She spent a little too long looking down at the disc and fiddling with it. "I'm sorry, Joel," she murmured. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

  "I do," he replied. "And you have nothing to apologize for. I understand. You never have to explain yourself to me."

  He gave her a quick hug around the shoulders and, just because, he kissed the top of her head.

  He did it more for himself than for her--just to feel one moment of connection with her before they went back into another shit storm.

  "I found another chamber on this Marauder with a bunch of Lilri fighter craft, Chronon Vanguard Splitwings, and multiple other spacecraft," he told her. "If anything goes wrong, I was thinking we could go back there and see if we can find some Lilri rifles, or maybe even some rebel laser rifles. They should be more effective against the Brath than these disc weapons."

  "You're right," she murmured. "It's a good idea." She looked around the chamber. "Where are these craft?"

  "I can't explain it to you right now. I'd have to show you. Let's go get Leatherwood first. Then the three of us can work together to get off the Marauder."

  He led her toward where he'd opened the window to enter this confinement chamber.

  He really would have preferred to check the corridors outside before he went out there. He would have given a lot for one of those handheld scanners.

  He wouldn't likely get one here, and when he opened the window, a bunch of Brath opened fire on him and Zuna from outside.

  They both dove sideways to take refuge behind the walls. The Brath did something to keep the window open. Richmond couldn't figure out how to close it. Now he and Zuna were trapped in this chamber with no way out--or were they?

  These discs identified the Brath to the ship itself. All the ship's functions worked through the disc.

  He didn't know if it would work, so he retreated to the other side of the chamber.

  The Brath kept dumping blasts through the opening to stop Richmond and Zuna from leaving that way. Were the Brath trying to set off that pulse to knock out the prisoners again?

  The discs protected them. Maybe the discs would protect Richmond and Zuna from other things, too.

  He scooted down the walls where the Brath couldn't hit him, stopped against one of the sidewalls, and turned to aim his disc at the pipes. He tried to will them to open another window--one that would allow him and Zuna to get out of here.

  It worked. The pipes became transparent and then opened another window into a similar maintenance duct.

  He spun around and waved Zuna toward him. "Come on! We can get out through here!"

  She got stuck on the other side of the opening. She couldn't cross the window with all those energy blasts torching into the room from outside.

  Richmond raced over there, huddled on his side of the window, and waited just long enough for a break in the bombardment to shoot back at the Brath.

  They immediately doubled down and unloaded into the chamber again, but that one instant of reversal gave Zuna the moment she needed to dive across the gap.

  Richmond grabbed her and hustled her to the same spot on the wall. He had to reopen the window before he pushed her inside. "Go!" he yelled.

  "Where?!" she asked.

  "Just go! Get out of here!"

  She scrambled to crawl away and give him space to wedge himself in behind her. The Brath kept bombarding the confinement chamber. How long would it take them to figure out that the two friends weren't in there anymore?

  CHAPTER 10

  Zuna crawled forty yards up the maintenance duct before it tilted downward into a steep slope. "We can't go any further, Joel," she told him. "Now what do we do?"

  "Slide down it. The trash hold was at the bottom of one of these tubes. This might get us closer."

  "Trash hold?" she repeated. "We're going to a trash hold?"

  "Just go with it, okay? We just have to make do with what we have. Slide down and we'll take it from there."

  She hesitated way too long. "I don't know about this..."

  "Would you like me to go first?" he asked.

  "Yes, I think that would be best."

  "Just make sure you come. Don't stay behind because you're scared to slide down."

  She didn't answer to insist that she wasn't scared.

  He had to go through an agonizing process of crawling past her. His weight wound up crushing her, and made her gasp and groan when he squashed her against the tube walls.

  He eventually worked his way in front of her and pushed himself down the slope. He slid a long way down--much farther than the party of friends had slid down to get to the trash hold in the first place.

