Chapter 19: Station D-102

We arrived at station D-102 shortly after midnight, which worked out well for us. The officer on duty greeted us as we disembarked through the airlock, gave us a very brief welcome, and told us to see him if our palm computers didn’t automatically update with our birthing assignments and duty shifts. Then we were left to find our quarters and catch some sleep before reporting for duty. We followed the rest of the new batch of crewmen as everyone found their new living spaces. I was sharing a room with a Lt. Carlson. A second level engineer assigned to the recycling and environmental control maintenance crew. He wasn’t a very chatty guy. Tended to mumble under his breath a lot. He said something and I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or himself. Then he stripped down to skivvies, crawled into his bunk and was snoring from nearly the moment his head hit the pillow.

With my bunkmate dead to the world and it being the middle of third shift, the hallways were void of people and I could move around the corridors without drawing any attention. A quick hack into the stations security system allowed me to see camera views of all the hallways and common areas. Confident my path was clear I made my way to Mitchell’s private quarters: a privilege she got by being the second in command of the station. She had swept the space for listening devices and then put a damper in place just in case she couldn’t find something that was there. For the moment it was the most secure place on the station.

“You get a chance to review those documents I gave you?” she asked the moment the door closed behind me.

“Yeah,” I said as I took a seat at one of the two chairs in front of her desk. She took the one on the other side. I pulled out my PC and brought up the first one I had reviewed. “I don’t know if this torpedo theory is what they were working on.”

“Why?” she asked, slightly annoyed at yet another possible dead end.

“The Quantum Speed Generator is one of the few advances that humans actually contributed to the alliance. Before we came up with it a little more than a hundred years ago, space-faring races were using warp field generators that were a lot more unreliable and had the problem of the time differential.”

“Time differential?” She asked.

“Oh that’s right, they don’t cover this stuff when you’re a ground pounder. You have to know these things if you’re going to spend most of your career on a fleet ship. When a ship is going faster than the speed of light, time gets all screwed up. A trip that takes two days at warp speed can get you a couple of thousand light years, but six months will have past in real time by the time you actually arrive. That’s because warp engines change the space around the ship, effectively allowing it to move across greater distances without actually moving the full distance.” Her nose crinkled; something she always did whenever I said something that didn’t make any sense to her. “Okay. When on maneuvers, have you ever come across a canyon that your troops had to cross?”

“Sure.”

“And how did you cross it?”

She wasn’t sure where I was going with my analogy but played along. “Well, usually we would have to hike down into it and then climb out the other side.”

“Right. Now, what if you have a device that would warp the space between where you were and the other side so that you could just step over. Then once you were on the other side you turn the warp field off and the space between you is back, but you are at your destination.”

“And how does that screw-up time?” she asked.

I scratched the back of my head as I tried to come up with a way of explaining how Einstein’s theory of relativity still applied to the Warp Engine and not the QSG. “When you move at warp, you are basically cheating the laws of physics by moving your ship faster than the speed of light, but because it is still in ‘real space’ time around your ship slows down, so even though inside your ship your trip across 10 light years only took a week, for the rest of the universe a year has passed. Because the QSG actually removes us from everything, a week-long trip in the tube is still just a week everywhere else.”

“I still don’t understand how it works,” she said.

“Well, nobody does. It’s like gravity and dark matter. We know that it exists and we understand it well enough to use it to our advantage, but we really don’t know how or why it works. And from the moment we perfected it, we have been trying to weaponize it.”

She tapped her fingers on the desk and then said, “Let's just say for the sake of argument that they did perfect this torpedo. Just how effective would it be?”

“During the war, the standard tactics when using missiles on both sides was to fire more than the enemy could shoot down with countermeasures. That would consist of a combination of flack, laser fire and smaller smart missiles that would go after incoming missiles. If a battleship fired 40 at once at an enemy ship, they would be lucky to have five impact. These torpedoes would disappear about three seconds after leaving the missile tube and appear three to five seconds later, just feet from the opposing ship that would have no chance of evading the assault.”

“And just how hazardous would these torpedos be?”

“Are you asking if an accident with them could cause a catastrophic event to a ship testing them?” I asked back, and she nodded. I then thought about it for a moment and answered, “If they were testing the propulsion system on the torpedo they would have done it without ordinance. If they were testing a finished torpedo with full detonation strength, they would do it on an established demolition range in an uninhabited system.”

“Wouldn’t they test something like that in open space?” She asked.

I shook my head, “You don’t want to test something like a missile in open space because if it flies off course or the overrides fail, you could have a very dangerous weapon flying through space at such intense speeds that it might not be easy to chase down. It could easily, randomly hit something, like another ship or populated planet before it could be stopped. No, they would use a system with something like a gas giant or star to use as a backdrop.”

