“That’s a rather strong term. Iprefer the word ‘borrowed’.”
His mood darkened, brought on bythe sense of helplessness and anger that yet another ship had snuck up onthem. There was no reason to doubt Daygarn’s threat. Bounty hunters werealmost a law unto themselves. The end always justified the means.
“Cloaks,” John spat out. “We’vegot to find a way to cut through cloaks.”
“That is the whole purpose of acloak.”
“I don’t care!”
Yelling at Gillespie was notgoing to solve anything, but it made John feel better for a moment. He turnedto the desk and stared at the small screen, letting his mood ease.
“We’ve got to get the ship backfirst. If we get hold of Roppa, at least we’ll have something to bargainwith.” He dropped into the chair behind the desk and turned the console on. “I need to get hold of Tan and find out what we’re up against.”
“What is it you’ve got him doinganyway?”
John grinned. “Cracking codes.”
“Andromedan codes?” Gillespie’seyes widened.
John nodded.
“We don’t even know the languageand you’ve got him cracking codes?”
John nodded again. “He’ll doit.”
Gillespie let a breath out as heshook his head in disbelief.
John concentrated on theconsole. It was basic, available for public use and, no doubt, extremely limitedin what it would allow.
Hacking his own ship’s security. He shook his head slowly at the thought. The ship would pick up any outsidesource and raise alarm bells the moment its security was touched. John couldshut it down, but not before it alerted the bridge to the presence of anintruder. Personal calls usually didn’t set security off, but they wereautomatically monitored and logged – the call, not the content.
John reasoned that if you weregoing to hijack someone’s ship, you were going to manually monitor everything.
He couldn’t risk tapping thebridge and alerting Daygarn. He hesitated, his fingers drumming the desk as hetried to figure out where the crew might be held. They could be isolated andlocked in their quarters or held somewhere like a cargo bay where they could beguarded by minimum numbers.
He slipped in through thepersonal call system. Bismarck monitored and requested an ID. John gave it. It cleared him and he tried to shut down the system. The screen in front ofhim flashed with an error message. He was going outside its permittedlimitations.
He acknowledged the error and themessage disappeared. He’d have to risk manual detection and let the callfilter through to Tan’s quarters, the bar, the cargo bays and the bridge – onlyfor a few seconds on the bridge.
There was no answer fromanywhere.
John pounded the desk with hisfist in frustration. “It’s no use. He mustn’t be anywhere near an outlet.”
“Want me to try?”
“It’s not the system. Just lackof an answer. The only other place he can be is the brig.”
The brig wasn’t equipped tohandle the numbers and it’d be standing room only. He doubted Daygarn wouldcare. The place could be locked down and watched by one man.
“McReidy was on the bridge,”Gillespie reminded him.
“That was for show…” At least,John hoped it was. His eyes darkened as he looked up at Gillespie. “When thisis over, we figure a way to cut through cloaks.”
He stared at the screen for amoment.
“We better find out what Soghra’sup to before he gets us all arrested.”
He brought up the informationmap, a green dot indicated their location. He keyed in the shuttle bays and ablue dot came up. He studied it for a minute and switched the console off.
*
The first shuttle bay wasactive. Civilians pottered around the docks: loading, unloading, stopping fora smoke or a bit of conversation. As smoke filtered into the air system, analarm pealed. Heads turned and the guilty party, suddenly aware of theattention – and probably the rules – dropped the smoke and ground it outunderfoot.
“Too busy,” John decided, andturned away.
The second bay was quiet. Ahandful of craft sat at the docks. Gillespie tapped John’s arm and pointedtowards Soghra, who was climbing out the hatch of the furthest craft.
John raised an arm to attract hisattention and waved him over. The Ruscatan glanced around the dock beforeslinking to the nearest wall and making his way towards them.
“We are in luck,” he grinned. “Come.”
They kept to the wall. John’sattention drifted to the ceiling as he wondered exactly where traffic controlwas and if they were in view. He could only make out blank walls, but thatdidn’t mean they couldn’t be viewed through from the other side, and hecouldn’t see what was directly above him. He tensed, in case the next alarmthat went off was for them.
Level with the shuttle, theyducked their heads and darted to the hatch. Their faces might not show on anycamera, but the uniform was a dead giveaway. John was already at the hatchwhen he realised he should have taken his jacket off.
“It’s already fuelled up andready to go,” Soghra said.
“Why not steal Daygarn’s ship?”Gillespie wondered. “It would serve him right.”
“I already thought of that,”Soghra answered. “It’s not here. Nowhere in a thousand kilometre radius.”
John stopped short of the pilot’sseat. The control panel was nothing like he had ever seen before. There wasnothing that even seemed remotely familiar. “I can’t fly this!” he exclaimed.
“I can.” Soghra slipped aroundhim and into the pilot’s seat.
John dropped to the co-pilot’sbeside him. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” he taunted.
“It is not so different from yourown.” Soghra looked anxiously over the controls, rubbing his hands gleefullyand loosening up his fingers. “I am a little inexperienced with some of themodern devices.”
“How inexperienced?” Johnworried.
“About eight years… ahh.” Hefound what he wanted, flicked a couple of switches and pressed a button. Theengines turned over and came to life.
John groaned, changing his mindand telling himself what a bad idea it was. There had to be an easier way.
The shuttle lifted, then droppedimmediately, thumping into the floor. The impact shook them all in theirseats. It rose again, listing heavily to starboard, then swayed from side toside as Soghra tried to steady it. A heavy jolt as it scraped across the floorbefore rising again and wobbling towards the bay doors.
John
