“Where
were you?” McCallister said, “And what the hell happened?”
Dixon sighed and pushed his chair
back. “Hell’s one word for it.” He moved behind the counter that separated the
cooking area from the dining area and a cupboard below his knees. “Four months
back we were called in to deliver a bunch of prisoners to some new off planet
prison facility that had just been built. A half full bottle of amber liquid
hit the counter and he opened another cupboard above his head. The sound of
clinking glass lifted the corner of Charlie’s mouth. Four glasses were pulled
down. “Top secret facility and mission. It was need to know.”
Rhodes pointed to the glasses and
bottle, “I don’t approve of you drinking Captain. I don’t care if you out rank
me, but if you take one sip of that stuff and I will cuff you to a bed in
Medical.”
Charlie chuckled and watched as
Dixon didn’t mess with orders, shoving one glass back into the cupboard above
him. “It was supposed to be a simple job, we escort the prisoners, hand them
off, make sure they’re secured, take a quick look at the security of the place
and come back out again.”
“Something went wrong,” McCallister
said.
Dixon nodded and brought back the
three glasses that held an inch of amber liquid in each one. He sat them down
in front of the three crew members of Valhalla and retook his seat. “The
scientists wanted us to hang around and head of security doubled this opinion. Command
authorised us to hang around an extra couple of weeks.”
There was a tone to his voice that
had Charlie frowning. “Two weeks to help with security.”
The other Captain gave a nod, “My
thoughts exactly.” He tilted his head to one side with a sigh. Charlie picked
up her glass and sipped. Rhodes pushed hers away and McCallister took his with
a wry smile. “But we stuck around, thing was the scientists wouldn’t let us go
anywhere. Their security could come and go where and whenever they pleased. But
us?” he shook his head and picked up Rhodes’ glass, taking a sip before the
woman could say anything. She just glared and Charlie tried to refrain from
laughing. Dixon liked to push the buttons on Doctors. He smirked as he put the
glass down and let it sit for a few seconds before the smile disappeared. “We
did our job though. We stuck around, bored, getting more bored with each
passing day. Before you know it two weeks pass and we ready to depart. Only our
ship wouldn’t work.”
Silence surrounded them with a
company of frowns. Charlie was the one to speak after gently setting her glass
down on the table, “What happened?”
Dixon’s eyes fell to
the glass he’d claimed and he sighed. “Johnson and Hill were in engineering,
looking over the engine when something happened. We’d locked up the ship,
standard protocol, but they were talking missing valves and pulled wires when
they went silent.” Charlie just cocked her head and waited for him to continue.
“I grabbed my side arm, told Carter, my First Officer to come with me and my Second
Officer, Hickman, to be wary. Something was off, we could all feel it.” A pause
and Charlie caught the odd look McCallister was giving her. There was a slight
narrowed look to his eyes and the deep look let her know that he was thinking
that something weird was going on, that nothing but trouble awaited them. “Then
the lights went out. Emergency lighting came on,” he passed a look about the
room, “much like it is now, and we hurried up. We got to engineering to find
Johnson and Hill unconscious. Then the doors closed and we were locked in. The
next thing we hear is gunshots, firing all about the ship. Capello’s voice
comes over the comms, telling us there’s a couple of people on board trying to
get into the bridge. Hickman had sealed it off and she was shouting, there was
banging, a burst of bullets and then silence.”Happy Writing
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