Chapter 80: Chapter 8: Big Trouble

Dash burst onto the bridge, lungs heaving from his sprint through the Stardancer’s passageways. He locked the reinforced hatch, slipped around the vacant flight engineer’s station, and plopped himself into his captain’s chair. The three-station bridge wasn’t spacious, but it was comfortable and welcoming. The ship was the closest thing he’d ever had to a home. He wasn’t about to lose it now to some corrupt rock-dwellers. “What’s our status?”

“Almost ready to pull out of the shiplock,” Gaius said. He sat at the pilot station, forward and to the right of the captain. Displays and panels ringed each station. Primary systems reports dotted the main viewport at the head of the compartment. Gaius referenced a checklist, then toggled switches.

Dash opened the bow cam streams. Porter, Boci, and Galo stood right outside the closed cargo bay door of the Stardancer, alternately shouting at each other and into their PDs. Bania was nowhere in sight. The handful of workers glanced with tepid interest toward the commotion. “Where’s Doc and Tinker?”

“In the medbay. Had Tinker strap Doc in there.”

Dash checked the ship’s boarding log. “Ops crew is accounted for. Take us out,” he said, then opened the ship’s general comm while fastening his chair harness. “All hands, prepare for emergency departure. Strap in immediately,” he said, then muted all incoming comms. He didn’t have time to argue with Henrik. “Preflights done?”

“Close enough,” Gaius said, and moved his hands to the thruster panel. As he input the maneuver, a comm request icon appeared. At the same time, a collision warning sounded.

Dash silenced the warning and opened the comm, muted on their end. “Where do you think you’re going?” Bania’s voice boomed over the bridge. “I’m not getting stuck with your garbage contract. Give me back my rocks!”

Dash flipped to the starboard cams. Bania’s freighter pulled out ahead of the Stardancer and into a blocking position. A flurry of both anger and despair filled his gut. Bania was going to get them killed. “He’s trying to block us in.”

“We’re not getting out of here without banging hulls,” Gaius warned.

Dash leaned forward in his chair. “What do you think the guild will do to us once they see the suite?”

Gaius’s eyes went unfocused as he digested the potential of a horrible fate at the hands of the guild. “Banging hulls it is,” he said. He cracked his knuckles and initiated the thruster sequence. A warning icon flashed on the main display. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and overrode it.

Through the bow cam stream, they watched the shiplock slowly drift away as the Stardancer backed out. Warning lights flashed around the shiplock. Porter, Boci, and Galo stepped back from the field, biological instincts screaming at them to get away from the giant hole into outer space, particle field or not.

“I hope that thing fails and blows them into space,” Gaius said.

Dash pointed at the main display. “Forget about them. Don’t let Bania block us in.”

“Roger that. Hold on.”

Dash clenched the armrests and braced himself. The deck rocked beneath them as the two freighters collided. Alarms screeched as the dull howl of battling metal reverberated throughout the ship.

“We should be able to push past him. Our thrusters are better,” Dash said.

“According to specs. But remember ours are still a bit wonky since Henrik recalibrated them,” Gaius said.

Two blips moved in their direction on the localized map. Drone tugs, on the way to secure either ship in place. The Stardancer’s window of escape just lowered dramatically.

“We don’t have time to play who’s got bigger thrusters,” Dash said. He input a maneuvering sequence on his station and shared it to the main display.

Gaius raised his eyebrows at the maneuvers. “That’s going to hurt.”

“It’s going to hurt them a lot more than us, if you do it right.”

“There’s no if,” Gaius said. He tightened his harness, then initiated the maneuver. The Stardancer’s bow thrusters reversed direction, driving the ship into the rock wall of their berth. There was another jolt as the bow struck rock. Gaius then fired a burst from its main engine. The thrust pivoted the ship on the rock, pushing Bania into the opposite side of the berth.

“Reverse it!” Dash shouted.

“I am!” Gaius said, killing the main and firing all thrusters.

Bania’s ship hit the side of the berth, sending chunks of rock into the main docking channel. The Stardancer slowed, then struck the other freighter in another violent jolt. A new alarm sounded: a decompression warning.

“The primary airlock has been breached,” Gaius said.

“I’ll worry about that,” Dash said, tapping at his panel. “You get us out of here.”

“Roger that, Cap.”

Gaius wiggled the ship free of its berth and into the cavernous main channel. One of the approaching tugs dove toward Bania, the other to the Stardancer.

“Blast them with the main!” Dash said.

“Gladly,” Gaius said. He swung the ship’s stern out and fired the main engine. The scorched tug spun away like a swatted insect. The Stardancer twisted in the open channel, then rocketed toward the entrance. The suddenly narrowing entrance, as the massive doors began to close with some poor freighter halfway through the opening.

“Hold on. This is going to be close,” Gaius said.