  The tube spat him out, and he landed hard in a completely different trash hold. This one didn't have any fighter craft, Splitwings, or anything else Richmond would have been able to use.

  From what he could tell, this hold contained nothing but a random collection of space junk, destroyed electronic components from hundreds of different technology types, and a lot of other twisted, charred, and melted stuff he couldn't identify.

  Zuna slid down the chute, landed on top of him, and bounced off before she rolled down the stack of crap underneath them.

  She yelped in surprise and then sat up to look around and blinked her long, slit eyes. "Where are we, Joel?"

  "I'm not sure. It looks like a different trash hold, which means we aren't too far from the trash hold with the fighters in it."

  "That doesn't do us much good, does it? We still have to find Leatherwood."

  "True, but if we stopped by the other hold, we could get some weapons." He studied the walls. "This hold doesn't have the same pipes in the walls. I wonder what that means."

  "It probably means the Brath don't use this hold for the Marauder's normal operations. This hold doesn't need pipes because the Brath don't use it for that."

  "I suppose that must be it." He picked himself up, dusted himself off, and balanced on top of the trash pile. "It's too bad we can't find anything here to help us."

  "We can." She got to her feet and pulled an iron bar out of the pile. "We can use any of this stuff as weapons. We don't have to rely on these discs."

  "These discs are the only thing protecting us from recapture." Richmond pulled out another thick piece of metal. This one resembled a club. It felt good in his hand--a lot better than these discs.

  "Let's find a way out of here and locate both the fighter hold and Leatherwood," he suggested.

  "It's too bad the pipes aren't here. You could use them to open a window to the other hold."

  "Maybe we can do one better." He stumbled to one of the walls. Instead of pipes, this one had been constructed of smooth sheet metal.

  He stood back and opened fire on the wall with his disc. The energy damaged the Marauder's internal walls and window openings.

  The same thing happened here. The blast burned a hole in the wall and let Richmond and Zuna go out into another corridor of pipes like all the others they had been traveling through.

  He approached one of the sidewalls and used the disc to create another control panel. Navigating around this Marauder wasn't so hard, now that he got the hang of it.

  He located the fighter hold, the hold with the warship in it, and Leatherwood's confinement chamber.

  Zuna studied the charts over Richmond's shoulder. "He's a long way off. It would be better if we figured out how to use these transport windows to get there quicker."

  "We don't have time for that. Let's get some weapons from the fighters and go get him."

  He stepped away from the wall--and right at that moment, another squad of Brath came out of a different transport window farther up the same corridor.

  That was the problem with these transport windows. Richmond couldn't see anyone coming from the other side before they actually stepped out into plain view.

  These Brath were definitely looking for him and Zuna. The Brath opened fire, and their shots aimed to blast apart the control panel Richmond had just been working on.

  But suddenly there was no panel. It just evaporated, turned back into energy, and vanished to reveal the mass of pipes that made up the real wall.

  He tackled Zuna out of the way just in time. They landed hard on the floor and rolled away to crash into the wall on the other side of the corridor.

  Richmond didn't think about creating another window for himself, but he fell through one anyway before he even knew it was there. The wall had been solid until a split second before.

  He and Zuna pitched off a sheer ledge, fell twenty feet, and Richmond landed on his back on another tangle of pipes.

  Zuna scrambled to get off him--and then she froze. She and Richmond looked around.

  He didn't dare to move when he found himself balanced in the worst possible position on top of what looked like another corridor--on the outside of it, this time. The mass of pipes formed a cylindrical conduit running in swooping curves through a massive hold. Zuna and Richmond landed on top of the conduit's upper side.

  Hundreds or maybe thousands of these conduits ran all over the place in a tangled maze of curving tubes.

  Richmond eased up onto his knees. He didn't see anything about this place to indicate where he was on the Marauder, or what all these corridors might be used for. He did see the ship's drive reactor right below him--and it clicked.

