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Pitman noticed Osterhaudt flinch, and then remain silent.
“He needs more motivation, boss,” Pitman said. His fists were sore from the first series of blows, but he’d relished the exercise. Every hit was another piece of revenge for what had been done to Gillian.
Berd sighed and nodded.
Pitman lunged, cracking a fist across Osterhaudt’s cheek.
There was a loud smack and Osterhaudt’s head snapped to the side, blood pouring from a new gash in Osterhaudt’s face.
***
Tim ran a tongue along the wounded flesh inside his mouth—to compliment the wounds outside—and grimaced. A few teeth were loose. He’d have to have that taken care of, if he survived to get off this mud ball.
Another blow cracked Tim’s head in the opposite direction, and a second cut joined the first in dribbling warm redness all over Osterhaudt’s muscled chest.
“Who is your partner?” Berd asked again, remaining calm as Pitman’s chest inhaled and exhaled rapidly.
Osterhaudt closed his eyes and tried to remove himself from the current situation. He refused to betray a woman whom he had learned to call a friend. He was also a CAF Reserve officer. They hadn’t spent much time discussing prisoner of war scenarios, but Tim knew the stories from history. He would resist them as long as he could. Until whatever he babbled out of his mouth was so nonsensical it wouldn’t matter how much he spoke.
Osterhaudt lifted his head slowly and stared at them both through swollen eyes—just for a moment. They waited as he opened his mouth to speak, looks of anticipation on their faces.
“Ambit League? Go fuck yourselves,” Tim whispered.
***
Pitman screamed, and was on Osterhaudt in an instant, raining curse after curse and punch after punch.
Suddenly Pitman found himself grabbed by the shirt collar and hurled against the opposite bulkhead by an impossibly strong arm.
“You fool!” Berd hissed at a startled Pitman. “We need him alive for now. I told you to rough him up, not to kill him. Put your anger about Gabriella on hold until we can get both he and that damned woman out in the open. Together. After that, you can tear them both apart for all I care, but as long as she’s loose in the ship, we need him as live bait. Understood?”
Pitman nodded his head, his lungs sucking in and expelling air at a very rapid, adrenalized pace.
***
Berd watched for a few more seconds, to be sure his executive wouldn’t renew the rage-filled beating, then he turned away and picked up a communications headset from the nearby bridge console. He placed it on his graying head of hair and tossed a second unit to Pitman.
“Untie him from the seat,” Berd said, “and carry him down a few decks to the cargo bay. If he won’t give us what we need, then maybe we can use him to force her out of the air ducts.”
Berd walked past Pitman towards the bridge lift tube.
***
Pitman spat once on the deck, and began to unstrap the tape from Osterhaudt’s bindings—tape which had held him to the chair long after losing consciousness. Tim toppled to the floor, unable to stop himself. Pitman felt the urge to rain a series of savage kicks on the pilot, but didn’t dare cross his boss’s order to keep the young CAF troop alive.
Chapter 20
Kal slowly assembled the Archangel armor by feel.
First the interface body suit—which felt terrible being pulled on over the top of Kal’s sweaty, filthy, and in some places bloody skin.
Then, the secondary coolant suit.
After that, the boots, and the legs, the lower torso, the upper torso, the shoulders, the upper arms, the gauntlets, and finally, sealing the collar to the helmet.
By the time she was done she was sweating so profusely in the cramped, unventilated interior of the crate, that she felt literally like she might suffocate. Unless she got some clean air.
The moment she got the neck ring to the suit’s helmet sealed, the microcomputer interface came to life and a pleasantly female voice announced in her ears that the Archangel armor was activated and would she please select a mode of operation before continuing.
A projection appeared in Kal’s field of view—made bright by the fact that the interior of the crate was pitch black—and Kal scanned the menu options:
DIAGNOSTIC TYPE A.
DIAGNOSTIC TYPE B.
DEMONSTRATION MODE.
NEW PILOT MODE.
