Time Bomb

by R. M. Olson

  Jez’s stomach tightened with a familiar anger. “Yeah? Well, maybe I should have, you bastard. But an idiot tech-head told me something once, when he and the rest of them came back for me when maybe they shouldn’t have—he said people don’t do things like that to people. So shut up, OK?”

  Masha studied her for a long time, head cocked slightly to one side. At last she gave a small smile. “I see.” She paused. “I—suppose I should thank you. Although I disagree with what you did.”

  Jez gave her a smirk. “Well, guess that’s better than no gratitude at all, you plaguer.”

  “I guess it is,” said Masha, her tone ever-so-faintly amused.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Impact minus .5 hours, Tae

  Tae clipped a connector in carefully. “Jez, power it up,” he said, and a moment later there was a familiar hum. He let out a breath of relief and wriggled out backwards. The others watched him as he brushed himself off and stood, their faces a familiar blend of concern and the blind trust that he’d know what he was doing well enough to get them out of this.

  “It’s ready,” he said. “At least, as ready as I can make it.”

  Tanya’s face broke into a relieved smile, and Jez grinned widely.

  “Knew you could do it, tech-head,” she said.

  He shook his head. He’d actually had no idea he’d be able to do it. But on the same token, he’d had no idea that Jez could cut her lifeline, push off out into deep space, and somehow make it back, so he supposed they were all pushing the limits of the impossible at this point.

  “How much time before we can make our jump?” asked Masha, her face taut.

  He glanced at his com. “The shields are up now, but it’s going to be a solid hour plus before we can do a jump.”

  “So now we wait,” said Lev. Tae nodded.

  “That’s all we can do.” He tried to feel relieved rather than worried.

  Still, he’d never have believed a few hours ago that they’d be this close to getting away. Not when they were sitting crippled and helpless in deep space, with their oxygen running low and their power dead and no shields as two missiles blasted towards them.

  “Well,” said Ysbel at last, “I should get the children ready for the jump.”

  “Put them in helmets in case the oxygen goes,” Jez called over her shoulder.

  “I’ll go calculate our coordinates,” said Masha. “Lev? Would you come please?”

  Lev looked up and nodded. His face was unaccountably grim. He turned and shot a last worried look at Jez, then stepped out of the cockpit.

  Tae shook his head slightly.

  Apparently, being stuck on a dying ship was something of a relationship builder. In the airlock, in Lev’s arms, Jez had looked completely drunk, and Lev had looked like someone had hit him over the head. Who would have thought?

  He smiled to himself and glanced over at Jez.

  Her eyes were closed, and she ran her fingers over the control panel like she was trying to memorize the feel of it.

  He knew as well as she did how the ship would come out of this jump. Maybe with the thrusters, they would have lost the components designed by Sasa Illiovich. It would have been tragic, but they could probably have put something back into her and got her running again, as a sort of pale, weak shadow of her former self.

  This, though—this jump would leave her a broken hull. There wouldn’t be anything worth salvaging.

  “Tae,” she said, after a moment, without opening her eyes.

  “Yeah?”

  “I—I’m sorry. For screwing everything up with Masha.”

  It seemed so long ago he could hardly remember it.

  “Jez—”

  “You were right, you know,” she said quietly. “I always have run away. I guess I just got into the habit of it. But—I guess running away works better if you don’t care about what you’re leaving. Guess I hadn’t really thought through what I’d be leaving this time.”

  He stared at her for a moment. Finally, he shook his head. “Jez, listen. It’s fine. I’m sure—”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, and her grin had a tinge of weariness to it, and something that was almost regret.

  “Nah. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure everything will work itself out once we get away. I just—I wanted to tell you that. Because here’s the thing—you’re a good person. And I don’t want to screw everything up, which I tend to do, and have you not know that.”

  He looked at her oddly. “I—”

  She grinned. “Anyways. I’m going to grab something to eat. See you soon.” She pushed her way to her feet and made her jaunty way out of the cockpit, and he stood looking after her, frowning.

  There was something about the tone of her voice, the look in her face, that made him uneasy.

  He shook his head and tapped his com.

  Fifteen more minutes.

  It took him about three minutes to clean up the wires and the extra components from the floor of the cockpit, and another two minutes to organize the tools neatly back in their places.

  Waiting was always the worst part.

  Ysbel appeared a few minutes later. Tanya and the children were with her. Misko looked slightly ridiculous in the oversized helmet, but it should keep him alive, at any rate.

  Lev and Masha came in next. Lev glanced at the empty pilot’s seat, but he didn’t say anything, just sat down in the copilot’s seat and began typing coordinates into the com.

  Five more minutes.

  Jez sauntered back in and dropped into the pilot’s seat. She didn’t look at him or anyone else, and for a moment he could have sworn he saw traces of tears on her face.

  “Alright, Ysbel,” said Masha quietly. “We’d best get the shields prepped.”

  Ysbel nodded and moved over to the side of the cockpit. Tanya joined her.

  “I’m pulling the shields online, Ysbel,” Jez said, still without looking at them. Ysbel nodded, and Jez pulled down the shielding lever.

