“Warning. Explosive device detected.” The alarm rang endlessly throughout the prison. There were only two voices Ilise wanted to hear, Tony’s to confirm the Darkstorm was alright, and Charyd’s begging for his life. Her gun was charging with a shot to incapacitate, waiting for Charyd to show himself in Tower C. Not Flight Officer Charyd, but the fucker who stole her ship originally.
“What’s going on Tony?” she asked into her comm, trying not to let the anger force a tremble in her voice. Another breath later and the lack of sass from Tony brought a new emergency. The Darkstrom was silent and as captain, she could not abandon it. Warning her crew to capture Charyd wouldn’t help either. She could only ping the whole crew as one, not individuals, and any message she sent would be sent to Charyd too.
The courtyard had a mix of guards, her crew, and prisoners. There was no way to get her subordinates’ attention without alerting all the other prisoners of a military-grade ship that was a sitting duck in the visitor’s parking lot. She had to beat Charyd and his pirates to the Darkstorm. She had to get out of the prison safely before everything blew up and make sure Tony was okay. The hunt for Alice was over, but she could at least follow her to get out of the ticking time bomb.
There were two large gates that clearly had not followed the regulations of being tested every moon to confirm they worked with the decay and rusted state they were in. The prisoners were fighting and taking revenge on the guards, trying to beat them to the lifeboats and find a way out in time. One prisoner with a shining head dashed about. Switching her gun to stun, she prepared to shoot him when suddenly a glowing white Alice peeked over and shot at her. Ilise squatted down barely in time. The guard behind her failed to react as fast. His body slowly drifted down. The stun blue shot clear on his shoulder.
When a second guard behind her collapsed with a similar blue stun marker, Ilise bared her fangs. The pirates were incompetent if they could not tell the difference between a stun setting and incapacitate, or they were being overly generous to their guards. From her position, she glanced over to see one of the pirates using her antenna to work the control panel. She ducked before she got hit. She was a sitting duck if she showed herself for a third time in the same spot.
Tower C still had a shadow moving about in it. Charyd was trying to override the gates from there. She took one last glance at Tower C and fired two final shots. She had to get to Tony and Charyd could stay in this damned prison when it exploded.
It was too late, the ground trembled from where she squatted as the gates screeched open. Again, she fired at Charyd through the window. It splintered, but the sound was immediately washed out by a squealing. The gates were wide enough to let the prisoners through. She had to get to the Darkstorm.
Her comm dinged with a message. “Do not board the Darkstorm. Fire detected.”
At least Tony was responding, but with worse news. Was the explosive detected in the prison or on the Darkstorm? Ilise had no time to wonder.
“Tony stop the silent treatment and give me a report.”
The response was instant. “Doors closing.”
“Let me help you! Call the crew back.”
It was worth the risk to tell her crew to stop the pirates; she tried to ping everyone, but only the annoying buzzer sound responded, declaring her crew’s communication was dead. Tony was stubborn, but not this stubborn, and fire was not something to joke about either. The pirates were the least of her concern. Tony was in trouble.
She switched her gun to stun and joined the nearest group of prisoners and guards who were now all running out of the courtyard, differences put aside as they ran for their lives. All except a small brawl between one guard and a prisoner. The rest were obeying the correct protocol of evacuating and heading toward the lifeboats.
All except a few headed toward the visitor parking, running across the algae-covered concrete. The pirates were trained, and they were continuously watching their backs. Ilise watched from a distance as they fearlessly boarded the smoking Darkstorm. The doors weren’t closed.
No one in their left brain would enter a burning ship, it's why all the prisoners and guards left it alone. The black fumes billowed out through the open door. The last message from Tony was fake. She glanced up at the tower, the shadow was still in there. She fired at the cracked window one last time to make Charyd duck before running to board the Darkstorm. With her first step aboard the ship, her wet boots squeaked on the floor. Stealth was not needed right now.
Gun at ready, she sprinted down the hall and pried the door open of her cabin room. The air was cleaner here, no smoke had entered until she opened the door. Her fuzzy white teddy bear rug by her bed that kept her feet warm first thing in the morning was still pristine and free of ash. Quickly, she accessed the panel reading through the logs. Tony had silenced the alarms and delayed outgoing messages. Or was the delay something caused by Charyd? The logs declared the fire near the Lightning Strike. First, she had to stop the fire. Figuring out why Tony stopped the alarm could be dealt with later. No. Tony was most important. Her top priority was rebooting the Darkstorm. She inputted the reset commands, put in her clearance code, and held the opposite corners of the screen counting to ten. Once the Cadoon logo appeared, she ran back into the hallway.
