The Last Horizon (11 page)

“Grey what’s your status?” A deep voice sounded over the older man’s headset.

“The ship’s secure, Seinz. It’s just the pilot--no passengers.”

“
Send someone back to the shuttle and find out what’s going on with Rell.” Seinz said angrily. “I’ve been trying to reach him for the last ten minutes. If he’s asleep at the controls again I’m going to dump his ass out here.”

“Give us a few more minut
es and I’ll have Edik look in on him.”

“What’
s she hauling?”

“Don’t know yet. Edik’s
checking on the cargo now.”

“Hurry it up.
We just picked something up on the scanners. Something’s heading toward us.”

“
10-4, Seinz.” Grey said humorlessly. He put his hand over the left ear piece of his headset. “Rell, you copy?”

Silence.

“Rell, you there?” Grey shook his head with disgust. “Bastard!”

“Seinz is right,” Echo glanced over from the instrument panel, “he probably fell asleep again.
You know how he is.”

A few
minutes later, Edik reappeared with a bottle and the duffle bag.

“What’s that?” Grey asked.

“First crate I opened is full of this hooch!” Edik beamed as he took a swig of whiskey and belched.”

“Gimme that!” Grey snagged the bottle out of Edik’s hands and
studied it. “Moving alcohol across space.” Grey raised the bottle to his nose and sniffed. “This is the good stuff.”

“Alcohaulin’!” Edik grinned.
“And check this out!” He held up the bag.

“What’s in it?”

Edik set the duffle bag on the floor, unzipped it, and stood back up with a huge smile.

“
Damn!” Grey’s eyes widened as he stared at my money. “Anything else we should know about?” Grey frowned.

“Yes, the dietary supplements I’ve been taking giv
e me a nasty case of the vapors, how does my ass smell?”

“This one’s trouble, Grey,” Edik glared
as he held up my ankle wrap, “I say you let me have at her for a few, then we end her and tell Seinz she tried to pull some shit.”

“Shut up, Edik!” Grey spat. “
Get back to the shuttle and wake up Rell. We’re bringing her back to the Moria.”

Edik shouldered his rifle and stomped through the pressure lock. The drone followed him through as the door slid shut
and he headed back to their ship…

S
cott moved silently into the shadows of the last stack of containers that stood next to the door of the decon compartment when he heard footsteps coming down the aisle. He stood motionless in the darkness with his back against the wall and his weapon in his left hand.

The pirates had gotten careless and assumed Nikki was alone.
This was a mistake Scott would exploit. He let Edik walk by and enter the chamber.

“Rell, you dumbass!” Edik bellowed as he stepped into the shuttle and trudged into the cockpit where he saw his partner sitting in the pilot seat facing forward. “Wake up
you idiot! Grey’s really pissed!” He grabbed Rell’s right shoulder and shook him.

Rell’s head lolled back and forth lifelessly
and his body slumped forward and fell against the instrument panel. Edik jumped back in shock and turned around when Scott pulled the trigger of the Raven and put two rounds into Edik’s forehead. The back of Edik’s skull blew open and canopy was splattered with blood, small lumps of gray matter, and bone as his body was thrown backwards from the impact.

Scott grabbed the drone and smashed it
against the wall where it blew apart with a shower of sparks and smoke. He moved quickly through the Zephyr’s cargo hold with the Raven drawn in front of him and stopped at the bulkhead that led to the cockpit…

T
he Zephyr shook hard and almost knocked me off balance when warheads detonated and rocked the Moria Balá. I looked through the canopy and saw the flash of the Moria’s pulse cannons firing rapidly; the Seekers had arrived and were making their run. They homed-in on Seinz’s heat signature and strafed his vessel with their pulse cannons.

“
We need to get back to the ship!” Grey shouted as he turned his attention to the unfolding chaos outside.

I started laughing
when one of the Serrenian drones attached itself to the Moria’s fuselage and drove a tentacle through a gun turret and began pulling the panels apart.

“Echo! Let’s get back to the shuttle!” Grey
shouted in a panic as he stumbled backwards toward the pressure lock. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

Echo gr
abbed her rifle and growled. “What about her?”

Grey looked at me. “What the hell are you laughing at?”

“Sequence, 3M-TA3.” I chortled, “Initiate.”

“What the hell was that?” Echo blurted.

The bridge lights dimmed, flickered brightly three times, and began to pulse in red. “The beginning of the end.” I smiled and glanced at the control panel. “Seinz can you hear me?”

“Who is this?” Seinz screamed back over the intercom. I could hear the pandemonium of
his crew’s hysterical shouts mixed with loud popping noises and explosions in the background as the Moria engaged the Seekers in battle.

“How do you like our new friends?”

“I think she enabled the ship to self-destruct!” Echo piped as she looked at the blinking lights on the instrument panels.

“YOU DID THIS!”
Seinz roared.

“Hubba-hubba-hubba!”
I laughed.

