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

no surgeons alive and he assured that all the surgeons aboard the North Star were dead. The captain had pushed him into the escape pod before activating the poison gas, but it had been too late: Adamson was already mortally wounded.
    The subcommander was wounded, but he wanted to warn us of what had happened.
    Our men hadn’t noticed the Cassocks when they’d stalked our ship and boarded her in the middle of the night. They’d run along the corridors, entering rooms and murdering the men in their sleep. Some of the officers had heard the screaming and had run to defend the bridge before the enemy had arrived, but the Cassocks had been too many.
    The captain had ordered the engineers to arrange the core explosion and disable the venting systems, hoping that none of the Cassocks would’ve reached the lower deck. He’d been right, and we were alive because his plan had worked.
    The subcommander gulped as he tried to gather the energy to continue his tale.
    I was no doctor, but his end was near. No man needed to waste his last breath warning us; we’d manage.
    “Don’t, sir,” I told him. “Keep your strength.”
    “Won’t be of much use,” Flanagan said.
    I glared at him, but he remained impassible.
    Subcommander Adamson pressed my arm. “He’s right,” he said. “I’m dying anyway.” There was no fear in his voice, only tiredness and pity. Pity to die too soon, pity to never reach the rank of captain, and pity to hand command over to an engineering officer who would never manage to lead the North Star to safety. He might’ve been more optimistic than me about my own skills, though.
    The men on watch had been caught without warning. The Cassocks hadn’t killed them; they’d stunned them and taken them to one of their frigates. They wouldn’t be dead yet, not until the Cassocks captured or destroyed the North Star. There was still hope, but not for the subcommander.
    “Rescue our boys,” Adamson told me. His eyes were tired and dying, but he stared at me intensely. If I didn’t obey him, he’d return from death and haunt me.
    Flanagan didn’t care that the man was dying or about his death wish. He told him that he disapproved of everything the captain had done, and that we’d have had more chances of survival if the captain hadn’t killed our own men as well as the enemy.
    The subcommander agreed, but he remained respectful for O’Keeffe’s memory. He told us that the surgeons on watch must’ve been taken with several officers, and maybe even with part of our crew.
    Fear overtook him as soon as he’d given me the instructions. His mouth distorted and he grabbed the neck of my jacket. “You’re in charge, Wood,” he told me. “Take our lads back home.” He pushed me back and his hand dropped listlessly to his side.
    “What a dramatic death.” Flanagan turned his back to him and headed straight for the controls to run a systems check. He complained loudly at nobody in particular. “Why do officers take life so solemnly even when they’re scared shitless? You don’t need to keep the act when you’re about to die.”
    Gomez stared at Flanagan. The sugar high might’ve subdued, but perhaps he’d realized the gravity of the situation.
    “Thank you, Flanagan,” I said, starting to get annoyed.
    He looked up with less skepticism in his face. Was he testing my officer skills? Had I passed?
    As if command hadn’t been enough, I was now tasked with confronting five enemy frigates and rescuing our men. If we were lucky, we’d die trying. If we weren’t, we’d be captured alive.
    Command meant one thing: I had to take charge.
    Pardon the engineering analogy, but our situation was like the First Law of Thermodynamics: you can’t win, you can’t draw, and you can’t quit the game. It’s unfair, and it sucks.
    Several of Flanagan’s men joined us on the bridge, and my engineers arrived too. They reported no survivors in the escape pods or anywhere else, but the ship didn’t detect over