Stowaway (24 page)

He wanted to ask about Kit. Ask if the galley crew were locked up in one of the pantries—their place of safety in the event of attack. But he couldn’t be such a fool in front of the captain. Kit wasn’t the only person on the ship. Raine had to keep everyone safe, not just one man.

“What’s happening to the escort ship?” He reached an elevator and hit the call button.

“It’s engaging two vessels. It will be at least an hour before we get any assistance.”

“I understand, ma’am.” His team had to hold the boarders for that long.

“Good luck, Chief.”

“Thank you, Captain.” The elevator arrived, and he stepped in. He started to put the Link into his pocket as the elevator moved off, but stopped. He had a moment, so checked Kit’s tracker data. He’d managed to stop himself obsessively checking it over the last few days, but this was an emergency situation. He needed to know everyone’s location.

Damn.

Kit wasn’t in the galley. He was down in the food container. Collecting stores, probably. He must have Gracie with him too—the status for the galley staff showed only Trish and the two cooks secure in the pantry with its heavy metal door.

They’d have had a guard for the stores collection. A few quick taps and he found out Munro had the duty, but he’d reported in that he’d gone to take his position, leaving Kit and Gracie to hide in the container.

They were alone down there.

How could Munro have left them? But the flash of anger passed. Munro had done the right thing. They’d be safe enough. Pirates weren’t going to stop off for a snack. They could hide. Even inside the walls. Kit knew how to do that. Don’t worry about him.

Fat chance.

He shoved the Link in his pocket as the elevator neared its destination…and dropped. Only for a second, but he felt it go into freefall before the mechanical emergency brakes clamped hard against the side of the car. It slammed to a bone-jarring halt, knocking Raine to his knees. The lights flickered and went out, leaving him in darkness. The alarm klaxon stopped.

He scrambled back to his feet. Main power down. This was bad. He grabbed his Link and stared in horror at the last update from the bridge.

Multiple intruders. Decks 4, 6, 7, 10.

They were aboard. He had to go help his people, but first he had to get out of this damn elevator. He hit the message symbol and New Call and stared at the Link. Stared at the red symbol telling him communications were down. No voice, no text.

While the rest of his people fought, while Kit was out there unprotected, Raine was trapped in an elevator in the dark with no communications.

* * *

“Kit, I can hear something,” Gracie said.

The two of them were crouched in a dark niche formed by stacked crates. They’d pulled another crate across the entrance to conceal them, leaving them as invisible as they could be without taking off a wall panel and hiding behind the bulkheads—which he remembered how to do if it came to it.

“I hear voices,” she said. She had better hearing than Kit, so he believed her and knelt up to look over the top of the crate concealing their hiding place. He heard not voices but the sound of footsteps, on the metal stairs linking the three levels of the container. Lights flashed between the stacks of crates. Flashlights. The container had only emergency lights on, the main ones having gone off ten minutes ago, along with the klaxon.

“Damn,” he muttered softly and moved back to sit with Gracie again. “There is someone out there.”

She stared back at him, wide-eyed, and he put his arm around her.

“It’s okay. They’ll never spot us here. Probably move on when they realize this is food and general supplies, not valuable cargo.”

“You think so?” She snuggled closer against him, trembling. She must have heard the same lurid stories Kit had about what pirates did to prisoners. Slave labor for the men and worse for the women. The stories must be exaggerated…he hoped.

“It might not even be the pirates. Might be some of the crew. They might have seen the bastards off already.”

“Then why is the power still down?”

Okay, she had a point there.

“Don’t worry. They’ll never spot us in here. If we sit tight and keep quiet, we’ll be fine.”

“Us?” She giggled nervously. “Takes something extreme to make us keep quiet.”

He smiled in return, hiding his fear. The pirates might not take Kit prisoner at all if they found him and Gracie. They might simply shoot him on the spot, and then Gracie would be alone and undefended. The thought sickened him, but he didn’t know how he’d stop it happening.

Take your own advice, he thought. Don’t worry. Sit tight.

