After a sigh, she continued, saying, “My suite has an airlock only a few people loyal to Mr. Grosstin are aware of. I already informed you of this. Try getting an emergency evacuation suit with a silenced automatic homing beacon.”
I knew McAllister could do it without breaking a sweat, but genius-level programming engineers probably weren’t on the Palace’s payroll. Their security equipment and supporting software verified it to me.
So, it came down to two choices. Abandon the ‘plan’ and attempt to make my way inside the dock to O’Vorley’s shuttle, or face the vacuum of space and attempt a walk. Either way, my luck was likely used up.
I made my decision. “I’ll risk the walk,” I said. “If something goes wrong out there, Capital Galactic won’t get the satisfaction of knowing I’m dead.”
Violet grinned, then raised a hand to her ear. She stared down at me, frowning as she listened to her embedded communication chip. “It’s imperative you depart now. A security team is approaching the Palace entrance. A large one.”
I nodded as I checked the holstered CO2 guns and the wrist straps connected to my rollers.
My mind raced again, rethinking my options. Bounty hunters served a valuable slot in society, but those willing to do CGIG’s bidding? Sure the wealth offered—if CGIG actually paid—was a powerful incentive to track and capture, or kill me. But it also spoke to their moral character. A willingness to perform a task for a corporation proven to be working with the Crax, a race determined to crush and subjugate humanity. Or exterminate, which was more likely. Humanity was many things, but docile and willing servitude? There’d always be elements of rebellion. Me among them, of that I was sure.
No. Back to the ‘plan.’ Better odds of doing more damage to CGIG, and the Crax, if I survived.
When I’d asked her, the purple entertainer explained that most of the time, the spacewalk was to an airlock whose sensors and life-support connections had been compromised years ago. Normally the ‘plan’ for the individual in the emergency evacuation suit was to reach the nearby air lock. What circumstances necessitated such a spacewalk? Even a short one to the nearby airlock? I didn’t really care to know.
That wouldn’t work for me. I needed to reach Loki’s Lady directly, and hope Engineer McAllister wasn’t in a vindictive mood. I’d killed her fiancé years ago during the Colonization Riots. She never forgave me, and tried to kill me while aboard the Kalavar, and then wreck my career and my life as a fallback when the initial goal failed.
Entertainer Violet directed me with a quick hand gesture to lie down in the revealed floor cavity between the portholes. I retracted the shafts of my magnetic rollers and clipped them to my hips. Stepping into the cavity I gripped her extended hands with my suited and gloved ones. Then the purple woman assisted me as I sat, and then laid flat.
“Remember what I told you,” she said. “Grab the steel cable when the air lock opens, or the centrifugal force will hurl you into space and you’ll deplete your thrust jets just to get back.”
I nodded and flipped down my faceplate. While it sealed and the life support system activated, she added, “Follow the bouncing ball.” Bending over and giving me an eyeful of her chest, she made a quick check of my placement and gear. “Don’t dally or you’ll run out of oxygen. Unless your batteries drain first. Freeze or suffocate, either way you’ll be dead.”
I nodded and mouthed, “Thank you.”
“Give the bastards hell,” she said, “and we’ll call it even.”
I grinned and winked. I’d left Segreti’s chit with Yeong.
It didn’t matter whether Violet meant the Crax or Capital Galactic, or both. Giving any and all of them hell. That was my plan.
The floor plate slid shut, enclosing me in darkness. Faint LED lights lining my faceplate activated. The secondary door below me opened. The capsule dropped, allowing a secondary door above to close. It appeared to be thick as a bulkhead. My capsule vibrated as it was conveyed a short distance laterally and then rotated so that I faced out toward space. I felt more than saw the hatch close and seal. Magnetic plates activated, locking my coffin-like capsule into place.
