Prison Ship (43 page)

The game had ended.

THE New Order battlecruiser glided forward, slowing until it stood nose to nose with the
Marauder
. Its massive form occupied most of the forward screen in the command center. Printed on the side of its hull was the name WARLORD.

Mason closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them again he would discover that this was a nightmare of his darkest imagination. His fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms. It comforted him slightly, distracting him from building nausea.

“Enemy vessel, surrender, and prepare to be boarded,” someone announced over the speakers.

Mason cringed at the sound of the voice. He turned and locked eyes with the pale bartender. There would be no escape for either of them.

Mason beat the helm in frustration. “This can’t be happening—I won’t let it.”

He stormed toward the weapons console. If the
Warlord
wanted an answer, he would give them one. Then he noticed a pistol aimed at him from inside the stairwell. He froze in midstride.

Wong stepped up to the main deck, keeping the gun trained on him. A spare gun must have been hidden inside his suit. “Drop your rifle,” the fat man demanded, climbing to the main deck.

Mason released his weapon, cursing himself for not bothering to frisk his prisoners. How could he have been so foolish?

“Travis Quinn?” the voice from the
Warlord
asked. “If you have secured the vessel, please give a response.”

“Pilot,” Wong said to Mason. “Flash the ship’s running lights.”

“Never.”

“Do it, or I’ll cut you down.”

Mason held himself back.

Wong’s face turned crimson. “If that’s your decision, so be it.”

A shadow moved inside the stairwell. Julio Sanchez appeared, grabbing Wong from behind. “Separatist scum,” he hissed. Jewels glittered from the handle of the dagger in his hand. He thrust the white of the blade into a gap between Wong’s armor pads.

Crying out in pain, the fat man swung his pistol into his assailant and fired it twice. Sanchez’s bloodied face sank back into the stairwell.

Mason rushed at Wong, but the fat man’s gun muzzle greeted him. An orange beam blazed in front of Mason’s face, causing all of his nerves to jolt. Wong dropped to the deck, his head sliced open.

Mason collapsed to his knees in shock.

Bricket stood to the side, holding a smoking rifle. “I never did like him much.”

“Neither did I.”

Putting the rifle down, Bricket glared at the forward viewer. “What do we do about them?”

With a new strength of will, Mason sprang to his feet and hastened to the weapons console.

Bricket’s mouth fell open. “You’re going to attack?”

Mason found a functional automatic turret and locked its targeting computer on the
Warlord
. “I’ll never surrender to my own father.”

“Admiral Richina?” Bricket gasped.

“The one and only.” Mason brought a clenched fist down on the firing keypad.

“WHERE’S the Orders disk, Captain?” Quinn asked in an almost playful manner.

Faint discharges sounded from the pulse-cannon assembly. Steiner’s breath caught in his lungs. Someone in the command center must be firing at another ship. The Separatists must have arrived to receive the military information.

“Captain?” Quinn asked.

“I destroyed it already,” Steiner replied.

Quinn’s eyebrows rose in a mocking manner. “How were you able to do that so quickly?” His head tilted toward the sparking conductors behind him as if in answer to his own question. “Perhaps it’s hidden up here somewhere?”

Steiner’s heart stopped. Quinn had figured out the truth. It wouldn’t be long until he found the disk. He had to make a desperate play.

With all the strength he could muster, he launched himself toward the board. When he crashed against it, his left hand moved the control bar to its maximum setting.

Brilliance exploded from behind him. Covering his ears, he slumped to the base of the distribution board and watched the masterpiece of his creation. The entire generating station had come alive with electricity. Lightning streaked all about the ceiling, darting from one conductor to another. One of the pods sitting on top of the cylindrical posts ignited in a shower of sparks, followed by another deeper in the interior. The sight stung his vision, leaving white spots dancing in its wake. He breathed in the charged scent. The most beautiful storm he had ever witnessed played about him. Relief flooded through him, overflowing into a chuckle.

Quinn stared out at the fierce display for a few seconds, then turned back. His lips curled up.

