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Raising one eyebrow, Jayna gave him a puzzled look. “Are you sure that’s wise, given the two of us are going to assault the hold next?”
“Turner is nearly comatose, Paxter is space happy and who knows about Abrall once we get him away from his beloved engines. Which reminds me, we’re going to see him next. I don’t want us to snatch Angelee from the monster only to then find we’ve been abandoned by intoxicated, space happy crew members. Can you adjust the settings or not?”
For answer she turned to the controls and spent a few minutes revising command parameters and punching instructions into the rudimentary computer. Then she rose from the chair, dusting her hands off. “Done. The ship will only respond to you or me. What’s the rest of our plan?”
“We go see Abrall. We get Turner down here. I’ll give Paxter a deadline to get his ass down here. We go rob Nishagwaq of her kidnap victim and we get out of here like a bat out of hell. Blow up the ship, wait for our ride to show up and we’re done. So much for my glorious career as a salvage master.”
“I’ll get Turner. I want to pick up something in medbay anyhow, to treat Angelee with when we get her out of stasis. You deal with Abrall and Paxter and I’ll meet you at the door to the hold in ten.” Now they were about to embark on their end game, Jayna was all business and very much the stoic Special Forces operator. Theo thanked the Lords of Space yet again for Captain Fleming having sent her on this doomed mission with him. He figured he’d never get out of the mess they were in if he didn’t have Jayna on his six.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “Ladies first up the ladder.”
Ten minutes later he stood outside the hold, his pulse rifle at the ready, worrying over all the bad things which could have happened to Jayna. Another Nishagwaq-created flashback maybe or a problem with Turner. Paxter had been easy to deal with in his current mood, agreeable to anything Theo wanted him to do, including locking the autopilot and heading for the wardroom once the time ticked down. Abrall had been positively delighted with his role in the battle plan, as outlined by Theo. He wasn’t sure Abrall got the full set of parameters for the mess they’d unwittingly stepped into but the engine tech could handle his assigned duties for the next half hour.
Theo hoped once they were free and clear of Nishagwaq’s influence the other three crew members would revert to being their normal selves. He’d have to have a long conversation with Dr. Shane on the Nebula Zephyr about what the small crew had endured so she could assist in the recovery period. Theo acknowledged to himself he was being wildly optimistic here but that was his nature—his true persona—and he wasn’t going to change now.
He heard footsteps down the corridor and Jayna came into view, moving at a ground eating pace.
“Turner’s squared away,” she said. “I had to give her another hit from the medbay’s sedatives to get her to stay in the smuggler hole. The alien has really done a number on her mind.”
“Tell me again exactly where the stasis pod is,” Theo requested, resting his fingers on the control panel to open the door.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take you straight to it, unless Nishagwaq is doing her time and space bending shit in there. Once Angelee told me where she was, I realized I’d seen the pod while I was engaged in my battle not to be dragged into the alien bitch’s mouth.” She held out her fist. “Ready to execute?”
Theo bumped her fist with his own. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The door opened and they stepped into the silent hold, Jayna in the lead and Theo slightly behind. She didn’t hesitate but turned to the right and began working her way down the stacks of cargo containers, heading for the spot where the alien allotment was located.
Jayna was calm and collected, as she always was when going into action. She’d already bested Nishagwaq in this environment once and she had a pretty fair idea of the tricks the alien could throw at her. She was determined to rescue Angelee and bring the child to safety with them. Checking her corners and keeping her eyes peeled for anything unexpected, Jayna made her way closer to the central area of the alien’s power. Theo was right behind her and even if he wasn’t a first tier operator like herself, he was a person she wouldn’t hesitate to rely on.
At the last section before the pulsing, glowing containers which housed Nishagwaq’s entity and might even be her outer physical shell or her nest for all Jayna knew, she paused, fist raised. When Theo closed ranks with her, she pointed off to the right, where a Sectors sentient stasis pod lay on the deck, partially blocked by other small containers, including several with the telltale alien glow. “Cover me,” she said on the subaural link, which worked okay if they were in close quarters like the current situation. Without waiting for Theo to acknowledge her order, she ran a crouching, zigzag path across the open deck to reach the pod.
