by Ian Cannon
Dorlin relaxed, gave her a smile, asked, “What have you seen?”
“Seen?” she said.
“Any combat?”
She nodded, vague. “Oh, plenty.”
“Which campaign?” he asked.
Tawny crooked her lips. She had removed herself from the war as completely as possible in the last several years—removed herself from the bi-solar military nets, avoided battlefront news. She didn’t know any of the recent campaigns or battalion movements. She didn’t care.
She guessed, “Golotha.”
“The Golothan offensive,” Dorlin said, coolly.
“Right.”
He clicked his lips. “That was a big one.”
“Pretty big,” she agreed.
He drummed his fingers together, studying her like a riddle. “Any lunar action?”
She squinted at him. What was he getting at? She said, “Plenty.”
“Which moon?”
“Prime,” she returned unchallenged.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “The ninety-seventh, first calv,” he assumed.
Tawny forced down a grin. There was no ninety-seventh. Everyone knew that. He was testing her, trying to catch her in a lie. “No, not that one,” she said.
He cocked his head, impressed. “Okay. Which?” he asked.
Now she was stuck, felt her pulse rise. She had no idea which calv detachments had been a part of that battle. She cleared her throat and guessed, “Third calv.”
He nodded. “What was your regiment?”
What was this, an interrogation? She felt herself grow insulted. She said, “They’re all the same.”
He nodded, still with his eyes like slits. It was a judging look. “Top Admiral Lar Mott, then.”
Tawny flapped her lips shooting for ambiguity. “If that was his name.”
Dorlin asked, “You didn’t know your top’s name?”
Tawny flicked a wrist at him, said, “There’s so many.”
He tilted his head, drumming his fingers slowly on the table. Then he stopped, stared at her. “Funny though, isn’t it?”
“Hilarious,” she said, sparring back.
“Very, very funny.”
Her lips tightened. “Mmm.”
“There is no third calv.”
She was caught. They stared at each other. She grinned. “There’s no ninety-seventh either.”
He reached for his gun. She whipped her right leg up over the table before he could draw. Kicked him square in the teeth. He tipped back in the chair and spilled across the floor, along with his teeth. Before she could get to both feet, a very large, very strong body wrapped her up like a bear from behind. The voice that came with it was deep, “Thought I didn’t recognize ya?”
Brotly. That’s his damn name!
With one leg still stuck in a mol bot brace from a shattered knee, she couldn’t maneuver against him. No other option—she slammed her head back once, real hard, and met pay dirt. The guy’s face made a wet, impact sound, but his grip remained. He gave her a laugh.
She did it again smashing the same big face with that same hard head. This time he growled at her.
The third head butt released her and she lurched forward. Brotly staggered back blinking his eyes, and for some reason, smiling.
He flicked a wicket of blood from his lip. “Like to play rough, huh?” he said.
She turned and hobbled as quickly as she could toward the exit. He bolted after her. The other cargo runners and privateers scattered out of the way, chairs falling over, tables being shoved aside. Tawny hit the exit fast. Brotly stopped at the hub exit and watched her run, grinning at her. He called out “There’s only one way off this sector, honey!” He slapped an alarm button on the wall and a klaxon started wailing out. “I’ll be waiting!”
Tawny could hear the siren pound through the passageways. The passages were small, half-circular corridors divided by bulkheads with pipes running overhead. In seconds they’d be teaming with security mobs coming after her.
One way off this sector, he’d said.
Okay great. Which way was that?
There was a juncture up ahead. Shadows moved and stretched across the passage. They were coming already. “That was fast,” she said, half thrilled by the chase. She was outnumbered and crippled. Her best chance was evasion.
She bolted down an adjoining passage and toward another passenger hub. Its door hatch was open. She could see the commotion inside. People were reacting to the klaxon, everyone looking around curious.
