My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire (25 page)

Trying to hit the cruiser with a standing broad jump was out of the question. The boat did have a personal maneuver pack, a small backpack outfitted with jets and hand controls. Ruoni had brought it along and proposed to use it to fly over to the cruiser where he could anchor a cable. We had a long spool of cable mounted by the airlock of our boat. It was a good plan, except for the fact that neither Ruoni nor anyone else in our party had ever used a pack. The task fell to Ruoni only because he had brought the pack. I was glad he didn’t offer it to me on the basis of rank.

With one of us on each side to anchor him, Ruoni snapped himself free of the hull. While he floated in front of us, we hooked the boat’s cable to his equipment belt and rotated him to face the cruiser. Then, there was nothing to do but watch him as he ran through his checklist. Standing there, under the stars, I felt cold. It was a ridiculous sensation; the suit was perfectly well heated. Still, I looked at the perfect black sky with all those stars and my mind said “winter night” and I felt cold.

“Ready.” Ruoni’s word sounded distant inside the helmet.

As he spoke, there was a brief spray of mist from the pack. Ruoni flew away to the cruiser in a spaceman’s belly flop. From his position, it was clear that he had no intention of using the pack to brake himself, probably because he didn’t know how. He simply flew on, in a straight line, until his path intersected the hull.

He hit hard. His grunt was audible through the intercom, but he managed to get one foot down and keep it in contact with the hull. For a moment he held the position, his foot on the ship, the other three limbs akimbo in space, in a spastic pirouette. Then, he brought the other foot down and anchored himself.

Now, it was simply a matter of the rest of us pulling ourselves, hand over hand, along the cable. Our bodies may have been weightless, but they still had mass that required effort to put into motion. Once in motion, the mass tended to stay in motion. It was all too easy to convert the handhold on the cable into a pivot that swung the unwary climber around in an arc. Still, all of us somehow made it to the other side.

“All right, now we’re here,” I said. “How do we get in?” That had been bothering me since we left the Flower.

“Simple.” Ruoni slipped his gloved hand into an indented spot on the hull. The hatch slid open under the light pressure of his touch. “Emergency hatches on a spaceship may need to be used by people who are impaired, physically or mentally,” he explained. “This has to be easy.”

And no one steals spaceships, of course. Except Danny Troy.

When we were all inside, I asked Andrave if he could pick up anything with his comm gear.

“Nothing I can make out, Command. There’s a lot of traffic on the Imperial channel, but it’s scrambled. There are only occasional transmissions on our channel, but they aren’t giving away positions and the equipment I have can’t locate the sources.”

“Only a few transmissions?” I asked. “Have we been wiped out?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like it. Also, even though I cannot find absolute locations, I can get relative ones. The Imperial transmissions are widely scattered. It all seems consistent with a wide-ranging fight, with our crew maintaining silence, for the most part.”

Hot damn! I thought. Maybe Jaenna really had learned something from old what’s-his-name. Until that moment I hadn’t truly believed in the possibility. It put some snap back into my thinking.

“Okay, the first thing we need to do is get that boat in. Fire Control, do you know where the bay entrance is?”

Ruoni nodded and moved off. He led us to another airlock, similar in construction, except for size, to the ones I had seen at the boat bays on Flower and the Flying Whore.

Ruoni said, “If there is anyone in the bay, they will be alerted when we enter the lock. You should expect them to fire when the inner door opens.”

It was sensible advice. Fortunately, there was enough room in the lock for us to stand to the side of the doors. That way, no one would be in the direct line of sight when they opened. Once they were open, Andrave and another Srihani would provide covering fire from the sides of the doorway while the rest of us took the bay control station.

The doors slid open. Two beams flashed from the bay side, scorching the outer door. There was nothing but air in their way, however, and the shots gave away the defenders’ locations. One was directly in front of the lock, using part of the boat’s launch cradle for cover. The other was firing from behind the control console, positioned to the right of the boat and closer to the door. Six blasters concentrated their fire on the console. The Imperial there went down.

“Now!” I shouted.

Fire from the door forced the Imperial at the boat to duck, and four of us broke for the control station. Too late, we discovered that there was a third defender in the bay. Situated on the far right of the bay he was in perfect position to enfilade us, and he held his fire until we were in the open. Our first warning was a bolt that dropped the trailing Srihani. Ruoni and I dove for the shelter of the console, but our fourth spun around to return the fire and was blasted down.

The bay’s control console gave us cover from the fire on our flank and a chance to shoot back. Crouched at one end of the horseshoe console, Ruoni fired at the enemy by the boat. I took a similar position at the other end and shot at the one who had ambushed us.

They were also firing at us, but aside from an increasing tang in the air, there was no effect either way. Despite our numeric advantage, our position was not good. The rear of the boat’s cradle, which sheltered one Imperial, was so constructed that he could fire at the console without exposing himself to my crew at the doorway. Those two were also unable to get a good shot at the Imperial across the bay without exposing themselves. That made it impossible for them to provide us with any effective covering fire. It looked like a stalemate, unless someone scored with a lucky shot.

“Command, I saw the control settings when we ran over here. I think I can open the bay doors.”

I looked across the console at Ruoni. “Do that and you’ll be exposed to both of them.”