She sat back and rubbed her temples as she was clearly tired and feeling like we weren’t making a lot of progress. “Okay, we have a shuttle that was recovered by the syndicate after its mothership was lost in a classified accident. Then to cover their tracks they switched the ID codes of the shuttle with a shuttle from this base. And then the records of that shuttle were altered so that when it was used to take people with the flu to a hospital ship it matched up with the stations records. That hospital ship then dropped the shuttle off at New Harmony, it didn’t raise any red flags, and then that shuttle was destroyed in an act of sabotage,” she sighed and then looked at me. “We have a lot of loosely connected facts without a clear reason to why.”

I could tell that she was so tired, she was having a problem focusing. Getting up I walked around the desk, stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders. Working so closely with someone tended to break down some of the workplace boundaries, and this was something we established was acceptable as friends and wouldn’t allude to anything more. She let her head drop and let out a sigh as it was exactly what she needed at that moment. I worked my fingers up the back of her neck and then back down to her shoulders to the two knots that always gave her the greatest pain. Pushing my thumbs into them her head popped up, and she let out a gasp of pain, but I knew it was how she liked it. Then her head dropped again, and she hummed her approval. I softened my pressure and rubbed her shoulders and neck for another minute. When I stopped, she looked back up at me with a smile and said “Thanks. That will definitely help me sleep tonight.”

“Happy to help,” I said as I picked my PC back up off the desk and headed for the door.

“Reilly,” she said to get my attention. I turned to look at her before I stepped out the door.

“Yeah?” I asked.

For a moment it looked like she was going to say something else; but then the expression on her face changed and she said, “I’ll send you a message when I’ve figured out a good time to meet tomorrow.”

