Stars in the Sand (3 page)

 With a near-crash, the shuttle slammed into the side of the freighter, the docking clamps
locking
into place, sirens sounding to warn of a collision. The hull was intact, but it had been a close thing – the pilot must have tried to swat them away with the bulk of his ship at the last minute. Taking a deep breath, she slammed the hatch control and, without looking, swung through the airlock, catapulting herself into the corridor, rifle out and ready to fire.

 Waiting for her in the freighter were a couple of confused-looking crewmen, and she snapped a couple of shots in their direction, pushing herself away down the corridor. Neither even threatened to
get
near their targets, but they dived dramatically out of the way into cover; the bullets harmlessly smash
ing
into the hull.

 “
Come on!” she yelled through the hatch, and her troops piled out into the corridor, spreading around into a loose clump. Seeing that they were outnumbered, the two freighter crewmen pushed away, a salvo of wild shots chasing them as they retreated.

 “
Fire discipline!” Orlova said. “Don’t waste your shots, and only shoot if you have a target!” She’d have been happy enough if the rest of her group contented themselves with simply looking menacing, leaving the shooting to her, but admitting that would probably have had a bad impact on morale.

 Another clang echoed down the corridor, and as she watched, a second airlock slid open, Nelyubov and Cooper bursting through it almost before it opened. Cooper reacted quickly enough to turn his pistol on one of the fleeing crewmen, causing him to spin out of control and smash into the wall. Nelyubov grabbed him, securing him with his arm, then turned to Orlova with a grin.

 “
Looks like we’ve found a tour guide, Maggie.”

 
“
Where’s the drive room?” Orlova
asked
. “Quickly.”

 Cooper held his gun close to the man’s temple, his face a mask of iron, and the crewman looked up, trying to blink away tears of fear, his gaze switching from one to the other. They wouldn’t have shot him out of hand, but the crewman didn’t need to know that.

 “
Deck Five, aft,” he said, his voice trembling. “They’re making a last stand there.”

 “
Think he’s telling t
he
truth, Lieutenant?” Cooper asked.

 “
We’ll find out soon enough. Secure him in the shuttle, and let’s get on with it.” She turned to see Durman drifting out of her shuttle, the last one out, shaking his head.
“
Problem?”
 
“
It’d be nice not to keep fighting my own people. That’s all.”

 Looking around, she said, “Take charge of the rear guard. Six men to guard the shuttles.”

 “
Thanks.”
 
“
The rest of you, follow me!”

 There was no time for a tactical plan, no time to really think about what they were doing. All they could do was race for the drive room – or at least, where they hoped the drive room was – and see if speed could compensate for skill. She kicked towards the nearest elevator, presuming that her strike team would select itself. Those who reacted fastest would make it in time, the rest would have to wait in the corridor.

 Not waiting to see who that would be, she slammed her fist on the control for Deck 5; Nelyubov, Cooper, and a trio of maintenance technicians were with her – Cantrell, Grogan and Manning. All of them from Cooper’s shuttle, she noted. Evidently he had a talent for quick training that she hadn’t considered.

 “
Don’t try for cover when we get down there,” she said. “Just go for it. We might be able to take them by surprise, and we can’t afford a battle of attrition, we just don’t have the time. Cooper, Nelyubov, give us covering fire as we advance.”

 The two veterans exchanged a glance, both of them knowing what that order meant. They – and Orlova – were the only ones who might reasonably be expect to hit what they would be aiming at. The first group would be charging headlong into opposition as a distraction while the rest secured the position.

 “
Remember,” Cooper said, “don’t just head forward in a straight line. Use any hand-holds you can find to change your trajectory. If they know where you are going they will shoot you. And try not to slam into the wall.”

 Orlova braced herself, glancing left and right at the technicians, and inwardly sighed. They weren’t trained for this, and should be back on Alamo working on getting the ship back into one piece. It didn’t seem fair to throw them into the fight, but if this freighter could alert the Cabal of Alamo’s hiding place, they’d be just as dead at the end.

