Cleo noticed the giant ship had come alive in the time she’d spent in the detention centre. Ed and Pickyrd hid their weapons inside their suits as Cleo adopted the appearance of a security officer and marched them back through the ship at gunpoint.
This time the corridors were buzzing with activity as the multiple dormitories spilled out hundreds of personnel, all heading to their adjacent hangars.
‘Shit,’ mumbled Ed. ‘We had to pick a hangar at the very back, didn’t we?’
‘Good for your cardio fitness,’ said Cleo, nudging him in the back with a laser pistol.
The lighting in the corridor dimmed and the background hum of the ship changed pitch for a second.
‘We’re jumping again,’ said Ed, as his eyes met Pickyrd’s. ‘Judging by all this activity, the invasion must be imminent.’
They turned, as Cleo swore behind them. Her hologram was flaring and losing solidity. It quickly stopped, but hadn’t gone unnoticed.
A Klatt soldier blocked their way through the next bulkhead doorway, waving his weapon at them menacingly.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘GDA prisoner transfer,’ said Cleo, quick as a flash. ‘Captain’s orders.’
He looked her up and down with a nonplussed expression, prodding her with his rifle muzzle.
‘Why you flicker?’ he asked.
‘Why did I what?’ she replied. ‘That was the lights when the ship jumped.’
He stared at her, his stern demeanour not changing.
‘I will check for confirmation of this transfer,’ he said, pressing a button on his wrist and lighting up a small panel.
Before he could call anyone, Cleo reached over and touched the back of his hand. The soldier convulsed violently and hit the ground like a dropped rock. Continuing to spasm, he quickly began to attract attention.
‘Need a medic here,’ called Cleo, pointing at the quivering soldier at her feet.
As two passing soldiers bent down to attend to him, they quickly moved on and marched as fast as their legs would go without actually running. When they finally reached the rearmost hangar a few minutes later, Ed peered through the inner airlock door. The outer door was still open after the last pilots had exited a few seconds before. He could see many of them milling around their ships and seemingly preparing to fly.
‘Shit,’ he mumbled, as he noticed their shuttle getting some unwanted attention.
Three, what could only be engineers judging by their dress, stood by the shuttle’s airlock trying to gain entry. Cleo took a look and shrugged.
‘Leave this to me,’ she said, cycling them through the airlock.
When they emerged into the vast hangar, she marched them smartly towards the shuttle.
‘Hey – what d’you think you’re doing?’ she shouted.
The three engineers turned and stared at them as they approached.
‘Get away from that ship, or I’ll have the captain lock you in the brig.’
‘This vessel isn’t in the ship’s inventory,’ one of them plucked up the courage to say, the other two backing off slightly with expressions of uncertainty.
‘It belongs to the Skirmat Eagle,’ she said, tapping the correct code into the door’s keypad. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain your displeasure to him personally?’ she added, as the door whined up and the steps descended.
The engineer’s eyes widened at the mention of the Skirmat and much to his colleagues’ relief he chose wisely and backed away to join them.
Cleo kept up the ruse and prodded them through the airlock with her rifle. Ed could see the gobby engineer still wasn’t convinced and stood having a heated discussion with the other two, his arms flailing about, generally in their direction as he spoke.
Just as Cleo turned to close the doors, the engineer appeared again, a determined expression on his face, and blocked the door from closing.
‘I’m not happy about this,’ he said. ‘I’m the hangar director and I say what flies and when in here.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?’ Cleo asked, rolling her eyes at Ed as the engineer glanced around the cockpit.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, snapping his gaze back to her. ‘I just want to confirm with the bridge that you’re authorised to remove these prisoners and utilise this vessel.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ she said, hitting the door close button.
He had two choices. He picked the wrong one and stepped inside the shuttle as both doors came down and sealed with a hiss.
‘Now you belong to us,’ she said, morphing back into the real Cleo.
The engineer’s eyes widened as shouting and tapping could be heard from outside the airlock. Cleo nodded at the pilot’s seat and glanced at Pickyrd.
‘I trust you know what to do with that chair?’ she asked.
‘Absolutely,’ he said, the plastic restraints on his wrists miraculously dropping to the floor as he slid into the front seat.
‘What the hell is going on?’ said the engineer, the earlier arrogance all but gone.
‘You’re a prisoner of the GDA navy,’ said Cleo. ‘That’s what’s going on.’
He made a grab for the airlock controls, only to find his arms set in concrete as he slowly lifted off the floor and hung in mid-air.
‘Woah,’ he yelped, wriggling about, which only succeeded in turning him to face the bulkhead. ‘Fuck,’ he said, wriggling around again to face the cockpit once more. ‘You won’t be able to fly through the barrier,’ he said, sneering. ‘It’s coded to our ships only.’
He shut up then and hung there, a smug expression replacing the sneer.
‘We didn’t fly in here earlier, idiot,’ said Ed, nodding at Pickyrd that it was time to leave.
The antigravs began playing their tune and the banging on the airlock immediately ceased. Pickyrd lifted the shuttle, retracted the struts and floated into the middle of the hangar. Ed could see a lot of confused pilots eying them from inside their fighters as they prepped them for flight.
‘No,’ said the engineer, the penny finally dropping. ‘You can’t jump out of here – it’ll damage a load of my fighters.’
‘The more the better,’ said Pickyrd, shrugging his shoulders as he cloaked and touched the jump icon.
They reappeared in a random area of clear space half a light year from the octaship. Checking the holomap, instantly resetting above their heads, Pickyrd turned to Ed with a perplexed expression.
‘What the fuck are we doing out here?’