The man Morgan assumed was in charge of the miners called the lift, and then stepped back as five of the men with rifles took up positions around the lift doors, ready to fire in if anyone should happen to be on the lift when it arrived.
She couldn’t see inside from her position, not because of her angle and distance from the lift, but because of the near-solid wall of larger men between her and it. She watched the men standing ready, and saw them relax as the door opened, the lack of any gunfire confirming it was empty.
“Let me through,” Morgan demanded, to which the men slowly complied. “Max, a hand?” she asked, calling out to him. He pushed through the crowd as well, and within a few seconds, they were alone in the lift.
Morgan punched the button to hold the lift there, and then punched the button to close the doors.
Max didn’t say anything, but he did raise an eyebrow.
Morgan coughed, and she could feel her face heat up again, but after a moment, she managed to get out an explanation.
“I’d rather not put on a show, accidental or not, for everyone here.”
“Oh. Oh! Sorry, I guess I assumed they’d found you shorts or something. That’s all they could find for Anders, anyway, and watching him grumble about the t-shirt falling past the bottom of the shorts was funny…” Max trailed off, rubbing the back of his head. “I’ll just shut up now.”
He got into position as before, hands cupped in front of him to give her a leg up. This time, however, he very pointedly closed his eyes tight.
Morgan paused for a moment, torn between verbally thanking him – and making things even more awkward – or just going with it.
The second won out, and she stepped into his hand, boosted up to his shoulders where she could easily knock open the hatch, as of course she’d not replaced the bolt before surrendering to the pirates.
Pulling herself up onto the roof of the lift, she quickly scrambled over to the passage she’d taken before, and from there to where she’d tucked Daddy’s spanner out of sight. Opening up the panel, she pulled at the rifle, wiggling it back and forth a bit to get it out through the slightly too small opening, and then her pistol, pouch, and magazines, the last of which, for the moment, she tucked into the now-empty makeshift pouch tied to her equally-makeshift belt. The pouch wouldn’t stay put on her bare arm like it would her skinsuit, so she put it around her ankle instead.
Her uplink took a bit longer to untangle from all the cables and wiring, but soon it was back on its proper place on her wrist.
Just having her uplink and pistol back was a huge relief, as if a piece of her had been returned.
Speaking of the uplink…
Morgan pulled up the uplink’s comm system. It wasn’t as powerful as the one in her suit, since uplinks were generally designed to tie into an existing ship, station, or planetary network, but it should have been powerful enough to reach STEVE’s closest comm hub, even through all the layers of metal in between them.
That was, of course, when it wasn’t being jammed. There was a chance, though, if the pirates were still relying on their own suit systems rather than the station’s, that they’d taken the jamming down once they were sure everyone was captured.
They might have brought it back up after Aegis came knocking, but it didn’t hurt to check.
She paused right before trying, backing up a step to enable encryption. The last thing they needed was the pirates realizing they were coming.
“Lieutenant Black to STEVE. Is anyone over there receiving?”
There was no response, but it didn’t look like she was being jammed.
She repeated her message, and waited.
Still nothing.
Sighing, Morgan set it to auto-repeat every twenty seconds, and then headed back to the shaft, pushing the rifle in front of her to make crawling a bit easier.
Reaching the end of the lift she put the rifle aside and dropped down onto the roof of the lift, then turned back and grabbed the rifle.
“I’ve got a present for you, Max,” she said, holding the rifle carefully and extending it to him butt first, only releasing her grip once he verbally said he had it. “I think I’ll want that back after,” she said. “I haven’t owned a rifle before. This one seems nice enough.”
Max laughed, the sound bouncing around the shaft in a not entirely unpleasant way.
“I’ll have to see if I can get another for myself,” he replied. “All the rifles I get to play with are company issued.”
“Ready for me?” Morgan asked, sitting down and getting her legs dangling through the hatch into the lift car.
“I’ve got you,” he replied.
Morgan scooted forward, dropping down a bit until Max’s hands closed around her waist, lowering her down to the floor.
“Any luck with communications?” he asked, gesturing toward her uplink with his chin.
“Nothing yet. I can’t tell if it is jammed or if there simply is too much interference.”
“Well, the important message already got through, from the looks of things. Come on, let’s make way for the others,” he said, letting go of her waist and smacking the button to open the doors.
Morgan followed him out, and they were barely two meters into the corridor before five of the men crowded into the lift.
Why those five, she didn’t know… but at a glance, they looked to be older, on average, than the rest of the men present.
“If the area is clear, send the lift right back up,” Max said, giving the group a quick nod. “Don’t move too far out, either, we want to hit them with everything we have at once, not get defeated in detail.”
“If it is not empty,” the mining officer added, his face grim, “do what you can, and if you can’t clear it, we’ll come through the crawlways as quick as we can.”
Once they’d left, the lift beginning its slow descent down, Morgan headed to the back of the group, slumping down to the floor with the wall at her back. A moment later, Linda came over and sat next to her. Max did not sit down, bit did come over to her other side, leaning against the wall.
