Peter Telep - Pilgrim stars

"Take my hand," Karista told Blair. "Drag me over there. I'll slow them down." She lifted her head toward the Marines Maniac had evaded.

"But what about them?" Blair asked, gesturing to the group coming up hard to the rear.

"There's, just too many. We'll try to outrun them."

With a nod, he seized her wrist and pulled her toward the intersection. As they crossed into the open, he spotted twin lines of Marines lying on their stomachs along the passage. The first two soldiers in each row rolled onto their backs and clutched their throats.

"We're across," he told Karista, then tightened his grip on her wrist. Her eyes refocused, and it took but a few seconds more for them to break into a sprint.

They jogged straight for about fifty meters, the Marines behind them thankfully holding their fire. Conventional rounds fired within the ship could cause serious damage-not that Maniac and Santyana cared about that. It also seemed likely that the jarheads had been ordered to take them alive.

The corridor dead-ended at a sealed hatch whose control panel flashed the usual authorized personnel only warning.

"Hey, you can't pick locks with that little power, can you?" Maniac asked Karista.

"No, but I can shut mouths."

Maniac's lips sealed, his eyes bugged out, and he began to groan under Karista's gravitic gag. She let him suffer a few sec-onds more, then freed him. "Hey, honey," he said, his lips and tongue moving spastically. "Take it easy."

"Everybody back," Santyana cried, the status light on his rifle's underslung grenade launcher flashing red.

"Let's make this a quick bang," Maniac warned. "Hunting party's just down the hall."

They retreated about eight meters from the hatch, and even before Blair could find a spot against the bulkhead, Santyana rang the doorbell with his concussion grenade. A terrific thunderclap reverberated through the corridor, succeeded by a muffled burst as the hatch blew inward.

"I always like to make an entrance," Maniac mumbled as he followed Santyana into the rising smoke.

Blair put his hand on Karista's shoulder and ushered her in behind Maniac. Shouts to halt echoed from behind them, and Blair smiled over a sudden idea. He thought himself in front of them and moved swiftly through the ranks, tripping one, two, three, a fourth Marine. The five or six others behind them collided into the heap of tangled limbs. Too easy. Too funny.

Then he took himself back, his eyes now watering from the smoke. They passed onto the first catwalk of the environmental control bay. Scores of monitors walled in the rectangular room, and at its center lay the fifteen massive, drum-shaped air recy-clers that rose five meters to the overhead.

Wasting only the few seconds it took to appraise the surroundings, they darted across the catwalk and took a stairway down to the operations level. The five techs assigned to the station had already gathered near the first drum to regard them with curiosity and a healthy measure of respect.

"You're not authorized to be in this area," a gray-haired tech, probably the department head, shouted.

"Very good," Maniac returned. "You got any more keen observations before I pick your nose with a round?"

The Marines in pursuit reached the catwalk, and a trio made it to the stairs much sooner than Blair would have liked. He spotted the next hatch that would take them into the aft storage area.

Once again, they would have to stall the Marines so they could blast themselves a course.

Damn it, if we only had access to the security network, we could open the hatch before we even get to it.

Wait a minute. Maybe we do. "Merlin. Activate."

Blair had to grin as the old holographic assistant jogged next to him on a course of air about shoulder height. "You realize you're killing me, don't you, Christopher?"

Why Merlin had chosen to jog was beyond Blair, and he hardly had the time for an explanation. "Get into the security network and open that hatch."

"You make it sound so simple."

"Just do it!"

"What is that?" Karista asked.

"My holographic assistant. I would've introduced you to him earlier, but he tends to embarrass me."

"He lies, Ms. Mullens. Oh, how he lies."

Santyana reached the hatch, and as he glanced at the control panel, a string of lights switched from white to green. He faced them, confused.

Blair winked at the holograph. "Very smooth, Merlin."

"You kidding? I didn't do anything. I'm still trying to break into the net."

"Then who opened the hatch?"

"I'll trace the command. Well, I can't. I'm blocked."

"Who cares who opened it," Maniac called back. "We'll thank them later." He followed Santyana into the next passage.

Karista slowed as she reached the hatchway. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I thought you didn't need to ask. But yeah, I am. Just be ready."

VEGA SECTOR.DAY QUADRANT. EN ROUTE TO PORT HEDLAND.CS OLYMPUS.

2654.128.1000 HOURS.CONFEDERATION STANDARD TIME.

Blair remembered the aft storage area from the first time he had passed through it, on his way to view the hopper drive. The polymeric bars that fenced in literally thousands of storage containers reminded him of the brig: one of two possible homes for him if they failed. The second lay out there, somewhere, in the continuum. He guessed his script would live on, as his mother's did, but to die, to end in the physical sense… better not to think about it.

Ahead and behind the bars, a crew of three ran a small loader with a hydraulic claw secured to its tapered nose. They shifted a column of containers toward the starboard bulkhead. Consumed in their work and deafened by the whine of the loader's engine, the techs failed to notice Santyana and Maniac as the two hauled by. Even as the tech nearest Blair and Karista turned his head and spotted them, a voice boomed loudly from the shipwide intercom:

"This is the captain. Broturs and sosturs? The time has come. Report to jump stations. We'll reach interphase point in six minutes. Captain out."

"There's the hatch," Santyana said, pointing ahead to the oval-shaped barrier.

"Where are the guards?" Blair asked. "Supposed to be a couple of guards."

"And the door's unlocked," Maniac said, eyeing the control panel.

Santyana broke out of his jog and stood at the door, panting. "They're waiting for us in there."

"So we go in shooting." Maniac grimaced and shook his rifle, demonstrating how he would punch holes in the next contingent of Marines.

"Blair? Karista? When I open the hatch, you reach in there first," Santyana said. "See what you can do." He thumbed the touchpad.

And Blair surrendered to that other place inside him. He and Karista stepped gingerly onto the circular catwalk overlooking the coliseum-like drive chamber. A score of Marines had strung themselves along the walk at three-meter intervals and leaned over the rail, sweeping the room with their rifles. The two jar-heads nearest the hatch rushed forward, though everyone kept hidden in the corridor outside-a position good for only another few seconds.

Moving with the fluid grace of a breaker, Karista reached the first Marine, raised her hand-and froze. She looked at Blair, shocked. "I can't."

A tall black man materialized next to her. He had already seized one of her wrists and now grabbed the other and forced her back. "No, Sostur. There's nothing you can do here."

Blair dove toward the man, but a palm of force held him in midair. He fought against the gravitic barrier, against an impossibly strong mind, then suddenly dropped to the deck.

Gunfire reverberated nearby. He tried to stand but couldn't against the riptide.

Then he opened his eyes to find himself back in the corridor with the others, rifles pointed at their heads. Santyana and Maniac had shot three more Marines before being overrun. The Marines confiscated their rifles and eyed them with a vengeance clearly restrained by an order from Aristee.