Tawny busted through. Dozens of eyeballs looked at her. It was another holding hub, similar to the last one—long viewports to the left and right, lounge tables placed throughout, exits at either end. The space ruffians reacted to her presence, all surprised and excited. They all wore the utility clothes of privateers—flak jackets, vacuum dungarees, maintenance armor.
These were her people now.
She bolted through with all her senses cranked to ten. The first thing she noticed beyond the viewport were the dozen security bikes heading toward the other hub. Their riders were tucked away under vacuum carapaces.
“Station security! Halt!” a voice yelled from behind. She looked back. The security team charged at her from down the hall. One of them called into a station communicator, “The fugitive is in holding bay ten. Redirect, redirect.”
All at once, as if directed by a common signal, the security bikes banked toward her new location, each of them zipping into a hard angle like a flock of birds. They were coming.
She smiled a devilish grin. She didn’t see approaching trouble. She saw a means of escape.
Tawny wrenched the nearest table toward the doorway sliding it violently across the floor, and bolted for the opposite exit screaming “Liberatus!”—the universal call of the black market cargo hauler.
The security personnel bowled through the entrance knocking the table out of their way, grumbling commands and wearing their visored security helmets.
A voice bawled, “Liberatus!” and the ruffians surged forward to engage the security team. The place became a mesh of flipping tables, flying chairs, bodies colliding.
Laughing out loud, Tawny hit the far exit and found herself in another passage, leaving the calamity behind.
A directional plaque on a bulkhead read in its hieroglyphic language: Hub 10 docking platform.
She stormed down the passageway and into a long, narrow space with a lowered catwalk. She could hear the bikes thudding against their crane restraints just outside. A series of circular floor hatches began opening like steel orifices. The pilots ejected upward, each landing on their feet and running toward the far exit. She ducked behind a bulkhead and waited for them to scurry off, their footfalls sounding rapidly until they were gone. She peeked back out. The place was suddenly empty. It made her smile wildly.
But her smile faded.
Voices came from the other direction. The security team had muscled their way past the privateer squad. Their footsteps were thundering down the hall.
“There!” one shouted.
Time to scat.
She headed down the stairs and out onto the catwalk. Not knowing fully what to expect, she bolted to the nearest floor hatch. It read her approach, opened up, yanked her into a controlled, headfirst tumble through the hatch, slammed a vacuum carapace around her, flipped her head-over-heels and dropped her onto one of the security bikes, all in a single, immediate motion. The thing lit up as she straddled it. The bike released and dropped from its station restraint. She was outside. She was free. And she had a security bike.
Oh—this is too good!
She zipped away at top speed.
Ben’s hover skiff was an excellent model. In just a few seconds he’d learned its control functions—accelerator control. Up. Down. It even had evasive qualities. He looped over a construction platform allowing it to zip underneath him, then flew under a large construction vehicle hugging its underbelly, squeezing between crane arms and worker pylons. He chuckle
d, “This is easy. Okay, show me navigations.” A panel lit up. “Station schematics.” A screen displayed the Menuit-B map with each sector labeled and highlighted. “Bring up the contractor bay.”
A computer voice: “This is a non-applicable command.”
He scrunched his face. “Okay. Show me privateer docking.”
A section of the map zoomed in showing more detail. That’s it. It was a live stream. A row of vessels hung from a long docking frame. That’s where they stored the privateer ships. It didn’t take two seconds to identify REX tucked in between them with his long mag-spires jutting below. He was on the other side of the operation center. A long way away.
“I see you, buddy,” he said.
Now, it was time to locate his wife.
A proximity alarm screamed at him, diverted his attention. Vehicles were moving in. He’d drawn some unwanted attention. Ben fired a glance through the port vacuum screen. There were three of them. Security bikes matching his flight. Long, sleek, fast-looking machines with pilot carapaces extended over the rider seats like tortoise shells.
A voice over the comm panel said, “This is an unauthorized flight zone. Identify.”
