My Other Car is a Spaceship (31 page)

“Yes, but can you look a man in the eyes and shoot him down?”

“If he’s pointing a blaster at me or my people,
hell
yeah!”

Hal grinned
into the holo pickup. “All right, then. Welcome to the team. I’m sure you’ll get the chance to test out that theory. Now let me get back to work here. I’ve still got a few components to reinstall, but I should be able to get her flight-ready by morning. Have the rest of the team here by dawn at the latest.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“Sir? Won’t
you
be in charge, Commissioner? I’m just a pilot.”

“Hell no. I’m just one of the grunts. It’s
your
plan,
your
mission,
your
responsibility,
Captain
Nellis.”

Hal snorted. “
Captain?
Why not Admiral of the Fleet, while we’re throwing around meaningless titles?”

Mynax laughed. “Because that’s Kalen Jeffries’ job when he returns.”

Dr. Felmendar reached
with a trembling tentacle to key the intercom system for Jern Ishtawahl’s office. He trembled not from fear—a Foren his age had little left to fear—but from the effects of too much low-level radiation exposure for too many years.

Unlike some of his long-dead peers, he’d managed to avoid the kinds of accidents that ended any worries of the infirmities of old age. But the s
mall, temporary leaks had taken their toll. Foren, unlike some species, didn’t contract radiation-induced cancers that killed quickly. Instead, they suffered for many years from a slow, gradual impairment of their nervous systems—Bronn’s Syndrome, doctors called it. Over time, it left them with tics and tremors and eventually reduced the victim to a brilliant mind trapped inside a barely functioning shell of a body—at least until a major organ finally shut down.

Felmendar knew he didn’t have long to live, a year at most—perhaps half that.
His illness had made it difficult for him to find work the past few years. But with the money he stood to make from this job, payable upon completion, his family would be set for many years to come. Another four or five months and he’d be done here and could go home to live out his final days in the company of loved ones.

But that was then.
For now he still had a job to finish, however distasteful.

He spoke into the intercom.
“Mr. Ishtawahl, this is Felmendar. I have completed the repairs on the damaged warhead. They were minor. You may reinstall it in another missile.”

“Excellent,” the Alberian replied. “When will the
next
nuke be ready?”

“It is almost finished. Another two to three days, plus testing.”

“Good work, Felmendar. If you continue to please me, there will be a little something extra in your bank account at the completion of your contract.”

“Thank you,
sir. I will not let you down. You will have all your nukes as promised.”

Steve Vanderwaal cradled his head in his arms on the rough bedding and tried to fall back to sleep. Images of his wife and son kept invading his dreams, making sleep troublesome. What started out as scenes from happier days, quickly morphed into their last moments together, as pirates ripped them from his arms. His last view of them was of their frightened tearstained faces, pleading with their captors. Jessica’s arms reached for his son, as they, too, were separated. Then they were dragged from view. He hadn’t seen them since.

Jessica, honey, t
omorrow’s the big day. With any luck, we’ll get out of here and I’ll come find you. Wherever you are, whatever it takes. Hold on. I’ll find you.

With that thought firmly in mind, he drifted off into a fitful sleep.

“
You’ve all heard the plan. If any of you have changed your minds, now’s the time to say so.” Hal surveyed the group assembled in the captain’s ready room.

“Once we leave, there’s no turning back. If you’re not fully committed to this, you’ll only
be in the way.”

He looked each of his team in the eyes, one by one. “Fen?”

The Thorian, nodded sharply. “I am in.”

“
Bekken?”

The Melphim spoke softly but with resolve. “Ready.”

“Kelmalar?”

The Foren crossed two yellow-orange tentacles before his chest and bowed his head in assent.

“Gley?”

The Sestran wove agreement with his antennae.

“Joud?”

The Chan’Yi
bobbed her snout. “Yes.”

“Pete?”

“
Hell
, yeah!” the man shouted with a fierce grin.

With all the troops accounted for, Hal turned to his co-pilot. “Sefsen?”

“You can count on me.”

“Spelvin? Last chance.”

“You kidding? I can’t wait.”

Hal nodded. “Very well.” He looked to the final member of the team, the squat, ugly, all-important Blensian. “And finally,
Giffen. Are you ready? Without you this mission is a waste of time.”

