The Wanderer wasn’t most ships. Before they reached clear space again he stretched out, yanking the ship into jump space despite the masses of the two Imperial ships to either side. He’d chosen a path straight towards a blazing blue star, but kicked off onto a new heading almost immediately. Let them follow that course, see where it got them.
The sharp manoeuvring he’d had the ship pull off worried him; someone could have gotten hurt. He checked on Matt first. He was fine, not awake yet but the procedure had completed. The webbing was gone and he seemed to be sleeping well.
Jess paused. How was that possible? The last time he’d checked the procedure had only been a couple of hours in. That must have been ten or twelve hours ago for Matt to now be sleeping off the operation. And he hadn’t checked on Matt in all that time? Just what was going on?
He flicked his awareness to the main living quarters, worried that the baby might have been hurt. She was fine, but what he saw chilled him. Robby and the other two men sat at the table, their guns and ammunition in front of them together with several large kitchen knives. He checked the ship protocols, weapon suppression had been turned off. By him. Why didn’t he remember doing that? Worse than that, every one of the passengers had been granted full access to the bridge, full control over the airlock. Once again he had granted the access. Something was terribly wrong. Then it hit him. Sal! Where was Sal?
He flicked his attention to her quarters, knowing it might be a terrible invasion of privacy but even more scared of not finding her. His relief at finding her was short-lived. She lay sprawled awkwardly across her bed, still dressed. Her eyes were open but unfocused. Drugged. She lay with a big, stupid looking grin on her face. At least she was safe for the moment. Her door was already closed. Jess locked it, then revoked all access to the refugees. Next he reactivated the weapons suppression. Anyone attempting to fire a gun was going to get a nasty shock.
Then with trepidation he flicked his attention back to the bridge, not into his own body but using the ships sensors. As he’d feared, his eyes were wide and a stupid smile was plastered across his face. He too was drugged. But then, how was he thinking clearly now?
The answer came from the ship, nudging into his thoughts. His brain was being accelerated many times over, supported by the new implants in his head. The electrical activity in his brain could be stimulated and emulated to reach those speeds; the glandular, chemical based thinking couldn’t. The implants simulated that as best they could, but only within certain limits. They wouldn’t replicate the effects of the drug.
That meant if he dropped back to normal thought he’d be lost again. Now that Sal was safe he needed to straighten himself out. He had the ship run an analysis of his blood and brain chemistry, a task made much easier by his implants’ ability to take direct samples. It quickly identified a number of substances that hadn’t been present earlier when the implants had been growing. One, refined cocoa, was quickly discarded. It came from the hot chocolate, was perfectly natural. Seven others were present. Three were confirmed as mild hallucinogenics, another had uses as a truth serum. The remaining three were unknown.
The ship was able to guide his implants to release counteragents to all the drugs. Over the next few seconds in real time, which felt like long minutes to Jess in his accelerated state, he watched his body start to return to normal. The dilated pupils returned to the merely slack, distracted look they had when he was linked with the ship. The levels of the chemicals dropped away to zero and his implants kept pumping out counteragents in case of a renewed attack. Finally he let his connection to the ship recede and dropped back into his own body.
“Holy shit!” he groaned, doubling over and holding his head. While a prisoner he’d drunk moonshine a few times and had suffered the crippling hangovers it brought. This was worse, far worse. He groaned again, then felt cool fingers on the back of his neck.
“What’s wrong, my darling?” asked Ali, concerned. “What is it? And what happened? We were rushing between those two ships and then we were in jump space. That’s just not possible.”
Jess just groaned again, though his headache was receding a little. His implants had started releasing painkillers, and other chemicals to sweep up the unpleasant residue of the drugs in his system.
“Darling, what is it?” asked Ali again.
Her fingers rubbed his shoulders. She leant forward and kissed the back of his neck, then kissed his cheek. She turned his head to kiss his lips.
Everywhere she touched with her lips smarted, almost burnt, as the counteragents kicked in. Jess pulled away from her, pushed her back with a hand as she tried to lean after him.
“Lipstick? Nice touch. I guess you must take a counteragent, so it doesn’t affect you.”
“What? I don’t know what you mean.” She flashed him a huge smile, eyes staring into his. Despite everything his heart skipped a beat. She really was beautiful.
“My darling, I really don’t know what you mean,” she said leaning in closer again. For the first time he looked at her properly, saw that her pupils were dilated. Realised that she too was suffering the effects of whatever compounds had been fed to him. Now he was able to think more clearly it made sense, explained her manic rush to hug him when first coming on board and why she’d spent so much time with him.
“Wait here for a moment, please,” he said, forcing a smile he didn’t feel at all.
“Of course, my love.” She sat back, face beaming with a loving smile.
It made him feel sick, knowing it wasn’t real, knowing it was forced on her. He quickly left the cabin, closing the door behind him and locking it. She couldn’t do any harm and he didn’t want the distraction of having her around while he faced the others.
Robby saw him first. “What are you doing here? Where’s Ali?” he demanded.
“She’s safely on the bridge. She can stay there until we’ve flushed whatever chemicals you’ve been dosing us with out of her. I’m taking back control of the ship. Put down the guns now.”
