Broken Boundaries Ch. 03-04

Alain gritted his teeth but he saw no way to overpower the two or call for any help that could arrive in time. Even if he'd taken the emergency pistol, he knew he'd be no match for an experienced shooter.

The younger one gestured with his gun for Alain to step back. 'It's going to be a while so you'd better relax and don't try nothing. You wouldn't want to spend your last day or two in pain, eh?'

'Hang on, Lio.' said the first. 'The captain wants him to guide us to every weapons locker to see if there aren't any accidentally left behind.' he said and grinned at Alain. 'Looks like you're going to earn being alive for now.'

'I've checked, there are no weapons on board.' Alain said.

'The captain says there's a weapon locker at the rear of the ship that has a specially hidden compartment for emergency access to weapons, and we're going to make sure whether it's been emptied or not since only a few select people know about it.' He gestured at Alain's suit. 'Get going.'

Asitha grabbed her tablet and opened a secure file. 'We need to get there first.'

Tiness saw the blueprints of the Walkurea on the screen. 'You have this information!?'

'It was given to me to be an advantage in case we got the opportunity to use it. And now we have an opportunity to use it to save Alain.'

***

'Are you leading us around in circles!?' said Sorg when Alain turned another corner and led Sorg and Lio through another corridor.

'Some power units were damaged during the impact. If you want to pass through lethal radiation be my guest. I'll take the safe detour.'

Sorg grumbled. 'Just hurry.'

Alain halted at a door near the back of the ship. 'Here.'

Sorg opened the door and looked inside the mostly empty room apart from a few empty racks at the walls. 'This doesn't look like an armoury.'

Alain shrugged. 'This should be it. I didn't design the ship, I just remove components.'

Sorg went inside and pulled out a scanner. It sent out a pulse and the screen pointed towards one of the racks. He moved closer and examined the sides. 'Get in here, there's a compartment behind this rack.'

Lio pushed Alain inside and Sorg gestured for him to take the other side of the rack. 'There are release mechanisms at the sides, pull them loose.'

Alain took the handle near the bottom of the rack and after a couple of jerks it moved, and the rack came loose from the coupling to the floor. The one on top was easier to free and he pushed the rack away from the wall with Sorg. Behind it was another door and Sorg examined it. 'No lock?'

'Maybe they thought it wasn't necessary or would get in the way if someone needed these weapons.' Lio said.

Sorg hummed in doubt but opened the door. The room beyond wasn't big and all that was left was a large steel chest at the back. He pushed himself towards it and fumbled with the latches to open it. 'What the.'

'What is it?' asked Lio.

Sorg held up a food container. 'This is Silth food.'

Lio leaned into the doorway. 'What do you mean, Silth!?'

The next moment he was hit hard from behind and tumbled and rolled towards Sorg. He caught a glimpse of a Silth space suit just before the door closed and he was trapped with Sorg.

'Thank you.' said Alain. 'You saved me.'

'To quote the last movie we saw, what else are friends for?' chuckled Asitha.

Tiness put her hand on his shoulder. 'I'm really glad we could set this trap just in time.'

Alain grinned. 'Good thing they took me along so I could talk to you in my suit without them noticing.' he said and knocked on the door. 'And a good thing there was this interference free room for electronic repairs near the back. They can't send or receive any signal.'

'What do we do about the rest?' asked Asitha.

'First we see if what they said is true and see if there's a hidden compartment at the armoury. If there happen to be weapons left behind I don't want them to get into their hands, and we can arm ourselves. Did any of you receive any training in weapons?'

'I had a brief military training and fired a weapon a few times.' said Asitha.

'I never touched one.' said Tiness. 'I wouldn't know what to do with them.'

'All right. I only have knowledge about them but never fired one, so we'll avoid a firefight as long as we can.' he said and went with the girls towards the armoury.

The armoury itself was empty and after a thorough search Tiness found a lever behind a narrow grate near the floor at the back wall. She pulled it and a section of the wall snapped forward. Alain pulled it open to reveal a walk-in closet stacked with arms and ammunition. 'Fucking crap on a stick! They were right!'

'What do we do with these?' Asitha asked.

'For now, let's box them up apart from one each that we'll keep for ourselves.' Alain said. 'Tiness, I'll give you one with an empty magazine so you won't have to worry about firing while still looking threatening enough.'

