Poor Man's Fight (50 page)

Lauren
couldn’t argue with that. The information coming in on the monitors and comms channels indicated a single fuel cell locker had exploded, but that naturally led to other problems and further possible danger. With enough people on the job, though, they could prevent any sort of cascading catastrophe. If she couldn’t handle this mess with six hundred men and women, she couldn’t handle it at all. “Good enough,” she said. “Get ‘em over here.
Vengeance
out.”

“Christ, what a mess,” grunted Jerry. “Any idea what could’ve caused that?”

Lauren let out a tense breath. “This is why you can’t slack off on a ship,” she fumed. “People get careless, get complacent, then shit like this happens at the worst possible time. I’ll bet you anything if we could autopsy a couple of those bodies we’d find all sorts of fun stuff in their systems.
Dammit!
”

Yet even as she spoke,
Lauren wondered if she relied too heavily on conventional wisdom and experience. She had survived her share of shipboard accidents in her time, but there was always the possibility that there was another explanation.
Could this be deliberate
, she wondered?
Could one of Wilson’s snipes have lost his marbles?

“Give me a rundown on who’s coming back on board as they get here,”
Lauren said. “Let’s make sure we cover all our bases.”

***

“Two-six-zero mark two-one-three to Augustine, approximately three point five minutes at quarter speed. No inbound contacts to destination. Three outbound contacts, all clear of our path.”

“Midshipman Carter, I don’t think I saw you plug the numbers into the computer,” observed Lieutenant Sharma. He stood behind the young woman’s shoulder, taking her and her classmate through the lookout routine as
UFS Fletcher
pulled out of orbit.

“No, sir, you did not,” answered
Allison.

“And yet your numbers are exactly correct,” added Sharma.

The midshipman beside Allison groaned. It wasn’t the first time she had shown Rick up. “How do you make this look so easy?”

“I’m just smarter than everyone else,”
Allison shrugged with feigned ease. Rick groaned again, eliciting a laugh from his classmate.

Sharma rolled his eyes. “Enough with the flirting.”
Allison and Rick both blinked, looking up at the lieutenant with surprised expressions. “Oh, come on, everybody knows. I’m not saying there’s a problem. This isn’t the 18
th
Century. Just focus on the task at hand.”

Allison
turned beet red. Her gaze shifted from Sharma to the screen in front of her as her back stiffened. She didn’t need to look at Rick to know he would stare down at the console in front of him with a mortified expression.

“Lieutenant Sharma, we’ve got a change of plans,” someone announced. The astrogator and the two midshipmen turned
. Captain Catherine Leigh stood behind them, leaving Allison doubly mortified at Sharma’s advice. Had the captain heard their discussion?

“Ma’am?” asked Sharma.

“Augustine Command lost contact with one of their corvettes while she responded to a possible distress call just past the FTL line,” explained Leigh. “We’re the closest ship in the area, and since we’re almost ready to move they’ve asked us to go take a look. Lay in a course.”

“Ma’am?” piped up
Allison. She’d hardly spoken to Leigh in the entire three months she’d been on board. A great many steps in rank separated them, not the least of which was the difference between commissioned officer and midshipman. This time, she couldn’t help herself. “Did they say which corvette?”

Leigh
tilted her head a touch, not answering right away. “That’s right,” she said, “you’re from this system, aren’t you? Michael, was it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain nodded. “They said it was
St. Jude
,” she answered. “I wouldn’t get too worried. If they were really concerned, they’d have authorized an FTL hop. We’ll get there soon regardless. Lieutenant Sharma, the coordinates are in the system. If you could double-check the course and approaches for hazards?”

“Right away, ma’am,” Sharma said. He turned to
Allison as the captain left. “I’ll need my seat back, but don’t go anywhere. You should see how this is done.”

***

Well, shit
, Tanner thought.
This is awkward
.

The main water distribution tube had carried him two thirds of the way across the ship. He didn’t swim so much as push himself along the inside of the tube, kicking when he had room and wiggling
free when stuck. With few internal markers in the tube and a limited copy of the layout of the ship’s plumbing copied to his holocom, navigation proved difficult. His helmet and harness provided the only light he had.

For all
that difficulty, though, he made good time. Only twice did a grate or a filter block him, and that was easily resolved with the simple tools he had on him. The real difficulty had been in getting into the tube without making a giant mess that would give him away.

But now he came to the end of the watery road. His shoulders were stuck. The tube had been only barely large enough for him to enter, and now it was too thin to move around.
Just as well
, he decided. His oxygen cartridges, depleted already by his time in the void, would run out in another couple of minutes. It was time to leave.

He had the perfect tool for accomplishing that, but getting it out of its large holster on his right hip proved difficult. There was
barely room to draw it out all the way, and not nearly enough room to hold it parallel to his body. Tanner took one last stab at orienting himself, watching the bubbles in the water to confirm which way was up and which was down.

He made a final check of the schematics. They hadn’t changed since the last time he looked. There was only one practical direction to go, and sadly it wasn’t up, left or right. Tanner put the plasma carbine up against the bottom of the tube, tilting it to the most favorable angle he could manage without blowing off his own feet, and pulled the trigger.

Green light and impossible heat flared up all around him. He was lucky he didn’t boil himself alive, but then, the water heated by his plasma blast escaped almost instantly. His gun created a large hole in the tube, disintegrating plastic well beyond the actual diameter of the plasma blast. The water in the tube followed gravity. Tanner was washed out instantly, falling two and a half meters onto the hard tile of an open bay shower.

