by David Liss
As if reading my mind, Steve said, “Could be we’re being played, mate?”
“I’ve just been thinking about that, but . . .” I paused, remembering that we were probably being bugged. “Unless our old associate turned evil while we were gone, I don’t see how that’s possible.”
Steve ran his fingers from the tip of his nose to the base of his neck. It was probably his species’ equivalent of scratching his head. “That’s the trouble, yeah? I keep thinking in circles. I can’t see any other option than what we’re planning. I guess that’s what makes me wonder. It’s like we’re being pushed in this one direction.”
“Whatever comes, we shall deal with it,” Charles said. “As we always have.”
“Like Nayana always did?” Mi Sun demanded. “She was doing her best to survive, and she didn’t make it. The same with Urch and . . . and the other being. There’s no guarantee we’re going to get through this.”
“I know,” I said. “But there is a guarantee that we’re in real trouble if we don’t try.”
“You guys are such complainers,” Alice said.
We all stared at her. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “They weren’t your friends. You didn’t know them.”
“I don’t mean that. Of course what happened to them is terrible. No, I didn’t know them like you guys did, and I get your grief. I know what it is to lose people. But there are huge things happening, and you are lucky enough to be at the middle of all of it. You guys matter.”
“We’re not going to matter if we’re dead.”
“Yeah,” Alice said, “you will. You’ve already changed the galaxy. Do you even hear those words? You, Mi Sun, have changed the galaxy. I don’t think you realize how important you are. I’ve spent my whole life wishing I could do something significant.”
I looked over at Alice, standing with her hands on her hips, looking determined and steady. There was something comforting about having someone like her around. She wasn’t unpredictable the way Tamret was, but she was still courageous and resourceful. She was also, I realized, very pretty.
Are you kidding me! Smelly shouted inside my head. Pupils dilating! Respiration and heart rate accelerating. You don’t have enough problems? Snap out of it, Romeo. Keep your eye on the ball or we’re going to be toast.
Smelly was, of course, correct. I had to focus on what mattered, and that meant getting everyone through what came next. I’d deal with my personal drama later.
I checked the time and stood up. “If you want to do something significant,” I told Alice, “then this is your lucky day.”
• • •
Colonel Rage, who had taken the last spying shift, was waiting with Tamret and Villainic on the front lawn. Tamret and the colonel both had the same stony expression of grim determination. Villainic looked like he was seriously considering having an accident in his trousers.
“There’s a lot that needs to get done,” the colonel said to all of us, “and most of it is reckless. Also, most of it rests on your shoulders. I’ve spent as much time as I could in the sims, but you kids know the terrain and the technology better than I do. I’ll chip in as much as I can, but Steve, you’re taking the lead on theft and piloting. Zeke, you’re on vehicle weapons. As for me, I’m going to grab the first pistol I can get hold of, and if I have to take a blast for one of you, then that’s what I’m going to do. These people are trying to get away with murder, injustice, imprisonment, and a coup. Let’s go make their lives miserable.”
It would have been conspicuous for us to cheer, so we all nodded. The truth is, when you’re going on a crazy, possibly suicidal mission against a galactic superpower, it’s kind of comforting to have an adult around to tell you what to do.
The colonel and Steve pushed forward to walk at the front of the group. I decided to take the rear, and allowed myself to drift behind. As the Rarels moved ahead of me, Tamret took hold of my hand. It was brief—over in the blink of an eye—and she didn’t even look at me while doing it, but it fired up my courage. Tamret had said some things that had hurt me, and her defense of Villainic still stung, but she was reminding me that we were in this together.
We approached the transport-shuttle dock. There were two peace officers on duty and one technician. They looked at us and perhaps, for a second, did not see a swaggering band of outlaws come to do something totally illegal.
“This area is off-limits for you,” a turquoise-skinned humanoid peace officer said. Her eyestalks widened and moved slightly toward us. Her partner, an alien who looked like a big cockroach with silver fur, waggled one of its many appendages toward its pistol. I think it was trying to look menacing, but mostly it looked gross.
It all happened so quickly. Mi Sun kicked the blue peace officer in the face and then leapt back. Steve, meanwhile, leaped into the air and grabbed the big cockroach’s head, or headlike area, or whatever, knocking the alien into the wall. The cockroach slid down, and a second later Mi Sun’s blue combatant fell. They were both out cold. Colonel Rage grabbed the PPB pistol from the first fallen officer and fired it at the technician.
“Tamret, you’re up.” he said.
She accessed the transport dock’s computer and began typing furiously. “They’ve upgraded security since the last time we were here.”
“Does that mean you can’t get in?” Charles asked.
“Please,” Tamret said as her fingers danced over the console. “I’m just laughing at them if they think this is going to slow me down. Okay, we’re good.” There were transport shuttles docked on the platform. She pointed to the one on the far left. “That one.”
“I think Junup told us to take the one in the middle,” Charles said.
“Yes, he did,” she agreed. “And I’m telling you to take the one on the left, so who are you going to listen to?”