He’d have sat tight for as long as it took if it hadn’t been for the new sound. A kind of loud crackling. What the hell? What were they doing out there? He saw a strange light too, a hot glow. He scrambled forward and poked his head over the crate again. The glow came from where the container butted up against the hull of the ship.

“What’s going on?” Gracie whispered behind him.

“I don’t know.” But it couldn’t be good. They were up to something, and he had to find out what. He could send a report to the bridge. “I’m going to find out. Stay here.”

Gracie gave a squeak of protest, but he ignored her and slithered over the top of the crate, dropping to the deck, staying low. He moved slowly toward the sound and the glowing light, pressing close to the stacked crates as he negotiated several lanes, staying deep in shadow. When he reached the end of a lane of crates near the intruders, he crouched down and poked his head around the corner cautiously.

Five of them, standing in a group, the glowing light behind them throwing long shadows on the deck. All of them bristled with weapons, and one of them wielded the thing making the light. A plasma cutting saw. Cutting? Into the hull?

No. Kit realized suddenly they were cutting into one of the huge clamps locking the container to the hull. Those could be released only with codes from the bridge crew—or if you cut right through them.

Hell! Kit ducked behind the crates and scurried back to the hiding place. He’d said they’d move on to what he’d think of as valuable cargo. But if they had a food shortage, this
was
valuable cargo. The
Dawn
carried enough not only for the rest of the trip to Saira but for the several months it would take to circle back around to Drexler, delivering the ore to the various colony planets on the way.

Gracie scrambled back when Kit climbed into their hiding hole but relaxed when she saw it was him. “What’s happening?”

“They’re trying to cut through the docking clamps and steal the whole container.”

“Oh my God!” She slapped her hand over her mouth, then spoke more quietly. “Can we get out?”

“They’ll have men guarding the door. I have to…do something.”

Did he? This could be his chance to get off the
Dawn
. His earlier thought about them shooting him out of hand seemed foolish. Why kill a healthy young guy? He’d be as good a slave laborer as any other captive, and eventually he’d have a chance to escape.

Hell, what was he thinking? He couldn’t let them take Gracie. And he couldn’t let down the ship, the captain, or Raine.

Raine. He couldn’t leave Raine; that’s what it came to. Cursed himself for a fool but knew it. Him and Raine… They weren’t done yet. And somewhere else on the ship, the big lug was fighting more of these bastards. Kit couldn’t give in to them. But he and Gracie couldn’t do much alone. They needed reinforcements.

He took out his Link and went to the messenger screen, only to find the words
SYSTEM UNAVAILABLE
. No comms? Shit.

“Try yours,” he said to Gracie. A moment later, she held hers up showing the same bad news. Kit flicked through a few more screens. The network was still up but no communications. Targeted sabotage, he assumed.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

The network was still up. He looked at his tracker. Was its signal part of the communications system or separate? He couldn’t use it to talk to anyone, but there was one thing he could do. He opened the lid of the crate across the entrance and used his Link as a flashlight to examine the contents. Oh, just the thing. He pulled out a large can of vegetables. It weighed a ton; he couldn’t even hold it in one hand. He handed the can to Gracie, then laid his left forearm on the deck. The tracker fitted loosely enough that when he pressed his arm to the deck, the top side of the bracelet stood above his arm, enough space to get a finger in. He hoped the gap would be enough to save his arm from too much damage.

“Hit it,” he said to Gracie. “Try to use the edge of the can. More concentrated force.”

“No way! I’ll break your arm!”

“Not if you do it right. A sharp rap with the edge of the can. It’ll work. Hit it.”

“Kit…”

“Gracie, we need someone”—Raine, he meant Raine—“to come down here before they cut through the rest of those clamps.” He didn’t know for sure this would work, but he had to try. “Now, Gracie. Do it!”

She looked at him with huge eyes, swallowed, then raised the can in both hands and brought it down hard.

* * *

Raine lay on the floor of the elevator, panting and catching up on all the swearing he hadn’t done for the last few years. He’d tried to pull open the doors. He’d tried to get up to the hatch in the ceiling. Both attempts had been futile. His people were out there fighting, and he couldn’t help them. His efforts had been accompanied by several howls and roars of rage and frustration. Anyone passing would think the elevator had a wild animal trapped inside.

