I almost bounced over to the door, where Calpurnia hugged the double layers and bent around them to fire the gun.
Now I knew why the doors had two layers, too.
I yelled at Calpurnia, “Situation!”
She was an ex-Ranger and responded as ordered. “Three of them, around the corner. They jumped back when they saw me. They’ll call for reinforcements. We need to move.”
I agreed with her. “Can you keep them pinned down? We need to look in the other rooms!”
She glanced at me, startled. Then she grimaced. “If you must.” She raised the gun and it coughed its ball of destruction again. The ball glanced off the corner and buried itself in the wall on the other side, then exploded, sending up sparks and flames. “The corner is on the same side as us, which works against them. Just make it fast.”
I waved Yoan to me. “Give me the key.”
He handed over the flashlight key.
“What are you doing, Danny?” Dalton demanded, getting to his feet.
“I’m looking for the rest of the Ige Ibas crew,” I told him. “They might still be alive.”
“Colonel…” Calpurnia said, her tone urgent.
I waited for her to fire once more then slid along the wall to the next room’s door recess, slapped the door panel the way Sauli had, and looked inside, but didn’t really need to, for the aroma was enough to tell me this room held more of the crew.
It was the last room on this side. I looked across the corridor and my heart spiked when I saw that Dalton was already there. He slapped the door open as I looked, glanced in, shut the door and shook his head. Then he dived and rolled, back to the doorway Calpurnia was protecting.
I went into my room and worked to unlock the shells of the survivors. “Just hold on,” I urged them, and lifted them out and laid them on the ground. Before I was done, Juliyana, Lyth and Marlow came in.
“Take them into the other room,” I shouted, working on the last shell.
“Why?” Marlow demanded.
“Just do it,” Juliyana snapped at him, and bent to pick up the nearest survivor.
Lyth bent silently to do the same. The survivors were so emaciated that they could easy pick up one by themselves. There were only four in this room. I picked up the last myself and hugged the corridor wall between this room and the other, carried them in and laid them on the crowded floor of the other.
I moved over to the control panel next to Calpurnia’s back and pulled out the key and jammed it in the lock on the panel. The panel lit up. Yoan crowded up next to me.
“How do I lock the inner doors?” I asked him.
“Inner doors?” he repeated, but he was already leaning forward, examining the controls. As he reached for the panel, I said to Calpurnia, “Be ready to step back.”
She nodded as she fired again. “Their backup has arrived,” she warned me, as the stream of exploding balls intensified. Crackling and popping, and the volley of fire was deafening.
Yoan prodded.
The doors instantly slid shut. Calpurnia stepped back smartly, bringing the gun up and out of the way as the doors slammed shut.
“And lock them,” I told Yoan, and spun to head for the dashboard. “Lyth! Sauli!” I beckoned them.
“Locked!” Yoan cried. “I think,” he added in a lower voice.
Sauli and Lyth gathered around me by the dashboard.
“Lyth, you’re the pilot. Figure out how to pilot this thing.”
Sauli gasped. “This is a shuttle!”
I nodded. “The whole room. That wall is the screen over the front. They stand up when they pilot, these guys.” I stepped out of the way. “They’re efficient, with their slaves,” I reminded them. “They don’t even bother moving them in and out of shuttles. They just keep them in the shuttles all the time.”
Lyth peered at the dashboard.
“You can’t guess right first time,” Sauli told him. “You have to experiment. Everything that doesn’t work will tell you something.”
Lyth quickly moved his fingers over the dashboard. It rewarded him by flashing lights and making chirps that sounded like confirmation notes. The center of the panel was a screen of some kind, for information was displayed there. It wasn’t a language that I recognized. “Symbols?” I murmured to Sauli.
“Yes,” Lyth confirmed, his tone distant.
“Why not use labels and save the guessing?”
“Aren’t you glad they don’t use labels?” Sauli said, raising his brow at me. “We’d be sunk, if they did.”
“Symbols cut across communications barriers,” Jai said, making me start. I hadn’t noticed him come up behind us. “Maybe these people don’t have a default dialect.”
Behind him, I heard the sound of muffled fire. Calpurnia and Juliyana stood at the door, their heads down, listening. Juliyana held her palm to the door. That would tell her if the door was heating, overheating, or worse, melting.
“We have to get this thing away from the mothership before they drill a hole through the door and we lose our atmosphere integrity,” I told Lyth.
“No pressure or nothin’,” Sauli added.
Lyth didn’t answer. He moved his fingertips over the dash, frowning. Then his frown cleared. He pressed both hands to the dash.
The floor beneath me gave a distinct thud. The doors Juliyana stood next to made a similar sound.
“We’re sealed in,” I guessed.
The floor began to vibrate and more symbols arrayed themselves on the screen. Lyth picked one that looked like a circle with a chunk hanging loose and flapping.
The shuttle didn’t shift, but I heard heavy thuds just beyond the walls on the side opposite the door.
“The freight bay doors opening,” Sauli guessed. He pointed at the dashboard. “The circle is the symbol for the mothership.”
“Yes, thank you,” Lyth said, his tone dry. He’d already got there. “Hang on.”
