Not the Man She Thought (30 page)

Laken jerked free of Enak’s grasp to glare at him.  She
wouldn’t let him see how terrified she really was.  “He’ll come after me.”

Enak laughed harshly.  “Oh, I have no doubt of
that.  In fact, I’m counting on it.”

Her brow furrowed.  “Why would you want Rade to come
after you?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want him to come after you so that I
can kill him, of course.  Preferably right in front of you.  Then my
revenge will be complete.”

Laken stared at Enak, unable to breathe.  Unable to
even think.

“You seem surprised,” Enak said.  “You didn’t really
think I’d let him live, did you?  No, I’m going to lure him into a trap,
then I’m going to make you watch while I kill him.”

Laken clenched her hands into fists.  Not caring about
her own safety, she hurled herself at Enak.  “You bastard!”

She barely managed to rake her nails down Enak’s face before
he caught her wrists.  Shoving her away from him, he lifted his hand and
slapped her hard across the face.  The force of the blow knocked her to
the floor and she cried out.  Pressing one hand to her stinging cheek, she
pushed herself into a sitting position with the other and looked up at him
defiantly.

Enak wiped the blood from his face with a finger.  “I’d
like to make you pay for this right now, but we’re about to leave and I need to
get back up to the bridge, so retribution will have to wait until later.”

With that, Enak turned on his heel and left the cabin, his
men following.  Laken couldn’t suppress a shiver as she watched them
go. 

Slowly getting to her feet, Laken looked around the small
cabin.  She had to get out of there.  If the door weren’t locked,
which it probably was, then it would most certainly be guarded, so there would
be no escape that way.  Even if she could manage to get out of the cabin,
though, there would be no way to get off Enak’s ship.  Which meant she
would have to wait until they arrived wherever they were going.  Or until Rade
came for her. 

Enak’s threats echoed in her head.  Surely Rade would
never be stupid enough to fall for a trap like the one Enak was setting. 
But even as she had the thought, she knew how wrong she was.  Rade would
do whatever it took to rescue her, even if that meant putting himself in
danger.  She couldn’t let that happen.  She had to find some way to
warn him.

But how?

She looked around the cabin again, an idea coming to her as
her gaze came to rest on the air vent in the ceiling.  It was small, but
she thought she might be able to fit.  She didn’t know much about how
ships were built, but she knew the air vents had to be connected.  If she
could manage to get to the communications room, then she could get a message to
Rade.

Pulling the chair out from beneath the desk, she positioned
it underneath the vent, then stepped up on it.  It took her a little while
to figure out how the vent was held in place, but luckily, there were no bolts
to be unscrewed, just a series of clips that needed to be flipped over. 
She slid them over and let the vent cover swing down on its hinge.  Going
up on tiptoe, she cautiously poked her head inside.  It was even smaller
than she’d thought, but she could make herself fit.

Sticking her arms inside the opening, she put them on either
side and pulled herself up into the ventilation shaft, pushing the chair away
with her foot as she did so.  It didn’t slide far, but hopefully it would
confuse Enak and his men for a little while.  Once inside, she twisted
herself around so she could reach down and pull the cover closed.  Enak
and his men would figure it out quickly enough anyway, but it might give her a
few more minutes.

Since Laken didn’t know where the crew was, she had to be
careful not to make any noise as she made her way through the ventilation
shaft. Since she had no idea where the communications room was, she had to stop
at each vent opening to look into the room below.  She was just beginning
to think she’d never find the communications room when she finally stumbled
upon it.  She looked through the opening in the vent cover and was
relieved to see that the room was empty. Opening the vent cover, she
lowered herself to the floor below.

Throwing a quick glance over her shoulder at the door, she
hurried over to the computers.  Wanting to both warn Rade as well as let
him know where she was, Laken sent out a distress signal that repeatedly
spelled the words “trap” in code.  She set the frequency to the same one
that Rade’s ship usually operated on.  If anyone on his ship was listening
to the radio, they would pick up the signal. She just hoped Rade would be able
to figure out what it meant.  All he would have to do after that is track
where the signal was coming from and it would lead him right to Enak’s ship.
Before she left the room, she reset the main communications frequency to what
it had been when she’d come in so Enak’s crew wouldn’t know the radio was
sending out a distress signal.

As she carefully made her way through the maze of ducts
again, she paused at each vent opening to make sure that no one was below
before she crawled across the vent.  When she came to the ship’s engine
room and saw that it was unoccupied, she stopped, an idea abruptly coming to
her.

Checking the door, she opened the vent cover and lowered
herself into the room below.

Laken had never been in a ship’s engine room before, but
since it was run by computers, she could easily find her way around the
equipment.  Engines might be complicated, but computers were simple. 
Going over to them, she shut off the ship’s engine by making it think it was in
danger of overheating.  Then she set a series of administrator passcodes
so Enak and his crew wouldn’t be able to override the computer’s automatic
shut-down sequence.  She smiled as the engine slowed to a stop.  Rade
should have no problem finding her now.

Knowing someone would come to check the computers now that
the ship’s engine was off, Laken wasted no time climbing back up into the
ventilation shaft.  She was covered in dirt and grime from head to toe
thanks to all the crawling around she’d done, but she didn’t even notice
it.  Leaning back against the wall of the shaft, she settled in to wait.

It wasn’t long before one of Enak’s men came into the engine
room to check on the ship’s power.  Laken quietly crept forward and looked
through the opening in the vent.  The man fiddled with the computer, only
to let out an expletive a moment later when it wouldn’t grant him access.

He took the handheld com from his belt.  “Sir, I can’t
get the engines to restart. The damn computer won’t let me in.”

Laken could hear mumbling on the other end of the com. 
Then a man’s voice said, “I’ll be right there.”

