Baron lunged into the hallway and put on a burst of speed, his long legs eating up the distance to the junction that the Rehulians had been hiding behind. He slid into their midst unscathed, the five pirates too occupied with frantically trying to wipe thick, pale pink foam from their eyes. The closest one raised his blaster, aim unsteady, as he blinked repeatedly. Baron ripped the offending weapon from his grasp and used his own to shoot the bastard in the head. The body crumpled against the wall just as Baron turned, taking out another. A weight crashed into him from behind and he growled, reaching back and catching the asshole by the arm. Twisting, Baron hefted the struggling alien up and tossed him at the final two pirates. They all went down together and Baron slogged into the mess of limbs, punching and shooting until the mass fell still.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he removed himself from the pile, sloughing off the pink foam that coated his arms to the elbow. As he turned back to the elimination facilities, he caught sight of Kessia peeking out of the door at him. When she made to come to him, he held up a hand to halt her. “Stay there.”
He waited to make sure she acquiesced before stripping the fallen aliens of any weapons he could find. He wiped the foam off as best he could from the blasters and knives before bringing his bounty back to Kessia. Thankfully, when the foam was only a thin film on their surfaces, it evaporated away.
She smirked when he approached the tiny room she was in. “Well, that’s one way to clean house, I suppose.” She took the now clean blaster he handed her and examined it. Tapping the side, a little blue gauge appeared, showing an almost full charge. She stuffed it in her makeshift bag before hefting them both up.
“We need to keep moving. Others will arrive soon.” Baron kept his attention on the hallway, listening for the sound of any approaching footsteps.
“I think this way is all crew quarters. We might want to double back and try the other direction.”
Baron nodded and headed back the way they’d come. When they reached the junction with its dissipating foam and scattered bodies, he heard her gasp. Without thinking, he turned and swept Kessia into his arms on one side, bracing her small body against his hip and turning her face into his throat. “You should not have to look at this.”
She buried her face in his shoulder, not looking at the green blood that mixed in splatters with the foam on the floor or the unseeing eyes that reflected their passage. He carried her away, letting his longer strides cover the distance until the junction was lost to the curve of the ship’s corridor.
“You can put me down now.” She murmured quietly.
Baron shook his head. He found himself reluctant to release his hold on her. “Not yet. Let us get to another room first.”
They passed the cargo bay that originally held them and kept going, striding down the hallway with Baron’s great speed. Kessia brushed some unruly hair behind her ear as she stared over his shoulder at a painted panel they had just jogged past. “Wait! Go back!”
Baron turned and stepped back to the red-painted panel, setting Kessia on her feet when she wriggled in his arms. “What is it?”
“An emergency access!” She grinned as she depressed the button beside the panel and the doors slid aside, revealing a large tube with a ladder attached to the wall. “It connects the levels in case the power to the lifts goes down.”
Baron peeked into the straight vertical shaft, eyeing the space. It seemed to span multiple floors and he frowned. It would be a tight fit. He would have trouble climbing in such a confined space, and fighting would be impossible. If someone discovered them using it and fired down the tube, they would be easy to pick off. “We would be vulnerable.”
Kessia eyed his broad shoulders and grimaced. “Yeah, I get that. But we could at least use it to get down to the next level. I know I was taken up in a lift when they took me to you.” She glanced at the access again and levelled her gaze at him. “The other option is a lift. This is safer. It’s possible to trap us in the lift until they get a team together to capture us again.”
That was logic Baron could accept. “Understood. We will take the emergency access.” He reached out a hand to halt her when she moved to climb into the shaft. “I will go first and you will follow closely.”
Kessia frowned again but stepped aside and gestured him in. “After you then.”
Baron stuffed one of his guns into the waistband of his loincloth and gestured for Kessia to give him their bags. She gave them up and he reached into the shaft, grasping one of the rungs. He crammed his body into the tube and grasped the rungs with his upper set of hands, leaving his lower hands to carry their bags and his gun. He lowered himself quickly down the rungs, keeping an eye on Kessia as she began to follow.
As he came even with another entry panel, he looked up at Kessia. “Should we try this level?”
“Yeah, go for it. Press the button on the side.” Kessia directed from above, staring down at him from beneath her arm.