With a smile, I said, “Very good, Commander,” using the rank of her undercover persona and then left trying to remember if my new quarters were to the right or the left.

~~~

At 0-800 hours I reported to Lt. Commander Harrington, second in command of the Primary Engineering Team. Harrington was a weathered, but competent career officer who had a few more years in service than me. He stood about six two, with a head shaved down to a stubble and a build like a linebacker. His age was the most evident in his eyes that were deeply creased with lines from years of maintaining a hard demeanor while serving in the hottest zones. I could tell from before he said a word that he was all business and that allowed me to relax some. It meant that I wasn’t going to have to worry about any slack from the engineering team. I would be able to do the job of my covert persona without having to double check everyone else around me, and be able to focus on my real job.

We were all standing at attention in a line while he walked in front of us to establish his expectations. In a hard, but quiet voice, he said “Welcome to Star Base D-102. This base is the only Alliance installation for over five light years in all directions, which means it is a very busy base. If anyone of you believes for a moment that this assignment will be any easier than serving on the largest battle carrier in the fleet, then step out of line now and pack your things.” He actually waited a moment and looked around to see if anyone would. It made me wonder if anyone had ever taken him up on the offer in the past, or if he just enjoyed the dramatic effect. Confident no one was stepping forward he continued. “This station does everything a main spaceport would do, from fueling and resupplies to scientific research and medical emergencies. We are the home away from home for the First, Third and Ninth Fleet that patrols this quadrant of space and beyond. A typical station that has seen half the time in service and the wear and tear as this station are usually retired, but this station…”

An alarm cut him off in mid-sentence. It was followed by an announcement from the computer over the P.A. “Seal Breach at Airlock 7 Alpha. Seal Breach at Airlock 7 Alpha.”

Commander Harrington ran to the comm on the wall and clicked the line open to the stations operations center. “Commander Harrington to Opps. Situation Report!” He demanded.

Half a moment later a voice replied, “The freighter ship Yosemite was trying to doc with us. They had just escaped an attack from pirates, and they were having problems maintaining their position with the station and keeping their tethers in place. We lost the docking collar while they were unloading their wounded.” Harrington called up a schematic on the screen that was part of the wall next to the comm. It showed him the ID markers of every person on the station. They were color coded so he could quickly determine his assets. Everyone assigned to engineering was marked in orange and damage control was marked in red. Operations was indicated by green icons, and medical was in blue. Two groups from damage control were already responding and diverging onto the section, but he needed a team to board the damaged ship, fix its mag systems and assist the medical teams getting everyone off the ship and onto the station. With the transition of new personnel for old crew members that just shipped out, he only had one team of experienced engineers that he would have preferred to use, but most of them were on the T.S.S.Artemis that was docked at the other end of the station for repairs. Making a decision, he turned to us and loudly asked, “Alright, who here has made a tether exchange before.”

That’s where you put on a pressure suit, walk out an airlock, tether a line to the ship you are on and jump over to another ship. Then you tether yourself to that ship and release the one that’s holding you to the first. An exercise that can get you killed with any number of mistakes. I along with five others in the line of 30 raised our hands.

“You six are with me,” He said. “The rest of you report to Lt. Commander Hakle on level 42 to assist with escorting evacuees and wounded to the auxiliary medical station in cargo bay 9. Go!”

The six of us followed the Commander at a brisk run down three decks to a locker room that housed a couple hundred spacesuits. Before he gave the order, we each opened a locker and pulled out a suit, stripped down to our underwear and pulled them on. Unlike environmental suits that were designed to wear over one's clothes, pressure suits were designed for the vacuum of space and required a much snugger fit as they were thicker and regulated more than just temperature.

The strain on Harrington’s face lightened slightly as he could see he had some seasoned people assigned to his command. Each locker was also equipped with three packs. One was for medical use, one was full of engineering tools, and the third was a survival pack in case of an emergency evacuation. We each grabbed an engineering pack and helped each other slide them over our heads as the pressure suits made the task awkward without help. The packs had a front side and a back side. The compartment that you had hanging over your belly was where your tools and small supplies were, like wires and replacement computer parts. The bag on your back was full of bulky items like a bottle of compressed liquid metals, batteries, explosive charges, and a first aid kit. In situations like this one we always worked in teams, and the items on your back are not meant for you, but for your partner to access.

In under three minutes, we were suited up and ready to go. Docking collar 7 was just the next section over, but with the damage it took, we went down to number 6. Each docking collar is a walkway 12 feet wide by 12 high that extends out to a ship, latches on with magnets and a soft, malleable seal, creating a pressured environment passengers can walk across. Next to that is an airlock, so in case it fails we can do what we were about to do. Two of us entered the airlock at a time as it was limited on space. The small size was because we lost air every time we used it despite sucking most of it out before opening the outer doors. Conservation of resources, especially air, was a key to survival when working in space. I stepped in first, followed by someone who was at least a foot shorter than me. I looked over and could just tell through the faceplate that it was Ensign Jess Rogers, the young woman I had gotten to know on the trip over.

I clicked on my internal comm with one click. That indicated to the computer that I only wanted to connect with the person I was looking at. “I thought you were just out of the academy. When have you ever done a tether jump?” I asked.

“My uncle ran a shuttle tour company in the belt. I spent three summers working for him as a co-pilot. We used to do this all the time when our fueling pump failed, and we had to run the pressure manually.” She said with a very confident smile.

“Well, Damn,” I said, honestly impressed. “You’ve got me beat. I’ll follow your lead, Ensign.”

