The Crucible: Leap of Faith (20 page)

By the time we reached
engineering, the game had already begun.

Just as we walked along the wide
hallway that lead to the triple reinforced trilarium doors, an
alert sounded.

“All Crew to emergency stations.
There is a critical cascade in two of the engine cores. Repeat, all
crew to emergency stations.”

“This is it,” Williams said under
her breath as she half turned to me.

I nodded.

The blaring whoops of the red
alert echoed down the corridor, drumming into my skull.

My heart beat ratcheted up to
match it.

All I had to do was follow
Williams and help her.

We raced into engineering, just as
a bunch of shocked ensigns raced out.

The Chief Engineer, a squat
Raconian with six arms, was standing in the middle of the room
shouting orders. For a woman who was just faking an engine failure,
she was doing a hell of a good job.

Clouds of steam swept across the
floor, a few consoles on the far side of the room crackling as
charges of electricity arced over them.

“Try to get those buffers back on
line,” the CE bellowed.

A few of her engineers worked
frantically at the main panels.

“It’s no good. We can’t take the
excess energy away from the cores. They’re starting to send the
others into meltdown!” one engineer cried.

“Keep trying,” the CE bellowed
back.

Suddenly a massive arc of energy
discharged from the main shields that separated the engineering
deck from the primary drive shaft. The bolt of electricity slammed
into the center of the floor, and the CE had to knock an
unsuspecting ensign out of the way.

“That’s it, we’ve lost it,” the CE
announced. “All noncommissioned officers out. The rest of you, we
have to buy this ship enough time to evacuate.”

Even though I knew it was all a
ruse, I couldn’t convince my body of that. My heart slammed in my
rib cage, my mouth as dry as a desert planet.

“Get the Captain on the line,” the
CE grabbed a slow ensign and shoved them towards the door with one
of her many arms. “Captain, we’ve lost her. There’s nothing I can
do. This ship will go down. It’s only a matter of time.”

There was a pause. I heard the
Captain take a ragged breath. “Buy us as much time as you
can.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” With that, the CE
took a jolting step backwards. She appeared to see us for the first
time. “You two, help the crew escape.”

Immediately she turned back to her
task, throwing her squat body towards the main control
panels.

All her commissioned officers
stayed with her, and I quickly reasoned they must all be in the
resistance too.

…
The resistance must be massive.
And to think, I’d never known. Until about a week ago, they’d been
nothing more than a legend to me.

“Come on,” Williams grabbed me by
the arm.

She pulled me out of the doors and
into the chaos that was the hallways.

Surprised ensigns ran in every
direction, officers shouting orders as they strode between
them.

A few panels here and there
crackled as the excess energy being produced by the cores
overloaded their circuits.

I had to duck to the side as an
access panel to my side exploded, sparks spewing out and catching
onto the arm of my uniform.

I patted them off with a swipe of
my hand and started to run.

It wasn’t hard to evacuate a ship,
even one like this. Evacuation drills were drummed into your head
at the Academy. You knew exactly what to do. Every new crew member
was drilled on evacuation procedures when they were inducted into
the crew of a new vessel.

We all followed those
procedures.

Red lights flashed through every
corridor, the alert klaxons still blaring overhead.

Williams helped ensigns into the
waiting evac pods, as I stood back and barked commands.

Between the pounding beat of
footfall and the ceaseless blare of the red alert, it felt like
reality had fractured into fragments of a nightmare.

I saw snippets of surprised,
shocked faces. I saw eyes as wide as planets. I heard
screams.

And all of it was for
naught.

This ship was fine.

When we scooped the last ensign in
our section onto an evac pod and disengaged it from the ship, I
stood back and faced Williams.

Her usually perfect hair was a
mess, a few beads of sweat trickling down her worry-marked
brow.

I used to think she looked
immaculate no matter what she did. Now I realized I didn’t know
her.

She’d likely faced horrors I
couldn’t even imagine. Horrors that had been dealt out at the hand
of the Alliance.

….

She smiled. It was a small brief
move, but it was enough to capture my attention.

“Come on, Nate. We need to check
in with the Captain to see if all the crew have been
evacuated.”

I nodded and turned hard on my
foot to follow her.

We ran down the corridors, the
flashing red lights playing across our shiny command
insignia.

A few strands of her lose hair
trailed out behind her as she started to roll up her
sleeves.

“What are you doing?” I
asked.

“Getting ready. Captain,” she
tapped her communication PIP, “we’re clear in this section. Have
the rest of the crew been evacuated?”

“Unclear. We’ve lost contact with
crew on deck 16,” the Captain answered. For a woman who hardly ever
showed stress, I could hear it shaking through her tone like an
earthquake. “Get down there and see what’s happening. Be careful,
though. It could be enforcement operatives.”

I watched Williams close her
eyes.

“…
What do we do?” I asked, heart
in my throat.

She opened one eye to look at me.
“We buy them some time,” she croaked. “Come on.”

I followed her.

The ship was still a virtual
nightmare, with the red alert blaring like a continuous
explosion.

