“ So what happened?” Sharp demanded once Eric was back on the bridge. He as limping, Kira noticed, and seemed thoroughly exhausted.
“ The pushers are ionic, slow but powerful thrust over time,” He said. The Captain scowled at him. “Right, you know that, sorry. Well the point is they wouldn’t explode on their own. The damage wasn’t internal.”
“ So we were attacked?” Kira interrupted with a squeak in her voice.
“ I can’t say for certain,” Eric said. “I mean, if we were, why haven’t they followed it up? We’re floating in space with nothing but thrusters right now and not enough fuel for them to make a difference outside of dodging some rocks. And that’s if we could see to use them!”
“ Captain, I had an idea about that,” Kira interrupted again.
“ That’s why I never had a women on my ship before, they can’t keep their damn mouths shut!”
Kira’s head jerked back in surprise at the rebuke. She recovered quickly, her idea had merit, damn it. She glared back at him and took the risk of sticking her tongue out. The Captain’s eyes widened and a laugh burst from his lips. “All right,” he said, “out with it.”
“ Eric can reroute the nav controls to the hull. I can patch myself in from there, in a suit, and visually steer the ship when we get to the asteroid belt.”
“ Manually steering a ship the size of the Rented Mule? You’ve got balls, Kira, I’ll give you that!” Sharp said. He leaned back and clasped his hands together, pondering the idea. “You really think you can do it? Some pretty intense calculations have to be made to dock a ship, let alone dodge the rocks floating around.”
Kira shrugged. “I have to try, what other option do we have?”
Sharp nodded. “All right, I’ll think about it, now about this damage…”
“ It wasn’t just a single hit. Either we’ve been sabotaged or there’s a damn good gunner out there,” Eric said.
“ Sabotage?” Sharp’s eyes narrowed. He stared hard at both of them.
“ I haven’t been out of the ship yet,” Kira pointed out.
“ I damn near had my spine broke when we were hit — I was outside of the inertial suppressor field,” Eric said.
Sharp grunted. His fingers tapped a cadence on the arm of his chair.
“ Sir, Tarn came back early from his shift, remember?”
“ You think Tarn did this?”
“ Does anybody else have knowledge of how to rig an explosion and make it look like an accident or an external attack?”
Sharp opened and closed his mouth. He growled and stood up. “Weapons locker now, you two are with me.”
“ Captain, do you really think Tarn would do this? He’s stranded with us too!” Eric said, following behind the Captain as he walked briskly down the passage.
“ Any chance he overheard you talking about the bounty on your head?” Sharp snapped.
Kira gasped, drawing looks from the other two. She waved her hand. “It’s nothing, I just hadn’t thought of that is all.”
The rounded a corner and stopped at a hatch. Captain Sharp unlocked the door with a retinal scan then stepped in and beckoned them to follow. He stopped, causing Eric and Kira to run into him. “Son of a bitch! I’m going to kill him with my bare hands!”
“ Sir, if he was a FIST, he’s not going to be easy to kill,” Kira pointed out. “Even if he is old and fat.”
The weapons locker was virtually empty. All that remained were a couple of low grade laser pistols with output ratings low enough to require several seconds for a burn through on an unarmored human target. An alarm rang through the ship, making Eric jump. Sharp turned with a snarl and started back towards the hatch.
“ Sir, wait!” Kira spotted a display and, near it, a data port. She hurried over and pushed her hand against it, then started commanding the computer to display the source of the alarm. “Our passive sensors picked up an active sensor hit. And there’s another, they’re coming in fast!”
“ They? How many are there?”
“ Looks like five, no si- nine of them Sir.”
“ Nine? Why didn’t you see nine ships out there?”
“ Sir, they may not be ships. Could be EVA suits. They disable us then send in a boarding party to take control of the ship. After it’s secured, they bring in theirs and tow us off for salvage.” She suggested.
Kira saw a strange look in Eric’s eyes. “What? It makes sense! That’s what I’d do.”
“ You have a history of disabling and stealing ships?”
“ Well no, I just mean when you think about it and break it down…”
Eric went over and grabbed both of the pistols. He handed one to the Captain and the other to Kira. She looked at it with wide eyes. “I don’t- I’ve never used a gun before!”
“ Me either, but I’ve got a hunch you’ll be a better shot than I would.” Eric wouldn’t look her in the eyes as he spoke.
Kira slipped it into the waist of her pants without thinking. She turned to see the Captain watching the two of them. “All right, these things will be useless against an armed and armored boarding party, but maybe if we don’t fire them they won’t know it. You think they’ll override the airlock or blow a hole in the hull?”
“ If they’ve got inside help they’ll use the air lock. Or if they want to use the ship themselves, they’ll need it pressurized,” Eric theorized. “Doesn’t make me a betting man.”
Sharp’s laugh was bitter. “You just wagered all our lives.”
Eric swore. Kira’s eyes widened but she gave him a supportive smile. “If it makes you feel any better I’ll even take off my clothes to show my support.”
“ Remember when I said to make sure you don’t disrupt my crew or complicate things? That goes double when we’re repelling boarders!”
Eric chuckled. “Had that talk, did you? Just think of what it might do to the pirates!”
Kira turned, having heard it first. Her pistol was out of her pants and pointed at the open hatch before Tarn rounded the corner and pulled up short. Sharp swore and pointed his own pistol at the man. “We beat you here, Tarn?” He asked.
“ Yeah, now put those useless things down. You wasn’t on the bridge so I brought you these,” Tarn grabbed the straps over his shoulder and pulled off two assault plasma rifles. “Anybody ever shoot one of these?”
Kira felt Eric looking at her from the corner of her eye. She glared at Tarn a minute longer than lowered her pistol. She glanced at her lover and saw him still looking at her. “What? No, I’ve never shot one. I don’t even know what kind of gun it is!”
