Weeds of Eden Read online

  Thick blue beams of crippling EMP energy blasted the nearby Druze ship as well. They too began to drift, crippled by the MEA peace-keeping frigate that suddenly loomed over both of them.

  Vigilance had practiced their precision targeting for the most part. Matty flipped the switches on his console to enable the audio coming from the peacekeepers.

  "...in violation of MEA intergalactic laws specifically prohibiting..." Matty flipped it back off and concentrated on getting their systems back online. He could hear Mustache down the corridor also trying to find and reactivate whatever breakers might have blown and replaced any coils burned out by the Vigilance's EMP pulse weapons.

  "What've we still got?" he shouted to Matty.

  "Communications, internal systems including life support, and shields. No weapons or propulsion."

  Matty looked back to the screen where an MEA officer stood, silently lecturing them and likely stressing protocol and clearances for such kinds of hostilities. Suddenly, the screen's feed shook and the officer whirled in panic. On screen turning klaxon lights flared and illuminated the Vigilance's command bridge.

  Someone else had attacked the MEA sentry ship.

  #

  Joliver, Tina, and Julio crept through the halls. They'd gone for better cover at the far edge of warehouse district while the gunfight still raged nearby.

  Julio asked, "Any luck with that thing, Tina?"

  She shook her head. "They keep putting me on hold for the next available security member. Something else must have everybody's attention."

  Joliver imagined there might be some sort of civil unrest in the main section of Outpost 7. He guessed it might make their teacher do a quick head count and moaned. "Mr. Beck is gonna kill us," he sighed.

  Suddenly Austicon rushed past them and walked through the nearby doors. Julio crouched down to keep out of sight. "He can't kill a group of heroes who just apprehended the most powerful criminal in the galaxy, can he?"

  Joliver squinted, confused. He looked back at the Investigators who fought Austicon's henchmen. "Why would he kill these guys, even if he could?"

  Julio and Tina stared at their friend.

  "Ooooh! You mean us?" Joliver cringed. "I think I've had enough adventuring already."

  "Don't be such a sissy," Julio said. "Let's follow him."

  Joliver hedged.

  Tina nodded to agree with Julio. "I'm already on hold with the constables. We just have to follow and report his location once we get in contact with a real person."

  Joliver nodded reluctantly. "You guys are killing me, ya know? Quite possibly in a very real and literal sense."

  His friends shrugged. Mischief glinted in their eyes, inspired by teenage delusions of grandeur.

  They glanced back to see the mercenaries flanking the last couple holdouts. Full of butterflies and jitters they pushed open the doorway and plunged into the hallway to track the most dangerous man to ever exist.

  #

  "We've got to follow him and make him pay," Rock said.

  "I saw which way Austicon went," Dekker responded. "If we follow, we shouldn't encounter more of those tripwire bombs that killed Trigger."

  They had regrouped just outside of the polonium storehouse. Nibbs had disabled the octopoid device and hacked into the security feeds, learning that assistance from the local security or constables was unlikely. Austicon's device filed a number of false alarms all across the upper levels of Outpost 7.

  "I don't think any of you understand the level of scariness in that room." Guy thumbed a digit backwards. "Isn't anybody else bothered by this?"

  "You're the bomb guy. Defuse it," Jamba joked.

  Dekker watched Guy's reaction. The explosives junky just stared; his eye twitched.

  "I know you all want to go catch Prognon Austicon and leave me here to deactivate this--but it's freaky-level bad in there."

  "Nibbs?" Dekker asked their tech chief.

  "Yeah. It's probably worse than he says. Terrifying. I'd like to request that I not be here when we start messing with the moon-killing scary-bomb?"

  Dekker kept his eyes locked on the distance, not wanting to look away for fear that it might mean Austicon escaped. Finally, he turned back to his friend. "Who do you need?"

  "Nibbs for sure..."

  "Crap," Nibbs joked.

  "...and at least four others in case this is a second to worst-case situation."

  Shin asked, "What's the worst case?"

  "We're all dead, plus everyone in suborbital space over this hemisphere, so it won't matter."