The spot between her shoulders itched as if she was expecting a sniper shot to hit home from the shadows behind her but Nishagwaq didn’t fight in such a manner. As soon as she reached the pile, she slung her rifle and began unstacking the crates until she had a clear view of the stasis pod. It was definitely an old style, with self-contained backup power source and there was no viewscreen to check on the occupant but the lights were all green. Briefly she considered trying to contact Angelee mentally but decided against it, not knowing whether the attempt would awaken the alien. The hold was quiet—too quiet—but she wanted things to stay that way. Drawing a deep breath and reminding herself this strange existence was not what any young human girl should have to endure, Jayna doublechecked her first impression of the pod’s size. As she’d thought, the antiquated pod was much too heavy to be carried, even if Theo assisted. Jayna would have to unseal it here and hope for the best.
Strong and fit as she was, she could barely move the container an inch on the deck, so she abandoned the futile attempt and cycled the controls to standby and then off, so the container would open. Theo joined her, facing the alien cargo so close by, weapon hot and ready. Over the subaural link, he said, “This is too easy by half.”
“Tell me about it. I think we’re amusing Nishagwaq right now.” She hit the final set of commands to cancel stasis and open the pod and moved to the side as the container split and a portion lifted off on flexible hinges. There was a puff of air, cold and sterile and Jayna beheld the face of the actual little girl. She appeared to be sleeping and her breaths were regular, which was reassuring but Jayna knew she’d be waking up shortly. Rapidly she administered the medinjects of stasis and cryo sleep remedies she’d been able to find in the medbay, one after the other until five empty cartridges lay on the deck by her boots. “Ready?” she asked Theo.
“We’ve gone too far to stop now,” he said.
Reaching into the pod, Jayna gathered the child into her arms and rose to her feet, Theo doing the same and steadying her.
“Mommy?” the child whispered sleepily, not opening her eyes.
Jayna cuddled Angelee close. “No, a friend,” she whispered.
Something clattered to the deck from the folds of Angelee’s dress and Theo bent to retrieve it, showing Jayna an old fashioned small, framed photograph of the Herron family in happier times with a data disk clumsily taped to it. “Says ‘From Mother to My Angelee’,” he read softly. One-handed he got the items stowed in his utilities pocket and took point.
He and Jayna hadn’t gone three steps with her semi-conscious burden when there was a metallic screeching sound assaulting his ears and the humanoid form of Nishagwaq appeared in front of them, barring their way. As before her beauty was astonishing, if alien, but then the longer he looked the more repellent the creature became, like a scent which at first beguiles and then reveals the rot underneath. “I’ve indulged you enough, humans, in return for your extraction of my pet from her cold cage. I’ll take her now and I’ll take you as well. Fools to think you could get off this ship. No one escapes me.”
Theo fired his blaster, hitting her dead center with all three shots. “Run,” he yelled to Jayna.
The blaster pulses had no effect on Nishagwaq, who laughed and became taller and thinner like an image made of smoke, reaching for him with her long arms. She wrapped her elongated fingers around him, getting a strong grip and lifting him from the deck. He had his pulse rifle but it was useless. The alien’s embrace was crushing.
“I can devour you as well this way as I can with my actual form,” she said, bringing her face close to his while he kicked and fought. Her mouth opened and he was staring into an endless vortex of black, edged by sharp red teeth. He had to work hard not to be fatally mesmerized by the whirling within, like a cosmic tornado. Theo remembered what Jayna had told him about her encounter with their enemy and the way she nearly died. He was facing a similar fate but at least he could try to buy time for Jayna and the little girl to escape. The bigger plan only needed one of them to make it to the smuggler’s compartment.
He felt the heat and sting of several close blaster bursts as Jayna shot at Nishagwaq in an effort to help him. “Get out of here,” he yelled, struggling to form words against the constriction placed on his chest by the encircling ‘arms’. “I order you to leave me.”
Theo kept fighting as his captor drew him closer to the hellish mouth. He wished he had a force grenade on his belt, to take her with him but he had no such armament.
