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<< previous | Prologue | Interlude 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next >>
"See
if you can get us power. I don't care about gravity and life support, I just
want computers and sensors," Lt. Interlude Colonel Kristofer Mitchell
said into the mike.
A blast of rapidly spoken Oort burst through the speaker. Mitchell shrugged and turned to Wild, the only other Human on the bridge. "That sounded like an affirmative to me."
Wild shrugged back. They had long ago come to terms with the fact that their Oort technician was stark, raving mad. One symptom of this was his refusal to ever speak in another language. They cut the Oort a lot of slack. He was a genius when it came to fixing things others would give up for dead, and you made allowances for genius.
Wild drifted to the computer station. He was only seated for moments before the screens flickered to life.
"The furball works fast." he said as he worked just as quickly.
Mitchell glanced back at Mrrraiff, their Falar pilot. The great lion stood guard at the bridge entrance, gazing uncomfortably into the dark hall. It's driving him nuts, Mitchell thought. No hearing. No sense of smell. He hates relying on his eyes.
"I got it," Wild reported. "Blast it, we've got four heat sources, closing rapidly on the bridge. They have us cut off. We're gonna have to make a stand."
"Dammit, they're not getting my salvage," Mitchell growled as he took up a firing position behind the captain's chair.
Wild leapt into the air, using his boot magnets to secure himself to the ceiling above the hatch. Mrrraiff took up position to the left of the door.
They waited in that tense silence that you only can experience in total vacuum. Mitchell sat, listening to the quiet hiss of his C02 scrubbers. He could feel the tension build. He just hoped that the data encryption on their radios confused the enemy.
The first one launched himself into the room on a ballistic trajectory, straight over the captain's chair. "I got 'em," Mitchell said on the corn.
Wild and Mrrraiff Stood very still as the enemy soared over the chair, followed by a full burst of blaster fire. Bridge sensors flashed red alert as the coherent blasts tore through the enemy's vac suit.
"Get sucked," was a common enough spacer curse. Mitchell watched it happen in seeming slow motion as vacuum attempted to rip the poor man through the holes in his suit. He could dimly hear the sound of the klaxons as they transferred up his legs. It lent a surreal edge to the man's death.
There was a terrible moment of near silence as the claxons blared into the hard vacuum and the lights strobed. Mitchell shifted his position slightly, ready to leap at a moments notice. There were still three left.
The two grenades drifted into the room with deceptive grace. Mitchell watched one pass on either side of his head. With a sudden spring he launched himself into the air.
Under any other circumstances, he would have made it, but as he glanced off the back of the chair, he activated the ship's safeties. If they hadn't restored power. If they hadn't brought the computers online to register a red alert, he would have bounced off the chair and soared upward, clear of the blast. But they had restored power. They had brought the computer back online.
In a blur of motion, the ships computer, misinterpreting the blaster fire as a crash situation, activated the chair's safety harness. In a second, he was strapped firmly in place, just in time to watch the grenades bounce off the forward canopy and drift slowly back toward him. "How ironic," he whispered. Wild watched in eerie silence as the grenades detonated. The armored vac suit absorbed the majority of the blast, but in a sudden explosive burst, it tore from throat to groin.
The three other enemies rushed the room. Mrrraiff leapt in feline fury, but in the heat of his anger, he leapt with too much force, and leading them farther than his velocity warranted, he shot harmlessly by.
Wild pushed off the ceiling, landing with a gentle click. He had never fired his assault blaster in combat. He barely had the presence of mind to wave it back and forth as he emptied its charge.
And then it was over. The three enemies drifted end over end, sucked by hard vacuum. Mitchell was still thrashing, feebly trying to use an inadequate suit patch.
Wild launched himself over to the Lt. Colonel. He grabbed him as firmly as he could, trying to hold him to his chest hard enough to seal the meter-long tear. They stood there in this strange embrace, staring into each other's eyes. Wild could see Mitchell's frantic expression as his blood dropped to point one atmospheres and the nitrogen began to bubble.
They still had eye contact when he died.
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