Star Force: Starchaser (SF69) (7 page)

It was messy, but totally clean at the same time. It
was just water. It would dry so no harm done, but it did seem to mess with the
unspoken rules of society and she liked that, even onboard her own ship where
she could set the rules however she liked…except she couldn’t, because her crew
brought with them their own expectations and culture and whatever else you
wanted to call the hive mind that society operated off of. Mina had always been
slightly put off by it, and now even more so as she seemed to finally make the
mental disconnect and realize what it really was to be an individual in both
mind and body.

She walked through the ship’s corridors to her private
quarters, dunking herself in a shower tub for the
autowash’s
scrubbing cycle that scoured off what grime the concert dunking and jacuzzi had
left on her, then she walked into a drying tube that left her with a pine-like
scent when she stepped out and into some silky soft pajamas. From there she
headed over to the ship’s dining area and the chef whipped up an array of small
portioned items that she favored in only a few minutes, giving her an
opportunity to get into bed without much delay.

Mina fell asleep quickly, exhausted from this
planetary stint and having already cycled the adrenaline out of her system.
Dreams would ensue but she wouldn’t remember them when she woke, for she rarely
did…not to mention the circumstances of her waking would wash away any lingering
memory as sheer panic set in.

7

Mina woke to a loud bang on her door so intense and
quick she wasn’t sure why she sat bolt upright in bed, thinking for a moment it
was all in her groggy mind’s imagination until the second thud sounded. Then a
third and fourth came in quick succession and she scurried out of bed and over
to the door, pressing the button on the wall that slid the panel open into the
midst of a scuffle between one of her security guards and a non-human…someone
that was definitely not supposed to be on her ship.

She took a step back as they tussled, then the
green-skinned biped that stood a good six and a half feet tall got her guard in
a headlock and began choking him out with a knee into his back to keep him from
wriggling away. Seeing that he was losing, Mina ran out the door and jumped on
the pair of them, wrapping her own thin arms around the Fahmren’s neck and
feeling its skin plates slice into her skin as she pried it back using her
weight and her own knee in its back.

She succeeded in pulling it off her guard, but was
pancaked as it fell
backwacks
and something in her
left knee popped under the weight. Unable to move with the Fahmren’s mass on
top of her she was pinned and could do nothing, hoping she’d done enough to
help the guard get free as she still clung to the attacker’s neck.

The next thing she knew her head slammed into the
ground again, knocking her half unconscious. The weight on her chest
disappeared and she heard a plasma blast, feeling a trickle of heat wash over
her before two more sounded and the Fahmren fell to the floor a meter past her
feet...then the guard was standing over her and pulling her to her feet.

“Get back inside,” he ordered, standing over her
protectively as she tried to step on her injured leg and yelped from the pain.
He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her inside, tossing her on the floor as a
red plasma bolt shot down the hallway and they both ducked inside her quarters.
He shut and locked them in, then pulled her out of the way so he could have a
clear line of fire.

“What’s going on?” she shouted, with the guard’s
answer cut off by two huge bangs on the door. Instead he pulled out his stun
pistol and pushed it into her hands.

“I hope you remember how to use this. That door isn’t
going to last long,” he said, with his prophetic words being followed up with a
glow mark popping up about a meter off the ground as it was hit from the
outside with a plasma blast, quickly followed by many more as they began to
burn their way through into her quarters.

Mina saw that he held some type of rifle she wasn’t
familiar with, ostensibly the same one the Fahmren shot in the hall had been
carrying. “How many are there?”

“At least three…probably more,” he answered as a small
hole was torn in the door and a bit of red leapt across the room and into the
far wall, thankfully below the skylight that led directly into space. Melt that
and the whole room would depressurize and they’d be dead, though in theory it
should be made of material more sturdy than the door. “We’ve been boarded. I
don’t know how or why, but we should have jumped out and didn’t. I can’t reach
the bridge and barely got to you before that bastard did. The rest of security
is down or missing.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked, wincing
against the pain as she held the stinger pistol at the ready. All Humans had a
decent amount of combat training in the maturia and she had always been a good
shot, but she’d never expected having to put those skills to use onboard her
own ship.

“Unless there’s somewhere to hide in here that I don’t
know about, we just shoot as many as we can. They’re here for you.”

