Totaled

Totaled: Part 4

The problem was, it was his fault. Had been. No words would ever change it.

It was the sound that had stayed with him, would always stay. The sound of her body meeting the floor. He'd been on the com with her when it had happened. Wasn't even a military engagement. Not an honorable death. Just an inspection on a freighter that had gone wrong when the pirate-loving smugglers had panicked and decided to open fire on the authorities. In all his years of flying, Dolridge had never seen anything else like it. No reason, no thinking-it-through. Just sheer, animal panic, and boom. People died. His people. She had been making her report to him when they'd attacked. Shot her in the back. She never even knew.

The report had gone from mundane details to blaster fire to a dull thud. It echoed still.

There should be a law against taking your own child on a starship. Oh, there were rules. But rules could bend and break, and frequently did when the right palms were greased or the right names were dropped. So when, five years ealier, an impressive up-and-coming officer had been requested by her father to serve under his command, the assignment had been made.

Now there wasn't a day he didn't see her face or hear that sound in his mind.

He turned the corner, and for just a moment thought he was seeing her in front of him, standing there, arms crossed. He stopped mid-gait and stared, blinked. No. It was just Caspar.

"Report, Officer," he growled as he walked past. She turned and walked with him.

"Sir, invalid log entry just before we left port. Comp shows a 'Dr. Sarel' checked in to hitch a ride past the rings. Only, security says there's no such person aboard. We think the alarms were triggered by who or whatever came on in his place."

Dolridge froze. "Are you telling me there is an unauthorized person aboard this ship?"

Caspar nodded. "That seems to be the case, Sir. But security is puzzled. I've had the comp review all footage from the passenger section, and there haven't been any—"

She was getting more and more difficult to understand, the words beginning to blur together. She paused, peering at his eyes.

"Sir? Can you hear me?"

A fog was creeping into the corners of his vision.

"Sir, get down!"

She grabbed him by the shoulders and thrust him to his knees, then pulled him down to his belly. Together, they lay on the floor. A cough racked his body. His head cleared a little.

"Gas?" he croaked, his throat struggling to open.

Caspar nodded, blinking away tears and coughing.

The vents in the corridor lined the wall along the ceiling. They seemed to have some clean air down by the floor, but who could say how long that would last? And the door to the bridge was a full twenty meters away—could take some time in a belly crawl.

Dolridge rolled onto his back and tore his shirt open. Buttons popped, askew. He wrangled out of it and tied it around the lower half of his face, up above his nose, like a bandana. Caspar did the same. Then together, they crawled on forearms and knees.

He'd once prided himself on his physical fitness—back when he'd been an up-and-coming young buck serving the Council of Kuiper in espionage missions. Now, the most exercise he got in a day was strolling from the bridge to his cabin. His throat and eyes burned from the poison, and his lungs screamed in protest, but he forced himself to take short, shallow breaths, trying to get by with as little air as possible so as not to imbibe any more gas.

Caspar seemed to go slowly on purpose—must be matching his pace. He growled, frustrated, but couldn't waste the air to tell her to hurry up. Anyway, it's what he would have done, too, if he'd been the faster one.

The door was closer, he knew it. Another five meters. Maybe three. But it was fading, falling away from him. Caspar looked over, saw his eyes, and looked worried. She grunted, took a deep breath, and rose, sprinting the remainder of the distance and slapping the console on the wall. It dinged.

But the door didn't open.

She slid to the floor, took a deep, racking breath, and had a coughing fit.

Dolridge breathed in fire through his nose. Yep. He was too old for this nonsense.

He somehow managed to crawl to the door, then reached up and slapped the keypad again. Same thing—ding, but no dice. He turned on his back and kicked, hard. There was no give. Stupid thing.

Another few seconds and they would both pass out, and he doubted they would ever wake up. There wasn't much to lose by taking a chance. So he slipped his blaster pistol from its holster at his belt, tried to aim at the console, and fired.

He missed.

The round lit up the foggy air like a nebula. He blinked his bleary eyes, refixed his aim, and shot again. This time sparks flew from the console and it smoked, the cover melting away.

Dolridge grabbed Caspar by the shoulder and struggled to speak.

"Tear out the... circuit."

She nodded and rose to her knees, still coughing. Then she cleared away some debris from the smoldering console, reached inside, and pulled. A grunt, a snap, and a little piece of circuit board came out in her hand. She tossed it to him.

The doors hissed open.

But the scene on the bridge wasn't much better. Bodies hunched over stations, everyone already unconscious. The gas seemed even thicker here. It was acrid and smoky, creating a hellish atmosphere. This must have been ground zero for dispersal; the bridge crew had never had a chance.

Happily, there were emergency ventilation contingencies. But Caspar and Dolridge had already pushed their bodies to the max. They would have to crawl at least halfway across the bridge to get to the nearest station, then just hope it was in better working order than the door had been.

He glanced at her. Her eyes were grim, jaw set. She knew they weren't going to make it.

Small, narrow portholes on either side of the viewscreen looked out onto empty space. A light flashed through the smoke from the porthole to the left. Dolridge peered up and saw the light come to settle outside. It was followed by a single, continuous blasting charge at the porthole.

Cutting through.

To be continued...