Below her, the man in the engine room clipped the com back
on his belt and tried to access the computer again.  A moment later, a tall,
gray-haired man walked in, followed by Enak.  Laken instinctively moved
back from the vent a little.

As she watched, the gray-haired man stationed himself in
front of the computer and began typing.  “What the hell...?”

“What is it?” Enak demanded.

The gray-haired man shook his head.  “I don’t
know.  The computer has put us in emergency shut-down mode.  It
thinks the engines have overheated.”

“Well, just tell the damn thing that they haven’t,” Enak
said.

“It’s not that simple,” the other man said.  “The computer
won’t accept my override command.  It keeps saying my passcode is
incorrect.”

Enak frowned.  “How the hell can that be? Are you
putting in the right one?”

The man’s mouth tightened.  “Of course I am.
 
The computer just won’t recognize
them.”

“Well, then take the damn computer offline and do it
manually,” Enak told him.

The man gave Enak an impatient look. “This isn’t some cheap
hovercraft. There isn’t any manual method for restarting a Tachyon-drive
engine.”

“So, what do we do?” Enak demanded. 

The captain frowned.  “I don’t know yet.  But if
we can’t get the engines started soon, then we’re in for a whole mess of
trouble because we’re drifting into Nijon’s planetary atmosphere.  Without
power, we’ll never survive reentry.  We’ll be forced to abandon ship.”

Crap. When she’d shut off the ship’s engine, she had
naturally thought they were in the middle of deep space.  She hadn’t even
considered they might be close to a planet.  If Rade didn’t get to her in
time, she was as good as dead.

* * * * *

Standing on the bridge beside his first officer, Rade
wondered if it really was possible for a person to go out of their mind with
worry.  It would take days to get to Yerel and there was no telling what
that bastard Enak would do to Laken in that time.  For all Rade knew, Enak
could have killed her already.  His gut clenched at that.  He
couldn’t let himself think that way.  She was alive, he knew it.  He
would feel it if she weren’t.

“Captain, I’ve got something strange on the com frequency,”
Kam said from the controls.

Rade walked over to stand behind the other man’s chair.
“What is it?”

“I’m picking up a distress signal from a ship, but it’s not
the usual SOS,” Kam said.  “It’s repeating the word ‘trap’ over and over.”

Rade’s heart began to pound.  “It’s Laken. Fix on the
signal.”

Kellen came up behind him.  “How do you know it’s
Laken?  It’s a common frequency.  It could be anyone.  It could
be someone playing a joke.”

“It’s Laken.  I know it.”

If Laken had gotten to the com room to send out that distress
signal, that meant she was still alive.  They just had to catch up to
Enak’s ship.

“Once you get a fix on that signal, I want you to go to max
power and keep it there until we catch up with that ship,” Rade told Kam. 
“I don’t care if we blow out the engine, I want you to keep—”

“Captain,” Kam said, interrupting him.  “Catching up
with the ship that distress signal is coming from isn’t going to be a
problem.  I don’t understand it, but for some reason, it’s sitting dead in
the water.  The engines seem to be offline.”

Rade waited tensely while Kam took them out of hyperdrive
and maneuvered them toward the other ship.  It was a little tricky since
the other ship was already dangerously close to the planet beneath them.

Rade frowned.
 
Had Laken done something to Enak’s ship?  If so, why do it when
they were so close to a planet’s gravity well?  Didn’t she realize the
ship would just tumble into the atmosphere uncontrollably?

“Captain, the sensors just picked up a shuttle heading
toward the planet.  They must have abandoned ship,” Kam said, glancing
over his shoulder at Rade.  “Do I follow the shuttle?”

“Are the sensors picking up any life signs on the ship?”
Rade asked.

Kam was silent for a moment as he checked the computer in
front of him.  “I can’t say for sure.  It’s difficult to tell with
the atmospheric interference.  Maybe.”

Rade’s frown deepened.  He had no idea if Laken were on
the shuttle or the ship.  He didn’t think Enak would leave her behind so
easily, but the nagging feeling in his gut told him differently.  Either
way, he couldn’t let that ship fall into the atmosphere without checking to
make sure if Laken were on it or not.

“Follow the shuttle,” he told Kam.  “I’ll take ours and
go check out the ship.”

Turning on his heel, Rade ran down the passageway, pausing
just long enough to duck his head in the com room and tell Dev she was going
with him.  Dev didn’t ask questions, but simply hurried after him.

Even though Enak’s ship was already bucking as it started to
enter the planet’s atmosphere, Rade was able to dock easily. Mainly because
there was no one on the ship trying to stop him.  Maybe Enak really had
abandoned ship.  But then Rade remembered Laken’s distress signal. 
She had been warning him that this was a trap.  Maybe this was what she’d
meant.

“Stay with the shuttle,” he told Dev.  “If I’m not back
and the ship starts to tumble into the atmosphere, I want you to get the hell
out of here.  Understood?”

Dev opened her mouth to argue, but Rade didn’t give her the
chance.  Pulling his weapon from its holster, Rade left the safety of the
shuttle and boarded Enak’s ship.

* * * * *

“I’m not letting you take her from me, Karsten!”

Rade leaned back against the wall, breathing hard.  The
interior of the ship was lit only with emergency lighting and the warning alarm
that was going off made it hard to think.  The electronic voice that kept
declaring “imminent uncontrolled reentry” wasn’t helping matters any.  He
stuck his head around the doorway he was hiding in, only to jerk back as a bullet
pinged off the wall near him.

He had cautiously been making his way from room to room
looking for Laken when he had come upon Enak standing in the middle of the
passageway looking like a complete madman.  Rade had immediately shot at
the other man, but the rocking of the ship threw off his aim and the shot went
wide.  Enak had returned fire and now they were at a standoff, with him at
one end of the passageway and Enak at the other.