Overload Flux Read online

  The air handlers went silent and the nav pod’s ambient lighting went out. The primary light came from the displays, which lit up with the passive intercepts of bouncebacks from the numerous active-scans by the mercs and the spacer.

  The Purple One spacer proved to be a worthy adversary and evaded the pursuing Blue Four corvette, finally luring it into a weapons firing solution for a strike. The corvette would have been crippled if it hadn’t dodged at the last second, but it didn’t get away entirely unscathed. Now the Blue Four icon moved noticeably more slowly on the holo display.

  The alerts were startling. Somehow they seemed louder in the dark.

  “Warning. One minute to long-range firing solution from enemy Blue Three.”

  “Warning. One minute to long-range firing solution from enemy Blue Two.”

  Haberville swore as her fingers flew in the interface. Mairwen keyed the shipcomm and told Luka and Jerzi to seal their exosuits. The launch bays weren’t independently sealable the way the nav and engine pods were. If Haberville was unhappy about the announcement, she could complain later.

  “Pray to Allah they still don’t know where we are.” Haberville used docking thrusters to nudge the Beehive’s position ever so slightly to keep them hidden from two corvettes. “Move along, you godless infidels. Nothing here but a little cluster of rocks.”

  Haberville fired the thrusters again and kept nudging their ship around the asteroid.

  “Warning. Long-range firing solution from enemy Blue Two achievable.”

  For a moment it looked like the Blue Two corvette might be oblivious to the Beehive’s presence, but an active-scan from it said otherwise. Instead of firing, however, the Blue Two changed vector to a new course straight for them. Before Mairwen could think about that, a syncopated flurry of announcements bombarded them.

  “Warning. One minute to long-range firing solution from enemy Purple One.”

  “Warning. One minute to long-range firing solution from enemy Blue Four.”

  “Warning. Long-range firing solution from enemy Blue Three achievable.”

  “Warning. Long-range firing solution from enemy Purple One achievable.”

  Mairwen nearly flatlined her hearing to block out the distraction of the synth voice announcements. She dropped into half-tracker mode to give herself more time to think.

  All of the three merc corvettes were now in range to kill the Beehive, but that didn’t tell the whole story. The unknown spacer had turned aggressor and was firing on the crippled Blue Four corvette. The other two corvettes abandoned pursuit of the Beehive and went after the spacer.

  Blue Two’s incompetent commander proved true to form and waded into the orbiting rocks instead of arcing over them. The path would take Blue Two within ten kilometers of the Beehive’s hiding place in two minutes, and within range of their enhanced lasers. Alternatively, they could launch a timed thermolytics package and let Blue Two overtake it. Mairwen plotted the firing solutions for both and showed them to Haberville.

  When Mairwen eased into realtime, she felt light-headed. She had nearly burned herself out during combat, and her body was fighting injuries. She couldn’t afford much more time in tracker mode, even half-tracker, until she got food and rest.

  “Let’s save the lasers as a surprise,” said Haberville. She keyed the shipcomm. “Luka, load all five of your packages in the tube, tied together if you can, and set the timers for...” She plotted vectors rapidly on the display. “...six minutes. I’ll control the launch.”

  Her fingers moved in the display, and the lights in the nav pod brightened. “Powering normal systems,” she announced. “No point fumbling around in the dark now that they know we’re here.”

  After forty-nine seconds, Luka reported that the payload was set and ready to launch.

  Haberville set the firing solution in the navcomp, then announced over the still-open shipcomm, “Launch from number one bay in ten seconds from... mark.”

  “Warning. One minute to long-range firing solution from enemy Blue Two.”

  “Confirm launch from bay one.”

  Mairwen closely watched Blue Two’s progress on the display. It was active-scanning almost continuously, but the homemade thermo package was too small to detect that way, even if they’d been looking for it.

  “Warning. Long-range firing solution from enemy Blue Two achievable.”

