Project Starfighter (43 page)

“I can, but I can’t do it
blindly, if that makes sense. I need to be able to see it, to be more
aware of it.”

“So, you can’t bring the
transport around to us?”

“No.”

Hell. Chris had no idea what to do.
“We’re stuck,” he said under his breath.

“I can help, if you like?” a
female voice came over his earpiece.

“Athena ...?” Part of him wanted
to scold her for still being here, the other part was relieved. She
had clearly chosen to stick around and help out, listening in to
everything that was going on, and only making Chris aware of her
presence when she thought it was needed. She confirmed the very same.

“I didn’t jump out of the
system; I just held back a bit, as I thought you might run into
problems getting out. I’m battling a group of fighters out here,
but I can bring the
Dodger
around to you.”

“Send Overlook’s transport,”
Chris said.

“I can’t. I’ve lost control.
It’s the
Dodger
or nothing. I’m approaching the rear
airlock.”

“We’re on our way,” Chris
said. “Signal me as soon as the boarding tube is in place.” He
turned to the others. “Athena’s going to help us. We just have to
wait by the airlock.”

The four hurried to where Ursula
directed them, finding the airlock as promised.

“Athena, how long?” Chris asked.

“A few minutes,” Athena said.
“You’ll have to hold tight. I’m going to dedicate more of my
control to the
Dodger
once I’ve dispatched these fighters.”

“Are you using the Talons, or are
you out there yourself?”

“Both.”

“Sacrifice the Talons if you need
to, to get the job done faster. There’s quite a lot of smoke in
here. I don’t think we’re in danger of suffocating, but if
anything else goes up, that could change.”

“How did you know this airlock was
here?” Phoebe asked Ursula.

“I found out from the drones; they
told me about it the first time I tried to escape,” Ursula said.

“There won’t be third!” a
man’s voice shouted.

Chris started, seeing Kethlan
striding towards them. Only this time, Chris was certain, this was no
projection. The man was real. Chris paused only briefly to consider
whether the WEAPCO commander might have been in the facility the
whole time, or had only just landed after his avatar was disrupted by
Ursula. Then he raised his rifle.

He fired the shot at the same time
that Kethlan lifted his right arm, a translucent oval shape appearing
before him, the plasma bolt Chris had fired slamming into it. An
energy shield! It appeared to be powered by a device affixed to
Kethlan’s wrist. Chris had heard that WEAPCO was in possession of
such hardware but had never believed one so compact and portable
could actually exist.

“Get behind the drones!” Phoebe
ordered, as Kethlan began to return fire. The four did so just in
time, the machines that Phoebe remained in control of erecting
shields of their own, enough to protect the four men and women from
the advancing WEAPCO commander. Kethlan stopped firing after only a
handful of rounds, his face dark.

“Looks like we’ve reached a
stalemate,” Chris shouted from behind the drones. “We can’t
hurt you, and you can’t hurt us.” Though Chris was sure that a
barrage of fire from the drones would be enough to break down
Kethlan’s shield’s defences. “As I said before, we’re
leaving. There’s nothing you can do to stop us,” Chris finished.

“And that’s where you’re
wrong, Bainfield. Very wrong.” Kethlan raised a hand in the air,
clearly wishing for them to see it, and clicked his fingers. At once,
the drones shielding the four would-be escapees dropped from the air,
their running lights extinguishing, their shields and anti-gravity
systems cutting out.

Chris was sure that he had heard
Phoebe cry out in pain, but his desire to check on the woman was
overridden by an ominous bleeping sound that began to fill his ears.
He looked at the machines scattered on the floor ahead of him, seeing
a single red light pulsing on each, steadily growing faster.

“They’ve been set to
self-destruct!” Phoebe cried. Her nose was bleeding once again,
more heavily than before. She had sunk down to her knees; Ursula was
attending to her.

“Is there anything either of you
can do to override it?” Chris asked the twins, desperately.

“No. Once a self-destruct is
issued, everything shuts down,” Sid answered for the pair. “They
can only perform one further single action.”