My hands gripped the side bars as the outward gravity, or whatever it was called, caused by the Palace disk’s rotation threatened to launch me when the door opened. I watched and listened. My suit expanded slightly as air was drawn out of my capsule. “Five seconds,” a modulated computer voice warned, “until airlock door opens. Four seconds, three seconds, two seconds, one second. Door opening.”
There it was: black space pierced by twinkling stars. And the cable along the left hand side of the opening.
“Airlock door will close in thirty seconds,” the computer voice warned.
Spreading my knees wide to stabilize myself and slow my ejection from the airlock capsule, I let go of the bar with my left hand and reached. I scraped my knuckles along the edge but snagged the cable.
It felt like holding onto an old-style rope hanging from a tree limb while swinging out over a pond. But, unlike that childhood experience, I wasn’t going to let go. Rather, I reached across with my other hand as my legs and hips swung out of the air lock. My right hand latched on to the cable, and I dangled a moment. I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths and refocusing my thoughts.
When I opened my eyes, the airlock was closed.
Then, hand over hand, with protected knees and feet, I climbed the cable along the disk and then over the lip, making my way toward the central shaft. Simulated on my screen, a purple glowing ball bounced along the cable, and I followed.
What I really needed was a harness with a latch hook. Losing my grip and falling from a cliff to spatter on the ground was preferable to drifting off into space. Of course, the suit wasn’t made for external chafing and stresses a harness might cause. It wouldn’t survive someone being arrested after starting to tumble away.
Sure, if I lost my grip and my hand jets ran dry, breaking radio silence and calling for help was an option. Better to pierce the emergency suit and die quickly…or as quickly as suffocating in the frigid grip of zero gravity space would allow.
I kept going, hand over hand, carefully lifting and placing each knee, watching for any rough patches or jagged welds.
Once I reached the main shaft around which the Palace’s disk sections spun, the centrifugal force attempting to hurl me away faded. Once stabilized, hanging in basically zero gravity space allowed my arms and hands a moment’s rest.
I’m not ashamed to admit the suit’s systems had worked double-time absorbing my cold sweat. During the climb my hands cramped twice because I gripped the cable too tightly.
From there I followed the purple bouncing ball projected onto my faceplate, along a groove in the shaft that took me past two of the Celestial Unicorn Palace’s spinning disks. Then I deployed my magnetic rollers. They propelled me across the main sections of the Bonnisbin Orbital Colony.
The process was slow, especially as I strove to be methodical, avoiding portholes and areas festooned with antennas and other outcroppings.
Finally, I spied the docking area. The odds were long that anybody would be looking through their forward or side viewing ports, and see me outside. Even if they did, I might be mistaken for someone performing inspections or maintenance.
For a short time I’d been able to see the Troh-got battle frigate, the light of 70 Virginis reflecting off of it. It’d reminded me of radiation, which the emergency evacuation suit was built to resist.
Then I saw it. Or rather the purple bouncing ball directed my attention toward it. Loki’s Lady, a sleek long range shuttle, or would’ve been sleek, except for an auxiliary external thrust engine dorsally mounted, and pair of dual-beam pulse laser turrets. One pair ventrally mounted near the aft section, and the other above the forward bridge area. The area near the shuttle’s chin, where the cascading atomic engine that enabled condensed space travel was housed, appeared more bulbous than similar models. Almost like the metal was angry and swollen. Like most l
ong range shuttles, she had an upper and lower level, but appeared stretched fifteen or maybe twenty percent longer than others of her class.
Her portside was attached to the dock, and along the starboard in fierce flowing red script was her name: Loki’s Lady.
Moving carefully toward the aft section, below the main thrust engines, I found the emergency hatch.
Once I reached it, holding my breath, I deactivated one of the magnetic rollers and tapped against the hatch in the prescribed pattern, announcing my presence to whoever was inside.
Chapter 24
After two long minutes, and with only forty minutes of life support left, the shuttle’s emergency hatch swung open. I climbed in and around the shuttle’s spherical escape pod.
While waving to the camera, the emergency hatch closed. Several seconds later the digital readout next to the internal hatch flashed green. The oval hatch opened.
