Fatal Boarding (25 page)

We dashed out, lugging our weapons, satchel,
and charges. I went directly to the door, and carefully peered
around the corner. There was no one in sight.

I charged over to my target console and
pulled the lower drawer open. Perk was already working on one in
the next chamber. I hit the buttons on my charge, watched the timer
start counting down, and placed it gently under the queer looking
manual in the drawer.

We sprinted to the elevator and arrived at
the same time. Within its open framework, I hit the up button as
Perk pulled the detonator out of his pocket and took the best
position to toss the charge. The elevator was only moderately fast.
We passed up through the next level unseen, nothing but cables and
junk scattered around a loading area.

The third level up, trouble was waiting. A
group of four of them, their backs to us, stood together working on
something. One of them heard the elevator and looked up. With a
look of alarm, he raised one three-fingered hand to point. His
comrades turned abruptly, just as Perk’s charge slid across the
floor beside them. The charge exploded with our feet still exposed
to that level, and with the loud boom, we felt concussion and
debris blast past.

The next level was a huge two or three story
chamber with the elevator loading area in an adjoining alcove. As
we rose higher, I realized we had just passed the party.

With more alarms blaring around us, we
silently rejoiced as we emerged up to our point of entry. As we
stepped off, I used the butt of my weapon to smash the elevator
control panel, hoping to disable it. We looked hurriedly around,
praying our suits were still there. I glanced back and watched
disappointedly as the elevator headed back down.

“Perk, they’ll be coming.”

“Yeah, have you noticed the hatch is closed
and sealed, with keypad?”

“Crap.”

We scurried around and found our suits. In
the mad scramble to get them out and set up, we got tangled up with
each other’s gear. Perk gave me the finger. Only with great
conscious effort, was I able to sit on the floor and get my legs
in. Perk continued to struggle with his.

He asked worriedly, “Time?”

“We may have been too generous. We still
have ten minutes.”

“You know we’ve got to blow that hatch.”

“Four charges should be plenty.”

“I’ll set two remotes to blow all four
charges. Either of us will be able to do it with one button.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

We stood and pull our suits up and wrestled
into the arms and gloves. I closed and sealed Perk’s back pack,
turned, and he sealed mine. He reached down, opened the satchel,
and drew out two remotes. After setting them, he handed me one.
“Wait til I’m clear, okay?”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’ve got to place these before I
pressurize. It’ll be a whole lot faster.” He gathered up the four
remaining charges and headed for the hatch.

I drew out the two rocket motor remotes,
tucked them into a Velcro pocket on my suit leg, and kicked the
empty satchel away. It was a pleasure to twist the helmet on. With
my visor up, I took a position between Perk and the elevator, and
got ready to fire.

“That’s the last one.” He picked up his
helmet, and hurriedly pulled it on. “We’ll need to get back behind
the elevator shaft for a shield.”

We both reached up to pull down our visors,
but never made it. The top of the elevator suddenly shot up through
the floor.

They had somehow squeezed four onto the
small, round platform. The controls on the elevator were still
smashed, but the thing came up through the floor like a torpedo.
They leapt off in a controlled crash. They were not the usual ugly
little men. They wore combat-styled suits, and carried much larger
weapons. They were visible, probably because the weapons were too
large to conceal. They opened fire as they came up, and immediately
began to scatter. The continuous blaster fire echoed off the walls
at a mind-numbing level.

My first shot caught one of them square in
the chest. It knocked him over backwards, but the bastard got right
back up. I hit him again with rapid fire until one shot caught him
square in those yellow teeth, and he stayed down.

Perk put three shots into two of them. It
knocked them around but not down. To my horror, I saw him get hit
in the chest. He flailed over backwards and did not get back
up.

I stepped behind a short partition off to
the right, held my gun around the corner and laid down half a dozen
rounds of blind fire. The strap on Perk’s weapon was down around
his waist with part of it near me. With another round of blind
fire, I dared to step out and back, grabbing it as I went. More
blind fire and I dragged his body behind the partition with me.

