Deluge

WHEN YANA’S TEAM passed the engine room, they shed a member, Rick, who entered the room as if reporting for his shift, going straight to the duty station as they had planned and saluting the man already there. That man returned the salute, made an about-face, and headed gratefully for the crew’s quarters.

There would not be a lot going on in the engine room while the ship was docked, and they were counting on the crew being bored and somewhat slack.

After Rick left, the team had five minutes to reach the bridge. Yana had not been on a troop ship for more than a decade, but she was relieved to find that this was a vintage model that dated back to her days in the Corps. Same dingy beige paint, same sharp corners and textured metal corridors, same gridded stairs. She would have expected to feel right at home here, on the same sort of vessel where she had spent much of her career, but despite the familiarity, she found it oppressive and confining. Her entire cabin on Petaybee would have fit in a small section of the ship’s main corridor, but she’d grown used to windows and a door she could walk through to the outdoors.

Or maybe it just had to do with the fact that she was no longer on a ship full of comrades. Except for the four people with whom she’d boarded, she was surrounded by enemies. In her experience, that tended to make one feel confined.

Crew members had passed them without a second look so far, but she knew it was just a matter of time before someone who was looking for distraction from routine duties would realize they were not the people their name tags claimed them to be.

Pet Chan marched into the security control center, where cameras, monitors, and extra weapons were kept.

The bridge was in sight when Raj Norman took his planned detour and disappeared through a starboard hatch. This would be where the backup generators for the bridge were located.

Yana and Johnny stopped and positioned themselves on either side of the entrance to the bridge as if standing sentry. With a slight crackle and a loud hum, the lights went out. A series of blips preceded someone on the bridge saying, “Captain, the computers are down.”

It would take a few moments before they felt the temperature dropping. Meanwhile, they would have other problems.

With intercoms, computers, and lights down, as well as backup generators, Yana’s team was betting it would take some time for the various sections to communicate with the bridge. The crew would be equipped with glows and battery-powered torches, and presumably had enough survival clothing to weather the storm. Their air supply was warm enough and should be sufficient for their needs. The team could not tamper with the ship’s oxygen mixture without suiting up in full space kit, which would have aroused too much comment before they could put their plan into action. Besides, none of them wanted to kill anyone-at least, Yana thought grimly, it hadn’t yet come to that-but they did need to distract the enemy crew and cause as many to leave the ship as possible.

The darkness would make finding the root of the malfunctions more difficult for the crew, and would also help conceal the hopeful saboteurs.

For further distraction, hoping to drag the command staff from the bridge, they relied on another old standby.

“Fire!” The bellow was Raj Norman’s, with just the right degree of panic in it, enough to bring everyone running to where he had set a dramatic but not-too-harmful blaze.

People poured past Yana and Johnny into the corridor, their glows showing them to be the captain, first mate, navigator, and com officer. Good. That should be everybody. With the ship docked, there was no reason for anyone to remain on the bridge, though under normal circumstances protocol dictated that they do so.

Yana and Johnny slipped inside. Cursing came from down the hall as the officers and crew fought with the fire. Yana hoped Raj hadn’t done too good a job of setting it. A shipboard fire was always dangerous, and if it got out of hand, even a little, it could damage something vital. They needed the ship operational when they were ready for it to be.

The crackling of flames was quickly drowned out by coughing, swearing, and one male voice saying, “Too bad we had to put it out. It’s starting to get bloody cold in here. What the frag is taking Engineering so long, anyway?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant, there was this fire…” a reedy voice, not without sarcasm, replied.

“And now there’s not!” the officer bellowed. Uh-oh, one of those, Yana thought. At least his lousy disposition made him easy to hear from a distance.

She sat down at the comoff station, which she and Johnny had not rearranged, and recorded and directed several messages to be sent automatically at regular intervals once the ship was outside Petaybee’s magnetic field. Such automatic messages were not something a com officer would ordinarily detect, since security software concentrated on incoming messages or possible tracking devices but not actual outgoing communications of a routine nature.

With that precaution in place, she joined Johnny under the consoles, where he was busily rearranging critical connections, swapping chips, disrupting circuits, wreaking selective and highly specific damage within the delicate web of wires. From the shadows cast on Johnny’s face by her torch and his own, it seemed he was entangled, head first, in the trap of a giant arachnid.