Prison Ship (12 page)

Steiner found himself in the shuttle depot once again, facing Mary before she boarded the shuttle. Her hand trailed away until their fingertips lost contact. Desperately, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. She struggled against his hold.

Please, don’t go,
he cried out.

She ripped her arm free from his grasp and fled toward the shuttle.

No,
he screamed.
I need you.

Steiner jerked upright on his cot, gasping hard. Sweat covered him. He tried to calm himself but couldn’t seem to catch his breath. A horrifying realization came to him. Something was wrong with the air in the room.

He moved from the bed to the oxygen indicator on the wall. It read dangerously low. An alarm should have gone off when it sank below tolerable levels. Why hadn’t it?

He punched the keypad to open the cabin door. Nothing happened. He hit the mechanism again to no avail. His hand pried out the emergency hand crank. It wasn’t operational either.

He searched wildly for some idea that might save him.

His head began to spin. His muscles grew weary. He had to get air soon.

In desperation, he tore the grating off of the air vent and peered inside the dark tunnel. Ten feet into it, an emergency seal closed off the shaft from the air generators.

Someone was trying to suffocate him.

Then he remembered the satchel of explosives under the cot. He dragged it out, dumping the contents onto the floor. Twelve grenades. How could he use them to escape? They could puncture either the cabin door or the seal in the air duct; however, he would surely be killed by the blast.

Just as despair started to creep in, a solution occurred to him. The blast shield. He wrenched it out from under his cot. Its construction appeared tough enough to withstand intense heat.

He put his plan into operation. After piling the grenades at the base of the cabin’s door, he picked up the blast shield, then searched around for some insulation. The sheet from the cot. He ripped it from the mattress and tied it to the handle of the shield.

When he armed one of the grenades, a ten-second countdown was initiated.

He scrambled into the air duct with the sheet in tow. He pulled the excess bedding into the narrow shaft until the shield covered the vent opening. Darkness shrouded him. He braced himself against the sides, keeping tension on the sheet.

Then it happened.

It was as if his head exploded. Brilliant light, deafening noise, smoke, pain, then blackness.

He found himself riding a river of colors, trying to keep his face above the waves. Branches hung overhead just out of reach, as if they were taunting him. Something rubbed against his arm. He twisted around to see McKillip’s body floating next to him.

No,
Steiner screamed, almost going under. His legs fought desperately to keep him up.

Then he saw a dark mound ahead, protruding out of the surface. A blanket of black material spread out from it. When he got closer, he recognized it as hair. His blood froze as the head turned to reveal—

Mary
.

With a cry of terror, Steiner released himself to the powerful undercurrent. He was drawn deeper under the swirling tide. Pressure squeezed his lungs. The colors surrounding him began to fade into total darkness.

Rest.

Something like metallic claws clenched his arms. Abruptly, he was drawn upward.

Distorted voices sounded from all around. Light filtered through his eyelids. Blurred images of people surrounded him. Something was placed over his nose. His lungs breathed in pure oxygen. His head throbbed with intense pain. When he tried to move his arm, he found it had no strength. It didn’t even feel as if it belonged to him.

“Breathe deeply for a few moments,” a voice said. “Don’t try to move.”

He turned toward the source of the sound. The hazy form of J.R., the assistant engineer, huddled over him.

“I used to be a medic,” the man reassured him calmly. “You’ll be fine in a while.”

Steiner’s senses began to sharpen. Distant voices become clearer. People were gathered all around him. His memory reemerged from the haze that had engulfed it. Someone had tried to trap him.

He bolted upright, fighting the nausea the movement created. J.R. and Daniels stood next to him, extinguishers strapped to their backs. Tramer towered over him to the right. Steiner’s hand dropped to his holster to see if he still had his weapon. To his surprise, he found it there.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We all heard an explosion,” Daniels said. “Tramer arrived on the scene first. He dragged you out of the burning cabin.”

Steiner met the cyborg’s lifeless gaze for just a split second before the machine wheeled about and thumped away.

Why had it saved his life?

