Bad Boy Romance: Bad Marine (Bad Boy Military Romance) (Alpha Bad Boy New Adult Contemporary Male Stories) (30 page)

_______________

              In the Captain's seat on the bridge of the
Morrow,
Ty Callum resorted to using his personal screen to follow the progress of the Space Urchins through a schematic of the ship's structure.  The ship's computer and data systems were operating at 60 percent efficiency, which was falling fast.  Frowning at his screen, he muttered, "Hungry bastards.  You've already eaten through some of the ship's data relays."  He couldn't even raise the ship's interactive computer voice.  His personal screen would have to serve him, and even its link to the ship's systems had begun to flicker.  Looking up futilely at the viewer, he muttered again, "Too bad I can't see how the
Aureole
is doing." 

              He thought of the other officer who had addressed him, the Captain of the
Aureole
.  In spite of his jeopardy, he now harbored some thoughts about this Captain Reyna Talbot that were out of place and time at the moment.  "Quite a looker, that one."  Any other time, he would do everything to try to persuade such a woman to drop both rank and uniform and join him for some naked horizontal R and R--at which point the two of them would indulge themselves in a number of other choice letters of the alphabet.  His thoughts strayed just enough to wonder whether Reyna were like other female Patrol Captains he'd met, too full of her position to get into some positions lying down with him.  In his travels he had been able to prevail on a few of them, but found others too self-important to sleep with a common prospector.  As he noted on his screen that an Urchin was even now chomping its way through a service duct on its way to the bridge, he wondered whether he would live long enough to find out just what type Captain Talbot was.

_______________

              In space, the
Aureole
swerved and looped, banking and diving and releasing pulser beams to the fore and aft, port and starboard, keel and mast, holding at bay the ravenous spectral forms of the Space Urchins which swooped and lunged, trying to latch onto the ship's shields again and penetrate to the hull.  Where the beams connected there was a sudden burst or upheaval and a stricken Urchin went spinning away with severed limbs or tail; or erupted in a violent cloud of plasma and sparks as it was skewered right through its middle.  To Reyna's satisfaction, one creature put itself directly between the
Aureole
and the
Morrow
and made a frontal charge--and took a pulser blast right in its voracious maelstrom of a mouth.  An instant later, the
Aureole
sailed through the sparking cloud where the Urchin had been. 

              "
Got
you, you wretched monster!" Reyna cracked with another curt nod at the tableau on the screen.  The
Morrow,
still bleeding plasma and listing to port, loomed ever larger in the viewer.  "Comm," she called, "can you give me an updated status on the
Morrow?
" 

              The Comm Officer reported, "
Morrow
approaching half power and dropping rapidly." 

              Silently, Reyna commended Callum and his people for keeping themselves going this long.  Before her, the screen was still filled with Space Urchins, which seemed to be deliberately avoiding doing any more damage to the
Morrow
and making for the
Aureole
as fresh prey.  And perhaps, with a calculated risk, she could turn that to her advantage. 

              "Helm," she called.  "All stop.  Tactical, full main power and full reserve power to all external shields." 

              An icy silence fell over the bridge as the officers seated before her turned around and they and their comrades to both sides all fixed their eyes nervously on the Captain.  The Helmsman asked with a gulp, "All stop, Captain?" 

              Setting her jaw, Reyna repeated, "That was the order, Helm.  All stop." 

              Exchanging a look of mounting anxiety, Helm and Sciences turned back to their posts.  And with the execution of orders, the
Aureole
came to a complete stop in the Xerxes Supernova Remnant.

              As quickly as it would take to say it, the Space Urchins were upon the ship.  They came sailing in from everywhere, hit the shields, and held on.  The space around the
Aureole was
filled with the ominous flickering and throbbing of light from the creatures draining the power of the shields like a mass of cosmic leeches. 

              On the bridge, Reyna allowed herself a frown of disgust at the sight of four of them attached to the forward shields alone.  She knew that the entire envelope of energy surrounding the ship was covered with them. 

              Tactical reported, "We are now completely enclosed in Space Urchins, Captain." 

              Reyna replies, "Just like I expected.  Now, Tactical, I want you to put all the power you just put into the shields into an omni-directional discharge.  Hit them with everything.  Fry the damn things." 

              In front of her, Helm and Sciences traded another look.  Both men silently smiled at their Captain's strategy. 

              "Discharge at will," said Reyna.  "But make it fast." 

              With a hand striking his panel, Tactical answered, "Discharging now, Captain." 

              The response was instantaneous.  In the spaces between the clustered Space Urchins covering the shields, there was a second of pulsating light.  Then, from those same spaces poured a mighty cascade of power; fountains of energy surging out on every vector at once and blossoming into a ball of energy that expanded blindingly.  It spread out, shining brighter than the glow of the nebula itself.  As it started to fade, the space surrounding the
Aureole
was strewn with wisps and curls of dissipating plasma--and the ship was alone.

              On the bridge of the
Aureole,
the Science Officer reported with satisfaction, "The Space Urchins are gone, Captain." 

              Reyna stood up.  "The ones who came after us are gone, that is.  There'll be a few more of them still making a meal of the
Morrow.
  You're in charge, Science Officer.  I'm heading over there with the boarding party." 

              All eyes once again turned to the Captain.  Sciences asked, "
You,
Captain?" 

              "You heard me, Mister," said Reyna.  "I'm going over to help--one Captain to another." 

