“I need at least ten knives,” I said.
“Ten? Steak knives?” The implied was I had to be mad.
I nodded my head.
“Bigger if you have them to spare,” I added.
He looked at me and then flicked a glance over my shoulder. I felt like a target was painted on my back. Slowly, I turned my head. But there was no one there. When I looked back at the waiter, he looked frightened.
“I’m sorry, but we can't help you like that.”
What had he seen? The guard looking this way? What?
“Then I’ll order four steaks, medium rare, side of steamed vegetables to go,” I said. “And I’ll take you up on the offer of loaned steak knives.”
The look he gave me definitely said I was mad.
“OK,” he said slowly, ringing the order up. “That’ll be $99.96 plus the deposit on the knives of forty, making it a total of $139.96 plus tip.”
Tip. He wanted a tip?
“Throw in two extra knives, and I’ll tip you a twenty,” I said.
His hand hovered over the cash register, and then he rung it up.
“That’s $99.96 plus the deposit on the knives of sixty, making a total of $159.96 plus a tip of twenty. $179.96,” he finished.
I blinked at him. Then pulled out nine twenty-dollar notes and placed them on the counter between us.
Holding his eyes, I said, “You can keep the four cents.”
He took the money, slipping a twenty out of the pile and into his pocket, and then put the rest in the cash register and closed it.
“That will be half an hour,” he said.
“Thank you,” I offered. “I’ll be back.”
He said nothing as I exited the restaurant. I checked my wrist comm. It was already closing in on 1730. I had to hurry if I wanted to get an order in elsewhere like that. Four freaking steaks. What the hell was I going to do with that? I checked my cash supply. It was getting low. Not so low that I couldn’t still pull this off, but anything after tonight, and I was going to be strapped.
The rest of my cash was in my quarters. A lot of cash. It was a cash society now, and my father had made sure we had oodles of it. I had enough on me for one last effort, though. I may not have the entire twelve knives the captain wanted by the end of it, but I’d have something.
I walked two restaurants down and slipped in the door. As it closed, I rechecked the guards. One of them had shifted. Had the other? My heart leapt into my throat, and I turned back around.
The waiter was already waiting. Eagerly.
“Dinner for one?” he said looking over my shoulder. “Or are you expecting someone else?”
I glanced around the restaurant. Burgers. It was a freaking burger joint. No knives. Fantastic.
“Can I speak to the chef?” I asked.
“Oh,” the waiter said, eyeing me with suspicion. He probably thought I was here to complain.
“I’m writing an expose for the newsfeeds on restaurant kitchens, and I’d love to include yours,” I said in a rush of words that tumbled over each other.
“Oh,” the guy said. “In that case, I’ll check.”
He turned and started walking towards the kitchen. I waited a beat and then followed. By the time he pushed through the swing doors, I was right behind him.
“Suze,” the waiter was saying, “I got a chick who wants…”
He stopped when he saw I’d followed him into the food prep area.
“I’ll take it from here,” I said, slipping him a twenty. “Thanks.”
He glanced down at the note and then flicked a look at the chef, and then mumbled something incomprehensible and shot out the door back to the front of the restaurant.
Suze, the chef, looked at me. Her big, bulky arms crossed over her chest.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
The smell of fried onions and beef patties reached my nose, and my stomach rumbled. She let out a huff of breath.
Now or never, I thought and stepped up to her prep table. There was a decent looking knife sitting right there. I could have just taken it and run. She was too large to chase me through the tables out front, and the waiter had looked ineffectual.
Suze slowly reached forward and picked up the knife, slipping it beneath the bench’s surface purposefully.
My eyes met hers, and I blurted, “I need knives. I’m happy to pay. But I need whatever you can give me. It’s important.”
I shut up.
Suze didn’t say a thing.
“Um,” I said, pulling out what was left of my cash. “I have two-hundred, no three-hundred and sixty dollars.” I slammed it down on the counter between us. I looked up at her again. “Please,” I said for good measure.
“Who are you?” the woman finally asked.
“No one,” I said. “No one special.”
“There’s a restriction on knives,” she offered. Did that mean she was thinking about helping me? “The guards will check my inventory,” she added. She was!
“Oh,” I said, not knowing what to say to convince her.
“It won’t help you,” she added. “They’ve got armour. And plasma rifles.”
“It’s not…”
She held up her hand to stall me. “Everyone wants protection right now.”
I nodded my head.
“I can’t give you knives,” she said earnestly, “but I do have something.”
She turned around and reached up to her hanging utensils. Her thick fingers wrapped around a meat mallet. It was the biggest meat mallet I’d ever seen.
Suze turned back and thumped the thing down on the bench in front of me. It actually dented the surface.
“They don’t check on these,” she said. “Swing hard and aim low,” she added. “And then run like fuck.”
I stared at it. She pushed it slowly closer. And then picked out a twenty from my pile and pushed the rest of the cash towards me.
OK. A meat mallet. A meat mallet and six steak knives.