DEPLOYMENT MODE.
Unsure of how to make her selection, Kal muttered something about being a new pilot.
The selection illuminated happily, then Kal felt a burst of air against her damp cheeks from the suit’s own internal atmospheric pressurizer. Her eardrums felt the sudden shift, and she worked her jaw to pop them while the menu display showed a swirling circle—the near universal sign that the computer was booting its assigned program.
There was a gentle mechanical noise in Kal’s ears, and she momentarily froze, wondering who—if anyone—outside the crate might be within listening distance. But then her fear abated as she realized that, for the first time since she’d crash-landed, Kal was not in any immediate danger from the people around her. Small arms wouldn’t do much good against the Archangel. Tim had sworn it. So unless the privateers had something more powerful to throw against her, for the moment, Kal was essentially invulnerable.
At least if she could figure out how to work the system.
Tim had warned her again and again to take it easy. Not overreact. Not push the suit in the way she’d been used to pushing older suits.
Kal waited while the mode finally came up—with menus not a lot different from what she’d seen on her displays in the conventional armor units—then began navigating the selections by voice. Under ideal circumstances she’d have had plenty of time to go through all the choices and get things customized. Right now she merely needed the suit to respond to her as quickly and as powerfully as possible.
Would the suit really be as good as Tim said it was?
Kal would soon find out.
A chime alerted Kal to the fact that a wireless signal was active, where none had been active before.
Kal ordered the signal to be piped to her speakers in her ears.
“Attention, this is Karl Berd, commander of the Ambit League ship Goshawk. I am speaking to the woman who has thus far stubbornly refused to cooperate with my requests that she cease and desist all harassment of my crew, and give herself into my custody. Since you have elected to be stubborn, I am now forced to be stubborn as well. My first officer has been quite thorough in his dealings with your young friend here. Quite thorough. Albeit nothing permanent has transpired. Yet. This may be about to change. Listen carefully.”
Kal heard a sickening crunch, then a shuffling sound, followed by a barley contained yowl of pain. Tim.
They were now breaking bones!
Crunch.
Another, stronger scream from Tim’s throat, which sounded dry and ragged.
“Respond,” Berd’s voice said, “or we keep going. When his fingers are done, then we break his toes. Then his arms, and legs. After that, you force us to get creative. Reply to this signal please, and announce your intention to surrender to my crew at once.
“No!” Kal suddenly blurted out in a ragged cry over the Archangel’s wireless connection to the intra-ship network. Which to that point had merely been passive.
***
Tim Osterhaudt held back the tears as Pitman kept Tim’s hand pinned to the top of an empty cargo crate. Tim’s right index and middle fingers were grossly misshapen and had turned a horrible color of black, mixed with purple. They bled where crushed bone poked through the skin, and the pain was unimaginable.
Around the cargo bay, most of the crew of the ship stood armed and ready, guarding the access ducts and the hatches, waiting for Kal to surrender herself. So far Kal’s only response on the wireless had been a resounding and emphatic, “No!”
***
Radar and Do
ppler navigation projected a virtual image of the crate walls around Kal, eliminating the need for lamp activation. The Archangel’s power meter showed that the twin fuel cells were pegged to the top, and that neural mapping was proceeding rapidly. Movement would now be possible. A voice asked Kal if she would like to try to stand up.
Kal did more than that.
She went through the side of the crate.
Tim hadn’t been kidding, the Archangel responded almost before Kal could think to move her body.
Kal kept going—from a walk, to a trot, to a run—and bulldozed her way through several more crates, until she stumbled out into a clear space in the middle of the cargo deck.
Mouths were agape, and eyes were wide.
Kal looked around her, 360 degrees, until she saw Tim, and the man standing over Tim with a wrench ready to strike.
Kal bodily swept the man aside like he was made of paper, and picked Tim up. He groaned at the pain such movement caused, but Kal spun and headed back the way she’d come. While weapons finally began to pop off, sending wild rounds pinging and panging off of the deck.
