Starship Revenant (The Galactic Wars Book 3) (16 page)

W
alker batted the barrel aside
, and kicked the alien in the nuts. He hoped he had a pair.

The Decluvian winced and doubled over. It seemed he had balls after all.

Walker grabbed him and forced him into the jet of steam venting from the pipe. The steam burned the Decluvian’s delicate skin, melting his face off. He flopped to the deck, screaming in agony. What was left of his skin was blistered and peeling. His eyes were liquified, his lips burned away, his features eroded.

Walker put a bullet into him to end his suffering.

“You alright, boy?” Walker asked as he knelt down to Bailey.

He barked.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

They raced through the machinery, past coolant pumps, storage tanks, turbine generators. They reached the hatch at the aft end of the compartment.

Walker peered through the viewport in the hatch. It was the ship’s power distribution center, which routed energy to the various systems. It was mostly an automated system and had one guy at a command console in the center of the compartment.

Walker opened the hatch and rushed into the compartment. He blasted the Decluvian at the console, then he secured the hatch behind him.

A few moments later, he felt the thunderous rumble of the blast in the reactor room. The entire ship thundered and shook. The force knocked Walker to the deck.

Then the entire ship went dark and silent. The rumbling of the engines stopped. The hum of the life support system dissipated. The constant drone of background noise that could be heard aboard any starship vanished.

It was pitch black in the compartment. Walker couldn’t see his hands in front of his face.

Bailey whimpered. He didn’t really like the absolute darkness.

But a moment later, the auxiliary power kicked in. Emergency lighting illuminated the compartment.

Alarms blared, and klaxons sounded.

Walker peered through the viewport into the previous compartment. It was a disaster. Smoke and twisted wreckage littered the room. It was highly radioactive.

Walker backed away from the hatch and weaved through the power distribution center. He pushed into the outer corridor. The forward hallways had been sealed automatically to contain the radiation.

Walker headed aft and climbed a ladder to the next deck. As he reached the landing, he was greeted by plasma rifles and two angry warriors. They stripped his weapon and slammed him against a bulkhead.

Bailey growled and barked.

“Shut him up, or I’m going to put a bullet in the little mutt’s head.”

“Easy, boy,” Walker said.

“I’d kill you right here, but the Emperor wants to handle that personally.”

Two plasma bolts rifled down the corridor. Before Walker realized what happened, he was covered in green Decluvian blood. Their heads exploded, and their bodies crumpled to the deck.

Walker’s eyes snapped down the hallway to see Malik, Saaja, and Lu. They scurried toward him.

“You didn’t think we were going to leave you all by yourself, did you?” Malik said. “Just didn’t seem right.”

Walker grinned. “That’s the second time you’ve saved my ass.”

“I’ve got a plan,” Malik said with a devious glint in his eyes.

Lu stripped the gear from one of the warriors and suited up in the Decluvian battle armor. He marched Walker, Malik, and Saaja toward the flight deck at gunpoint without so much as a second glance.

All of the escape shuttles had been jettisoned. They were going to have to blast their way out through the front door.

The team took cover behind some maintenance equipment at the edge of the flight deck.

“This is your plan?” Walker asked, eyeing the decrepit Saarkturian gunship they had flown in on. “We’ll never escape in that thing. We don’t even know if the quantum drive will work.”

“No, not that.” Malik pointed to the armored troop transport. “That.”

“Do you know how to fly that thing?” Walker asked.

“No.”

“But I do,” Lu said.

“It doesn’t look incredibly fast,” Walker said.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Lu said. “It’s heavily armored. Plus it has a slide-drive.”

The bulky troop transport was 50 yards away. It was a long run, without any cover. Walker pulled a grenade from his tactical vest.

“What’s that for?” Malik asked.

“Diversion.”

Across the deck, a flight crew was loading ordinance onto a gunship.

Walker heaved the grenade. It pinged across the deck and rolled to the crew loading the ordinance. They dove for cover, but nothing was going to save them. The thermal grenade detonated. The flash was blinding. It caused a secondary explosion among the ordinance, blossoming in an amber glow. The deafening blasts sent shards of metal and shrapnel streaking through the air. Part of the deck and the near bulkhead were demolished. The entire ship rumbled. Smoke and haze filled the flight deck.

