Black Rain Ch. 04

Occasionally, an overhead light would flicker and spark but beyond that it was pitch black. Sonny felt his way forward, seeking the smooth metal covering of a control panel. After a few moments, he found what he was looking for. He opened the small door to the wall conduit, feeling around the circuits and control chips until he found the wiring port. He pulled on the seal, breaking the wires loose.

"You got a watch on you?" he whispered to Soniah, "Anything with a battery?"

"Why? You gonna run a starship off a battery?"

"Do you have one or not?"

A moment later Soniah slapped her wrist communicator into his open palm. Sonny loosened the casing with a few good hits to the floor. He listened; his face cringed as they waited for the thunder of footsteps to rush towards them. After a moment, they both exhaled and Sonny opened the casing.

"Don't do that again," Soniah hissed, her arms crossed. She had never felt so cold in her entire life. She felt as though a thousand eyes were watching her from the darkness. For all she knew, she was right.

Sonny pulled the powerful transmitter battery out of the communicator and wired it to the control panel. After a few sparks and a drift ozone the red emergency lights activated, blinking spastically to life along the running beams of the deck. In the crimson light, Soniahs' blue skin looked almost black, her reflective yellow eyes demonic and bizarre. She looked at him and shrugged, "Okay, how did you do that?"

"It'll only last for a few minutes and only on this deck. We gotta go," he grabbed her arm and led her down the corridor.

"Didn't the pirates go this way?" she asked.

"Yeah," he nodded, "But whatever they were shooting at is back that way."

"Good point."

"If I can get to the central control alcove, I can switch the A.I over to the last battery back up. They probably used some kind of pulse grenade when the came in," he whispered and stopped at the intersection just before the bridge. There were no Jah-Harans anywhere. "Weird," he muttered.

"So?"

"So, the last back-up wasn't on when the attack happened," Sonny explained, "The electrical grenades didn't fry it."

"So you restore power and then?"

"And then we can open the gun lockers on the bridge," he said.

"That's the plan?"

"You got a better one?"

Soniah opened her mouth to argue and then stopped.

"That's what I thought."

When he saw the coast was clear, he led Soniah down the corridor to the central alcove. He prayed none of the acidic shit he had discovered on C-deck had found a way inside the room. If it had, then their hopes for one lousy plan to work would be dashed. And, he really wanted his plan to work. Not just for the sake of his shipmates, but because he wanted to impress Soniah.

'It's juvenile, yeah,' he thought to himself, 'But she's so hot.'

"If you get me killed," she squeezed his hand tightly, "I'll haunt you for the remainder of your days."

"Baby," he smiled half-heartedly, "Something tells me if you go, you'll take me with you."

Despite herself, Soniah smiled.

***

In the med lab, Miranda tried to pry open the storage door. It wouldn't budge. The power had been severed to the lab for the moment, and while the red emergency lights had activated, nothing else seemed to work.

"Cut the hydraulics," Ashton said and handed her his pocketknife.

She took the knife and opened it. In the hot light she put the tip of the blade to the release lines and began cutting. A cold sweat had broken out all over her body, soaking her uniform to her skin. She felt like she was ready to pass out, and the fact that she could hear the pirates coming closer and closer to the lab only made her hands shake even more. She gritted her teeth and scowled to herself, 'Get a grip girl, get a fucking grip... just cut that line...'

The blade was not sharp enough to penetrate the reinforced plastic of the small section of hydraulic line. She cursed and banged her head on the door.

"This isn't going to work," she sighed.

"It's okay," Ashton reassured her.

"No, it's not," came the voice of Robert Harmon, followed by the report of a blaster being fired. In his blindness, Ashton could only duck down and hope Miranda did the same. As he hit the deck, he heard a muffled *flump* sound. It was the sound of phased plasma striking clothing and flesh. He heard someone fall to the deck hard, knocking over instruments and scanners in a loud crash. He cursed the day he had ever approved the transfer of Robert Harmon to his ship as he frantically tried to think of a plan.

"Paisley?" he whispered, "You okay?"

No reply.

"Captain Ashton," Harmon called from the blackness, "It wasn't supposed to be this way."

"This is the second time you've tried to shoot me," Ashton said. He sighed and stood up. There was no point to hiding or being stealthy. Harmon knew where he was and he could shoot at any moment. Ashton simply stood his ground and hoped a miracle would grace him and save his sweet ass one more time. He asked, "How much did they pay you, Robert?"

