We moved forward carefully, Bryce taking point while the rest of us lurked from one doorway to the next, cautiously peering around corners. The ship seemed mostly empty, but the lack of bodies lying around made me think they’d captured the crew, rather than killing them.
But the lack of people didn’t mean we had an easy run to the bridge. Bryce was easing up towards one corner when Jai barked out, “Stop!”
Bryce stopped on a dime, his body frozen in position while he waited for Jai to explain what the hell the problem was.
“Back up slowly,” Jai told him, his eyes fixed on something at ground level, though I couldn’t see it from where I was standing. “There’s a trip wire at your feet.”
Bryce looked down, then took two slow, careful steps backwards. “I don’t see it.”
Jai checked the hallway ahead of us, then moved up to stand beside Bryce. He pointed out the wire, but Bryce still shook his head. It was only once Jai shined a light from his comm onto the wire – thinner than a hair, and almost transparent – that I could catch a glimpse of it.
“How the hell did you spot that?” I asked. I was currently at the rear of the group, and I was focusing half my attention on the hallway behind us. No point going to all this effort if we were just going to let them sneak up on us from the rear.
“I can see more ultraviolet light than humans can,” Jai explained. “I saw something shiny on the floor.”
“So what does this trigger?” Bryce asked, scanning the walls and ceiling around the trap.
“I can’t tell,” Jai said, after performing a similar sweep. “Probably safest if we back around the last corner and trigger it from a distance.”
We retreated, then Jai pulled a knife out of his boot and tossed it towards the wire. He ducked back around the corner before it landed… and a moment later, a light thud was followed by the sound of metal grinding on metal, and a spray of shrapnel skittered past us.
“Nice,” I said sardonically. “Nothing like a makeshift bomb. Good work, Jai.”
“Thank you, sir.”
We kept going, avoiding two more similar traps. Apparently, the pirates were just making use of any old scrap lying around, along with a few custom-designed pieces, to cause as much damage as possible. They wouldn’t care how badly the interior of the ship was busted up, since the only things they would be interested in was the cargo. Freighters like this were too big and slow to be useful to pirates, and they were difficult to sell on the black market for the same reason. Most likely, they would unload the cargo they wanted into a smaller ship, then cut the freighter loose as just another piece of space junk.
We were getting fairly close to the bridge when we met the next real resistance. We came around a corner, finding a cluster of Polvrons and Anicrians in the doorway that, according to our maps, led into the stairwell that would take us to the second level. They all looked up in alarm at our arrival, but instead of fighting us, they retreated into the stairwell, firing a couple of warning shots in our direction.
“Well, that sucks,” Bryce muttered. “That’s the way we need to go.”
“Reckon they’ve retreated up the stairs?” I asked. “Easier to hold us off from the top of them.”
“Exactly,” Bryce said, with a sigh. “Okay, let’s see if we can’t shake them up a bit.” He tossed a green canister down the hall, and a hissing sound indicated the gas it was discharging. The canister contained a potent sedative. At high enough doses, itcould render a person unconscious – though it had no lasting toxic effects – but even at lower doses, it could be disorienting enough to give us the edge in the fight. Our respirators would protect us from its effects, but the pirates hadn’t had any noticeable breathing apparatus with them.
We waited for a minute or so, to give the gas time to take effect, then we resumed our careful shuffle along the hall. There was no guarantee that all of the group we’d seen had been affected – or even that they’d stuck around to find out. They could have just hurried off up the stairs to regroup elsewhere.
We got to the doorway and a quick glance proved that the map was correct; there was a staircase leading up to the next level of the ship. And my guess had also been correct; the pirates were waiting just around the corner at the top of the stairs, ready to take us out from the more defensible position. I heard muffled voices, though I couldn’t make out anything useful.
They didn’t seem to be shooting at us, though, which I found odd.
“Carver, watch our six,” Bryce ordered, as the rest of us focused on the stairs. He raised his gun – a small, compact model designed to deliver brief but powerful bursts of laser fire – and took an experimental shot at the shoulder of the person hiding just around the corner. From the flash of orange fur and the short stature, it was an Anicrian.
But rather than hitting the pirate, or even scorching the wall, Bryce’s shot hit some kind of shield that was blocking the room right at the bottom of the stairs. The laser beam dissipated harmlessly across the surface of the barrier.
“Fuck,” Bryce swore. “Tangent shields. This is why I hate dealing with Polvrons.”
I agreed with the sentiment. Polvrons were great at inventing weird and wonderful contraptions, and while a lot of theirinventions were very useful, a few of them were an absolute pain in the ass.
“Not a problem,” Jai said, edging forward. He fired two more shots at the barrier, one up high and to the left, and the other down low and to the right. Then he pulled a knife out of a sheath on his leg and threw it at a point on the wall, just in front of where the barrier was. But rather than hitting the metal wall, it embedded itself in an object just in front of the wall – an object that was entirely invisible, until the knife shorted out its circuits. I realised belatedly that the small device had been employing what was colloquially known as mirror shielding – it recorded an image of what was directly behind the device and projected that image from special panels on the front. To an unsuspecting observer, it rendered the object effectively invisible. The technology worked best on stationary objects, and even better in dim light, but the most advanced stealth spaceships also employed that technology as one of a dozen different stealth techniques.
“How did you…?” I started to ask Jai, astonished that he’d managed to figure out the location of the device with just a couple of shots. But with enemies all around us, now was not the time for a detailed explanation.
“They taught us that in combat school,” he said succinctly. “The way the laser beam breaks up indicates the relative strength of the field. I’ll show you one day. When we’re not being shot at.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
With the disappearance of their barrier, the group at the top of the stairs had muttered a series of curses, and now seemed to be having a hasty, if muffled discussion on what to do next. But before we could figure out our own plan of action, a small, grey cylinder came skittering down the stairs.
