“I am not even going to ask,” she muttered as she headed over to one of the cabinets and opened it. “Oh, yes I am,” she said rather more loudly when she saw what was inside.
It was difficult for her to leave when she did, not having had a chance to check everything out. But with the subtle marks on the cabinet doors that she quickly recognized for what they were, and figuring out the way to get past the security panel inside the outer cabinet door, it still took her several minutes to gather up everything she would be able to carry, and still take the time to put on the armored confusion suit.
It was a squeeze, but Willi got everything in the elevator, and then out through the small panel into the bedroom closet, in one trip. With the adrenaline now pumping through her system, she was able to run out of the bedroom and down the stairs with no trouble, even with everything she was now carrying.
“Good timing,” Johnny said with hardly a glance at her when they both reached the front door at the same time.
It was not hard for Willi to see the strain Johnny was under, between the pain from his injuries, and the stresses he was putting on his body now without the cast, with everything he was carrying.
A relieved grunt escaped him when he dropped the extra gear beside hers. He looked at her, down at her additional gear, nodded, and used his communicator again.
“Two minutes,” was all he said. He was checking the gear he had strapped onto his body, most of which she could not see as it was inside the confusion suit field.
Willi, rather surprised at herself that she was not peppering him with impatient questions, just waited silently until he pointed at several items on the floor and said, “These first,” while still watching the communicator in his hand.
Again Willi was surprised, when Johnny only picked up one item from the floor, though from his movements, it had to be heavy, after saying, “Thirty seconds.”
She did not see any other movement from him, but suddenly the door was open, and he was moving through it. Willi followed right on his heels. Up to the point where he stepped slightly to the side, and began scanning the area, the comm device up in front of his face. “Go,” he said, still not having looked at her.
Her eyes went from him, down the steps and she almost backed up a step at what was headed toward her. And what was behind what was headed toward her.
But Johnny had said go. So she went, aching to turn and look at him, but knowing she needed to just follow his instructions at the moment.
The two blobs passed her on the way up the stairs as she went down them. Tossing the bags she was carrying into the open door of the vehicle sitting right at the bottom of the steps, which she knew was there only because the door was open, and she could see inside.
Because if the door had not been open, she would likely have run right into the side of the vehicle, as it, like the fighter craft had been, was very, very well cloaked.
Willi had to really scramble out of Johnny’s way, because he was much closer behind her than she would have thought possible. The bag he carried joined the ones she had tossed in, and he sat down beside her with a loud grunt of pain.
Willi saw him touch the pain medication activator, but for only a tiny fraction of a second. The vehicle door was closing, but Willi saw the two blobs approaching rapidly, with the rest of the bags seeming to simply float along beside and behind them.
When the door fully closed it was a second or so before the cloak went clear from the inside. She saw the two had dropped the bags into a hatch at the rear of the vehicle and were moving toward the front. Both slid inside, and the cloak cleared again after having activated when they opened the doors.
Only after the two adjusted their confusion suits did Willi find out that one of them was worn by Cherokee. And the other by… “Grant?” Willi asked, incredulously. She felt a sense of alarm. “Where is Mother? Is she safe?”
Johnny held in the chuckle that almost escaped when he saw the rather annoyed look Grant gave Willi, as he said, “Of course she is safe. You think I would leave her if she wasn’t safe?”
“Uh… No?” Willi stuttered out, chagrinned.
“No is correct.” Grant reeled of a set of coordinates, that Cherokee was double checking against a pre-flight startup list.
Willi looked over at Johnny. He was rather proud of the fact that she had stayed quiet over the last several minutes. He decided that it would be best to explain, right now, that even try to delay it until later.
Her mouth was already open, but Willi closed it when Johnny, his eyes flicking from the communicator to her eyes and back, constantly, spoke first.
“You Mother graciously offered…”
Willi looked forward to Grant when he grunted, rather rudely, she thought. But they were quickly back on Johnny.
“You Mother graciously offered to provide me transportation off the planet, without going through official channels.”
Again the rude grunt from Grant, which Willi ignored this time. Johnny continued. Willi could see that the pain was easing, at least a little bit. She itched to reach over and press the medication release, but restrained herself.
Johnny’s eyes flicked up to Willi’s. He held her gaze for long moments, and Willi could tell that his mind was going over options as quickly as some of their old computers could probably process information.
Willi knew when he came to a decision, and the one tiny flicker, that almost took his eyes from hers was enough for her to know she would not like the decision. And that it was not the decision they would work with.
“Think of something else,” she whispered, her eyes still locked on his. Willi could almost feel Grant’s eyes on the back of her head as she stayed close to Johnny, shielding her face from Grant’s far too perceptive eyes, and incredible abilities to hear, read lips, understand body language, and use all the other weapons in his arsenal he used to protect her mother as head of family security.
Knowing that Johnny had not actually moved his lips, nor his eyes, and that eyes could not actually twinkle internally, Willi was sure that he was smiling, and that he had made the decision instantly, and was actually just fine with it, when he did, finally, blink, quickly look at the communicator, and then back at Willi.
