Fragments

anyone with a tie to them had to be taken care of.'

Several shots impacted the shield.

'Listen, I'll tell you everything if you can promise to keep my secret.'

Ashley didn't know how she felt about the grisly display, or Larry’s true identity. He was dangerous, and if there was any truth to all the spy movies she'd seen, agents would do anything to keep their secrets. It was her turn to put on a false front.

She shrugged and smiled at him. 'I'm just happy to have my bikini bod back. Last I remember I went over the pilot's console like a wet noodle. A wet noodle that went crunch.'

'Get dressed, that shield won't keep them out forever,' he told Ashley as he handed her a black vacsuit that matched his own. He turned around and pulled the ammunition from both the rifles as she got dressed behind him. 'They were able to evacuate medical for the most part, but they couldn't move you. They told me it would take at least twenty hours for the recovery meds to do their work while you rested in a coma. The longer you had to recover, the better.'

'So someone's boarded the ship?'

'More like everyone's boarded the ship. The only place that isn't like a war zone is the Botanical Gallery. Medical was sealed too, but I opened a couple doors so I could take care of a few of these corporate soldiers. As soon as I found out they were from a division of Regent Galactic, the gloves came off.'

'What do we do?' Ashley closed the front of her vacsuit and turned towards him.

'Well, I'm going to get you to a secure compartment where I've routed a few communication taps so you can take control of the ship.' He clamped a more military style command and control unit than she was used to onto her arm and brought up the stealth controls. 'All right, you want all the systems on and you can use Crewcast to link to me so we can communicate on a low powered, low range scrambled channel. You'll also be able to see me as though I'm not cloaked.'

'We're not going out that way, are we?' Ashley asked as she looked at the shield between them and the soldiers who blasted at it repeatedly with their rifles. Their shots made a hissing sound against the energy barrier.

'We're taking the back way,' Larry said, his tone was still all business. He walked across the room, hopped up onto the bed and popped the cover off of an air vent. It was wide enough for them to fit through, but not by much. 'Once we're inside we'll activate our cloaking systems.'

She shrugged and climbed up onto the bed behind him as he wriggled into the air vent. Ashley managed to get her arms and shoulders inside before she had to struggle for every inch. 'This looks so easy in the movies.'

'Grab my feet, I'll help you up.' Larry pushed himself backwards a bit so she could get a good grip.

She wrapped her hands around his ankles and held firm. 'Ready.'

To her surprise he pulled her almost halfway inside. He moved ahead again and she was most of the way in and able to easily wriggle behind him. 'Wow, stronger than you look,' she said, mostly to herself.

'Well, maybe. The suits can form a temporary bond with almost any non-liquid material.'

'Really?'

'Yeah, you didn't know?'

'I mostly wore these because I liked the way they looked and they helped with my phobia of decompression.'

'Oh, well that makes sense too. Time to activate the cloaking systems.'

Ashley did as she was told. The vacsuit hood came up and her faceplate sealed as the cloaking systems came online. She held her hand up in front of her face and could only see the outline of it on her head's up display. 'So I'm completely invisible now.'

'Yup. Except for on dedicated sonic scanners. Old tech, who knew it could defeat new cloaking suits.'

'You know, somehow I thought I'd feel different.'

Larry chuckled momentarily before saying; 'We have to move Ash, we're in a bit of a spot.'

'Right, bad guys behind.' She did her best to wriggle forward and keep up, but she couldn't figure out the gripping system in the suit so she did it the old fashioned way. 'Knees and elbows, knees and elbows,' she muttered as she hurried behind.

'So why didn't my suit protect me from getting broken up?'

'It tried. Your head and neck were protected, but with the inertial dampeners almost completely down under your seat, well, not even the suit had time to react. Jump of a bridge, or even a chair and the suit has time to see it coming, but getting bashed against your control terminal in a quarter of a millisecond is a different story. Normally Triton protects us with inertial dampeners that are always compensating for the environmental stresses, you just got really unlucky.”

'Don't remind me. I'll never forget what that felt like,' Ashley interrupted, shuddering at the thought.

'I got knocked out, had a skull fracture and a couple broken ribs. I didn’t have to go to medical, but I didn’t want you to be alone. '

'So you stayed for me?'

'Of course. Not the entire time though. I had to help people evacuate to the Botanical Gallery and the hangar deck then came back. They meant to get you out, but time ran short, so they sealed the infirmary instead. It would have taken days for anyone to cut through.'

'But there were soldiers inside my room,' she objected lightly as she followed Larry down a narrow side passage.

'I had to open up a part of medical so I could hide some evidence.'

'You mean-'

'I've been doing what I can. Taking out as many of them as I can manage, and a few got behind me. I almost didn't get to you in time.'

'You got there in time. Thank you Larry. What happened? I mean, the last thing I remember was-'

'Going over your terminal like a wet noodle. I'll catch you up while we move,' he said as he stopped and waited for her to catch up.

Ashley redoubled her efforts, still working the stiffness out of her muscles. 'Good thing I took up yoga, otherwise you might have had to tow me. Feel like I've been asleep for days.'

'That's been known to happen with serious internal reconstruction.'

Another topic Ashley didn't want to ponder at length. She remembered Oz rushing to her side on the bridge. The memory of the pain wasn't clear, but she would never forget the forced reassurances Oz plied her with as the pain medication kicked in and eventually put her out. She didn't expect to wake up. 'Anyway, what's up with the ship?'

'All right, so we were knocked around because these crews can track a ship at faster than light speeds.”

“I remember that bit.”

'We made it to the planetary nebula, got some repairs done but then we were discovered. I was in medical letting the accelerated healing meds do their work when the order came down to start the evacuation. Most of the slaves volunteered to stay aboard, so did most of the security teams, gunners, and hangar deck crew. The evacuation happened so fast that no one argued when I told them that I'd stay with you in medical so you wouldn't be alone when you woke up in a sealed section of the ship.'

'And I thank you, regardless of your secret agent status,' Ashley beamed. She was starting to have difficulty keeping up, and Larry was actually picking up speed. 'Slower, little slower there, speedy.'

'Oh, sorry. It's not far. We're about fifteen meters away from the edge of medical.'

'So everyone left has been fighting ever since?'

'Exactly. Oz and Jason are directing Chief Grady, Agameg and Frost. I've been trying to overhear as much as I can on comms, but most of Jason's encryptions are too good to get around.'

'Aggie?'

'He's leading most of the slaves.'

'Newcomers, they're free now.'

'All right, he and the newcomers have been playing a game of fight and retreat, keeping the soldiers from settling into any one place. So far it’s been working, they can’t get ten minute’s peace and the soldiers I’ve been watching recently are so unnerved they’re almost useless. I don't know what the master plan is exactly, but from what I'm seeing they're staying aboard while Frost, all his gunnery people and about half the security teams counter