He frowned.
“I know I’ve asked you this before, but it’s easy to say yes from inside an office when it’s all theoretical. It’s something else entirely when you’re about to leave on what might be a one-way trip. Can you do it? Can you risk your life to possibly save thousands? When pirates are shooting at you and the rest of the team is depending on you, can you do what needs to be done?”

Giffen Moritha Brih
, suddenly the focus of attention for nine sets of eyes, shrank back for a moment, and then straightened to her full point-seven-meter height. When she spoke it was with a strong, confident voice.

“I know that we Blensians are not
considered the bravest creatures in the galaxy. Compared to some other races, as a species we must seem like cowards. But not all of us are that way. When needed, we can rise above our fears and do what we must.” She jerked her head down in a sharp nod. “I am ready.”

Hal bent and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Well spoken, Giffen. That’s all I can ask
of anyone.”

He straightened and looked over his team.
“I know we’ve all just met. But I think we have a good team here. You’re all experts in your fields. Of course,” he paused with a twinkle in his eyes, “in Spelvin’s case, the field is administration.”

Everyone chuckled, releasing tension, as Hal had planned.

“The Merchants’ Unity may be about to become a footnote in the history books, but if it has to go, I say we go out with a bang and not a whimper.”

H
al paused for a second, surveying his team. “Duty stations, everyone.”

He sat in the
captain’s chair, an odd feeling for the veteran pilot, and watched Sefsen Glo settle into the pilot’s couch.

“Take us out, Mr. Glo.
Destination: pirate central.”

As Kalen and Vanderwaal had promised each other, they coordinated their attacks so that Kalen’s Team One covered for Vanderwaal’s Team Two. Team two’s job was to attack the hangar, as planned before, but this time not with the goal of stealing a ship, but to wreak as much havoc on the hangar and any ships docked there as possible. Because a pirate barracks was located only a two-minute run from the hangar, Kalen’s task was to keep the pirates from leaving the barracks to provide backup for the guards in the hangar.

When the plans for the hangar changed, Vanderwaal argued for the job of stopping the pirates in the barracks.

“All it would take is a couple of canisters of poison gas and no one would leave the barracks upright.”

Kalen
frowned. “Yeah, and that would make us murderers, just like the pirates. I’m only too happy to shoot any armed pirate, but I’ll be damned if I’ll condone poisoning them in their sleep!”

“So, how do you propose
keeping a couple dozen pirates from leaving the barracks all at once when the alarm sounds? Stand at the door and ‘tsk-tsk’ them to death? There are only four of you to cover two doors. You don’t have the manpower to keep them at bay with blasters.”

Kalen nodded. “You’re right, we don’t. That’s why we’re going to gas them.”

Vanderwaal frowned. “But you just said—”

“I said I wouldn’t poison them in their sleep. I never said I wouldn’t hit them with
tear gas to incapacitate them. The four of us should be enough to stop the few who manage to grab a weapon and get out before the gas hits them.”

Vanderwaal paused in thought. “That could work. I still think we should kill them any way we can, though. Your way, they’ll still be around to come after us tomorrow.”

“I know, Steve, but I couldn’t live with myself if we did it your way.”

“You’re the boss,” Vanderwaal shrugged. “We’ll just have to find a way to kill them later.”

Kalen smiled. “I can live with that.”

“I hope we
all
can. The pirates will try to make sure we don’t.”

Now it was time to execute the plan they’d developed.

“Teams ready?” Kalen looked at the other three team leaders. All nodded agreement. “Let’s go!”

The four groups, consisting of three teams of four and one of five, raced out of the
tunnel. By the time they reached the third intersection, they were traveling in different directions and exited the maze into four corridors.

This would be their biggest coordinated strike yet, hitting—if everything went according to plan—four disparate targets nearly simultaneously.

This time, though, all the prime targets would be heavily guarded. The days of unprotected assets were long gone. As a result, the Kadre was forced to be creative in their attacks. Frontal assaults were too risky. Divide and conquer was the rule of the day.

Team
Three, led by the Melphim Menjen Zo, targeted a weapon’s locker guarded by four Melphim guards. Zo, dressed in a stolen guard’s uniform, limped from around the corner of an intersection, holding a bloody rag to his forehead and obscuring part of his face.

