Chapter 33

            The penguins led them to a circular chamber with a sort of swimming pool at the bottom.  A few of the penguins slid down the sides of the pool, into the water.  "We're going to swim to their igloos?" Will asked.

            "Yes, we swim," Percy said.

            "But we can't swim," Heather said.  She backed away from the water to the side of the chamber.  Some part of Will wanted to smile to see the cat afraid of something.

            "She's right," Tom said.  "That water is too cold."

            "We swim," Percy said.  With a flipper he indicated the other penguins.

            "Oh, I see.  But what about the rest of us?" Will asked.

            "You follow."  Before Will could ask Percy to expand on that, the penguins who had gone down to the water returned with what looked like a giant swordfish.  The fish bobbed on the surface to indicate it was dead.  From the shine still on its scales, Will figured it hadn't died all that long ago.

            "You want us to ride in that?" Heather asked with a mix of revulsion and shock.

            "Yes," Percy said.  "You ride, we pull."

            "I suppose it could work," Will said.  "As long as you keep the mouth closed."

            "No worry.  Pinquins are smart."  As Percy said this, more penguins bobbed to the surface with bits of chain in their beaks.  Will wondered where they had found the chains; probably from the Black Ship base.

            The mouth of the swordfish yawned open enough for Will to crawl inside.  The penguins had already cleared out the major organs of the great fish so that Will only had to push aside some leftover bits to fit inside.  It would certainly be a tight squeeze, not to mention a very smelly ride, but it could work.  Tom joined him in the fish, followed by Heather.  "A cat eaten by a fish.  I'll never hear the end of it," she grumbled.

            Spot IV reported the penguins had brought up a second fish to carry the rest of the team.  Out of the twenty-five original commandos, only a third of that number remained.  Will wondered what so few could possibly do against the Black Ships, even with the help of the penguins.  It's our only chance, he told himself.

            The swordfish's mouth closed, plunging Will and the others into darkness.  There was of course no window, but he could feel the fish begin to move, carrying the commandos in its belly.  With so little room, they said nothing to conserve what oxygen there was inside the fish.  Will thought of the Bible story about Jonah and the whale, followed by the Disney version of Pinocchio.  He supposed a whale would have been a lot more comfortable, with more room to spread out and more oxygen to breathe.

            The interior of the fish turned frigid, indicating they were probably closer to the ocean floor.  The commandos had no choice but to press tighter against each other so that their body heat would keep them from freezing.  Making the situation worse, water began trickling into the fish's belly, soon coming up to Will's knees.  If the fish didn't reach its destination soon, they would all drown.

            The water was up to their chests when Tom said, "I'm sorry I dragged you along on this."

            "You didn't.  I wanted to help her too."

            "Some help we're doing by drowning in this thing."

            "At least we tried."

            "Sure, Mom can put that on our tombstones."

            For the first time in what seemed like forever, Will thought of his parents.  How much time had passed on Earth?  Did his parents think he and Tom were dead?  He imagined a memorial service with his father comforting his mother.  Then he reminded himself it would be more likely that his parents would spend the service arguing about whose fault it was that he had died.  The service would probably end with other relatives dragging them to separate cars.

            By the time he resigned himself to this, the water was up to his mouth.  He took as deep of a breath as possible, trying to cling to life for another minute or two.  I'm sorry, Jessie, he thought.  We tried.  In the end, as Tom had said that wasn't much.

            The fish came to a stop as the water reached Will's eyeballs.  To his relief, the mouth of the swordfish opened a moment later.  "We here," Percy said.

            The fish disintegrated around them as the penguins sliced it open with their beaks.  Will collapsed onto a metal surface, gasping for breath on his knees.  When he finally got enough of his breath back, he looked around to see how the penguins had found the chain they had used to drag the fish.

            They were in a rubbish pile with food wrappers, bits of electronic components, and even chunks of Black Ship warrior armor lying around.  A circular hole took up the center of the room, into which the Black Ships probably shoveled their trash periodically.  He hoped that wouldn't happen for at least a few minutes.

            "Thank you for your help," Will said to Percy.

            "You make Black Ones go away now."

            "We'll try."

