And as the words came out of her, the two of us stared at one another, eyes wide with a sickening realization.
“Liberty?” I called into my wrist, trying to sound calm. I put my feet against the bulkhead and yanked the cable with all my might. Screw trying to unclip these cables, I’d rip the bitches in half if need be. The cable’s male ends snapped, severing the connection and sending tiny pieces of plastic scattering in the air.
“Captain Fryatt?” I called again, heart rate increasing. I fumbled in my pockets, rushing back to Griffin, looking for the earpiece Liberty had given me those many months back. As I slipped it on I heard tense voices.
“Don’t move,” a raspy male said, “and I won’t burn her alive. Plasma torches get real hot, sir.”
“Kelly, it doesn’t have to be like this,” XO bled in.
“The hell it doesn’t! I was sent here on a mission, and if you people hadn’t been so damn… I mean… Why are you making me do this? I have to do this, you understand, right? I can’t let you succeed. William Fryatt was going to kill us all.”
And there it was. Kelly, it had always been Kelly. Not even the great William Fryatt had known. He’d been too focused on his daughter getting laid to even notice. There was a spy, a saboteur of the Axis on board, but for whatever reason he’d hesitated and not killed us outright. Was it because of guilt? A crumbling resolve? Or maybe he’d had a crush on a smart, sporty tomboy of a girl? It didn’t matter now. We had to fix this problem. I had to save Liberty.
“It’s Kelly,” I told Griffin. “He’s on the bridge. He has Liberty hostage with a plasma torch.”
“That bastard,” she growled at her tablet. “I should have known. I’ve spent more time with him than anyone on this ship. Damn it, I should have known, long ass fingernail.”
“Can you fix it?” I tried to keep a grip on my calm, but it was greasy and slick like pig fat. “’Cause next thing we have to rescue them.”
She went through her tablet again, reviewing the data she’d hastily collected. “Yes, I can fix this, but we’ll have to reset this box and it won’t let me do it through the system. Every time I try and run the command, forcing it to power cycle, it clears away my text.”
I removed the vape pen from my pocket, took a drag and said, “Will a power surge do it? I know it’s got built in breakers, but I don’t wanna cook it.”
“Yeah, but it’ll have to be a lot of juice.”
“Ten thousand volts too much?”
“No. Maybe? No. Yeah. That’s—”
“Perfect.” I flipped the safety switch on the side of the vape pen and jabbed its end against the box, depressing the button. A sizzling arc of blue light came out its end. The lights on the side of the weapon’s box went off, then returned a moment later. The computer had begun its normal restart, a soft whirr of fans spinning up in confirmation.
“That should do it,” Griffin gaped. “I need me one of those.”
“We’ll get you one when we’re back home.”
My watch buzzed. Thirty minutes remained.
As the system booted up she worked furiously, reinstalling a series of older, more reliable weapons drivers. “Can you stun him with that thing?”
“Not before he cooks our new Captain. Besides, I think it’s busted.” I inspected the tube’s blackened end while running simulations in my head. I got the feeling Kelly didn’t want to kill anyone directly, or he already would have. He would let the Razor do his dirty work. There would be no way to tackle him without risking her. We had no guns on board, and if I threw something I’d be just as likely to hit her as him. There had to be another way, had to.
Griffin’s expression pinched. “What do we do?” She disconnected the uplink cable and clipped the tablet to her leg. “Alright, we can release control to the bridge, but not operate remote.”
“So we have to take the bridge back. No option.”
“But how?”
“We have to incapacitate him. Maybe we could…” A thought surfaced in the murky depths of my mind. What would Liberty and I do? What have we done before? “Does Kelly still carry that old tablet?”
“The one with that crappy processor and lithium ion battery? Yeah. I can’t even believe they let him bring it aboard.”
“Where does he carry it most of the time?”
“In the pocket on the left chest of his jumpsuit. Why?”
“I have an idea.” I threw myself down the zero-g tunnel to Crew 1. “Brix,” I called into my watch. “Situation?”
“I’m a little busy.”
“Are you outside the bridge?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything you can do to help?”
“No. I can’t get in. Kelly’s locked the room. He’d been planning this all along.”
“I know. Hold tight till we can move. I think I can free the Captain.”
“Don’t be stupid, Goddard. What are you going to do?”
“When am I ever stupid?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Standby to help if you can.”
Crew 1 was empty, everyone in their safe place or at duty stations. Most of the ship might not have even been aware we were on the edge of a knife with a hostage situation on the Bridge. I found my spare tool belt under the bunk and went to the food dispensing station, tearing away dry hoppers of AFiN slop to get at the heart of the machine. Flakes of white, like freeze dried snow, scattered on the floor.
“What are you doing, sir?”
“Saving our asses.” With the flat end of a screwdriver, I ripped off the back of our microwave and began to disassemble it. Numbers were rushing through my head, trying to work out the glaring issues with my hair brained scheme. I knew it could work, but it had to be quick and this usually wasn’t. I had to run the magnetron beyond its highest settings. “What do I need? Four thousand? No, five thousand watts? Best be safe.”
My watch buzzed. Twenty minutes remained till the Razor could hit us.
The earpiece cut in again. Liberty’s voice. “Kelly, we can work this out. Trust me. I know you want to. I’m sorry you hate us, and I can see how, but we can find a middle ground. There is a diplomatic solution no matter how dire this situation.”
“Hate? I don’t hate you! Fryatt, you’ve been kind to me. But… I have to do this, don’t you see? I’m sorry, so sorry. I can’t let you kill everyone on Europa. I just can’t.”
“We won’t, I promise. This ends today.”
“You’re right, Fryatt, it does. It has to. No more risking. No more risking.”
Liberty kept him busy by talking.
After a couple minutes the microwave was broken down into three parts. “Pass me a spare length of pipe and a three inch, metal insulator sleeve.”
“From where?”
“In that closet on the left.”
My watch buzzed. Fifteen minutes left. Mars’s horizon was the only thing keeping us safe from the Razor. We had to take back the bridge now or we’d be defenseless.
Griffin handed me a length of half inch pipe five feet long. I bound the magnetron—the cylindrical piece of a microwave that emits charged particles to heat food—to the end of the stick with a length of adhesive tape. I then bound its wiring onto the pole, running it back to where the power supply and original housing were located. I thought of looking for an extension cord to supply the power needed, but instead opted for a spare set of combo torch batteries. We had to be mobile, but all we needed was one shot. Those batteries would supply more than the required wattage. The resulting jury-rigged weapon was like a spear wrapped in cables, a loose box on its back end with a copper can on the tip bent to a funnel with a two-inch hole.