The Gorison Traveler Incident (Veslor Mates #1) Read online

  “This isn’t a stunt! It’s all true! Laser fire does nothing to the Ke’ters, sir. It doesn’t hurt them at all. That’s the strongest weapon we have onboard.”

  “This is bullshit. They wouldn’t attack. You were always the worst troublemaker as a girl. This is nothing more than a way to get back at me for telling you to stay away from our alien guests, and you’ve gone too far. You will immediately stop this nonsense and report to the brig. How dare you—”

  She cut coms and repeated her earlier message, spelling out most of the words to prevent the aliens from understanding her intent.

  The coms line buzzed but she ignored it. Instead, she watched the clock.

  Two minutes passed—and then she initiated lockdown.

  Sharp alarms continued to blast through the speakers all over the ship, and she knew emergency doors were being sealed, corridor access points were cut off by thick blast walls, and every venting shaft would go into crisis mode. They would seal off to prevent oxygen leaks in case of explosions but would pump in enough filtered air to keep everyone alive.

  She turned the chair, facing the long-range communications controls. She turned them on to send a message but the device refused to give her access. She didn’t have an override code, but there was a general distress signal option.

  Vivien initiated it. The Gorison Traveler was in dire need of help.

  The auto-distress beacon blinked as it transmitted a standard S.O.S.

  She turned back, still ignoring the coms buzzing at her, and began to pull up security feeds.

  Medical had been devastated. It was clear some kind of incendiary device had gone off in the huge room. Bodies lie in pieces, scattered among the charred, broken equipment.

  Tears blinded her, but Vivian blinked them back. The Ke’ters must have targeted Medical to cripple the Gorison Traveler’s efforts to help the injured. There was no longer a place to take their wounded. It also meant that poor man she’d come across in the corridor would die.

  She continued flipping through various cameras on the ship to get an overview of the situation. No crew seemed to be stranded in the corridors, but she did see a few human bodies. She saw a few Ke’ters in random corridors, and also found three more trapped inside a lift.

  “I hope you die in there, bastards.”

  She found more of the aliens when she brought up the bridge. They were eating the pilots and other crew.

  That’s when she remembered their intent to take over the ship. They would succeed, since they now had control of the bridge.

  She reached over and flipped on the internal coms that kept buzzing at her.

  “Goddamn you, Goss! You can get the death penalty for sealing off this ship!”

  “The Ke’ters have the bridge.” She tried to keep her voice calm, despite the panic she felt. “They are going to steal the ship, sir. They’re eating the crew alive! I don’t know what else to do. How do we stop them?”

  Commander Alderson disconnected on her.

  “Bastard!”

  Then she thought of Donny and his wife, Maggie. He was the head of engineering. She punched in their cabin code. It buzzed until Donny answered.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just what I said. The Ke’ters have attacked us.”

  Donny muttered a curse. “Why?”

  “We’re food. They’re eating us,” she explained, still feeling sick. “Is Maggie safe with you?”

  “Yes. We both made it to quarters. How bad is it?”

  “The Ke’ters have the bridge, medical was blown to hell, and, um…Commander Alderson thinks I’m playing a prank.”

  “He’s an asshat. You’re not a teenager anymore, and the pranks you pulled were always harmless. No one initiates lockdown as a prank. I believe you, Vivian.”

  “Is there any way I can shut down the engines from a control center to stop them from flying us to god knows where?”

  “Did you send out a distress signal?”

  “I was able to activate the auto-distress.” She glanced to her right, watching it flashing. “It’s still transmitting.”

  “There’s nothing else you can do.” He paused. “Wait—you need to get to Control One.”

  “I’m there. Mikey sent me here. It’s how I was able to put the ship in lockdown. Donny…the operator of this station wasn’t here. Why would they leave their post?”

  He hissed another curse. “I don’t fucking know. They shouldn’t have. Thank god Mikey is okay.”

  Grief knifed at her heart. “What can I do?” She needed him to think clearly. She’d tell him the truth about his best friend later.

  “Control One has override ability in case of an engine fire. It would shut them all down. I’m going to have to talk you through it.”

  “Okay. How does it work?”

  “It will vent all the oxygen in the engine compartments. They need oxygen to run, so they’ll shut down immediately. But…there’s a bad side to this, Vivian.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’ll be on backup power. Emergency system will kick in, so we won’t die, but they’ll only last four days. The engines themselves are what recharge the backup system. We’re ten days from the closest space station, and I don’t think anyone else is this far out. The Bassius Colony is too new to accommodate visitors for sustained periods, and I doubt they have long-range ships that would reach us.”

  Priorities, Big M would tell her. That’s what she needed to focus on. Deal with one mess at a time. She closed her eyes, thinking. “Can I restart the engines if I shut them down?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  She knew what that hesitation was about. “How long do they have to be kept running before the backup system is recharged?”

  He went quiet for another moment. “Twenty hours, at least. It’s a huge risk though, Vivien, to give them engines again.”

  “I know. First priority is keeping people alive and stopping the Ke’ters from taking us farther from help. Tell me how to vent the oxygen from the engines. If emergency life support goes down before help arrives, I’ll restart them.”

  “Fuck.” He was breathing harder. “First, go into the submenu for maintenance.”

  Vivian took a deep breath and put her hands on the controls, briefly looking for it. “I’m in.”

  Chapter Two

  Vivian jerked awake and stared at the screens in front of her. The Ke’ters on the bridge had done a lot of damage to the equipment while she’d rested. They were clearly too stupid to know they couldn’t get the engines online via that location.

  “Not happening.” She groaned as she moved, her body aching from sleeping upright.

  She glanced at the clock. It had been thirteen hours since she’d initiated lockdown. Commander Alderson refused to answer her calls. There was no security feed she could pull up in his quarters. All crew had privacy inside their homes.

  Another alarming fact she’d discovered was that the other three control stations on the ship weren’t answering her calls. They were supposed to be manned around the clock. Like Control One, they seemed to have been abandoned.

  She’d also spent hours searching the ship via the cameras, and had located nineteen of the twenty-two Ke’ters. It was the missing three she was worried about.

  Aside from those on the bridge, most of the others had been trapped in corridors, include six in the corridor outside the debriefing room where they’d attacked her adopted brother and father. And of course, three remained sealed inside the lift where she’d spotted them yesterday.

  The number of murdered crew members had staggered her. She’d stopped counting after thirty. It was too heartbreaking. The Ke’ters had attacked various areas of the ship in teams. The ones who’d targeted medical with that bomb were probably the three trapped in the lift near that section.

  She stood, stretching her stiff body, and moved into the small break room. She had access to plenty of food and drinks, so she wouldn’t starve or dehydrate. There were even t