Prison Ship (22 page)

New alarms sounded, fast-paced and shrill. The base was alerted to their presence.

Guns from the ridges rained down powerful energy blasts on the convicts in the field, cutting down one of them instantly. The second raider ducked inside a neighboring building before the bolts hit him. Pattie raced ahead and jumped through a hole in the netting that covered the stockpile of armaments. The sentries on the ridges stopped firing for fear of igniting the depot. Several seconds later, Pattie reemerged from the weapons stockpile, cradling a portable laser cannon in his arms, and discharged a sustained searing beam of intensified light back at the ridge. The foliage growing around the defense tower caught fire as the shaft of particle energy sliced through it and cut a path through a section of the metallic walls of the guard post. Dark smoke from the shrubbery fire billowed, blocking any view the sentries had. The laser ceased as Pattie repositioned the cannon in his arms, obviously struggling against the heat the device’s casing generated while discharging.

Steiner couldn’t believe the risk Pattie was taking by holding a laser cannon like that.

A scrape of stone somewhere behind him tore his attention away from what was happening outside. He looked up and down the corridor. No one was in sight, yet the grinding continued to emanate from close by.

“Oh hell,” Mason muttered, then shoved Steiner into the opposite wall. Frozen by shock, Steiner could only watch as the pilot raised his rifle muzzle toward him.

Be wary of him,
Tramer’s voice repeated within his head. He had failed to heed the warning and would pay the price.

The grating noise increased, resonating through Steiner’s entire body. He realized it originated from the wall behind him.

A crack split to his left. A section of the wall swung open.

A hidden door.

Mason dropped to his knees, firing into the opening as two soldiers burst out. Their legs disintegrated beneath them. They toppled on top of Mason, crying out in agony.

Another man jumped out of the maw of the secret passage. Before he could aim at Mason, Steiner grabbed his arm and swung him around into the wall, knocking him unconscious.

Three more soldiers charged through. Steiner watched helplessly as two gun muzzles leveled at him.

A piercing cry came from outside the building.

Pattie sprang through the sunlit doorway, brandishing the laser cannon. The high-pitched scream of the laser stung Steiner’s ears as he watched the sustained particle beam burrow through all the men hidden inside the secret passage. It stopped as abruptly as it had started.

Steiner rubbed his eyes, blinded by the intensity of the light ray. When he looked up through orange-spotted vision, he saw Pattie dashing back outside.

Mason crawled to his feet. “I’m such a fool. I should have expected them to have secret doors to trap their enemies from behind.”

Steiner stared at him for a moment, stunned by what had transpired, ashamed that he had thought Mason had turned against him. “You saved my life,” he said.

“It was in my best interest to,” Mason replied.

Steiner should have expected Mason to respond with a comment like that. How could he ever have doubted him? He peered into the darkened maw behind the door. “Where does this lead to?”

“Probably to the upper levels.”

“Good. That’s probably where the control complex is.” Steiner stepped over the smoking corpses littering the entryway. He counted ten dead soldiers who had planned to ambush them from behind. If they had succeeded, the raid surely would have failed.

Electrical lamps embedded in the rock illuminated the cutout passageway. Tangles of cobwebs hung from the ceiling. With Mason trailing behind him, Steiner followed the tunnel until it emptied into a cavern.

A stairway, embedded in the rock face, spiraled up to a door a hundred feet above. Steiner carefully climbed the steps, keeping his rifle aimed at the top.

He flinched at the stutter of rapid weapons fire ahead, accompanied by half a dozen short-lived screams.

“Be careful,” Mason whispered harshly. “We don’t want to walk into the middle of a firefight. We might get hit by our own people.”

The sounds died off into a deathly silence.

Steiner continued at a steady pace until he reached the sealed entry. When he touched a glowing keypad set into the rock, the door slid down into the floor, revealing the control complex.

Tramer’s sensor orb found them instantly. The weapons officer stood alone in the room, in front of a bank of computer terminals. Lifeless bodies lay scattered around him. Blood dripped from the consoles and spread out on the floor. The torsos had been hit by numerous precisely aimed energy bolts. Almost a complete hole had been blasted through each of their chests. It reminded Steiner of the gunner who had been killed on the
Marauder
.

