“Shuttle two-four-one-eight, you are in violation of a lockdown order. Land immediately or interceptors will be dispatched and you will be shot down.”
“Help!” Josh cried over the comms. “They’ve got a gun!” he added, right before he started clicking the talk button over and over. “They’re forcing me to take…em…moon…help-” Josh ended the fake broadcast, turning to Loki looking very pleased with himself. “You think they bought it?”
“Oh, sure,” Loki said.
“Maybe they’re already too busy, what with all the riots and stuff,” Josh said hopefully.
“Don’t think so,” Loki muttered. “We’ve got company coming up real fast.”
Josh looked over at Loki’s display. Besides the multitude of outbound contacts, there was a red flashing triangle coming up from behind them.”
“Hang on back there,” Loki called over the comms. “We’ve got company.”
“Who is it?” Marcus asked. Suddenly, the shuttle jumped as something exploded in the air just outside their starboard side. Marcus was nearly thrown out of his seat. “Never mind.”
Marcus stood up and pulled a long safety strap from the ceiling, connecting it to his harness. “You two buckled in?” he asked Tug and Jalea.
“Yes!” Tug answered. “Why?”
Marcus grinned and slapped the big red button along the side of the rear cargo hatch. The massive cargo door hissed as it began to open, starting its slow lowering into its ramp position. The sudden change in cabin pressure was immediately felt by all, as the wind rushed in around the widening crack between the door and the frame.
“Shuttle two-four-one-eight, you are in violation of a lockdown order. Land immediately or we will fire on you.”
“What the hell are you doing, you crazy old fart?” Josh yelled over the comms from the cockpit.”
“Just try to keep this thing low enough so we don’t all suffocate, while I shed this bugger from our ass!” Marcus declared.
The rear hatch continued to lower until Marcus stopped it at its standard platform position, parallel to the deck.
“Give me a hand!” he shouted at Tug.
“With what?”
“We gotta start tossin’ some of this stuff,” he declared as he picked up the first crate and tossed it out the back of the ship. The crate bounced off the end of the ramp, broke open, and sent vegetables flying towards the local police interceptor that was rapidly closing on them.”
Tug’s eyes widened. “You don’t really think you’re gonna stop that interceptor by throwing produce at him, do you?”
“Whattaya think I am, stupid? I need room for my new toy!”
His explanation didn’t inspire any confidence in Tug, who rose to help nevertheless. After securing himself to the ceiling in similar fashion, Tug also began tossing boxes of food out the back of the shuttle. Somewhat to Marcus’s amusement, the tumbling produce did cause the compact interceptor to dodge back and forth wildly, trying to avoid messing up his windshield.
After a few minutes, they had tossed nearly a third of the boxes out of the back. “That’s enough!” Marcus yelled as he started to cycle the hatch closed again. Now Tug was even more confused.
“I’m pretty sure he’s lost it,” Loki decided.
“What the hell are you doing, Marcus?” Josh cried out.
“Just hold’er steady for a few minutes while I get setup,” Marcus told him while he inserted a heavy stand into a socket in the middle of the aft section of the cargo deck, less than a meter from the rear hatch which was now fully closed.
“Gimme a hand with this thing!” Marcus ordered. Tug crossed over to the other side of the cargo bay as Marcus opened a long compartment and started pulling out what looked like one of the energy cannons off Tug’s fighter.
“Is this what I think it is?” Tug asked as they wrestled the heavy weapon from the locker and carried over to the post they had set up a moment ago.
“You bet!”
“Where did you get it?” Tug asked as they plopped it down onto the mount at the top of the meter high post.
Marcus uncoiled the power cable from the weapon, flipped open a port on the deck, and plugged the weapon in. “I took it from your little ship!”
“Who said you could-”
Marcus hit the door control to start cycling the rear hatch open again. “You can thank me later!”
“Jesus,” Josh exclaimed as air once again began rushing in from the rear of the ship. “Can you override his door controls or something?”
“Shuttle two-four-one-eight, this is your final warning. Land immediately or we will destroy you.”
Another burst went off outside, this time to port and even closer. The rear of the ship lurched upward, launching Marcus upward and Tug back over onto the now disorganized pile of supplies. As the door swung open down and away from the shuttle, Marcus swung the business end of the energy cannon outward, another grin forming on his face.
“We’ve gotta do something,” Loki exclaimed.
“Like what?” Josh defended.
“I don’t know! Do some of that crazy pilot shit you always do!”
“Crazy pilot shit? I’m just trying to keep from slamming into any of the other thousands of ships flyin’ all about us right now!”
Loki turned his head to look over his shoulder toward the rear of the shuttle to see what Marcus was doing. When his eyes caught sight of the weapon mounted in the middle of the deck, he nearly spun around in his seat, his eyes going wide. “Oh fuck!”
Cameron’s fingers danced across her console as she entered commands into the helm. The series of waypoints she had programmed into the auto-flight system had carried them out of the cavern and through the exit tunnel with flawless precision. Although she did not state the fact to Nathan, she was sure that navigating the tunnels in this fashion had saved them several minutes over flying through them manually.
“Coming up on the exit,” she announced.
“Let me know the moment you have our sensors back up,” Nathan told Kaylah. From the moment they had disconnected their umbilical from the base inside the asteroid, they had been blind to the outside world. Had there been someone to stay behind and man the hidden base, they could have at least monitored their own sensors and relayed information to them on their way out. Nathan decided that if they were ever to use such a facility again, he would have to make sure that they had a wireless telemetry feed for such data.
“Yes, sir,” Ensign Yosef answered.
“Try to contact the shuttle once we’re clear,” Nathan told the acting comm-officer. “Let them know we’re coming to get them.”
“Crossing the exit threshold now,” Cameron announced. The rocky ceiling passed over them and was replaced by the black star field. The exit tunnel dumped directly into another long trench that eventually widened and became shallower until it was level with the primary surface and disappeared altogether.
“Where are they, Kaylah?”
“I’m not seeing them, sir,” she admitted, double-checking her display to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.
“They’ve gotta be out there somewhere.”
“The gas-giant might be between us and them,” Jessica suggested. “Based on their last course and rate of deceleration, it is possible.”
“They can’t be that dumb,” Nathan said. “Even I’m not that dumb.”
“I’ve got them,” Kaylah announced with relief. “They just came out from the far side of the seventh planet.”
“He’s definitely not stupid,” Jessica commented. “He had to have picked up speed to make it that far over in such a short time. He did not want to be anywhere near where we thought he would be.”
“Should I change course to bring the gas-giant between us?” Cameron asked.
“No, keep on a straight bearing to Corinair, best possible speed, no finesse.” Cameron looked at him quizzically. “During our conversation, I got the impression he was surprised by my age. He probably thinks I’m young and dumb.”
“Well, he’s half right,” Cameron said under her breath. Nathan didn’t take the bait, but he did like that his XO was starting to become more relaxed under pressure, as it helped keep him in the same mood.