Tritium Gambit (Max and Miranda Book 1) (16 page)

John tossed two grenades out of the ship and watched from the bay doors as they fell. At the last second, he ducked inside and covered his eyes. Moments later I felt a blast of heat from the opening. Even from this height, it felt like I was sitting much too close to a bonfire.

“
Go! Go! Go!” John ordered.

I trundled to the bay door opening and looked down. We were twenty feet from the ground, and so I jumped. The instant I hit the ground, the ship was ascending into the sky. I watched it go for a moment, then realized how little time I had before I was lunch for a Wendigo or some other alien creature and turned away.

The rocky ground was coated in a fine layer of gray ash, the remains of the vines that had been here moments ago. At the perimeter of the blast, the vines had some glowing embers on them, but it didn’t look like a wild fire had started, not yet.

I noted an opening in the side of a cliff, but it wasn’t a cave. An ornate and decorated doorway arched upward thirty feet. I made straight for it. Gears whined as I walked. As I approached, I wondered who had made this big doorway and probably the space behind it. The Wendigo didn’t seem like an artistic species, but maybe I had misjudged them.

I entered the ornate archway, and twenty feet into the passage, I ran into a large pool of dark water and a waterfall with no path around it. I turned the exoskeleton headlamps on, but the flickering light didn’t penetrate the water’s murky depths.

I quickly unbuckled myself, climbed out of the exoskeleton, and approached the water. The room was large and so there was much space for the sound to dissipate, but the waterfall was loud and I knew I could not hear a thousand Wendigos if they followed me into the cave. I kept looking over my shoulder. I also felt vulnerable because the only exit was the doorway I had entered through. I couldn’t simply wade into the water with the exoskeleton. The water wouldn’t hurt it, but I didn’t have a rebreather and I might drown if the water was too deep.

I knelt on the stone floor and looked closely at the water. There might be alien predatory fish swimming in this pond, maybe armored piranha-like fish or some alligator-like creature that would bite me in two. I saw nothing in the eddies of moving water.

I checked the entrance again and saw a massive shape in the doorway. I was out of time. I jumped into the water and swam toward the waterfall. I could hear a bellow of rage from behind me, but I didn’t look back. Once again my abysmal swimming ability came back to haunt me, and I had to exert tremendous willpower not to panic and sink to the bottom immediately. I kept my head above the water as best I could by kicking vigorously with my legs and swinging my arms from front to side in sort of a modified breaststroke. I had seen plenty of people swim in high school, in college, on TV, but I had always avoided swimming whenever possible because water scares the hell out of me.

When I got to the waterfall, I looked back at the shore and saw a Wendigo glaring at me from where I had entered the water. It hadn’t entered the pond though, and I didn’t know if that was comforting or not. As I approached the thin waterfall, I could see a door on the other side.

I held my breath and pushed through the cascade until I came out on the other side of the wall of water sputtering. I pulled myself up onto the hard stone floor and took a few difficult breaths while scanning the corridor ahead. I then glanced back at the waterfall. There was no sign of the Wendigo following me, but then I could not see through the water either. I turned around again, and the hallway ahead glowed with a glossy green light along the floor.

The passage was free of dust, dirt and debris, the floor smooth stone and the walls ornately carved with vines and animals that I didn’t recognize. The passage went ever so slightly uphill. I walked for a half mile before coming to a large room.

Green fluid trickled down the walls and into pools, and there were rivulets in small grooves in the floor. The room was a hundred feet long and twenty feet across. There was nothing inside to indicate the purpose of the room, but the walls had more ornate etchings.

“
Halt!” said a high pitched voice in Intergalactic Common from my right.

I turned to a little furry creature with large eyes pointing a wooden spear at me. The Dark Side be damned. If he was an Ewok, I would wipe out his whole village on principle alone. I was still upset with George Lucas over ruining
Return of the Jedi
with those little beasts.

I looked down at him, eyeing him carefully lest he prove to be some kind of ninja warrior with that spear. “Hi there, little guy. Are you an Ewok?” I asked innocently.

As I spoke, I noticed his necklace making strange clicking sounds, an old-fashion universal translator. Anything I said, the device would repeat back in his language and vice-versa.

He growled at me, and I found it comforting. “I am a Magnoculous, trespasser.”

I looked him over closely. He didn’t have a funny tattered hat on, and he wasn’t sniffing me or making weird squeaking sounds. Then I saw that his brown fur wasn’t really fur. Rather, he was covered in porcupine-like quills that stood on end each time I moved. I decided I was going to let him live. “Sorry about that, Magnum. I’m just in here looking for some tritiated water.”

The little guy showed his teeth, which were blunt, thick, and yellow. He really needed some whitening strips and to maybe cut back on the cigarettes. “You admit then that you are a thief.”

“
Thief? Hey buddy, I paid an arm for the tritiated water.”

“
You didn’t pay us, and it is ours. Come with me or die where you stand.” He turned his back and began walking down the hall. At first, I thought he was being rather trusting to turn his back on a potential enemy, but then I realized at least a dozen of his friends were standing behind me with weapons made of wood and stone.