“There’s no chance that the
action in this case could be to cancel the self-destruct order?”
Chris asked, finding himself pressed up against the airlock door,
unable to move back any further from the line of drones. He looked in
horror at Kethlan, seeing a satisfied smirk on the man’s face. The
WEAPCO commander was backing up, keeping the four where they were,
but moving out of the blast radius. He had them trapped.

“Chris ...” Sid started.

“Athena!” Chris called out to
her.

“Almost there,” Athena said. “I
need just another few minutes to deploy the docking tube.”

“We don’t
have
minutes,”
Chris responded, angrily. He gathered the others to him, and the four
held tight to one another.

“Where are you?” Athena asked.

“Right by the airlock.”

“Then we’ll do this the quick
way. Get ready. Oh, and
don’t
hold your breath!”

“Wait, what?”

There was a sudden boom, and Chris
felt himself yanked backward, as the airlock door blew open. He
barely had time to tell the others to evacuate their lungs, before
they were all spinning in open space. There was terror in the others’
faces as they tumbled, all just as shocked as he was. He saw the
facility falling away behind him and WEAPCO fighters hurtling around,
battling one another. He briefly made out the form of a Firefly
adjusting its heading, as a Cyclone it had been tailing went up.

Several orange-yellow blooms caught
Chris’ attention – the drones that had spun out of the airlock
along with them had started exploding. He realised that the four of
them had been lucky that the machines had briefly gotten caught in a
pileup in the airlock, before tumbling out after them. Had they not,
the four might have been caught in the explosions. Not that it made a
lot of difference; it only meant that they would have died a lot
sooner.

Chris shut his eyes, his head
becoming light. His chest felt as though it was going to explode. He
could feel the others still holding on tight to him. Barely a few
seconds had passed, perhaps no more than five or six. What had Athena
been thinking? He felt pain building. He hoped to lose consciousness
soon, so that this torment could all be over.

His consciousness faded.

~

Chris
came to. He was breathing, pulling fresh air into his lungs. He was
somehow aware that he had only been unconscious for a few moments,
and was now lying on something solid, though he could not see what.

The darkness lifted, and Chris found
himself in an enclosed space, one that was somewhat familiar to him.
Bright lights, crates, a starfighter or two. This was the cargo hold
of the
Dodger
. He was sprawled out across the floor.

Sid, Phoebe, and Ursula were
stirring next to him, Sid making an effort to sit up. Chris found he
was able to do so, too, his strength returning quicker than he might
have expected.

“All okay?” he eventually
managed to croak.

Phoebe appeared a little
bleary-eyed, and Ursula was semi-conscious, but neither was much the
worse for the spacing experience. Impressive, given the state of
Ursula. She was dressed only in the undergarments she had had on ever
since she had been pulled out of her capsule-like prison. If there
was nothing wrong with her after this, then ...

Chris noticed that Sid was looking
at something behind him, and turned to see the white-robed avatar of
Athena. She was looking down at all of them, deep concern on her
face. It didn’t take long for Chris to realise what Athena had done
– blown them out of the facility’s airlock, and caught them in
the
Dodger
’s hold. A bold move.

Sadly, instead of being impressed by
Athena’s ingenuity and quick thinking, Chris felt only anger.

“Chris, are you okay?” Athena
asked gently, as Chris raised himself on unsteady legs.

“Don’t you EVER do anything like
that again!” Chris bellowed at her. “What the hell is
wrong
with you?!”

“I’m sorry, I had no choice,”
Athena started, taking a step back.

“You could have killed us! Look at
Ursula! She’s practically naked!”

“Chris, I came as fast as I
could,” Athena was almost pleading, “but I wasn’t going to get
to the airlock in time. I weighed up the options and decided that the
best thing was for you to jump out of the airlock and for me to catch
you.”

Chris stared at her incredulously
and would have shouted at her again but felt a hand grip him tight on
the shoulder. He swung round to glare at Sid, who appeared a great
deal calmer than Chris was.

