“I was thinking more like overnight.”
“You’ve got five minutes.” He cut the comm and so did I.
“We’re dead, aren’t we?” I slumped back in my seat.
“I don’t know, kid,” Ana-Zhi said. “Your dad is pretty obsessive.”
“Tell me about it.” I accessed the comm unit on my Aura and established a link to the Sean bot.
“What are you doing?” I asked. It was tough to keep the petulant tone out of my voice.
“Trying to get this damn thing to work,” he said. “Is everyone back on board?”
“Yeah, everyone but you. By the way, Molda Prundt offered us a deal. We surrender the Vostok and he gives us Qualt.”
“What? That’s a horrible deal.”
“I wasn’t serious. I was trying to stall him.”
“Did it work?”
“Not really.”
“Then he’s going to try to board you. He wants what’s in those crates.”
“I know.”
“We can’t let him get any of those artifacts.”
“I know.”
“Jannigan?”
“Yeah?”
“Just do what you think is right.” He paused and then said, “I trust you.”
Then he broke the comm.
My heart sank. What was I going to do now?
To his credit, Molda Prundt ended up giving me about seven minutes before he hailed us again. A generous guy.
“Well, Mr. Beck? I have a shuttle standing by. Do we have a deal?”
“You know, Prundt, I thought about your offer. I really did. On the surface it seems fair. I get my revenge. You get your ship back—packed with crates of goodies, on top of it. But then I was thinking: a late-model Barnes LV-900 Lamprey-class Scout—in great condition, by the way—has got to be worth more than one middle-aged asshole and some janky little shuttlecraft, hasn’t it?”
“My shuttle wasn’t actually part of the deal.”
“Even more to my point. The fact is, I need a ship. My crew needs a ship. So here’s my counter-proposal. A straight-up trade. You want the Vostok? You give me the Baeder.”
I had to quickly cut the microphone on our end because Chiraine burst out laughing.
Molda Prundt was silent for a few moments. Probably gnashing his teeth or something.
I turned the mic back on. “You there, Prundt?”
“Perhaps I just deploy a few squadrons of my legionnaires and take the ship by force?”
“You can try. But we’re not going to just be sitting around waiting for you.”
He laughed creepily. “Where do you think you can go, Mr. Beck? Despite your efforts, the Fountain remains closed. And I have the power to—”
I abruptly broke the comm.
“Boring conversation, anyway,” I said.
“What do we do?” Narcissa asked.
“He’s right,” Ana-Zhi said. “He could knock out our weapons systems with few well-placed bursts from their hyper-Vs, then send in some troops with a few breachers and open us up like a can of sardines.”
Before I could answer, the sensor alarms started going off like crazy.
“What is it?” Chiraine asked.
We all crowded around the console.
“We’re detecting massive energy leakage from the control station,” Narcissa said.
“Have they started blowing it up?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I think it’s the reactor.”
Ana-Zhi threw herself in the pilot’s seat. “If that blows, it will take us out for sure. We need to get out of here.” She looked up at me. “You okay with that?”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Chiraine pulled me close in a comforting hug.
“More bad news!” Narcissa said. “That jump ship is heading our way.”
“Not if I can help it.” I ran for the gun turret and climbed up.
“Incoming!” Narcissa shouted.
“Incoming what?” I yelled, as I braced myself in the gunner’s seat.
The ship’s klaxons blared so loudly that I couldn’t hear Narcissa’s response, and then an explosion rattled the ship. We’d been hit. Hard, by the looks of the warning indicators.
Just then I felt the jump of our repulsors engaging. Thank Dynark.
“Ana-Zhi, get us out of here before they freeze us! Narcissa, watch the thermal dispersers!”
I didn’t have much hope that we could do much damage to the Baeder, but I wouldn’t mind trying to taking a few pot shots at their hyper-Vs, not to mention the jumpship.
The AI-assist informed me that torpedoes were loaded and—
An urgent voice came over the comm. “Jannigan, stop the ship!” It was the voice of my father. “Stop it now!”
“Ana-Zhi, did you hear that? Initiate braking. Full stop!”
“Aye aye.”
“Dad? Where are you?”
“Coming up on the lower bay. Open up for me. I don’t have a lot of control with this thing.”
Someone had routed the external video feed of our aft bay hull camera to my weapons display.
I felt my mouth go slack as I saw the Sean bot flying through space right towards us, hugging what appeared to be a tall cooling canister shooting gas out of one end.
“I don’t believe what I’m seeing!”
“Believe it, kid,” Ana-Zhi laughed.
“Narcissa, prox plates off!”
“Off!”
“And the doors—”
“Opening!”
Another klaxon sounded, but a different tone than the battle alarm.
“Radiation surge!” Narcissa said.
“Get us out of here, Ana-Zhi!”
“First go. Then stay. Now go. Make up your mind!”
“Dad, you in?” I asked.
“In.”
Narcissa closed us up and switched back the proximity plates—just in time. Another shot from the Baeder rocked the ship.
“That’s going to leave a mark,” Ana-Zhi said.
“Why aren’t we moving?” I asked.
The color seemed to drain from Ana-Zhi’s face. “I don’t know. I’m pushing the repulsors all the way.”
A loud grinding sound reverberated throughout the ship. It didn’t sound good.
“We’re caught!” Narcissa said, as she frantically cycled through control screens.
“What do you mean caught?”
“Something has locked on to us and is pulling us back towards the station.”
That was impossible.
“Jannigan, look!” Chiraine pointed at our main viewport which was displaying a split screen, showing views from the forward and aft cameras.
The space in front of our ship looked perfectly normal, a field of stars with a glimmer of one of Yueld’s moons. But the view in back of the Vostok, towards the control station, looked like something I had never seen before.
Huge crystalline planes of color twisted into existence, surrounding the station.
“What the hell?” Ana-Zhi gasped.
The station itself seemed to collapse in on itself in slow motion, almost as if it was being crushed by negative pressure.