She was glad to not have to handle a dangerous object while not looking defenceless. 'Yes.'

'This is the last.' said Asitha and closed the last box with the closet's contents.

Alain secured one handle of the box to another with a short chain. 'Good. I think these are safest stored somewhere on the Amaroth where they won't suspect them.'

'I know a compartment at the impact zone where we can hide them between other debris.' said Tiness.

'All right, lead the way.'

***

'Think they'll have noticed by now?' asked Tiness while she looked at the bandit ship through binoculars from a window of one of the structures at the front of the Amaroth.

'If not, they'll suspect something soon.' said Alain. 'Then they'll come searching for those two guys and me.'

'We put the rack back, I doubt they'll ever find them.' said Asitha. 'There's a good chance they'll come to see us since they don't worry about killing.'

'Which means we'll have to take them out any way we can.' Alain said. 'Maybe I can get a peek at their systems.'

'How?' asked Asitha. 'You can't walk up to that ship and plug in.'

'No, but maybe I can connect remotely. Since that ship is made up from different parts it's highly likely they had to disable or lower security protocols to connect the different systems. That would create the hole needed to connect to their core infrastructure. I just need a few things from my pod.'

The three kept to the backside of the pod and out of sight of the ship, and Alain was glad it was still empty. He went around and into the airlock as quick as he could, retrieved his equipment, and returned to the girls quickly again. 'I have what I need. We can head over to an observation deck where I can target the ship without being seen.'

The girls followed him through the Walkurea and to a compartment with a reinforced glass dome large enough to sit under and get a view along the side of the warship. The bandit's ship could be seen from the side and Tiness noticed people working near the engine. 'So they really need repairs.'

'Which means they won't leave soon and need at least one or two men to do repairs while the rest might come after us.' said Asitha.

Alain opened up a terminal window on his portable workstation and probed for a remote connection. 'Got it!' he said. 'I was right, they had to disable security to make things work and never imagined it could become their weakness.' He typed several commands and other windows appeared with status views. 'The ship's name is Lady Wind, registered as a trading vessel at a lot of nations. They've been going around a lot apparently.'

'Trading is a good cover for robbery.' said Asitha.

'Looks like they're faking flight logs as well. Their arrival here isn't logged.' Alain said and checked another stream of data. 'Someone has stored crew photos. We can see how many of them there are.'

He ran a viewer on the data and it displayed the collection in sequence. 'Those two are Sorg and Lio, the ones we trapped.' said Alain and pointed them out.

'A dozen men.' said Asitha after several photos. 'The guy with the fat neck seems to be the captain.'

'That would be Don Sax according to the ship's manifest.'

'What's?' said Tiness, then growled at the photos appearing on the screen.

'They're worse than beasts.' growled Asitha.

Alain closed the viewer quickly. 'This is how low some people can go.' he grumbled. 'A thousand years in excruciating pain is too good for them. At least now we know we don't need to hold back.'

'Yes.' said Tiness between clenched teeth.

***

'What do you mean, disappeared!?' raged Don.

'We can't make any contact and Rodge and Sto didn't see any sign of them when they went around scanning the ship.' said Dural, his second in command.

'Then he must've gone to the Amaroth!'

'That should've triggered a reaction from the Silth. Their sensors would've detected him and set off an alarm.'

'There's a possibility that he made contact and they've turned off their sensors.' Don said and looked out towards the Amaroth from the bridge window. 'What's the procedure at an alarm?'

Dural thought for a moment. 'The Silth would send out a military vessel. Depending on how close one is, arrival would take at least two weeks for their fastest ship.'

Don turned towards him. 'Send men to the Amaroth. Kill the Silth after making sure they had contact or not.'

***

''Do you think those cats might be involved?' asked Sto on the way to the Silth pod after crossing the wreckage..

'I don't think so.' said Rodge. 'They're just way too happy to see us humans getting killed.'

'They'd like nothing more than us killing each other and then take over our territory.' said Fitch. 'Fucking beasts.'

Rodge chuckled once at the memory of how they played with the crew of a small Silth vessel a while ago before putting them out of their misery. 'Beasts, indeed.'

'Look!' said Sto when he spotted movement at the Silth pod. 'Those two are leaving.'

Rodge waved but didn't get a response. 'They didn't see us.' he said when the two suits moved towards the back of the Amaroth. 'Maybe for the better so we can surprise them.'

