TICONDEROGA PROJECT

“Heads up!” I shouted once I spotted Brinn. I’d seen a compact Asian man dressed in UPE marine BDUs shadowing him earlier in the day and knew he had to be a guard.

Brinn’s hands sprang up while the guard drew his weapon. With Kegar’s reloaded sidearm already leveled, I shot the marine in the chest before he could react.

I stormed forward. “Jettison cargo pod three!”

Shock held my engineer motionless. Even his extensive experience wasn’t serving him this minute. I’d never known anything to hold him to inaction before.

“Snap out of it, Brinn! This is your jailbreak! Jettison the damn pod!”

Maddeningly slowly, Brinn worked his console. His languid compliance wasn’t deliberate—multiple safeties guarded the release procedure. Still, I would have appreciated alacrity.

“Glad to see you, Cap. What happened?”

“Too much.” I pressed my back to him, keeping both the aft stairwell and the corridors in view, as someone would surely come to investigate my earlier gunshot. “Did the pod release?”

An unfamiliar alarm rang through the hallways, followed by a ship-shuddering boom.
“Pod’s away.” He stooped to search for the fallen man’s weapon.
“We’re going to count on our people to deal with whoever’s in the pod,” I said. “Lexington shouldn’t be long. They’ll pick it up.”

“Lexington?” Brinn asked, obviously confused.
“Where have you been, Chief?”
“Minding this console ever since Kegar’s people took over.”
“Well, you’re sprung now.”

“He said he’d kill my granddaughter if I didn’t follow along. Did he really get to your family?”

“Yeah. Someone did.” My mind took a second to wonder if Kegar had admitted his guilt or simply used circumstances to his purpose. “We need to move it along. Do what you can to lock the ship down.”

Noise echoed from the stairwell at the aft end of the control room.

“Chief?”

“Couple of minutes, Cap.”

“Watch your back, Brinn,” I said before darting into the stairwell.

A marine poked his head around the opening into the deck two corridor and got a couple of close shots off before I hit him. When he crumpled, I caught a glimpse of a taller man in a business suit vanishing into the frame eighty corridor.
Chase the suit or secure command?

My hesitation allowed someone to get behind me and jam the barrel of a sidearm into my broken ribs.


“Killing Kegar doesn’t change the plan,” Charlie Benson said. “Drop the gun.”

I did as I was told. “Who said I killed him?”

Benson laughed. “Anyone else would have shot him or at least drawn a line before beating him to death.”

Well . . .

“You can never tell, Charlie.”

“Maybe I’ll take some of what he wanted.”

“Do I get to kill you while you’re in the saddle, Charlie?” I asked genuinely.

It’d be worth it.

Benson was silent as he considered this for an instant. I thrust an elbow into his shoulder and knocked his gun far enough away that the shot he fired struck my side rather than my heart.

Ferocity exploded from its cage down where I kept my guts. This time, I didn’t cry as I killed.

Benson wasn’t ambiguous. He was an asshole.

Our weapons training instructor once told my class gunshot wounds were funny things. Some people howled in pain and some barely flinched. Sometimes they fell over and never got up, and sometimes they never quit fighting. It seemed I was the fighting kind.

I retrieved the gun I’d taken from Kegar and started toward command.
I ran into another of the interlopers along the way and shot him on sight. Time was running out. The loyal crew was safe, Kegar was dead, and Ticonderoga would soon be back in UPE hands. My imminent death didn’t have any bearing on the situation.

The chair at my former station was a welcome respite as I opened up a wideband com channel.

“Lexington, this is Ticonderoga. How do you read?”

“Loud and clear. What’s your status?” West asked.

“We jettisoned the UPE-loyal crew in the cargo pod, Admiral. It’s set up as an emergency lifeboat.”

“We’ve got it on scanners now. We’ll take care of it. I assume you were otherwise successful?”

“It’s just me and Engineering Chief Brinn. We don’t have sufficient manpower to sweep the ship, but if some of them were with the crew, we should have Kegar’s party neutralized.”

“You have them in custody?” West asked.

“I was unable to secure their surrender, sir.”

“Roger that,” West said.

“How far out are you, Admiral?”

“Allowing some time to secure the pod, we should be there in about an hour.”

I keyed command sequences into my terminal as I spoke. “I’m going to extend docking latch A and set the computer to automatically accept the linkup, sir. I might not be here for you when you arrive.”

“Allison?” West’s concern sounded genuine.

“I took a hit. I’m getting pretty woozy.”

“Get to medical and patch yourself up as best you can.” I could tell he turned away from the microphone. “Alter course for Tico’s beacon. The pod will keep. Max thrust—open her up.”

The last sequence I entered into my console was a primary systems lockout. Engines, weapons—all of the good stuff would stay offline until someone with proper authority unlocked the system with an authorized code. It would slow down any of Kegar’s people that might be left.
“I’m sorry, sir. Kegar, Benson, Hayes, Jake . . . I let it get messy.”

I pressed my hand to the wound on my side, and the pain woke me to my situation. I stood shakily and moved toward the corridor entrance.

My vision blackened.

“You did good, Allison,” West’s voice said from miles behind me. “Do you hear me, Captain? You did good. Hang on—we’re coming.”

As night wrapped me in its embrace, I didn’t feel the certainty he seemed to.

And I didn’t care anymore.