Absolution

by Rick Partlow

  Dog had turned onto the main road, wheeling the car off to the left and turning our nose back at the spaceport. I tried to reach the gun on the floor, but a sudden slam on the brakes to avoid a running pedestrian brought me up short, the seat harness grabbing me tight enough to squeeze the breath out of my chest. I saw Chad’s pale and puffy face frozen in our headlights for just a moment before Dog blew the horn and the rental clerk bolted away, running headlong across the street and into the wilderness.

  Dog hit the accelerator again and we surged forward just ahead of another blaster burst, the flare of ionized atmosphere lighting up the interior, turning the smoke still drifting from the last hit into a glowing fog. It was just as well Dog was driving because I couldn’t see a damn thing, and I wasn’t sure which way we were heading until the chain-link fence was looming right in front of us, the pedestrian gate just a centimeter too narrow for our vehicle.

  Metal scraped and polymer ripped and the engine screamed and the whole vehicle shuddered until it yanked free, delivered like a baby through the birth canal…or another, more scatological analogy that came to mind. Dog was becoming a bad influence.

  “The port police are going to be all over us driving out here without authorization,” I pointed out, finally able to bend down and retrieve my blaster off the floor.

  “I’m of the opinion police protection might be desirable. They’re following us.”

  My neck was getting sore from staring behind us, but I could see the headlights following us out through the forcefully widened gate, whipping back and forth as they squeezed and scraped their way out onto the plain of the spaceport.

  “You can outrun them, right?” I asked him. “Can we go any faster?”

  “You notice that shimmying on the right side of the car?” Dog replied to my question with one of his own. In fact, I had, but I just thought it had been the rough road, or perhaps his driving. “Well, that’s the front wheel about to come off this thing from hitting the fence. I’ll keep it going as long as I can.”

  “Well, darn.”

  I rolled down the passenger’s side window, unlatched my seat belt and leaned out, trying to draw a bead on the vehicle trailing us. I’d just about compensated for the shuddering, swaying motion of the car when lightning cracked out of the passenger’s side of the car behind us and passed half a meter from my head. I jerked back inside, biting down on a curse.

  “These boys are persistent.”

  “Who the hell did you piss off this time?” Dog wondered.

  “They’re after me,” Beckett declared.

  Her voice was muffled, and I peeked over the seat, making sure I’d heard her right.

  “They’re after me,” she repeated. “You should let them have me. No one else needs to get killed because of me.”

  I wanted to argue with her, wanted to question further why she might think that, but we were coming up on the port, coming close to the slot where the Charietto had landed, and we weren’t going to have the time or space to board her with these guys on our ass. I lunged back out of the window and started firing before I’d even tried to sight in, just walking the actinic plasma across the pavement in a long, draining burst until it intersected the utility rover’s front right wheel.

  Sparks showered off melting metal and shredded plastic flared in a brief gout of flame just before my blaster went dead, its charge gone. It was enough. The rover nosed into the pavement, spinning out and flipping onto its roof with a screeching crash that set my teeth on edge.

  “Good shooting for a meatsack,” Dog complimented. “And just in time.”

  The Charietto squatted in resentful silence, an angry, silver wedge over a hundred meters long and half that wide, battered and worn from decades of use before she became mine, I’d sunken everything I had into her and she was still costing me over half of every bounty I brought in. Normally, the thought of the money outlay gave me a bit of heartburn, but this time I was just happy as hell to see her.

  Dog wasn’t using the manual controls, just operating them through a direct computer connection, so when he slammed on the brakes, there was absolutely no warning. The car slid sideways across the bow of the ship and screeched to a stop, bouncing fitfully on the suspension. I was already jammed against the door, so I simply pulled the handle and tumbled out of it, rolling into a crouch. My blaster’s charge pack was drained and I took a moment to swap it for a fresh one, tucking the spent pack into my jacket pocket before I opened the rear door and helped Beckett out.