She nodded, placed her right foot on the edge of the opening, held her left hand out like she was aiming and then pushed off. She was halfway between the station and the ship before I realized she hadn’t attached her safety tether to the station. Quickly I let out as much line as I could, attached my tether and looked out to get my bearings, hoping I could push off hard enough to catch up to her before she was too far out to grab. But before I could, I heard her whoop with glee over the radio. She had aimed perfectly, landed directly on the hatch of the ship and attached her tether to the bar on the ship as if that was her plan the whole time.

Retracting some of my lifeline to the length slightly greater than the distance I had to cross, I positioned my foot and pushed off, floating almost in the right direction. I missed the mark by nearly ten feet, but my gloves had magnetic handholds built into the palms, so I was able to shuffle my way across the hull and to the ship's airlock door. Jess was waiting for me, and once I was there she activated the door’s release, but it didn’t work. I moved closer to Jess, opened one of the pockets on the back of her pack and pulled out a fist-sized battery. Opening an access panel, I inserted the battery and activated the power bypass, allowing the doors to open enough for us to fit through.

Clicking my comm twice to open the channel I said, “Lt. O’Brien to Commander Harrington.”

“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” he replied.

“There’s no power to this airlock. Can you tell from your side if it’s just this section or the entire ship?”

Harrington had access to the station sensors and could use them to monitor the situation. After a moment he responded, “Looks like the whole ship is losing power and will be completely dark within minutes. Try to access emergency power and route it to that airlock.”

“Copy that,” I said and turned to Jess. “Take a couple of power cells out of my pack and see if you can get the computer station up in this compartment.” I then pulled off a panel and looked to see if there was any damage before I started cross-connecting any circuits. Getting the airlock functioning was a key part of the mission because we couldn’t just open it. Without a proper seal and equalization of pressure, we could blow out all the air on this deck and possibly most of the ship.

Jess worked fast, and we had computer access. The main computer was still operational, and that made my job a lot easier. Soon I had the ship’s backup power running the compartment and lighting up the deck we were on. The inner doors opened, and we stepped into the ship. “Airlock operational, Commander. You can start sending over everyone else.”

“Copy that, Lieutenant,” Harrington replied. “Do a quick assessment and communicate with their crew that we will be evacuating them shortly.”

“Understood, Commander,” I answered and turned off my comm.

Jess and I walked down the hallway. The gravity plating still had power, and there wasn’t a haze of gasses obstructing our view, both good things in my book.

“Lieutenant?” Jess asked over the comm. “If we brought power back up to this deck, shouldn't everyone be coming to us about now?”

“Depends,” I answered.

“On what?” she asked.

“Lots of things,” I said. We came to a turn in the hallway and down it were several compartments, all with their doors open. We walked to the first one, and Jess gasped. There were bloody bodies of people who had been brutally cut up laying on the floor. Jess turned away from them. I couldn’t tell through the visor of her helmet if she was turning green, but by the way she was clenching her jaw I expected that she was doing her best not to vomit.

I clicked my comm back on. “Commander. We just found three dead bodies of crewmen who were assaulted. Advise arming personnel. Possible hostiles aboard.”

“Copy that, Lieutenant,” Harrington replied. “Return to the airlock and wait for the rest of our team to join you. We're bringing additional sidearms for you and Ensign Rodgers.”

“Yes, Commander,” I replied and signaled to Jess to double back.

She held up her hand and said to me, “Wait, do you hear that?”

I held my breath and listened as best I could, but pressure suits were not battle armor. They didn’t have built-in sensors to advance the user’s vision or hearing. In fact, it was rather difficult to hear and see one's surroundings when in the suits. After a moment I could just make out the sounds of boots running on the floor and the sounds of lasers impacting the walls. I looked over at the Ensign, and we both came to the same conclusion. Grabbing her by the arm, I pulled her into the room where we found the bodies. Quickly I turned the lights off but left the door open. The running boots came closer and then five men dressed in black uniforms ran past the room firing laser pistols back the way they came. Then about seven crew members of the ship followed, giving chase, firing their own weapons.

“What the hell?” Jess asked, her comm still open to mine.

“My thoughts exactly,” I said, Then I stuck my head out the opening, scanning the passageway. “Come on.”

“Are you crazy?”

“The bad guys went that way,” I said pointing down the hallway. We’re going to go that way,” pointing the other way.

With as fast as we could jog in the suits, we made it to the other end where it opened up to a cargo hanger. In it were a group of about two dozen people, most crewmembers and some civilian passengers. I pulled off my helmet and introduced myself. “I’m Lieutenant O’Brien, who's in charge here?”

“I’m Captain Yearul,” an older man with white hair and a grey beard said. He was sitting on a crate, and one of his men was wrapping a bandage around his recently wounded leg.

I walked up to him, not bothering with any customary greeting, “Why didn’t you tell the station you had hostiles aboard?”

“We thought we had them contained,” he said cringing through the pain. From how quickly the blood was seeping through the bandage I assumed the injury just happened. “We were attacked and boarded near the Lancaster system. We fought back and were able to destroy one of their three ships and then jumped away. Their boarding party took hostages and tried to demand we turn the ship over to them, but the crewmen they were holding fought back, and that gave us the opportunity to gain the advantage over them.” He cringed as the pain from his injury was growing, but he forced himself to continue with the answer to my question. “Once we had them contained in one of our storage compartments, we set course for D-102. But our systems were badly damaged and shortly after we docked with your station, we lost all power. A few minutes ago power came back to this deck, and the invaders whom we had locked down were able to escape, overpower some of my people, take their weapons and make a run for it. I think they're trying to find the escape pods.”

I was rather impressed that they had done so well to take back their ship from a boarding party and get away from a group of, well for the lack of a better term, pirate ships. The cargo ship was a civilian freighter. Most of the crew would not have military training. At best they would have had a weekend seminar on hand weapon operations given by their corporate employers.Switching on my comm in my suit I reported in.

“Commander. There are five hostiles left and are currently being pursued by the ship's crew. The Captain thinks they're trying to find a way off the ship, they may be heading for the escape pods.”

