The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [45]
‘They brought us back,’ said the admiral, smiling.
‘So we’ve a chance of being rescued,’ said Marko.
‘Only if we can stop these Suneye bandits from towing us off to their prison.’ The admiral got up, went to one of the cabinets and opened it. Tough but flexible body armour was handed round, jackets and leggings, and goggled face protectors. All of it had a silky black sheen.
‘Sabotage,’ the admiral said. ‘We fight our way onto their ship, find some important-looking systems and set a few shaped T9 charges. Oh, and slap a few on those boarding tubes as well. Sergeant, how would you rate our chances?’
Miczek squinted back at the screens. ‘Far fewer drones patrolling our corridors than before, sir. I’d give good odds on reaching their ship.’
The admiral grinned and broke out the weaponry.
Kao Chih, though, felt that the admiral was being less than candid about encountering the Suneye drones. Might they not have something more powerful than darts to fire? And could there be other lethal countermeasures hidden in ceilings and bulkheads?
Kao Chih was passed a beam pistol: cased in some lightweight alloy and coloured white and blue, it looked and felt like a toy.
‘Don’t be deceived by the lightness,’ said Sergeant Miczek as she gave an identical one to Marko. ‘These are droptroop issue, a redesigned model with a twenty per cent range improvement over the previous mark.’
‘We’ll divide into two teams,’ said the admiral. ‘Young Marko will stay with the sergeant, keep his wits about him and follow orders, understood?’
Marko grinned nervously and bobbed his head.
‘Kao Chih,’ Zhylinsky went on. ‘You’re with me. Let’s teach those Suneye machines a thing or two, eh?’ He pointed at one of the screens, which showed that the Viteazul was being hauled on a course leading around the gas giant towards the vicinity of the Roug–Vox Humana flotilla. ‘Time is limited. Let us be on our way.’
Via more maintenance passages, communal rooms and underfloor crawlways they reached a medstation near the sternmost of the boarding tubes in ten minutes or so. Once the sole patrolling disc-drone had passed by on its way along the dorsal corridor, the admiral led them out along the passageway. He used a local hatch override to lock all the nearby hatches, sealing off that particular corridor junction. Then they approached the oval opening in the ship’s hull. Silver-green hooks curved round the edges of it, their tips sunk into the bulkhead metal. Beyond, the opaque conduit waited, undulating slightly.
‘Should be zero-gee along this stretch,’ the admiral warned, readying his short-bodied beam rifle before ducking through.
Kao Chih watched in admiration as the older man kicked off from the rim of the sealing ring and gracefully glided up the tube. He recalled his own experiences with weightlessness on board Blacknest Station and mentally prepared himself for a display of oafish clumsiness. But his performance turned out to be adequate, with one or two bumps along the way. Sergeant Miczek arrived a moment later with Marko tethered to her waist.
‘And here we are,’ said the admiral. ‘Not exactly constructed on a Human scale but I’m sure we’ll manage.’
They crouched together in a spherical space about ten metres across with an artificial gravity noticeably lower than the Viteazul’s. Although there was no main light source, most of the odd-shaped panels gave off some radiance, mainly from the glowing threadlike lines that were laid out in an angular network all across the curved surface. Several octagonal tunnels led off at a variety of angles and as they crouched there Kao Chih began to wonder why their presence had not provoked a response. Then Zhylinsky, who had been hunched over a small device, looked up.
‘In case you’re wondering why there’s been no welcoming committee, it would seem that those unknown interceptors have followed us here, so most of the Suneye drones are out there fending them off.’
He held up a datapad with a foldout