The sound of our desperate
footfall could not make it over that constant drone.

“Hurry,” the
Captain’s voice coming over Williams’ communication PIP, “someone
is interfering with the engines. They’re trying to initiate a
self-destruct. It must be the enforcement officers.
You must stop them.”

“God,” Williams’
voice shook. In fact, her whole body shook, her now loose bun
splaying over her shoulders.
“Come
on!”
she begged.

I matched her pace as the two of
us threw ourselves towards the deck.

When we reached it Williams did
something unusual.

She spread both
her arms wide and something…
something
happened.

Light – glorious yellow-gold light
spilled over her arms, forming a definite angular pattern as it
plunged deep into her hands.

“What the
hell?”
I jerked away from her, heart
slamming so hard in my chest it felt as if it would shatter my
ribs.

“It’s my ability, Nate. Just keep
going. We can’t lose this ship. It’s everything to the
resistance.”

Though the shock threatened to
pull me apart, cell by cell, I followed.

The light was so goddamn bright as
it burnt over her arms, it was almost enough to counter the
constant red flash of the alert system.

What the hell had the Alliance
done to her?

That thought stabbed through my
mind and removed every last trace of doubt.

The Alliance really were
monsters.

Deck 16 was a mess.

Sections of the floors and walls
had been ripped open, and circuits hung in broken chunks, their
wires exposed and crackling in the air.

“What the hell happened here?” I
stammered.

“The enforcement
officers. They’re trying to tear this ship apart and make it
self-destruct. We have to stop them.
Nate,
we have to stop them.”

I stared at her.

I nodded.

We turned and ran
forward.

…

Ensign Jenks

I followed from a
distance.

I had not evacuated this
ship.

…
I don’t know why, but I was
still here.

I had never planned on joining the
resistance. Though they fought for a cause I believed in, I didn’t
trust them.

They’d use me, just like Axis
had.

When they found out what I could
do, they’d use me.

So why was I still on
board?

I could have fled this ship with
the rest of the crew. The Star Forces would have been none the
wiser.

Yet, I’d passed up my
chance.

Now I was following him.
Shepherd.

And her. Lieutenant
Williams.

She was just like me.

That thought kept echoing in my
mind.

I followed at a
distance.

I felt it as soon as Williams
activated her implants. I could even see the faint glow spread down
the corridor.

God, she really did have the same
abilities as I did.

Could she be more powerful than
me? Had professor Axis lied when he’d said I was his child, his
perfection, the one experiment that mattered more than any
other?

I shook my head and tried to push
that thought from my mind.

The deck around us was badly
damaged. Someone had pulled chunks of the ceiling and walls
away.

There were no blast marks. The
metal was simply bent and warped.

I kept following, more cautiously
now, always staying out of sight.

I heard the two of them
stop.

They reached a room.

From my constant shifts spent
scanning, I knew it was one of the primary cargo bays.

It seemed like an irrelevant
target until you realized that underneath the floor was one of the
primary buffering manifolds for the engine core.

The enforcement officers F’val had
warned of were clearly trying to destroy this ship.

As if to confirm
that fact, the
Ra’xon
suddenly lurched to the side.

I pressed a hand into the wall to
steady myself, then I continued forward.

I watched Williams and Shepherd
barrel into the cargo bay, the massive doors closing behind
them.

I stepped out of hiding and spread
my hand, stopping the doors from closing completely. I left them
open with the tiniest gap.

I reached them and pressed my eyes
close.

I saw the cargo bay.

It was a mess. In the far corner a
hole had been ripped in the floor, jagged metal jutting out in
every direction.

The ship lurched again.

Two men in jet-back armor shifted
up. They’d been kneeling near the hole punched in the
floor.

They moved with deadly
ease.

Williams came to a stop in the
middle of the room, her arms spread wide, her implants on full. So
much light spewed out of them, it was a surprise they didn’t burn a
hole in the hull.

“You’re not taking this ship,” she
screamed.

Neither of the black-clad
enforcement officers said a thing; they simply walked forward, both
splitting off in opposite directions to circle around
her.

Shepherd had grabbed a gun from
somewhere, and lifted it up.

One enforcement officer spread his
hand, yellow light bleeding down through channels in his
armor.

The gun suddenly lurched from
Shepherd’s grip. He managed to hold onto it for a few seconds –
which was incredible, considering the force the man
used.

In another instant he swore as the
gun spiraled from his grip.

Both enforcement officers kept
circling Williams.

“You won’t win,” she
warned.

Neither man said a
thing.

They simply attacked.

They lurched towards
her.

She doubled back, slamming her
hand forward and locking one man in place.

She was powerful, and kept him
frozen in mid-air, but she wasn’t strong enough to stop the other
man from circling around behind her.

She gasped, shifting to the side,
dodging the other officer as he sliced towards her.

She tried to grab a box from the
far side of the room. There were large metal crates lined up neatly
along one wall.

Williams grabbed one.

Or at least she tried
to.