With her mismatched green and blue eyes, Engineer Nova McAllister stared down at me. A genius in software and hardware design, thrust engines, and cascading atomic engines, and more, she looked down on everyone. She was twenty times smarter than me, and equally difficult to get along with. So it wasn’t surprising her first words to me were, “Spend a little time on a space dock and people start looking to kill you? Who would’ve thought?”
She didn’t say it with a smile. More of a sneer. Her orange coveralls reminded me of our days serving together aboard the civil transport Kalavar. A platinum ring hung from a silver chain around her neck, the ring I pulled from her lover’s hand just after a Crax had killed him, and handed to her just before we fled. The blood that had covered the ring was gone. The hard memories between us remained.
I tapped the sequence to release my facemask’s seal. “Some things never change,” I said. “Abrasive as ever.”
She reached down and offered me a hand to climb out. “You must have been desperate to do a spacewalk in that rig.”
The pull of gravity, even artificial, felt good. In the narrow corridor couched between compartments, I said, “Thanks.”
“For rescuing you?” She shrugged, emphasizing the shoulder padding in her engineer orange cover suit. “There’s some killing that needs to be done. Capital Galactic traitors. Possibly some Crax. It’s one of the few things you excel at.”
With raised eyebrows, I asked, “Really?”
She showed a feral grin. “With luck, there might be Primus absorbing some of your archaic firearm’s buckshot.”
“In this?” I glanced back toward the thrust engine compartment. “I saw some modifications, but—”
“But,” she interjected, ignoring my question, “the really good news is that you get to experience another bout of cold sleep along the way.”
That news made me frown. Going under wasn’t bad. The process and result of cold sleep wasn’t pretty: pale and frozen, with tubes thrust into every orifice. Ugly as it was, you felt nothing. You didn’t even dream. On the other hand, waking up sick, enduring suffering like a triple case of the flu, it’s something you never forget. That recovery gets easier after your first cold sleep, or even the second, is a lie. Corporate propaganda aimed at luring the poor and ignorant aboard their colonization ships. I knew firsthand and carried the precursor chemicals in my blood and cell tissues to prove it.
The only good news was that if you survived your first cold sleep and didn’t react to the injected drug cocktail that ensured your cells didn’t freeze and burst their membranes, you were virtually guaranteed to survive the process from then on, barring equipment failure or a medical technician screwing up. Or someone killing you when you were completely helpless.
Those facts ran through my thoughts…the propagated false rumors, the callused propaganda. No, waking up from cold sleep never got easier.
“There’s that glum look I appreciate seeing on your face, Keesay.”
As McAllister said it, Kent O’Vorley peered into the corridor and waved. “Hey, Kra. Heard you were making your way here.”
I gave him a thumb’s up. “Hey, good to see you too, Kent.”
McAllister laughed. “You’re one friend in the galaxy, Keesay.”
“One friend?” I asked. “I’ve got more than one friend.”
“More than one?” She smirked. “I wager you can count the total on one hand.”
I thought about it, knowing the difference between a friend and a co-worker, or an acquaintance. After Kent, there was Segreti, and Guymin, and maybe Vingee. Dr. Goldsen? Without intending to, I shook my head. To her I was closer to a patient turned colleague.
“I bet mine number more than yours,” I said, “or would, except for the war.”
I’d had friends on the Kalavar, but the Crax killed most of them. Corporal Smith, always grinning and poking fun at me for being a security specialist instead of a Colonial Marine. And the Chicher diplomat who’d thought of me as a pack member, survived to escape the Kalavar with me and McAllister. The alien served as part of the Bloodhound 3’s crew, taking Maximar Drizdon Jr. with us so he wouldn’t be captured. The boy survived, but the Chicher, in the end, didn’t.
Even as the buried images emerged in my mind, McAllister’s right hand shot to the ring dangling from its chain. She’d lost Anatol Gudkov on the Kalavar.