The lights were out but there was a red haze: backup generators while the ship was resetting.
The smoke did not hurt to breathe, in fact, it smelt like burnt milk. She knew this prank, she had made the same smoke bombs when she was a kid. Gun at the ready, she climbed up the ladder to the Lightning Strike. A light was beaming through the smoke at the entrance panel.
“Aw dang, they got rid of my drawing.”
The voice was not enough to pinpoint the location, but it was calm enough, which confirmed that someone else had already extinguished the fire. She shot in their vicinity.
A gasp was quickly followed by a large hard metal fire extinguisher hitting her wrist and making her drop her gun. The fire extinguisher fell with a loud clatter beside her gun. She backed away from the ladder and pushed back on the landing, fighting for the small space in the area. Her adversary was equally small as her - but weaker. Ilise gripped only two of their multiple arms and kicked low to hit a few more legs and crunch into their back. With another sweep of her leg, the person fell and she punched them, their antenna crunching before passing out.
Ilise pinpointed the flashlight the pirate had been carrying and went to the scanner nearby. She held her thumb against the bottom right corner until it began to blink alive. The logo of the Cadoon army greeted her as it began to boot up the Darkstorm system.
She thought of talking but kept her emotions and thoughts in check. She had to be careful, Alice was on board. It was making it more frustrating when her biochip failed to scan to let her into the Lightning Strike scanner. Talking would only give away her position to Alice and would do nothing to help Ilise save Tony. Her biochip failed to scan a second time when a message came through her comm.
“Fiery hot never did suit me. I should try ice cool next.” Ilise smiled, relief flooding her to have Tony talking to her, but it was short-lived. “You need to close the entrance door manually. My systems are still booting up. I need to do a proper reset.”
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
She gave a curt nod, making sure she was near one of Tony’s cameras, and quickly slid down the ladder. The smoke was thicker in the hallway than in the Lightning Strike panel, all of it flowing out the back door. Once back at the main door, she noticed an outline. An outline that she recognized. Her hatred heated her whole body causing her bio-luminescent sweat lit up her entire face. This was supposed to be her ship months ago, she was supposed to be at the war front, not trying to prove the Darkstorm was viable technology after pitiful pirates stole it off home base. There would not be another man walking all over her position, rank, or ship. Her hand went for her gun, but it was still missing. There was a fire extinguisher near the ladder. Near her. She picked it up.
——
Tower C didn’t have any windows facing out. In their stead, there was a wall lined with metal shelving units and various foil wrappers sticking out of boxes. Charyd recognized the logo, signifying chocolate bars. The only windows of the tower were those facing into the courtyard where Charyd’s crew, the guards, and the rest of the prisoners were.
A quick peek out revealed Polo doing a fine job of keeping most of the attention on him, even as Alice was glowing white. The both of them were distracting the guards and encouraging the fighting while Squilla was ducked down low near the old rusted gates of the courtyard and using one of her antennae on the control panel.
Charyd ducked back down under one of the control panels and stared at the wall. Chocolate. A glance at his communicator revealed no more insightful tips from the Darkstorm’s AI. It’s okay. He planned for this.
When the alarm changed tune, the panel above him lit up in red and pink. He jumped up and started searching for the right buttons.
The evacuation order startled enough people in the courtyard to run to the emergency exits. The closest exit for the lifeboats was in the neighboring courtyard.
He found the right button and when he flicked it, a metal panel opened, revealing a screen and keyboard. So old-fashioned. The blinking line on the screen was waiting for his input. Charyd started typing.
>>Run Court-B_Evacuation.exe
File not found.
>>Search: evacuation procedures
1,340 files found.
>>Narrow down to Courtyard B.
11 files found.
>>List files
C-B_Florplans.aic
C-B_Inner-Tapes.jpf
C-B_Poster-Rev4_Final-final2-FINAL.pdt
C-B_Rules_rev4-mod2342-03.jpd
>>Access file.
File downloading.
Charyd stared at the blinking ellipsis on the screen for what felt like hours. After a few seconds, the file opened up and he started skimming the fifty-three pages. It was on page forty-two that he found what he was looking for. He rolled his eyes then returned back to the command screen and entered:
>>Run C-B_unfasten-doors.exe
Running C-B_unfasten-doors.exe
A gunshot sounded, cracking the windows from the courtyard. He glanced down but did not see who had fired it. The courtyard had barely two dozen people in it, still fighting even over the din of the alarm and announcement. He turned back to the screen as the ellipsis continued to blink.