“So it seems we will be going into hiding for a few days, until my…”
Willi could almost see him running through a list of word options to describe whoever it was that would be helping them. She had also heard the minute stress on the word ‘we’ when he had used it.
“…my associates have the information I have requested,” he concluded.
“Trinity Home will…”
Seeing the real regret in his eyes, Johnny gave her a tiny shake of his head, and said, “Too much risk for your family. And, to be honest, as fast as she is, too slow for what must be done.”
Willi felt herself bristle slightly. She was, justifiably she knew, proud of her family’s home base ship, the Trinity Home. The family had several ships plying the trade routes, as well as Moon-Ship bases orbiting planets in several systems, plus four even larger Moon-Ship planetoids travelling independently in extremely long period orbits around key groups of star systems in the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Trinity Home was the largest, fastest, most well equipped, tightly and efficiently run of all of her family’s ships. And only a dozen other ships could come close to matching her, and they were sister ships, belonging to some of the other families that had brought civilization and the human race itself out of the Dark Times of the Twenty-first through the Twenty-fourth Centuries, and led them to the stars.
She grudgingly admitted that there might be four ships that surpassed the Trinity Home in a few aspects. But only in some ways. Admit it she did, though, to herself, with just a touch of envy, but much more of pride, as the families owning all four of those ships had direct ties with her own. From those distant Dark Times. And all admitted openly that her family had been as instrumental in achieving everything that had happened as they were.
/> “Then where are we going? And how are we getting there?” Willi asked then, quite firmly. “And what are we going to do to get this straightened out so we can get married?”
Cherokee’s soft, almost suppressed chuckle registered on Willi, barely, because she was concentrating on Grant, who was suddenly coughing, trying to catch his breath while staring at her in wide-eyed shock and disbelief.
Apparently, Grant had just taken a sip of one of the concoctions his sister brewed up for him to help him keep going the long hours he felt necessary for him to put in without break to fulfil the duties of the head of Family Security when Willi had spoken.
And had sprayed it all over the inside of the vehicle forward view monitor he was using to keep track of everything at the moment.
Cherokee’s right fist bounced off Grant’s back when he hit him to try to restart the man’s breathing. And perhaps, heartbeat, if Cherokee was right in his thinking.
“Married?” Grant finally managed to say, sounding much more like one of the pre-teen girls Willi occasionally taught flight skills to when she was aboard the Trinity Home. Very high pitched, and… girly… Though Willi made a huge effort to bury even the thought deep inside her head when it popped up, before Grant could somehow realize it had actually been there.
But one look at Johnny, and she had a feeling that he knew, and that Grant might just know, since he was now glaring at her. And not because of her mention of marriage, she was sure.
Grant finally got several deep breaths into his lungs, and was able to say in his standard deep, gravelly voice, “Does your mother know you are getting married?”
“Mmmm. Not yet…” Willi squeaked out, sounding rather like what she had thought Grant had sounded like moment before.
“Uh-hummm.” Grant replied, turning back around in the seat. He cleaned the view screen without another word.
“I’m going to tell her,” Willi hurried to say. “Just as soon as I see her.”
An annoyed glance was directed at the back of Cherokee’s head when she thought she heard another chuckle. “Shut up, Cherokee!” slipped out before she could control it. “I am going to…”
“Yes, Marilyn,” Cherokee replied quickly.
“Marilyn? Who’s Marilyn?” Grant asked, feeling something he had not felt since… Well… something he had never felt, actually… confused… before.
“Mother didn’t tell you?” Willi asked, eyes wide, her amazement apparent.
“Tell me what?” Grant almost bellowed.
Willi did not flinch. She actually had to struggle to keep from giggling. She had never seen Uncle Grant like this before.
“If I might, Commander McKindrick?” Johnny asked politely.
“Please. Please do,” Grant said, now much more calmly.
Johnny amazed both Willi and Cherokee with his quiet, concise, and very self-deprecating explanation of the last many weeks.
It was not until the end of it, which wrapped up with the last few moments, that Grant looked over at Willi, never having taken his eyes of Johnny.
“It was you I was looking for?” Grant asked her. Fairly quietly. But with some wonderment in his voice.
“You were looking for me?” Willi asked, now as confused as Grant had been until moments before. Turning her eyes from Grant to Johnny she opened her mouth to ask a question, but Johnny spoke first.
“It would seem that The Lady McKindrick sent your Uncle to find you when her… assistants… lost track of your whereabouts on Sol’s Transport Center.”
“Wait!” Willi said, a hand going up. “She was having me followed?”
That pretty much paralleled Grant’s question of, “Arabella had you followed? Where? And why?”
Willi dropped her head into her hands. “Oh, Lord. What a mess…” she muttered.
Johnny kept his mouth shut. He might be marrying into the family, but he was not part of it yet, and he figured, based on his experiences with his own family, that it would be wise not to get in the middle of a family matter. Such as this one.