A sudden alarm from his Link made him grab for it, hoping to see the comms back on. The alarm was only half-familiar, he hadn’t heard it in a long time, but when he looked at the screen, his memory of the last time rushed back. The memory of the fear he’d felt then.

Kit’s tracker had stopped transmitting.

God, what had happened to him? Had he been taken off the ship, a prisoner? Shot, vaporized?
God, no!

Trying to calm himself, Raine took a deep breath, imagined the hot, dry air, the wind singing over rock and sand. The sky. Then he opened his eyes and looked at the tracker data again. Kit had been in the food cargo container when the transmission stopped. So Raine had to get there. Whatever was going on, Kit was in the middle of it, and Raine had to get there.

But first he had to get out of this damn elevator. He was certain the deck lay only a couple of meters away, if that much; the elevator had been so close to its destination. If he could get the doors of the car open, he might be able to reach the emergency release handle for the outer doors. He scrambled to his feet and squared up to the doors again, trying to burrow between them with his hands. Burrow into the split where they met. He had to break the seal.

He pulled, fresh sweat breaking out, feeling like the veins in his neck were about to pop—unless his head burst before them. He grimaced, twisting his face into what must be a rictus hideous enough to scare the ugliest gargoyle. He’d have yelled if he didn’t think it would take away some of the energy he needed.

A tiny gap opened. A fingernail’s width, a fingertip’s, a real gap. He had some purchase at last, something to pull. And pull he did, the yell escaping him this time, giving him energy rather than draining it. It seemed to rise from his boots to his throat, a great roar as the doors began to part. When he had enough room, he forced a knee in, then his shoulder, turned sideways and shoved with his foot and his back, forcing the doors apart. At last they yielded, past the point of no return, and sprang open the rest of the way. Raine slumped, head hanging down, catching his breath. When he recovered enough, he wiped sweat from his face with his sleeve and pulled himself together. What next?

Using his Link as a flashlight, he found that, as he’d suspected, the elevator car had stopped close to its destination. The outer doors rose half a meter above the car’s floor. Dropping to the floor, he squeezed his arm out through a narrow gap. After a moment of fumbling around, he closed his hand around what he’d dreamed of holding. The emergency release lever.

He yanked it, and the outer doors sprang open, making him scoot back, the jerky, unpowered movement startling him. Through the gap, he saw only empty corridor lit by dim emergency lighting. In the distance, he heard noises he didn’t like. Yelling, small-arms fire.

The gap barely gave him space to get through. He had to strip off his jacket first, drop it to the deck, then lower his rifle on top of it. Then he squeezed, cursing all the hours in the gym bulking up. Should find a better hobby. Skin ripped from his shoulders, but at last they were out. The squeeze threatened to crush his chest, but he emptied his lungs as much as possible and heaved again. Free! His waist and legs followed fast, and he crashed to the deck, knocking the wind out of himself.

When he recovered enough to pick up his jacket, he discovered his Link was cracked right across. It must have taken a direct hit from his belt buckle or elbow. Nice work, he thought, tossing it aside in disgust. Let me know if you can think of any other ways to screw up.

He scrambled to his feet, putting his jacket back on and hefting his rifle. He had to get to the food container. He had to get to Kit.

* * *

“I knew I’d break your arm.”

“It’s not broken,” Kit said. “Just bruised.” And fucking painful. Ditto his lip, which he’d bitten right through. But he hadn’t yelled and given away their presence, which meant they were able to sneak up on the unsuspecting pirates.

They’d finished with the clamp Kit had previously seen them working on and had moved on to another. Fully occupied with it, they hadn’t heard Kit and Gracie moving around in the darkness preparing some little surprises. They didn’t hear them approaching, each carrying a fire extinguisher. Kit had two, in fact. A big one and a miniature one in his apron pocket, alongside a few other bits and pieces. Reaching the end of the lane of crates, Kit peeked around it and saw the same group of five men working on the clamp.

He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes since they smashed the tracker. Was Raine on his way, or was he tied up fighting somewhere else? Was he hurt? Was he… Kit derailed this morbid train of thought, needing to keep his head.