The Aspirant by Nick Adams

Author:Nick Adams [Adams, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781916105690
Publisher: Elliptical Publishing

22

GDA Battle Cruiser Proklisi, Orbiting Tourkouaz

Bache woke the next morning with a grin on his face and stared up at the cabin ceiling. He missed home and today the ship would start its journey back to Dasos, stopping in at Deelatayne to drop him off.

He picked up his tablet and realised he’d been asleep for over eleven hours. He listened and couldn’t understand why the main engines weren’t online. Chief Whipper had said they’d be leaving Tourkouaz in a couple of hours and that was twelve hours ago.

He had claimed one of the largely unused noisy cabins right at the back of engineering where they’d been hidden a few days ago. So he’d certainly know if the main drives were online or not.

Loading his software from his organic chip, he flicked through the ship’s camera views until he found the bridge. He stared at the image for a few moments and changed to a different camera angle.

‘That’s weird,’ he said to an empty cabin and sitting up. ‘Who are all these people?’

He didn’t recognise a single person on the bridge and began searching through the ship’s cameras to find anyone, anywhere he recognised.

It wasn’t until he checked hangar three, that he found what he was looking for. But it certainly wasn’t what he expected. Everyone he knew was lined up, hands cuffed behind their backs and guarded by a group of armed soldiers all dressed in black. Chief Whipper was there, Tyrett, Gyton, and Twynner and everybody who had been running the ship a few hours ago.

‘What the hell?’ he said, jumping out of bed, quickly dressing in an engineering overall and making sure it looked as if no one had been there; he picked up the tablet and listened at the door.

Hearing nothing he opened it a crack and peered down the passageway, back towards the stairway to main engineering. It appeared clear, so he slipped down to the stairwell silently, descended to the bottom level and hurried to the small access cover that concealed Grogun’s hiding place.

He was in and had the cover back on in just a few moments. Lighting up the screen on his tablet to provide a little light in the gloom, he nearly screamed as a face appeared along with the muzzle of a laser pistol pointed straight at his face.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Grogun. ‘Thank skata for that – I tried to warn you, but they came so quick.’

‘Who the hell are they?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m glad you’ve brought that,’ she said, pointing at the tablet. ‘What are they up to?’

‘Last time I looked, they’d handcuffed and lined everybody up in hangar three,’ said Bache, finding the camera feed again.

They only just caught them being marched onto a troop carrier that sealed and left the hangar.

‘Find an exterior view,’ she said. ‘I want to know where they’re going.’

Bache scrolled through the feeds again until he found a view from the top of the ship.

‘What the skata is that?’ said Bache. ‘It’s immense.’

A matt black vessel that made the Proklisi look like a corvette hung off the port side.

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