 The doors opened, and they burst out into the corridor, swinging out towards an obviously hastily prepared series of barricades swung across the ground to provide cover. Behind her, carefully placed shots cracked, sending the enemy forces down into their hiding places; she used the first barricade as a handhold, twisting herself onto a new trajectory – only to reach up to swing off a light fitting when she saw herself on a collision course with the ambling Cantrell.

 A crack next to her ear confirmed that the defenders had managed to get themselves together, and she pulled a pistol out of her belt, loosing off a shot at one of the freighter crewman behind her, the recoil pushing her faster down the corridor towards her destination. The gunshots were coming thick and fast now, cries of pain
echoing
all around her. Then, with another crack, the lights went out – someone must have managed to hit something vital.

 The corridor glowed an eerie red under the dim emergency lighting, and shots began to wildly fly through the air from gunmen hidden in the shadows. Any thought of a goal other than reaching the drive room was forgotten, and she tried to duck and dive towards her target, unable now to concentrate on anything other than her own progress through the gloom.

 Finally, her hand reached the far wall. The hatch didn’t open, but she hadn’t thought it would; in her hand she held a data crystal loaded with intrusion software, its simple computer mind dedicated to one task only – opening doors. With a single move, she slid the crystal into position, then twisted around behind a tangle of boxes, unknowingly smashing its occupant out of cover into the middle of the corridor – a series of shots fired, and his body grew limp, globules of dark liquid spilling forth.

 Another figure slammed into the wall beside her, and she glanced up to see Cooper, a grin on his face and his pistol in his hand, gesturing down at the corridor.

 “
Thought you might like some company, Lieutenant,” he said, panting for breath.

 A ray of light blasted down the corridor as the hacking crystal did it job, the hatch sliding open; she wasted no time in swinging into the room, surprised to see no-one inside waiting for her. Evidently everyone had decided to make their stand in the corridor. Cooper span around to cover the rear, then gestured forward.

 “
Where’s everyone else?”

 
“
Nelyubov’s back at the top of the corridor in cover, taking shots at anything he can see. The rest ended up getting caught by the third barricade, pinned down.” He looked up, peering into the dark, then continued, “He called Durman to send another wave. Help’s on the way.”
Looking down at her watch, she smiled. They still had three and a half minutes to go, and she turned to look at the drive control mechanism. A series of countdowns showed hendecaspace jump preparations in progress, but she could have guess that already. None of the controls matched those on Alamo, and she held her hand over them, frowning. All the readouts might as well be in gibberish for all she could understand them; she didn’t even recognize the language the control console was displaying.

 “
Well?” Cooper said.

 “
This isn’t what I was expecting.” Taking a deep breath, she started tapping buttons, and smiled; she’d guessed right, and the language changed back to English. Now she could begin to work, but she immediately began to frown; none of her commands worked. She slid a duplicate of her hacking crystal into a reader, but it didn’t even make a dent.

 “
Damn,” she said.

 “
What is it, Lieutenant?”

 “
Locked tighter than a drum.”

 “
Can we sabotage it?”

 Shaking her head, she said, “This is just the control room; we’d never get down to the drive systems themselves. At a pinch they could probably engage the drive from the bridge.”

 “
Two minutes, fifty seconds,” he said, looking at the door.

Pulling her communicator from her belt, Orlova said, “Orlova to Alamo. Patch me through to Lieutenant Bailey, right now.”

 Weitzman replied, “Aye, ma’am.”

 A few seconds later, the voice of Alamo’s Security Officer replied, “Bailey here.”

 “
You haven’t managed to break through the freighter’s firewall yet?”

 
“
No, still working on it.”

 
“
I need your gang to start working on hacking the drive systems. If I splice this communicator into the console, can you crack it?”

 “
Can do, Lieutenant.”

