Shadow Moves by P. R. Adams

Author:P. R. Adams [Adams, P. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Promethean Tales
Published: 2019-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

17

The old man was pacing, the echo of his boots thudding on the cargo bay deck loud enough that everyone was glued to his movements. Benson wanted so badly to tell the others of her crew that everything was going to be okay.

Would that be fair? Tell them that they were all going to be fine because they just might have help from someone who apparently took a laser beam to the face and was bad enough off that everyone had left him for dead? And how long had he been on a ship with radiation leaking from its reactor?

A quick peek at the folks still aboard the Pandora—Dietrich, Gaines, and Parkinson—and she realized it didn’t matter. She didn’t have the people who could make a difference if the time came.

Benson’s attention drifted to the dark trail smeared along the deck, leading from her huddled crew to the airlock.

Lopez’s blood and brains. She could barely make out the stench of urine.

He’d been a kid, younger than Stiles.

It wasn’t right. They should’ve had a chance to fight back. They should’ve done what Benson had wanted to do from the start: blow the umbilical and flee.

Her stomach flipped, and the material of her flight suit suddenly felt heavy and rough on her skin. Could she have done that? Could she have lived with it? These were her people to care for now. Her responsibility.

Being a captain wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be.

The thump-thump-thump of Chung’s pacing stopped. His heel squeaked on the deck. “Hey!”

Benson snapped out of her distracted thoughts.

“We need to speed repairs up.” The old man ran stubby fingers through wispy white hair. He looked at the three prisoners, then right at her. “Who can do that?”

“I-I can.”

He smirked. “I’m keeping you and that engineer in my sight.”

Gaines raised her hand shakily. “I’ve helped with hull repairs and some other simple work in the past.”

Benson bit her lip. She didn’t want the doctor involved, but there was no rational reason to protest.

Chung waved the youngest of the privateers toward the airlock. “Jimmy, get her across.”

“Uncle Quentin, I—”

“Hey! Did that sound like a request? Get her across!”

The kid pointed his gun at Gaines. “Let’s go, fatty.”

Benson’s cheeks burned, but Gaines didn’t protest. She accepted Dietrich’s help up with a smile, then swung past Benson, stopping long enough to hug her. “We’re going to be all right, Captain.”

While Gaines and Wong suited up, Chung scratched his scalp. It was nervous energy, same as the way his scarred face bunched and relaxed. “Dev?”

Rai stepped from the entry to the narrow path created by the piled cargo containers. “Yes?”

“These other ships—the ones that could be coming here?”

“Or somewhere in the DMZ. We don’t know if it’s here.”

“Yeah, well, we gotta know. We gotta know soon. This idea that we might have a ship just show up while we’re defenseless…” Chung shook his head.

“What can we do? Let’s just have everything ready to go.”

“Backups. Data backups!” Chung turned to Benson. “Hey. What

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