Chapter 30

Zeke didn’t know it at the time, but they had doomed themselves.

The ship had already stressed its primary shield generator when they were trying to board his ship. They had overridden several safety features to get it operational when they had backed off the first time.

The force of their curved hull suddenly hitting a larger, reversed-curved and mostly immovable object at speed caused it to crumple and crack along a good section of the top of their ship. As the ship rebounded, most of the water from its top bladders vented.

Then it vented the pressurised air from the breached rooms below, and the compartments’ contents followed. Zeke’s shield happily absorbed most of the air and water. Hence, he and his people barely felt a bump.

Meanwhile, the other ship was shot downwards, sideways and on a forward trajectory.

At first, the people viewing the disaster didn’t comprehend the severity of the situation. They didn’t have a clear view of the top of the ship hidden by Baraz’s ship. They just knew that the ship had hit the shield and been repelled.

None of the people viewing the ship’s demise was surprised to receive the automated distress call. They watched as the ship started to spin and tumble as it sped up on its way into a new trajectory in a lower orbit.

Then Zeke saw the damage.

“Shit!” he exclaimed as he quickly turned the proximity scanner and its alarms back on to cover the port side and bottom of the ship. He’d turned those scanners off when the other ship had tried to dock.

“Freya, warn Dusty that debris is coming our way. Those idiots hulled themselves. Tell her to get her ship above us, now. The other ship is breaking up, and our shields will help protect them.”

After a few moments, Freya replied, “They are moving above us, Captain. I’m tracking the other ship. It is spewing debris in all directions. Several large plate sections have ripped off, but they are tumbling away from us.”

Pin-pricks of red started showing up on the screen as Freya tracked the debris flying away from the other ship. Alarmingly, many spots were larger than others. Zeke now realised that the other ship was in deep trouble.

He watched the screen in horrified fascination. He sighed in relief when he saw two pods blast away from the front of the stricken ship. “How many were on board her, Freya?”

“Sixteen,” she replied sadly.

Zeke frowned, “They look like the same type of two-man-pods that Baraz had.”

“Yes, Captain. They are standard crew pods. One has one person in it, and two people are in the other. The two pods near the ship’s rear for engineering are still in situ.”

“Freya, how were the other eight people supposed to get off?”

“I believe an eight-person troop carrier is in the lower hold.”

Zeke asked worriedly, “Why in hell haven’t some of them tried to use the troop carrier?”

“Captain, if you remember when the ship passed below us, my scans showed nine people clustered in a room at the top of the ship where the access port was. I am afraid that I am no longer receiving life signs in that area of the ship.”

“They must have been ejected into space after the rupture. I’ve tried hailing them on the emergency channel but have received no response. I’m not receiving beacon signals either. I can’t be certain that they were wearing space suits.”

Zeke shook his head sadly. “So where are the other four people, Freya?”

“They were in the rear of the ship. I suspect their shield overloaded when they hit ours too hard, and their generator blew up. I detected a strong heat signature as the ship tumbled away. Indications are that it hulled Engineering.”

“I was surprised that they would attempt what they did. Captain, why didn’t they just back off? I didn’t understand why they continued to endanger their lives and ship.”

Zeke sighed, “Freya, all I can think is that there is some evidence on Baraz’s ship that will indicate that some powerful people were doing something wrong. They don’t tend to care about the death of their minions, just that they complete the tasks set for them.”

He sighed again, “I probably should have jumped to their ship and tried to stop them.”

Freya was quiet for a little while.

Finally, she said, “I’m sorry, Captain, but in every computation, I ran, your chance of success without using magic was nil. Even using it, they were not favourable.”

“I determined that you would have had to expose that you used magic if you did anything. You could not easily explain away how you arrived on that ship. All of the scenarios I ran of you doing so concluded with you having to flee Sol’s space if you could.”

“I have learnt that magic users are still not widely accepted here unless you are very powerful like Queen Lee. If you are caught using it, and it becomes widely known, people are just as likely to persecute you, or you would be banished to Harmony.”