215. The Plan
215
The Plan
A ’Dar
I slide my arm around her waist and pull her down the hall to the room we vacated only minutes ago. There’s no one in here. It’s easy to see we’re safe and alone.
Now that we’ve left the safety of our cabin, it’s clear the others in The Game will be able to see us, just as we can see them. Locations are harder to detect, but I have an advantage. This is my ship. Where others just might see a storeroom or a meeting hall, I know exactly which storeroom and where it’s located in the ship.
Although our initial strategy was to wait in safety and let the contestants kill each other, we don’t have that luxury now. Not with the pirates awake and roaming the vessel. If they’re smart, they’ll work their way through the ship, looking for stragglers and picking them off.
Suddenly, a bolt of fear sizzles through me. The weapons on the ship have all been disabled from the pulse. The pirates are the ones who activated the pulse, probably on a pre-arranged failsafe signal. They had to have rigged their weapons to be impervious to the effects of the pulse.
It is standard operating procedure to remove all weapons from ships we acquire. Except there had been so little time from the moment these males were captured and taken to the brig to the moment we all ran to our cryo pods for safety from the gas they released.
“I believe there are active weapons on the pirate ship,” I say, not wanting to keep the truth from Maya.
Although I’m looking at her, I didn’t need to see her to know terror fills her to her marrow. I smell the sour smell of her fear.
“You’re sure?” she asks.
“Not positive, but I doubt my males had time to disable or lock up their weapons, which I assume are impervious to their pulse. That had to be how the pirates planned it. It was a brilliant strategy.”
“And all we have is one darning ,” she says, then chews the inside of her cheek.
One darning which may or may not have as much fuel as the one I just used.
I comm Mel’Kan, not bothering to text because Zedd’s cameras are broadcasting our position. Time is of the essence.
“How are you coming on repairing the pulse damage?” I ask.
“Slow.”
His mate is probably at his side. I take it he’s not willing to divulge the truth, which means the situation is bleak.
“ Echtar vu villiam voss ?” I ask him if he knows the old language, one that is probably not in the Earthers’ translator database.
“ Ess .”
Maya raises her eyebrow in question. She clearly doesn’t understand our conversation.
Mel and I have a rapid exchange. He tells me things he’s already tried, most of which are over my head. I was first mate and seldom even entered the engine room. I have no aptitude for that. He informs me of other options he can explore, but he shares no optimism.
“The weapons are our least concern,” he continues in the old language. “Even if we get them working, the ship still needs to be ready for a voyage off this planet. I’m nowhere near being able to perform that miracle.”
When I terminate the comm, Maya asks, “Bad news?”
I don’t know why we bothered to keep things from our mates. They had to know when we switched to a language they couldn’t understand that things weren’t going well.
“He’s working on it.”
“Is it time to make our way to the landing bay to commandeer some working weapons?” She pulls her darning off her shoulder and hands it to me.
We make a plan, first mapping our route up another stairwell. To get to the fore landing bay on eight, we will have to ascend from where we are on Deck One. We discuss what we’ll do when we enter the bay.
“All we have to do,” I say, my words so upbeat you would think I’m describing a trip to pick flowers in the park, “is dispatch all living beings in the landing bay. Then we might have working weapons.”
“Piece of cake, A’Dar,” her voice is light. She wants to eat dessert? Did she swallow my lie? Think it will be easy? “Because if they get there before us,” she says, “that means they already have working weapons and all we have is a flamethrower that may or may not work. Don’t patronize me, A’Dar. It pisses me off.”