Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1) by Sam Coulson Page A

she
answered as she accessed the ship’s system control. “It’s just an
interplanetary shuttle, no weapons. It’s designed to perform satellite maintenance
and dock with orbiting craft.”
    “Dock?”
    “Yup,”
she said.
    She
typed: J.L.M. Ackno, mak’n nois, be quik .
    “But
won’t they see that message?”
    “The
Draugari use their own communicators, something in their helmets. They won’t be
monitoring our coms, especially with the power plant offline and the
Celestrials out of the way.”
    With
that, Ju-lin entered another series of commands. The screen began to flash scanners
offline .
    “Alright,”
Ju-lin said, still typing furiously on the keyboard. “As long as they aren’t
looking out the windows they won’t see him coming.”
    “And if
they do?”
    “It’s our
job to make sure they don’t,” she answered. “And to make enough noise that they
won’t notice when the docking clamp locks.”
    “How are
we going to do that?” I asked.
    “We’re in
the cargo bay. Through that hatch and up the access tunnel is the living area.
Seats, beds, kitchen, the usual. From there if we continue to the foredeck we
will pass through the airlock where the docking collars are, and then the
cockpit in the front.”
    “Okay,” I
responded. “You didn’t answer my question. We’re unarmed and hurt and they are
eight feet tall and heavily armed. And my hands are still bound .”
    “Yeah. No
time for that,” she tapped the controls and the access hatch opened, revealing
a ladder. “Aside from a few access panels, there isn’t much in the living areas
that they would need to get to for them to bring the main power back online.
Most of that will have to be done through the main controls in the cockpit, so
that’s where they all should be. We can probably find some weapons that we can
use to hold out and get their attention long enough for dad to make his
approach.”
    “And if
one happens to be accessing one of the panels?”
    “They
won’t be,” she said with certainty as she stepped toward me, looking at me
squarely in the eyes. “Look, I know you’re new at, well, at everything .
But listen to me clearly right now. If we do nothing, my Dad dies, and then we die.”
    I looked
around the room at the blood-stained walls and took a deep breath, doing the
best I could to calm my nerves. For a second, I was glad my hands were still
bound, that way she wouldn’t notice them shaking.
    She
turned abruptly and started climbing carefully up the access ladder. I followed
close behind, using my elbows to augment my still-bound hands to climb. She
paused at the access hatch at the top, looked down at me and nodded. Bracing
herself against the side of the narrow access tunnel, she lifted both hands,
easily twisted to unlock the hatch and slowly pushed it open.
    The room
above was quiet. After taking a slow survey of the deck, she nodded to me and
climbed silently to the top and hopped out, setting the open hatch down
silently on the deck.
    I
followed her up, pulling my torso up onto the deck on my elbows so I could look
around. The living area was a long room segmented into several parts. We came
up in what looked like a small kitchen area. There was a half stack of rations
tucked cleanly in a transparent compartment on the wall. A few steps away was
the foredeck access door which Ju-lin had said would lead to the docking lock
and cockpit. The aft section was dark. The lights must have been blown out. I
could see shadows of four sleeping pods mounted on two-on-a-side against the
bulkheads. I wondered when and where the poor crew had run into the Draugari.
And how long they had suffered before they were killed.
    I reached
up awkwardly, still trying to climb up out of the access hatch. Midway through
the last heft of pulling my torso up to the deck, my foot slipped on the ladder.
I slid back with a thud and a grunt, catching myself with my arms at the
shoulders with my legs dangling for a moment as I fought to