  “Warning. One minute to long-range firing solution from enemy Blue Three.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we know,” growled Haberville at the navcomp, eyes never leaving the Blue Two icon. “Go open your present, pendejo.”

  It was a tense few minutes as Blue Two kept its straight-on course for the wounded Blue Three corvette.

  The result was worth the wait. Blue Two hit a rock just as the thermolytic package detonated. The scans and the panicked comms made it clear the corvette’s shield generator was offline. The hull was compromised catastrophically when the ship careened out of control into another larger asteroid. Blue Two broke apart, shedding debris and several life pods. It was an unexpected piece of good luck.

  “One down, one and a half to go,” announced Haberville via the shipcomm.

  The Blue Three corvette commander, despite having a clear shot at the Beehive, didn’t take it, and chose to take on the spacer instead.

  That was twice the mercs had opted to let the Beehive live. While Haberville was distracted with trying to find a new place to hide, Mairwen turned away and subvocalized her observations to Luka. He said it confirmed his belief that their cargo, specifically the samples, was valuable. It also meant they personally were expendable, especially after they’d cost the mercs a squad, a flitter, and two ships.

  The battle between the spacer and the corvettes continued, but it was soon obvious the corvettes were outclassed by whoever was commanding and piloting the spacer. Crippled Blue Four was the first casualty, and was set adrift, broadcasting distress calls. Blue Three got in a few good shots, but within fifteen minutes, it was sent damaged and spinning out of control toward Insche 255C. Without a pilot of Haberville’s caliber, they’d be lucky to survive the descent, much less the landing.

  The merc transport that had been hiding behind the planet took advantage of the melee to make its escape. It arced under the asteroid belt and successfully went transit just as Blue Three took the last hit from the spacer.

  The displays went quiet. With no more active-scans blanketing the area, the Beehive would have to do scans of its own to find out what the spacer was doing.

  Haberville’s fingernails drummed on the armrest. “The spacer knows we’re here and will find us quick.” She gave Mairwen a pointed look. “Question is, Queen Jack, what do we do about it?”

  Mairwen gave Haberville a steady look back. “Luka is the commander.”

  Haberville rolled her eyes and keyed the shipcomm and started to speak. She was forestalled by a synthvoice alert.

  “Incoming communication, broadbeam, open.”

  Haberville played it via the shipcomm.

  “This is deep exploration ship Seraika Shamsa, on behalf of La Plata Security. Do you need assistance?” The voice was in standard, unaccented English and could have been male or female.

  To Mairwen’s disapproval, Haberville responded immediately without asking Luka.

  “This is transport Beehive. Yes, we need assistance. We expect reinforcements from the merc company that attacked us both. We’d like to be out of this tin can before that happens.” Because the shipcomm was still keyed, her answer was broadcast throughout the Beehive.

  “Do you have external transports?”

  “No, we’ll have to join airlocks, and we’ll need your ramp. We have some cargo, too.” Haberville manipulated the nav interface, then sent size and shape specifications data. “Our system drive is operational. We can meet you above the asteroid elliptic.”

  “Acknowledged. Sending target coordinates.”

  Haberville checked the incoming data stream. “Got it. Our ETA is abou
t eight minutes.”

  She plotted a safe course out of the asteroid belt and engaged the system drive.

  “Acknowledged. Will you need medical assistance?”

  Haberville eyed Mairwen’s bandaged head and lower calf, where the wound pack was visible through her torn pant leg. “Yeah, we’re a little banged up. Nothing critical.”

  She was about to turn off the shipcomm when Luka’s voice came over it. “Eve, ask them where they’ll be taking us.”

  Haberville complied, and was told simply “home.” She relayed the answer, then told Luka and Jerzi they’d need to be near the airlock when it came time to join with the spacer. She also unnecessarily reminded them it was standard procedure to seal exosuits and tie in. Everyone who’d ever traveled interstellar knew airlock joins were riskier than external transports when it came to transferring cargo or people.

