by J. S. Morin
Carl raised a tentative hand. “No, but I’ve actually bombed things from orbit.”
Esper shot him a glare and looked around for signs of anyone being more helpful.
“Don’t look at me,” said Roddy.
“I flew ground assault missions,” Tanny added with a shrug. “Deliver boots to planet. Head back and pick up more. Repeat.”
“I’ve pulled Carl’s ass out of several fights,” Mriy said. “But we never let him get put into a jail.”
“Mort,” said Esper. “You must have done this sort of thing before.”
Mort cleared his throat. “I imagine … well, I think we’re all fine with the theory. It’s just …”
Esper held her arms out to her sides, mouth and eyes gaping. “What kind of outlaws are you people?”
“I can field that one,” said Carl. “We’re the kind who do what we need to do to get paid. I make sure we don’t keep records around, but maybe we can start a group story night, get you up to speed. We can take turns telling—”
“Roddy, throw me that remote,” Esper ordered. The laaku mechanic complied, lobbing the device to her with a foot. “This seems to be the only thing any of you listen to around here.” She played around with it for a few moments, flashing through file clusters and search results until she had a short list of holovids.
“I didn’t even know we had some of this shit,” Carl muttered.
“Waiting a day is probably a good idea,” said Esper. “Tanny had a good point about them being on alert. I’m going to show you all what being an outlaw is supposed to be about. Mriy, do we have popcorn in the pantry?” The azrin nodded. “Well, settle in. We’re all going to watch holos and eat popcorn, and learn what a hero really is.”
# # #
“That’s it,” Esper said. The credits were rolling by on the last of their holovid marathon as inspirational music rose in crescendo. “Now, do you see? This is what being outlaws is supposed to be about. You can do things no law-abiding person could get away with. It’s your duty to use that freedom to help other people.”
“Didn’t seem to work out that well for most of them,” Roddy grumbled. “Robin Hood never actually made good. Derrius Miles got spaced by his own crew …”
Esper frowned. “I had forgotten that bit at the end.”
“These were mostly set on old Earth,” said Tanny. “Only a couple looked close to modern.”
“Aha!” said Mort. “But one wasn’t. They snuck it in at the beginning that it was actually set in the distant past in some other galaxy. Technically even older than the others, I’d wager.”
“I think you guys are missing the point,” said Carl. When everyone stopped their individual arguments, he continued. “Esper won. She got us drunk and happy, filled our heads with tales of the little guy winning out, doing the right thing. Fuck it. I want some guy a hundred years from now writing shit like that about us … and I want Jack Plantier to play me.”
“That Douglas Fairbanks was a looker,” said Tanny, drunkenly attempting to be helpful.
“Sure,” said Mort. “And in a hundred years both of them will be dead.”
“You saying I look like Douglas Fairbanks?” Carl asked.
Tanny squinted. “Maybe,” she said with a sly grin. “After six of Earth’s Preferred, at least.”
Roddy tried squinting at Carl. “I’m at fifteen, and he’s still lookin’ like a washed-up, sim-hustling fighter-jockey. We seriously going to follow this guy into a war zone tomorrow? Shit … I need a good night’s sleep. Mriy, beer me. Two for the sack.”
“What about you, Mriy?” Esper asked. “You haven’t said what you think.”
“The one with the feathered hat should have kept the money,” said Mriy, lobbing two cans in Roddy’s direction. Even drunk, he caught them fluidly. “The masked one should have slain all his foes and claimed rule. The smugglers were admirable hunters in the end. I think I liked the spacers in the stolen ship best; they sought revenge and got it.”
“I would have sworn he retired to a life back on Luna,” said Esper. “But you’re missing the point. It’s all about finding something deeper than just money. You can live it up outside the law, but when the calling comes, they heed it.”
“Holovid drivel,” said Mriy. “People aren’t like that.”
“Who says ‘heed?’” Roddy muttered.
“We’ve got to be all in this together, or—”
Mriy hissed, and the translator charm did nothing to offer a meaning. Esper shrank back, despite being across the room. “I don’t care what those holo-people want. My pack hunts, and I go. I don’t lead, so ‘why’ doesn’t matter.”