  “We’re going to have impact in five minutes.” Lev was watching the ship’s com screen.

  Ysbel had Misko, and was bracing herself against the wall. Tae pulled off his portable harness and tossed it to her. She shot him a grateful look and strapped the protesting Misko into it.

  “Four minutes.”

  Olya slipped her hand into Lev’s. Without looking up from the screen, he stood and lifted her into the copilot’s seat, strapping her into the harness. He knelt beside the chair, bracing himself.

  “One minute.”

  Tae took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves.

  “Four. Three. Two. One.”

  There was a moment’s silence. And then the ship bucked and rolled, tools and loose parts were flung across the cockpit. Tae put up his hands to shield his head, and Misko screamed, a thin, terrified sound.

  Another explosion rocked the ship, and from behind him on the main deck came sounds of smashing and breaking.

  And then, finally, the rocking and jolting subsided. Cautiously, he lifted his head from his arms and glanced at the ship’s holoscreen, which was somehow still active.

  “It looks like—” he let out a long breath of relief. “It looks like the shields held,” he said, almost not recognizing his voice. “It looks like they actually held!”

  They looked at each other, their expressions slack with relief.

  Then he froze, staring at the screen.

  No.

  It was impossible.

  He stared for a moment more, almost unable to breathe. He felt as if someone had hit him in the stomach and knocked the wind from him, that moment where his body seemed to have forgotten how to pull in air.

  Lena’s ships. Close enough for a visual. Maybe twenty minutes away.

  “We miscalculated,” he said, his voice sounding strange. “Looks like they were traveling faster than we thought.”

  And then there was a jolt, something almost like a puff of air, and the ship rocked, ever so faintly.
/>
  He locked eyes with Lev for the briefest second.

  And then, without warning, the lights flickered and died, and the soft hum of the ship that had become so familiar over the past few hours he hardly noticed it anymore, disappeared.

  “What—” Lev began in the darkness.

  “Why are the lights out, Uncle Lev?” asked Olya, her voice small.

  “Tae?” asked Masha, her brisk voice showing a sudden hint of concern.

  He didn’t answer for a moment.

  Twenty minutes out. That was about the right range.

  He’d recognized that feeling, recognized the wild spike of lines on his com screen.

  He’d seen them before. He’d seen them plenty of times before. Because he’d been the one who had made them.

  “Jez,” he said quietly.

  “Yeah.” The tone in her voice told him she’d figured out the same thing he had. “That EMP tech the government stole from you.”

  He nodded, even though in the dark no one could see him.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Well, tech-head,” said Jez at last, and there was a tone in her voice he couldn’t read. “Guess that’s the disadvantage of being so good. Least it didn’t take out the life support backup.”

  “Lena will shoot us out of the sky, then,” said Ysbel softly.

  “Nah,” said Jez. “I know her. Probably sent those missiles so we’d power up, get the shields going, so she could knock us offline. She won’t kill us until she talks to us first. Always looking for an angle, Lena.”

  Tae stared down at the blank screen.

  Not that they needed a screen. Lena was close enough for visuals now.

  And there was nothing he could do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Post-impact, Jez

  It was pitch dark, but Jez knew this ship like she knew the shape of her own body, and she could get around it as instinctively as you twisted sideways to get through a narrow doorway. She slipped out the cockpit door as Lev’s com light illuminated the space.

  The cabins were cut off, but she headed back for the small storage closet behind the cockpit, where she stored her spare clothes and whatever else she might need on short notice.

  Lena would be here in twenty minutes.

  I knew you wouldn’t leave us.

  Funny how a kid could make you rethink your whole life.

  It wasn’t like she’d thought about it. It wasn’t like she’d sat down and thought to herself, as soon as I start getting soft-eyed over that ridiculous scholar-boy, as soon as these idiots start feeling like friends instead of coworkers, that’s when I’m out. It had been Masha, and her damn rules, and her ideas that everything had to happen just so, and her inability to take risks.

  But Tae had been right. It had been almost a reflex—she got into a fight with Masha, and she didn’t know who would win the fight, and she didn’t want to find out if Lev and Tae and Ysbel would take her side, or Masha’s. And she couldn’t deal with everything that would come with trying to make things work even after everything she and Masha had said.

  So she’d decided to run again, like she always did. And she hadn’t even thought about what that would do to the others, because she was never around for that part. She’d go in and start a fire and get back out again before she had time to get burned.

  But there was something about this damn crew that had pulled her back in, right into the middle of the flames.

  Still, probably came a time in everyone’s life where they just couldn’t run anymore.

  Lena.

  It had been a long, long time, but that name still had the power to scare her, just a little.

  Lena, who had once, almost, been the mother and father she’d lost. The crew that she’d once naively believed would replace her family, after her family threw her out as a skinny, frightened fourteen-year-old, with nowhere to go and no-one to turn to.

  And for five years, she’d chafed under Lena the same way she chafed under her father, but at least under Lena she’d been allowed to fly.

  And she had flown. She’d flown things no one else in that damn crew could fly, even as a fourteen-year-old.