  The spacer’s response had been an inadequate answer to Luka’s question, but perhaps Haberville thought it impolitic to question their rescuers. Haberville’s actions had committed them to close interaction with the unknown spacer crew. Doubtless she wouldn’t care that Mairwen didn’t like it.

  Via her earwire, she heard Luka tell Jerzi to put the weapons on top when they packed their equipment. She assumed he’d subvocalized it for her benefit, so she’d know he didn’t like the situation, either. He was becoming more untrusting since she’d known him. Perhaps she was a bad influence on him, too.

  As much as she wanted to be where Luka was, she decided she needed to stay in nav as long as possible, where she could be more useful if trouble arose. Even though the spacer had been hired by La Plata, her tracker instincts demanded more caution than Haberville was displaying.

  From the visuals, the exploration ship was easily three times the size of the Beehive. Like most, it had enough defensive and offensive capability to fend off an alien invasion, even though humans had never encountered other intelligent life in a thousand years of galactic exploration. The spacer could slag the Beehive without breaking a sweat. On the other hand, they hadn’t so far, despite multiple opportunities.

  To soothe her prickly sense of unease, Mairwen set up and hid a small instruction set in the shipcomp that silently added herself, Haberville, and Luka to the commander’s access group. It would reinitialize even if someone else specifically tried to remove them.

  The airlock join between the ships was connected and sealed quickly and expertly. Haberville told Luka and Jerzi they could unseal their exosuits and open the Beehive’s airlock door whenever they were ready.

  Haberville turned to Mairwen. “Why don’t you go meet the spacer crew? I’ll negotiate telemetry with their pilot.” She waved toward the door. “I’m sure Jerzi will want every last sample from that cold unit transferred to the spacer’s cargo hold for evidence.”

  Mairwen nodded, then folded the interface closed. She wished she could be both at the airlock and in the nav pod, but her series of hidden alerts would have to do. Haberville hadn’t remembered Mairwen’s earwire, and she had no intention of mentioning it. Nor of mentioning the spare in her pocket.

  Instead of going straight down to the cargo area, she stopped off in the kitchen to chug a protein drink and slap together a sandwich and wolf it down. It would tide her over for a short while.

  In the lift, she determinedly settled under the mental and physical camouflage of a simple night guard with dull senses. After days of freedom, it was harder to achieve than she would have imagined. She couldn’t remember if it had been as hard right after she’d escaped the CPS and was trying to blend in. She’d been in considerable pain at the time, and it colored all her memories. She wondered if she needed to explain to Luka what she was doing, but it was too late because the doors opened, and she was immediately among strangers.

  The spacer’s crew had no uniforms, but there was a similarity to their clothing, body art, and jewelry that marked them as a unit. As Haberville predicted, Jerzi was supervising the offloading of the Insche 255C biological samples, tracking the crates against the inventory. She found Luka in the sealable hold with three of the spacer crew, loading their motley gear onto a long, narrow grav cart. Curiously, none of their weapons were on the cart.

  She took a couple of steps inside, then assumed an at-ease stance and gave Luka as impassive a look as she could manage.

  “Haberville said to report to you.” She added a tiny bit of boredom to her tone. The spacers gave her a glance, then dismissed her, as she’d hoped they would.

  An astute observer might have noticed that Luka’s eyes widened in momentary surprise, but he covered it smoothly. “Good. Get the med kit from the third level and anything else we left.”

  She nodded and went back to the third level where the showers were. She checked them briefly for any equipment they may have left behind, then went through the staterooms.

  She found the medical kit in the hall outside the stateroom closest to the clothes sanitizer. It felt heavier than she remembered. She checked and discovered it was now home to some of their stash of captured hand weapons, concealed under the top layer of medical supplies. She pocketed one of the small hand-beamers, just in case. She was definitely a bad influence on Luka. She smiled briefly as she rearranged the contents to hide the weapons again and closed the case.

  She was about to head back down when she remembered that Jerzi had stashed the xenobiological sampling kit in the engine pod. Since he’d been so diligent in collecting the samples it now carried, it would be a shame to leave the kit behind. She walked up the circular ramp to the engine pod door and stepped inside.