Esper was quiet. “It does.”
“Listen, kid,” said Carl. “Don’t throw the fish back in because it took an unbaited hook. Might not catch it twice.”
“How … how you do that?” Tanny asked. Carl gave her a quizzical frown. “You’re drunker as I am, but you’re still pretty slick that tongue of yours.” There was a look in her eye, and Esper was growing worried about it. It was that barroom look all over again.
“Once you get good at something,” Carl said. “A couple beers can’t stop you.” Carl had the mirror of Tanny’s look. There was a point-to-point laser comm going on between them, a direct line-of-sight uplink that Esper was hacking into and decrypting without meaning to.
“Well, I think I’ve given everyone enough to think about for one night,” said Esper. “Let’s all get a good night’s rest and wake up ready to right some wrongs. Remember,” she emphasized, “we need our rest.”
“Sure, kid,” said Carl. “G’night.” He lurched to his feet and sauntered off in the direction of his quarters. Esper breathed a silent sigh of relief when Tanny headed for her own.
# # #
Carl awoke in the past. Through some trick of temporal magic, it was years ago. It had to be. He remembered movie night, but after that, things got hazy. Now, here he was, probably two or three years in the past, waking as he often did in those days, pinned beneath the surprisingly heavy dead-weight of Tanny’s slumbering body. It wasn’t all of her atop him, but her head was pillowed on his chest, her hair filling his nose with the scent of the military-surplus brand of shampoo she loved. One arm was curled around him, tucked under his neck, effectively trapping him.
She was still snoring, oblivious to Carl having awakened. He took a moment to just enjoy her warmth, the smoothness of her skin, the … well her warmth was actually a small inferno, thanks to her amped-up marine metabolism, and there was a thin layer of sweat between them that kept him from appreciating most of her smoothness. Still, he had no idea how long his little bout of time travel might last, and having Tanny back as his wife was comforting, even if it wasn’t quite comfortable. A thousand arguments faded to echoing whispers. The dozen of thoughtless, hurtful acts on both sides seemed less egregious now that he had some perspective on them.
Tanny choked off a snore with a snort and shifted positions. She slid off and came to rest in the crook of his arm, with her head on his shoulder. The arm that had had served as his pillow dumped him rudely back onto his pillowcase. That arm ended in a hand, and that hand had a ring finger. That ring finger had no ring.
“Shit,” Carl mouthed. His time travel delusion was just the fancy of a half-slumbering mind. Maybe he let himself believe it, but it was just to enjoy the moment and pretend.
Tanny stirred again, and pulled herself up to his lips. Carl indulged her, tasting the warmth of her tongue. She moaned and rolled, pulling Carl atop her, obviously intent on resuming whatever activities they’d enjoyed overnight. Depending on her disposition when she woke, he was more than willing to indulge her in that, too. But when her eyelids parted, and she caught a glimpse of him through those thick, dark lashes, it was all over.
Her eyes shot wide. “What the hell?”
Carl was airborne before he could formulate a response. He hit the floor at the side of his bed, saved from a potentially serious injury by a heap
of unwashed clothes. “Whaddaya mean, what the hell? You came on to me.”
“Bullshit,” Tanny replied, pulling the sheets up to cover herself. She scanned the room. “You got me drunk last night.”
“Esper got us all drunk,” said Carl. “And that’s about as tough as selling beers at a ballgame. What you do when you’re drunk is what you’d do sober if you weren’t uptight about it.”
“You’re as bad as Roddy,” Tanny snapped. She stood from the bed and yanked the sheets free to form a rudimentary toga. “This didn’t happen. And it’s not going to happen again.”
“Yes, dear.”
Tanny stabbed a finger in Carl’s direction. If it had been loaded, he would have been a dead man. “Don’t you start with me.”
“I think we finished.”
“I’m serious,” Tanny snarled. “Now, help me find my clothes in this landfill.”