There was silence and then, "Enough to buy my own back world planet, and then some."

"You sold us out."

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," he lashed back, his anger saturating every word, "The ship was supposed to be off course for a month, no more. No one was supposed to die. I didn't plan on a crash!"

"But people did die," Ashton balled his fists up, his heart beating fast with rage, "You killed half the crew and almost all the passengers! What the fuck were you thinking?"

"You shut your fucking mouth!" Harmon screamed. Ashton could hear he was crying now. The man was losing it. "I am not going to fucking die here! This wasn't part of the deal."

"Did you kill Paisley?" Ashton asked, his mouth dry as though desert cotton had been stuffed down his throat.

"No," he said, "I tagged her on the shoulder. She's out cold is all."

"So what now? You take me and her hostage and try to negotiate?" Ashton laughed, "With who, Robert? The Jah-Harans will cut your head off before they listen to your demands. The others? If Gordon doesn't kill you, then Sonny will."

"Fuck them both," Harmon's finger trembled on the trigger of his blaster, "They never liked me anyway. Always a private little club. This whole fucking crew is like that. You all never wanted me here anyway."

"You raped Paisley, didn't you?" Ashton pressured him. He could tell Harmon was ready to snap, but he didn't care. Why should he? The odds looked bad either way, and truth be told, the idea of living the rest of his life stranded here and blind didn't appeal to him in the slightest anyway. Better to go out his way. His choice.

"Harmon," he said, "You fucked the Haven's navcom, you crashed us on an uncharted planet and you've killed a lot of people. But all that being said, you still found time to rape a woman who put her trust in you."

"I-"

"Don't deny it anymore," Ashton snapped at him, "Be a man, own up to it. Don't be a pussy."

Harmon took a deep breath and felt that familiar anger wash over him, that cool reserved hate for this crew that had left him open to sabotaging their mission in the first place. Ashton had always just paid him lip service, and Tishara was too busy sucking her captain off to even notice him. Gordon and Sonny were like two peas in a pod, sorry Harmon, no room for a third. The rest of them, those like Miranda, had been aloof and unappreciative of him and his talent. Any guilt and fear he might have been gripped by since the crash were fading away, replaced by a righteous anger.

He leveled the gun at his captain and shrugged. "So what if I did?" he asked quietly and then added, "Captain."

"You bastard."

"Oh," he laughed, "It's okay for the captain and XO to fuck each other silly, in violation of every single regulation in the book against such relationships on a TSE starship, but me? No. A little fun with a colleague and its twenty questions before the noose."

"A little fun?" Ashton exclaimed, "You raped her!"

"Let me clue you in, you blind-sighted sack of shit," Harmon spat at his former captain, "Sometimes in life, a man has to just take what he wants. Paisley wanted me to give it to her, but she couldn't admit it. So I gave it to her. Believe me, she had it coming."

"You miserable excuse for a man," Ashton breathed.

"Did you know when she orgasms, she cries?"

"Goddam you Harmon!"

"She even keeps her pussy shaved..."

"Harmon!"

"... so soft and smooth. Like a peach, captain."

"I swear, Harmon..."

"She even tastes sweet."

"I'm going to-"

"You're gonna kill me?" Harmon laughed, "Spare me the hero routine, John. It's old."

"You're finished," Ashton told him, "It's over for you."

"It is all over," Harmon agreed coldly as he leveled his weapon and took aim at Ashton's face, "And so is this."

Ashton cringed, waiting for the shot and the searing pain of a plasma blast to the chest or the head. He hoped he would get it in the head. It would be quicker that way. He didn't want to suffer.

Instead, he heard the clattering of a gun to the deck and then the scraping sound of metal over metal as it slid down the incline. Ashton stepped back against the wall, his hands grabbing the bulkhead tightly. He could hear strangled sounds of a man being choked and then finally the exasperated scream of agony. Harmon was in pain, but not any pain that Ashton could understand or see. He was squealing like small stuck pig, his boots slamming into one of the medical beds near the door. For once, Ashton thought maybe it was better that he couldn't see.

"Harmon?" he shouted, "Harmon?"

