems Jay thought could be fixed. “That thing’s almost beyond the short range sensor, another couple of hours and we would never have known it was out there.”

“Whoever is in it, assuming there is someone in that capsule, is bloody lucky. I’m setting an intercept course,” Step said, programming it into the computer after a minute or so of calculations. “We should catch up with it in approximately two hours.” Finishing his work he stood up. “Time enough for a bit more sleep.” With that he left the bridge and returned to his cabin, he wasn’t surprised to hear Jay doing the same.