He took the fall as best he could. The padding of his combat jacket and the vac harness helped, but ultimately the only part of his body left unhurt by the impact was his head, protected by his helmet.
His rough, sudden landing forced an inglorious sound from his throat.

Tanner lay on the tile as water gushed down on him from above. He moved his arms, then his legs, starting with small motions just to make sure he hadn’t broken anything. Then he rolled out from under the ruptured tube, looked around to orient himself, and got to his feet. His
expectations held true; with the ship in the middle of both a boarding action and an emergency in main engineering, nobody was taking a shower. Coming out of the head, he found no one in the large crew berth.

It all went to hell the moment he stepped out of the compartment.

Four armed men stood at the junction just to his left. He had the drop on them for all of half a heartbeat—just long enough for his brain to process the horrid, terrifying development—before someone down the passageway to his right yelled, “Hey! Who the fuck—?!”

Tanner snapped the plasma carbine in his hands to hip level, one hand on the trigger and the other under its barrel, and let loose the widest possible blast of green destruction into the pack of sentries a mere couple of meters away. Smoke, gore and screams resulted while Tanner immediately
spun and dropped to one knee to fire at the voice down the opposite end of the passageway.

Bullets and lasers flew past him, largely aimed too high by rushed, startled hands. Tanner afforded himself a half-second to aim and fired a
nother blast that expanded as it flew down the corridor at this second batch of foes. Then he spun back to the first group once more, falling onto his left shoulder. His weapon had annihilated one man and dismembered another. Of the two remaining, one had enough of his wits about him to leap behind the contour of one bulkhead. It wasn’t enough to save him from Tanner’s weapon. Superheated green plasma partly melted the edges of the bulkhead as well as the half of his body that hadn’t gotten around it for cover.

A hail of friendly fire cut down the fourth pirate in the nearer group. Tanner rolled away from him, scrambling for cover. By the time the remaining pirates corrected their fire, Tanner rounded the corner. He heard the frightening ping of a grenade ricocheting off the bulkhead close to him. Spotting the thing just in time to see it land alarmingly close, Tanner had no real time to think. He reached out with one hand in the shape of a hook, scooped it up and hurled it back down the passageway.

Had he stopped to listen, he might have heard the pained screams that blended with the echo of the resultant explosion. Tanner didn’t stop to look. He glanced around quickly to orient himself, picked a direction and ran, keeping his weapon up and at the ready all the while.

Weapons and tactics school emphasized the need to control oneself and avoid casualties by friendly fire. No such concerns burdened Tanner here. He was quite ready and willing to shoot anything that moved, as the next pirate to step into his path found out to his instant regret.

***

Jerry couldn’t believe his eyes. The mess in engineering already held plenty of his attention. Now this. “Lauren, we’ve got trouble!” he shouted, pointing to the action in the passageways. The violence displayed over the monitors was soon accompanied by a cacophony of weapons fire close enough to be heard on the bridge.

Lauren
hit the emergency signal on her holocom. “Recall! Recall! All available hands, we’ve got hostiles aboard
Vengeance
! Get the fuck back here now!”

Within seconds, her holocom erupted with rapid responses. Boarding teams from all across the
Pride of Polaris
announced their imminent return.

“Christ,” breathed Jerry, “they’re already closing on the bridge.”

“How many are there?” someone demanded.

“Fuck if we know yet,” the acting captain snapped.

“Chopra’s team says they’ve got casualties!” called out another bridge hand.

“Where the fuck is Paco? Weren’t they covering deck three?”

Then the ship shook. “Second explosion in engineering!” reported Jerry. “That mess still isn’t under control!”

“All available hands!”
Lauren repeated into her holocom, “All available hands, return to
Vengeance
now!”

***

Had Casey’s holocom been on a handset, he’d have thrown it down onto the deck. It was bad enough to be interrupted. Doubly aggravating for its timing, coming right as his recruiting pitch left his mouth. But for the interruption to announce
this
…

“Chang! Castillo! Singh! Hold firm on your positions! Carl, you
button that bridge down, and if anyone blinks wrong, fucking shoot ‘em!” Casey’s orders came without much thought. Whether the action on
Vengeance
required a few dozen guns or literally every single crewman, they couldn’t let the
Pride
go now. Even if this disruption was eliminated in the next two minutes, it had already revealed a crack in the pirates’ image of unassailable strength in front of their captives.

Naturally,
Casey wanted to charge back to his ship, to take control of the situation or at least find out from Lauren what the hell was going on so he could help her deal with it. But he’d left her in charge, and he had to maintain his faith in her. She was the most experienced pirate he knew; if she couldn’t deal with whatever danger had appeared, chances were no one could. Casey had to concern himself with other matters.

Glaring viciously at his captive audience of the ship’s crew and junior officers,
Casey drew his pistol and fired randomly. His bullet caught a young man in the shoulder. It might have been better to kill the man outright, but then, his cries and whimpers of pain would serve as useful background noise.

“Forget it!”
Casey snarled. “Forget what I said! Not one of you is coming with us. You’ll be lucky to get out of this alive! Up! On your feet, all of you!”

He switched over to a direct line on his holocom as his frightened audience got ready to move. “Chang,” he said, “we’re bringing the crew out to the promenade. I want all these assholes in one place until we get shit sorted out again.”

Chang gave some sort of acknowledgement, but Casey didn’t listen. He was already looking for someone else to shoot.