  The kit wasn’t in plain view, but the evidence of the jury-rigged overload flux connection they’d added to power the rigged laser was. She didn’t know what would happen to the Beehive after they abandoned it, but if military investigators went poking about, she’d rather not be questioned about the modifications they’d made, and she knew Haberville would give her up in a heartbeat. She put the med kit down and sat on the bench to open the engine console so she could adjust the flux controls before decoupling the connection.

  Mairwen shook her head. Haberville seemed constitutionally incapable of putting things away. She’d left the emergency communications relay module running, including the recorder. There were two messages queued, and Mairwen assumed one was a copy, until she noticed one was encrypted and considerably larger. The encryptor was still open with the last key used, so she was able to decrypt the longer message.

  Just as she was about to listen to it, she heard two sets of boots clomping on the circular ramp one level below, coming up toward her. She didn’t recognize the footsteps, so it must be more of the spacer crew. She clamped down on her senses, becoming the dumb guard again, and had the engine comp convert the message for display. While waiting, she opened the cabinet beneath the console to see if Jerzi had secured the xeno kit there.

  Far too late, she realized she’d made several mistakes. The words on the screen shocked her, and the sudden sound and floral scent of Haberville behind her caused her to jump, but not fast enough to avoid the slap patch applied to her vulnerable neck. She threw herself to the side to avoid any weapon Haberville might have, but the anesthetic patch did its job, and submerged her into numb, despairing twilight with alarming speed, and then unfeeling blackness.

  CHAPTER 23

  * Interstellar: “Beehive” Ship Day 02 * GDAT 3237.045 *

  Eve Haberville was so royally pissed she was ready to shoot the next person who spoke. She’d been so fucking close to winning the high-risk, high-reward gamble that she could pull off this mission, and now everything was in jeopardy.

  It had gone as planned to begin with. It was child’s play to lure perverted Ta’foulou into using the emergency monitoring system where she’d hidden the mal virus. She’d promised he’d be hearing memorable sex between her and the lusciously hard-bodied but now sadly departed DeBayaud.

  Then everything had gone chaotic, starting with the sabotage and damage to the Berjala
n, which wasn’t her doing. If she ever got her hands on whoever did, she’d give them a one-way trip off the wheel of life.

  She’d rolled with the punches, though. Even after surviving a crash landing and living through a firefight with a merc squad, she’d gotten the God-cursed samples off that lung-rotting, stinking boghole of a planet and into the contract exploration spacer’s hold. She’d even, amazingly, gotten the drop on Morganthur, but now that hellspawn freak of nature had vanished.

  Eve knew the anesthetic slap patch had made full contact because she’d checked it before stripping off Morganthur’s earwire. She should have found a weapon and shot Morganthur then and there instead of taking the time to wipe the nav history and bottle up Foxe and Adams. It was partly her own fault for indulging her soft spot for Jerzi, wanting to protect him from whatever her generous but exacting employer might do to him.

  Eve had been planning to quit the piece-of-shit Beehive with good riddance when she remembered Adams’s precious xenobiological sample kit. Maybe her thoroughness in getting the samples would make up for the fact that one of the merc transports got away, possibly with another cold unit full of samples, although that hadn’t been her fault, either.

  Besides, it was too dangerous to leave Morganthur alive. Even if she wasn’t a jacker anymore, she likely had friends who were, and Eve didn’t want to be at the top of some jack crew’s payback hit parade. The impatient spacer crew had given her a beamer and five minutes to take care of loose ends.

  Now the mutant bitch was gone, and Eve had no idea how or where. She’d even taken the med and xeno kits with her. Christ only knew what the bitch was thinking, but Eve did know Morganthur’s weakness, which was why she was standing outside the cargo hold where Adams and Foxe were trapped. She keyed the hold’s door comm.

  “Jerzi? Luka? You in there?” she shouted, as if she’d only just discovered where they might be.