I realized he meant “hold on to something” when the floor shifted beneath me.
“No inertial buffers,” Lyth warned.
I reached for the edge of the nearest shell, apologized silently to its deceased occupant, and clung to the shell. Now I thought I understood why the bars were placed across the shells, even though the occupants were supposed to be frozen in place.
“Keep them from rolling around!” Fiori cried, as she leaned over Mace and held him in place on the floor.
The shuttle was juddering and jinking sideways. Even though the freight door or whatever it was, was open, we seemed to be having trouble passing through it.
“Some sort of shield,” Jai murmured. “If the mothership has shields, they would have to lower them from the bridge in order for the shuttle to leave.” He exchanged worried glances with me.
“Just keep ramming through,” I told Lyth. “It’s not a physical shield, or they wouldn’t bother with a hatch over the shuttle. Non-physical shields can be overcome by physical objects with enough inertia.”
“We’re at a standing start,” Lyth pointed out. “I can’t build impetus in the space of a few meters.”
Sauli shook his head. “Drive through it,” he told Lyth. “Have you found the accelerator, yet?”
“That will drive us forward.” Lyth pointed. “Right into the bay wall.”
I saw a thin line of black at the corner of the translucent screen. “Space!” I breathed, a thrill running through me. “You’re using some sort of maneuvering jet, yes?” I asked Lyth.
“It’s automatic,” Lyth said. “I said go, and it’s doing the rest itself.”
“In a skintight bay like this, you can’t afford to have a human pilot eyeball it,” Sauli said, his tone judicious.
“What about steering?” I asked Lyth, my heart ramming in my chest. That chink of black space beckoned like a siren song. I could almost taste the silence and stillness out there. We were so close! “Can’t you accelerate and steer the nose around and out?”
“You’re welcome to try this for yourself, captain,” Lyth said, his tone tight.
I held up my hand and moved away. The chink of blackness seemed to be widening, which made it even harder to shut up.
Sauli, though, stayed in place. “Actually, it’s not a bad idea,” he told Lyth. “Look, we’re edging out. A half meter more and the horizontal axis will have passed the edge of the bay. That gives you room to turn.”
“Very little,” Lyth said shortly. “And we’re slowing. The shield is bouncing us back.”
Which was true. I squeezed my fists, making my knuckles ache.
“No, no, ram it, Lyth,” Sauli said. “Wrench the nose around and burn!”
Lyth shook his head.
“Trust me!” Sauli cried. “Go!”
Lyth took a deep breath, his shoulders lifting. “Hold on!” he cried and slid his fingertips over the dashboard.
The ship’s nose, where we stood, spun sideways, ramming me up against the shells. Sauli gripped the bottom of the dash and hung on.
Starfield slid into view through the clear front end of the shuttle, but it was hazed over. The shield was obscuring it.
Lyth ran two fingers down the dash.
The shuttle jumped forward and almost immediately halted, as if something had hold of its tail. The roar of engines made the walls and floor shudder.
Lyth slid his fingers down the controls once more.
The ship surged forward, not by much.
Then suddenly, it shot forward. The haze over the starfield evaporated and the roar of the shuttle’s engines cut off instantly. We were in vacuum.
“Look for the Lythion!” I cried and lurched over to the dashboard. The clear floor to ceiling window was disconcerting. I was used to looking at real space, and not just via an internal screen, but the Lythion’s windows were solid, small apertures, not this giant room-sized opening. It made me feel vulnerable, but the view was unobstructed.
“Under fire!” Lyth cried, as the shuttle lurched and jolted.
“That wasn’t a direct hit,” Juliyana judged, her gaze upon the ceiling.
“Dodge and weave, Lyth,” I told him. “And try to give us a full spherical view of local space while you’re at it. Sauli, look for the Lythion.”
We pressed up against the window, on either side of the pilot board, and tried to peer around the edges, looking for the Lythion. The only problem was, that if she was at any great distance, she would be a matt black speck against a lot more blackness.
“I’ve activated my beacon,” Juliyana called.
“You still have it?” Lyth cried, not quite looking over his shoulder.
“Look!” Jai shouted, pointing through the screen.
We all looked.
Lyth was turning and twisting the shuttle, dodging the weapon balls of the mothership. It brought the mothership itself spinning into view and it was a glorious sight to behold.
The ship was on fire. Actually on fire. The shields that had held us inside the guts of it clearly held atmosphere inside them, too, and with oxygen, fire could burn. The side of the ship had a tiny rectangular dent in its lower side, and the fire bloomed from that vent.
“That’s the bay we pulled out of,” Sauli said. “Lyssa fired right into it. I could kiss her. It’s a weak spot. That’s why they shield it.”
“She must have fired the moment we broke through,” Sauli said. “But where is she?” He twisted his head, as the starfield whirled over us. Lyth was still jinking and dodging.
Lyssa came over the top of us, casting a shadow over us that dimmed the interior of the shuttle, for she was between us and the red dwarf.
Everyone who could speak broke out into cheers and cries of pleasure.
She slowed as the bulk of her passed over us, then turned her tail, presenting her side to us.
The freight ramp was down.
“Not again,” I sighed.