“Copy that, Lieutenant,” Harrington replied. “That might explain what just happened. The airlock that you just secured has been blown out. Be advised we are looking for another hatch to enter from and we are being joined by station security. Hold your position and keep me updated with any status changes.”

“Yes, Sir,” I replied. Something was very wrong with what I just heard. What could have blown out the airlock? The hand lasers kept on a civilian transport did not have enough power to blow out an airlock. It would take 20 or more impacts from lasers that size to even make a dent. Even if the invaders brought military grade laser rifles, it would take multiple direct impacts to do that. Directed explosives designed to breach things like a heavy door or even blow holes through walls would make more sense. The pirates had forced their way aboard the ship, so it was reasonable to assume that they would have charges like that with them.

“What do you know about these pirates?” I asked the Captain of the ship.

“Not much,” he said, his eyes glazing somewhat as the medic had injected him with a painkiller. “They had three small Coblin Cruisers. I hadn’t seen any of those in over 30 years. And they had modern laser cannons on them. Cut right through our shields.” Suddenly he grabbed the medic’s shoulder and closed his eyes hard as he felt a wave of disorientation.Forcing his eyes open and looking directly at me he continued. “Our reactor went offline, and we went dark. They assumed that we were dead and sent a shuttle over with about 10 men to board us. Which they did, but our engineer was able to get the power back, and that gave us the advantage. I ordered the helm to set the QSG for here and the section the boarding party was in to be locked down. They took hostages… and you know the rest.” His eyes closed as the meds were making it hard for him to stay awake. I looked at the medic and gave him a quick nod indicating that I understood the ship’s Captain wasn’t going to answer any more questions.

“Who's next in command?” I asked the group standing around us.

“I am, Sir,” a man who couldn’t be older than 20 answered.

“Yeah?”

“I’m midshipman Baker,” he said. I work on the bridge as the Captain’s assistant. The first officer took the rest of the bridge crew to go after the men.”

“Okay,” I said. “Do you know what happened to the shuttle that they used to board this ship?”

“Um… I think I heard the engineer tell the Captain that they would have to jettison it before we could make our jump and Mr. Kyle, the first officer, ordered some of the men to do that.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “How many shuttles do you have on board?”

“Oh, a... I don’t think we…”

The medic looked up at me as he was reclining the now unconscious Captain on the crate. “The company removed our shuttles to make more room for cargo a couple of years ago. They said we had enough life pods if anything bad ever happened.”

“Nice,” I said, as I was trying to figure out why they wanted to blow the airlock while running from the crew. It wouldn’t stop troops from the station from boarding the ship. The cargo ship had at least 10 other airlocks they could come through. Unless they needed to buy time. But for what? Their shuttle was gone, and if they had done their homework about the ship they were boarding, they would know there weren’t any other shuttles that they could take. So what was their end game?”

I looked back at the medic who seemed to be in the know, “Do you have anyone left on the bridge?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “As soon as we reached this system the Captain ordered everyone to this section with orders to evacuate onto the station.

“The Captain was concerned that the reactor would fail again and we might lose life support,” the Captain's assistant chimed in. “So he ordered everyone to this section as soon as we were clear of the jump. He said it would be the easiest place for a rescue party to find us if we didn’t make it to the station. At the time he didn’t know that the pirates had escaped their confinement.”

At least that part of the story made sense, I thought to myself. “Do you have any idea what the pirates were after?” I asked both of them.

The medic thought for a moment. “Because most of the shipments are military contracts, they don’t often tell the crew what we are carrying, but we do have a load in Section ‘F’ that was listed ‘Black Seel’ which means that nobody, not even the command staff is allowed within 100 feet of the compartment.”

“Is there anything special about compartment F?” I asked.

The medic shrugged, but the Captain’s Assistant nodded then said, “It’s the largest of all the sections and the only one that isn’t segmented into smaller rooms. It’s one big, open hold with its own hatch at the rear that’s big enough to load a two-story house.

I got that nagging feeling that there was something much worse happening. “How did they get aboard again?” I asked.

“Um… I think they flew a shuttle to one of the cargo sections and latched on, then cut a hole in the hull to get in, I think,” the young assistant said. “Yeah, that’s right. We had to clear section D because we had to send a charge through the hull plating to get the shuttle to detach, and it decompressed part of that section.”

“What are you thinking?” Jess asked me as she had been standing behind me listening to the conversation. I almost forgot she was there, quietly waiting for instructions from her superior.

I turned my body to include her in my response. “If I were a pirate trying to steal something off a cargo ship I wouldn’t send a shuttle with a boarding party until the ship was completely disabled and I wouldn’t force my way in through the hull, I would use a docking port or the shuttle bay.”

“But their Captain said that it looked like they were disabled when their reactor shut down,” she said.

I shook my head, “Even a ship with basic sensors would be able to tell if a ship’s reactor was going completely cold or not.” In my gut I felt that the pirates must have had another exit plan, but had nothing solid enough to voice my theory out loud. I just said, “Damn it,” and pulled on the clasps to release the chest plate of my pressure suit.

“What are you doing?’ Jess asked.

“Getting out of this thing. You need to do the same so we can move quickly.”

With a puzzled look on her face, she followed my orders. “Why?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” I said. In less than a minute we were both stripped down to our boxers, t-shirts, and socks.

“Tell me you have a weapons locker on this deck,” I said to the very confused assistant.

“Yes, it’s over there, but the other officers cleaned it out. I don't know if there is anything left.”

I ran over to the open door of the small room that housed a small arsenal of tranquilizer guns, stun-sticks, and an empty laser rifle cabinet. I pulled open a drawer on the base of the cabinet to find one laser pistol and two power clips. Grabbing them and a tranquilizer gun, I ran back out to the open space where Jess was waiting and looking a little out of sorts in her limited attire.

“Here,” I said as I handed her the tranq gun. “Keep your eyes open for a real gun on the way.”

“Lieutenant? What the hell are we doing?” she asked.

“Something very stupid,” I said. Then I ran back the way we came towards the aft section of the ship with Jess close behind.