Carl held up some flannel garments. “Yours, I believe.” He dangled the pajamas in front of her. “Methinks you didn’t come straight here under my spell. I’m thinking someone went to bed and decided that she’d rather sleep with Douglas Fairbanks than alone. Hmm?”
“Give me those,” said Tanny, flushing. She snatched the nightclothes from Carl’s hand, and he obligingly turned his back to her.
He listened to her changing, his mind drifting back to bygone days when she liked him watching. “You know, for just a few seconds there, I forgot when I was. It was in that little snippet when you’re done dreaming but not thinking right yet. Right then I’d have sworn we were still married.” Carl had been keeping track of the sounds. She had just finished dressing. He turned and looked her in the eye. “It was nice.”
He watched the anger melt away from her face, jaw relaxing, brow unfurrowing. She closed her eyes and sighed. “God dammit, Carl. We’re not doing this again.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“But it was still nice.”
“What’ll be nice,” said Tanny, “is if no one sees me coming out of your quarters this morning. You go out first and make sure the common room’s clear before I sneak across.” She caught Carl snickering. “This is serious! No, I’m not acting like a … oh, forget it. Just get out there.”
Carl gave her a nod and a thumbs up, and exited his quarters barefoot and in just boxer shorts. Tanny pressed herself against the wall to stay out of sight of the doorway. Mort and Roddy were sharing breakfast with Esper at the kitchen table. Presumably that meant Mriy was minding the helm. The door thunked shut behind him.
“Morning, everyone,” said Carl.
“You’re late enough,” Roddy replied with a mouth full of cereal. “Esper wouldn’t let us cook anything until everyone was here. It was bullshit. Where does she get off … well, we compromised on cereal in the meantime.”
“Fire up the egg-maker!” Mort proclaimed, holding a milk-dampened spoon aloft as a battle standard.
“Hold that thought, guys,” Carl said, pausing to yawn. “Tanny wants you lot to clear out of here for five, give her time to sneak back to her own quarters with no one looking.”
“That’s daft,” said Mort.
Roddy laughed, hastily swallowing his cereal to avoid spitting it out or choking on it. “You’re an ass, you know that? A class-A, grade one-hundred ass.”
“Yeah, only if anyone tells her,” Carl replied.
# # #
The Rescue Council convened around the holo-viewer. Tanny had linked Esper’s stolen datapad to it so that everyone could see the display at once. She cast suspicious glances at everyone, especially Carl, but Esper kept her mouth shut. There was no gain in strife just then, and a sin kept secret is a sin that could still be confessed by the sinner.
A map hovered in the air, the 2D image from the datapad rendered fully in three dimensions on the holo display. It showed an intimidating network of underground passages, complete with Esper’s impromptu annotations. Tanny held the datapad in hand, running down through a list of questions.
“OK, then,” said Tanny. “I’m just going to change ‘two guards at desk,’ to ‘Security Checkpoint (2).’ And what the heck does this mean: ‘Chad?’”
“Chad was a … contact … I made,” said Esper. “He helped me navigate the facility. You can delete that, though.”
“Can we make any use of this Chad guy?” Carl asked.
Esper felt everyone’s eyes on her. She could just imagine they could all see right through her. “Probably not. I think I used up all my good will with him in my escape.”
While Carl and Esper spoke, Tanny had been tracing out a route from the jungle to the Sub-Humans. “I’ve got us an assault plan,” Tanny said. “We can use the Mobius’s guns to blast a hole in the glassteel tunnels into the jungle, enter from this point here.”
“They must have some aerial defenses, even if they’d be on visual targeting due to the interference,” said Roddy. Ever-present beer in hand, he was the only one not showing signs of a hangover.
“Agreed,” said Tanny. It was amazing how she transformed when the subject had fit into military paradigm. Esper wondered whether she saw things skewed as well, and what that skew might look like to the rest of the crew. “I think we can count on some element of surprise on the way in. On the way out, we need to be sure they can’t blast us out of the sky.”
“I hate sky,” Carl muttered. “It’s like space, but half-assed.”
Tanny snapped her fingers in Carl’s direction. “Focus!”
“I’ll handle the flying both ways,” said Carl. “I’ll know all the evasives.”
