Free Pelquin's Comet by Ian Whates

certain that it had indeed ended.
    Car doors slammed, the sound penetrating in a distant, muffled fashion. He risked peering around the corner of the crates and was just in time to see the vehicle pulling rapidly away. At the same instant the metal staircase above him rang to the tread of heavy footfalls. Pelquin appeared, with Anna and the doc a little behind him. The captain was carrying a hefty-looking energy gun. The cavalry, arriving too late.
    Drake heard a gasp from beside him. “Monkey!” It was Bren’s voice.
    Only then did he register the form of the diminutive mechanic, curled up in a foetal position behind a cluster of crates far smaller than their own. Monkey wasn’t moving.
     
    Drake’s respect for Pelquin grew in the moments immediately after the one-sided fire fight. The Comet’s owner checked on his crewmember first, ensuring Monkey was still alive, before standing aside and letting the doc examine him. Only then did he turn his attention to discovering exactly what had happened here, inviting Drake, Nate and Bren to describe in turn what they had seen and heard. Next it was the welfare of the cargo and equipment. He tasked Nate, Bren and Anna with checking every item and every crate for bullet holes and other damage. Nate had suffered a flesh wound where a bullet had grazed his left arm but he was otherwise unhurt. The doc sprayed the resultant gash with something and slapped an antibiotic skin patch over it, then left Nate to get on with things.
    Monkey was another matter entirely.
    Pelquin turned to the banker and said, “And that was it? Really? They simply shot the place up and then left, without attempting to board or take anything.”
    “Yes,” Drake replied, realising that the captain was merely looking to reaffirm what he already knew and that the question was all but rhetorical. Pelquin nodded, as if he now understood fully what had just happened.
    Drake suspected that he did too, now that he’d had a chance to analyse events. He just hoped the captain was as sharp as his reputation suggested.
    “Anna,” Pelquin called. “Forget the damage inventory for now, get up to the controls and start the engines. We can finish this off once we’re underway. Nate, shut the bay doors and prepare for lift off.”
    “ Lift off ?” the doc looked up sharply from where he knelt beside the wounded mechanic. “You can’t. We need to get this man to a hospital.”
    “Out of the question. We’re leaving. Now.”
    “But he’ll…”
    “Put him in stasis.”
    “In his condition?” Bren said, staring at the captain. “It’ll kill him.”
    “Maybe, but I doubt it. He’s stronger than he looks.”
    “Pel, this is Monkey .”
    The captain ignored Bren and addressed the doc. “What’ll happen if we don’t put him into stasis and don’t get him to a hospital?”
    Doc hesitated for an instant and then said, “He’ll die.”
    “So he will die if we don’t put him in stasis and might die if we do, yes?”
    The doc nodded.
    “Did you follow that, Bren?”
    “Yeah, you made your point. I’m angry, not deaf.”
    “Then quit yapping and get on with it. The sooner Monkey’s in a cryochamber the better his chances of surviving.”
    Bren’s glare looked hot enough to melt steel. The two of them locked gazes. The woman broke first. “You’d better be right about this, Pel.”
    She crouched down, scooping Monkey’s deceptively frail form up in her arms.
    “Be careful with him,” Doc said.
    The anger hadn’t fully left her eyes as she straightened up, but evidently her trust in the captain had won out. She left without saying anything further, the doc hurrying in her wake.
    Pelquin watched them go and then looked across to Drake, perhaps expecting the banker – such an acknowledged symbol of officialdom – to object, but Drake had no intention of doing so. He sensed that the Comet’s captain had reached the same conclusion he had. Logically, the raid could only have had one purpose: to