Running Black

by J. M. Anjewierden

  “Why do you ask?” Morgan said, taking in a deep breath before standing and joining them.

  “Look at what they were carrying,” Max said, gesturing at the weapon in Marcus’ hands.

  “It looks like an NCR to me,” Morgan said. “What of it?”

  Max could see Marcus’ eyebrow rise.

  “Where does a merchie like you learn about military weapons?” she asked.

  Morgan just shrugged.

  “The guy who sold me my pistol is a veteran, he messes around with modifying them regularly. Anyway, why is it worth commenting on?”

  “Just that they’re only sold to reputable militaries. They eventually filter out into disreputable hands, but that takes time. The mark eight has only been on the market for what, two years?” Max said. He shook his head. They didn’t have time to be speculating. Gesturing toward the lift, he added, “We really need to get back down to the docking level before they realize something is wrong. I don’t think any of them had time to contact anyone, especially since the jamming will almost certainly affect their wireless as much as ours, but they’ll notice sooner or later. We don’t want to be stuck in a lift when that happens.”

  “Of course,” Morgan said.

  Marcus headed straight for the lift, jamming the call button and then backing up a step to train her weapon on the doors.

  Morgan lingered, looking down at the dead men scattered around the central table.

  “They left us little choice,” Max pointed out in a whisper.

  “I know that,” Morgan said. “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried that it was easier this time.”

  “Just so long as you’re here to worry about it, I’m happy,” Max said, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Right,” Morgan said, looking down for a few seconds more before tearing her eyes away and heading for the lift, the groaning men and the beeping of unmanned consoles the only sounds left behind them.

  Chapter 24

  Few decisions are as hard as when to rush to the rescue… and when not to. “Leave none behind” is vital to the cohesion and camaraderie of any armed forces, or other groups where you are at times literally putting your life in someone else’s hands. At the same time, blindly rushing in and putting others in the same difficulty as those you’re trying to rescue serves no one. Put another way, there is a reason they always stress to put your own vac suit on first before helping others in case of an emergency. You can’t help anyone else when you end up needing as much or more help yourself.

  - General Neil Prat, Harold’s Star Royal Navy.

  MORGAN SLUMPED against the back wall of the lift, debating if opening her helmet so she could vomit was worth the risk of getting the fat ‘captain’s’ blood inside the helmet as well as on it.

  Definitely not. I feel like I need a shower as it is. At least Max got enough off that I can see out of it.

  How had things turned so quickly? Once the man had started droning on about the contract minutia, she’d dared hope that things really would be all right, despite all the clues and evidence they’d noted. Surely there was no point in such a charade?

  He must have had a reason. Something that made sense to him. I have to assume whatever that reason was, it is nothing good for us.

  “What was he trying to do?” Morgan asked, realizing she was still too shaken up to think clearly. Eck, Marcus, and the others, were picked because of their knowledge. Use them, you fool. She berated herself. The others… Anders, Bolton, and Khatri. How are we going to find them through all this jamming? Where would the pirates have taken them?

  “The obvious goal was to stall us,” Marcus answered, shrugging. “To what end I’m not sure. Clearly they were willing to take us hostage, so why not simply do that to start with?”

  “Take us hostage, stall for time, either way the question is still why,” Max commented. “What do they expect to happen after they’re done using up time?”

  “How did they get here?” Marcus asked, very quietly.

  “A ship, obviously,” Morgan answered.

  “A ship,” Max repeated. “A ship that is still out there somewhere.”

  Morgan groaned inwardly. How could they miss something so blatantly obvious?

  “We’re too used to seeing everything nearby, tracking it all constantly, and having it all tracked by everything else in orbit. Between the shutdown and the cover the asteroids can provide, there could be all manner of things out there and we’d have no idea,” she said. Mentally she was trying to do the math for how long a hidden ship would need to get to their position, failing because there were just too many variables.

  “And STEVE would usually be able to just jump away if any threats do show themselves,” Max added, nodding. “But if we’re still docked?”

  And now the things I need to worry about just multiplied several times over. “So what do we do? My orders were to head straight back to the ship if anything went wrong. The releases for the clamps will all be here, and we still need to find the rest of our group. We can’t just leave, can we?”

  Max was shaking his head.

  “No, no, your orders are right. Right now Captain Rain doesn’t even know there is a problem. If we don’t get off this rust heap he won’t know, probably until it’s too late. There’s also far too much station and only three of us. No, we get back, get the rest of Aegis, and then worry about things like the clamps and our missing men.”

  “I hate leaving them behind,” Marcus said, though she was nodding to Max’s comments as she said it, “but he’s right. Our chances of rescuing them and saving the ship are much, much higher if we get reinforcements first.”

  “Besides,” Max said, reaching out to put a hand on Morgan’s shoulder, “We still need to save ourselves, first.”

  His words chilled Morgan’s heart, but he was right. They’d gotten lucky on the bridge; the pirates had been overconfident.

  Maybe not even that, she thought. I certainly didn’t expect Max to set up explosives on the wall ahead of time. We weren’t even sure, yet. What in the galaxy would he have done if they hadn’t been pirates? Politely excuse himself to retrieve it from the wall as we left?