“I don’t think so!”
Robby stood, aiming and firing his pistol in one smooth movement. The sound of the gun firing was incredibly loud in the enclosed space. Almost as loud was the scream Robby let out as he dropped the half melted remains of the gun, the palm of his hand blistered red from the heat.
“Consider yourself lucky,” Jess told him. “I set the fields to keep your hand safe. I could as easily have let the gun take your arm off when it exploded.”
He didn’t know if that was true, but it felt like time to stretch the truth a little. The other two men stood, grabbing long knives from the table. Jess raised an energy barrier with a wave of his arm, sealing them off from the rest of the room and from the table full of guns. He made sure the barrier had a slightly red tinge so they were well aware it was in place. After hammering ineffectively against the barrier a few times they stood still, sullenly glaring at Jess. He glanced around the room from the two trapped men to Robby nursing his hand and on to the woman and two children.
“I won’t waste my time asking why. We rescued you from certain death, gave you the run of the ship and would have found you somewhere safe to live. We might even have let you stay on-board if you wanted. You tried to enslave us. You tried to kill me. We will keep you fed, looked after, and drop you at the nearest station with a decent sized population explaining exactly what you’ve done.”
“What do you know?” spat the woman. “You’d have dropped us off? With no money, no belongings, nothing. We’d have been beggars. Charity cases.”
“You’d have been alive. Alive and free. Trust me, those two things are priceless. With those you can achieve anything. And judging by the guns and the drugs you used on us you were hardly innocent travellers.”
Not wanting to hear any more from her he used the ships fields to push them all into an area near the airlock, well away from the weapons, and made the field soundproof. With a heavy heart he made his way to Sal’s room. How was he going to explain
this to her when she recovered? And just what had happened to her whilst she had been drugged?
Chapter 6
Having already cured Jess, the ship was able to generate a counteragent for Sal and Ali that quickly reversed the effects of the drugs. Once Jess had revived Sal and explained the situation she was ready to flush the visitors out of the airlock. After a few minutes arguing she agreed to Jess’s plan to hand them over to the authorities somewhere. There was still a dangerous glint in her eye. Jess added a confirmation subroutine to the outer airlock controls to give him the chance to counter any orders to open them. Just in case.
Jess then uncomfortably tried to ask if she thought Robby had, well, taken advantage of her. She shook her head fiercely. She was certain he hadn’t. She made it clear that if he had then, no matter what Jess said, Robby would be breathing vacuum with his balls cut off. Jess was certain she meant it.
They turned to the problem of Ali. Sal insisted on taking care of the girl, from giving her the counteragent to explaining what had happened. She said that as Jess was the one Ali was fixated on it wouldn’t be fair for him to do it. Jess happily agreed. He had no idea how to tackle Ali.
* * *
Jess sat on the bridge. A check on Matt had confirmed everything was going well, though he was still asleep. He’d have a lot of catching up to do when he finally awoke. With nothing else to do while Sal helped Ali, Jess was thinking over everything that had happened since they captured the ship. He was so deep in his thoughts he didn’t hear anyone approach. The hand gently laid on his shoulder nearly made him jump clean out of the chair.
He spun round to find Ali standing behind him, trying to hide a smile at his reaction. Jess felt flustered, could feel the blood rushing to his face. Despite everything that had happened, he really did find her very attractive.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “I wanted to apologise for what happened. I don’t really remember it very well but, well, I’m sorry anyway.”
Jess smiled awkwardly. “It’s OK. I forgive you. That is… I mean… it wasn’t your fault, I don’t blame you. How did you get mixed up with those people though? You aren’t related, are you?”
“God no! No. Nothing like that.” Her face clouded over. “I grew up on a small station orbiting a gas giant, Kershel V. There were a couple of hundred people on the station, mostly families. Mum and Dad died in an accident two years ago. I got by. People looked after me. Then, a couple of months ago, those… people… turned up in their freighter. They seemed honest enough; showed up with a variety of goods and started trading. A few hours later an Imperial warship arrived and started broadcasting a warning, claimed we had illegal goods and they were there to destroy the station. They wouldn’t listen to reason, wouldn’t accept our surrender. Wouldn’t even allow us to evacuate the children. They gave us twenty minutes to make our peace, then the station would be destroyed.
“There was nothing we could do. The station was peaceful, it had a few lasers for dealing with stray asteroids but nothing that could even dent a warship’s shields. Then our saviours came forward. The freighter crew said their ship had a special jump drive, that they could escape and avoid detection – make a clean getaway. Their ship was too small to take us all, but they could take the children and a few adults. They offered to do it out of the kindness of their hearts, wouldn’t accept any payment.
“How could we refuse? In the end there were thirty-one children and six adults, one parent of each of the youngest five children and me. Since my parents died I’d spent a lot of time working in the nursery and the school. The children knew me well. With only a few minutes until the deadline we left the station, accelerated heavily away from the warship, ignoring the dire threats from it, and jumped. A few minutes later they dropped back to real space and jumped in another direction, then again a few minutes later. To make sure they weren’t being followed, they said.
