Past the Redline

Throttle Sixty-Two

The captured mechanics didn’t seem to have a procedure at hand (or tentacle) for what to do if captured by an adversary who just violently boarded the vessel they were working on. Mostly, that meant that they were following Diana’s lead. “You,” she said, pointing to the many-limbed borel. “Grab that guy there. They’re probably not dead, so can you give them first aid?”

“There’s a medical station three decks back,” one of the others said with a vague gesture to the back.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, bring them to that. I bet they’ll be busy, but that’s someone else’s problem. In the meantime, you two, where’s the nearest control centre?”

“The bridge?” one of the ktacha asked.

“I bet the bridge is defended, so no, not the bridge. Come on, that can’t be the only place networked into the ship’s computer.”

“There’s the docking and hangar command centre ahead,” they said. “It’s the tertiary bridge, if the main and secondary bridge lose control of the ship.”

Diana grinned. “That sounds like exactly what I’m looking for, thanks. Now, if you would kindly lead the way? I’m on something of a timetable.”

A faint crackle in her ear popped up before ChaOS spoke. “It will take another twelve minutes before the third phase is ready to launch. More if you expect it to be a capable vessel.”

Diana touched the side of her head in the universal sign of someone speaking over some comms, then she let her hand drop as she realised the Federation people before her wouldn’t understand that at all. It was Earth-universal, not universe-universal. “Got it. That’s longer than I expected, what’s the hold up?”

“Damage was greater than expected, and I’m trying to be somewhat subtle. Ideally this will look like it was planned from the start, so the remains of the Hercules need to look as though they were designed to accommodate the third phase. That means creating several mechanisms only to eject them.”

“What if we stop being so subtle, what’s the timetable then?”

“You wish to unleash a full-on grey-goo scenario within an enemy vessel? It’s possible, though unlikely, that the Federation has protocols in place to scuttle the ship in that event. Subtlety isn’t a bad thing, Mistress.”

“Fine, might take that long to get where I need to go anyway.” Diana gestured with her handgun, and the two ktacha started to float across the corridor. The borel, meanwhile, grabbed the bodies left behind and pulled itself away with a few tendrils hooked onto the handlebars lining the passage.

The two mechanics didn’t speak much as they moved across the ship. Diana didn’t fail to notice how slow they were going though. She suspected they had both decided to protest her capturing them by moving at as leisurely a pace as they could manage.

Diana didn’t mind. She had time to spare and the insides of a Federation warship were new to her. They seemed to really like this one shade of greenish-beige, and there weren’t as many padded surfaces as she would have assumed.

It was a nice blend of utilitarian and corporate-boring that seemed purpose-built to serve its purpose and nothing else. No flair in the design, no pretty flourishes or clever gizmos hanging around. It was quiet too, though that might have been an artefact of the lack of pressure. It had to be more than that, though. Maybe the Federation just valued silence onboard their ships.

“It’s over here,” one of the ktacha said. They’d dropped down a level, which is to say, they were closer to the central shaft of the ship. The mechanic was pointing to a heavy-looking bulkhead door, one they were very clearly not standing in front of.

“So, just in there, huh?” Diana asked.

They made assenting gestures with their hands.

“And if I open that door I won’t be surprised to find half a dozen soldiers waiting for me on the other side ready to open up on me at a moment’s notice?”

The mechanics shared a glance, then one of them pulled themselves a bit further back from the doorway.

Diana shook her head. “Okay, well that’s not going to work at all.” She checked her equipment and found a distinct lack of anything explosive. She was regretting not coming with some more armaments. Just a few grenades could have levelled the playing field immensely.

“Okay, so… here’s the plan. Your suit’s helmets are separate from the actual clothing part of the suit, right?” The mechanics agreed, though they seemed reluctant about it. “Perfect. Undress.”

Diana watched to make sure they were complying, which they did though only reluctantly, then she started looking for cameras. With ChaOS helping her, she found one camera set just above the doorway. She brought her face close to it, no doubt giving the people on the other side one heck of a closeup. Then she stole a piece of tape from one of the mechanics and slapped it over the aperture. Duct-tape, or its equivalent, was something mechanics carried regardless of species, it seemed.

Once she had the mechanic’s space suits, she shooed them into a corner of the corridor where they’d be out of the way, then she carefully placed the two suits in the air, posing them so they’d look somewhat realistic. “All I really need is about three seconds,” Diana muttered as she checked her handgun.

With a flick, part of her vision was taken up by a screen linked to a tiny camera on the end of her gun’s barrel. It wasn’t ideal, but it would serve her purpose all the same.

Diana stood on the ‘top’ of the door, then reached down and tapped the button to open it before pulling her arm back snake-fast.

The door whisked open and before it was even entirely gone, the corridor filled with gunfire as the people within opened up on the empty suits.

Diana swung her arm around, focusing entirely on the screen overlaid atop her vision.

The tertiary bridge had a small room connected to it. Something similar to an airlock, with racks for suits and equipment and a few amenities. A pair of tables had been clamped to the floor at an angle, forming a temporary barricade behind which a trio of marines stood.

Their fire paused as they realised what they’d been shooting at. Which is when Diana opened up herself. Three quick shots, all aiming centre-mass.

The marines were thrown back. One was flung across the room while the other two had their boots clamped to the floor, so they merely bent in a way that, on a human, would be awful for their ankles.

Diana swept the room, looking for more problems, but when nothing popped up she gestured to her mostly-naked companions. “Alright, get inside.”

The mechanics shot looks she couldn’t read to the two very perforated suits still hovering in the middle of the corridor. The rounds they’d used weren’t very strong, Diana noted. Not even strong enough to break through the corridor’s far wall.

Likely a good thing. They didn’t want to break their own ship just because they were clumsy.

She swung into the room after the two mechanics, then pointed them to the corner. “Look, there’s fresh suits there. Dress up, if you want.” Diana placed a foot down next to one of the marines, then aimed her gun down at the alien when he started to move towards his own. “No. Just no. Stay down and you’ll make this easier on yourself and everyone else.”

She peeked into the bridge and found it filled with nervous officers and crew, only a few of which had holdouts. She closed the door between the antechamber and the bridge, then looked at the marines.

“You don’t happen to have grenades, do you?” she asked.

As it turned out, they did.

A grinning Diana had the marines undress, then locked them and her mechanic friends in a Federation-grade washroom with all sorts of interesting washroom-related contraptions that she didn’t have time to explore. She shut the door, then checked the grenades she’d acquired. “Are these dangerous?”

“I believe they are concussion-based,” ChaOS said. “Likely too weak to damage the ship greatly, but still dangerous.”

She had five of them, which is why, when she opened the door into the main section of the bridge, she tossed in only three before closing the door again.

There were three ‘whumps’ so close together that it was hard to tell them apart.

When she opened the doorway again, she found the room turned into a sloppy mess, with bridge personnel tossed around and some delicate-looking devices turned into scrap.

Diana floated in and shot any of the crew who looked conscious enough to cause trouble.

“Well, that wasn’t too hard,” she said. She still had that roll of not-duct-tape. It was a bit of a chore, but she divested the crew of their arms and taped the lot of them together against a support pillar at the rear of the room. “Now, where can I jack into this system?”

***