Downfall, Part 8
14 Jun 2017User4296
Apex Unlimited AnacondaUnknown System
June 3302
"Now what?" the pilot asked.
"Where are the lifeboats? Escape pods?" I asked, taking a step back and removing the pistol from the side of the gunner's head. He seemed to visibly relax, but jumped slightly at the bang on the bridge door.
"They're trying to get in," he said. "Without a torch, though, that door should hold for a while."
"There's a lifeboat up here," the pilot replied, turning and pointing toward the starboard side of the bridge. "The rest are scattered around the ship, but they're pretty clearly marked - you can't miss them."
"Okay," I said. "Sit tight for a minute." I kept the pistol readied but lowered – a sign of good faith, maybe - and moved in the direction the pilot had pointed. Sure enough, a sign built into the ceiling pointed at a small door set into the side of the bridge. The door slid away as I slapped the keypad next to it, and the lights came on inside.
The lifeboat was small, but large enough so that the bridge crew - normally five or six people - all had a place to strap in. This worked perfectly.
"All right, come over here - slowly," I commanded.
I backed away as the two bridge officers slid out of their chairs and approached, the gunner was the first through, but the pilot paused as he crossed the threshold.
"You're letting us go?" he asked.
"You said you're only the hired help, right? Besides, you've been cooperative, and I'm not a fan of killing anyone I don't have to - even though that's already bit me in the ass once."
He looked down. "Look... This may be their ship, but the crew was all hired separately. There are a few more of us in engineering who aren't a part of their science division - we just operated their ship." He paused, then looked back up at me. "You think... you think you can let them go, too?"
"That's up to them," I replied, as he finished climbing into the pod. I punched a few buttons on the keypad again, and the door slammed shut. A quick glance through the small window on the hatch revealed that the two men were seated and had just finished strapping themselves in. With a shrug, I pulled the lever next to the door.
The room shook slightly as the lifeboat was pushed free of the Anaconda, and my view through the window was replaced with a circular space that the lifeboat had occupied mere seconds before, the stars visible out beyond the opening.
"Good luck, fellas," I muttered, and turned away from the hatch.
A loud bang on the bridge door pulled reminded me that there was still a lot to do. Even if the security force was as small as the communication officer had said, the bridge was indefensible, and trying to fight my way out was suicide. Maybe there was...
There. On the floor nearby was a grate, and I knelt beside it. It didn't budge the first time I pulled at it.
"Shit," I breathed, and looked around.
The bridge was laid out like a semicircle, with the door set on the flat edge. There wasn’t much on my end of the bridge, but the other end looked a little more promising - there were many storage lockers, one of which read "BRIDGE DEFENSE" on the front in large, red letters. I made a beeline to it, taking care to duck under the circular window set in the middle of the door.
Inside were a row of laser rifles, so I tucked the pistol into the back of the tuxedo's waistband and grabbed one, slinging it over my shoulder. The rest of the lockers didn't hold much, mostly rations for the bridge crew and a few spare parts for quick repairs, though one did have a multitool inside of it, which went into a pocket.
On my second trip past the bridge door, I stole a glance out the window. Four people were gathered outside, and appeared to be having some kind of conversation. All of them were clad in the same generic body armor and grey fatigues that the two dead guards on the bridge wore. One of them noticed me, and the banging on the door resumed with renewed vigor.
Not going out that way, I thought, and walked back over to the grate. Thanks to the multitool, the grate came away easily. I cast it aside and dropped into the maintenance tube, not being able to help but think that I tended to find myself in a lot of these.
A few meters later, the tube sloped downward until it reached a second grate, this one on the wall of the tube and had light pouring out of it. I recognized the corridor as one of the ones they had brought me down on the way to the bridge. I had just reached out for it when I heard a voice from out in the corridor - toward where the ramp to the bridge was.
"We're not getting in there, man," it said. "With this shitty torch it'll take hours."
"So?" another voice replied. "It's not like he's going anywhere. We'll just take turns."
"We could just wait him out, too," a third voice added.
“Are you crazy?” the first retorted. “He’s got access to the flight controls.”
"Look, the boss wants him out of there now, so that's what we're gonna do. Help me with this, wouldya?" a fourth commanded. "Besides, I want to gut him myself - Barry and Rob are dead because of him."
"And the two crew," the second replied.
"Fuck the crew!" the third shouted.
The four voices gave way to a loud whirring noise. I reached out and took hold of the grate, and pushed, but it didn't budge. With a sigh, I braced my foot against it, then reared back.
The whirr suddenly stopped, and I cursed, the interruption of my kick causing me to topple over backward.
"You weren't kidding," the second voice said. "This is going to take forever."
"It's your turn now," the fourth commanded. "Here, take this."
“You had it for, like, five seconds,” the second voice replied.
There were sounds of shuffling out in the corridor before the whirring noise started back up again. I reared back a second time and kicked the grate open, the sound thankfully drowned out by the torch, before crawling out into the corridor. To the left and right, the corridor was empty.
I pulled the weapon to my shoulder and moved off down the corridor, leaving the whirring noise – and the occasional arguments of the guards – behind me. The path to engineering didn’t take long, as the route was well marked by signs set into the corridor’s ceilings. The ship also seemed deserted. Maybe the bridge crew was right, I ventured as I turned the final corner. Maybe there aren't many –
"Hey!" a voice at the end of the corridor shouted, slamming the door of hope shut. "The fuck are you-"
Flanking the door into the engineering section were two security guards, both armed, but we had surprised each other - their weapons were still holstered, while mine was up and in my hands. I fired the first shot nearly reflexively, which caught the guard on the left in the neck, and he buckled to the floor.
My second was less lucky, as the other guard had dropped into a crouch and struggled to free his weapon. He finally did, but the only way he could go was back, as the empty corridor between us held no cover. I backpedaled to the corner, firing as I went, and he blindly returned fire as he somehow managed to engage the door control. Every shot missed - and someone, somewhere, was probably laughing as a result.
I leaned out and opened fire on the doorway at about the same moment he moved to step inside, and his luck ended when one of my blasts caught him in the back of the neck. He pitched forward and fell into the room. I was right behind him, and hopped over his body as I entered engineering.
The room was long, and held a walkway flanked on either side by a long, horizontal tube, and each one fed into the massive power plant housed at the back of the space. Along the walkway were four people. two men and two women. Three of them stood at the control panels that were spaced along the two tubes, while the forth was stopped in the middle of the walkway, holding a dataslate. All of them were staring at me, jaws dropped, and four sets of hands went into the air nearly immediately.
"Hi," I shouted, over the hum of the engines, "I understand you get paid for shit."
The four of them looked at each other.
"Here's the thing," I continued, "I really don’t like your employer. Your friends up on the bridge thought I should warn you before I did something crazy.”
There was a second of hesitation before an elderly engineer in the back shrugged. "I’m not getting paid enough for this," he said, and his compatriots nodded their agreements. I moved aside as the four of them filed past me and back out into the corridor. That done, I approached one of the consoles and stared at it for a second.
“You want to overload it?” a voice asked.
I turned, and saw that the elderly engineer had lingered for a moment.
“You’d do that?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “I was supposed to retire last year. The boss denied my retirement.” He reached over and tapped a series of commands into the console. Within a few moments, the whine from the two horizontal tubes had already grown noticeably louder, and it wouldn't be long until the system started tearing itself apart.
“Thanks,” I said, and the two of us walked out of the engine room. As the door slid shut behind us, I slammed the butt of my rifle into the panel, smashing it apart. “Speaking of which, where is the boss?”
“The lab’s a deck up,” the engineer responded. "Follow the science. It’s all he seems to care about.”