The engineers helped Steiner to his feet. Smoke fogged the corridor, hiding his cabin from view. He stumbled closer, curious about the amount of destruction. The spectators, congregated around the site, backed away, giving him clear passage.

The door that he had placed the grenades by lay in a twisted heap at the base of the entry, the corners broken off in the track. Steiner was amazed that he had survived a blast of that magnitude.

All that was left of the room’s furnishings was ashes and ruins. The cot had been permanently embedded in the bulkhead. Its metal posts stuck out, jagged and bent into wicked shapes. The blackened blast shield lay atop a pile of rubble, its surface showing signs of melting in several spots. Somehow, he must have kept his grip on it after losing consciousness.

Then his heart sank.

When he rummaged through the warm ashes by his cot, he discovered Mary’s holocard. Cracks split its scarred surface. He tried activating it.

Nothing happened.

With a small cry of rage, he threw the worthless piece of metal against the charred bulkhead.

In his mind, he could hear the sinister cadence of Jamison’s laughter.

TYCUS,
Steiner thought with apprehension as he led Mason toward the landing bay. He had asked the pilot to shuttle him down to the ground installation, where he was to have his meeting with Jamison. If Mary’s holocard hadn’t been destroyed, he could have used it for encouragement. He needed it badly.

Steiner still didn’t know who had tried to suffocate him the previous night, but he had discovered how they had managed the attempt. The assassin had broken into the life-support control station through one of the ventilation shafts and sealed off the flow of air to his cabin. Steiner had Richards install a proximity alarm near the oxygen generator to prevent anyone from doing the same thing again.

It was frightening to consider that the assassin was still at large on the ship. It began to erode Steiner’s optimism about his crew. He was determined not to let anyone get an advantage over him again, so he would plan his moves carefully, as if he were playing a chess game for his life.

“Do you really think it’s wise to leave Sam here all alone?” Mason asked, breaking the silence as they walked. “What if the crew riots or something like that?”

“When we first launched, weren’t you telling me he could take care of himself?” Steiner replied.

“That was before the two attempts on your life. If he were coming with us, I’d feel more at ease.”

“Trust me. He’s safer here on the
Marauder
.”

Steiner understood why Mason worried about the teenager. Over the past two weeks, a kinship had grown between the two of them; it was as if they had become brothers.

Daniels, J.R., and Spider waited by the sealed entry to the landing bay.

“What are they doing here?” Mason whispered.

“They’ll be manning the landing bay while I’m gone,” Steiner answered.

“What makes you think they won’t try to kill you, too?”

“If they were going to, they probably would have already succeeded by now.”

After an exchange of greetings with the engineers, Steiner started to enter the password into the computer panel beside the door.

“Ironhand,” Mason said, pointing down the corridor.

A blue sensor orb shone from a darkened silhouette at the far end.

Steiner expected Tramer to come forward, but it remained perfectly still.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Daniels said. “Tramer won’t harm us.”

“You sound like you trust it,” Steiner replied.

“More than most.”

The reassurance didn’t comfort Steiner. Keeping one eye on the cyborg, Steiner returned to the task of opening the door. The thick barrier slid aside. Darkness veiled the interior. The musty odor of stagnant air crinkled Steiner’s nose. It was quite apparent that this was the first time the bay had ever been used.

Daniels vanished into the blackness. Several seconds later, the overhead lights sprang to life, illuminating a vast chamber, which housed a small personnel shuttle and a giant armored transport carrier, a spacecraft capable of ferrying troops and making aerial attacks on ground installations. An assortment of wheeled vehicles called TRACs lined the right wall, armed with massive guns powerful enough to punch a hole through the outer hull.

Daniels signaled his aides to begin their work. Spider ascended a ladder into a control booth while J.R. ran to the back of the line of vehicles. A moment later, the shuttle moved forward, suspended from a claw that moved along a track in the ceiling.

A groan rose from Mason. “A scuttle bucket? I should have expected as much. After all, why would the military give us anything that was up-to-date?”