            "We go now."  Percy squawked something to the other penguins, who as one dove into the hole to swim back to their village.  This left the eight commandos alone in the Black Ship garbage dump.

            "So how to we get inside?" Will asked.

            "Leave that to us," Heather said.  A large, heavy door allowed the garbage to drop in from the rest of the base.  Heather studied the door controls along with Spot IV.  They consulted for a minute, during which Will eyed the walls, waiting for them to start closing in to shove the trash—and the commandos—into the ocean.

            That didn't happen.  Spot IV took an electronic device from his belt to place it next to the door controls.  Lights on the device flashed in patterns like on a dance floor until finally three green lights came on.  The door swung open.

            "Ready or not, here we come," Tom said.

#

            The pistol felt unnatural in Will's hand.  The only guns he had ever held before were toys and squirt pistols, nothing that could kill someone.  But the weapon Spot IV had thrust into his hand could easily kill someone, or at least someone not wearing protective armor.  "It's a simple enough weapon.  Push the safety here, aim, and shoot.  Try not to shoot yourself in the foot," Spot IV said, beginning and ending his gun safety lecture.

            "Good advice," Tom said, holding a weapon of his own.  Seeing the gun in his brother's hand, Will thought back to the convenience store robbery that had landed Tom in Stratford.  Tom looked entirely too comfortable with the weapon for Will's taste.  Maybe one of his former friends had let him hold a gun before.  This thought prompted Will to grimace.  "Come on, let's get moving before they find us."

            "Right."  Will trailed after his brother.  The female shepherd mix from the mining station mission took the point again with Heather, Spot IV, and two commandos following her. The humans came next, with the rest of the commandos covering the rear.

            The door led to another chamber, this one a square room littered with more piles of scrap.  Overhead was a series of conveyor belts, onto which garbage dropped from other parts of the base.  One of a half-dozen robotic arms seized the garbage to examine it.  A green light came on, the scrap flowing down the conveyor belt, into a door.  Another piece received a red light and was shunted onto the piles of trash.

            "This must be a recycling center," Spot IV said.

            "Waste not," Tom said. 

            "What do we do now?" Will asked, but Heather had already sprung into action.  She climbed up the nearest pile of scrap, getting high enough that she could jump from the pile onto the conveyor belts.  When one of the robotic arms tried to take hold of her, she destroyed it with a shot from her pistol.  Like a feline Annie Oakley, Heather blasted the remaining robotic arms, never missing a shot.

            "Let's move it," she said.

            Spot IV shrugged before following her onto the conveyor belt.  The shepherd mix came next, then two of the commandos, and then Tom.  "Are you sure about this?" Will asked.

            "I don't see any choice except to go back," he said.

            "I guess."  Will followed his brother, scrambling up the pile of scrap.  Jagged bits of metal tore at his hands and clothes, leaving a few bloody gashes and tears, but nothing serious.  He steadied himself on the pile before jumping towards the conveyor belt.  He sailed through the air, his eyes going wide as he realized he was going to miss.  At the last moment, Tom grabbed Will's right wrist.  With a grunt, he hauled Will up onto the conveyor belt.

            The belt ferried them through a doorway, into yet another chamber.  Overhead, Will saw circular openings, presumably used by the rest of the base for dumping its trash.  The commando team assembled in the chamber to stare up at the openings.  "Any bright ideas about which one we try first?" Tom asked.

            Before Heather could answer, red lights came on, followed by alert klaxons.  Will dove for the doorway back to the conveyor belts, but it had been sealed off.  "Biological waste detected," a computerized voice said.  "Rerouting for processing."

            The chamber suddenly became a whirlwind, the fierce winds lifting Will and the others into the air.  He reached out for Tom, but as on the landing craft, he couldn't do it.  He could only watch helplessly as Tom, Heather, Spot IV, the shepherd mix, and two commandos were sucked into one of the tubes.  The tube sealed itself before Will could be pulled inside.  Instead, he and the rest of the team were thrust into a different tube. 

            Will felt like one of those containers at the bank drive-thru, being shot through a series of clear pipes.  He managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of a series of igloo-shaped buildings.  Now he understood why the penguins referred to the Black Ship base as igloos.  Which of these igloos held Jessie and the others?