  He'd seen all these tangled tubes and pipes from the Marauders' exterior. They surrounded the drive reactor. He just didn't realize during his first battle against the Brath that these pipes were actually corridors leading through the ship.

  He should have been able to exploit this information somehow, but he didn't see a way to do that. None of this helped him get Zuna and Leatherwood off the ship.

  "This is a fine state of affairs, Joel," Zuna muttered.

  "You're telling me. I guess we just have to go back inside one of these corridors and make it to Leatherwood's chamber before the Brath catch up with us."

  "Why don't they use their transport windows to ambush us?" She shook her head. "I don't understand their strategic thinking at all. They're so different from the Vasyke and all the Narillian factions."

  "Let's not think about it too hard. Let's get back inside the corridor."

  He concentrated his disc on the corridor's outer walls, but it didn't work the same way. He had to shoot at it and bore a hole through it instead.

  He and Zuna jumped down into the corridor. Then Richmond had to go through the same process all over again of creating a control panel and find his own position. He and Zuna were too far away from the fighter hold now, so he determined the best route to find Leatherwood instead.

  Richmond and Zuna didn't see a single Brath all the way to Leatherwood's chamber. "I don't like this, Joel," she murmured. "It's too quiet. The Brath are up to something."

  "Of course they are. I'd say Principal Racao is up to something."

  Richmond stopped outside Leatherwood's chamber. He couldn't explain to himself why he hesitated to go in there.

  "You stay out here and guard the entrance," he told Zuna. "I don't want to get trapped in there the way we did last time."

  "If the Brath come, I might have to retreat inside, and then we would get trapped in there like last time."

  "At least we'll have some warning if you stay here." Richmond turned to the wall. "Just keep an eye on things, okay?"

  He didn't wait for her to answer. He opened the window and stepped inside.

  His stomach plummeted when he saw Leatherwood lying half-slumped against the opposite wall.

  Leatherwood's head and shoulders propped against the pipes. The rest of him sprawled across the floor. His head lolled to one side, and his eyes hung half-open and stared in glazed semi-consciousness at nothing.

  Richmond swallowed hard. This wasn't good at all.

  He went down on one knee and rested his hand on Leatherwood's chest. Leatherwood didn't respond. He didn't even blink when Richmond passed his hand back and forth in front of Leatherwood's near-dead eyes. This was bad.

  Richmond thought fast. These rooms were supposed to treat whatever medical problems and injuries the prisoners sustained on board this ship. Why didn't the energy field heal Leatherwood? He couldn't possibly know.

  Leatherwood getting hurt complicated things. He might be hurt beyond repair. He might be in a permanent vegetative state. Then Richmond would risk both his and Zuna's lives trying to save a man no one could save. Leatherwood might already be effectively dead.

  That didn't matter. If even the slightest possibility remained that Leatherwood might recover, Richmond had to save him. He had come too far with Hayes and Leatherwood to see even one of them fall now. With luck, Hayes would already be back with the Vanguard. Now it was all about Leatherwood.

  Zuna appeared at Richmond's side. "Oh, no, Joel!" she breathed. "He looks awful!"

  "I need you to defend me while I carry him." Richmond took hold of Leatherwood's wrist to sit him up. "We need to move fast."

  CHAPTER 11

  Richmond yanked his one remaining spare disc harness over Leatherwood's head and hefted his bulky body onto his shoulder. Leatherwood weighed a ton, but Richmond just had to push through and keep going.

  Zuna went in front. She kept turning her body from one direction to another to aim her disc back and forth.

  Richmond held onto Leatherwood's arm on the left side and his legs on the right. He didn't know if he'd be able to shoot his disc weapon like this, but he would damn sure try.

  He and Zuna headed down the corridor toward the first transport window. The two friends ran straight into another squad of Brath coming through the window from the other end.

  These Brath opened fire right away. They didn't hesitate for an instant.

  Zuna and Richmond dove in opposite directions. Richmond couldn't move fast while he was carrying Leatherwood.