  She was cursing loudly with each tug toward the door, clearly unhappy about being tossed around in the rear seat with her hands secured behind her back, but I wasn’t going to waste time setting her loose, not when two of the gunmen were crawling out of the wreck of their truck and probably only seconds from opening fire on us again. Dog was out of the car and he had the hatch opening already, the interior lights throwing out an elongated halo of yellow in the particulate wind.

  The ramp crawled downward in slow motion and it took quite a bit of self-control not to urge it along with useless profanity. I raised my blaster to shoulder level and fired off two quick bursts towards the overturned vehicle, trying to force the two men I’d seen near it to keep their heads down. There were sirens in the distance and when I checked around the other side of the Charietto, I could see the flashing lights of the approaching vehicles. Just groundcars, not even a flyer. Philyra was really a backwoods sort of place.

  “Port cops,” Dog said, staring at the hatch, waiting for it to unfold. When it was halfway down, he leapt inside with an impossible bound…impossible for a flesh-and-blood dog, that is.

  “Maybe we should just wait for them to get here,” I mused aloud, more of an argument with myself than a request for advice, but Delia Beckett made a face at me like I’d grown an extra head. “Oh, I know, I’d likely wind up spending a day in jail while they sort through everything, but the alternative is leaving two dead bodies lying around and never being able to come back here again.”

  I shut up, not because I was tired of hearing myself talk, but because a whining in my ear made me look up. I couldn’t see the aircraft at first, just heard the jets, but I knew what it was: a VTOL flyer coming in from the direction of town. That, in and of itself, was nothing strange. Flyers probably landed at the port’s public lots all the time, a quick way for people to jet in from the outback. But this one didn’t seem to be running any safety lights, and it was coming in nap-of-the-earth, low enough to stay off the port radar.

  “Oh, boy,” I said.

  The ramp was unfolding its final segment, but I didn’t wait for it, just lifted Beckett onto the lowest set of steps and gave her a shove. She nearly stumbled but put her shoulder against the safety rail and lunged upward, tumbling into the utility bay. I jumped and grabbed the railings, vaulting over the last section of steps as they swung down at me, and climbing the rest of the ladder up to the deck.

  I risked a look back at the approaching port police vehicles, only about a hundred and fifty meters away now, throwing up a dust cloud that glowed with a polychromatic halo from their emergency lights. They’d be here in seconds and I’d have some explaining to do…

  The blaster fire exploded out of the night, the chin cannon tucked close against the fuselage of the unlit flyer, only the brief flares of plasma revealing its sleek, dagger-shaped lines. Stuttering red bolts drifted toward the path of the police cars in a long, walking burst and my gut clenched in sympathy as they intersected the first of the vehicles. Eye-searing yellow and white blossomed up from the police car, leaving a trail of brilliant sparks and billowing flame and smoke as the vehicle veered out of control off to my left, rumbling to a stop.

  The second car tried to swerve, tried to evade, but there was no way to outrun a blaster cannon. All the swerving and dodging accomplished was to tip the thing over when the bursts finally walked their way across the left-side wheel base. And now that it was done with them, the flyer would be coming for us.

  Chap
ter Six

  “Dog!” I yelled, slamming the lever to fold the ramp back up, running past where Delia Beckett was sprawled out on the deck, trying to squirm to her feet. “Get us out of here!”

  But the ship was already lurching upwards, nearly sending me sprawling with the abrupt motion. I caught myself on the bulkhead of the narrow passageway between the utility bay and the cockpit, pushing away and sprinting the last few meters before I had the chance to fall again. Dog was in the right seat, leaving the left for me, thoughtfully allowing me the illusion I was still the captain of this boat.

  I strapped in, knowing I should have tried to help Beckett into a safe position but also knowing it was better for her to be a little banged up than it was for all of us to get burned to ashes if that flyer managed to get a lucky shot into us before we could get up to speed. I thought I might have heard her pained squawk somewhere back down the passage when the Charietto’s atmospheric drives rumbled to life and pushed me back into the acceleration couch.