  She opened the tiny ship’s closet and pulled down a couple of pieces of old clothing. Behind them hung her pilot’s jacket, and she pulled that out as well and reached into the pocket.

  Her fingers brushed something inside of it, something small and round and hard, and she smiled to herself.

  A piece of the cargo she’d lifted off Lena, when she’d stolen her ship and run. The thought brought a smile to her face, even now.

  Hell. Lena would be ecstatic to see her. Probably be the best day of her damn life. Because Jez was pretty sure after she stole Lena’s ship, and then after the others had almost blown up Antoni when he’d come after her on Prasvishoni, killing Jez had probably become Lena’s fondest dream.

  Jez grinned to herself slightly. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to this, but still, she had to admit, it was nice to be appreciated.

  She rolled the change of clothes into a bundle and shoved them into her tattered bag, and shrugged on the pilot’s jacket. She flipped on her com light quickly and looked around.

  Anything else she needed? Probably not.

  Anyways, she had no idea what Lena would have planned for her, and it may not involve her living long enough to need a change of clothes and some toiletries.

  But the thing was, whatever it was, whatever Lena had planned, Jez was almost certain she’d be able to make it last long enough to give the others a chance. Masha was at least a little bit right. Jez had never been good at not attracting attention. And good thing, because she was about to attract a hell of a lot of attention in just a few minutes from now.

  She looked around one last time and sighed. Her hands shook slightly, and her heart was beating a little faster than it probably should be.

  Guess after everything, she was more afraid than she’d thought she would be.

  Still—she gave a slight shrug. If you weren’t afraid of something you were about to do, you probably weren’t living hard enough.

  She’d use an escape pod. Even if the EMP tech had disabled everything, there were manual controls on those. She should be able to eject, and then manually steer the thing in the direction of Lena’s ship. And once she got close enough, she could use the harpoon to pull herself in.

  Shouldn’t be a problem.

  And the best part was, there was no one else on this ship who could pull that off. Once she was gone, there was no danger that any of the others would come after her.

  It was an odd feeling, really, to think that they probably would have. They almost certainly would have.

  There was a lot about her idiot crewmates that she didn’t understand. And there was a hell of a lot about the strangely-lightheaded, giddy feeling she got every time she damn well brushed fingers with Lev that she didn’t want to understand. But somehow, she did understand that. They’d never leave her behind, not if they could help it. Which was exactly why she was going to make sure they wouldn’t be able to help it.

  Least she could do, she figured.

  She hoisted her small bag and stepped back out of the confined space and back into the main hallway of the ship, and almost bumped into someone.

  She tensed.

  “Jez.” It was Masha, and she let out a breath of relief, shoulders dropping.

  “Hey Masha. Just on my way off ship. Remember what I told you, OK?”

  “Of course,” said Masha, in her usual calm tone. She flipped the light on her com, illuminating her face in shadowy light. “Good luck.”

  She managed a grin. “Thanks. Same to you.”

  She made to step past the woman, but Masha put out her hand.

  “Jez. A moment. I think you forgot something.”

  Jez half-turned, and Masha’s hand came up, and she only had time to realize the woman was holding something small and white, and to catch a whiff of the strange, sweet smell of
it, before the world went completely black.

  Lev caught the unconscious Jez as she fell and lowered her gently to the floor, then flipped on his own com light, illuminating the small corridor.

  “Well,” said Tae at last. “That was almost frighteningly effective.”

  “I did tell you,” said Masha. “I am somewhat proficient in sleeping gasses.”

  Lev looked down at Jez, her eyes closed, her face somehow almost peaceful, and shook his head. “She was going to the escape pods?” he asked.

  “I suspect so,” said Masha. “Although I didn’t wait to find out.”

  “How long until she wakes up?”

  Masha glanced down. “From the amount I gave her, I’d say maybe twenty minutes.”

  Lev sighed again. Something inside him hurt, just a little, to see Jez like this. Still, there’s been no other way, because talking Jez out of something once she’d decided it was a good idea was, he’d learned, singularly ineffective.

  “Alright,” he said, straightening. “I guess we have twenty minutes to come up with a plan, before she wakes up and decides to go anyways.” He paused, and glanced at Masha. “I—thank you. For telling us.”

  Masha smiled her pleasant smile, but there was a trace of warmth behind it that he wasn’t sure had been there when he’d first met the woman. “You were right, Lev. Jez has gotten the rest of us out of enough sticky situations in the past. I believe it’s our turn to do the same for her.”

  Tae glanced at his com. “We’ll have to work fast. Lena will be in com distance in ten minutes, and close enough to initiate boarding maneuvers in fifteen.”

  Lev nodded and gestured at the floor, and the rest of them took their seats. The bluish glow from the com lights threw strange shadows on their faces, and on the unconscious Jez lying behind them.

  “Alright,” he said, pulling up his com holoscreen. “What do we have on our friend Lena?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Post-impact, Ysbel

  The dark bulk of Lena’s long-haul ship blocked out any view of the sky from the cockpit windows. Ysbel glanced over at Lev, who’d taken his customary seat in the copilot’s chair.