For a brief instant, Tramer glared at Mason with the same hatred that Steiner had seen when the weapons officer had wanted to kill Bricket. Then the orb shifted back to Steiner. “Captain,” the synthesized voice rumbled. “I have accessed the computer files with the help of the outpost’s commanding officer.”

“Where is he now?” Steiner asked, looking at the mutilated heaps of flesh.

“The other raiders have taken him to the conference hall, where all the prisoners are being held. It appears as if the station’s personnel were in the middle of some kind of award ceremony when we attacked.”

“What about these men?” he asked. “Did they all have to be killed?”

“When I found them, they were in the process of trying to destroy their files. They put up a strong fight.”

Steiner noticed the multitude of charred markings covering the weapons officer’s breastplate. He had been through a fierce battle. How had he defeated them? He had no weapon.

“There’s some very important information stored here,” Tramer said. “I even found a few personnel files on some of the Separatist officials.”

Almost immediately, Steiner forgot everything else. He moved next to the weapons officer and looked over them for himself. A gold mine of current battle plans and strategies was listed across the screen.

Steiner started to let out a triumphant shout. It died inside his throat.

A Separatist officer stood in a nearby doorway, aiming an assault rifle at him. Before Steiner could blink, the defender was showered in energy bolts. The searing beams hit in such rapid repetition that they looked like one continuous ray and disintegrated the man’s chest instantly. A smoldering heap of flesh dropped to the floor.

Mason gasped then fled back into the secret tunnel. Tracing the direction of the beams, Steiner saw Tramer standing erect, his scarred breastplate hanging open, with two miniature assault guns attached to the interior. The plate closed up again, taking the hidden weapons with it. The weapons officer turned and stared emotionlessly.

Steiner was so stunned he couldn’t speak.

A motorized whine rose from somewhere outside. Instantly, the weapons officer snatched up his face shield and ran out onto an adjoining balcony, which overlooked the installation.

The whine burst into a steady rumble.

The attack fighters.
Steiner had forgotten all about them. They must be launching. He sprinted out onto the balcony just in time to see Tramer disappear down a moss-covered stairway to the side.

Steiner ran to the guardrail and looked down into the small valley. He found Tramer racing down a dirt path toward the clearing, where ten fighters were lined up next to the visiting colonel’s yacht.

Weapons fire from the north ridges rained down on him. Some of the powerful bolts grazed his metallic body but failed to slow him. Abruptly, the attack ended. Rifle blasts echoed from atop the fortified bluffs, followed by a triumphant howl.

One of the fighters lifted off the ground, trailing a loose cable its crew had forgotten to unhitch. With incredible speed, Tramer grabbed the metal cord and wrapped it around the neighboring vessel’s landing gear. The fighter, hovering in the air, blasted forward, pivoted against the cord, and crashed into the middle of its sister ships. A series of blinding explosions rocked the earth as all ten spacecraft disintegrated, one after the other.

The brightness of the inferno caused Steiner to lose track of Tramer. He searched around futilely. What happened to him? Suddenly, the weapons officer stepped into view. Small fires of ignited fuel danced upon his metal casing. He raised a smoking mechanical arm and saluted.

A buzz from the helm console of the
Marauder
caught Mack Palmer’s attention. It came from the long-range sensors. When he looked at the readout, he gasped.

No, it couldn’t be.

On the screen, a Separatist battlecruiser was heading straight for Hurot IV.

“Please—not now,” he muttered.

Simmons, the only other person in the command center, looked up from his station. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m picking up an enemy warship coming right for us.” The words had barely left his lips when the navigator stumbled over his own feet in his hurry to get down to the helm to look at the readings for himself.

Mack shoved the man’s head away from his face. He didn’t have the time to put up with the fool’s prying. They were in serious danger.

Mack knew he had to hide the
Marauder
behind Hurot IV before they were discovered. At the press of a few keypads, he detached their vessel from Skyport and bolted toward the far side of the planet.

“Look, there’s another warship approaching right behind the first,” Simmons cried out.