~~~

Freight ships are all built on a very basic design. A mostly flat top that is, for, the most part, the ship; the bridge, crew compartments, and the engines. Everything below is cargo space, and they are usually modular, so they can be changed out for various needs and even exchanged between ships. The operations part of the ship was only three decks, so I had a pretty good idea of how to get to the general location that the pirates wanted to get to, Section F.

The sections that we were passing over were marked on the walls and floor. As we got to section E we heard laser fire and could see smoke at the end of the passageway.

“I hate it when I’m right,” I mumbled under my breath as I put my back against the wall and checked my handgun. Jess followed my example, putting herself against the wall next to me.

“Lieutenant, please tell me what we are doing.” she pleaded.

I looked at her and said, “I don’t think these guys are pirates. I think they’re professional soldiers. If I’m right, this crew won't have a chance of stopping them, even if they outnumber the enemy three to one.”

“So, you think we can do any better with a hand pistol and a dart gun? The best thing we can do is wait for the rest of our team to get here.”

“Normally I would agree,” I said, “But they are risking their lives for something that is classified, and if it’s on something that can fly, we have to do everything we can to prevent them from succeeding.”

The look on her face told me that she understood what I was thinking. She grimaced but nodded her compliance. The firefight was sounding like it was slowing with fewer shots as if there were a lower number of shooters. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not, only that one side was winning over the other.Making our way down the hallway, we stayed as close to the wall as possible. Then we turned the corner to find a flight of stairs heading down to the next deck. The fight was just beyond the landing. With a couple of hand gestures I signaled to move down, crouching as we stepped to make sure we could see what was happening as quickly as we became visible. Of the five officers that chased the men in black uniforms, only one was left alive. He was crouched behind a half-destroyed crate, his leg bleeding. I jumped from the fifth step down to the floor and rolled to the spot behind the crate with the one survivor. Not my best idea as my knee buckled the moment I landed. But it was better than getting shot.Jess quickly joined me, picking up a laser rifle from one of the dead officers as she did. Burning debris from the fight had created enough smoke to cover our movements, but it also obstructed my view of the enemy. The mix of gasses in the confined space burned my eyes and nose, and I did my best not to open my mouth as a lungful would be much worse. Another reason to stay low was the air was less toxic.

The enemy were firing blindly down the hallway, and the young crewman was firing his rifle over the crate and hitting nothing. His face was a pale and his eyes barely open. He was losing blood and not entirely aware of what he was doing.I took the rifle out of his hand and held a finger to my lips to show that I needed him to be quiet. Once he stopped firing, so did the enemy.Everything got very quiet and still. The only sound was the environmental system slowly moving the air around us. With no more weapons fire the dust from the debris was settling and the smoke was beginning to clear. Listening, we could hear voices coming from the other end of the corridor. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the timbre of one voice sounded like a man giving orders. Then we could hear the sounds of metal scraping on metal. I looked over at Jess who just shrugged her shoulders as she was at as much of a loss as I was. Then I heard a sound I definitely knew, a heavy magnet lock on hard metal. The smoke had thinned enough to see down the hallway, and I peeked over the crate to take a look. Right at that moment, I saw all five men run to the sides to take cover. Grabbing Jess by the head, I forced both of us down as low as I could behind the crate as an explosive charge went off. The impact could be felt all the way down the hall, blowing out most of the fires and creating a large six-foot hole where the door to Cargo Section F had once been. The men in black ran in, not even bothering to check behind them to see if anyone was still pursuing them.

I gave Jess a hand signal to follow me and we carefully, but quickly moved down the hallway to the forced opening. Suddenly I brought my hand to my mouth and muffled myself before I let out a howl of pain. My food that was only covered in a sock stepped on a sharp piece of metal from the bits of door and wall from the destination. Instinctively I threw myself back against the wall and grabbed my foot. It took me a moment to regain my composure. It’s funny, in the heat of a battle you can take a laser to the shoulder or leg and not even notice it until everything slows down, but get a little shard in the arch of your foot and you are nearly incapacitated. I pulled off my sock, found the inch and half scrap of metal and pulled it out. Then I used the same dirty sock to stop the bleeding by tying it around my foot.

Jess and I moved the rest of the way down the hallway and when we got to the forced opening we each took a side and slowly looked in. There were two large container crates that each looked big enough to hold a house, just like the Captain's Assistant said. We saw the men planting charges on the sides of each. Jess and I ducked back behind the door just before they went off. The blast forced hot air and shrapnel through the opening. Both of us could feel the heat and waited before opening our eyes and looking around. Fortunately one explosion was enough to do the job and wasn’t enough to breach the hull. The sound of two very heavy objects hitting the floor caught my ears and both of us looked back through the opening. As the smoke and dust cleared we saw the side of each container had fallen away and what was inside each was revealed.