He reached out, depressing the button beside the entry with the side of his gun hand, and the doors slid open with a quiet woosh. Weapon leading the way, he peeked out, looking into the thankfully silent corridor. He stepped out and set their bags down, keeping his weapon up while he reached in to offer Kessia a hand off the ladder. She glanced both ways as she emerged. “None of this looks familiar.”
Baron gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Let us look around. We may find something useful.” When she nodded, he gathered their belongings up once more and started off to the right. If they needed to, they could backtrack to the access tube.
Baron strode down the hallway, Kessia at his side, trying doors as they passed. “Locked.” He announced as another door failed to open at his request.
Kessia sighed as she poked a door panel on her side and found it locked as well. “I could probably open most of these.”
“We will leave that as a last option.” He keenly remembered how long it had taken her to open the cargo bay doors and refused to stay still that long unless it became necessary.
The sound of a door sliding aside followed closely by a gagging noise had his head swivelling to Kessia. He caught a glimpse of a grimy room beyond, all sorts of dishes piled on the counters. The reek of something rotting drifted out and Kessia slammed her hand on the door panel, shutting the door once more. “Oh, my god.” She shuddered as she backed away from the door, her face pale. “I have never seen a galley that disgusting.”
As Baron guided her away from the foul kitchen, he was beginning to think they should return to the emergency access and descend to the next level. Each door they approached brought a wave of anticipation and the subsequent dashing of those hopes seemed to be wearing on both of them. They approached the last door with a sense of resignation already taken root. Baron was focused on the lift a handful of paces from the final door, more concerned that the lift would open to approaching enemies.
The room opened and Kessia visibly brightened. “Bingo!” She hurried in, not waiting for Baron to clear the room of possible threats.
He hustled in behind her, nearly trodding on her heels when he had to stop short. The room wasn’t very big, and most of it was taken up by a large view screen on the wall and a computer console that seemed to be covered in a fine layer of dust. Two backless chairs were mounted to the floor in front of the console. “What is this space?”
“A map room!” Kessia shot him an excited grin as she slipped onto one of the seats and wiped her hands down the console in an effort to clear the dust. She brushed her hands together and grimaced before rubbing them on her bare thighs. “I’m guessing the Rehulians on this ship don’t care much for plotting their routes. It doesn’t look like this place has been used in forever.”
“That is what this room is for? Plotting the ship’s course?”
She nodded as she started tapping away at the console, portions lighting up eagerly in reaction to her silent requests. “Map rooms are a holdover from when most small ships were used as explorer craft. They were designed so navigators could combine all the sensor data and maps shared by others on the network to try and determine where to explore next. After the Coalition formed and set up monitored spaceways, many explorer ships were converted and map rooms weren’t needed. But…” Kessia cut off as she tapped a few options on the console and bared her teeth in a victorious grin as the viewscreen before her lit up with what appeared to be a star chart. “The map room is still connected to the bridge’s sensor arrays.”
Baron leaned forward and stared at the 3-D star chart displayed. When he spoke his voice came out a whisper. “What is this showing?”
Kessia glanced up at the viewscreen with its cloud of thousands of pinprick stars and planets, slowly rotating on the screen to show relative distance. “This is a map of known space.” Her mouth twisted into a frown and she started tapping on the console once more. “Although it’s out of date. The Coalition has expanded its reach significantly in the last 50 years.” The map altered slightly, hundreds of new pinpricks adding to the outskirts of the cloud and the green area at its heart expanding significantly. “There. That’s better.”
Baron found himself torn between wonder and horror. The idea of so many different worlds was wondrous, sparking a desire to see them for himself, but the reality of being one insignificant soul in that grand swirl of stars chilled him to his bones. Truly, in the scheme of things, his and Kessia’s outcome meant nothing. A drop of water into the sea.
“You said you’re from Lehra, right? Let me see if I can bring it up in correlation to where we are now.” She quieted for a moment as she worked and he watched the screen change, turning and drawing into a tiny insignificant speck orbiting a brilliant white star. It grew closer until he could see the slowly spinning orb of his planet, its land masses appearing to be nothing more than green and brown splotches against the vastness of the purple-blue seas. Lehra appeared to be a jewel against the velvet darkness of space, its three moons staged around it like tiny pearls.