He growled dipping the skiff into a nosedive. The security bikes pursued. They were lightning fast; faster than his vehicle. Ben jerked the thing back up and toward a long scaffolding tower hanging a thousand feet from its upper lunar foundation, studded with exterior worker levels. He spiraled around it in a tight pattern trying to lose them. They accelerated, keeping pace.
“Okay…”
He shot away and back toward the personnel facility where passageways and hubs sprawled along the underside of the moon. He darted toward a pressurized tunnel hanging on steel brackets from the moon belly. He squinted hard. There was clearance. Twenty feet. Ten feet? Maybe eight.
Bi-gods, he hoped it was enough!
Clenching his face, he sliced between the tunnel and its rock bed scraping chunks from the moon and banging around in his tiny cockpit. His skiff shot through.
Phew! That was close!
He looked back.
All three bikes tried to make it. They bumped each other, bifurcated, slammed into the tunnel in a mutual ball of flame.
Ben zinged away toward the far end of the personnel facility until he braked to a stop. He sighed in relief, shook his head. This was getting dangerous. Had to find Tawny. His eyes scanned the map screen frantically.
Another proximity buzzer. He looked up fraught with anxiety. Here they came. Gods, it looked like a dozen of them. The lead bike peeled around and through the superstructure of the facility, the others following suit, each moving with perfect unison.
“Oh no.” He was sunk.
He committed an immediate about-face and boosted away at top speed. He’d head for REX. If he could make it there, they wouldn’t stand a chance against him. Growling, he pushed his skiff harder, harder, winding back through the network of tunnels and hubs. His pursuers were too fast. The lead bike sidled up next to him.
“Great…” Ben growled and veered toward the bike. His vehicle was bigger, had more mass, more ramming power. They bumped, grinding against each other. He glanced over, saw the pilot through his cockpit window—teeth gritted, warrior eyes, Raylon red hair. That wasn’t a he. Ben gasped.
“Sweetheart?”
“Babe!”
They released each other.
“What’re you doing out here?” Ben said.
“Oh, just going for a ride.”
“Okay, follow me. I know where REX…”
But she accelerated away leaving him in her space wake.
“Okay…”
Now they were after him. He couldn’t help but laugh. The least he could do was divert them, let Tawny make her way to REX. He’d catch up later.
He reversed his accelerator, peeled around facing the other security bikes and blasted toward them. They separated, juking out of his path, some veering up, others veering down, each evading frantically. Splitting their numbers, he U-turned again and faced them as they corrected. The bikes spun around coming to a stop arranging in security formation. They were angry. And they were looking at him.
“Oh boy…”
He reversed, slid around and darted off. They followed—zip zip zip zip!
There was REX. Found him!
Tawny switched through a range of communication frequencies as she approached, fast. “REXY baby, you copy?” Nothing. She tried again, another channel, “REX, can you hear me?” Finally …
“Hey, Boss! Is that you?”
“Benji’s in trouble. Open the doors. I’m coming in fast. And I mean fast!”
The hangar bay door started dropping. Tawny looped her security bike around and shot through. She crashed hard against the cargo bay floor screaming, “Close the bay door!” The door reversed, thudded shut. Interior atmo whooshed in as her carapace folded off her body. She flummoxed across the bay, sucking O’s.
“Boss,” REX said, “we’re going to have a real hard time getting away. They got their mag couplers on me.”
She got to her feet and rushed to the lift. “Not good enough, REX. We got to find a way.” Within seconds, she was up in the passenger hold storming toward the cockpit.
“There’s something else, Tawny, we got company. Look out!” REX screamed.
Tawny saw the motion in her periphery. Someone was there, and they swung at her. She had just enough time to react, ducking and sliding across the floor. She pounded into the stairway and looked up.
Brotly.
He stood over her holding a stun wand in a big, meaty grip, grinning with mean, dumb-looking eyes. “Told you there was only one way off this sector.”