  Imagine how that conversation would have gone.

  Morgan toggled over to a private channel, just her and Max.

  “Thank you,” she said, her mind still racing through thoughts of how things would have turned out if he hadn’t been there.

  He didn’t reply, and looking over at him, she realized he didn’t seem to have reacted at all.

  Right, the jamming. We must have moved down enough that it’s affecting us now. Sighing, she toggled back to the secure channel – maybe they’d find the source, though it wasn’t likely – and then repeated her comment through her suit’s speakers.

  “For what, Cutie?” he replied after only a moment.

  “Everything. If you hadn’t been there, I’d have been captured… or worse.”

  Max tilted his head, acknowledging her thanks, but not saying anything further.

  “We’ll reach the bottom in less than a minute,” Marcus warned them.

  “Is this lift just that slow, or the station that big?” Morgan asked. She hadn’t gotten a good view of anything besides the cargo area, though that certainly looked big enough.

  “Both,” Marcus answered. “I’ve been out to these stations before, years ago when I first hired on. They tend to build them around existing asteroids or even small moons; it’s cheaper, gives them a ready source of ore to mine initially, and gives the station a little bit of gravity to work with.”

  “So this place is a maze of mining tunnels on top of the constructed stuff? That’s a horrifying thought, considering we’re probably going to have to come back and clear it room by room,” Max said.

  “Let’s just get off fir…” Morgan said, cutting off as the lift ground to an abrupt halt.

  Max swore.

  “We’re still ten floors too high. They’ve figu
red out we’re loose,” he said.

  “What do we do?” Morgan asked. There has to be a way out.

  “Nothing we can do,” Marcus said. “If we try to fight, we’re DOA. We have no cover in here; a single burst from a penetrator rifle would get all of us.”

  “Then why’d we use the lift in the first place?” Morgan asked. She could hear the panic rising in her voice, but she didn’t care. Sometimes panic was the right call, and this qualified, if any time did.

  “No choice. There wasn’t any other way off the bridge.”

  “There are always…” Morgan said, frantically looking about. She stopped as she noticed a square bit of the ceiling that was different. “There. Access hatch. Can we get it open?”

  Max looked like he wanted to argue the point, but when he looked over at Morgan, his expression softened.

  “All right. Climb up on me. We have to be quick.”

  His words were underscored by the lift beginning to move again, but now travelling back up the shaft.

  Max laced his hands together, giving Morgan a step up. Vaulting up, she got one leg onto his shoulder, then the other.

  “Your helmet is making this difficult,” she said, trying to keep from losing her balance and falling backwards.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, how inconsiderate of me,” Max said in-between grunts as he shifted about, probably trying to keep his own balance.

  “Almost got it,” Morgan said, but it was no good, her butt slipped backward and they both came crashing down, his helmet painfully digging into her, despite the padding of her skinsuit.

  “Try again,” Marcus said, “And hurry.”

  Sighing, Max retracted his helmet.

  Wordlessly he got back into position.

  This time it was easier for her to get up, and once she was steady. Marcus stepped up behind her and placed her hands on her hips to stabilize her further.

  Max said something, but she couldn’t understand it with how muffled his voice was.

  “Just a single bolt,” Morgan said, sparing an instant to glance down. Her daddy’s spanner made short work of the offending bit of metal, and she shoved the hatch open.

  Pulling herself through only took a moment more, and she scrambled around, one hand securing her tool while the other reached down to help them up after her. Marcus handed her rifle to Max, who passed it up to Morgan, then he got into position to boost her up.

  The lift stopped moving.

  “Too late!” Max hissed. “Close it, close it quick!”

  Morgan wanted to argue with him, she wanted to reach down and pull him up by force. Instead, she closed her eyes tight and closed the hatch.

  I can’t help him if I get caught too.

  She was right – he was right – but oh, how it hurt.

  Chapter 25

  Guilt, ah, guilt. A great motivator, it can be used for good or ill. Guilt over misdeeds can prod even the most hardened heart into change, but it can also be used to pressure others into things they really don’t want to do. Guilting someone into doing the right thing is better than then doing the wrong. It is not as virtuous as them doing it of their own accord, of course, but we all must start somewhere. Guilting someone into doing the wrong thing, or something personally harmful? That holds a spot of dishonor up there with the worst manipulations that can be perpetrated on a person.

  - Rachel Manfried, Central Coordinator, Zion Volunteer Services.

  Sgt. Eck

  MAX WATCHED the roof hatch swing closed and then whirled to face the already-opening lift doors.

  Relief mixed with fear in his chest, more than a little overwhelmed by weary resignation. Stuck in a lift, a rifle and pistol between them – assuming Marcus could get to her pistol in time – and nowhere to hide.

  The only thing that would save them now was the pirates’ apparent need for hostages.

  And how long will they need us hostages for? Not known for keeping prisoners, pirates.

  The lift opened on an almost empty hallway, extending out to either side of the lift. That wasn’t especially surprising – yes, Marcus and Max were screwed, but they could do a lot of damage with their own weapons before the end.