  Dekker nodded. "Take who you need... the rest of you are with me."

  #

  Joliver was the tallest of the teens and so he peeked through the window. The others tried to crouch against the wall of the long, open corridor as if that would afford them any amount of cover.

  "What do you see?"

  "Shh!" Joliver shushed Julio. "Creepy mask guy is talking with Austicon. It's some kind of cryogenics facility. It looks like they freeze stuff here for transportation."

  The trio stood exposed in the hallway. If anyone walked in and found them there they would be in a world of trouble... possibly a lethal dose, depending on who it was.

  "Is there anywhere to hide behind those doors?"

  Joliver shook his head. "Not without being spotted by a psychotic killer."

  Julio frowned. He didn't want to give up on the chase, but their location didn't afford anywhere to hide.

  "Guys? What about this?" Tina pointed up towards the ceiling where a single ladder rung dangled. An adjacent sign labeled it as the emergency catwalk access.

  Julio jumped to try and reach it but came up short. "Joliver?"

  The taller teen leapt and snatched the handle. His weight dragged a ladder downward with a rusty, screeching noise that stopped them all dead in their tracks; their breath caught in their lungs and they waited for Austicon to emerge and kill them all.

  After a few seconds of silence, no pursuit came and they examined the access. When the ladder came down, a hatch had opened simultaneously.

  Julio scrambled upwards and into the dark. A few moments later he poked his head back down. "This way. I found the perfect hiding spot."

  The others crawled up and onto a maintenance platform that hung suspended from the ceiling inside the cryostation. They pulled the ladder up and closed the hatch behind them.

  Creeping as silently as possible, they barely dared look at the two assassins who discussed their plans below. Joliver looked down to the com in Tina's hand and suddenly had a terrible thought: what if the constables finally answer?

  With a look of panic, he pointed at it and raised his eyebrows, silently sharing his concern. Julio tapped him back and pointed up again. Another ladder, this one shorter and mounted to the wall, accessed a control room for the facility.

  They climbed it and entered the spacious cubicle quickly and stealthily. Computers and other equipment rested on the nearby desks and consoles.

  Julio, Tina, and Joliver peeked through the large pane of industrial glass. It provided the perfect vantage to keep an eye on their bounty.

  Tina glared at the communicator. "Now, if only I can get someone to respond!"

  #

  The Shivan pirate ship swooped down upon the Vigilance and unloaded its full arsenal upon the larger vessel. A small complement of missiles took out the weapons on the MEA's sentry ship.

  As intruders continued to beat on it with a battery of heavy laser fire, the ship shuddered and flamed. Plumes of gas and vapor leaked from damaged sections of the hull and the Vigilance powered up its engines to try and escape a further beating.

  "No, no, no!" Matty screamed at the MEA cruiser as it tried to extricate itself from the deadly situation. They'd hobbled the Investigators and then pulled out, leaving them to die. Matty rushed through the ship, trying to find and repair any fried circuits as fast as possible in order to restore weapons and propulsion systems--or even just one of them.

&nbs
p; The Rickshaw Crusader shook and jolted as their much larger enemy turned its attention back to them and began firing.

  Mustache and Matty traded nervous glances as they worked feverishly on restoring the systems. Thankfully, several retrofitted, black market upgrades on their ship meant the shields would likely fare better than the Vigilance's... for a time.

  "How long do you think we got?" Mustache asked between bouts of vicious shuddering.

  Matty grimaced with a nervous, sour smile. "Probably not long enough. It's gonna take at least thirty minutes to get us running again and we're sitting ducks out here!"

  "That's a very nonspecific amount of minutes."

  "I give us maybe twenty minutes at most. Unless someone comes to help, we're toast."

  "You think it's time to try something crazy?"

  Matty nodded grudgingly. "It might be."

  "Good." Mustache shot Matty a playful look. "Cuz I've got a crazy idea. Do we have power to the airlocks?"

  The Shivan vessel dropped in close like a confident predator, hovering just beyond the listing Crusader like an animal ready to strike a killing blow.