“Go! Go! Go!” Walker yelled.

The team took off running toward the troop transport. Walker could hear the screams of wounded Decluvians. His nostrils filled with the acrid smell of the burning debris and seared Decluvian flesh.

Bullets whizzed through the air as a few Decluvian warriors fired from across the deck.

Walker and the others dodged the bullets and ran up the ramp of the transport. Lu closed the ramp behind them. The hydraulics whirred and the hatch locked shut.

The Decluvian’s kept pelting the ship with small arms fire. But it was no match for the heavy armor plating of the transport. The ship resembled a stout bulldog—thick and beefy and mean. It was like a flying tank.

Lu sprinted to the cockpit and slid into the pilot’s seat. He flipped switches and pressed buttons, powering up the system. The controls flickered to life. Indicator lights flashed. The system went through a series of preflight checks.

Lu flicked a switch and took control of the transport’s forward cannons. The turrets swiveled to life and took aim at the warriors across the deck. Lu squeezed the trigger and the plasma cannons erupted. It pulverized the Decluvians on the flight deck. Anyone left alive scampered to safety.

A light on the control display was flashing red. It wasn’t a good sign.

Lu’s face tensed. “They pulled one of the oscillating units for maintenance.”

“So?” Walker said.

“Electron acceleration is achieved by inducing a magnetic field—“

“In English.”

Lu looked confused. “I thought I was speaking in English.”

“The short version.”

“I can’t engage the thrusters without the oscillator.”

W
ind whipped
and swirled through the corridors. Debris tumbled through the air.

Max was sucked around the corner, careening toward the open airlock. He managed to grasp his paws onto the indentions in the deck. It was lined with molded, anti-slip rubber matting that was made up of thousands of small circular cutaways. Just large enough for a finger, or a paw.

Max dug his claws into the hard rubber.

Violet’s eyes went wide.

Zoey summoned all of her strength and pulled Violet up to the ladder. Zoey was about to lose her grip, but Violet managed to grasp onto the ladder in the knick of time.

Max was hanging on, despite the gale force winds. He was up the hall, maybe 15 feet away from Zoey. She climbed toward him, pulling herself across the ladder. Then she reach to the deck and latched her fingers into the circular depressions. They weren’t very deep—a half inch, at best. In this kind of wind, it wasn’t the most secure thing to hold onto.

Zoey let go of the ladder and brought her other hand to the deck. She pulled her way toward Max. She made it a couple feet, then lost her grip. The wind forced her back. She managed to dig her fingers into the depression and latch onto the deck. She was definitely going to need a manicure when this was all over.

A fragment of sheetmetal ripped free from the bulkhead. The sharp shard of metal hurled through the air like a javelin. It was heading right for Zoey.

She thrust her head aside, and the sharp fragment raced passed her, narrowly missing Violet.

It careened down the hallway and slammed into Jaxon's skull. Blood splattered. Jaxon tumbled out of the airlock into space. He toppled end over end, leaving a trail of blood droplets floating in space. Crimson orbs that quickly expanded and vaporized without atmospheric pressure.

Jaxon's body ballooned to twice its size. The lack of pressure isn’t enough to make a person actually pop. But let’s just say the expansion isn’t a pleasant sensation.

His eyes and mucous membranes almost instantly froze over. Nitrogen and other gases began to bubble in his veins. Within 10 seconds, he blacked out from hypoxia. It was probably for the best, because the decompression caused his lungs to rupture. It was all downhill from there.

Jaxon's body floated passed Mitch and disappeared into the hazy nebula.

Zoey was climbing toward Max. She was almost there—just a few feet away when Max lost his grip. The wind scooped him up and whisked him toward the open airlock.

Zoey reached up and caught him, pulling him in close, like a football. She dangled, clinging onto the deck with one hand, cradling Max with the other. Her fingertips were sliding out of the narrow depressions in the deck, and she couldn’t readjust her grip.

Mitch had regained consciousness and began to pull himself back to the ship via the safety cable. He glided through space with ease, but as he got close to the airlock, he had to fight the venting atmosphere.