“Son of a Bitch,” I said as what came into view were two ships of a class I had never seen before. They were completely black, which would make them nearly impossible to see with the naked eye in space. They looked like a cross between a dropship, which is basically a combat-ready ship used to bring troops in and out of a battle and an assault boat, which would be used to shower targets with missiles, heavy laser cannons and various other ordinances. Yet, the wings were longer and thinner than typical battlefield craft. More like a fighter, with wingtip engines for maneuvering control in high-speed situations. There was nothing like them in any of the Alliance’s fleets, and these guys were about to steal them for themselves.

“Get ready,” I said. “As soon as they board the ships we’ll run in, catch them off guard and take them out. You take the one on the left, and I’ll take the one on the right. Shoot to kill. Got it?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said firmly, but I could tell she was scared to death. I had to admire her for holding it together considering she never thought she would ever see combat outside of a simulator.

Three of the men walked up the ramp that basically made up the rear of the ship. It was large enough to load a whole company at once or a small group of vehicles. They were definitely built to move quickly in and out of ground combat. I kept a close eye on those men as they were boarding the ship that I was going to run at. The other two waited a moment, took a final look around and then headed up the ramp into the other ship.

“Go,” I said. We ran towards the ships. Jess ran straight up the ramp into the ship on the left. The ship on the right started to raise its ramp as I was sprinting at it. As I got closer, I realized I wasn’t going to make it. Without slowing, I changed my direction to the other ship and ran up its ramp.

Laser blasts were going off in all directions as I got to the top, but as I raised my gun to fight Jess yelled, “Hold your fire!” I pointed my gun up and quickly realized that she had successfully killed both of the enemy soldiers. “What happened?” she asked, knowing I was going to be attacking the other ship.

“Change of plans,” I said as I jumped into the pilot's seat and hit the controls to raise the ramp and seal the compartment. Looking at the rest of the controls I quickly realized that this was nothing like a shuttle or escape pod and I didn’t have a clue of what most of them did. “Where the hell are the weapon controls?” I said aloud.

Jess stepped up next to me and said, “Lieutenant, with all due respect, Move!” I got up, and she put herself in the seat. Like a pro, she flicked on a number of switches on the overhead controls, several on the left-hand controls and then two on the front controls. “Take the other seat. The weapons are now hot and ready to fire. Laser cannons are on the main stick, missiles are on the right hand, and when you put the helmet on, the targeting guidance will follow your eye movement.” She took the pilot’s helmet that was next to the seat and put it on. Suddenly two missiles flew at the far wall, blowing a huge hole out into space, but I hadn’t done anything. The other ship had fired them.

“They’re warming up their engines,” Jess said. “If we don’t destroy them before they launch we’ll have to chase them.”

Grabbing the co-pilot’s helmet hanging off the back of the chair I put it on. Immediately the internal computer switched on and gave me a view of the exterior of the ship. It was a little disorienting as I couldn’t see my hands at first. With a couple of hard blinks with both eyes, the computer changed my view to a combination of exterior and the interior.

“Hold on! Hold on! I think I have this,” I said as I was trying to figure out how to make the computer lock a missile onto a target. The other ship lifted up, its wings bobbing from side to side as their pilot was getting a feel for the controls and then headed towards the opening, still not aware that we had killed their partners. As I moved my eyes to follow them a green targeting radical hovered in front of me. It jerked and fluttered as I was trying not to look at my hands, but needed to in order to make sure I was pushing the right buttons. I looked at the other ship again, centered the targeting system on it, blinked to engage the lock and pushed two buttons to launch two missiles. They flew off our wings, straight ahead, then curved up, impacting what was left of the far wall of the compartment.

“Shit!” Jess exclaimed as she switched on the engines to spool them up and quickly turned on everything she needed to in order to fly the bird.

“How do you know how to do that?” I asked.

“I spent two years in flight school training to be a pilot,” She said as her hands moved to various buttons and switches so quickly it was as if she wasn’t even looking at what she was doing. “But when we started training in the fighter I kept blacking out whenever I hit mock three. They would have let me complete the program, but I would never be certified on any combat birds, so I changed over to the engineering track. Hold on.” She hit the engines and with the skids hardly off the floor, we flew out of what was left of section F.

“You got this?” I asked. She looked like she was in her element as we dove down in the last direction we saw the other ship go.

With a grin and her eyes straight ahead she said, “Absolutely, Lieutenant.”

I was still trying to figure out the controls inside the helmet. This was something that really wasn’t covered too much in my training outside of learning how to fix and test them. So the only time I ever put one of these on was to run through a few of their diagnostics, which would take less than a minute to confirm that everything was working. So, I knew what all the functions were inside a helmet, but when your heart is racing, and your life's on the line, it’s hard to recall what you need when you need it.

