Morgan's Choice (6 page)

She nearly squealed when the box suddenly
rose into the air.
A loader, that’s all. Settle down
.

Noises outside. The lid swung back. She
looked up into Sayvu’s face and breathed a sigh of relief. As she
clambered out into a cargo hold, the same senior NCO she’d seen
before clamped the other two containers to fixtures on the
deck.

A female body wearing only underclothes lay
against a bulkhead, bound hand and foot and gagged, clearly
unconscious.

“The pilot,” Sayvu said. “She has been
drugged. Here is her flight suit."

Morgan peeled off the stinking red prison
clothes and pulled on the black coverall while the NCO finished his
job. “Good luck,” he said to Sayvu. He disappeared through the
hatch back to the hangar bay.

Jones beamed at her, grinning from ear to
ear. “Great. We’re out of here.” He snaffled Sayvu and gave her a
brief hug.

“Save your breath. We’ve got to get out of
the hangar first,” Morgan said. “You two get strapped in.”

They headed for the crew compartment while
she climbed through the hatch into the bridge. A VN 34 utility
shuttle. She’d spent the last few nights becoming familiar with the
specs and using the flight simulator software. She sat down, locked
into the ship’s system and checked status. Ready for take-off,
awaiting final clearance. She breathed deeply, willing her heart to
stop hammering. Off this ship to who knows where?

“
F75 you are cleared to enter airlock bay
fifty-four.”

F75. That’s us.
“Acknowledge.”

She applied some pressure to the lower
thrusters. The ship lifted off the deck and floated forward, into
airlock bay fifty-four. Thrusters off. A hiss, a clunk as the ship
settled back onto its landing gear. She waited, each second an
eternity. Atmospheric pressure dropped in the airlock. Vacuum. The
bay doors slid open. She looked out at a blue and white world, a
marble floating in the blackness of space.

“
Clear to go, F75. Safe journey.”

Thrusters down, drive into slow. F75
drifted out of the airlock and into space. She checked the route
the ship had been given to take it to the space port on the ground.
A swift calculation plotted the best time to amend the vector so
the ship would bounce off the atmosphere, pick up speed and power,
and disappear into shift-space. They’d need to be quick to avoid
the flights of fighters the warship could send out if somebody
realized what was really happening.

The side wall of the battle cruiser rose
behind the shuttle like a cliff pock-marked with caves. How crazy
was this? But then, the whole thing had been crazy since
Curlew
had left Belsun station and she
really was sick of life in a cell. At least this way she’d have
some chance to plot her own destiny. She hadn’t given up on going
home; not completely.

“
F75, return to the airlock. Repeat,
return to the airlock.”

Every nerve in her body tingled. What the
fuck? The order came from the battle cruiser. Maybe she
could
— A beam of white
light blasted across her ship’s bow. A fighter appeared alongside
the shuttle.

“
Turn back now or be destroyed.”

Morgan sagged even as she applied the left
thrusters to turn the ship.
Hells fucking bells. This was planned, a
trap.

The bridge hatch slid open. Sayvu clambered
inside, yellow eyes wide with fear, arm outstretched. “You can’t.
Don’t go back. You mustn’t. They’ll kill us, kill us all.”

One look at the girl’s face was enough. That
was real, genuine terror. Fine. She wasn’t finished yet.

Before the ship had turned around completely,
she hit full power, controlling the vector. A Supertech versus a
standard thruster control system? No contest. Sayvu gasped as she
fell, flung out of the bridge hatch by the acceleration. F75 shot
down the battle cruiser’s flank. Grinning, Morgan diverted all
shield power to the rear. This would be fun if it wasn’t so
serious. The fighter that had menaced them had only just managed
its turn. They’d launch others, of course, but up close to the
cruiser they’d think twice about shooting. The ship lurched as a
beam struck the shields, sending them shimmering. And again. Shield
power down to ninety percent.