Kal prayed that Tim wouldn’t be hit as she aimed for the ramp that opened to the outside world. Light was flooding up the ramp—sunshine for the first time in several days?
Kal cradled Tim in her mechanized arms and protected him with her back as the whole of the cargo bay—dozens of crew, all firing—opened up on her. She skipped first left, then right, then stuttered left, then bowled over the three crew who were at the top of the ramp, and leapt out over the ramp entirely, her motor-assisted motion exaggerating the movement as if Kal were moving in barely a fraction of normal gravity.
It was a heady, exhilarating feeling, after being forced to skulk about the interior of the ship.
Finally, Kalliope Reardon had real power!
And she intended to use it.
But only after she got Tim a safe distance away from the ship.
Kal’s legs churned up the loamy soil as she jogged, first to the treeline, and then into the trees. She maneuvered as best as she was able, mindful of Tim’s condition, at the same time, she tried to put as much distance between the Goshawk and herself as possible.
Finally, having reached a small clearing, Kal stopped.
She gently bent to the soil and put Tim down.
He looked hideous, with his eyes almost swollen shut and his face ripped to shreds. His wounded hand was a pulp, and he was clearly dropping into shock.
“Kal,” Tim said quietly through split lips.
Kal leaned in, being careful not to pinch or crush anything with the suit.
“I got you out of there,” she said. “I finally got you out. I am so sorry I didn’t do it sooner. Oh God, Tim, your face ... I’m sorry!”
“Not ... your ... fault,” Tim said, and managed a weak smile.
“Tim,” Kal said, “you’re in worse shape than I thought. I can stay with you, if you want, but I am afraid they’ll be after me if I don’t do something quick. Maybe they’ll even try to suit up themselves? How good is the Archangel when pitted against other Archangels?”
“I’ll ... be okay,” Tim said, struggling to sit up. Kal gently raised him into a sitting position.
“The suit,” he said, “is learning you ... as you go. Like I ... said before, it’s amazingly ... durable.”
“I don’t have any built-in weapons,” Kal said. “This one appears to be a basic model.”
“We don’t ... arm them until ... they get to the ... testing lab.”
“Then I’ll just have to make do.”
“Kal ... Reardon. Remember what I said? About ... not wanting to hurt people?”
“Yeah,” Kal said.
“I changed ... my mind. If this were in ... the Conflux, I’d want the lot of them ... hanged.”
“No jails or courts on this planet,” Kal said, staring down at her wounded partner and friend. “But there is one kind of law.”
“What law is that?” Tim asked.
“The kind I make with these,” Kal said, holding up her gauntleted fists.
Tim managed a smile.
“I’ll be right back,” Kal said.
“I’ll be here!” Tim encouraged her.
***
Kalliope Reardon came in on the Goshawk like a micro-sized freight train. Ignoring the small arms fire that spattered across the Archangel suit, she went directly up the ramp and back into the cargo hold, flinging people bodily away from her and smashing shoulders, arms, legs, rib cages, and spines with a series of savage punches and kicks.
Those not smart enough to flee, were soundly pulverized under the Archangel’s super-extra-large boot heels.
To the point that Kal was covered in gore from top to bottom.
But where was Commander Berd?
Or Berd’s second-hand thug who’d delighted in brutalizing Tim?
A sudden rumbling in the ship alerted Kal to the fact that someone had triggered the old freighter’s launch sequence.
Doubtless, from the bridge.
Kal wasn’t sure how to get there from the cargo hold, but she knew a faster way. Collecting two of the submachine guns which had been abandoned on the deck, Kal darted back out of the cargo hold—the surviving privateers scattering out of her path—and hit the suit’s limited flight boosters.
It wasn’t anything to write home about.
Kal’s path up to the top of the ship was a bobbling, weaving, legs-flailing embarrassment. But it got her where she needed to go.