A cold feeling invaded Steiner. Something wasn’t right. Quinn reached into his shirt pocket and retracted a silver wafer.

Steiner cried out hopelessly. After all he had tried to do, he had still failed.

The
Marauder
jolted to one side, almost knocking Quinn off-balance. Several pods overloaded. An alarm rang out. Quinn glanced about in confusion.

Whatever ship they had fired upon must have responded. The floor rocked violently again. This time, Quinn toppled backward.

Without hesitation, Steiner lunged at him.

MASON straightened up, rubbing his bruised head where it had hit the console. Their defensive shields had withstood two direct hits. A yellow warning indicator lit up, informing him that they couldn’t hold up under another. One more well-placed shot should destroy their outdated vessel. The
Warlord
hovered in the front viewer, obviously awaiting the desired response from its victims—one that Mason would never give.

Bricket lifted himself into the chair at the communication station. Blood flowed from a gash in his forehead. “Why didn’t they just finish us off?”

“My father isn’t about to risk losing the chance to obtain U.S.S. military information. He’s trying to intimidate us.” Mason bared his teeth at the
Warlord
. “He’ll never get that pleasure from me.”

“Is anyone in the command center?” The head engineer’s voice sounded from the intercom.

Mason sprang from behind the weapons console and responded to the call. “Daniels? Are you in control of the engine room?”

“Yes. What’s happening up there?”

“A Separatist battlecruiser is staring us down. How long before we can have starspeed capability?”

There was a short pause. “We’ll do the best we can, but it doesn’t look good.”

Bricket’s face whitened. “They’ll be jamming our navigational sensors. We can’t run blind.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Mason replied.

“I might. Give me a second.” The bartender hurried to the security station and began typing keypads.

“Enemy ship, this is your last chance to surrender before we destroy you,” Richina shouted.

Memories of his mother’s arrest came back to haunt Mason, reinforcing his undying hatred for her murderer. He activated the intercom again. “Daniels, we need to leave now.”

“The engines are off-line, the reactor chamber sealed up,” Daniels replied. “It’ll take us more than a day to get it operational.”

Mason knew that his father never made empty threats. He would follow through if they didn’t signal him immediately.

Mason turned toward Bricket, who rifled through camera images on one of the surviving monitors, apparently searching for something. Whatever the bartender had planned wouldn’t make any difference. There was no time left.

Mason stepped to the weapons console and retargeted the automatic turret. With his gaze riveted to the
Warlord
, he pressed the firing keypad.

Streaks of red, intensified energy, lanced out, raking into the shields of the battlecruiser without any effect.

STEINER rolled across the floor with Quinn, struggling for control of the rifle. Only sheer determination kept him going. His muscles ached from growing fatigue. It would not be long before they gave out completely, leaving him at Quinn’s mercy.

He put all of his strength into a punch to Quinn’s gut. While Quinn was winded, Steiner yanked the rifle away but lost hold of it. It flew far out of reach and skidded under an assembly.

Quinn’s countenance darkened into a crazed expression. He threw Steiner back, then broke into a frenzied assault.

Steiner tried desperately to escape as fists pounded against him. A kick into his bruised side curled him up. Nerves shrieked in agony. He couldn’t hold off the attack any longer. His energy was spent. His resistance gone.

Icy fingers weaved themselves around his neck, tightening until no air could be forced through.

Steiner saw a hope. A sparking pod had toppled over against the top of a nearby fence. If he could grab ahold of the electrified mesh, he could take Quinn with him.

He reached out, then froze when he heard something. His ears rang so loudly that they had nearly muffled it. Had it been his imagination, a delusion brought about by his weakened conscious state?

Quinn went rigid, his hands loosening their hold. His gaze rose, widening in surprise—maybe even terror.

Steiner turned his head and saw the impossible. There, twenty feet away, sprawled on the ground, lay Tramer. Steiner blinked hard to see if it was a dream of some kind. It wasn’t. Energy burns marred most of the damaged metallic body. One of his legs stuck in the air, frozen at an angle. Charred wires and severed mechanisms protruded from the stub, where his right arm had once been. His left hand propped up the assault rifle that had been lost during the fight, its barrel aimed at Quinn. Even though the pale face seemed distorted by pain, the single human eye held the fire of vengeance.