Then the tower rumbled.
The doors were old.
They probably hadn’t been opened since they were built.
Another shot caused the glass to splinter and he heard the cacophony from the courtyard. Above all of that was a high-pitched squeal that he recognized too well. Squilla was happy. Charyd was glad she decided to keep the squeal out of Alice’s mental link and give his entire crew the equivalent of a stroke.
The rumbling continued only for a moment longer and then there was shouting as the courtyard started clearing, everybody left running for the large doors that were slowly rolling open.
Go right! Ignore the other prisoners. Make sure you’re not followed. He ordered into the mental space Alice had created for him.
There was a general agreement and a warm fuzzy feeling in his chest as a response.
Now. His crew had a way out. It was his turn.
He grabbed a handful of the foil packets from the shelving unit and then ran back out the door of Tower C. The doors were under him. Only one of them was completely retracted into Tower B, and the other one was stuck under the bridge between the two towers. It was at least five stories high.
Charyd jumped.
Even with the lower gravity of Psi Trident, he hit the ground hard. The wound in his leg sent the pain all the way up to his jaw and he could have sworn one of his eyeballs exploded. He morphed his nose into a smaller shape and his eye twitched. He was fine. A glance back at the courtyard revealed it completely empty.
From here, there were only two places to run to. The HL pad was where emergency shuttles landed and beyond that the dock with the lifeboats. And the visitor’s parking lot where the Darkstorm was secured.
Charyd limped around a corner to see the Darkstorm, buffeted by the rain but standing completely still even with the prison’s alarm going. The two docking cables kept the ship still even as the water under them started shaking the entire platform.
It was almost like there was a real bomb somewhere and it went off.
Charyd slipped and slid on the algae-covered ground to the Darkstorm and circled the ship. Her sleek design made it easy to duck under her fins and body after detaching one of the docking cables so he could do the same for the other. The automation for the unlatching must have been broken.
Once he was sure the cables were out of the way, he circled around back and made his way onto the Darkstorm.
“Close doors,” he ordered.
There was no response.
Instead of waiting for one, Charyd found the manual switch and watched as the rain disappeared when the Darkstorm’s rear door closed soundlessly.
We’re ready to fly and make ourselves comfortable.
That was easy. He felt the mental connection with his crew server the moment the door latched fully closed.
And then he was hit over the head with something heavy.
——
Fire safety protocols doubled for anti-theft. Ilise hung the fire extinguisher back and dragged Charyd out of the hallway to the room that looked like a basic cleaning closet, mundane and boring. Smoke trickled from a small spot in the ceiling right above the scanner. The door opened without her needing to scan. She was the only one to have clearance. Dragging Charyd’s ass in here was a dumb idea, but it was the safest place to hide from a Nereos, the moment the door closed she smacked Charyd’s face again. His nose was oddly shaped and his legs were different sizes. Did he adjust all lower limbs into an odd size like he was trying to do a third-leg joke?
The DME began to hum to life as the ship slowly started to turn on its engines. In the room she stood in, the lights were bright and the screens were all white with brilliant blue text flashing across with the occasional yellow. Graphs were plotted and re-rendered. Cameras were turned on in the hallways and the control room, showing the pirates gathering around. There was one loitering in the mess hall grabbing a bunch of coffee mugs. More importantly, though, Alice was buckling up in the pilot seat and she looked like she knew what she was doing.
Ilise swore under her breath as she felt the telltale lurch of the Darkstorm moving.
“Tony? What happened to the bomb threat? Is it neutralized?” They couldn’t go anywhere if there was still an active explosive somewhere on the ship.
“All good.” Tony sounded like he was smiling and for a moment, Ilise wished she could see his hologram. But not in this room. This was the only room on the ship that Tony was never visible in. “It was a stupid computing mistake,” he said without actually explaining.
By the entrance of the room sat a collection of handcuffs, ropes, and maybe - she stopped questioning once things looked a bit more on the leather side and grabbed the gold handcuffs that glistened and labeled especially for shifting aliens. She hooked the handcuffs through the thickest insulated cooling input line that kept the brains going for the ship.
“I would’ve dressed better if I knew I was going to have visitors,” Tony said.
Ilise felt his breath on the back of her neck, raising her hairs and making a shiver run down her spine.