Grey stepped into the pressure lock
and the door to the cargo hold slid open. “Echo, NOW!” He yelled and turned, “Let’s get the hell out of…” Scott stepped in front of him and punched his throat with a left jab before he had a chance to finish his sentence. Grey’s eyes widened with surprise as he dropped his weapon and clutched his neck; he made a loud croaking noise then his eyes rolled white before he collapsed into a crumpled heap on the floor.

“Grey!” Echo screamed in horror as she turned her attention to her fallen comrade. I dropped to the floor and spun counter-clockwise with a leg sweep that knocked Echo off her feet and sent her sprawling on her back against the grating while her rifle bounced out of her hands and landed a few feet away.

Echo jumped back up immediately and pulled out a Kirsten Automatic pistol
as I dove for her assault rifle, grabbed it, and fired a burst into her abdomen as I lay prone on the floor. The impact slammed her against a support column, and her body went limp as she slid down to her knees and fell face first to the grating.

“Bitch!” I cussed.

“Nikki, you okay?” Scotty asked.

“W
e need to get these scumbags off the Zephyr and strap in!” I replied as I picked up Echo’s sidearm.

The Zephyr
lurched hard to the right and we were thrown against a bulkhead. I staggered awkwardly to my seat and squinted through the canopy at the flickering particle lites from the laser fire outside. A Seeker ripped a huge panel from the Moira’s fuselage and penetrated her hull…

“Scotty!” I shouted hoarsely. “We need to jettison that goddamn shuttle that’s attached to us
or we’re screwed!”

…
a blinding bluish-white light flashed from the Moria--it seemed to pull everything into a vacuum of silence that lasted forever…I held my hands up to shield my eyes and time lapsed into a slow motion drift as jagged shadows danced on the bridge…

…
a fraction of a second, and an internal explosion from the Moria blew out a section of her hull with an orange ball of flame. Something had ignited their O
2
generators and she was actually on fire…

…a secondary blast sent fragments spinning through the darkness
and debris clattered loudly against the Zephyr…I looked up and the severed upper body of one of the pirates drifted by the canopy…

“
Oh god!” I cried as I put a hand over my mouth and turned away.

“Nikki!” Scotty yelled through the mayhem, “What do we need to do?”

I regained my composure and leaned over the flight panel. “Terminate false load exercise, password: Faraday.” The cabin lights stopped blinking and I double-checked the auto pilot. The drives were still on cruising speed and I could see the Moria Balá slowly pulling away from us with her guns blazing. “Let’s get these two back to their ship and ditch’em!”

Scotty frisked
Grey’s wilted body and fished out my Cobalt. “Nikki, your heater.”

“Thanks.” I g
rinned as I holstered my weapon.

He
grabbed Grey roughly and slung him effortlessly over his left shoulder. I flipped Echo over with the intent of dragging her by her arms when I saw where I had shot her. “Gee-zus!”

“What’s wrong?” Scotty asked as he carried Grey over to where I was standing.

“She’s a friggin’ AI!” I exclaimed as I stared at the exposed wires still sparking and sticking out of her stomach. Echo’s eyes were still open but the cornea of her left eye was glass black.

“I’ll be damned.” Scotty scoffed. “Come on, we’d better hurry!”

The Zephyr pitched sideways and shook hard as we moved Grey and Echo’s bodies through the cargo hold, pushed them back into their shuttle, and closed their access door. I slammed the port hatch and engaged the locks as Scotty and I backed out into the decon chamber.

“
We’re done. Let’s get back to the bridge!” I exhaled.

We
strapped ourselves into our seats as I watched the Moria tangle with the Seekers. Two of them had already attached themselves to their ship and were pulling it apart. Even with the distance between us, we could hear the “Thunks!” of armor-piercing rounds boring through the Moria’s hull as the other battle drones fired their cannons with every high speed pass.

I leaned forward and slammed my han
d on a button that detonated a ceramic ring around the docking port. The Zephyr trembled as the shuttle blew free and floated lifelessly into the void.

“Hang on
, Scotty!” I grabbed the control yoke, pulled back, and banked left as a Seeker took a direct hit from one of the Moria’s pulse cannons, spun wildly by us, and smashed into the shuttle at full speed. We were pushed against our seats as they exploded and the bridge rattled from the blastwave.

“Son-of-a-bitch that was close!” Scotty shouted over the din.

“Powering up!”

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Scotty drummed his armrests apprehensively.

“Sequencing!” I hollered. “Going hypersonic!” The drives ramped into a high pitch as we watched the Moria Balá blow up…

…”
HYPERSONIC ENABLED!” I flipped the toggles, reached down and jammed the trim levers forward, and the Zephyr left the chaos behind as she drove into the icy darkness. I adjusted our trajectory and sank into my seat as I put my headset back on and ran a systematic scan to check for damages.

I was thankful the Zephyr had redundant power source systems; w
ith one of the main cryogen pipes that served the right hypersonic drive ruptured, I had to run a bypass to keep the drives operating. We were hit pretty bad, and I could only run them at three-quarter capacity or run the risk of squelching at full throttle.