“About half a day later they docked with another station, a strong independent station they said. One that could cope with the influx of children. One that had defences. As the rest of the refugees left the ship Robby asked me to help him, saying some toys had been left and he’d hate for the children to miss them.
“He dropped slightly behind me as we walked back from the airlock. I didn’t think anything of it. Then he grabbed me, shoved a foul-smelling cloth over my face and everything went black. When I woke up they had me chained by the leg to a bulkhead. The only times I was released were to use the bathroom, and even then I was watched.
“I was scared. Terrified. I kept expecting them to be chased down by a ship when my friends realised I was missing, until I heard the crew talking. It wasn’t a station they’d been taken to, it was an orbital farm. They were the next batch of slave labour. Children last longer and can get into smaller spaces so they’re worth more. It got even worse. The whole attack on my station was staged. The warship wasn’t from the Empire, it was a pirate ship. The station was never in any danger. Once we’d left they told the station our evacuation was a set-up and demanded everything valuable the station had to get us back. Whether the station paid or not they’d then vanish without keeping the deal. That’s how they got their payment for helping with the scam.”
She stopped, eyes sparkling with tears she tried to hold in. Jess sat quietly, not knowing what to say. After a few moments she took a deep breath and carried on.
“When the kidnappers dropped into real space almost on top of several real Imperial navy ships… well… it was almost funny. They tried to put on the innocent traders routine, but their ship was known. The first shot destroyed their jump drive, the second their real space thrusters. Then the ship was slowly carved up. I was torn between being terrified of dying and being pleased that they’d be killed, that justice would be done. Something must have come up because two of the ships suddenly jumped out, and the navy went from trying to pick us apart to telling us to make our peace. That made me laugh, hearing the kidnappers’ own terms used against them. They didn’t see the funny side.
“Then you turned up and destroyed the one navy ship that hadn’t already jumped. Robby grabbed me and injected something. Everything gets very hazy after that. I remember them telling me how heroic our rescuer was, how attractive he must be, how I must be so grateful. They told me I must make sure he knows and that I must love him for saving me. Everything they told me I believed as truth.
“Then when the airlock opened and I saw you. I couldn’t help myself. I just had to hold you. I had to be with you. You know what it’s like, they got you with the same drugs. I think they probably used me to drug you, but I really can’t remember clearly.
“Everything is pretty blurry then until Sal gave me the counter agent and I started thinking clearly again. Sal explained what had happened, what those criminals had done. I cried. I got upset. I got really angry with you.”
“With me? Why?”
“Because of the feelings I’d been made to have. I’d been made to adore you, love you. I hated that. Hated you for that. Sal helped me, talked it through with me. She suggested I come and talk to you, she said it might help both of us. It has helped me.”
She stood, holding a hand up as Jess went to speak.
“Please. I needed to talk to you, to get it all out. We can talk properly later but I need to leave it there for the moment.”
She turned, walked to the door then looked back over her shoulder, grinning.
“Despite everything, you are cute you know.”
With that she was gone, leaving Jess sitting in stunned silence. He was still sitting thinking things over a few minutes later when Sal entered the bridge.
“How are you feeling?” she asked softly.
Jess twisted round to talk to her.
“Wishing this chair swivelled, for a start!” he said, thinking how much easier that would make talking to people behind him. The chair suddenly twisted, spinning round and leaving him sprawled half in the chair and half on the floor. Sal sa
nk into one of the other seats, laughing so hard she couldn’t get a word out. Jess tried to push himself back onto the chair, upset and embarrassed. He almost made it before his side slipped and he ended up laid on the floor with one leg still caught in the chair, head pointing towards the door. Ali came rushing in to see what the noise was, then stopped and stared at Jess for a moment before cracking up too.
Jess stared at the two of them, who were upside down from his point of view, as they laughed. He tried to hold onto his anger over their reaction. It didn’t work. The laughs were infectious. He tried to free his leg from the chair, only managing to turn the chair backwards and forwards, and found himself laughing too. Eventually Sal got herself under control enough to help Jess free his leg and to get up. He sat down on the chair so carefully it set Sal off all over again.
Once they’d finally laughed themselves out Jess felt as if a weight had been lifted. Their shared laughter had cleared some of the tension between Ali and himself. He felt more comfortable in her presence now, if still very aware of her. Both Sal and Ali looked more relaxed too. The laughter must have helped clear some of the impact of their recent drugged experiences. He glanced at Sal, then turned to Ali.
“Ali…” He pitched his voice low, soft. “I’ve been thinking about what happened to you, what happened to the others from your station. I’d like to help. I want to help you get them back. This ship is pretty powerful, I think we’d have a real chance, but I need to check it with Sal and Matt. Sal? What do you think?” Jess shot her a pleading glance.
“I agree,” Sal said. “We’ll need to be careful, and we need to find out just where they are, but yes… we’ll help if we can.”
Ali looked puzzled. “That’s… that’s wonderful,” she said. “But… who’s Matt?”
Wanderer's Odyssey - Books 1 to 3: The Epic Space Opera Series Begins Page 5