  “Civilian Transport CT-823701,” an annoyed voice came over the cockpit speakers as the ground dropped away beneath the front screens, “this is Philyra Traffic Control. You do not have clearance to take off. Please return to your slip and request clearance.”

  “Slip,” I murmured. “It ain’t a slip, it’s a parking space.” I touched the communications control to activate the cockpit audio pickup. “Philyra Control, this is an emergency. Criminals have attacked port police near our ship, there are several casualties and we have to evacuate the area. You need to send emergency services immediately.”

  The exasperated sigh was a burst of static against the man’s microphone. “823701, drop the bullshit and return to your slip immediately or you’re going to be facing a possible five-thousand-credit fine and impoundment of your ship!”

  “Where’s the flyer?” I asked Dog, muting the communications pickup.

  “It broke off once our atmospheric drives kicked in,” he reported, staring at the control panel as if there were a movie playing on it. I knew he was hooked into the ship’s computer system, monitoring sensors, satellite communications and our flight data. “Traffic control is trying to send a remote shutdown sequence to the ship’s flight computer,” he added. “I’m not letting them do that.”

  “And don’t think I don’t appreciate it.” I threw off my seat restraints and climbed out of the acceleration couch as our flight began to steady. “I’m going to go see to our guest. Let me know if the police send out intercept craft.”

  “We’re never going to be able to come back here, you know,” Dog called after me.

  I grunted agreement, but didn’t respond. Like all the disasters in my life, I couldn’t think how I would have reacted differently to this one.

  I found Beckett huddled on the deck in the utility bay, her leg wrapped around the support strut for the work table and a nascent bruise already rising on her cheek where she’d banged against something.

  “Sorry about that,” I told her, helping her to her feet and pulling her along to the cockpit. “Had to get us out of there before they decided to take a run at us.”

  “They aren’t going to give up,” she warned me, not seeming to begrudge the bruising, not even complaining about the restraints. “They waited this long, the only reason they came after me now is that you found me. They won’t give up until I’m dead.”

  “Who the heck is this ‘they’ you keep talking about, ma’am?” I asked pulling out a multi-tool and cutting the flex-cuffs off of her as we walked.

  She rubbed at her wrists but didn’t say anything until I’d guided her to the unoccupied navigation console and strapped her in. I paused and pulled another set of flex-cuffs out of my pocket and secured her right wrist to the chair’s armrest. By the time I turned around and began buckling my own restraints, the low clouds above Morrigan had given way to star-filled blackness.

  “Masterson.” Dog’s voice was flat, with no inflection, a warning tone. “There’s a ship coming in.”

  “Orbital Patrol?” I asked, suddenly concerned. I couldn’t even remember if the planetary law enforcement here had armed ships and I silently calculated how long it would take us to safe jump range and whether we could outrun a fusion-drive orbital cutter.

  “I don’t think so. It’s a starship, personal transport just like this one. No official registration so it’s not military or police.”

  “Maybe it’s just doing a normal orbital insertion,” I suggested, trying to bring up the sensor screen so I could see what he was getting directly from the computer.

  “It’s on an intercept course.”

  “Well, that’s not a coincidence.” I twisted around to look back at Beckett. “Come clean, lady. Who are these guys?”

  “No time for that now,” Dog chided me. “These assholes wouldn’t be homing in on us if they didn’t have the guns to back it up. You want to call the local Navy base for help?”

  “Head for the closest safe jump point,” I told him, bringing up the communications screen on the console between us and trying to find the emergency broadcast frequency. “Union Navy Operations,” I called. “Any Navy forces, this is CT-823701 declaring an emergency. We need help now. Please respond.”

  There was nothing. I repeated the call and then began scrolling through trouble-shooting screens before Dog saved me the trouble.