“It’s pretty,” Kessia murmured as she stared at the planet slowly turning on the screen.
“It is.” Baron agreed, almost speechless in his fascination.
Kessia made a little hum and slipped off her seat, rifling around for something. He glanced over to see her popping open a small cabinet against the wall. “I knew they had to be here somewhere!” She drew out a small grey cube and returned to her seat in front of the computer.
Baron eyed her as she popped the cube into a small recession under the display screen. A blue light lit the cube from within as the computer seemed to recognize it. “What is that?”
“It’s a datacube. It stores information so it can be accessed later.” Kessia started tapping away at the console, her attention on what she was doing. “I can save the coordinates to Lehra and New Terra on it so we can take it with us if we find a shuttle. That way we know where we’re going when we get the hell out of here.” She shot him a grin as the cube flashed white for a second before she collected it.
“Very smart.” Baron praised, duly impressed. She might be smaller and weaker than the females he was used to, but her mind was sharp. He eyed the console curiously. “Is there a way we can use this to see where the pirates are on this ship?”
Kessia’s lips twisted as she considered it. “I’m not sure. This room is connected to the exterior sensors, but I never thought about the interior ones.” She turned back to the console and started tapping away. The star map disappeared and a diagram of the ship replaced it. A grin crossed her face as she glanced up, watching small red dots appear all over the ship. “Baron, you’re a genius! We can use the sensors to track life signs on board!”
Baron felt a spark of warmth flutter in his stomach at her praise. Shrugging it off, he asked the first question that came to mind. “Do these all represent the pirates?”
“Most of them.” She pointed to two dots close together, separated from all the others. “I think these are us.” She gestured to a cluster of red dots toward the helm of the ship. “I believe that’s the command deck.”
Baron counted up the dots. Minus the two that represented them, there were twenty-one. Five of them were on the bridge, others were scattered about. Six dots were moving together through the floor above. As they watched, three of those dots broke off from the others and began to descend.
“They’re taking the lift,” Kessia murmured worriedly.
“Time to move.” Baron stood, ready to fight once more.
Kessia frowned as she watched three of the dots stop at the floor above and hurry down the hallway. “Their splitting up. I think they’re trying to corner us.” Her eyes roved over the diagram of the ship until she pointed to a section down the hallway from their current location. “I think that’s a shuttle bay!”
Baron nodded and opened the door, peeking out carefully before stepping out and gesturing for Kessia to follow. “Which way?”
With one last glance at the ship diagram to check the whereabouts of their pursuers, she stepped out and gestured to the right. “This way.”
He let Kessia lead, but he stayed right on her heels, needing to be close enough to shield her if the pirates appeared. He caught the sound of the lift doors opening at the other end of the hallway just as they rounded a curve and a large door appeared.
“That’s it!” Kessia shot forward and slammed her hand on the panel at the door’s side. The metal panel split down the middle and slid aside, revealing a large hangar. They stepped in and looked around, the door sliding shut behind them. Kessia shook her head in disbelief. “What the hell?”
Baron took in the echoing space. A ship occupied one of the three small slips the hangar boasted, but it had seen better days. The hatch at its rear stood open and various tools were scattered around it. Kessia hustled up the ramp, disappearing inside for a moment before a curse rang out.
“It’s fucked.” Kessia growled as she reappeared in the hatch. “The engines are offline. There’s no way it’s going to fly.” She cast her gaze around the empty hangar and her shoulders slumped, defeat flickering over her features. When she spoke again, her voice was small and scared. “There’s no other option.”
Determination steeled Baron’s spine as he stepped over to the end of the ramp, looking up at her tiny frame. “There is.” When her eyes met his, they were oddly wet and something in his chest hated that look on her face. “We will take the ship.”
Kessia looked around her at the broken-down shuttle. “I might be able to suck it out into space, but with the engines offline life support won’t last long. We would be sitting ducks.”
Baron shook his head. “We will not be ducks. We are not taking that ship.” He gestured at the shuttle. “We’ll take this ship.” He pointed to the floor beneath his feet.