“Wait,” I said. “Do you have a com? I’m probably tagged and geofenced. If I leave, it’ll set off alarms. And I’d rather not have to strip naked.” He grinned but pulled out a com and scanned me for trackers. I only had one, in my back pocket. I took it out and dropped it near the door. “Thanks,” I said. “Now I’m ready.”
He led me down the hall to an alcove with ladder access to the maintenance tunnels. On a ship this large they would be seemingly infinite. They were also less likely to be empty than on the Mayport because ship maintenance was a never-ending job.
Loch slid the access panel closed behind us. The tunnel was sparsely lit, narrow, and short enough we couldn’t stand up straight. But at least we didn’t have to crawl. “If we make good time, it’s eight minutes to the landing bay where Polaris is. You okay to run?” He looked me up and down, as if he could see any injuries through my clothes. His gaze snagged on my feet. “You’re not wearing boots.”
The steel grating of the tunnel floor dug into the soles of my feet, but it was a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. “I don’t know what happened to my boots; I woke up without them. But I’m good to run,” I said. “I want off this pile of scrap.”
Loch took me at my word. He nodded then started off in a ground-eating jog. After sitting idle in the same six square meters for the last two days, it felt nice to move.
We twisted and turned through the tunnels, sometimes going up or down a level. Loch never hesitated and never slowed down. My feet ached from the abrasion against the grated floor, but they hadn’t started to bleed yet so I kept my mouth shut and my body moving.
Loch stopped at the next corner and turned back to me. “We’re almost there,” he breathed into my ear. “The next part is tricky because it passes a maintenance crew supply room they’ve converted into a break room. There’s no other way unless we want to take twenty minutes to go around. Stick to me. If things go sideways, shoot to kill.”
I nodded. The blaster felt heavy in my hands. I hadn’t properly mourned for the last people I’d killed and now I was likely going to add to my total.
We rounded the corner into a fully illuminated tunnel. As we approached the door in the middle, I could hear conversation—at least three people. Loch moved silently. I shadowed him. When we reached the door, he held up a hand and crouched down to peek into the room.
He stood and held up four fingers—there were four people in the room. Using hand signals, he relayed that two of them were facing the door. We could either try to cross unnoticed or shoot them now.
The hallway continued uninterrupted for fifteen meters past the door. We would have no cover. But shooting innocent people in cold blood didn’t sit well with me, either. I indicated I wanted to cross.
Loch looked like he would argue, but finally he nodded. We synced our stride and walked past the door, Loch closer to the people inside, me hopefully hidden by his body. We sped up once we were clear of the door.
“Michaels, is that you?” someone called from inside.
“Nah, looked like he was in a hurry. You know Michaels doesn’t hurry,” someone else said. Everyone laughed. Neither speaker had sounded like seeing someone was cause for concern.
Their voices faded as we moved down the tunnel, but I didn’t relax until we turned a corner and put steel between my back and their eyes. “How much farther?” I asked in a whisper.
“We’re nearly there,” Loch said. “If we’re lucky, Rhys and Veronica are ahead of us.”
True to his word, a minute or two later we dropped down a ladder into one of the storage rooms off of the landing bay. Through the open door, I saw Polaris waiting with the cargo ramp down.
I could also hear a ridiculous amount of blaster fire. Most of it seemed to be getting absorbed by Polaris’s shields. Two people in the ship’s cargo bay were returning fire, shooting at someone or something I couldn’t see from here.
“Seems like we’ve been noticed,” Loch said.
“Tell me that’s Rhys and Veronica on the ship,” I said.
“With the shield up, that’s the most likely case, but I can’t see either of them to confirm. I just hope they got some alcubium loaded before they were caught,” Loch said. “Or we’re going to be dead in the water.”
“You know where it’s stored?”
“It’s down with munitions,” Loch said.
“If they didn’t get any, I will go,” I said.
“Rhys and Veronica were dressed as crew. If they couldn’t get it, your chances are nil. And the longer we wait, the more reinforcements Rockhurst is going to call in,” he said. I started to reply but he cut me off. “Let’s have a little look-see before we do anything rash.”
We crept out of the storage room. A few stacks of cargo gave us some cover. We stopped behind a pallet stacked high with emergency water rations. A solid fifty meters of open space separated us and Polaris. Without shields, we wouldn’t make it without getting shot.
“I don’t suppose you have one of Rhys’s fancy shields?” I asked.
Loch shook his head. “Rhys only had one. And, if you remember, you blew it up in Rockhurst’s face.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
He grinned at me. “I was there,” he said.
That left me with more questions than answers, but now was not the time. I peeked around the edge of the cargo. At least six soldiers hid behind similar cargo piles on the far side of the landing bay.
And sitting out in the open between us was a sled full of alcubium tubes in protective triangular covers.
It looked like a few soldiers had tried to retrieve the sled, only to be picked off by shots from the ship. I saw four bodies on the ground. The sled was not hovering, which meant it was either dead or deactivated.
“We have to get that sled,” I said. I roughly calculated the weight of each cylinder at a little over five kilograms. There were probably thirty cylinders on the sled. That was a shit-ton of weight to move, not including the busted sled itself. I revised my statement. “Or as many tubes as we can carry.”
“We have five minutes max until we’re overrun,” Loch said.
I edged around the cargo sled we’d crouched behind. The control panel was unlocked with big red and green buttons for ease of use. I hit the green go button and the sled lifted. The water rations weren’t the best shield, but none of the other cargo was any better. Too bad the soldiers had neglected to leave a sled full of ballistic armor sitting around.
“We use this as our shield,” I said. “We run for the alcubium. You load, I shoot. We grab as much as we can before the water containers disintegrate, then we make for Polaris.”
“The soldiers are being careful not to shoot the alcubium. I suggest you do the same,” Loch said.
“I’ll do my best,” I said with a grin. Adrenaline pumped through my veins. “You ready?”
“Let’s do this,” Loch said.
We grabbed the webbing that strapped the water to the sled and pushed. The stack of water containers was high enough that we could run bent over and still be protected.
We crossed more than half of the distance to the alcubium before the soldiers noticed we weren’t on their side and started shooting at us. Water spilled out of the front containers, wetting the floor and putting the nonslip flooring paint to the test. The cool water soothed the abrasions on my feet.
“Give me your blaster,” I said as we maneuvered our sled next to the alcubium. Blaster bolts sailed overhead and into the part of our sled not protected behind the alcubium sled.
Loch handed over his blaster. I took a deep breath then stood up and started shooting with a blaster in each hand. It wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, but it focused attention on me while Loch transferred alcubium cylinders to our sled.
And with a pallet of alcubium between me and the soldiers, I could almost feel their reluctance to shoot at me and miss.
When a bolt sailed close enough to my head that I could feel the passing heat, I ducked back down with a warning to Loch. He’d moved five cylinders.