Poor Man's Fight (49 page)

Darren let out a sigh. He could make a big deal out of this, but if it turned out to be no big deal at all he’d just annoy comrades who were only now beginning to forget his disastrous first week. His performance in Khalil City had gone a long way to repairing his reputation. The last thing he wanted was to wind up back in the doghouse again over something stupid.

Something told him not to go alone, though. “Hey,” he said, tugging at the dozing engineer next to him. “Hank.”

“Huh?”

“Hank, something’s up with airlock nine. We gotta go check it out.”

The middle-aged pirate sniffed. “Hm. Okay. Sure,” Hank said, rubbing his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Pressure leak inside the airlock, but it looks like it’s all sealed up tight outside,” Darren told him. “Think it might be something internal. Hey, Lance!” Darren called to the head of the engineering watch. “We’re gonna go check out a thing!” From behind a desk, Darren saw a hand wave in acknowledgement. That was as formal as things got around here.

“Y’know,” Hank mentioned blearily as Darren stood and donned his combat jacket, “you don’t gotta wear that fuckin’ thing everywhere.”

“I do if I don’t want it stolen. Thing cost me fifty thousand bucks.”

Hank made a face. “Who’s gonna steal that?”

Darren shook his head and tugged Hank along.

The airlock of concern
lay only a few minutes away, up one level and down a passageway. With
Vengeance
conducting boarding operations, most of the crew still on board remained at battle stations. Darren and Hank passed no one on their way.

Coming to the airlock, Darren made sure that the hatches leading to the compartment were all shut. He then checked the external gauges and controls, finding the readings steady but very low, just as they had been when he first noticed the problem.
A small porthole offered a view of the airlock compartment at eye level. Darren peeked inside and found nothing but a sealed external hatch. The vantage point didn’t offer him a view of the video camera.

“Looks like everything’s fine in there,” Darren said. “Guess we can open her up. Call it in to the bridge, will you?”

Hank shrugged. “Bridge, this is Hank from engineering. We’re gonna check a busted sensor in airlock nine. Don’t freak out if the readings go weird.”

“Gotcha, Hank,” came the response. “Knock yourselves out.”

Hank gestured for Darren to lead the way. Darren keyed the hatch controls and peered inside.

The crowbar that swung out from around the corner shattered Darren’s nose and his cheek.

Hank let out a yelp as Darren tumbled back. The helmeted man in the vac suit came on, swinging the crowbar across Hank’s face. He stepped out of the airlock, bringing the crowbar down on Hank’s head twice more as the engineer fell.

Tanner looked left and then right. No other enemies occupied the passageway. He spun around again to find the first pirate he’d struck looking up at him with wide, shocked eyes over a bloody face. The man fumbled with his gun. Tanner swung the crowbar down several more times.

Not fair,
Darren objected in panicked, silent thoughts.
This just isn’t f—

The crowbar came down on Darren’s head again and again until Darren stopped moving.

Thinking quickly, Tanner heaved one fallen man up and dropped him in the airlock, then the other. He tore their gun belts from their bodies, amazed at the degree of firepower these two guys casually carried around on board their ship.
A plasma carbine? Seriously?

Then he realized what the first one was wearing. Archangel marines didn’t wear combat gear that good. It was simply too expensive.

He didn’t stop to contemplate his good fortune. Tanner tore the combat jacket from the pirate’s corpse. As he finished stripping the bodies of useful gear, he discovered the first pirate’s holocom. Tanner tried to activate it, but the earring simply beeped at him with a disapproving tone. He tried activating it again, this time using its owner’s lifeless yet still warm thumb and forefinger. The holocom flared to life, but the menu screen demanded a personal security code before it would open up further.

Tanner sighed. “Guess you’re not quite as dumb as you look,” he said to the dead man. He shut the airlock once more, leaving Darren Mills and Hank Bruning behind him.

Not a single soul occupied the passageways leading from airlock nine to main engineering. No alarm rang when he opened hatches along the way. Tanner held his breath at every portal and junction, sure that he would be spotted
. Every encounter with a pirate brought with it the danger of more pirates. Numbers would tell.

The entryway to main engineering was the most nerve-wracking point yet. He expected to be spotted immediately, to be sucked into a fight where the best he could do was to throw around as many blasts from his plasma carbine
and slag as much important equipment as possible before being cut down. Tanner slipped open the hatch, keeping it to his side like a shield as he looked inside. There he discovered why his movement thus far had been so easy.

Two men not far from Tanner’s age sat turned away from their stations while engaged in a holocom game. Another seemed to be reading a book. Across the spacious, noisy hall of plastic and metal pipes and machinery, three more pored over a gutted power generator laid out on a worktable. One man sat with his feet up at his station, his hand hanging down from his seat to ineffectually cover the bottle of whiskey sticking out of the bag on the deck beside him. Like the pirates Tanner fought at the airlock—indeed, just like the pirates on
Yaomo
—not one of them wore a vac suit. And not one of them looked up to see who came in.

Discipline on
St. Jude
had been poor, but compared to this scene, Tanner’s old ship had been a fascist dream.

He didn’t risk thinking about it long. Tanner spotted a serviceable bit of cover behind a power distribution box. He closed the hatch behind himself and slipped over to the box, careful not to move so fast as to attract attention. Crouching low and looking around carefully, Tanner took
the time to orient himself to
Vengeance
’s main engineering space.

Huge pieces of self-contained machinery dominated the large compartment, each providing a portion of primary power and propulsion for the ship. Arranged in the spaces between were gear lockers,
workbenches, computer consoles and storage tanks. Tanner needed to get at the consoles. He kept low, stuck to the shadows and steered clear of everyone, crawling under racks and benches to get around to a single, U-shaped desk.

