The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (the false prince .txt) 📕

Just as Dirken and Yiorgos turned to go back, there came a bang against the bulkhead and then the side of it started glowing, first orange, then red, then white hot.

The left guard tapped a comm panel on his arm. "Commander, they're cutting through the starboard bridge bulkhead door."

Dirken grabbed Yiorgos and they ran down the hall. But instead of going back to the storage room they'd been assigned, he stopped at a panel marked "mechanical access." He tried to open it, but it was locked. He pointed at a touchpad next to it. "Yiorgos, can you hack into this?"

The cyborg looked at it, transformed his right forearm from the plasma saber back into a hand, then extended a wire from his right wrist. "I know what you're thinking," he said, "and it's stupid."

"What? It's a good plan! Climb up into the ventilation system and make our way back to the hangar."

"Yeah," Yiorgos said as he inserted the wire into a small port on the pad. "But you seem to forget that the ventilation system is the first to evacuate into space when the hull is compromised."

"They've already compartmentalized it, or we'd all be dead already." Dirken glanced back down the hallway, where a explosive clang announced that the bulkhead door had been destroyed. Blaster fire echoed down the corridor.

The touchpad gave a pleasant chime and the wood panel slid open to reveal a mechanical input and a ladder. Dirken hefted the safebox inside and they stepped in after it.

No sooner had the panel closed than they heard screams from the guards and the echo of metallic legs skittering through the corridor.

Dirken opened the mechanical panel and pulled out some oxygen masks and mini-canisters, which they strapped to their belts.

Luckily the access was lit by tiny blue lights, and they climbed upward into a tight service tube with other pipes and a ventilation shaft running along it until it stopped at a closed iris at the bulkhead.

"Need you to hot-wire a panel again, partner," Dirken said, readjusting the pack over his shoulder.

"Mmm," Yiorgos replied, pulling out the wire from his wrist again and crawling past Dirken to the iris. "That's what I am to you, eh? A lockpick set?"

"Only the best lockpick set!"

In moments the iris opened. Air rushed past them into the access tube beyond, drawn by some poorly sealed leak in the system after hull decompression. The little lights along these tubes flickered on and off, but it was enough to see by, so they continued down the tube.

More blaster fire and screams came from behind them, muted through distance and walls. The bridge, he thought. The droids made it to the bridge. We'd probably be dead now if we'd stayed put.

Dirken banged his head on a pipe and grunted, rubbing it. "You know, my Uncle Bradley once told me, 'Boy, I used to be afraid of tight spaces. Then one day I realized that we all came from the womb and passed through a tight tube to get out. Then we spend the rest of our lives tryin' to get back into one!'" He chuckled.

Yiorgos groaned. "Yeah, I met your uncle after the previous Mars trip. He's every bit the demented pervert you are."

Dirken's smile faded. "Well, what do you know? You're asexual, what with your religion and all."

"It's not a religious thing; there's no prohibition against sex for practitioners of Cyberalia. I'm asexual because that's who I am, and there's nothing wrong with that."

Dirken couldn't really understand. How could someone not feel sexual? To him, it was just part of being alive. Hell, he'd had sex for almost as long as he'd been able to get an erection. But then, who was he to argue? Some people couldn't understand why he was a xenophile, attracted to aliens, either. "Each to their own, partner."

Both threw themselves to the floor of the access tube as the air exploded in a cacophony of ripping metal and screams. It came from somewhere ahead of them. The two glanced at each other in silent agreement on what to do next. Dirken pulled his blaster. Yiorgos turned his arm back into a plasma saber.

The attack only lasted a few seconds, then there was an eerie quiet punctuated by a dying moan and the sizzle and pop of high voltage wires. After a moment more of silence, Dirken and Yiorgos inched forward as quietly as they could.

The tube turned left and, turning the corner, Dirken saw that the access tube had been ripped away. Electrical lines sparked where they had been yanked apart, and the room below was dark save for dozens of cut fiber optic lines glimmering in the debris and a vidscreen displaying a lovely tropical waterfall, which kept blinking in and out. There was no way to get across without descending into the room.

And something was moving down there.

Metal on metal. A spidery shape stepped out of the shadows, its numerous, titanium legs reflecting the blinking vidscreen. Half a dozen red eyes on the hunter droid's head turned one way, then the other, as it stepped across debris and the ghostly outlines of bodies in white uniforms.

CHAPTER FOUR

HUNTER DROIDS

Dirken aimed carefully and pulled the trigger. A bolt of white-hot plasma hit the droid squarely in the middle of its red eyes.

The droid reacted immediately, spinning and leaping up toward them.

Dirken threw himself out of the tube to avoid the droid. Yiorgos slashed with his plasma saber. Made contact with a leg. Severed it. The leg fell to the floor next to Dirken and started flopping around, a razor-sharp metal blade at the end slicing through the air just centimeters from his head.

Dirken released a couple more shots, missing the spinning droid, then fell back with the safebox toward the vidscreen.

The droid activated its laser, a thin red line that slashed across the room in an arc, barely missing Dirken's arm and cutting through the