Sto sniggered. 'They'll be surprised for sure.'

One of the two suits went down into a service hatch while the other stood at the edge and hadn't moved while the three thugs approached it from behind. Fitch gave the suit a push against its shoulder. 'Huh?' he said when the suit bent forward while the feet stayed put. 'What's this?'

Sharp pain shot through his upper body while red streaks flashed in front of him. He turned around just in time to see Rodge and Sto roll forward with their suits full of holes and their blood making red trails, and a human and a Silth suit holding guns. Darkness enveloped him. 'Fu-.'

Alain and Asitha tried not to think of the images they'd seen when they pulled the trigger but it was futile. Alain felt his arms tingle all the way to his fingertips. 'You all right?' he asked.

Asitha took a deep breath to calm herself and told herself this was the right thing to do because they didn't deserve to live another second. 'Yeah. Trembling but all right.'

'I know how you feel.' Alain said and took her arm. 'Let's move before they send the next guys.' he said and glanced at the stuffed suit Tiness had used before its arm was damaged.

***

''Five down, seven to go.' said Tiness while she, Asitha, and Alain took a breather inside an emergency pod.

'Assume there are more.' said Alain. 'We can't be certain of how many there are of them from the few photos we saw.'

Tiness nodded. 'What's next?'

'What would they do now?' said Asitha. 'My bet is they want revenge and will hunt us down.'

Alain stared at the gun in front of him. 'I think so too. They can't kill us by destroying the warships, they're too big for that, so they can only come after us directly.'

'Hiding wouldn't be an option either. They won't leave before they see our blood.'

Tiness shivered and her ears went flat. 'I hate this.'

Alain pulled her head gently against his shoulder and stroked it while he racked his mind in search of solutions. 'We'll have to hunt them instead as a defence. Trap them although they're probably more wary of that now.'

Asitha checked the oxygen status of their backpacks hooked up to the pod's life support system. 'We have to be quick about it, we can't last for a long time on these emergency systems when they're mostly depleted.'

'Hit and run.'

She looked back at him. 'What?'

'We know these ships best. I don't think we can do more than hit them from a distance, then run for it and head towards a trap and hope they'll fall for it, if they come after us.

Asitha pondered for a moment. 'Yeah, not much else we can do with just the three of us.'

Alain looked at his arm display. 'Maybe we'll get lucky. My tablet's running a simple probe and logging of the Lady Wind's systems to find something I can use to manipulate their systems.'

Asitha chuckled. 'Send them with their ship into the sun.'

Alain, smiled stiffly. 'Yes.'

'Packs are full, Shall we make our first run and hope for the best?'

Alain nodded.

***

Alain checked his display. 'I activated the passive mode on all undamaged sensors in the ship to track their movements. We just need to be extra careful in the blind spots to prevent a nasty surprise on our end.'

'All right, can you see them now?' Asitha asked.

'I get movement at two sections but I can't say how many there are.' he said and pulled up a floor plan. 'The ship's a bit of a maze where this group is,' he said and pointed at the plan. 'if we can lure them here we can trap them in this corridor by one of us closing the section door behind them and the others closing this one in front of them.'

'You can override the locks?' Tiness asked.

'With the right code, yes.' he said and displayed the sequence of numbers. 'Remember this, it'll allow you to secure doors and only unlock them with this code.' The girls memorised the code and he looked at both of them. 'Ready?'

'Not really but we don't have the choice to stay put unless you feel like dying.' Asitha said.

Tiness clenched her fists. 'I'm scared but I trust your plan.'

Alain smiled gently at them and took them by their shoulders. 'I trust you to pull this off.'

***

Asitha and Alain drifted slowly along the corridor wall towards the corner where they should find one or more bandits at the end of the intersecting corridor. They stopped just before it and took a moment to prepare for the attack. 'Ready?' Alain asked.

Asitha put up her gun. 'Ready.'

Together they rounded the corner far enough to aim their guns and shoot at the three figures at the other end of the corridor. Bullets sparked along the surfaces near the bandits, missing their targets because Asitha and Alain weren't used to handling guns at a distance.

The bandits turned at once and returned fire, and Alain cried out when one bullet went right through the shoulder of his suit.

'Alain!' shouted Asitha and reached out for him.