  Matty flipped a triggered breaker. "We do now, but are you sure about this?"

  Mustache bit his lower lip and shrugged as he started pulling on a spacesuit. "Trust me."

  #

  Guy muttered as he worked with the detonation systems the Druze had set up. He traced the wires back to the detonation control unit which blinked with a timer that ticked down with uncaring diligence.

  "Crap, crap, crap!"

  "Is it really that bad?" Ahmed asked.

  "Bombs--even big ones--don't normally scare me," Guy said under his breath. "But this thing? This terrifies me."

  Nibbs looked over the unit and agreed with Guy. "We can't deactivate this thing without setting it off."

  Ahmed and Jamba traded nervous looks and glanced at the dwindling clock. "Crap."

  Dirk and Corgan grabbed communicators and tried to contact the authorities and start an evacuation. All the lines were either busy or down. Corgan finally got through and waited on hold. He looked at the clock ashen-faced; there was no time for them to get anybody off-world. Even the Crusader wouldn't have enough time to get them out before it would detonate.

  Ahmed teetered on the edge of the giant hole the Druze had opened up. It delved deep into the crust and bored deep into the meat of the planet like a gaping wound.

  Dirk wandered through the polonium stores. Only a few pallets had been wired up by the connected dongles. Once they erupted, they would start a chain reaction capable of blasting high enough to take out even OSH3, the nearest transport hub orbiting above them.

  He leaned close to the connection where the cables affixed to the radioactive fuel rods and gingerly touched the union. Guy winced and motioned for Dirk to step back. The bombs were delicate and an accidental disconnect would set the whole thing off.

  Dirk stepped back like he was walking on eggshells.

  "If we can't disable it... what other options do we have?"

  Guy and Nibbs looked over the equipment already parked within the warehouse and then traded optimistic glances. Nibbs opened his portable computer and began hacking into Halabella's systems.

  Pointing his friends to the nearby machinery Guy asked, "Do any of you guys know how to operate these pieces of equipment?"

  #

  "This had better work!" Matty's voice crackled in the monitor built into Mustache's helmet. "The Druze ship has just powered back up--so you're only going to get one shot at this before we're dead."

  The Shivan vessel continued to hammer away at the Rickshaw Crusader's shields. Beyond the pirate craft, the Druze ship's stabilizing thrusters came on line and reoriented the ship to the standard plane with the others.

  "Druze weapons are hot and they're closing!"

  Mustache stood at the edge of the cargo hold with the doors open. Magnetic boots kept his boots clamped to the floor and a tether floated through the zero-g environment just in case the boots failed.

  "We won't last two minutes once they add their fire to that Class D," Matty insisted.

  "Hold onto your horses. I've got to get this just right... whether we live or not, this is the only chance I'm likely ever gonna get to try this."

  Without power, the Crusader rolled slightly and slowly, like a fish turning belly up. Mustache stood in the opening, grazing the edge of nothingness with his spacesuit.

  Nothing separated him from the sizzling, crackling sparks of energy as the enemies hammered away on their ship except for a meter of space and a shimmering shield less than an atom thick. At the top of his view, the pirate frigate came into view; it was close enough that he could see the stumpy pilot sitting at the controls. Mustache resisted the urge to flinch as it's barrage of lethal energy crashed against the barely-holding shields like violent tides.

  Seconds later he spotted the Druze ship. The Rickshaw Crusader continued the slow roll which changed his viewing angle, like the two enemy ships were solar and lunar bodies beginning to eclipse.

  Mustache smiled and waved at the Shivan pilot. "Gotcha."

  He yanked the Reliquary, Dekker's Prize weapon, from behind his back and aimed the ancient device at the enemies which had lined up perfectly. He wasn't sure exactly how to aim the meter-long engraved cylinder mounted to a pistol grip, but he felt certain he could make due by pointing it. Mustache pulled the trigger.

