No Man's Space 1: Starship Encounter Read Free Page A

He nodded. “You’re in charge, sir.” He headed to the room’s intercoms and began instructing the crew.
    “You’re in charge, sir?” Midshipman Gomez ran into the bridge and froze when he saw all the corpses.
    The captain’s chair had stains of blood, and so did the commander’s. Most of the standing officers had fallen defending the bridge. The lad counted them with his fingers. His sugar high hadn’t waded, and he barely reacted negatively to the blood.
    He eventually finished and approached me with an expression well beyond his years. “If they’re all dead and you’re the acting captain, does that make me the acting commander? And are we fighting the Cassocks out there? I’ve always wanted to lead a fight, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon. And do I have standing rights? The captain didn’t let midshipmen on the bridge, but I’m the only officer left, aren’t I? Can I sit on the commander’s chair? Once they’ve cleaned it, of course… it’s yucky right now. And can I eat in the wardroom? It’s going to be empty now that you’ll use the great cabin.”
    “God save us,” Flanagan muttered from the other side of the bridge. Midshipman Gomez didn’t offer many guarantees as a second-in-command.
    “Religious?” I asked.
    “No,” Flanagan said, “but looks like a good time to explore a new faith.”
    Either Gomez hadn’t heard us or he didn’t care. He walked over to the beige officers’ chairs in the center of the bridge. They had high backrests and plushy armrests, and they were much more comfortable than your typical holo-cinema room. Gomez ran his hand along one of the seats and checked the plushy seat.
    The kid had never seen death before, and he was already thinking of stealing a dead man’s chair! What kind of TV shows had he watched as a kid? At his age, I would’ve cried for days! Heck, if I’d been alone, I’d have curled up into a ball and hidden under a table.
    “Nobody’s sitting anywhere or dining in the wardroom,” I said. “And I’m definitely not stealing the captain’s cabin, not even if the whole damned crew is dead. I haven’t seen the subcommander’s corpse, so we may already have an acting captain.”
    “Doubt it.” Flanagan returned from the intercom and gestured at the screens to show several of the ship’s security cameras. Most of them had been disabled, but some showed corpses and more corpses. “Won’t find any survivors here, sir. Want the lads to check the hangars in case someone’s hiding in the escape pods?”
    “Do it.” I gulped and tried to man up, but the dead crew was too much. I would’ve died if I hadn’t forced my men to stay up until late while we tweaked the fuel system. It had been a silly upgrade, but it had saved our lives.
    And what could I do with my twelve year-old second in command?
    As if my thoughts had called for divine intervention, Subcommander Adamson stumbled out of the captain’s emergency escape pod on the bridge. I’d heard of it before, but I’d assumed it was just an urban legend about the Navy: why would a captain need an escape pod on the bridge if captains are supposed to sink with their vessels?
    Adamson was covered in blood from his stomach to his feet. One of his hands covered a large wound in his stomach, and he was pale. He stumbled backwards and sat on the floor beside the escape pod. He nodded in my direction… more or less. I don’t think he recognized me.
    I crouched beside him. Flanagan and Gomez stood beside me, staring at the scene as if it were a tragic representation of our unavoidable fate. Adamson held my double-breasted jacket, marking it with four long red trails.
    “Pity it’s black,” Flanagan said, referring to my jacket. “Won’t be easy to hide the blood.”
    I glared at Flanagan, but he shrugged. He’d seen more death than me, but it didn’t give him the right to ignore a dying man’s last words.
    The subcommander was agonizing. He needed a surgeon, but we’d found