“Are you doing all right?” Max asked, looking down at her, “You look like a stiff breeze would knock you over.”
Morgan could only sigh.
“It feels like if I stop I’ll just collapse, and yet I have to sit and wait. What kind of bad design is this anyway, that there is just a single lift for this whole area, and a slow one at that?”
Looking up, Morgan caught the end of a shrug from Max.
“Stations like this often are built up over time, and it leads to some odd design choices. Are you telling me you never, not even once, got lost on Takiyama Station?” he added.
Morgan could only laugh at that, and for a moment, just one moment, she felt like her normal self — followed by everything she’d been holding off crashing back down on her all at once.
“Oh, God, what have I done?” she moaned. She looked down at her hands, now trembling anew, and then at her feet. Despite the earlier cleaning up Max had done, she could still see hints of red. Her stomach heaved, and it was all she could do to lean over to the side in anticipation of losing the contents of her stomach.
Max jumped away from the wall, and Morgan was dimly aware of someone gathering her hair at the nape of her neck. She appreciated the gesture, though there wasn’t much chance of her hair getting soiled. It had been almost nine months since the terrorist ‘doctor’ had haphazardly cut it short in order to treat her cracked skull, and it was growing back quickly, but it was maybe eighteen centimeters at most.
I wonder if I should talk with Aydin about this tendency I have to fixate on random nonsense when more serious things are happening? she thought as she finished emptying her stomach. I hope she has some time free, five months out of contact is a lot to catch up on.
“Are you okay?” Linda asked, her free hand patting Morgan gently on the back.
Morgan went to wipe her mouth with a sleeve, realized hallway through that she’d moved the arm
whose sleeve had been torn off, and groaned. Reaching down instead, she unwrapped a bit of the bandage off her foot and tore it off.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be okay,” Morgan said, sounding none too convincing even to her own ears.
“Are ya sick or something?” Linda followed up.
Morgan shifted a bit to the side, butting up against Linda as she tried to keep the mess off her shirt.
“Nothing to be worried about,” Max said, suddenly popping back up next to the girls, one hand outstretched to Morgan. “That was a lot of fighting in not much time. The stress gets to all of us, just in different ways.”
Morgan took the offered hand, rising unsteadily to her feet. She stepped a bit to the side, and Max’s other hand steadied her, though it was a bit uncomfortable as he was holding something cold in that hand she couldn’t see.
Once he’d pulled Linda to her feet – and they’d moved a bit down the corridor – he switched the item to his free hand, offering it to Morgan.
“Where did you get water from?” she asked, taking it gratefully, and greedily gulping down a third of it in one go.
“I had the men gather anything useful in the area before we left. Looks like the guards pulled out a couple of the refrigeration units from crew quarters.” He made a face that might have been incredulity or disgust, then added. “Most of it was alcohol. The really high-end stuff we could use as disinfectant, I suppose, but we have enough of the real stuff that I had them leave it all behind.”
“Alcohol, in the guardroom?” Morgan couldn’t… actually, no, she could believe it after everything she’d seen. These pirates were fundamentally lazy, except where it came to their own safety. Not that getting drunk on guard duty is particularly, safe, but they certainly have that odd mix of paranoia and feeling of invincibility I saw from the Tinnys back home. She took another drink before saying anything else. “That helped, thanks. Still wish we could just get down there and get this over with.”
Max nodded as he took the mostly-empty bottle from her and shoved it in a pocket.
“Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Curse of all armed forces.” In the background, Morgan could hear the lift returning, and Max turned to face it. “Looks like we’re getting along with things, at least. Just two more loads and it’s our turn.”
“Because of course we’re last,” Linda said, sounding quite audibly disgusted.
“Yep. Women and children first tends to get reversed when ‘first’ is risking getting shot,” Max answered, turning and giving Linda a big smile, probably on reflex, to Morgan’s eyes.
Careful there, Max, Morgan thought. Cute, only one here close to her age, and you’re helping rescue her from literal pirates? She’s going to fall, and hard.
Morgan took in a deep breath through her nose. Musing over setting up Max with a cute girl was silly, but it was also a silly she needed just then. Especially since she was going to have to get on that lift in just a few minutes and go back into danger. Probably even shoot more people. Though despite how silly it was, she couldn’t help but feel a little sad, too, and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why.
About the only good news was that she might get another shot at Thirty-Four.
Just as well I have my pistol now, she thought, thinking on the bully of a many who’d tormented her for so long. We probably should take him alive, find out what he knows. Can’t shoot him with a rifle, but a pistol round, properly aimed, won’t kill him.
Morgan shivered, and for a moment, she debated if she should feel bad for wanting to shoot him, but just as quickly she decided she was still human, after all, and worrying about her enemies’ well-being could only stretch so far.
Then another stray thought crossed her mind, and she froze up completely.
I was thinking about what he knows about the pirates, but what if he knows something about Momma and Daddy? If it was Hillman that hired the pirates, he’s moved up the hierarchy a lot over the last few years.
“What’s wrong, Cutie? Are you feeling sick again?” Max asked, his hand on her back moving up to the base of her neck.
