I could have finished statting Raltus. Instead, I wrote this.
I relive my father’s death about once a week.
The food on the heighliners of the Imperial Merchant Fleet is nothing memorable, even without the concussion that followed. I dimly remember leaving the midship wardroom, headed aft to my quarters. The hatch outside my bunk wouldn’t open, and as I fiddled with the control, a heavy blow from behind drove me to my knees and a second one turned out the lights.
I woke, slowly, to the sounds of struggle. Corwin – my father – was grappling with three crewmembers I didn’t recognize. One man lay on the deck nearby. Blood ran freely from his mouth and nose, and his throat seemed oddly flattened. For all his skill, the remaining assailants were slowly forcing Corwin back toward a maintenance airlock, just large enough for one human in a void suit.
Its door yawned open, like a hungry maw.
The conspiracy unfolded before me in a flash – most, if not all, of the crew was neck-deep in a plot to “reconsign” the heighliner’s cargo. Given the nature of her cargo, the forces of Chaos were clearly the intended recipient. I didn’t stop to consider the deeper implications as I turned my thoughts to survival.
I carefully looked around, moving as little as possible to avoid attracting attention. I was laid chest-down on the deck of the aft maintenance bay, between the master control console and the forward hatch. And now, to my growing dismay, I could make out the irregular form First Officer Oughusk, crouched over the console.
My only hope was that Captain Denec wasn’t a Heretic, too. I took two deep breaths to focus my mind, tensed my arms and legs like coiled springs, and leaped to my feet. I covered the distance to the forward hatch in four long strides, but the clank-clank-clank of my boots on the corrugated steel deck was unconcealable. Oughusk glanced over his shoulder, and with widening eyes, spun back to his console and tapped rapidly with his manipulator arm. I dove for the hatch, sliding through just as it snapped shut. I bounced to my feet once more, and the deck tilted crazily beneath me as my head swam. I caught myself against a bulkhead and did some more deep breathing.
My pulse pounded in my ears, but not loudly enough to muffle the unmistakable CHA-WHOOSH of a couple of cubic meters of atmosphere venting through the hull and into the void.
I pounded along the corridor, avoiding high-traffic areas, and always moving forward. If I paused, I would hear the steady clank of pursuing footsteps, reverberating along the steel tunnels.
My pursuers got me in their sights less than a hundred meters from the bridge. There was a blinding flash to my right as a lasgun blast carved a half-meter-long trench in the bulkhead. Barely two seconds later, my world exploded into noise as alarm klaxons screamed their warnings. Denec’s voice, tinny through the ship’s comm., called out, “Shots fired on board! Officers and arbitrators to the bridge at once!”
“Heresy! Mutiny!” I shouted, but mere human lungs could not overpower the klaxons. I poured everything I had left into my sprint, running literally for my life. I felt the heat from another lasgun blast behind me, and at that point my vocalizations degenerated into a wordless howl.
I burst onto the bridge, still screaming, and I was cut off abruptly when I ran full-speed into a crewmember’s chair. The bridge was empty, save for Captain Denec, who started to ask me what was happening.
“Mutiny!” I shouted, cutting him off. “Seal the bridge, sir! They’re right behind me!” Denec was an experienced captain, and you don’t live long in the depths of space by ignoring potential threats, no matter how ridiculous. The bridge access door closed, and the locking bolts shot into place.
“All right, son,” Denec said, sternly. “That door’s a hardened alloy. Take a week and a half with a lascutter to break through. Time to explain yourself, and it better be damn good.”
I laid it out for him. “Your cargo was too ripe a target. Heavy bolter parts and ammunition? Who thought freighting that stuff together was a good idea?”
Denec wasn’t looking at me, instead moving from display to display along the consoles of the bridge. “Warp-cursed Tech-priests. Oughusk has the security monitors jiggered, nothing shows out of the ordinary. He told me Rispol was going out in a Void suit to check a hull fissure, when I saw the portside maintenance lock cycle I figured that was him.”
“Well, kid,” he continued. “Let me lay it out for you. Oughusk will kill our drivetrain from the engine room. We’ll drift in the void until we’re missed at Landunder. The Imperial Navy will be looking for us right quick tomorrow. Now, the Astropath was pulled off the ship just before we left dock above Scintilla, so we can’t holler for help. I got six days’ water and rations stored up here, and like I said, no one’s getting through that door. Heat and atmosphere are supplied independently to the bridge, so we’re pretty much self-sufficient for a week or so.”
“Pretty much?” I asked.
“Yeah, kid,” he replied. “About all they can do is…” As Denec spoke, the background noise of the bridge changed subtly. A continuous background thrumming stopped, leaving the chamber much quieter. And right on cue, we floated off the deck. “…kill our gravity,” Denec finished.
“I’ll tell you what I think, Captain,” I said as we drifted. “High-value cargo like this, only two Arbitrators on board, Astropath pulled out at the last minute. Add ‘em up, and I think you were set up, sir.”
“Tell you what I think, kid,” he replied, sounding grim. “We hold the bridge from the crew, we live through this…we’re going to meet an Inquisitor.”