The short, arrogant and fiery engineer standing next to me had status and respect, and many colleagues, but Gudkov had been her only friend.
Changing the subject, I asked her, “Where can I get out of this suit, and into something else?”
Her hand dropped to her side. “That anxious to strip down for cold sleep?” Forced mirth hung in her words.
O’Vorley must’ve sensed the jibes edging toward something darker and stepped between me and McAllister. “Your friends from the Nuclear Pitchfork managed to send a care package, before departing.” He shook his head, eyes widening. “How they managed it, don’t ask me. But at least you’ve got duty coveralls and your shotgun.”
“Which shotgun?” I asked, hoping it was the pump-action, especially if we were going to be going up against Primus Crax. They were more advanced than the Gar Crax. Not nearly as large and fierce, but superior technology could make up for that.
He tilted his head back with a wide smile. “Right. Not that double barrel you were carrying, like we used in the Mavinrom Dock’s range. It looks like the one you fought with on Tallavaster. Titanium alloy, with a bayonet lug. And the perforated jacket, made from metal like your bayonet, protecting the barrel. Not many like that.”
“Great,” I said, patting the package strapped to my chest. “Because I still have my fancy bayonet.”
“Of course,” McAllister said, turning to make her way toward the engineer’s station near the thrust engines. She finished, muttering, “What Relic would leave Earth without one?”
I tried not to frown and dampen O’Vorley’s cheery mood. McAllister and I didn’t care much for each other. Well, I didn’t like her—her superior attitude, and the way she looked down on not just me, but just about everyone. I’d only met a few people that were as smart as her—her brilliance was why the Umbelgarri had allowed her into their secret underground breeding area on Tallavaster.
No. She wasn’t easy to get along with. And she despised…no, hated me. But we’d managed to tolerate each other, and worked well as a team bringing down Capital Galactic, and killing more than a few Crax along the way.
I must’ve lost some time in thought because O’Vorley was staring at me, a questioning look on his face.
“Just wondering,” I told him. McAllister was out of sight but probably not out of earshot. I didn’t care. “If we’ll be able to work together again.”
“She’s told me a few things about you and her,” O’Vorley said. Putting a hand on my shoulder he directed me the opposite direction McAllister had taken. “Like she said, you’ll be in cold sleep. Me, her, our pilot, and medical doctor—or med tech—will be rotating staggered as pairs in and out of hybersleep.”
“Hybersleep?
I get cold sleep and you get hybersleep?”
“The Troh-gots will probably scan us before we depart. In cold sleep, you won’t be picked up as something living. So our numbers will match the official manifest.”
Following behind O’Vorley, I asked, “Are you sure?”
“Sure as anyone can be, Kra.” He tapped the side of the corridor before reaching for a ladder rung in front of him. “This shuttle has some Umbelgarri alloy in its hull, just like your shotgun’s jacket.” He looked back down at me after starting to climb. “Not enough to raise suspicion—new construction shuttles have it incorporated, if the buyer can afford it.” When he reached the upper level and made room for me, he looked back down. “One effect is to interfere with security scans of external origin.” After I’d climbed up next to him, he slapped me on the shoulder. “Enough at least that your frozen shelf partner wasn’t detected on the way in.”
Chapter 25
Med Tech Devatha was a middle aged man with dark skin, wavy black hair and a small, well-manicured mustache. O’Vorley told me that Devatha was really a medical doctor but felt it’d draw less attention if he served as a med tech. Devatha called me Specialist Bleys. The rest of the shuttle’s skeleton crew, McAllister, O’Vorley and the pilot, called me Keesay. And I called him Medical Technician Devatha. That said something about all of us.
The pilot went to catch up on some sleep because she’d just completed days of intense decryption efforts. Repeated references to me as Specialist Keesay had assisted them in breaking the code. That probably influenced her calling me Keesay more than anything else.
Relic Hunted (Crax War Chronicles #2) Page 22