Carallo had the look of a man going through the motions of life without actually living. Carallo said, “He’s afraid of you, you know, in an almost superstitious way, though not so much now that you’re in his hands. But if you weren’t, if you were free, then he’d fear you more than any other being in this universe. Even if you die, as long as he doesn’t have proof you’re dead, you’ll haunt him for the rest of his life. And if that’s the only revenge I can have, then so be it.”
That wasn’t good enough for Charlie. He didn’t want to be a ghost haunting Goutain’s dreams. And even through the haze of pain he knew that Carallo’s plan would only get them both killed. “I have to leave you now. After down-transition I’m going to try to kill Goutain, though I don’t hold much hope that I’ll succeed.”
Carallo climbed through the small hatch and dogged it shut. Charlie waited only long enough to hear the hatch’s lock ratchet into place. Then he popped the restraints holding him to the couch. He staggered to the medical cabinet, rifled through it desperately, and found a combat kikker, a cocktail of painkillers and strong stimulants. He slapped the patch against the side of his neck and shivered as drug-induced lucidity washed through his mind. He stuffed a couple more kikkers into his pockets, some antibiotics and painkillers as well. Then he staggered to the pilot’s console.
It was minimal at best, but while docked he had access to the larger ship’s navigation data. Twenty minutes to down-transition, with the lifeboat programmed to launch one minute later, its autopilot set up to drive at maximum thrust for Tachaann. But the launch of the lifeboat would raise alarms on the bridge, and a warship could easily overtake the lifeboat.
Carallo had opened the pilot’s console to command access, and for that Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. He plunged into the boat’s autopilot, overrode all its safety protocols, all its fail-safe restraints, especially those concerned with operation of the lifeboat’s drive. That done, and praying he hadn’t missed anything, he headed for the engine compartment at the rear of the small craft.
Lifeboats were designed to be simple, under the assumption they might be operated by badly injured personnel. Charlie grabbed a wrench and a knife from a nearby toolkit, disengaged a couple of latches, and slid the engine’s heat shield out of the way. Cooling lines, that’s what he was after. He badly crimped those that were metal or plast tubing in several places, while he cut those that were flexible. He closed the heat shield and limped back to the pilot’s console. Two minutes to transition.
He pulled off his tunic to use as a sack, stuffed it full of ration packs and medical supplies, then turned to the hatch. The only way of determining if chance had put someone in the corridor on the other side of the hatch was to open the damn thing. He did so, and luck was with him, or more likely, this close to transition everyone had a required duty station. He sealed the lifeboat’s hatch. One minute to go.
There were five more lifeboat hatches in the same corridor, all open for ready access in an emergency. The one he’d just exited was conspicuous in that it was sealed. He chose one of the others at random, climbed through it, and didn’t dare be so obvious as to seal the hatch. His one chance was the lifeboat’s emergency medical unit, though it felt more like a coffin as he climbed into it and lay down.
He felt the ship down-transit, then its hull thrummed several times as it launched its navigational drones. A short delay, then nearby the hull echoed with the launch of the lifeboat. He manually pulled the med unit’s lid down, leaving it open just a crack for air.
The engines on lifeboats were simple rocket motors, fueled by a couple of highly explosive liquid chemicals. If all went well, Charlie’s sabotage of the cooling lines would cause the engine to rapidly overheat, and if he hadn’t missed any critical fail-safes it would continue to pump fuel at maximum capacity. The resultant explosion would be dramatic enough that no one would expect to find anything left of its one unfortunate passenger.
If all went well.
Charlie didn’t dare use the med unit, or activate any of the lifeboat’s systems; the pilot’s console was always active, but any activity beyond