            He didn't get any more time to ponder this as he approached another opening.  He shot through the air as if out of a cannon, flailing in the air for a moment before coming down in a pool of something.  From the smell of it, Will knew it was not water.  He swam towards the edge of the pool, dragging himself onto the metal deck.

            The other three commandos soon joined him, all of them reeking and dripping with waste.  A bulldog trooper asked, "Where are we?"

            "I have no idea," Will said.  He looked around for Tom and the rest, but their tube must have diverted them to another location.  I hope it's somewhere that smells better, he thought.

#

            Now that there was power to the holographic projectors, Spot II could see the Bloc fleet was losing the battle.  Without the firepower of the Cerberus, the Black Ships had taken full advantage, swarming around the rest of the Bloc ships.  At least half of the fleet was already out of the fighting, disabled or completely destroyed.

            There was little Spot II could do as he watched a squadron of Black Ships batter his flagship, the Mutt.  He thought of his brother Jeremiah and the rest of his people on board the ship.  He said a silent prayer that something would happen to allow them to escape.  Instead, he watched a massive explosion rock the battleship.  "Abandon ship," he whispered, urging Jeremiah not to go down with the ship as was tradition.  A few moments later, the first escape pods began launching from what remained of the Mutt.

            The Black Ships for a change didn't bother with the escape pods; they had plenty of more valuable targets to worry about.  Buster pounded a fist on a console.  "That's enough!"  He turned to Carly Barker.  "How much power do we have?"

            "We're at sixty percent," Carly said.

            "Is that enough to execute a separation?"

            Nina ran through the calculations and then nodded.  "Yes, sir."

            "Then let's do it."  Buster punched a button to the bridge.  "Jonathan, we're going to execute a separation."

            "Understood," Jonathan said.

            "What is a separation?" Spot II finally asked.

            "If you remember your mythology, you'll remember the mythical Cerberus has three heads," Buster said.  "So does this one."

            "What?"

            Carly displayed a graphic on the screen.  On it, Spot II watched as the Cerberus came apart into three sections.  The forward section was the front of the ship with its main gun.  The remainder of the dreadnought split down the center, giving each piece one of the engine blisters.  "Ingenious," Spot II said.

            Buster cleared his throat.  "We're going to need a captain for the starboard section.  Are you up to it?"

            Spot II nodded, thinking of his brother and the rest of the Bloc crewers floating in their escape pods helplessly.  "Let's do it.  Zeke and Nina, you're with me."

            He followed Buster's directions along the corridors until he found a red door labeled, "Starboard Control Center."  He punched in a code into the door controls, the door hissing open.  Inside was a scaled-down version of the main bridge, with a command chair and three other stations:  one for offensive systems, one for defensive systems, and one for maintenance systems.  Zeke took the latter chair while Spot II took the offensive systems chair and Nina the defensive systems one. 

            Spot II punched a button on his console.  "We're ready," he said.

            "We're ready too," Buster said.

            "Initiating separation," Jonathan said from the main bridge.  Spot II said another prayer, hoping the ship didn't lose power again in the middle of the separation.  On his screens, he watched as the forward section pulled away using the emergency thrusters.  Once it was far enough away, panels on the bottom of it swung away to reveal a set of engines.  They couldn't launch the forward section into hyperspace, but they would allow it to maneuver.

            The rear section of the ship then began splitting along the middle as per the diagram Nina had shown him.  Once the port and starboard sections had broken from each other using their emergency thrusters, the engine blisters on each side swung ninety degrees so that what had been the outside edges of the Cerberus became the prows of the separate vessels.

            "Separation complete," Jonathan said.

            Spot II checked his consoles.  Zeke indicated they still had fifty percent power, enough for the weapons, shields, and life support on the bridge.  "That'll have to be enough," Spot II said.  He began tapping buttons on his console, bringing the weapons to life.  Finding a target wasn't difficult.  The starboard section's weapons vaporized a Black Ship frigate and badly damaged a cruiser.  To Spot II's relief, the ship's systems held up afterwards.  "Here we go," he said, maneuvering the ship into the middle of the fighting.  Hang tight, he mentally urged Jeremiah and the others in the escape pods.  We'll be back for you.