  Sigils along the barrel illuminated and a boom like thunder rattled the walls of the cargo hold. The weapon kicked like a mule and a massive blast shot from the business end, firing an emerald beam of arcane energy nearly three meters thick and wreathed with white lightning. It rocked the Investigator back on his mag-locked heels and threatened to tear him from the deck and smash him against the walls of the Crusader.

  Mustache's knees barely held as he stiffened to keep from tipping backwards under the thrust of the weapon. He howled in excitement when the deadly beam streaked through both of the enemy ships.

  The blast ripped open a seam on the pirate vessel and dashed the Druze craft to fiery pieces. Enemy bulkheads systematically failed and slagged chunks of armor plating floated adrift, blasted free from their home; air and steam hissed into the void of the Shivan ship as it began to split apart under the stress of catastrophic faliure.

  As quickly as it started, it ended. The etched symbols quieted and the arcane shaft of light dissipated.

  Flames danced within the breach of the Shivan ship. Nothing remained of the Druze spacecraft except for busted pieces of scrap. The pirates' vehicle flickered with electrical surges and then went silent as it dropped escape pods that rocketed to the surface.

  With the hold secured Matty and Mustache returned to the cockpit to check the status of their friends. Mustache called up a message from Nibbs while Matty checked diagnostics and located the rest of the system errors.

  "We'll get it back up and running after about twenty more minutes. Hopefully the others don't need an expeditious evac or anything in the meanwhile."

  Mustache frowned. "That's too bad."

  Matty shot him a look and his friend showed him a photo beamed to the ship's logging system. A timer rigged to a polonium bomb network read nineteen minutes and thirty-four seconds and a text blurb said: get to safety! Crusader is in the blast radius.

  Springing to his feet Matty rushed to the reset locations and began opening access panels. "If we push it, we'll make it--get to work!"

  Mustache shook his head. "This was sent about eight minutes ago."

  Matty's face fell, crestfallen. His friend shrugged and rummaged through a storage cabinet until he found a jar of the home-brewed booze Guy often kept on hand. A handwritten label identified its contents as "engine parts cleaner."

  Mustache took a big gulp, winced, and handed it to Matty. "No part going out sober."

  The pilot nodded and took a big gulp of his own. He sighed with defeat. "Can't argue with that logic."

  #

&n
bsp; Julio watched from the darkened control room. The masked man left through a door at the far end of the facility and Prognon Austicon crawled into a freezing pod to hide.

  "Now's our chance," Julio whispered. He activated one of the hibernating computers and pulled up the operations software, a relatively simple program. "Which cryo bay is he in?"

  Joliver stood on his toes and tried to spot any identifying markers. The bank of tubes facing them, opposite of Austicon's hidden location, had a number painted on it. "I can't see it. It must be on the front of the pod."

  Julio gulped a big chest full of air and then surrendered the seat at the monitor. He crept towards the door.

  "What are you doing?" Joliver hissed.

  "I'm gonna get that number." He ducked through the door and crawled onto the catwalk.

  The other two watch Joliver sneak across the suspended gridwork panels like a wraith.

  Tina slid into the seat and pressed a few keys with her free hand. In her other hand, she still held the communicator. "Wait a second," she put down the com and her fingers flew across the keyboard. "We can't do anything, anyways. There's a manual safety lock activated."

  Joliver looked through the glass and watched his friend sneak further across the suspension walkway and crouch down to make himself smaller as he moved into a position visible to the enemy's pod. Julio flashed him a number with hand signs.

  "Seventeen," Joliver said, spotting the safety release lever on the wall halfway between Julio and the control room door.

  "I got it," Tina said, trying to activate the pod. The screen flashed and a warning popped up each time she tried to activate the freezing cycle. "No good. I'll try and override it." Her fingers tapped the keys with a steady cadence.

  Joliver pointed to the safety switch on the wall. Julio scrunched up his face to show his confusion. He shook his head. Joliver pointed more insistently.

  "It's not happening from here," Tina reported. She opened a few other dialog windows and tried to hack her way around. "It's not a software lock. The switch is a hardware component--until it's flipped we can't activate any of the pods."

  Joliver pointed again, more insistently. He made a lever pulling action, trying to communicate via charades.