He said nothing in reply. I yielded to the inevitable, and asked him to wait for a moment. At least, I could improve the odds. I signaled Andrave and the other Srihani at the door to fire at the Imperial across the bay when I opened up on the one by the boat.

“Now!” I screamed, firing from beside the console. I could hear blaster fire from the doorway at the same time.

An instant after our shots, Ruoni jumped up to set the controls. There was more blaster fire and then a scream. Ruoni fell to the deck next to me, writhing in pain.

“Where are you hit, Ruoni?” I yelled, forgetting convention.

“Left shoulder,” he gasped. “The doors! Are the bay doors open?”

I first looked down at his shoulder. It was an odd wound. He must have been ducking just as he was hit. The beam had caught him over the top of the shoulder and charred a crooked furrow into the upper edge of his scapula. The shape of the cut prevented the self-sealing suit from closing. Somewhere, a siren was shrieking as the air was pumped out of the bay. I slapped a patch over the hole in Ruoni’s suit. Its edges immediately melted into the fabric to establish a spaceworthy seal. When I looked up, the doors at the far end of the bay were swinging open. Beyond them, framed in the opening, was our landing boat. It was farther away than I remembered from our trip to the cruiser. In all likelihood, we hadn’t been completely at rest relative to the Imperial ship. I didn’t expect the bay’s decompression to finish our opponents. They were certain to be as well suited up as we were. Having the boat available gave me a different idea.

“Landing Boat Pilot, this is Command. Acknowledge.” It took several attempts before Andrave worked out a patch to circumvent the smashed comm on the boat.

“This is Pilot, Boat Four responding,” came Cardoni’s voice at last.

“Can you land the boat in the bay?” I asked.

“No, Command. I might be able to land the boat in an empty bay, but with the Imperial boat there I’m not sure there is enough space. I know I can’t bring it in cleanly.”

“Do it anyway,” I said flatly.

“At your order, Command.”

Peering around the console, I could see a flare fan out in a circle behind the boat as Cardoni used the engine. The boat loomed large as it approached the door. Christ! I thought. It was way too big. No matter how skilled the pilot, there was no chance of fitting it in beside the Imperial boat. Obedient to my order, however, Cardoni brought it in anyway.

There was a hypnotic quality to the scene as the boat settled into the bay. I stared for what seemed an hour, transfixed as the boat slowly settled toward the deck. Then the boat sideswiped the craft berthed there. The left wing of the landing boat caught the bow of the Imperial. The collision ripped the wing halfway off, then twisted it up ninety degrees. The hull lurched and struck the wall of the bay. The wall buckled under the blow, but it held. True to the laws of physics, the boat rebounded from the collision and back into the bay. Meanwhile, the Imperial boat, nose smashed in, tottered on its cradle. The landing boat skidded across the deck as it bounced away from the wall and struck the supporting cradle. That was more than the structure could take. It collapsed, dropping the Imperial boat to the deck, and partly on top of our boat. The jolt knocked me flat.

When I lifted my head again, the bay looked like a junkyard. Bits and pieces of spaceship were strewn everywhere. Tons of smashed spaceship covered the position of the Imperial who had been hiding by the boat. What a novel way to take out a sniper. Drop a loaded spaceship on him! Then I realized someone was yelling into my earphone.

“I yield! I surrender!”

I looked up and saw that it was the Imperial across the bay. He was on his feet, arms away from his body, hands empty.

It took a while to sort out the mess. Andrave and Jonorosso, the other Srihani at the airlock, were unhurt. Ruoni was alive but needed medical attention despite all his protestations. The patch had fixed the tear in his suit but it had done nothing for the wound underneath. The boat was in worse shape. The crash had so disrupted the structure of the ship that many of the personnel racks had been torn from their mountings. They had been flung, crew and all, back and forth in the ship. Those without the racks had even less protection, and many of them were dead. All told, only a half dozen of the crew I had taken off the Flower were still able to fight. I’m sure Cardoni would have said “I told you so,” but he was unconscious, so it would have to wait.

At last, I marshaled my band of nine. Since the automatics had not survived the boat’s landing either, we hand-cranked the inner airlock door open. The corridors were almost empty, with only two brief exchanges of fire marking our progress toward the bridge. Then, quite suddenly, Andrave put up his hand.

“Listen to this!” He fed the signal through to all of us.

“Attention Imperials! Your ship is under the control of freebooter Danny a Troy. The bridge is taken and all command line officers are dead. One opportunity will be given for surrender.”

Jaenna’s force had done it. They had taken the ship.

T
he bridge of the Heavenly Blossom (so help me, that was the name) was huge compared to the bridge on the Flower. The basics were similar, of course, but where Flower made do with a single Fire Control position, the cruiser had a bank of them. Likewise, for the support and analytical sections. The computer made the one on the Flower look like an abacus.

There were blaster scorches everywhere I looked. There was also a lot of blood—the Imperial bridge crew had fought to the death—but most important to me, leaning on the navigation console and staring at the image of Flower on the cruiser’s screen …

“Jaenna!”

She turned. “Danny! You’re here!” There was no mistaking the happiness in her voice. “When we took the bridge, we tried to raise the ship, but we couldn’t get an answer.”

“It was pretty close,” I admitted. “I brought the able-bodied crew over in the landing boat. Only dead and wounded left on Flower now. We’ll have to send a rescue party. I take it things went well here.”