She scanned space, looking for options and
spied a shuttle on its way down to the planet. A burst of the left
thrusters slewed F75 around forty-five degrees. The fighter fired
again and missed. Just a little further. Top thruster on. F75
dropped, almost searing the underside of the shuttle as it streaked
past. The battle cruiser was a shrinking mass behind them. She
fired up the shift drive. A few minutes more and they’d be
clear.

A whole wave of fighters emerged from the
warship’s belly like wasps from a hive. Good luck to them. They
were fast but by the time they reached here, F75 would be gone.
Morgan pushed the power past the safety limit. Alarm sirens
shrieked a strident warning and red lights flashed.

Now. She forced the change to shift
drive.

What the fuck? Nothing happened. Her nerves
screaming, she dived into the system. Status normal. No errors. Ah,
shit. She threw off her harness and leapt to her feet. The bastards
must have sabotaged the drive.

The ship jolted sideways hard enough to have
her staggering against the hatch. Those fighters were firing and
the shields were beginning to fail.

“
F75 stand to or be destroyed.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she muttered,
forcing her muscles to move.

The ship jolted again, from the other side
this time. Fuck. The whole fucking squadron had caught up. The ship
was surrounded.

“
One last warning, F75.”

Her shoulders sagged. Jones stared at her,
ashen faced. Sayvu implored with her eyes, the pupils dilated so
far the yellow rim was barely visible.

“Sorry, guys. It’s over.” Morgan returned to
the pilot’s seat. “Acknowledge.”

Sayvu followed her and leaned against the
bulkhead, trembling, arms wrapped around herself. “They’ll torture
us. You don’t know what they’re like.”

Morgan swallowed. No, she didn’t. She
fired a short burst with the forward thrusters to slow the ship
down. But any other move was suicide. “Even if I fix the drive, in
this configuration I can’t go to shift-space. There are too many of
them and they’re too close, they’ll distort the matrix. We could
end up anywhere.” And she’d already done that once in
Curlew
, thanks
all the same.

“
You will set this course to
return to
Vidhvansaka
. Any deviation and you will be destroyed. We have missiles
trained.”

A short burst of transmission transferred the
coordinates. Morgan fed them in.

Jones squeezed into the bridge behind Sayvu.
“Can’t you disable the fighters or something?”

She snorted under her breath.
Idiot.
Wave
your magic wand, Supertech
. “I’m a Supertech, not a magician.”

Sayvu seemed to have shrunk. But no tears.
Maybe they didn’t do tears.

Shuttle F75 settled in the airlock, the bay
doors closed and atmosphere began to fill the void around the ship.
Jones and Sayvu returned to the crew quarters.

Morgan stayed in the bridge. Now the race was
off and the adrenalin had drained away she felt cold. Afraid.
They’d be wanting to chat with Sayvu, she expected, to find out how
she’d organized their escape. Assuming, of course, they didn’t
already know. She and Jones… maybe they’d overstayed their welcome.
They wouldn’t kill them. Would they? The best bet was probably the
university professors. Despair hovered over her shoulder, a thick,
dark mantle ready to smother her. So close. So fucking close.

The status panel flashed pressure equalized.
The bay’s internal door opened and a dozen armed troopers marched
in.

Déjà vu.

She rose and went to meet them.

Chapter
Seven

Morgan wriggled her arms behind her back. The
wrist bands weren’t tight but she’d been wearing them for hours
now. They’d shoved her into a bare grey room and left. No chair, no
water, nothing. Even the sensors were switched off. She wondered
again where Jones and Sayvu were. They’d hustled them both away
somewhere else. Soon enough they would come for her. She’d paced
for a while, fought down the pressing urge to use the toilet. That
was just fear. They’d been so close to getting away.

Leaning against the wall she closed her eyes
and let herself slip down until she sat on the floor, knees raised,
her head tilted back. Maybe this was all just a nightmare and soon
she’d wake up. Wouldn’t that be good?

Her eyes opened at the swish-hiss of the
opening door. Fear rose like lava from her belly. She swallowed. A
tall man wearing a black officer’s uniform stepped over to where
she sat, towering over her. Somebody else put down a chair in the
middle of the room and left.