  There was a single drone hovering opposite the lift doors. Sophisticated looking thing, with an obvious camera that was undoubtedly sending pictures back to the pirates. It was also projecting a flat hologram with some text above it, in an absurdly cutesy font.

  ‘Hi! I’m not just a camera drone, I’m a bomb! Try anything stupid and I’ll blow us all up!’ it said. A bluff? Maybe. Worth risking? Absolutely not.

  In any case, with no living targets, they couldn’t do anything useful, and if the pirates were smart…

  “Surrendering is your best option. Gently put your weapons on the floor and slide them forward, or we’ll just destroy the drone and you with it,” a loud voice called out from down the hallway. There was something about the voice that caught Max’s attention, but he wasn’t quite sure what. His tone? Word choice? Max couldn’t figure it out.

  “All right, give us a second. Let’s not be hasty,” Max said. Morgan, get as far away as you can, he thought, not daring to say it in case the camera drone also had audio pickups.

  Slowly he unslung his rifle and moved to place it where the lift floor met corridor, and then nudged it forward. Marcus did the same with her pistol.

  “Now the grenades,” the voice called out. “We saw the footage from the bridge, so don’t try and play us.”

  Max swore mentally.

  They know there were three of us who got on the lift. So why aren’t they asking about Morgan?

  For one wild, maddened moment, he thought about arming the grenades and then flinging them down the corridor toward the voice as far as he could, but that would get them all killed and wouldn’t necessarily do any good. Whoever was talking was using a suit speaker, the slight distortion was unmistakable, and that meant he could be a lot farther away than it sounded by simply turning up the volume.

  Sighing, Max took the belt off and very slowly reached out and placed it on the floor.

  “Good. Now hold very still,” the voice said, and the drone swooped forward, deploying a small, articulated arm and pulling the weapons farther away from them.

  “Now, be good little boy and girls, and toss your suits out.”

  “Absolutely not!” Max yelled as Marcus added some very colorful curses of her own.

  The drone suddenly put out a loud noise, drowning out their protests.

  “This is non-negotiable. I am not letting prisoners keep armor. It’s as simple as that.”

  “And only that?” Marcus said with a very bitter laugh.

  “Yes, actually,” the voice said, and at least he sounded sincere. “My men out here are privateers, not pirates. As long as you don’t try to hurt us – more than you already have, anyway – or try to escape, you’ll be treated as well as can be expected.”

  Cowards hiding behind a pretext, you mean, Max couldn’t help but thinking, even though that cowardice might save his life.

  He turned to Marcus, looking to see what her opinion was. She shook her head.

  “They have all the cards.”

  “Right,” Max said, pointedly turning his back on Marcus before starting to undo the closures of his skinsuit.

  Once they’d tossed out their suits, the pirates – privateers, Max corrected mentally with more than a little disdain and sarcasm – had them come out into the hallway and approach.

  They did, covering themselves as much as possible, Max wanted to keep his gaze high or low, but he didn’t dare approach without being able to see what the men were doing, no matter how little good it would do him.

  The corridor opened up into a large square atrium, the natural stone of the station’s bones visible above them with some skylights dug into the rock. It was quite impressive, especially given that he still felt quite comfortably warm, despite his current condition and the fact that the stone couldn’t possibly have been insulated.
r />   Max counted sixteen in the room, all of them armed. One of them holstered his weapon, a pistol rather than a rifle, and then grabbed something off a table in the middle, tossing it at Marcus before grabbing another and tossing it at Max.

  Max caught it, finding it to be a very long orange t-shirt. It would be extremely baggy on him, but it would at least cover him up.

  If his was baggy, the shirt they tossed Marcus was on the small side. It covered the essentials, but she’d need to be careful how she moved.

  He considered trading with her… but if it was a bit tight on her it would be wholly inadequate for him, even as his would likely be large enough on her that it would fall right off without intervention.

  “Stand there,” the owner of the voice they’d been hearing said, pointing to an empty spot on the far side of the room. “Either of you makes noise, we shoot the other one.”

  That’s a sick way to get obedience, Max thought, but he did as told. Now wasn’t the time, and he needed to be aware and ready when it was.

  Part of that was trying to learn and observe as much as he could. It was usually a fool’s errand to try and guess who was from what planet based on phenotypes, given how much humanity had mixed back and forth over the millennia, but it wasn’t entirely useless.

  As in this case, where everyone he could see had similar facial structures and skin tone… except for the man talking. He was shorter, a lot shorter, built thick and strong, and so pale he might actually have albinism.

  His accent was also different, very different from the fake captain’s and their guide’s, and finally Max realized what it was about his speaking was niggling at the back of Max’s mind.

  He talks like Morgan, only coarser.

  Chapter 26

  Evil men always try to use the bonds of love against us, and yes, sometimes it works. Those bonds are not to be broken lightly, however. Evil men might break our bodies and even cage our minds, but they can never touch our spirits unless we allow them access through our faithless acts.

  - ‘Seeress’ Ophelia, Cult of Mysteries, planet the Far Green Sea.