 Without further ado, she tugged a cord out of the communicator and fed it into the console, snapping it into position underneath. The channel closed, but the readout on the device started to show datafeed at maximum capacity, the hackers starting their work.

 “
How long, Lieutenant?” Cooper asked.

 “
Hopefully less than two and a half minutes,” she replied.

 Two more figures burst through the door – Cantrell and Manning, the latter sporting an angry gash down the side of his arm. The red-headed Cantrell spun around, taking a position opposite Cooper as if to the manner born, while Manning lumbered into the room clutching his arm. Orlova gestured towards the first aid kit on the wall.

 “
Get that seen to, then start monitoring the hack. They’ll be attacking any minute.”

 “
Any second,” Cooper replied. “We’ve got movement out there.”

 Alamo’s last Espatier leaned forward, taking a shot into the gloom with his pistol. The crack was followed by the noise of a ricochet, and he cursed under his breath before firing again, Cantrell immediately following suit; her shot was rewarded with a cry of pain.

 “
Got one!” she yelled.

 “
Beginner’s luck,” Cooper said. “I’ll be impressed as all hell if you can do it twice!”

 She leaned back, staring out into the shadows and gloom, raising her rifle to be ready to take the next shot. Cooper beat her to the punch, a pair of cracks from his pistol followed by a series of swear words in an unfamiliar language.

 Orlova looked down at the terminal, watching as Alamo’s security team fought an electronic duel with the freighter’s spooks. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d been running that mob herself, and she had some idea what they were capable of, but they had so little time to work.

 “
Lieutenant,” Cooper said, “I think they’re getting ready for an attack.”

 She turned to the gloom, looking at the shadows slowly moving around, before she realized what the obvious next move was going to be.

 “
Cover an eye!” she yelled, slapping a hand to her face just in time for the lights to blaze back on, dazzling her exposed eye. Cooper had closed his eyes, but none of the others had managed to follow her order before the enemy had thrown the switch. She dropped her hand and raised her rifle, firing a trio of shots at the advancing technicians, swinging forward on hand-holds in a bid to rush them while they were confused. Orlova and Cooper had a perfect field of fire at the advancing group, and two of the technicians paid the price for the failure of their plan while the rest skidded into cover, though far closer than they had been.

 “
Alamo for you, ma’am,” a squinting Manning said, “Captain Marshall on the communicator.”

 He tossed his communicator over to Orlova, who grabbed it and raised it to her ear in a single motion. “Orlova here, sir.”

 
“
What’s your status?”

 “
Ask Lieutenant Bailey; we’re just about hanging on over here.”

 
“
You’ve got sixty seconds to go. Can you get out of there?”

 She looked into the corridor, and a crack flew past her head. “No, sir. We’re pinned down.”

 A brief pause followed, “Maggie, I’m going to have to pull the trigger on the missiles in forty-nine seconds.”

 “
We all understand, sir. Though I hope we can render that unnecessary.”

 “
Ma’am!” Manning yelled, “Something on the status board!”

 Orlova tossed the communicator to Cantrell; she took it with a surprised look on her face while Orlova dived for the console. Bailey’s group had done their job, and the board was clear again. With a loud laugh, she started to enter the override commands. Evidently the bridge had realized what she was doing – a loud command in a strange language echoed from every speaker, and the freighter crew pushed forward once again, desperately attempting to overwhelm their position.

 There were six of them, two of them holding back to provide somewhat ineffective covering fire, the rest advancing into steady gunfire from Cooper and Cantrell, both trying to push the technicians back. With a thud, two of them slammed into the door, reaching for the two crewmen. Cooper took a shot at one, dropping the crewman but sending himself spiraling away into the room, while the other struggled with Cantrell.

 Orlova didn’t look up, not for a second, but continued to work, furiously typing commands into the console to scramble the system, anything to stop the ship from jumping. In the corner, the communicator was shouting at thin air; Manning drifted over to it and started to give a report to the Captain, but everything other than the console was fading away for Orlova.