Mack reexamined the screen. The idiot had jumped to the wrong conclusion as usual. He couldn’t tell a freighter from a battlecruiser.

“That’s just a cargo ship,” he snapped. Then he noticed the speed of both vessels. They moved rather slowly. It must be some kind of a convoy heading for the outpost on Hurot IV. “Get Captain Steiner back on a communication channel right now,” he ordered Simmons.

The navigator started back to his station, then stopped. “Why don’t we leave without them?”

“Do you know the way back?” Mack shouted.

Simmons hung his head as he fumbled his way back to his station.

Mack knew the navigator had been denied all the charts for this area, probably just to make sure they wouldn’t try running off with the ship. Besides, he wouldn’t leave Julio behind.

Looking back to the screen, he found three more freighters trailing behind their monstrously armed escort. None of them had increased their speed. Maybe the convoy hadn’t detected them yet.

“Steiner here.” The captain’s voice sounded from the speakers. “What’s the problem up there?”

“I’m tracking a Separatist battlecruiser leading a convoy this way, sir,” Mack said. “You had better get the assault team up here fast.”

No reply.

“Captain, are you reading me?” he asked.

“Yes,” Steiner answered at last. “We require transportation back to the ship.”

“What happened to the shuttle you took down?”

“We crashed it into a building during the raid.”

“Doesn’t the outpost have any operational spacecraft you can use?”

“Tramer destroyed them all. That’s why you’re not currently under attack by the fighters right now.”

“I can’t leave the ship now,” Mack shouted. “Not with a Separatist battlecruiser coming down on top of us.”

Several agonizing minutes passed before Steiner replied. “Call Phillip Daniels up to the command center. I’ve got an idea how it can be done.”

Mack glared back at Simmons, who had listened in on the entire conversation. “Get that head engineer up here fast.”

STEINER walked through Landbase’s ruins triumphantly, his pride in his crew’s performance soaring. He had just visited the conference hall where the prisoners were being held. His small band of raiders had captured seventy-five members of the station’s personnel alive, including the base commander and the visiting colonel.

He looked up at the reddening sky above. They had been successful in conquering the base before sunset, as he had hoped. The air danced with thousands of mosquito-type insects, awakened by the coming night. He waved them away from his exposed skin. They didn’t bother him much. He felt too good to be annoyed by the pests. The crickets sang in celebration with him. He took a deep breath of the fragrant breeze coming from the tropical plants and flowers of the surrounding jungle. This victory felt better than anything he had experienced aboard the
Valiant
. McKillip would have been proud of him.

When Steiner had finished his walk, he entered Landbase’s mess hall, which Tramer had converted into an infirmary. The odor of blood and sweat hung heavy in the air, accented by moans and cries of pain. At Steiner’s request, Tramer had allowed the base’s medical personnel to care for their wounded there.

Julio Sanchez sat at the entrance, nursing a scratch on his arm. His rifle was propped against the wall just within reach. “Is someone coming down to get us?” he asked.

“They’re on their way right now,” Steiner answered. He decided to keep the approaching Separatist convoy to himself for the time being. Why cause worry during their hour of triumph?

Scanning the interior of the mess hall, Steiner found Tramer in a far corner, standing watch over the medical personnel. Steiner threaded a path through the injured prisoners, listening to them exchange whispers about the “indestructible cyborg.”

Weapon scars and the scorch marks from the explosions of the fighters covered Tramer’s metallic body, adding to his already menacing appearance. His face shield lay on the floor next to him, looking much the same as the rest of him. He held the hand of a wounded raider on a gurney, a sight Steiner never expected to see. When Steiner got closer, he saw who the injured man was.

Pattie.

The Saint’s eyes were closed. His armor had been removed. Ashen burns were speckled across his hairy chest in the area where he had been holding the laser cannon, and on the underside of each arm. Both of his legs had been burned off around the upper knee. The intense heat from the laser that must have severed them had probably cauterized both of the stumps. Steiner had suspected this could happen. The laser cannons were meant to be attached to tripod stands before firing to prevent the random dispersal that holding them by hand would cause.