I sighed and followed the little guy. When we reached the other side of the room, I could see a door that was larger than the opening into this place and more ornate than anything I had seen yet. The stone had fist-size rubies and diamonds mounted in veins of silver and gold. Rivulets of the strange, glowing liquid flowed around the outside of the doorframe and to the floor to join the other etched pathways that lit the room.

I paused to admire the arch, quickly realizing my mistake when thick ropes that might have been vines looped around me. I was hogtied in record time. I didn’t bother resisting or complaining as they dragged me backward down the hall. I simply studied my captors that followed. They had four fingers, the first and last of them thumbs, and four toes. At first glance, I hadn’t noticed they had four eyes, but they each had two black, beady eyes on either side of their little furry snouts.

“
So, you guys don’t entertain very often, do you?” I asked.

One of the little guys poked me with a stick.

“
Hey now, that wasn’t very…”

I was poked again. I stared at the guy who had poked me, committing his spiky gray face to memory. I planned to bust that stick over his head the first chance I got.

Chapter 18. Miranda

Sparks flew out of the Phoenix’s console accompanied by fizzing and popping sounds. I ripped off the side panel and began searching through wires. The problem with stealing a ship from a repair dock is that it was there for a reason.

John tapped a blinking panel. “There’s a pressure leak in the starboard reflector.”

“
Crap.” I put down the wires and moved to the environmental controls.

Par for this mission, I thought, everything spinning out of control. Even though John wasn’t an agent, he felt like he was another partner and I wasn’t going to lose another partner. I resolved to fix this mess, get Max, and be on our way.

I flipped through a few commands and sealed off the life support for the cabin from the rest of the ship. That would prevent us from losing all of our oxygen immediately, but the rest of the ship was unusable for the moment.

I hurried back to the wires I had left dangling. “Blue to red or blue to green,” I mumbled.

“
You instill me with such confidence in your skills,” John said. “Maybe you should flip a coin.”

I attached the blue wire to the pink wire and slammed the panel shut. “Close enough.”

John rolled his eyes. “I’m sure it doesn’t really matter.”

I grabbed a screwdriver and went to the rear cockpit airlock door.

“
You forgot to turn life support back on,” John said.

“
No, I didn’t. We need to save the air we have until that leak is fixed. There will be enough oxygen left for me to get the repair done.”

“
You will be subjected to freezing temperatures.”

“
I’ll work fast. I need you to keep an eye on the com link for Max’s call. If anything else comes up while I’m making the repair, you should be able to contact me on the intercom,” I said.

Before he could argue, I opened the airlock at the back of the cockpit and stepped out. With life support suspended, the temperature was already dropping; but if I had left it on, our remaining energy and oxygen would have been depleted.

I made it to the starboard access hatch and crawled into the latticework of the ship’s hull. My breath fogged the air as I wriggled my way to the reflector panel. About a foot of composites and metal stood between me and the near vacuum of space, but the surface of the latticework was ice cold. A strong wind whistled past me and toward a thin gap in the reflector. The weld in the composite had split, and I was going to need to find a torch to reattach it. I banged my screwdriver against it to see if it would budge. The whole ship rocked and tilted sideways at that moment and I dropped the screwdriver. I watched it fall into the darkness below me.

“
Miranda,” John’s voice said over the intercom. “A port stabilizer strut burst. It looks like we might tumble into the atmosphere soon. Just thought you should know.”

I cursed like a Stellar Command maintenance worker. The ship would break apart if we reentered in a spin. I figured I had fifteen minutes of air left, give or take, but I would probably freeze to death before I suffocated.

“
Oh, and the control panel is making a strange humming sound,” he added.

“
Anything else?” I yelled. Unfortunately, the intercom was one-way communication when in the latticework.

I scrambled back down the latticework to deal with the strut. I had to fix it before the leak because having the entire ship break apart was a more imminent problem than suffocating. Both outcomes sucked, but first things first.

I exited the access hatch and zipped toward the back of the listing ship. Because we were tilted to the port side, I had to walk on the wall rather than the floor. I entered the holding bay and followed a ladder to the strut that John had reported broken. The damage wasn’t as bad as I expected. There were some loose screws allowing graviton seepage. If only I had the screwdriver that I had just lost, I thought. I bit back a scream.

I looked back into the bay area and saw a roll of duct tape, jumped to it, and grabbed it. I fixed the strut with ample gray tape, nearly the whole roll, and the ship righted itself immediately. I fell down to the bay floor and crates tumbled on top of me. The icy air told me that I was running out of time.

Armed with what was left of my favorite fix-all, I hopped through the debris, then through the rest of ship to the starboard reflector’s access panel. I finished off the roll of duct tape, sealing the leak, and the day was saved.

I vowed never to tell anybody that a ship that would need to go through a wormhole, if all went according to plan, was being held together by duct tape. I descended the latticework and reentered the corridor leading to the cockpit. I wondered if the ship would disintegrate on atmospheric reentry when Max called, if he called. The last thought was sobering.

Chapter 19. Max

They dragged me a good mile down different hallways and through small rooms. The whole way, I scrutinized both the little creatures and the walls. I concluded that these creatures were civilized but that said civilization was not very advanced. Somebody had given them universal translators, which meant that they had at least had contact with the Intergalactic Alliance at some point. Somebody knew they existed and thought they were worth talking with.