“Got them,” Jess announced as she spotted the enemy just below us and to the left. With just her eye movement she locked the ships targeting system on the opponent. When she did the icon and crosshairs appeared in my helmet, and I could just make out the black outline of the ship against the stars. Jess doubled the power to the thruster, and we began to close on them.

“Do you think you have the weapons figured out yet?” she asked.

“Just fly the damn ship,” I said as I armed two more missiles and got ready to fire.

The other ship suddenly turned its nose 90 degrees, still moving in the same direction, then burned all of its thrusters hard, changing its direction, but still flying at an angle. Jess tried to put the ship in an arc while accelerating to stay behind them, but we were too close, and they were able to move behind us. Jess then rolled our ship over, so we were flying backward, bringing the front of our ship to face the enemy who was nearly orientated around enough to fire at us. Both of my hands were holding on to the sides of the seat, and my stomach was in my throat. I wasn’t used to being in a small ship at these kinds of speeds. Hitting atmosphere in a shuttlecraft is bad enough, but this was really turning up my insides.

“We’re only going to have them in our sights for a few more seconds,” she shouted. “Take the shot!”

I forced myself to look forward and was able to bring the targeting radical up and lock it on the target. “Firing!” I announced and pushed the buttons that fired the next two missiles in the tube. They flew directly at their target, but then suddenly flew away in different directions.

“Damn it!” She yelled. “These things have scramblers on them. Quick, pull up the defense menu and activate anything that says countermeasures or anti-missile.”

With a blink of my left eye, I activated a menu that came up before my eyes. I tried to scroll through the menus with the eye movements and hard blinking like your supposed to do to keep it all hands-free, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought it should be. New pilots practice for weeks to develop deliberate facial movements to control the computer functions while also learning to limit their expressions as not to confuse the built-in AI. Knowing that and being able to do it was two very different things. I concluding my inexperience was about to get us killed. Quickly I pulled it off the helmet and with my hands activated the screen that was in front of my chair.

Jess spun the ship over and fired just one side thruster to send us into a corkscrew spin to make it harder for them to lock onto us, but it also made it hard on me to keep my focus on the screen as I grasped onto the side of the monitor with both hands.

“Hurry!” she demanded.

“Got it!” I yelled. “Missile Deflection system active. Shields at full power. Countermeasures primed.”

“Get those laser cannons charged! We’ll be within range in seconds,” she yelled, just as the enemy ship started firing their laser cannons at us. Jess rolled us to avoid the assault. We were still moving backward as we were spinning, but as soon as she stopped our roll, she fired the main engine in a hard burst that cut our speed in half. The enemy ship flew past us, hitting us with several shots of cannon fire that cut our shields down to nearly 30%. Jess then flipped us back over so we were pointing in the direction that we were moving, hit the throttle, and we jumped forward so hard my head hit the back of the chair. I pushed myself forward and grabbed the control stick for the guns. We were closing on them fast. I pulled the trigger, and a stream of rapid-fire lasers flashed out in front of us at the enemy ship, but missed. “Wait, I got this,” I said. Firing again I held the trigger and directed them to the left until they impacted the enemy ship. I held the trigger, hitting them repeatedly until they cut their speed and we flew past them.

“Hold on!” Jess yelled again as she used a foot pedal to fire the thrusters on the belly of the ship, shooting us up while still keeping our speed forward like an insane carnival ride. Then she flipped us over. For a moment it felt like we were falling until the gravity plating countered the velocity.

Clenching my gut and holding my breath, I did my best to keep my lunch down and focus on acquiring the target.

“On our five!” Jess yelled as the enemy ship came up from below us from our starboard side. They fired and hit us several times. The shields flickered a bright blue indicating an overload, and then they were gone. The enemy ship passed by us and Jess kept our nose pointed at them even though they were pulling away from us fast.

I put the helmet back on and used the system to get a target lock.

“What are you waiting for?” Jess yelled.

I didn’t answer. Focusing on floating the crosshairs over the target I got a lock and fired two more missiles. I knew that they wouldn’t hit, but like any good pilot the guy flying the other bird didn’t trust his countermeasures to do the job and rolled his ship to the right. That positioned them back towards us just enough to close the distance. Then I fired the laser cannons. Two streams of high energy plasma streamed into them relentlessly. Within seconds their shields flashed out, and their hull started taking damage. They tried to evade us, and probably would have, but we did some damage to their engines and a few of their control thrusters. They started to do a flat rotation which sent them into a circular pattern like a defective bottle rocket in slow motion. Jess aimed us right at them and with another barrage of laser cannon fire the ship broke up into several pieces. There were no survivors.