Quinn climbed to his feet. “You’re supposed to be dead, Cyborg.” His voice revealed his shock and apparent disbelief. Steiner shared it.

“My creators made me better than even I had expected,” Tramer answered back, his synthesized voice crackling badly.

For a split second, Quinn was expressionless, then he broke out in a sly smile. “So you’ve come back from the grave to kill me, have you?” He held up his left wrist, flaunting a small black instrument secured to it. “Remember this, Cyborg? It has a fail-safe feature programmed into it. If my pulse stops, the explosives in your head automatically ignite.”

The rifle remained poised to shoot. “Then we’ll die together,” Tramer said. His mechanical fingers fumbled with the trigger. The barrel tipped forward. The energy blast erupted into the floor.

Quinn laughed. “It seems you take this trip solo.” He reached for a button on the black device.

Steiner coiled his legs in and kicked Quinn into the electrified fence. In that instant, the cold eyes widened in fear. Sparks sprayed as his body made contact. Thousands of volts ripped through him for a second before he bounced off the fence and landed on top of Steiner. His flesh sizzled. The device on his wrist began beeping rapidly in succession.

Steiner crawled up from under the smoking body, stretching his fingers toward the small transmitter. He had to stop it, break it, anything to save his friend.

The beeping turned into a shrill whine.

Tramer lowered his head, willing to accept his fate.

“Maxwell,” Steiner uttered in terror.

Steiner wanted to look away so he wouldn’t have to see his friend die again, but he couldn’t force himself to.

One second passed.

Two.

Three.

Nothing happened.

Perhaps the transmitter had been a phony? No, Quinn would have discarded it after he thought the weapons officer had died. It had to be real, but why hadn’t it worked?

A bright flash from above gave Steiner his answer. He watched the lightning arcs playing all about the roof. The strong electrical fields must have interfered with the transmitter’s signal.

Without a second thought, Steiner ripped the device off Quinn’s smoking wrist and beat it against the ground until it shattered into useless pieces. The Orders disk stuck out of a nearby shirt pocket, the overhead storm reflecting off its exposed surface. Steiner pulled it free, then crawled over to where Tramer lay.

“Maxwell?” he asked.

A low whine sounded as the weapons officer raised his head. “I am alive?”

“Yes,” Steiner answered, unable to suppress a smile.

“Is the ship secure?”

Steiner looked down at the disk in his palm, then threw it into the toppled conductor over the electrified fence. The intense heat of the lightning arches melted the silver wafer on contact.

“It doesn’t matter now, my friend,” Steiner said.

MASON was expecting the
Warlord
to unleash a violent assault. His body quivered in anticipation of his impending death.

“What are you waiting for?” Mason shouted. “Get it over with.”

Almost in reply to his plea, the battlecruiser began reversing away, probably preparing to swing about to destroy them. Surprisingly, it pivoted around and sped across the border into the New Order Empire.

“What?” Mason exclaimed. “He’s leaving?”

A massive shape passed overhead and pursued the
Warlord
. It was a U.S.S. destroyer.

“The cavalry,” Bricket exclaimed.

Another vessel shot by on the starboard side and followed behind the first. The
Magellan
. The two ships chased the battlecruiser until they all disappeared into the distance.

Mason couldn’t believe what had happened. “My father should have annihilated us first before retreating.”

“You can thank me that he didn’t,” Bricket said from the security station.

“Why? What did you do?”

The bartender grinned, showing his teeth. “What every good gambler would have done—I raised the stakes.” He slapped the console in front of him. “I interconnected the security monitors to what was left of the communications array and sent a low-powered visual transmission.”

“Of what?”

“What do you mean ‘of what’? Of you.”

“Me?”

Mason noticed one of the screens depicting himself at the weapons console.

“I showed your daddy who he was about to kill, betting that he wouldn’t be able to do it.” Bricket laughed. “What do you know—I was right.”