He pushed himself away from the corner with his feet and covered the hole in front of his shoulder with one glove. 'I'm okay! My oxygen will last long enough to reach the trap!'

Asitha covered the hole in the back with her glove while they pushed themselves as fast as they could through the narrow corridors.

Sparks flickered on the wall next to them when they went through a bend. 'They're following!' said Asitha.

'Good.' said Alain. 'Tiness, get ready! There's probably three of them!'

'I am!' Tiness said and peeked through the small window of the door she hid behind. She watched Asitha and Alain pass and held her breath in anticipation of the bandits.

They jumped and pushed themselves aggressively in pursuit and Tiness jerked back when they passed her door. She counted to ten to be sure there were just the three following her friends, then opened the door and looked right and left. The short corridor was empty and she pushed herself to the section door at the junction.

Asitha and Alain almost crashed into the opposing wall at the junction at the end of the corridor. They turned to face their pursuers just as they came around the corner. 'They're fast!' Alain said.

'They must be used to this!' Asitha said and pushed herself to the section door controls. One of the men aimed his gun at her while he flew down the corridor and took a shot at her.

'AH!' cried Asitha when it hit the door post in front of her.

'Asitha!' shouted Alain.

'It missed!' said Asitha and punched in the door code as fast as she could with her gloves.

The door slid shut and the bandits grabbed the wall to stop. One of them turned around and spotted Tiness crossing the other end of the corridor. 'They're behind us!' he shouted and fired at once at her.

Tiness yelped when she saw the sparks flying and curled up into a ball to make herself small. She grabbed the door controls and punched the keypad quickly.

The panel blinked red twice.

'Shaz!' she growled and punched the code again. The panel blinked red again and she cursed furiously.

'What's wrong!?' said Asitha.

Tiness pointed her trembling finger at the keypad. 'My hand's trembling I'm pushing the wrong button!'

'Take a deep breath!'

Tiness shrunk again when sparks flew again and she saw the men coming fast at her. She bit her tongue to focus on her task and ignore her fear, and typed again.

The door shut as slow as a door could in her mind while more sparks flew close by her..One of the bandit's helmets slammed into the small window of the door and it got hammered by the butt of a gun. She jerked further back and expected the window to shatter but it held. 'It's closed!' she said and noticed how fast her heart raced and how the metallic taste of her blood filled her mouth.

Asitha pulled Alain towards her, took his tape from his pocket and covered the holes in his shoulder. 'How bad are you hurt!?'

Alain groaned lightly. 'Not too bad, I'll survive.' he said. 'Don't worry about me now, we need to get Tiness and get out of here.'

***

'Morons!' Find a way out of there!' shouted Don when he heard from his trapped men. He turned to the man next to him. 'Frenk! Drive them out and kill them!'

'On my way!' Frenk said and hurried to the shuttle bay of the ship with two other men.

Don went over to the communications panel and opened the standard broadcast channels. 'I don't know who you are but you have nowhere to run.' he said while holding back most of his anger. 'I will find you and your Silth pals and make you regret not accepting your inevitable fate.

***

'Fuck!'

'What is it!?' asked Asitha.

Alain tapped on his arm display. 'I'm getting movement from all over the ship at both sides!'

'What does that mean? The sensors are broken or they're blocking them?' Tiness asked.

'I get no interference on the sensors, which means something is moving in large numbers.'

Asitha stared at Alain. 'Hunter drones!'

Alain looked at her. 'I'm afraid you're right. They're scanning actively for us now.'

'Can't we hide?' asked Tiness.'

Alain shook his head. 'They're not fast but they're usually very powerful scanners. They'll find us unless we're out of their range outside the hull or in a secure room like where we locked the first two scumbags in.'

'The Amaroth has one.' said Asitha while she searched the blueprint of the warship.

'That still leaves going there and them not knowing where we went.'

''Can we move along the hull then?' asked Tiness.

Alain nodded. 'But we'd have to move along the other side from their ship.'

'Then we should go right now.' Asitha said.

'Yes. Follow me.' said Alain and pushed himself away.

Alain led the girls to the nearest exit out of the Walkurea away from the bandit's ship, and they pulled themselves along the hull as quick as they could towards the Amaroth. Asitha looked back when a growing sense of unease welled up in her gut and saw a flickering near the middle of the ship's length. 'They saw us!' she said and Tiness and Alain looked back to see someone flying towards them on a scooter.