Mina swallowed hard as a fist-sized chunk of her door
blew out. “I can’t walk on this leg.”

The security guard glanced at the door, then decided
to make a quick change. “Grab my neck, I’ll swing you over to better cover.”

She did as told, making sure not to tip the barrel of
her pistol into his head just in case the trigger got pulled. It wouldn’t kill
him if it fired, but the last thing she needed right now was to stun her only
protection. In truth he and the other six were here to guard her against rabid
fans, but they’d all had far more extensive combat training than her for a
situation like this. Mina just didn’t know if he’d be enough on his own and
hoped the others were still alive elsewhere in the ship.

Swinging from his neck like a child, he walked her
over to the other side of the main room and into a walk-in closet. She grabbed
a hold of one of the shelves to steady her, then he left and headed over to another
portion of the room and fired a shot back in through the door that was now more
holes and smoke than a barrier. The red bolt hit what she didn’t know, for it
was out of her line of sight barely, but anyone coming more than two steps into
the room would be in her firing line. Holding onto the shelf with her left hand
and aiming with her right, she stood ready on one leg to get at least a few
shots off.

A sound of sudden cracking preempted her guard’s
return shots and then all hell broke loose as two more Fahmren came into view,
one falling over as he was shot by her man before he had to duck down on the
other side of her bed for cover. She nailed the other one in the left arm,
causing it to go numb and the next plasma blast to hit the floor as it suddenly
couldn’t aim. Mina fired twice more, knocking it down before her view was
obscured by black uniforms and more green flesh as she was hit in the face and
her weapon knocked from her grasp.

Mina fell to the floor, her knee exploding again in
pain, then suddenly she was spun over and face planted into the carpet as her
arms were bound so tight she felt like her wrists were being cut off. A few
more plasma blasts sounded then all was quiet, which was a very bad sign.

She was yanked up off the ground by her arms that were
now locked behind her back, then she crumpled over again when her leg wouldn’t
hold her. Mina yelled in pain, then was picked up and carried over the shoulder
of one of her attackers out of her quarters with her able to catch a glimpse of
the smoking corpse of her guard on the floor next to the bed.

After that it was a pain-ridden ride through the
hallways, with most of her vision being of the floor and the backside of the
Fahmren hauling her. They took her down several levels, then when the flooring
changed and she recognized they were on the hangar deck she realized with
horror that she was being taken off her ship. Not knowing what else to do she
began bucking and kicking with her good leg, but all it did was make the thing
mad enough that he tossed her down to the ground and grabbed her by the neck,
dragging her forward and out of reach of any of her kicks.

She could barely breathe in his grip, but she had to
do something. If they were willing to kill her people to get to her then there
was no way of knowing what they’d do to her.

The pressure on her neck disappeared a split second
before several ‘pings’ filled the air, followed by dozens of plasma blasts
crossing over her head. She was laying on her back, hands bundled up between
her and the floor as the red and pink crisscrossed over her head for a moment
before another Fahmren grabbed her and dragged her over to the doorway of a
ship she didn’t recognize…only to get hit in the chest with a pink glob of
energy and fall face forward on top of her.

Mina had no vision and had to twist her head to the
side to get any air as she was once again pinned down, but she knew there was
another firefight going on and those pink blasts weren’t the stinger pistols
that her crew carried. She was left there underneath the body of one of her
attackers for what felt like an eternity until it was rolled off and she was
looking up into the faceplate of a dirty white armored Human that she knew was
from Star Force security.

“Relax,” he said through the external mic as he sized
her up then turned her over so he could get to her bound hands, “you’re safe
now.”

“Thank you,” she said, crying with relief. A moment
later her hands were free and she balled up on the ground, cradling her hurt
leg and not even trying to stand. “How many…are dead?”

“We’re still searching the ship, but I’m staying here
with you and to guard the hangar. Nobody is slipping back out.”

“They killed one of my security team. I don’t know
about everyone else,” she said, letting the tears flow freely and not thinking
she could stop them if she tried.

“If they’re here we’ll find them,” he said, but the
angle of his helmet had his eye line on the surrounding area. “Do you know how
they got onboard your ship?”

“I just woke up…I don’t know anything.”

“Your leg?” the commando asked.