She had a good point. The shuttle Junup had selected for us might be rigged to explode or crash. Maybe he never intended for us to get to the spaceport in the first place. On the other hand, if Junup had intended to get us into space before he eliminated us, he might have had some adjustments made to the middle shuttle that would make it easier to steal or harder to detect. There was no way to know, but at this point, mistrusting Junup seemed like the safer bet.
Once we were inside, Steve took the helm, and the rest of us simply strapped in. Transport shuttles had no weapons systems, so we had to hope no one tried to shoot us down. There wasn’t a lot we could do if they tried.
Steve liked to pilot fast and recklessly, but this time he took off slowly and eased himself into the clearly established flight patterns over the city. “Just out for a friendly drive,” he told us. “Nothing special here.” I had no doubt he wanted to bank hard and begin buzzing past buildings and zipping between other shuttles, but he kept his cool. There would be plenty of time for recklessness later.
It took us about twenty minutes to get to the spaceport. We passed a peace-officer patrol, but it didn’t give us a second look. At least so far, Junup was as good as his word that no one would bother us.
We took a spot in what was, for all practical purposes, a transport-shuttle parking lot, and then took a train to a central hub that connected all of the various terminals. Once there, we followed the signs for our dock, which involved taking another train and then several plasma-field rising walkways, which were essentially glowing blue escalators. I still kept my eye out for any beings who might be pointing and shouting, but like airports back home, the spaceport was crowded with beings who were too busy trying to get from one place to another to worry themselves too much with anyone else.
When we reached the ship docking area, we had to study a map and then make our way through a series of massive corridors, each the size of a gigantic warehouse. At long last we came to our aisle, a half-mile stretch of space garages. We found our particular garage and then rode an elevating plasma field about three hundred feet to reach it. We punched in the codes that Junup had given us, and the containment door opened to our
ship’s individual garage.
The ship was nothing much—a standard boxy artifact carrier with minimal weaponry—but it was our ticket to getting out from under Junup’s control, though maybe not in quite the way he intended.
The way it was supposed to work was that we would get into the ship, pressurize it, close the hall door, depressurize the compartment, and then open the space door. Pretty basic, really. We had no intention of doing that, though, since we had no intention of going into space.
We got into the ship, which had a layout not so different from that of the shuttle. It was a little cramped and utilitarian, with control consoles and just enough seating for all of us. I told everyone to take their seats, and just like in the old days Steve and Tamret sat up front to operate the vehicle.
Villainic hovered near us. “I wish to be next to Tamret,” he said.
“Sit down!” Colonel Rage barked.
Villainic slinked to the back and strapped in.
“I’ve downloaded the coordinates for our home worlds to my data bracelet,” Tamret said, “so that’s one less thing to worry about. Now I’m going through the ship’s systems. If there’s any sabotage, they’ve hidden it from the onboard computer.”
“Does that mean we’re safe?” I asked.
“Everything is integrated,” she said. “If they tinker with one system, there’s no way the others won’t detect it. Unless they’ve strapped a bomb to the hull, I think we can assume the ship is fully functional and properly operational.”
“How do weapons look?” Steve asked.
“Some light PPB power,” I said, “which is what we expected, and a targeted laser drill. I think this is some kind of adapted mining ship. We’d be worthless in any kind of space battle, but I think this will do for our purposes. As near as I can tell without testing, we should be able to cause some damage.”
“Time to test it, then,” Steve said. He fired up the engines. A warning light flashed, telling us that it was improper procedure to start engines before closing the port-side door. It began to close the door for us, but Tamret broke into the system and shut it down.
“This might get bumpy,” Steve said. “Also, things could explode.” He then began, ever so slowly, to back us into the hall.
Steve slowly reversed the ship and then turned it to face the length of the hallway. There was barely enough room to do what we were attempting. Steve brushed up against the wall, but I’d already activated light shielding. That meant the wall began to crack, but the ship was fine.
Villainic’s jaw dropped as he watched our progress through the viewscreen. “You are going the wrong way!”
“We thought we’d take a detour,” I told him.
“You did not inform me about this!” he shouted.
“We might have discussed a few details privately,” I explained.
We hovered for a moment in the corridor, our ship too big for the space we were inhabiting. We were like a dinosaur in a bathroom. Down at the far end of the hallway, beings were panicking, rushing to get out of our way.
I looked at Steve. “Do you think this is a wise course of action?”
Charles leaned forward from the back, having recognized the dialogue prompt from Star Trek: Nemesis. “We’re about to find out!” He was surprisingly cheerful given that we were about to do something monumentally dangerous.
“I guess we are,” Steve said. He eased forward at the slowest possible speed. Which, I should point out, was incredibly fast when you’re inside a building and not in the vacuum of space.
We were down the hall and out into the atrium so quickly I couldn’t even follow it. I felt like I’d left my stomach back in the holding bay. We were now moving through a massive open area. Below us were countless beings, pointing upward, scrambling for cover. A cluster of peace officers rushed from one place to another, but I had no idea what they thought they could do. Whatever it was, it was going to be too late.