Zoey’s fingertips slipped. She held on to Max as they were blown down the hall.

Mitch managed to pull himself inside the airlock and mashed the button. The airlock slid shut, and the gale force winds instantly stopped.

Violet crashed to the deck. Zoey and Max slid to a halt a few feet from the airlock. Her hands were cramped and aching from trying to hold on so tight.

Max meowed. It made Zoey smile.

Zoey staggered to her feet.

Violet ran down the hall and picked up Max and hugged him. Max was all she had left of Declan. She smiled at Zoey. “I am forever in your debt.”

Mitch sat on the deck, leaning against the bulkhead. He twisted off his helmet and took a deep breath.

Violet and Zoey rushed to him and helped him stand.

“You okay?” Zoey asked.

“Are you going to take care of me if I’m not?” He had a sly grin.

Zoey rolled her eyes. “Come on, let’s get to the CIC and see if we can get this ship powered up.”

Zoey and Violet marched down the hallway.

Mitch called after them. “So, I risk my life, save the day, get blown out of an airlock, and that’s all the thanks I get?”

The girls ignored him.

“That’s fair,” he said, dryly.

In the CIC, Zoey stood at the command console preparing to shut down all systems except for the reactors. In less than an hour, the
Revenant
would be making an uncontrolled descent to the planet. If the ship didn’t overheat and rip apart in the atmosphere, it was going to fall like a brick to the ground. Neither option seemed desirable.

“Hang on, I’m going to shut off the artificial gravity,” Zoey said.

Zoey pressed a button on the console’s touch screen. The three of them gently lifted off their feet. Then she shut down the atmosphere generator. The steady hum of the life support system came to a halt. She turned off the emergency lighting throughout the ship, except for the CIC.

“That’s everything,” Zoey said. “Let’s hope this works.”

She initiated startup procedures for one of the fusion reactors. They waited with baited breath, but the results were disappointing. The reactor wasn’t responding. “This doesn’t make any sense. We should have enough power to get the reactor to go critical.”

The lighting flickered in the CIC.

“I’m beginning to think it’s the ship that is cursed,” Zoey said.

“Don’t tell me I just threw overboard 3 trillion credits worth of trilontium for nothing?” Mitch said.

Zoey frowned, sheepishly.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Mitch floated around the CIC, grumbling in agony at the loss of a fortune. “Do you know what I could have done with that type of cash? I’d be debt free. I’d have fast cars. Faster women.” He glared at Violet. “This is all your fault, you know.” He mocked her playfully. “It’s the treasure… it’s cursed.”

Violet’s eyes burned into him. “It was a reasonable assumption. But, I’m inclined to agree with Zoey. It’s this ship. It’s sentient.”

“You’re not trying to say this ship is alive?”

“Is it such a stretch? There are millions of life forms in the universe. Not all of them have physical bodies. There are pure energy based life forms out there.”

“So, you’re saying this ship is possessed?” Mitch said arching a skeptical eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” Violet said. “What I do know is that something has the ability to cause hallucinations and to alter our cognitive function. It also seems to have the ability to control aspects of the ship’s functioning. That, to me, indicates some form of intelligence.”

Mitch didn’t want to admit it, but he knew she might be right.

A quantum distortion rippled through the ship. The bulkheads warbled. Time and space were momentarily displaced. Zoey felt her stomach turn.

Several more distortions followed after that.

The LRADDS display lit up. Klaxons sounded. A dozen red triangles appeared on the three-dimensional display.

“What is that?” Mitch asked.

“I don’t know,” Zoey said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. They’re not in the database of known enemy combatants. But whatever they are, they’re big.”

Just outside of the nebula, a dozen Decluvian super-carriers emerged from slide-space. This wasn’t their intended destination. But like so many other vessels before them, they had emerged in this sector under mysterious circumstances.

The Decluvian captain was likely trying to figure out where the hell he was, and how the hell he got here. It wasn’t going to take them long to probe the nebula. It was standard operating procedure. Any good captain would want an assessment of the surroundings.

Zoey knew that whoever was commanding this carrier group would send a recon team to make a threat assessment of the nebula. It was just common sense.

If these were hostile forces, the
Revenant
would be a sitting duck, Zoey thought.