The man sitting at that desk had his feet up on it. A plain ceramic coffee mug occupied one corner of his space, bearing the name “Lance” in hand-written letters. Some of his monitors displayed airlocks connected to their captured prey. Others depicted graphs and charts for power, life support and other systems. The center monitor screen played the highly pornographic antics of several different people on an absurdly large bed. Tanner put aside his awe at the lax attitudes all around him as he crawled forward.

Though not completely absorbed by the video, Lance gave it enough attention to leave him oblivious to approaching danger. His right hand slipped under his waistband as the action grew hotter. The engineer wondered, briefly, if he could get away with more than simply scratching himself without anyone noticing.

Then the knife came into his throat.  A strong hand pinned his left wrist to his chair’s armrest. Lance tried to let out a yell for help, but his throat no longer carried sound.

Engineering was a loud place. People banged around all the time. No one noticed as Lance expired.

Tanner slipped up to the console, turning off the sex scene on the main screen with a blood-soaked finger. He called up a main file directory and searched for a set of the ship’s schematics.
It was easy enough to download the information to his holocom in case he needed it later. He would be thrilled to survive long enough to even have a “later.”

He came aboard
Vengeance
with little more than an angry, vague desire to inflict harm. Though his rage still propelled him, Tanner understood the need for a plan. Whether or not he could pull it off was irrelevant; a failed attempt at accomplishing something significant was better than causing random chaos. Tanner traced out pathways from engineering to the bridge, since they were the two most vital areas. He’d never make it through all those passageways if anyone knew he was coming.

There had to be alternate routes. He looked for other systems in the ship and found, as he had suspected, that the ventilation systems weren’t practical.
Apparently, the shipbuilders had all seen those movies where people snuck around inside the air ducts and made sure it couldn’t happen on this destroyer. The engineering crawlspaces throughout the ship ran for only short distances. Tanner would frequently have to traverse open passageways.

Then Tanner hit upon his solution. He couldn’t get all the way to the bridge, but he could get close, and no one would detect him coming. Ordinarily it would’ve been ridiculous—but then, he had a perfectly serviceable
vac suit and helmet. There was no reason he couldn’t apply it to this particular task.

Main engineering had provided almost all he could hope for. There was only one other matter to address. With his path set, Tanner tugged Lance’s body down to the deck, gave it a pat-down and confiscated his automatic pistol and ammunition. Then he began his low crawl out from the monitor suite.

Little had changed over the last few minutes. He saw one engineer leave the compartment, mumbling something barely audible about the head. Tanner froze until the man passed, then resumed his quiet withdrawal.

Several meters away from the dead engineer and his monitor console, Tanner found a broad, heavy storage locker. It was a permanent fixture in the engineering space, designed as an integral part of the compartment’s layout. Its thick metal housing and bright warning labels made its purpose quite plain.

Though considered remarkably stable and safe under normal circumstances, the solid fuel cells used in starships still had to be handled with care. Each cell, charged up by the ship’s reactor and stored for emergency use, contained a remarkable amount of energy. Ship’s designers went out of their way to ensure that fuel cells would not be subject to violent treatment. Moreover, designers, engineers and technicians all took steps to ensure that cells were never stored en masse, preferring to limit the potential scope of an explosion by spreading out the necessary fuels. Storage units such as this one protected their contents from accidents.

They were not meant to be opened by unauthorized personnel like Tanner. Nor were they
intended to be left open. Nor, certainly, was anyone supposed to run down to the other end of a passageway and then, once behind cover, fire off a carefully-aimed blast from a laser pistol into the open locker.

The
instant explosion went beyond Tanner’s expectations. Fire and shredded metal erupted in every direction with a boom heard throughout the ship. Though thick sheets of metal housed the most vital machinery, a great deal of other systems and gear enjoyed less protection. The blast knocked out control panels and generators, cut cables and pipes and annihilated no small portion of the engineering watch. Survivors were soon plunged into chaos as damaged systems went haywire, flames roared from the wreckage and fire-retardant gasses spewed from their pipes.

Though protected by cover and distance, the blast still knocked Tanner off his feet. His ears rang despite the audio protection offered by his helmet. He didn’t waste time in assessing the damage he’d inflicted. As soon as he was on his feet again, Tanner rushed for the hatch labeled, “Water Distribution Space.”

***

“What the fuck was that!?” demanded
Lauren.

“Checking!” answered Jerry. He grimaced. “I was afraid of that. Something blew up in engineering. They’ve got a fire and casualties. Look, it’s on the monitor here.”

Lauren leaned in over Jerry’s shoulder to see. Men and twisted metal lay strewn about the compartment, which rapidly filled with smoke. Not everyone was dead; some were already at work recovering. She could see at least one man rushing for a still-functional communications panel to call the disaster in.

The acting captain didn’t wait.
Automated fire control systems plainly couldn’t handle that on their own. She hit her holocom and put out an emergency signal to the section leaders of the boarding parties. “Boarders, this is Lauren on
Vengeance
,” she said loudly. “We’ve got an explosion and fire in engineering. Plenty of injuries. Cause unknown, but I need damage control over here right fucking now. Wilson, you copy?”

“I hear you,”
Wilson came back. “We’re still a little while away from getting the
Pride
going again, but I’m releasing people. Casey, you listening?”

“Yeah, I’m here,”
Lauren heard Casey reply. “
Vengeance
is more important than the liner. Keep working on this ship with anyone you can spare, but
Vengeance
has priority. Lauren, I’m gonna release plenty of boarders to help out, but I need at least a couple hundred guys to keep this ship secure.”