“Hello.” Bricket’s voice sounded from the entry. “We’re here.”

The bartender stood in the doorway with another man.

“Bricket, I only planned for you to join us,” Steiner said.

“My apologies, Captain,” the crippled man said, hobbling into the bay. “I thought I might need a sturdy back to help transport the shipment.”

Steiner should have realized the bartender wouldn’t be able to do all the physical labor by himself. He eyed the assistant with suspicion. He couldn’t remember anything about the man except that he was one of the maintenance personnel. It was doubtful Bricket would have chosen an assassin to come. As long as Steiner was in command, the bar stayed open.

“I can go alone if you wish,” Bricket said.

“No. Just inform me next time.”

At a signal from the bartender, the other man carried two gravity trucks into the room.

“What’s your name, crewman?” Steiner asked.

“Frank Pearce, sir.”

A loud clang echoed as the shuttle halted directly above the massive sealed doors of the air lock under the floor. A fuel vehicle, driven by J.R., backed up to the rear of the craft.

“A scuttle bucket,” Mason grumbled as he made his way over to it.

Because everyone had arrived, Steiner turned toward the control panel to close up the bay. He twitched involuntarily when he saw Tramer directly outside the doorway, its sensor orb glaring at him.

“Can I help you with anything?” Steiner asked, a little angry at being startled.

“Am I to be transferred off here?” Its icy words echoed through the empty corridor.

“I’ve decided to keep you on board for a while.”

Motors whined as it saluted.

Steiner punched the landing bay’s password into the control panel. The thick pressure door closed, cutting off the resounding thuds of the cyborg’s feet as it marched away.

Steiner wished he knew what Tramer’s programmed motives were. Why did it always shadow him? Why did it protect him when it had brutally murdered before?

Casting the thoughts from his mind, Steiner moved toward the shuttle’s hatch. The vessel’s external lighting flared to life, casting colorful glows into the shadows.

When he stepped inside the passenger compartment, he heard Daniels and Mason arguing in the cockpit.

“It doesn’t matter how many improvements you made, this is still a piece of junk,” Mason said.

“We did the best we could with what we had,” Daniels replied. “Did you expect all the components to be brand-new?”

“No, but I thought they’d at least be in operating condition.” The pilot pointed to the rear of the craft. “That energy coil back there belongs in a museum.”

“All of the ships in the bay, including this one, were tested three months ago when we were refitting this Peacemaker for use. They all worked fine then.”

“Three months ago,” Mason exclaimed. “A lot of good that will do us now.”

Daniels shrugged at Steiner as he exited the cockpit. The head engineer couldn’t be blamed for what the military provided him.

Steiner strapped himself into the copilot’s seat. “Ironhand, if that coil sends an intermittent flow to the engines, it’ll be our death sentence,” Mason said.

“Just do the best you can,” Steiner replied.

A low-pressure hiss announced that Daniels had sealed the hatch to the shuttle. Steiner glanced back to make sure Bricket and Pearce were fastened into their chairs.

Mason huffed. “The prison system gave us faulty equipment just so it would kill us. Fewer convicts to worry about.”

The floor parted, exposing a chasm beneath the suspended spacecraft. With a jarring motion, they descended into the pit below. The enormous air lock, which was capable of releasing the armored transport carrier, dwarfed their tiny shuttle. The doors above joined back together, immersing them in pitch blackness.

“We’re depressurizing now.” Daniels’s voice sounded from the communication panel.

“Oh, joy,” Mason muttered. “Now we get to test our hull’s integrity. What’s that?” Mockingly, he put his hand to his ear. “Is that air I hear escaping?”

“Don’t joke about things like that,” Bricket shouted from the back. “These miniature buckets give me the creeps.”

It took nearly ten minutes for depressurization. The length of time irritated Steiner. The
Valiant
used to process its shuttles within a minute and a half.

When the hatch below finally opened, the glow of the planet shone up into the chamber. The shuttle crawled downward again through the
Marauder
’s bulkhead, stopping at the bottom of the docking assembly.