Fire Ship by Diane Carey

Author:Diane Carey [Carey, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Star Trek
Published: 2012-07-13T17:36:37+00:00

She seemed to know nothing, but I could tell from that tremor that she was a spacefaring creature who at least lived aboard a ship, even if she didn’t help run the ship. She knew we were in danger, knew that our lives depended exclusively upon the structure around us. As seafarers and spacefarers had for thousands of years before the two of us, we both knew the ship we were on meant our very lives. If it died, we died.

We were both aware of that, and of my lack of answer, when a fierce clacking noise hit the hull and rang through the metal bones of the ship. The clamping mechanism was above us somewhere, on Aragore’s upper external skin.

Even here in the lowest caves of the ship, we heard it reverberating, droning through the ship: rowrowrowrowrowrowrowrow.

And from the wall, the buzzing communication:

“What’s it over?”

“The racker section! We’ve got no way to seal off that much area!”

“He knew that …”

“Who knew?” Totobet persisted. “Do they know something?”

At first I wasn’t going to answer. Then I found myself talking, perhaps to sound out the logic for myself.

“My captain knew where to put a clamp on this ship, in a place where they can’t seal off the chamber. If it drills through, this ship is hulled instantly.”

The fear rose again in her voice. “Would he kill this ship? Knowing you’re here on it?”

“I certainly hope so.”

Fear widened Totobet’s yellow eyes. “What would a hole do?”

“It’ll punch through the skin of the ship and unequalize us. The whole ship is finished if it gets through.”

“We’ll be killed?”

“If we’re still here.”

Rowrowrowrowrowrowrowrow …

She turned away from me, curled up against a wall, and apparently decided there was no more to speak of since we were both dead.

“Are those your people in that other ship?” she asked. “But your ship was in the spacedock”

“No, that’s not the ship you’re talking about. These are the people from here. They picked me up. I was in a survival pod. Just like Sasaquon picked you up.”

“You escaped from the big ship?”

“I wasn’t on board when you attacked.”

“But how”

“Shut up, I told you already.”

Once she was silenced, I ignored her completely and listened carefully to the buzzing comm connection.

“That’ll short out all the systems! We’ll be down for days!”

“We’ll be dead in ten minutes! Do it!”

The excitement vibrating through the comm drove Totobet to the enormity of touching me on the back of my arm and asked, “What does that mean?”

I cast her a smoldering glance and squelched the temptation to spit a suggestion that she live with the mystery. “They’re probably going to send a surge of energy through the ship, trying to short out the mechanism on the”

Suddenly I stopped, fitting together a dozen thoughts. Was it possible …

“Yes!” I bolted. Totobet flinched, but I didn’t care. “That’s it! Quen knew Sasaquon would have to flush the ship in order to turn off the drill! This door has a magnetic lock! He probably knows that too!”

She shook her head, confused.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.