I checked my wrist comm. I was out of time. Then I scooped up the last of my cash and wrapped the meat mallet in my apron, securing it to my belt.
Suze snorted and then turned her attention to the, no doubt by now, well-done beef patty.
I thanked her quietly and then walked out of the restaurant.
The steaks and steak knives were waiting. The waiter hadn’t slipped anything else inside.
I took what I had and made a quick exit. The guards were still there. Still watching. But neither looked twice. I found a deserted corridor and slipped into the emergency tubes.
I lay there for a long time smelling grilled beef and steamed potatoes and gripping my steak knives.
Sixteen
Hello, Boys
Hugo
“Steak knives?” I said, looking down at the supplies the girl had brought us. “And a meat mallet.”
“The guards are monitoring all the bigger knives,” she said, scowling.
“They expect them to fight back,” López offered.
“Wouldn’t you?” Johnson said.
“But steak knives?” I said again for emphasis. What the hell good were those?
“It was the best I could do,” the girl snapped. “Stab them in the eye or something.”
“Through their helmets,” I said dryly. “Right.”
“Captain,” López said. “We can work with this.”
I glanced at my first officer. From the pertinent look on her face, I thought her suggestion was more about me not harassing our stowaway helper than it was about actually being able to work with steak knives.
“You’re right, Commander,” I said. “We’ll make this work.” I turned back to the girl. “Thank you,” I said. It sounded stilted to my ears.
She just offered me a sweet smile. Way too young, I thought. Now I had to keep her alive as well.
“Who do you want to have these?” the girl asked.
“Give one to López,” I said, nodding at the commander, “and then Munro down
the other end. Hold on,” I added, walking up to to the containment field. “Open a hole would you?”
She flicked her eyes to me but didn’t say anything. A wave of her wrist comm and an access panel opened. I pulled the filleting knife out of my belt and handed it to her through the gap.
“I’ll have a steak knife,” I said. “Give this to Lieutenant Commander Munro down the other end. Munro,” I called out. “Nova will be on watch.”
Munro nodded her head and said, “Aye, Captain.” She knew what I meant. Wilson was still groggy, so that left her as the closest commanding officer to the brig door. It would be up to Munro to start the attack. Only one of us would have the ability to do the most damage. And that damage needed to be done not long after they walked into the brig.
“Who gets the mallet?” the girl asked.
“I’ll take it,” Johnson said.
“You come from baker’s stock, not butcher’s,” Armstrong said.
“Lived on a farm,” Johnson offered. “Lot’s of trees. Cold in winter. Did a lot of chopping.” He lifted up his arm and displayed his muscles to Adi. I scowled at him.
“Cut that out, Lieutenant,” I said.
“I’ve got a good swing, sir,” he said, winking at the damn girl now.
“Give the mallet to someone in Lieutenant Commander Wilson’s team,” I said. “They’ll need to guard him.”
Someone stepped forward and called out. The girl took off down that end of the brig.
“We can do this, can’t we, sir?” López said quietly.
Steak knives and a meat mallet.
“Sure,” I said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“Not funny, sir,” she grumbled.
“All right,” I said, raising my voice. I was pretty damn certain that Aquila wasn’t watching or listening in here. Too much had happened for him not to have sent in guards by now. So, I didn’t temper my voice. “Nova leads the attack. Flux offers distraction. And Zenith will confuse matters as much as we can from down here.”
I watched as the girl, Adi, handed out the last of the knives to whoever caught her attention first. Johnson, I was strangely annoyed to note, got one. I shook my head.
“We need a wrist comm,” I said, looking at Munro. “And preferably one important enough to bring down the containment fields.”
“How will we know which one to target?” she asked. “And that he feeds me?”
“There was one guard that stood back,” López said. Trust her to notice. “Stripe on his shoulder. Did you see him?”
Munro frowned in concentration and then pointed to where the guard had stood.
“There, wasn’t he?” she said.
“Yeah,” López offered. “That’s the one.”
“OK,” I said. “Good work. Get his attention however you can, Munro. Demand he open your access panel. The rest of you make sure that the lieutenant commander is not served until that one guard approaches her.”
“Yes, sir,” they said.
Munro looked a little worried.
“You’ll think of something, Munro, “ I said. “Big engineering brain like yours has to be chock full of ideas designed to distract.”
“Gee, thanks, sir.”
I grinned at her.
“But just in case,” I added. “If it looks like Munro is having trouble convincing our guard, someone grab another and place their knife to his throat as a threat.” I grimaced. “I’m not above using hostages to get us out of here.”
Everyone looked as unhappy about that as me.
“Munro has got this,” I said.
“Sir. Yes, sir,” she said.
Someone snorted. We were not the army.
I looked at the girl again. She was standing in the gap between Johnson and Armstrong’s cells, ready to bolt at the first chance.
Her eyes met mine.