“ You handled that pistol pretty well,” Tarn observed.
“ Beginner’s luck,” she said through clenched teeth.
“ Give me one,” Sharp said, stepping forward and taking the rifle. He checked the weapon over quickly, then looked at Tarn until the ex-Marine gave him a quick rundown of the weapon. When he was finished the Captain fixed him with a stare. “What happened to the rest of the weapons?”
Tarn pointed at the two plasma rifles. “Traded ‘em for these. These babies are mil-spec. Not heavy duty like I’m used to, but good enough for pirates. Not what they use these days, that’s how I could get a break on ‘em.”
“ All my weapons for these?” Sharp persisted.
Tarn shrugged. “Wait till you see one in action.”
Sharp scowled and turned to Eric. He handed him the laser pistol. “Kira, patch back to the computer and let Jeff and Kevin know to grab whatever they can for a weapon and lay low.”
Kira did as she’d been told, a moment later the synthetic voice of the ship’s computer came across broadcasting throughout the ship. While she was there she checked on the progress of the boarding party. “Sir, based on the rate of closure they should reach us in a few more minutes.”
“ Don’t you want them to be with us?” Eric asked.
“ You left ‘em on the hull or are they on the ship?”
“ Shit!”
“ Yeah, that’s why Kira sent out the message. The computer will have broadcast on the suit’s frequency as well,” Sharp said.
“ That’s why he’s the Captain,” Kira said.
Eric shot her a dark look but couldn’t hold it.
“ Main airlock, let’s go!”
They filed out, falling in behind Tarn and the Captain. Kira’s eyes went to the Tarn’s rolls, noticing the higher quality pistol at his hip. She also picked out a bulge in his boot that she assumed was a backup gun. A moment later as he stepped over the entry to another hatch she saw his shirt rise enough to display the handle of a high tech combat knife.
She gasped as Eric grabbed her hand. She glanced at him and he nodded for her to hold back with him. She did, asking him the question with her eyes that she dared not utter aloud. He pulled her after him, turning down a passage to the crew’s bunkroom.
“ Baby, this isn’t the best time for this,” Kira said. “I’ll admit, I can’t think of another time when we’d have the bunks to ourselves though.”
Eric snorted. “Open your locker.”
“ Eric?”
“ Do it!”
Kira jerked back at his tone. She nodded and turned to the wall with the crew’s storage lockers in it. It scanned her eye, releasing the lock, and she opened it up before stepping back. “There, you want to go through my underwear now?”
“ Maybe,” Eric said. He scanned everything quickly, then started pulling open the drawers and rooting around in them.
“ Eric, seriously, what are you doing?”
“ I knew it!” He gloated. “This drawer doesn’t track right, hang on.” He fiddled with the drawer for a moment before he pulled it out of the locker and set it on the floor. He reached back in and pulled out a slim box that had been stashed beneath it. “Open this.”
Kira looked at it and felt herself start to retreat inward again. She shook her head, not at the action, but at the thought of losing herself. With a mewl of frustration, she swallowed past the lump in her throat and reached forward to press both her thumbs against the ID scanners on it. It chirped and clicked, letting her know the locks were released.
She opened the case and let loose the breath she had not known she was holding. Inside was a folded piece of cloth that shimmered in the light. Eric let out his own gasp, drawing Kira’s gaze. “I thought there’d be something else.”
Kira reached in with trembling hands and picked it up. It unfolded, hanging loosely in her hands until she stretched it taut as she held it up. “What is that? Lingerie?”
She shook her head. “It’s a bodysuit designed to diffuse energy weapons. It offers protection against any radiant beam weapon, but not something like a plasma weapon. Those have a highly energized form of matter.”
“ How do you know that?”
She looked at him and saw the pale color of his cheeks. “Eric, this is mine. I don’t know how, I’ve never seen it before, but it opened to my thumb prints. And I can’t think of a better time to find out.”
“ Find out what?” His question went unanswered. She stood up and stripped off her clothes, standing nude in front of him in the single least sexual moment she could ever remember being in. She slipped the diffusion suit on, pulling the shimmering material into place and noting how it fit her perfectly.
“ Wow,” Eric whispered. “Pretty crude of me, but you’re beautiful.”
Kira smirked. “That is crude, but there’s never a bad time to tell me I’m beautiful. What I need to know is how you knew it was there?”
Eric fell silent. She saw him struggling internally. His eyes dropped and he gasped. She followed his gaze and saw what had stolen his breath. She dropped to her knees and reached in, pulling out the strange pieces of metal that the bodysuit had hidden. Her hands slid across them, feeling a sense of familiarity even though she had no idea what she was doing. She looked at Eric, meeting his gaze, and then closed her eyes. Her hands worked the items, putting them together in a smooth and practiced manner that left a dryness in her mouth.
When Kira opened her eyes she held a rifle in her hand that was light weight and possessed a deadly beauty. Her eyes went to a magazine that was loaded full of ellipsoid shapes, with each narrow end coming to a point. She slipped it into the rifle and cycled a round into the chamber.
“ Damn…”
“ Yeah,” Kira said softly. She looked up abruptly. “Shit! The others! We’ve got to help them.”
“ You really know how to use that?” Eric stood up and asked.
Kira rose as well. “No, but I’ve got a hunch I’ll figure it out. Come on! And Eric, you’re going to tell me how you knew about this later. I don’t even want to think about it right now, but as soon as this is over I’m going to seriously freak out and either I’m going to need you there to hold me or I’m going to need you there so I can slap you silly.”
Eric grinned. “So long as you need me.” He followed her out of the bunkroom and back towards the main airlock where their shipmates were presumably waiting for them.