Tanny brought up the tactical view of the facility. “This file doesn’t list model numbers or anything specific about personnel; I think it’s two-part security with the facility main computer. But I recognize the silhouette on these gun emplacements. They’ve got four Raijin series ion cannons, plus a few smaller emplacements, probably automated. Those Raijins mean trouble getting off-world.”
“What kind of trouble?” Carl asked.
“Mobius won’t take that kinda punishment,” said Roddy. “Shields just ain’t designed for weaponry like that. We need to stop them firing before we high tail it.”
“Main power is located here,” Tanny said, rotating the map and zooming in on a location at the heart of the mountain. “They’re tapping a magma chamber for geothermal … and before you ask, no, we’re not trying to make it erupt.”
Mort gritted his teeth and clenched a fist.
“Anyway,” Tanny continued. “If we disrupt main power, they won’t have the juice to run those guns. Emergency backup and localized generators will keep environmental systems and probably some lighting on. Wouldn’t surprise me if they had sensitive equipment on battery power as well. It’s going to be hell getting in there, but we need to shut down that generator if we want to make an escape.”
“It would be nice if we could just convince them to surrender,” said Esper. Carl and Mriy chuckled, while Roddy splurted his beer.
“Look what you made me do,” Roddy said, giggling.
“Well,” said Esper. “I’m sure we can figure out a way to pull this off, and if they knew that, they should just let us, so none of them gets hurt.”
Carl rubbed at one of his temples. “Yeah, nice theory. But this whole business counts on a lot of surprise. We can’t just transmit our attack plan and have them toss all their guns in a pile. To get someone to surrender you gotta show you’ve got ‘em outgunned, and outgunned bad.”
“What about those stupid disintegrator rifles you keep trying to sell?” Esper asked.
“No power packs for ‘em,” Carl replied. “No way to power those things without a power pack.”
“Um,” said Roddy. “Technically?” He was still wiping beer off the front of his coveralls.
“What?” Carl asked, turning to the laaku.
“Well, I mean we can’t power them right without power packs, but those things use a pull charge,” Roddy explained. “They hold enough mojo to fire once
or twice. They backfill power from the packs.”
“Fine,” said Tanny. “But how does that help? They’re not charged in the first place.”
“I can cross-wire something to plug them into the Mobius’s engines,” said Roddy with a shrug.
“Holy shit,” said Carl. “What the hell’s that going to do to them?”
“Nothing good, I’ll tell you that much.”
“How’m I gonna sell those disintegrators after you—”
“Do it,” said Tanny. “Nothing those Gologlex security doofs have is going to compete with those things. Those are top-of-the-line infantry ordnance. They can’t even take cover against them.”
Carl raised a finger from each hand. “Problem. You can only fire once or twice.”
Tanny shrugged. “Esper wants a surrender. Point that shit at me and I’d surrender.”
“We’ve still got the problem of transporting refugees,” said Carl. “I’m not signing off on a trip in unless we’ve got our exit worked out. And we need to make sure that those Raiju fuck-my-ship-up guns stay out of commission after we lift off.”
“I’ll handle that,” said Mort. “Be a shame if someone used magic around all that pretty A-tech.” He gave Esper a knowing look, and she realized he noticed her trick with the forcefield.
“That stuff’s military-grade. Probably hardened against magic,” said Tanny.
Mort sniffed. “Not against mine.”
“I think we have a plan, then,” said Esper. “Roddy will get the guns charged. Tanny will lead the breach and get to the sentients exhibit. Mriy, Roddy and I will go with Tanny.”
“You never answered how we’re going to—,” said Carl.
“I figured you’d stay behind, where it’s safe,” said Esper, not allowing Carl’s question to poke a hole in their plan. “Keep Mobius ready for a quick getaway.” They were doing the right thing; an answer would come to them. It was more important not to lose their courage over it.
“How soon do we leave?” Mriy asked. Esper smiled at the azrin. Mriy had offered no input to the plan, no objections. Esper wondered if it was some azrin custom that kept her from questioning a battle plan, or if she just didn’t care for the details.