“You obviously can’t stay in here,” I said. “But I’d appreciate it if you stuck around. It’d be easier for us to escape through a side door than walk out of the brig through that.” I pointed at the imposing brig entrance door. “Outside there,” I said, “is the security hub and armoury. As much as I want us armed with more than steak knives, it’s also the most heavily fortified section of the ship. My guess, they’ve stationed all of Price’s mercs there. It’ll be their base. That’s why they’ve not kept a closer watch on us. There’s nowhere to go but past them.”
The girl slowly nodded her head.
“So, how long?” she said.
“What time is it?” Johnson asked.
“Does it matter?” someone else muttered. “We didn’t know what time yesterday’s meal was served.”
“Point,” Johnson conceded. “But just in case. What time is it?”
A few of the guys groaned. The girl looked at her wrist comm.
“1930,” she said.
It occurred to me that she wasn’t your typical civilian. Aside from the wrist comm and the fact she used emergency access tunnels, she also used the twenty-four-hour clock. A very militarised style of telling the time. Was she the daughter of some rich general? A kid sent off to military school at the age of ten? She could have been military herself, I thought. She was legal, at least. But she still looked too soft for that.
I pushed the puzzle aside for now. It felt like it might be getting close to meal time again. My stomach was growling.
“You better get back in the tube,” I said to the girl. “What signal shall we give you?” I asked.
“Morse,” she said. Yes. Some sort of military background. “Something about fish should do it,” she said.
“Fish?” I said.
“Well, if they’re onto you and they make you do a signal, it won’t be about fish.”
Clever woman.
Armstrong sniggered and pointed a finger at Johnson.
“Fish,” he said.
“Shut up,” Johnson replied.
The brig door chimed then, as it always did before someone entered. I glanced away, my face automatically turning towards the noise. By the time I looked back, Adi had disappeared, and the gel wall was once again smooth.
“Nifty,” López whispered.
The first guard walked inside.
I looked down at Munro. She offered me a small nod of her head. Showtime, I thought and started to hum tunelessly.
López joined me. She sounded better. I could hear Munro begin to talk.
“There’s a problem with my sink,” she said. “I can’t get any water out of it. I’m gonna die in here if it doesn’t get fixed.”
“Shut up.”
“I need water. You can’t keep us in conditions like this. It only takes three days for someone to die from lack of water.”
“There’s water in your meal.”
“It’s not the same. Here look.” She walked to the back of her cell and turned on her faucet. To my utter surprise, the facet didn’t work. She actually didn’t have any water. Engineering genius that.
The guard with the stripe stepped forward, while the other officers around Munro’s cell kept calling out for their meals and keeping the servers at least occupied. There were still three other guards dotted about.
“Come up to the containment field,” the striped guard said. “Place your hands together through this access panel.” He pulled out some wrist cuffs.
While his attention was diverted to the cuffs, Munro slipped the filleting knife out of her trousers at the back. I didn’t want to think about how uncomfortable that must have been
She lifted one hand up to the hole as the guard stepped closer and brought the wrist cuff up to attach to her wrist. He noticed she’d only put one hand through the gap, just as she snagged the arm with a wrist comm on it and jerked him face first into the containment field.
It hissed and cracked as he let out a shout of alarm and then a curse as the field zapped him. One food tray dropped to the ground, as all the remaining guards lifted their plasma rifles and aimed at Lieutenant Commander Munro.
&nbs
p; But Munro was behind the field the striped guard was plastered against. His shouting and cursing and flailing about offered the necessary distraction.
No one saw the knife.
She slipped the blade under the wrist comm and snapped it free.
Releasing the guard, she stepped back and waved the panel closed.
Everyone had stopped breathing. Even the guards.
And then Munro casually walked toward the officer in the cell beside her and brought the containment field down between them. She handed him the wrist comm and then gripped her knife. The officer started making the rounds as Munro made a show of antagonising the guards staring at her; all of them stunned silent.
She even tapped the knife’s blade against the field between them, gritting her teeth through the zap she must have felt.
Containment field after containment field came down between the cells. But we couldn’t reach those on the other side of the brig. We congregated behind Munro, who lifted the knife and said, “Hello, boys,” with a shit-eating grin.
I stepped forward, the wrist comm now in my hand, a steak knife in the other. This should be fun, I thought and swiped at the front of the cell.
The containment field fell.
We all rushed out. A war cry on our lips.
It was a melee.
But we had the taste of blood now.
Seventeen
At Least The Steak Knives Finally Make Sense
Adi
I could hear things through the wall. Muffled. Indistinct. I tried to decipher the swishes and thumps, but the gel wall was too thick. I pictured plasma rifles going off and blood squirting. But my idea of that sort of fighting was based on movies, and I wasn’t sure how accurate it was.
I suddenly thought I should have come more prepared. A medkit maybe. At least some wipes from the synthesiser. I was no longer armed, but I still had my apron and four to-go meals.
I could throw potatoes at them, I thought and then laughed.
The laugh became a little hysterical, so I covered my mouth with both hands until I finally stopped.
People were probably dying in there. Dying to escape my father’s prison.
Zenith Point (The Sector Fleet, Book 4) Page 9