“Is it numbers, or letters, or what?” I asked Jens.
“Whatever you like. Should be at least six characters long, for security, but like I said, the pirates will only get three tries each before it cuts them out. If there’s twenty pirates on the ship, that gives them maybe sixty combinations. To pick the right one with those odds would be a miracle.”
“Let me think about that for a second.” I took a few steps away, trying to figure out what message I could send to Jai that would mean anything to him, with some number or letter combination that he could decipher from a few cryptic phrases. It would have to be numbers only, I realised a moment later. Letters in the Eumadian script operated on a completely different system from Alliance script, so any code using spelling would be lost in translation. But what numbers would mean anything to him? I tapped at my comm, noting down phrases, then deleting them, then trying again. Finally, I had something I thought was workable. “Ready when you are,” I told Jens.
“Give me two seconds. Nearly ready…”
“Route the scanner through here…” one of the engineers said, pointing to a point on the console. “Then select all the security sectors… And we’re good to go.”
“What’s the code?” Jens prompted me.
“Eight, one, seven, three, one, five,” I recited.
Jens nodded and entered the code. “Eight, one, seven, three, one, five. Got it. The rest of you, start entering that into your comms, then go tell the rest of the crew.” He closed the console, then turned to Bryce with a look of grim determination. “Right, then. Let’s go cause some mayhem.”
I fired off the message I’d constructed to Jai, desperately hoping that he managed to decipher it. There were two fairly serious problems with this plan. Firstly, I didn’t know how we’d know if he’d figured it out. At worst, he’d fail the three attempts he had, but that wouldn’t leave him any worse off than he wasnow. The bigger problem was that I had no idea how we were meant to pick Jai out from among all the glowing dots that had appeared on my comm map. He’d had ten minutes or more to start making his way towards the bridge, so he could be in the thick of it with some of the pirates by now. And while he’d had a good headstart on us, it wasn’t impossible for us to catch up to him at some point. I didn’t want the slightest risk of accidentally killing him if we mistook him for one of the pirates. Unfortunately, that was largely beyond my control at this point.
We spent several minutes making sure everyone, the crew included, could access the map. The plan was for the crew to stay here, armed with metal rods and a variety of hand tools. The entrance to the storage area created a natural bottleneck that would be the best spot available to hold off the pirates if any of them came back this way.
The rest of us were going to join Jai’s efforts to retake the ship. The problem with that, though, was that we didn’t have any long range weapons.
“I propose we split into two groups,” Tolvorez announced, the instant the rest of us joined the soldiers by the door. “One group can take the lower floor-”
“No,” Bryce cut him off. “That didn’t work last time, and it’s certainly not going to work now. We need to make up for our lack of fire power with an excess of numbers. We go as one team. Yes, we’ll split into two groups, but we’re staying close to each other.”
Tolvorez looked shocked at the way Bryce was stomping all over his plan. “Excuse me, but I think I’m more qualified to be-”
“Shut up,” I snapped at Tolvorez. “Bryce is right. The only thing on our side right now is numbers.”
“I agree with Major Preswood,” one of the other team leaders said, a Denzogal Commander.
“This is a mutiny!” Tolvorez spluttered. “I outrank both of you-”
“But you don’t outrank me,” Bryce snapped at him. “We have a ship to save and a distinct disadvantage in our options to do so. This first group of pirates is guarding the way to the upper deck,” he said, pointing to a small cluster of lights on the map. “So we come at them from both sides. My team will distract them from the right. Hill, you take the other half of our team around here, to flank them.” He pointed to the hallway on the other side of the cluster, where we could get relatively close to them before we’d be spotted. “If we’re lucky, you’ll be able to sneak up behind them and take them out while they’re distracted. And for god’s sake, remember that hitting things in zero gravity works totally differently, even if you’ve got mag boots on.”
“We should turn them off,” I advised, having seen the way Jai moved so silently out the door. “There’s a certain risk involved, but it’ll mean we’re a hell of a lot quieter.”
Carver spoke up next. “Once we take out the first group, we can take their weapons. That should make it easier to even the playing field against later groups.”
Bryce nodded. “Teams one and two, you go with Commander Hill. The rest of you with me. And Tolvorez, you’re coming with me as well.”
“I’ll be filing a report against you once this is finished,” Tolvorez promised.
“You do whatever you like,” Bryce replied. “All right then, we-”
“Fuck,” I cursed, unintentionally cutting Bryce off as my comm vibrated quietly against my arm. A short message from Jai appeared on the screen.Bouncing ball.
I looked at Bryce as he read the message over my shoulder. “What the hell does that mean?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
JAI
After leaving the storage facility, I moved quickly but cautiously along the hallway towards the front of the ship. I was travelling largely along the ceiling, as a strategic move. Under normal circumstances, I’d be using the railings that ran along the sides of every single passageway in the ship. Anyone who spent a serious amount of time in space knew perfectly well that a power failure could result in the loss of simulated gravity, and the railings were a basic safety feature. But that also meant that the pirates would be expecting me – or anyone else hunting them – to be moving along at what would normally have been about waist height from the floor. They were less likely to be paying attention to whatever was happening on the ceiling, and with the dim light and my grey suit, I might be lucky enough to escape their notice. Or at the very least, their surprise might buy me a half-second advantage going into any battle.
What it also meant, though, was that I had to plan each jump perfectly, and execute each landing with precision, since there was nothing for me to hold onto if I misjudged a movement.
This early into my journey, I was making little more than a cursory examination of the hallways as I reached each corner. It was most likely that the pirates had retreated towards the bridge, except for the ones who were searching for the missing crew members. With the obvious shut-down of the engines, they would have headed straight for engineering. If the crew were smart, they’d have laid some kind of ambush to attack the pirates as they came looking for them. Either that, or they’d have to do some very fast and coordinated running away in order to out-manoeuvre the pirates.