“Something is broke. I can’t put any pressure on it.”

“We’ll get a medtech to you as soon as we can, but
right now you’re just going to have to hold on. We’re sitting in stellar orbit
and had to get to you in a puddle jumper. We’re just a reaction team and I
can’t leave this position to grab a med kit just yet.”

“How many of you are there?” she asked, closing her
eyes and wincing against the pain…which just squeezed out more tears that were
adding to the puddle on the deck beneath her head.

“Two.”

Mina sucked in a quick breath, suddenly feeling at
risk again.

“Relax. They can’t take us down with a few plasma
shots. Not in armor. My teammate will clear the rest of the ship and I’ll be
here to guard you and make sure nobody gets off until reinforcements arrive.
We’ve got a ship headed to our position, ETA about 40 minutes, and no other
hostile vessels in sight. We’re good, so just stay where you are and ride this
out. They’re not getting to you again.”

“Thank you,” she repeated, but kept her eyes open and
scanning as much of the hangar as she could, seeing the ugly transport sitting
in her hangar bay next to her own dropships and the small, gleaming
Puddle Jumper
-class Star Force ship
sitting just inside the energy field covering the hatch into space. That hatch
should have been closed, making it impossible for anyone to board short of
boring a hole in through the hull. How the hell did the attackers get onboard?

“Caught your concert via relay. You’re damn good at
those vocal spikes.”

Mina laughed, a mixture of anxious breath and tears
being blown out like a grenade explosion. “Thank you,” she said automatically,
but it was obvious that she didn’t care about anything right now except her
current situation.

“Have there been any threats recently?”

“No, nothing,” she said, trying to think and finding
her head still swirling in panic. “Not that they told me.”

“There’s no damage to the exterior of your ship. And
aside from the distress signal we received, there was no indication that this
rendezvous was unplanned. Your ship held in stellar orbit and allowed this one
onboard as far as we can tell. I hate to say it, but unless there was some
technical wizardry going on this looks like an inside job.”

Mina’s eyes became lasers as she turned her head and
looked up at his helmet, knowing in her gut that he was right but not able to
suspect any of her team.

“We’ll find out one way or another,” the commando
said, “we just don’t usually get hijackings inside a Star Force system when
they know we’ll be all over them. The dumb ones usually try fast hit and runs
before they’re caught, but boarding a ship takes so much time there’s no way to
pull it off under our noses unless you have backup and a very good plan. Doing
it in stellar orbit never happens.”

“Too much maneuvering room,” Mina said, remembering
navigational lessons from the maturia.

“Exactly. Even if your hangar door was open you could
still run and they wouldn’t be able to dock with this ship on the move. You
just sat here and let them come over, and they would have got away with it if
it wasn’t for your distress signal. As it was we got here about 2 minutes
before it would have been too late. We still would have ran their ship down,
but with you as a hostage it would have been a lot harder to deal with. We
don’t give up on a mission, no matter how difficult, but whoever sent that
signal saved you.”

“Can you put me on your ship?” she asked, almost
pleading. “I don’t want to stay here.”

“I need to stay in sight of the door so none of them
can slip back onboard their ship, but if you can hop or crawl over there you’re
welcome to sit inside.”

“Give me a hand up?” she asked, tears still flowing.

With his stun gun in one hand the commando reached
down with his other armored glove and pulled her up by the arm, letting her
balance on her good leg for a moment before letting her go. She took a small
hop, not touching her bad leg to the floor but sending a spike of pain up
through her with the jolt anyway. Mina pushed through it and hopped across the
deck all the way near to the exit into space where the Star Force craft was
sitting, blocking as much of the blinding sunlight behind it as it could and
just to the inside of the warning zone that amounted to a few meters of deck
painted with no-go markings to keep people away from the field so they didn’t
accidentally fall outside the ship.

Feeling a little leery about getting anywhere near it
with her balance being so bad, Mina headed in as straight of a line as she
could over to the open personnel ramp, then let herself collapse to the ground
so she could crawl up it, keeping her bad leg on top as he pulled herself up
the length and over the top bump, finding the bit of Star Force territory to be
immediately welcoming and feeling safe.

She curled up there and waited, crying out more tears
than she knew she had in her until the reinforcement team arrived and the
medtech got to her.