“Two prisoners,” he mumbled to the two guards who approached him with concern on their faces. Zo pointed behind him to the corner around which he’d just come.

The guards took off in that direction. Zo limped toward the other two guards standing on either side of the locker door. As he neared them, he stumbled and fell. As the guards bent to help him up, Zo rolled onto his back, pulled his blaster, and shot them. A moment later, the sound of blaster fire echoed down the corridor and the other two guards fell backward, dead, into the intersection.

The rest of
Team Three hurdled them and ran for the weapons locker, sacks in hand. They reached the locker about the same time as Zo got it unlocked using one of the dead guards’ ID badges. So far, the attack had taken less than ten seconds. They had one minute in which to collect as many weapons as possible from the locker, then they had to be on their way—but not before leaving a block of explosive behind, armed with a timer.

At the same time, Team
Four, led by Sue, struck one of the junction rooms. Through it passed one-third of the optical fiber wiring that allowed various parts of the fortress to communicate with one another. This time, one member of the team raced through the nearest intersection, firing down the crossing corridor at the guards outside the junction room. He missed, but two of the guards gave chase as he disappeared around the corner. When the guards turned the same corner, the two team members waiting there fired as soon as the guards appeared. The remaining two team members closed quietly behind the other two guards by the junction room, who were so busy watching their fellows chase the seemingly lone attacker they didn’t think to look behind them. They died without ever seeing their killers.

Unlike the earlier strikes by Kalen and Sue with crude homemade
bombs, this time the team had professional-grade explosives, powerful enough to destroy all the equipment and cabling in the room. It would take the pirates weeks to replace everything.

While Vanderwaal’s Team Two was getting into position to attack the hangar, Kalen’s Team One
located an air duct that fed the barracks, tossed two canisters inside, and headed toward the barracks doors. Moments later, the doors slid open and coughing, retching pirates stumbled out. The unarmed ones were hit with blasters set to minimum. They fell, alive but unconscious. The six who made it out with weapons in their hands weren’t as lucky. After a minute, the last pirate lay twitching on the floor and Team One raced to join Vanderwaal’s team in the hangar.

Team Two was already inside. One of the team had driven a grav-lifter from a warehouse to
the hangar. The guards outside the door fired at the vehicle, but the cargo of machine parts raised in front of the ‘lifter not only shielded the driver and most of the ‘lifter from the blaster fire, it also provided enough mass that the ‘lifter had no trouble smashing through the heavy doors.

The other four members of the team who followed the ‘lifter, were also partially shielded by the machine parts. They killed the four guards outside the hangar and
chased the lifter into the hangar. Once there, blaster fire from the eight guards inside forced them to duck behind a stack of crates.

Vanderwaal
gestured at two of his people and pointed to the right side of the stack. He and the two other team members went left. All returned fire around the crates.

A minute later, the four members of Kalen’s Team One arrived to even the odds.

The driver of the grav-lifter shifted into top gear and gunned the vehicle right at the nearest ship. He jumped off the speeding ‘lifter and dove for cover behind some equipment stacked between the two ships. A moment later, the ‘lifter plowed into the side of the first ship below the bridge. The satchel bomb strapped to the top of the machine parts blew, penetrating the ship’s hull and ripping into her innards. Fragments of machine parts also went left and right, slicing gashes in the hull of that ship and the adjacent one.

The driver,
a Sestran, firing from cover, used his blaster to pour energy into the reinforced main viewport of the bridge on the second ship. It took a minute of concentrated fire, but without shields and with the blast doors open, eventually the viewport shattered inward, sending flying shards of transparent aluminum inward to stab into equipment like dozens of daggers. Sensitive components fractured or shorted out, rendering the ship effectively dead. His job done, the Sestran used the cover of cargo to rejoin his teammates.

T
he others continued to shoot it out with the guards, neither side gaining ground. They were all too well concealed behind cargo.

“That’s it, everyone,” Kalen
shouted from his place of cover. “Time’s up. We have to leave before the reinforcements arrive. They’ll be here any second. Your team first, Steve. We’ll cover you from here. You can cover us from the doorway.”

“Right,” Vanderwaal replied. “Come on, people. Let’s go!” He gestured toward the door.