“Up.”

She tried, wriggling to angle her legs so
she could stand. But without the use of her hands, she simply
struggled on the floor like a landed fish. With a last effort that
sent her thigh muscles burning she got herself onto her knees.
Panting, she rested a moment before the final surge. She hated
this. She
hated
this. On
her knees, helpless.

The officer reached down, grasped her
shoulder in one hand and pulled her upright so fast her feet left
the ground. He let go and she swayed, regaining her balance. The
light winked on the gold sunburst on his shoulder.

Well, well. Her heart beat steadied. Maybe
she wasn’t for the firing squad just yet.

“Welcome back, Morgan Selwood.”

She stared at him, straight into slit black
pupils in an amber field. She was supposed to look down, wasn’t
she? Well, fuck him. She wasn’t beaten yet.

“You have not yet learnt manners, I see.”

“Where I come from, meeting a man’s gaze
shows honest intent.”

“You are not where you come from.”

He struck her face. Her head whipped around.
She staggered sideways and stumbled to her knees, her cheek
stinging. She hadn’t even seen him raise his hand. He hauled her
effortlessly, one handed, to her feet again. He must be enormously
strong. His fingers must have left dents on her shoulder.

“So. Let us start again.” That even, baritone
voice. He might as well have been at a cocktail party.

No, she wasn’t where she came from. Wishing
she could rub her cheek, she bowed her head. “Admiral.”

The word stuck in her craw. She fixed her
gaze on his rank insignia.
Daryabod
—Full Admiral. Second only to
Daryaseban
—Grand Admiral in the manesan fleet hierarchy. A
very, very powerful man. Another bastard admiral.

“
Better. You have not been entirely honest
with us,
Suri
Selwood.”
Still with that cocktail party voice.

“I told you no lies.”

“You left out quite a lot. Such as your
ability to connect with our computer systems through the
sensors.”

She met his gaze for a fraction of a moment
and looked away again. “Who told you that?”

“Come now. Let us not be disingenuous. Your
colleague Jones was happy to tell us what he could.”

“The sensors were off when I was brought
here.”

“Yes. We did wonder why you seemed to stare
at them so intently, so often. But it was confirmed in the last
conversation between Sayvu and Jones before your escape attempt, so
we ensured that option was not available to you here.”

“So she was in it? In this trap?”

He turned, lithe and graceful and prowled
over to the chair, the light glinting off the ornate silver clasp
that held his hair. He sat, long legs thrust out before him,
crossed at the ankles.

“
She was trapped herself, you might say.
There are always
Bunyada
cells on
large warships. Prasad had begun to suspect the young lieutenant.
We expected that
Bunyada
would be
most interested in your colleague in particular, because of his
round eyes. We offered the bait and she took it. Of course, we had
our own informer in the group and that individual eventually
managed to hide a listening device on Sayvu’s person.”

“What will you do with Sayvu?”

“She will be executed.” He tossed the remark
away, as if it didn’t really matter.

“Jones?”

“He has been most cooperative.” Ravindra
smiled, a curve of the lips that sent a shiver of fear down
Morgan’s spine. “Amazing what a little pain will achieve.”

So not averse to torture. Why would she be
surprised?

He sat up straight, placed his hands on his
thighs. “Jones is of no further use to me. I will send him to
Military Headquarters for further interrogation. But you… you have
talents I can use.”

She stared at him until a quirk of his
eyebrows warned her to avert her eyes. “To do what? Is this
something to do with the
Bunyada?
Because I don’t know anything about them. Not a
thing.”

“
The
Bunyada
is a canker which I would like to erase. But I have a much
more pressing problem. The
Yogina
,
the aliens you were in company with when we found your
ship.”

She sighed and shook her head. No, wrong. But
the head jerked back for no seemed so inadequate. “We weren’t in
company with them. They’d taken us in tow. I know even less about
them than I do your freedom fighters or terrorists or whatever they
are.”