I listened. There was not a sound.

I kneeled and worked Perk’s gun off of him,
but I took too long. When I stood, there was a barrel at the side
of my head. I stiffened as one of the creatures moved around in
front of me, keeping his weapon pointed at my forehead. The ugly
little man gave me another of those smiles I had grown so very
tired of. He lowered the barrel of the gun so that it was pointed
at my heart. I was afraid to raise my hands for fear it would set
him off.

Still smiling, he abruptly threw his head
back as though to laugh out loud. But no laugh came. Instead, the
sharp, pointed end of a knife blade emerged from his throat. The
creature fell back onto Perk, kneeling behind him.

I dropped to the floor, and out into the
open, thinking the other two must be just around the corner. The
closer of the two had moved in front of the big, center table.

We both fired, his went high, but three of
mine hit him square in the chest, sending him flying backwards,
over the table. Like everything else, he went down into it. He
caught the edge and seemed desperate to hang on. His partner on the
other side, stood aghast at the sight, as though it was the worst
possible thing that could have happened. The little man struggled
but slipped farther down as if some heavy force was pulling him in.
He dropped his weapon onto the floor and grabbed at the edge with
both three-fingered hands. His eyes were wide, and he opened his
mouth to scream, but was yanked down still further so that only his
hands were left grasping the edge of the tabletop. One hand slipped
away, soon followed by the other, and he was gone.

His partner was infuriated. He opened fire
but only got off two shots, before Perk, still laid out on the
floor, blew the hatch. Once again I was too damned close. I was
slammed up and back into the wall, and hit my head so hard inside
the padded helmet that the world went black. Not wanting to miss
anything, I quickly willed myself back to consciousness. When the
light refocused, Perk, the dead alien, and I were in a pile on the
floor.

My first thought was to wonder if my helmet
was cracked, but it didn’t matter. Immediately it felt like the air
was being sucked out of my lungs. Anything not fastened down in the
chamber was being dragged or blown out the open door. The alien
ship had been at a low pressure atmosphere, but it had a lot of it
to back that up. Perk and I were lifted up and began drifting
toward the exit. I managed to grab him, and at the same time snag
the edge of the alcove. I pulled him in, held him with one leg, and
slapped his visor down. As soon as it sealed I felt his suit kick
on automatically, a side benefit of a pilot’s suit. I let go of the
wall, and slapped my own visor down. We were dragged across the
room and reached the open hatch just in time to meet the last of
the little old men. The three of us hit the door together, too much
of a crowd to fit through, and the suit-less alien, wide-eyed,
grabbed onto me for dear life.

With sincere conviction, I hit him with the
hardest right hook I had left. It knocked him silly just long
enough to break free. We went out the hatch in single file, the ET,
Perk, and yours truly. Our momentum carried us too fast toward
Electra, skipping along the gangway handrails. As I kicked and
struggled to get into position, off to my right the ET went
twirling away. For just an instant, he caught my eye. He had lost
everything. There would be no return to pirate-port with the
spoils. No more infinite future sucking the life out of other life.
He fell toward the stars, wrestling hopelessly as he went,
disappearing into the cold darkness.

An instant before we rammed into Electra’s
superstructure, I caught a glimpse of Perk’s suit bleeding both air
and frozen blood. I clamped my glove over the hole and a spilt
second later took the impact on my right side. We bounced off like
wrestlers hitting a matt, and the recoil turned us to face the
alien ship. With my hand still patching Perk’s suit, I looked at
the countdown timer on my sleeve. Three minutes until the big
charges went off. I let go of him, tore a remote out of my leg
pocket and hit the arm button. At the first instant the armed light
illuminated, I hit the fire button and looked up.