Team One stepped up the rate of fire as Team Two zigzagged toward the exit. When they arrived and began sending covering fire back at the guards, Kalen gave the order for his team to leave.

When they were
seven meters from the doorway, he began to think they’d all get out of there in one piece. Then, beside him, the Sestran, VerBendol, fell. Kalen turned to help him, but stopped when he saw the smoking hole that was the back of his head.

Damn, damn, damn!

He resumed running for the door. Ahead of him, a man fell, shot in the abdomen.

Steve!

“Someone help me with him!”

One of the Thorians grabbed Vanderwaal’s left arm and Kalen took the right. Together they half-carried, half-trotted
the injured man from the hangar, with the others providing covering fire to pin the guards inside the hangar.

“It’s gonna be all right, Steve. We’ll take you somewhere safe.”

Vanderwaal coughed, spraying blood. “Fat chance of that.”

“Don’t say that! Nude’ll fix you up as good as new.”

Vanderwaal laughed, coughing up more blood, and then winced in pain. “I think this’ll require more than some bandages and antiseptic.”

“No more talking, Steve. We’ll be there in a few minutes. Just hold on!”

The guards attempted to pursue the strike teams, but covering fire kept them far inside the hangar long enough for the teams to turn the corner at the next intersection. Two more team members grabbed Vanderwaal’s legs and together they carried him to the maze.

Behind them, reinforcements for the guards
began to arrive.

The explosive
left earlier in the weapons locker detonated then, a kilometer away, blowing out the wall separating the locker from the corridor and sending a shiver through the rock floor throughout the fortress.

The blast killed two pirates unlucky enough to
have found the dead guards moments earlier, and left piles of shattered rock and smoking metal choking the corridor. The explosion did a thorough job of destroying the weapons the Kadre hadn’t had time to steal. Those were weapons Kalen’s people wouldn’t be able to get their hands on in the future, but then neither would the pirates. All in all, it seemed a fair trade. With only a handful of “freedom fighters,” Kalen’s Kadre needed nowhere the number of weapons the pirates did.

Combined with the attack on the hangar, some of the guards for the first time began to worry that perhaps they wouldn’t be able to take care of the “little problem” the escaped prisoners represented.

“Sir
!” MekFensal called up to Penrod, who leaned over the catwalk railing above the Pit. “The prisoners got away. By the time the reinforcements arrived at the hangar, they were already gone.”

“God
damn
it!” Penrod slammed his hand down on the tubular steel railing, causing it to vibrate. He hadn’t felt this powerless in many years. Although these circumstances were very different, in some ways they reminded him of his early days as the child of slaves. The feelings of impotence and rage were just as real now as then. But where before he raged at his helplessness over his life, now he raged at how little good all his power did him. He commanded an army of pirates and a fleet of ships that made planetary governors wet themselves in fear. Yet he couldn’t even quell an uprising by a handful of prisoners in his own house!

He knew he was as much to fault for the internal security problems as anyone—perhaps more so, as his was the final authority. But he had to blame
someone
, damn it, and blaming himself wouldn’t make him feel any better.

“Jern!” Penrod whipped around and stalked into his office. He punched the code for Ishtawahl’s implant.
I have to get one of those myself, one of these days.

“Sir?”

“Jern, what’s the status down there?”

“The prisoners were very efficient—in and out. They hit hard and then they left before our people could catch up with them. I am afraid they have developed into an efficient fighting force.”

“Gee, you
think
?” Penrod snarled.

Ishtawahl ignored the sarcasm. “
Intimidator
is out of commission for at least two weeks, until we can replace the damaged equipment on the bridge.
Destructor
will be out even longer—a month or more while we repair the hull. And the junction room will take almost as long to get working again. With what they stole from the locker, the prisoners will not be running out of weapons or ammo anytime soon. But there
was
some good news in all this.”

“Really. That’s hard to believe. Did they perhaps leave behind a map to their secret lair?”

“No sir. When they attacked the barracks they used tear gas instead of poison, or we would be down nearly thirty guards instead of only the fourteen they shot.”

“I would categorize that as ‘less bad’ rather than ‘good’.”

“Perhaps,” Ishtawahl replied, clearly disagreeing. “But, we did kill at least one, and probably two, of their number.”