“Hang on!” Steve shouted, unable to disguise his glee. He pointed the nose of the ship upward toward the building’s glass dome. Then, without warning, we were racing upward. We struck through the glass, which shattered around us, raining down to the atrium below. We were free of the building, out in the open atmosphere of the station, and heading toward the Forbidden Zone.
“It’s farther from the compound than any of us have ever been,” Steve said. “About sixty miles. ETA three minutes.”
We flew high, closer to the space dome than transports tended to go, mostly so we wouldn’t cause an accident. A couple of times we passed peace officers and security patrols, but by the time they could even turn around to face us, we were impossibly distant.
The comm console chimed. “Message coming in,” I told Steve.
Junup’s face appeared on the main communication screen. “You’re going the wrong way,” he said.
“Wait. What?” I said, affecting confusion.
“Zeke, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s a bad idea.”
“So you think it would be a good idea to head into your trap?” I asked.
“My trap?” He seemed incredulous. “I didn’t want to trap you. I wanted to get rid of you. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“We broke the roof of the spaceport. That’s going to be a pain to fix. And it looks like rain.”
“You’ve forced my hand. Now I have to deal with you with the public watching.”
“Give it a rest, Junup,” I said. “I know you planned to ambush us the minute we were out of range.”
“Who told you that?”
“Dr. Roop,” I said with a vindictive sneer.
“Roop? How would he know anything?”
“If he was so ignorant, why did your men force him off that roof?”
“What roof? You’re out of your mind, Zeke.”
“I don’t think we’re getting anything out of him but lies,” the colonel said. “He’s just a distraction.”
I killed the transmission. If he was going to pretend Dr. Roop hadn’t died, when I’d witnessed it with my own eyes, then there was no point in trying to trick truths out of him.
“That doesn’t look too inviting,” Steve said.
I looked up at the main viewscreen. “Is that the Forbidden Zone?” I asked.
“Afraid so,” Steve said.
It was huge, spreading out for miles and miles, hot and reflective and uninviting. It undulated with shifting hills and swirling storms. The Forbidden Zone was a vast and mountainous desert, and we were betting our lives that it would provide a way off the station.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
* * *
Why even bother to forbid it?” Alice asked. “It might as well be called the Zone You Don’t Want to Go to Anyhow.”
“Except we’re barmy enough to make that our destination,” Steve said. “I’m going to set us down as close to the entrance as possible.”
“Why not fly over?” the colonel said. “Perform some recon?”
“This particular zone,” Steve said, “is of the forbidden variety. The field that keeps Confederation citizens from entering also produces an electromagnetic pulse into the airspace. If we fly over it, we’ll crash.”
“Let’s not fly over it,” I said.
“I’m for landing,” Steve said.
“Good idea,” I told him.
We set down the ship about a quarter mile from the Forbidden Zone entrance, gathered our supplies, and began to march toward the last place any of us wanted to go.
• • •
The area just outside the Forbidden Zone may not have been forbidden, but it wasn’t particularly welcoming either. It was a lot of scrub and loose stone, but it was still a lot more hospitable than the rolling dunes and gigantic outcroppings of rock that lay before us. The air here was already much warmer than Confederation Central standard, but at least the surrounding terrain was deserted, which meant no one was trying to kill us. Yet.
Everyone grabbed their packs, and we beg
an moving toward the desert. No one had to state the obvious—that Junup’s peace officers would know where we had gone, and that they would be hot on our heels. We had to get across the border before they overtook us. If we didn’t, all of this would have been for nothing.
“How do we find what we’re looking for?” Alice asked as we trudged along. “There’s miles and miles of desert out there.”
“I have a map,” I said.
I opened up the file the bush had given me. It was encrypted with a series of questions that only I was supposed to be able to answer. I had to input the classic seven-hero Justice League lineup, the serial number of the Enterprise from Next Generation, and the names of all the actors who’d played the Doctor. I struggled—understandably, I think—with number seven, but then typed in Sylvester McCoy, and all was good. A rough map resolved. It wasn’t long on detail, but it would get us moving in the right direction. I hoped.
Everyone peered at the map projecting from my data bracelet.
“That looks pretty vague,” said the colonel.
“Um, yeah,” agreed Alice. “I’m not sure I’d have signed off on the plan if I’d known this was all we had to go on.”
I couldn’t argue with what they were saying. “Dr. Roop thought this would be enough. If he didn’t think we could find it, he wouldn’t have sent us.” I took a look at the skies behind us. Still no sign of pursuit.
I can help you find the fortress, Smelly said.
I’d told Dr. Roop about Smelly. Had he known the AI would be able to help us? Was that why he hadn’t bothered to tell me more? Or maybe the fortress would be so easy to find that it would soon become obvious why we hadn’t been given explicit instructions.
I was lost in these thoughts as we walked, and then, suddenly we were at the point where the open area of the station ended and the restricted area began.
The boundary to the Forbidden Zone was a thick green line painted across the ground, partially covered with drifting piles of sand. Every few feet were signs warning us that we could not cross. It sort of reminded me of Area 51.