“Gimme a hand with this thing!” Marcus ordered. Tug crossed over to the other side of the cargo bay as Marcus opened a long compartment and started pulling out what looked like one of the energy cannons off Tug’s fighter.
“Is this what I think it is?” Tug asked as they wrestled the heavy weapon from the locker and carried over to the post they had set up a moment ago.
“You bet!”
“Where did you get it?” Tug asked as they plopped it down onto the mount at the top of the meter high post.
Marcus uncoiled the power cable from the weapon, flipped open a port on the deck, and plugged the weapon in. “I took it from your little ship!”
“Who said you could-”
Marcus hit the door control to start cycling the rear hatch open again. “You can thank me later!”
“Jesus,” Josh exclaimed as air once again began rushing in from the rear of the ship. “Can you override his door controls or something?”
“Shuttle two-four-one-eight, this is your final warning. Land immediately or we will destroy you.”
Another burst went off outside, this time to port and even closer. The rear of the ship lurched upward, launching Marcus upward and Tug back over onto the now disorganized pile of supplies. As the door swung open down and away from the shuttle, Marcus swung the business end of the energy cannon outward, another grin forming on his face.
“We’ve gotta do something,” Loki exclaimed.
“Like what?” Josh defended.
“I don’t know! Do some of that crazy pilot shit you always do!”
“Crazy pilot shit? I’m just trying to keep from slamming into any of the other thousands of ships flyin’ all about us right now!”
Loki turned his head to look over his shoulder toward the rear of the shuttle to see what Marcus was doing. When his eyes caught sight of the weapon mounted in the middle of the deck, he nearly spun around in his seat, his eyes going wide. “Oh fuck!”
Cameron’s fingers danced across her console as she entered commands into the helm. The series of waypoints she had programmed into the auto-flight system had carried them out of the cavern and through the exit tunnel with flawless precision. Although she did not state the fact to Nathan, she was sure that navigating the tunnels in this fashion had saved them several minutes over flying through them manually.
“Coming up on the exit,” she announced.
“Let me know the moment you have our sensors back up,” Nathan told Kaylah. From the moment they had disconnected their umbilical from the base inside the asteroid, they had been blind to the outside world. Had there been someone to stay behind and man the hidden base, they could have at least monitored their own sensors and relayed information to them on their way out. Nathan decided that if they were ever to use such a facility again, he would have to make sure that they had a wireless telemetry feed for such data.
“Yes, sir,” Ensign Yosef answered.
“Try to contact the shuttle once we’re clear,” Nathan told the acting comm-officer. “Let them know we’re coming to get them.”
“Crossing the exit threshold now,” Cameron announced. The rocky ceiling passed over them and was replaced by the black star field. The exit tunnel dumped directly into another long trench that eventually widened and became shallower until it was level with the primary surface and disappeared altogether.
“Where are they, Kaylah?”
“I’m not seeing them, sir,” she admitted, double-checking her display to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.
“They’ve gotta be out there somewhere.”
“The gas-giant might be between us and them,” Jessica suggested. “Based on their last course and rate of deceleration, it is possible.”
“They can’t be that dumb,” Nathan said. “Even I’m not that dumb.”
“I’ve got them,” Kaylah announced with relief. “They just came out from the far side of the seventh planet.”
“He’s definitely not stupid,” Jessica commented. “He had to have picked up speed to make it that far over in such a short time. He did not want to be anywhere near where we thought he would be.”
“Should I change course to bring the gas-giant between us?” Cameron asked.
“No, keep on a straight bearing to Corinair, best possible speed, no finesse.” Cameron looked at him quizzically. “During our conversation, I got the impression he was surprised by my age. He probably thinks I’m young and dumb.”
“Well, he’s half right,” Cameron said under her breath. Nathan didn’t take the bait, but he did like that his XO was starting to become more relaxed under pressure, as it helped keep him in the same mood.
“Let’s not give him any reasons to think otherwise,” Nathan added. And remember, no finesse,” he added as he turned to go to tactical.
“So, just fly like you then?” she said to herself.
“Comms, any luck with the shuttle?”
“Not yet, sir. But there’s a lot of traffic coming from Corinair.”
“He’s right, sir,” Kaylah agreed. “There are at least twenty large transports in orbit, and I’m seeing at least a hundred shuttles coming from the surface of Corinair. And that’s not counting the ones that are still in the lower atmosphere, which we can’t see from here without going active.”
“What, are they evacuating?” Nathan wondered aloud as he stepped up next to the tactical console.
“Could be,” Jessica said, “if they know about that warship. After what was showing on their news the other night, wouldn’t you?”
Marcus looked out over the top of his makeshift gun emplacement along its double barrels. He could feel the humming of the power cells as he watched and waited for the rear hatch to lower enough to give him a clear line of sight on his target. But as the door nearly reached its platform position, the small police interceptor was nowhere to be seen. Before Tug could react, the interceptor suddenly jumped back up into sight from below them, and Marcus let go a double-shot of bright red balls of destructive energy that leapt from the ends of his barrels out toward the interceptor. “Surprise!”
The interceptor dropped back down slightly, avoiding Marcus’s first shot. The interceptor changed its angle to return fire, but as he did so, the rear hatch dropped down into its boarding ramp position, putting its trailing edge into the shuttle’s airflow.
The sudden disruption of the airflow under the shuttle’s tail caused its back end jump sharply upward, causing the interceptor’s volley to pass just under their tail.
“What the hell!” Josh cried out as he fought to compensate for the sudden change in the shuttle’s flight characteristics.
Josh’s over compensation for the sudden upward movement of the shuttle’s tail caused it to dip back down sharply and below their flight path. Fortunately, the motion put the little police interceptor right in the middle of Marcus’s view. Marcus again squeezed the trigger, letting out another pair of red balls of energy.
The police interceptor snap-rolled to try and avoid the incoming fire, but one of the red balls of energy caught its wing, clipping off its outer half. The little interceptor immediately began to yaw to the right. A few seconds later, the canopy shot up off the interceptor and the pilot’s rocket-powered ejection seat fired, sending the pilot well above his now tumbling ship.
“Oh yeah!” Marcus screamed as he watched the pilot’s chute open. He reached over and started cycling the hatch closed again. “Get us the fuck outta here!”
“You got it, pops!” Josh declared as he started to climb again.
Marcus looked over at Tug and Jalea, both of whom were still in disbelief. “Not bad, huh?”
The bridge rumbled as the ship decelerated sharply on its approach to Corinair.
“Captain, I’m getting multiple hails from Corinair’s militia demanding identification and intent.”
“Ignore them,” Nathan ordered. “I doubt they can spare anyone to deal with us right now, considering the chaos on the world right now. Besides, once they see us change course and veer away, they’ll likely lose