The screaming morphed into gurgling, wet gnarls and pleas for mercy. The words were incoherent and slurred together as Harmon tried to reason with his attacker. Ashton could hear the blood sputtering off his lips as the man was killed, terrified out of his wits. There was a final, whooping shout for help and then a hair-raising crack. It reminded Ashton of the sound his celery sticks made when he broke them all at once into small pieces. Small crunching and wet slurping sounds followed this in hungry intervals.

"Harmon," he looked into the blackness, "Harmon are you okay?"

'Brilliant question, dumb ass,' he thought to himself.

Ashton released his death grip on the wall and breathed deeply. He strained to listen for any sounds that might help him identify the attacker. 'Losing one sense heightens the others, isn't that what they say?' he thought.

Something fell loudly to the floor on his right.

"Shit."

He leaned back against wall as a cold sweat trickled down his back. He wished with all his heart Tishara were here. She'd know what to do. She would have been cool and calm. He didn't blame Paisley for being afraid, but her lack of attention to what was happening around her had made things worse. Tishara would have seen Harmon coming from a mile away. He cursed himself and nearly jumped out of his skin when something crashed off the counter next to him, this time closer.

"Fuck!" he cried out. His chest was heaving now. He was scared shitless, and his nerve was failing.

'Pull it together, man,' he thought.

"Who is that?" he demanded.

Nothing.

"I am Captain John Ashton," he said calmly. Maybe he could reason with whoever this was. It had to be one of the pirates messing with him, taunting him. He said, "I have a wounded woman here. There's no need for violence."

No reply.

"You don't have to do this," he said, "Please, take me and whatever you want. Just spare my crew."

Very faintly, he could hear labored breathing to his left.

"If you can guarantee safe passage off this planet for my crew, I'll let you take anything you want from the wreck. We won't fight you."

The breathing sounded wet, visceral. Behind the raspy inhalations came a deep-rooted growl. Ashton felt the hair on his neck prickle and rise up. The odds of this being a Jah-Haran were getting slim. They could growl with the best of them, but this was a savage sound beyond even a pirate. And he could smell something now as well. It was a sour, fishy smell. It reminded him of the bile stench he gotten a whiff of earlier, but this was more specific and more intense.

A blast of hot air touched his neck.

He spun and faced the attacker. If Ashton had been able to see, the large, misshapen teeth and the gaping jaws leering just short of his nose might have scared him. The eyeless face, ghostly white and now pink in the red emergency lights might have been enough to give him nightmares not even a cryotube computer could compensate for. But as it was, he could only sense that something was in front of him.

"If we could-"

When it bit him, it encompassed his entire head. A short, strangled scream escaped his throat, but it was cut short when the powerful jaws clamped shut as though powered by the same hydraulic lines that operated the doors. His skull fractured and he was dead before the pain of the teeth tearing his flesh even fully registered. Blood splattered the wall a deep crimson color and then ran wet with gray matter and gore. The world was already black for John Ashton, and when he died it was simply more of the same.

A last rattling breath escaped his ruined mouth into the throat of the white alien. The creature held him there for a moment and then released. The captain fell to the deck in a heap of dead tissues and meat, more a headless corpse than a complete body.

The overhead lights flickered and came back on, illuminating the bloody mess med lab had become in a few minutes time. The white alien looked at the woman lying on the floor. She was still alive, but she was not moving. It could sense that it was not her time. Close, but not quite. It turned, already hearing more of them in corridors.

It ran.

It was not finished yet.

***

When they entered the central control alcove, Sonny was amazed to see that the power had been restored. The hum of the A.I. computer cooling systems filled the small area and sounded beautifully familiar to him. He smiled and walked right in, dragging Soniah behind him. She blinked against the light of the small compartment, a sudden change from the red shadow in the passageway.

"The A.I. hooked itself up to the battery reserve," Sonny grinned and kissed the monitor, "Oh you beautiful old woman, thank you."

"Hurry," Soniah whispered, "I can hear them in the corridor."

"If we can jam the door shut," Sonny stood in front of the computer control panel, "Just shut the damn door..."

With a muted electronic beep, the door slid shut and locked.

"Thank God," he breathed, "We have a shot."

"No," came a watery voice from behind them, "I do."

Wren, who had been hiding in the corner, shot Sonny in the leg. He howled in pain, sinking to the floor as he shoved Soniah out of the way. The red-skinned Haalken stood tall in the doorway, his blaster aimed at them. He leered with rotten teeth, his almost canine features wrinkled with superior glee. His ink black eyes glittered with excitement. Slowly, he stepped over to Sonny and then looked at Soniah as he charged his gun. The Haalken leered at her and licked his chops, pointing the rifle at Sonny's head, "IS he your mate?"