The ship zoomed past mothballed mining rigs and processing barges moored along the channel walls. The door was almost shut, the other freighter desperately trying to maneuver clear. Dash unmuted the ship’s comm for a moment to announce, “All hands, brace for impact.” He gripped the armrests, hoping they hadn’t used all their luck with the previous near miss. 

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Three short breaths, and the ship shuddered as the door impacted the hull. A heavy thud was followed by a piercing howl of metal on metal. He checked the topside cam streams. Half were dead. Another jolt, and some part of the hull caught, then ripped free. The ship lurched once more, and then everything was still.

Terminus Station, and the surrounding planetoid encasing it, swung out of view of the aft cams. The Stardancer wound through smaller rocks and a few barges before clearing the station proper. Gaius enlarged the scanner view. “No signs of anything targeting us. Unless they’ve got some hidden point defenses, we’re clear.”

Dash reminded himself to breathe and read over the damage control report. “Primary airlock is out of commission. Some topside cams are down. Several minor atmosphere breaches. Assigning Tinker to them as priority work.”

Gaius spun around in his chair. Sweat dotted his forehead. “At least we’ve got a pallet of expensive minerals to pay for the damage with some left over for us.”

Dash switched to the cargo bay stream, and sighed when he saw the pallet still strapped to the deck. He updated the crew over the ship comm, instructed them to work on the priority repairs, then muted it as Henrik started in.

Undoing his harness, Dash reclined his chair. “We made it.”

“Got pretty dicey there for a minute,” Gaius said.

The bridge hatch buzzed as someone tried to enter. When the hatch didn’t open, they resorted to pounding the reinforced metal. Dash wondered how Henrik could’ve gotten up there that fast when the bridge comm buzzed. “Captain, I must speak with you immediately,” Wesley said.

“So much for basking in our victory,” Gaius moaned. “Does he have to do this now?”

“Let me do the talking,” Dash said, and unlocked the hatch.

Wesley stormed onto the bridge, clutching himself in one of the low-grade medbay robes. Between the outfit and his wild, unkempt hair, he resembled an addict escaped from a treatment facility. “Captain, I demand to know who sedated me?”

“Listen, Doc—”

The comms panel flashed with an incoming tight beam request from Terminus Control.

“Pretty sure this is for you,” Gaius said to Dash.

“Give me a minute,” Dash said to Wesley, then opened the comm on the main display. 

Porter’s pudgy face appeared. His eyes simmered with rage. “Captain Anderton, if you don’t get back here right now, consider yourself a dead man.”

“Hold on a minute,” Dash said. He was going to play dumb and let Porter reveal what he knew. “Listen, that whole thing is Bania’s fault, not mine. Don’t try to pin it on me.”

Porter’s face hardened. He leaned closer to the cam, threatening Dash as if they were physically in the same room. “I know what you did. My team found Kashara and Osric.”

So much for trying to talk his way out of it. Dash said, “That was self-defense. They tried to physically force us to take on a slave contract.”

“And technically, Kashara and her partner killed each other,” Gaius added before Dash silenced him with a hand wave.

Porter’s gaze somehow grew more maniacal. “You’re such hauler trash. I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer. I think I’ll start by having your ship gutted right in front of you. Then I’ll move on to your crew.”

White-hot anger frothed within Dash, stirred up by the realization of the depths of Porter’s depravity. “You’re running a sleazy guild exploitation operation, and you’re calling me trash? You better hope we don’t meet again, or I’ll blow your head off.”

Porter smiled, though his expression held a sinister undertone. “I’ll be seeing you shortly,” he said in almost a whisper, and closed the comm.

“You better hope not,” Dash said. He noticed both Gaius and Wesley had stiffened, as if suddenly wary of him. “Sorry, I just get a little intense about scumbags. Terminus is worse than I thought.” Before they could respond, a sensors alert popped open on the main display. A small ship had emerged from the station and accelerated in their direction.

“Looks like a tug,” Gaius said.

Wesley hugged his robe tighter around his body. “What do we do? Are we in danger? Should we take evasive maneuvers?”

Dash said, “Listen, Doc, this isn’t like the entertainment vids, with chases and fancy maneuvers and ships blasting each other to atoms. In reality, it’s pretty boring. You fly fast and straight. We’ve got bigger engines, and they don’t have the range to pursue us—”

The bridge lights flickered, silencing the crew. Dash held his breath, silently telling himself that what he feared was about to happen wouldn’t actually happen. His attempt at willing reality failed when the slight hum of the engines went silent and a critical alert appeared. 

“Main engines are offline,” Gaius said, hands dancing over various diagnostic readouts. “I think it’s a fried power regulator.”

“We can repair that,” Dash said.

“Sure, if Tinker was online. Without the bot, the crew isn’t getting it done before they catch up to us.”

Fear crept into Wesley’s expression. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?”

Dash hopped up from his seat. “Big trouble,” he said, and ran for Engineering.

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