              The Science Officer rose to comply with orders, taking the Captain's seat as Reyna quickly headed out.

_______________

              Ty Callum, too tense to stay in his seat on the bridge of the
Morrow
, clutched his personal screen and watched the progress of the Urchin chewing its way through the inner conduit on its way to the bridge.  At the same time the screen connected him with his Engineer on a lower deck.  The Engineer, his dark-haired Asian face occupying a section of the screen, reported, "The
Aureole
has cleared out the Space Urchins from the surrounding space.  It's safe to start sending the Emergency Pods out now.  And they're sending their own Emergency Pod to dock with us; they've got rescue and medical personnel on board.  But we're having trouble with the motors of all the docking port doors; we're going to have to do a manual docking procedure." 

              "Fine," said Callum.  "Remember my instructions.  You and the rest of the crew go from there and the other escape ports.  Everyone else gets off
first;
they can come for me if there's still time." 

              The Engineer protested, "Captain, some of those things are still aboard; you're still in trouble up there!"

              But Callum cuts him off.  "The orders stand.  It's bad enough we've had to scrub this whole mission and come home empty handed.  A lot of people are in for a hell of a disappointment over this.  I won't add grief over any of you to that.  That's final." 

              Grimly, the Engineer accepted.  "Aye, Sir.  Engineering out."  That section of the screen in Callum's hand disappeared.

              In silence once more except for the sparking and crackling of disrupted control surfaces, Callum kept his eye on his screen and cursed.  Inwardly, he fumed,
Damn.  It would have been so perfect.  So much money.  This whole bloody nebula is a mass of money and because of those damn things we'll never get at a farking cred of it.  What am I supposed to tell them when I get back--
if
I get back?  How am I supposed to face them?  The whole damn thing is a failure.
 

              He looked up, breathing heavily, his entire face pressed into a frown of frustration, rage, and regret. 
If I die now, I die with this failure.  That's how they'll remember me.  Damn.  Damn, damn, damn...
  A vicious noise welled up on the bridge, a noise from inside the wall facing Callum.  It was a sound of metal rending and grinding and tearing, a sound of hard things being ripped asunder like tissue paper.  The sound grew louder, getting closer.  Callum watched the wall and saw it start to shake and buckle.  Beyond the fact of his failure, he was sorry that he would probably never get to look that beautiful Captain Talbot in the face in person.  In the next few minutes he may take the memory of her on his viewer with him as he left this universe.  He slipped his screen into his uniform pocket and went for the holster at his belt, drawing his pulser and bracing himself.

_______________

              The docking port hatch doors of the Engineering section slid open haltingly, grudgingly, with a complaint of gears and servos, until at last they were wide enough for Reyna Talbot and a detachment of rescue and medical personnel, six of her crew besides herself, to step through.  The Engineering bay looked a fright.  Reyna could tell that before the Urchins struck, Callum was running a tight ship.  The disarray and controlled chaos before her--broken and fallen fixtures, heaps of debris on the floor, fibre optics spilling out of bulkheads--was the damage done to a place that had started out shiny and spotless and in perfect order.  The place had taken collateral damage from power surges when the Urchins struck, but it was only the presence of antimatter in the engines that had stopped the things coming in here directly.  Space Urchins, like most everything else in the universe, did not take well to antimatter.

              At once the Engineer, a short-haired Asian man, stepped out from the huddle of
Morrow
personnel and addressed them.  "Captain Talbot," he said, "Captain Callum is still on the bridge.  He ordered us all..." 

              "I know what he ordered you to do," Reyna said, putting a hand on his shoulder.  "The Captain stays behind, going down with his ship; oldest story in the book.  I'd have done the same.  We're tracking the last of the Urchins that you have on board.  Show my people to your wounded and help them get everyone out.  I'm going after your Captain myself."  She motioned to a man and a woman from her group.  They headed for the portal out of Engineering, leaving the other four to their work.

              Reyna and her comrades made a brisk pace through the outer corridor.  She ordered the woman at her side, "Scan all the lifts.  Find the one nearest here that's in the best order.  If there isn't one, we're going to have to use the service ducts to get to the bridge.  And look sharp for Urchins popping out of the walls." 

              The female officer called out, "Captain, there's one coming through a conduit about eighteen..."  Suddenly, a metallic tearing sound filled the corridor.  The three
Aureole
officers halted in their tracks at the rupture of the wall ahead and to the left of them.  Fragments went flying, and behind them a Space Urchin came glowing with its whirling maw into the corridor.  It stopped in the middle of the passage, flexing its appendages and sucking the air at them, as if ready to charge them.  "...meters ahead of us," the officer finished.

              The three from the
Aureole
drew their weapons and aimed in unison.  The danger was not so much that the Urchin would try to devour them--the space beasts did not consume living creatures--as that it might charge and chew through an outer section of the hull.  If it did, the decompression would blow the lot of them out into space.  "Fire!" cried Reyna.  As one, she and her fellows shot their pulsers right at the creature.  In the barrage of beams, the Urchin throbbed like a rapidly beating heart and threw off a trembling radiance while emitting a high-pitched whine that grew to a nerve-grinding crescendo.  "Cease fire and duck!" shouted Reyna.  The three of them broke off their beams and hit the deck together.  Less than a second later, the pulser-struck Urchin gave off a final, deafening wail and exploded, spewing clouds of the glowing stuff of its body up and down the passage.