"You speak English?" Soniah asked.

"Is this one your mate?"

"No," Soniah shook her head.

"Good," Wren grinned, "Then you won't mind if I shoot him?"

"I would mind."

"Shame."

She met Sonny's pained eyes as she furiously sought a solution to this problem. She had no doubt the pirate would kill him. Soniah was surprised to find that she didn't just want another member of this crew to perish. She realized she had come to like Sonny in the last few hours. In the heat of the moment, she discovered she liked him a lot. His willingness to stick by her and not her leave alone had made an impression she hadn't noticed at first but could not deny now.

"You'll need him," Soniah said suddenly, "he's our engineer. You'll need him to remove the components of the A.I."

"Is that a fact?" Wren eyed her.

"Yes."

"Forgiving the fact that I already have forgotten more about advanced computers and artificial intelligence than this pathetic excuse for a human will ever hope to know," Wren said, "I don't take orders from a woman."

One of his long, wiry arms shot out and smashed Soniah in the face. She staggered back as dark, red blood trickled from her nose and lips. She wiped her face and looked at the blood, her yellow eyes then falling to Wren.

"That was a mistake friend," Sonny warned.

"I'm not your friend," Wren kicked Sonny hard in the ribs, knocking the wind from his lungs, "Nor do I care what this woman thinks, if one can call such mindless firings of the synapses 'thinking'."

"You should treat the lady with more respect," Sonny managed.

"Shut up," Wren batted him hard across the face.

Before Wren could level his gun at Sonny's head, Soniahs' leg stretched out and kicked it out of his hands. Wren stood there, looking dumbly down at his empty hands. "How dare you..."

Sonny looked at Soniah, his eyes wide. The huge blaster rifle fell to the floor on the far side of the alcove. Soniah stood defiantly in front of the Haalken and shrugged, "There I go, thinking again."

Wren reached for the second of four guns he carried on his armor. He drew his sidearm blaster with a speed Sonny had never seen before. But before he had brought the weapon to bear, it was gone. Soniahs boot returned to the deck, another perfect kick executed.

"You bitch," Wren growled as the weapon joined the rifle on the deck.

"So I'm told."

He reached behind his back and went to draw his third blaster, a smaller but powerful sleek silver gun with a long barrel. It was the same gun he had tried to intimate Hessex with earlier on the shuttle. He aimed and found her hand had already slapped his wrist so hard that the muscles released and dropped the gun into her hand. She pointed it at his head, a mischievous grin stretching across her dark blue lips.

"When I'm done with you..." Wren hissed

"When you're done with me?" Soniah asked innocently, "Well then you'll need this back." She spun the blaster by its handle and slapped it back into the pirate's open hand. Wren made to clutch it but she had yanked it from him faster than he could move. Her free hand struck out and caught him under the jaw, snapping his head back. She slapped the gun in his hand once more and again, before he could react, she had taken it back and struck him hard across the face.

Sonny watched, mouth open and eyes wide in their sockets.

"I'll kill you for that," Wren gasped, truly shocked at her speed and audacity.

"Too fast for you?" Soniah asked and repeated the process, slower but still faster than Wren could react to.

The Haalken screamed and lunged for her. Soniah tossed the small blaster to Sonny and then slipped out of Wrens' way, her leg out and knee up. She connected with his stomach, her leg bearing a painful impact to his armor but nothing so serious she couldn't finish what she had started. Her hands, balled into fists smashed into the back of his neck and in one deft move slipped the fourth blaster from his shoulder holster while pushing him into the wall.

Soniah aimed the stolen gun and fired at Wrens' legs, two shots for each knee. Wren collapsed to the floor and bellowed in impotent rage. He turned onto his back and glared at the Denavian, "You'll pay for this! I swear you will!"

"I'll keep that in mind," she said, sounding almost bored. She then looked to Sonny, her voice warm, "You okay?"

Soniah knelt down beside Sonny and checked his leg out. The engineer, still in shock that the entire fight between her and the pirate had lasted no more than ten seconds, looked at her in complete awe and said, "How'd you do that?"

"Do what?" Soniah examined the cauterized wound that had drilled through Sonny's left leg.