For some reason that will never be known,
the left motor fired first. With that first blast of light, I
grabbed Perk and held on tight. The motor took only a second to
move the large, bug-like silhouette away from us. The gangway tore
lose, pitching and twisting, still anchored at our end. The mass of
the vehicle must have been much less than we anticipated, because
that single motor would have been plenty. The fringe of thrust
pushed us against Electra and held us there.

The lighted motor drove the thing up and off
to the right, tipping it over in a clockwise roll. It must have
been hell inside. The right motor finally came on with a burst of
crap from the nozzle, and then tried to fight the roll and
rightward yaw. The vehicle flipped, and looped, and twirled its way
off into distant space like a top fuel dragster that had hit the
rail. It became smaller and smaller, picking up speed as it
went.

We had been so, so lucky. The firing of the
first motor had pushed us back into Electra, and Electra herself
had shifted and moved, but it had forced the alien ship upward,
pointing the rocket exhausts away from us.

The scene was so surreal I had forgotten
about the big charges. I looked at the timer. It had passed zero
and was now at plus-one. A pang of fear rose up within me. Either
the explosion had been contained within their ship, or it had not
gone off.

Suddenly there was light. Like a new star in
the distance, it beamed on, followed by streaks of white shooting
off in every direction.

An instant later came something totally
unexpected, nothing at all. Suddenly black, empty space, as though
it all had been an illusion. But, it only took a second to
understand. They had been running with antimatter. With the
destruction of their antimatter containment, the antimatter had
been let lose to devour everything. Mutual annihilation.
Neutralization of all matter in equal proportion.

Like an injured chimp, I managed to get a
handhold on Electra and drag us down to the open airlock. The
lights within were dreamlike. Perk’s suit was softening. He was
either unconscious or gone, I couldn’t tell which. I had to lay him
on the floor in Electra’s gravity to shut the outer door. I hit the
emergency pressurization control, knowing that we would both have
to remain in our suits for a while, regardless. There would be no
emergency techs to greet us. For all we knew, everyone on Electra
was captive by now. I held Perk with one arm and opened an
emergency kit on the wall. I broke out a large patch and stuck it
over the hole in his suit, then plugged him into an umbilical,
hoping his backpack was still functioning well enough to manage his
atmosphere.

When the inner door finally opened, it made
me want to cry like a baby. There stood R.J. and the Doctor, loaded
down with med kits, and ready to go.

Chapter 26

I awoke in a white room, on a clean white
bed, a white sheet pulled up over me to the neck. My clothes were
gone. It felt as though I was dressed in only boxer shorts. I had a
pretty good headache going. There was a smiley-face stuck to the
ceiling above me.

I tried to sit up, but succeeded only in
raising my head. The rest of me refused to budge. RJ’s face
appeared on my left and stared down at me.

“I wouldn’t try that just yet.”

“Why am I restrained?”

“You’re not. You’re so beat up it just feels
that way.”

“Perk?”

“He’s hanging in there.” RJ nodded to my
right.

I turned my head to see Perk, in the same
totally white environment, beneath a clear Plexiglas tube,
asleep.”

RJ continued. “It was some form of plasma
bullet. It made a pretty good size hole. Designed not to cauterize,
so the victim would bleed more. It shut down his left lung, but the
doctor rebooted it. He’s gonna make it.”

“But the ship and crew?”

“You’re gonna be proud of us. Would you
believe Ringo and Salardy took out two of them? They fell for the
fake net messages. Pell’s phony call for help worked like a dream.
The two of them walked into the beams, got knocked down by the
blast and Ringo and Salardy were waiting. They unloaded everything
they had. They’re suits failed and they became visible, but they
were already dead.”

“And that’s not all. We sealed off most of
level two, all except the main corridor, and then caught one of
them coming out. He was in some kind of hurry, like he got a
message it was time to leave or something. Wasn’t paying enough
attention. Broke two of the beams and got into a fire-fight. I
think maybe when they die, the suits shut down or something.
Anyway, the remains of those three are in isolated deep freeze.
And, you won’t believe who took that one out. Frank Parker.”

“Frank Parker shot one?”