  “We’re being jammed.”

  Jamming civil communications signals wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t cheap. And anyone who had the gear to pull it off and weren’t afraid of getting caught were not to be trifled with. I reached beneath the edge of the command console and flipped up a hidden control panel with a targeting screen and a joystick. A remotely-controlled blaster turret popped down from the chin of the Charietto at the touch of a button. Technically, it’s not legal even for a licensed bounty hunter to have anti-ship weaponry…but then, technically, Dog was illegal enough to get me life in prison. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  “They’ll be in range in ten seconds,” Dog advised me. “Range for us. I don’t know what the hell they’re shooting with.”

  A good point. If they had torpedoes, we were dead and nothing was going to change it. I pivoted the turret around and tried to target the sensor icon representing their ship. It wasn’t quite visible yet, just a shining dot reflecting the starlight from Epsilon Indi. Morrigan basked in the starshine as the terminator passed beneath us, brown and blue and white and green, looking so much more hospitable now than when we’d flown in.

  “How long before we jump?”

  By way of answer, the roar of the main drive went an octave higher and twice my normal weight pressed me into the acceleration couch, which wasn’t comfortable but wasn’t exactly debilitating. We’d done six-gee accelerations before, and those were truly miserable.

  “Five minutes at two gees,” Dog told me. “Unless you want to push it harder. It’ll play hell with our fuel supply, though.”

  “No, this is enough. Just jump us out of here and head back to the Panicle as quick as you can.”

  I wasn’t paying attention to what was ahead of us, instead fixated on the ship coming up behind us. It was visible in the optical cameras, a delta-winged, silver wedge in the targeting screen, like looking into a mirror image of the Charietto. My thumb flexed with an involuntary urge to fire on them preemptively, to get them the second they came into range, but I restrained myself.

  “Shoot them down!” Beckett urged, the view on my screen visible from her position. “Hurry!”

  “They haven’t fired on us,” I reminded her, just a hint of the strain of the two-gravity fusion burn coming through in my voice. “If I blow them to vapors and it turns out they weren’t armed, or, worse yet, aren’t even with those people who attacked us at the port, I’ll be spending the better part of the next twenty or thirty years at a government work camp.”

  The argument became moot when a scintillating stream of red energy flashed out from the chin of the other ship and splashed agains
t the stern in a shower of sparks and a halo of sublimating metal. The Charietto lurched with the hit, which seemed wrong to me somehow. Nothing solid had struck her, just a burst of energy, but I knew from unfortunate previous experience the jolt was akin to the one the ship would undergo when it fired maneuvering thrusters and for the same reason: the spray of burning metal was acting as a brief and violent steering jet.

  I only cared about the science of it so far as it affected whether I lived or died in the next few seconds. The flare of burning gas obscured the view in the targeting screen for the briefest of moments and by the time it was clear, Dog was already throwing the Charietto into an evasion pattern, tossing me back and forth against my seat restraints and sending the image on the display jumping all over the place. More crimson slashes of fire streaked across our port side only a few dozen meters away, seeking us out, trying to finish us off and, above the roar of the engines and the bang-bang-bang of maneuvering thrusters, I could hear Beckett saying “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus….” I wasn’t sure if it was a profanity or a prayer.

  Gee forces were fighting against my hand on the turret control joystick but I grabbed my right wrist with my left and steadied it as best I could, gently traversing the gun turret and moving the targeting camera back around to the silver delta.

  “Shoot the fucker, will you?” Dog snapped.

  I was thumbing the trigger even as he spoke, which bothered me since I didn’t want him to think he could boss me around…and because it worked. The burst took the silver delta just starboard of its nose, scoring a jagged black line ten meters down the length of the fuselage and throwing it off to the port in an uncontrolled yaw. I tried to traverse around to follow them, but the turret reached the limit of its firing arc.

  “How much longer?” I asked through clenched teeth, swinging the gun back and forth, trying to find him again.