“Chris, she helped us to escape,”
Sid reminded him. “Granted not the ideal method, and not exactly
the least dangerous, but if Athena hadn’t done something, we would
have died back there. We had only seconds before those drones and
bots went up. Athena made the only choice that was available to her.
Please, Chris, see reason.”

Chris’ hands tightened by his
sides, and for a time he continued to grind his teeth. He then saw
that Sid and Phoebe were both calm, safe and well. Even Ursula was
breathing more steadily as she came into full consciousness. His
anger having subsided, Chris gave a deep sigh.

“I’m sorry,” he said to
Athena. “I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just that it was ...”
He couldn’t find the words. Dangerous, stupid ... necessary. Athena
had done the right thing. “At least we’re alive. We found Ursula,
and we all got out. That’s what matters,” he finished. “Thank
you.”

“You’re welcome,” Athena said.
“I’ll leave you to recover. We’re en route to Eyananth. E.T.A.
is just under six hours.” She walked away in the direction of the
Firefly, her avatar disappearing.

Sid folded his arms and turned to
Chris. “Nice going, mate. You tell her to get out of the system,
but she sticks around to keep an eye on us, and then when she steps
up to the plate to pull our arses out of the fire, you go and bawl
her out. Bravo. ‘What the hell is wrong with her?’ I think the
question is what the hell is wrong with
you
?”

It was the first time since their
initial encounter that Chris had seen Sid really angry with him. In
fact, this went further. Sid was not just angry, but disappointed.
Disappointed that Chris could treat their saviour in such a callous
manner.

“You should go apologise to her,”
Sid added.

“Not sure that's possible right
now,” Phoebe said. “She’s ignoring us; she wants to be left
alone.”

Chris shook his head and looked at
the floor. Why was he feeling so awful. She ... it was just a
machine. He couldn’t have hurt her feelings. Could he? No, really.
Could he
?

“What happened back there?” Sid
asked. “With Kethlan, I mean? He did something. He managed to
trigger a self-destruct in the drones and the bots.”

“Yes,” Chris said, looking at
Phoebe. “The same thing happened the last time we met him. Back
then, I thought he had some sort of digital or mechanical override.
This time, I’m not so sure.”

“Maybe he does, but we didn’t
see it?” Sid suggested. “He did click his fingers.”

“No, that was just for show,”
Phoebe said. “I felt his presence again. I felt him right next to
me, just before he took control of the machines. He did it
forcefully, and it hurt. It was like being struck in the head by a
hammer. It was all him, nothing else.” She bent down to help her
still dazed sister to stand. Ursula’s legs were very wobbly.

“And then he set the drones to
self-destruct,” Chris said.

The three looked at one another, as
the implications dawned.

“You know what this means, don’t
you?” Sid asked.

“Yes,” Chris said. “Either
Kethlan’s not human, or he’s an identical twin, too.”

I
t
took the
Dodger
a little longer than originally planned to
reach the Eyananth system, the ship undergoing its covert
transformation process once again along the way.

Chris had what felt like hundreds of
questions for Ursula, but given the woman’s current state he had
decided they could wait. Her battle with Kethlan inside the facility,
as well as the evacuation into open space, seemed to have suddenly
caught up with her. She had passed out not long after Athena had
rescued the group. According to the
Dodger
’s medical
systems, Ursula was suffering from mild ebullism and hypoxia, as well
as decompression sickness. She had also been drugged while at
Zetaman. Chris left her to recover.

In the meantime, he made his way
back down to the cargo hold. Having taken time to reflect on
everything, he realised that he had been too hard on Athena. He
should apologise to her.

The hold was emptier than it had
been before the start of the rescue effort. They must have lost well
over half their acquired fighters during the raid on the Zetaman
Facility. Not to worry. They now had both Phoebe and Ursula, two very
powerful weapons. If everything Sid had told him was to be believed,
the two women together could prove an unstoppable force.

Chris thought that he might find
Athena sitting around on one of the crates in the hold, or hanging
around near the Firefly. All he saw, however, were the machines that
continued to serve the
Dodger
’s needs, moving around and
repositioning the hold’s contents, following the sudden venting.