Perched on the mottled, ugly skin of the Goshawk, Kal marched to where the wraparound windows of the bridge.
Inside, she saw two faces.
Just the men she wanted.
Kal pointed both submachine guns at one of the windows, and pulled the triggers back.
Rounds blared from the barrels.
But the bridge windows had been designed to be meteorite-resistant. The bullets embedded in the reinforced transparent fiberflex, without shattering it.
When the submachine guns were empty, Kal tossed them away and began stomping on the damaged window with both boots.
After six or seven hard kicks, the window finally blew inward: ripped from its metal frame.
Kal dove down, and found herself facing an unsettling sight.
Berd was still in his uniform, unarmed.
But the other man ... the other man had been smart, and collected the pieces of his own Archangel armor. Though the armor did not appear to be fully booted up just yet.
Without weapons, Kal had only her Archangel to work with.
She kicked hard at her opponent’s sternum.
He managed to get out of the way just in time.
The wireless signal that was connected to Kal’s helmet speakers came alive once again.
“We’re leaving this planet,” the voice of Kal’s opponent said. “And I’m not the only one who thought quickly enough to suit up while you whisked your friend away to safety.”
“You’ll have a hell of time flying this tub into orbit with the bridge being open to vacuum,” Kal said.
“A minor problem, there are always the secondary and tertiary control centers. You, on the other hand, are soon going to be outmatched ten to one. I don’t think even you will be foolish enough to take those odds. So you can either flee the ship before we take off, or we can keep right on fighting until a dozen of us in suits tear you limb from limb!”
Kal’s opponent advanced on her, his movements getting more fluid as the suit’s neural interface caught up with him.
For an instant, Kal considered. Could she take them all on? Assuming the numbers the man was stating were accurate?
Then she thought of Tim, laying half beaten to death back on the forest floor. He might not make it without Kal around to help and protect him.
The horizon outside the bridge windows began to shift and sink.
The Goshawk was ascending on her thrusters.
Kal might have had the suit to protect her, but the fr
eighter was the only thing capable of getting her into orbit, which was where the Goshawk’s cradle ship would be waiting to take them out of the system.
In the end, it proved to be one of the harder calls in Kal’s life.
But it was the right call.
She climbed back up out of the bridge, skipped across the skin of the ship to the tail, and hit her flight thrusters. She floated easily down to the forest below as the ugly, abused Goshawk climbed slowly and steadily into the sky, roaring like a dragon.
Chapter 21
Five days later, Kal and Tim were holed up in the remains of the Broadbill.
With the Ambit League gone and no apparent sign of any other human life on the uncharted planet, what else was there to do but settle in and make themselves cozy?
It beat the hell out of trying to build a lean-to in the forest.
And it allowed them to stick close to the few remaining Archangel suits which had not yet been salvaged by the privateers; though finding those crates in the huge mess of other debris would be a time-consuming affair.
On their fifth night alone, Kal and Tim sat around the small space heater Kal had recovered from the wreck. With electric power still provided by the undamaged cells in the Broadbill’s carcass, Kal figured they had enough electricity to last them several years.
Which wouldn’t be nearly long enough, Kal reckoned.
“Nobody will find us,” Kal said, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders while she sipped at a cup of hot soup.
Tim had his own cup of the same soup, only carefully clutched in his good hand. The bad one was bandaged tight in a foam-seal emergency cast. Something Kal had found in an emergency locker, and applied. After holding Tim down and setting the bones back in place. Doubtless the hand would need major surgery, if ever they got back to civilization. But at least the hand would heal, for however long they were marooned.
“Sure they’ll find us,” Tim said. “We already know somebody knew about this planet, because the Ambit League had to pick out the coordinates ahead of time, and give them to the hijackers who took the Broadbill from Viking Station. The problem is, the people finding us will be Ambit League, not CAF. Berd and his buddy Pitman will be back. For the rest of the Broadbill’s cargo, if nothing else.”
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