“I just…” Morgan paused, trying to get the words out. “We need to take the leader alive. We have to take him alive.”
“You’re right,” Max said, nodding. “He probably knows all kind of things the Navy will want to know. Why so tense, though? There has to be others who know what he does.”
“No, not that,” Morgan said closing her eyes for a moment, still debating about opening up to him, despite everything they’d already been through. And Linda was there too. No, he’d earned her trust. “I said I knew him. It was back home, before I escaped. He was a guard in our village. My parents smuggled me out, but I don’t know what happened after that.”
“And he might?” Linda asked.
“Yes,” Morgan whispered. “He might. It’s still more of a chance than anything else I’ve had in more than five years.”
Linda frowned, then reached out to put her arm on Morgan’s back, below Max’s.
“He might know what happened to Ma and the littles. The lot might. Six months for me, not five years, but yeah. Such an awful, scary feeling.”
“We’ll make sure everyone knows, before we move out,” Max assured them. “Just a few more minutes, Cutie, Darling. First up, get your Pa back, and then the rest.”
Chapter 32
There are many, many ways to categorize people. Some are useful, some are… well, never mind that. The useful ways tend to be things like honor, punctuality, reliability, kindness, and other virtues. One I personally find to be especially useful deals with how a person handles blame. In this case, I don’t mean getting blamed for something, no, but in how they apportion blame. When something goes wrong, is it always someone else’s fault? Is nothing ever down to their own actions? Such people are to be avoided, no matter what other virtues they have. Regardless of how reliable, or kind, or anything else they are, people who can never accept responsibility for their own actions will turn on you in the end. They’ll have to, when something goes wrong and there isn’t anyone else to blame.
- Mahari Kanu, CEO, Jackson Investigations.
THERE PERHAPS remained a hundred yards between the rather eclectic collection of armed miners, spacers, mercenaries, and two teenage girls, when Morgan’s uplink squawked out a priority request for communication.
Frantically hitting the accept key, mostly to shut off the sound, she fumbled at the controls to turn down the volume on whoever’s voice she was about to hear.
“Lt. Black, are you receiving?”
Morgan recognized the voice as belonging to the comms tech that had been on the bridge before, but was puzzled why he sounded so disinterested.
Wait, no, that makes perfect sense. He’s probably been trying to get a message through the jamming and interference this whole time. How many hundreds of times has he said that same message?
“This is Black, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Lieutenant!” the tech said, with much more energy this time, followed up by some mostly edited-out background noises that sounded almost like someone coming upright in their chair, and then more speaking. “I’ll get the captain right away.”
“No, wait, I need…” Morgan started to say, but it was no use, there was no reply. I need to speak to Marigold. Did he physically get up from his station?
A few moments more went by, and then the line came to life again in a burst of static.
“Black, situation?” Rain asked without preamble or niceties.
It was probably safe to assume he’d gotten her earlier message, but just in case…
“Pirates captured us all. I escaped, freed some of the miners, we are approaching the airlock now with twenty armed men. They took six men from the group I freed, presumably as hostages. We assume the plan is to stall until their ship returns.”
“Twenty armed men, you said?”
“Yes, two zero, all armed,” Morgan confirmed, resisting the urge to explain whe
re she’d gotten the weapons; that wasn’t important right now. “Mostly pistols, but some rifles also.”
“And you are certain they have a ship nearby?”
“Certain, no, but it is the only theory that fits.”
“Unfortunately, I agree with you. Very well, Marigold has something of a stalemate in the airlock corridor, but your arrival changes things. Hold a moment while the tech patches her in.”
The comm line went silent for a moment, then picked up again with the crisp sounds of Marigold’s voice, in complete professional mode.
“Marigold, here.”
“Lieutenant, it would seem we have some reinforcements for you,” Rain said, sounding almost proud to say it.
“They’ll just be stuck behind us, not useful,” Marigold said.
“Right, Black, you explain,” Rain said with a snort.
“Black?” Marigold asked before Morgan could say anything, sounding downright shocked, her façade audibly cracking a bit.
“I’ve got twenty armed men with me, not far from the airlock, station-side. We should be able to come in behind the pirates, but we don’t know how they’re set up.”
Further showing cracks in her demeanor, Marigold’s reaction to Morgan’s words was a quick shout, sounding something of a mix of predatory and joyful.
“Oh, these sons of space trash won’t know what hit them,” she said with another quick shout, before getting down to business. “That many, I assume the miners?”
“Of course,” Morgan said.
“Good. Get their leader listening in, he’ll be able to visualize this best.”
Morgan signaled over the leader, who had been hovering around anyway, listening in.
“Be quick, please, we’re exposed in this hallway,” he said once he was in range of Morgan’s uplink pickup.
In a few terse sentences, Marigold laid it out – pirates taking up positions around the existing crates and barrels, hostages nearest the airlock where they’d most mess up angles of fire from the airlock itself, and so on. The important thing was, they didn’t have anyone Marigold’s sensor drones could see guarding the rear, and there were plenty of other crates Morgan’s group could use for cover, if they could get in fast enough.
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