She sat up.
He said, “Yeah, I remember you. You were that sniper—that little Group Zero gitch. Always thought you were better, didn’t ya; better than us grunts. Well, guess what. I was always going to be the one that—huh?”
REX’s crane bot had shuffled silently up the lift and approached from behind. Now its utility arm tapped him on the shoulder, made him spin around.
Tawny looked down at her leg brace. No time for pain. She pounded him in the crotch, hard. His knees knocked together, eyes crossed, and he went down. She bent his wrist backward and snatched the wand out of his hand. She sparked it against his butt cheeks, and he screamed—Yeouch!—jolting forward, going numb.
“Get up!” she yelled kicking him until he stumbled to his feet. One leg was all floppy. She hustled him by the scruff of his neck to a comm device mounted into the bulkhead and sneered, “Cut us loose, jackwad.”
“You’ll never make it past the outer perimeter,” he cried, sweat popping out across his forehead.
She split his thighs with the stun wand pressing it to the underside of his sack. His eyes went big. “You want to lose your junk, punk?”
He bawled into the comm device, “Security code, privateer dock, H-one-A-sub-zero-two, release couplers!”
There was a thud. REX called, “We’re free!”
“See how easy that was?” she said and jammed the wand into Brotly’s neck sparking him and making him jiggle and shake and spray vomit like—gakgakgakgak!
Ben was locked up against one of the bikes as they tried to flank him. His fuselage ground against the cycle frame, bucking and jarring. They were too squirrelly, too quick. All he had was power and size. He gritted his teeth angrily.
Maybe he could …
A rock outcropping approached.
Smash this guy…
He veered toward the rocks, jerking the bike with him.
Into oblivion …
KABOOM!
The explosion spread out causing the other bikes to disengage, go around. But they were back on him in a blink. He shook his head running out of ideas. There were too many of them. His situation was turning hopeless.
He skidded into a tight one-eighty, kicked on the mag boosters and barreled back toward the complex, the others banking with him, all around him. Way up
ahead, the endless framework of the construction facility approached. He’d close the distance in no time. But it wouldn’t matter. He still couldn’t shake these bucketheads. He could feel his desperation growing.
Can’t escape what you can’t shake.
And he’d pulled all the speed from his little skiff he was going to get.
They were going to track with him until they caught him.
Or he gave up.
This was bad.
So …
Something up ahead caught his eye.
Freaking …
It gave him hope.
Bad …
“REX!” he yelled.
The ship came roaring forward under the sprawling thatch work of tunnels, towers, hubs and space lifts. And then his bubble cannon began stitching blasts right at him. Ben screamed. He was going to be pulverized by his own ship …
His own wife!
Explosions marked the security bikes all around him. One by one, very rapidly, they shattered into blinding balls of fire until all that was left was Ben and his skiff. REX hit the space brakes with his cargo bay door opening. Ben gunned it, and his disc-shaped skiff went skipping across the bay floor below the ATV suspended in the air on its gantry crane. It crashed into the far wall and came to a sudden stop, Ben groaning a painful—Guh! The bay door closed. Ben was out, on his way to the cockpit like a shot rubbing shins and elbows on his way.
Tawny climbed up from the bubble turret and took the co-pilot’s chair as Ben slid into the pilot’s seat taking the control. “Wife,” he said.
“Hubby.”
They took off fast, Ben saying, “We gotta get out of here.”
“They’re going to have an outer perimeter,” Tawny said.
“Figured they would,” he responded. “REX, plot a course.”
“Where to?”
“Surprise me.” He flipped overhead toggles, maneuvered away from the foundry area.
“Course laid in. One thing,” REX groaned, “I feel it necessary to remind you, Cap, that my payload never got delivered.”
Tawny gave him an odious look, said, “The Orbinii! They’re going to be very mad.”
“Later, later!” Ben said arcing them toward the edge of the moon base.