Where Willi had gone off on her own, misleading her mother about where she was going and what her intentions were. And Arabella McKindrick had sent people to follow her daughter. Who had lost her trail almost immediately.
Whereupon she had sent her brother, Willi’s Uncle, Commander Grant McKindrick, to find her before she could get up to some mischief she might not be able to handle. Without telling him just who he was looking for, nor why.
And later, while he was still trying to find whoever it was he was looking for, with very little to go on, when Arabella had contacted Grant, and rather worriedly had dispatched him to Sector ZZ-1219 to find out what might be happening there, without getting the family named involved, Grant had finally shown up, only to be diverted from heading out to the Trinity Home, which was heading away at high speed… somewhere… to an address planetside.
He was still reading reports on the local news outlets about the ‘incident’ when they arrived at Johnny’s hideout location. And it hit him just now, which was way longer than he was comfortable with it having taken, that the Johnny, with Willi, the one she was apparently going to be marry, was the Johnny Oneshot in the stories. The one the central government was looking for. The Johnny Oneshot that… “Criminey!” Grant muttered, his eyes back on Johnny.
Knowing the look, Johnny, a bit surprised that Grant was looking at him with it on his face, said, “Don’t believe everything you hear.”
The slight head motion Willi made when she rolled her eyes caused Grant to look over at her, in time to see the eye roll. He looked back at Johnny. “You don’t look like…” Realizing what he was about to say, though the color in his cheeks did not actually show, he felt it, and quickly shut up. This man was a legend. Beyond legend, apparently.
Grant’s contacts throughout the human settled areas of space were excellent. More than excellent. They might even rival those of the Confederation intelligence services. He was very aware of the legend of Johnny Oneshot.
He also knew much of the legend was true. But he had always had some doubts about the entirety of it. Despite some of the first-person accounts he had been privy to. Not to mention his and his sister’s not quite seen encounter with the legend when said legend apparently dropped off fissionables on the fly several years previously, and made it possible for a significant portion of the Space Trading Guild to survive and escape what would have been, from what he always suspected, and know knew, a horrible death.
That all passed through Grant’s mind at blazing speed as he watched the legend… man, calmly check his communicator again. And Grant recognized the device as precisely what it was. He had one, as did three others under his command. And they had cost more than a small fortune, not to mention being highly restricted. Not even someone in his position was supposed to have one.
And when Johnny, eyes still on the device, quietly spoke to Willi, Grant was even further amazed to see her do exactly what Johnny had just asked.
“Willi, please sync your communicator with mine. You will need the most current information I just received, in case we get separated.”
Though Willi did so, her eyes on the device that she pulled from somewhere within her confusion suit, she told Johnny, in no uncertain terms, that, “We will NOT be getting separated.”
Grant felt his comm unit silent annunciator. A small sigh escaped him, despite his best efforts, when he pulled it out and saw that it was being automatically updated, with a huge amount of information. From his sources.
“You have one of these?” Willi asked in surprise when she saw her Uncle trigger something on his. She looked over at Johnny. “I thought these were restricted.”
“Very much so,” Johnny said, a faint smile on his lips when he looked from Willi, to Grant, and then back to Willi. “A person could get in a great deal of trouble if anyone found out someone not authorized to have one, did have one.”
“Oh,” Willi replied. She looked at her Uncle with even more respect
than she had always had for him. “Do you have one of the…” she was in the process of asking him about the weapon Johnny had given her. But she cut herself off, giving Johnny an apologetic look, and a muttered “Sorry.”
“Sorry, what?” Grant asked. “And do I have one of the what?”
Willi kept her mouth shut. She shook her head. Grant looked at Johnny.
“She is worried she might get me… or you… in trouble if she asks about whether you have one of the Security Forces special issue PDWs.” A quick glance at Willi, and he added. “I am sure he does. Probably at least a couple of his people, too. We made sure they were made available, through certain contacts, to people that might have a need for them, and that we trusted would put them to good use if it ever became necessary.”
Grant and Willi exchanged, on Willi’s part, a wide-eyed look, with Grant’s tighter, but still rather incredulous look.
“I really hate to say this,” Grant said, but fell silent and looked at Cherokee.
Johnny heard the pause and looked up. “Cherokee is in the loop now,” was all he said.
Another exchange of looks between uncle and niece, and a chuckle, not suppressed this time, from Cherokee, and Grant continued his thought. “I really hate to say this, but I feel like I am on the outside looking in. And I will firmly say, and not hate saying it at all, that I DO NOT like feeling like I am on the outside, looking in.”
He cut another glance at Willi. “How much of this does your mother know?”
A helpless shrug was the answer Grant received. But the question did trigger a memory in Willi, that since it had come to the fore, she was not going to suppress again until she had an answer to the question that kept popping up from time to time, since her mother and Johnny had met, apparently again, at the space port.
“When did Mother meet Johnny the first time? I am sure you had to have been around. You know everything that happens. Well, I guess except this.” She managed not to snicker.
“It was several years ago, apparently,” she added, giving Johnny a look that he ignored.
Mission to Sector ZZ1219 Page 18