  Richmond collided with the pipe wall, and half a dozen blasts from the attackers' discs punctured the pipes right in front of them.

  The energy inside exploded in his face and the shockwave took him to the floor. Leatherwood went sprawling.

  Richmond scrambled to get back to Leatherwood, but he had to flip onto his back and return fire at the Brath advancing on him.

  He didn't see what happened to Zuna until she opened fire on the Brath from the other side of the corridor. She only waited long enough to scoot out of their way before she turned on them and unloaded. They were already advancing to surround Richmond. They didn't pay attention to her until it was too late.

  They rounded on her to cut her down when a third jet of energy blasted into the Brath from a few feet away.

  Richmond jerked around in that direction to see who was shooting at the Brath.

  He stared in disbelief at Leatherwood lying on the floor. He had fallen with his head against the wall. He could barely open his eyes.

  He still managed to fire his disc at the Brath. They discounted him just as much as Richmond had. Leatherwood's shots took the Brath completely by surprise.

  Seeing Leatherwood come back from the dead gave Richmond all the motivation he needed to open fire, too. He, Zuna, and Leatherwood surrounded the Brath in gunshots and took them out.

  Richmond crawled over to Leatherwood. "Sergeant," Richmond croaked. "You're okay!"

  "Not really, sir..." Leatherwood drawled. His eyes sank shut before he struggled to open them again.

  "What happened?" Richmond shut his eyes and shook his head. "Never mind. We're getting out of here."

  He staggered to his feet again, but at least Leatherwood could string two words together. He wasn't completely gone.

  Richmond pulled Leatherwood's arm over his shoulder this time. He and Zuna approached the transport window.

  "I'll go through first, Joel," Zuna told him. "Then I'll come back to let you know if it's clear."

  Richmond nodded. "Good idea."

  She turned toward the window, but another squad of Brath appeared from another transport window farther up the corridor behind the three friends.

  These Brath opened fire, too. Zuna took a step forward to position herself between Richmond and the Brath. She returned fire with her disc. "Go, Joel!" she barked. "Get through the window!"

  Richmond dove through the window and took off running down the next stretch of corridor. The energy pulses traveling through the pipes sped up when he did.

  Zuna caught up with them a second later, but she kept spinning backward to unload her disc weapon on the pursuing Brath.

  Richmond kept veering from right to left, trying to avoid their shots. His disc opened random chambers, control rooms, and other functional spaces throughout the Marauder. He raced back toward the fighter hold, but he had to divert when more Brath cut him off from the front or from the side.

  They kept showing up from random transport windows along his route. He dove sideways and would have run into the walls, but different openings kept appearing in front of him or elsewhere in the walls.

  He didn't understand half of what he saw or where he was going until one of these openings led him into another tiny chamber attached to the maintenance ducts. Zuna stood guard over the entrance and traded shots with the Brath beyond the room opening.

  Richmond strained every muscle to the breaking point to shove Leatherwood's body into the duct. Leatherwood roared in what sounded like pain. He couldn't move very well.

  Richmond didn't even ask what was wrong with him. How ironic that none of these rooms gave Leatherwood medical treatment when he needed it most.

  He pushed Leatherwood away. "Get over there, Sergeant! Crawl over there and slide down the chute!"

  "Are you insane?!" Leatherwood bellowed.

  Richmond didn't give him a chance to argue. He crammed himself into the duct and dragged Leatherwood forward by his shirt.

  "Come on, Zuna!" Richmond yelled. "We have to go!"

  She backed away from the opening, still unloading on the Brath out there. The shots coming from the corridor built to a devastating pitch. The whole Brath army sounded like it was out there.

  Leatherwood kept roaring in agony when Richmond dragged him away down the duct. Zuna crawled inside, unloaded a few more shots at the Brath advancing into the room, and pulled herself far enough away for the opening to shut.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12