by Karl Beecher
That cheered Tiffin up at least.
He activated the ambulance sirens, but the forcefield stayed up, while one of the guards flagged him down. Charging the ambulance at the forcefield would merely have been a quick way to turn the vehicle into a heap of scrap metal. Tiffin had no choice but to halt.
He killed the sirens and opened his window as the guard waddled closer.
“Paramedics!” Tiffin declared in commanding character. “Responding to a call at docking bay forty-two.”
“All right,” replied the guard. “I just need to see your—”
“There’s a man in there suffering severe plasma burns,” Tiffin cried, pointing beyond the barrier. “If I get there in time, he might just get to keep his leg, so move it!”
The guard hesitated, looked briefly flustered with indecision, then turned and gave a thumbs up to his colleague. The other guard pushed a button on the wall, and the forcefield disappeared.
Tiffin flung the ambulance onwards through the gate. Once past, he glanced at the rear-view screen. They’d let him through, but the guards still had suspicious looks on their faces. One of them talked into a communicator. Tiffin wasn’t out of the woods yet.
He drove through the maze of avenues that weaved through the forest of towering, grey space hangars, until he arrived at the one housing his own craft, the SS Mosquito.
He parked the ambulance and looked around. This wasn’t a busy spaceport at the best of times. Right now, well into the evening with dusk falling, it looked positively abandoned. He did, however, see two far-off figures walking briskly in his direction. Best not to wait around and find out if they were interested in him.
He clambered into the back of the ambulance, where Colin was slumped in his wheelchair. Tiffin straightened him up and examined him. Still unconscious, still breathing, still drooling.
With the push of a button, the ambulance opened its back doors and extended a ramp. Tiffin unloaded the wheelchair onto the street, then looked again at the two figures, closer now. One was definitely a security guard, while the other was dressed in overalls. Both had started to jog. Tiffin pushed Colin towards the hangar entrance, trying to move quickly without appearing to run.
“Excuse me!” came a yell.
He ignored it.
“Hey!” came another shout.
The two men broke into a run. Tiffin did likewise.
Once inside the hangar, he spotted the Mosquito parked across the bay. He made a dash for it, but the damned wheelchair slowed him down. Coming closer, he spotted the ship’s embarkation ramp was already down. Strange, but this was no time to question it.
He got the wheelchair a few steps up the ramp before the voice cried out again.
“Hey you, stop, or I shoot!”
The voice echoed around the hard walls of the hangar. Quick as a flash, Tiffin punched a button on the wheelchair’s arm, putting it into automatic and sending it crawling up the ramp under its own power. Then, he ducked beside the wheelchair, side-stepping slowly and keeping the limp Colin between himself and his pursuers across the hangar bay.
He peered out to get a better look at the two men. They’d come to a stop about twenty metres away. The security guard, young and nervy, was pointing a pistol. Beside him stood a breathless, middle-aged technician. Tiffin recognised him as the grease monkey he’d dealt with immediately after arriving on Procya. If Tiffin remembered correctly, his name was Gizzel or Grizzel or something.
Both men began to tread cautiously forward. Tiffin had to keep them at bay until he’d reached the airlock door.
“Stay back!” yelled Tiffin.
“More security are on their way,” the guard said. “There’s no way out of here.”
“No way out?” replied Tiffin incredulously. He pointed at his ship. “Are you blind? What do you call that? I’d call that a very large and obvious way out of here.”
“Oh yeah,” the guard conceded. “Well… we’re here to stop you taking that way out.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
Grizzel pointed at the roof. “The hangar doors are closed,” he wheezed, still gasping for air. “You can’t get past them.”
“Ha!” laughed Tiffin. “My plasma cannon will cut through them like aluminium foil. What else have you got?”
The guard and Grizzel exchanged glances. The technician shrugged.
The guard shifted, seemingly embarrassed. “Um… well… I’ll shoot you unless you give yourself up.”
“You’re threatening to shoot me?” exclaimed Tiffin. “This is a hostage-situation, and you’re threatening to shoot the hostage taker. What kind of security are you? If you were one of my officers, I’d put you on immediate suspension… without pay!”
The guard looked hurt. “There’s no need for that. I’m new. I’m doing my best.”
Tiffin and the wheelchair, still crawling along, were more than halfway up the ramp. A few more seconds of this dawdling, and he’d be safely onboard.
Grizzel gave the guard an impatient shove. “Stop messing with him, he’s getting away!”
Getting away? thought Tiffin. He and the wheelchair were presently surging forward only slightly quicker than a centipede wearing ill-fitting shoes. Hardly a high-speed pursuit.
“Go and get him,” said the technician. “He’s not armed.”
The guard began to creep forward again.
Tiffin reached into his pocket, pulled out the tiny stun gun, and pressed it against Colin’s temple. “That’s close enough!”
The guard squinted at Tiffin’s weapon. “What is that?” he said. “A lipstick?”
“It’s a covert stun gun, moron! It’s on heavy setting at point-blank range. Enough to kill a man, or at least render him brain dead.”
Tiffin kept his eyes fixed on his pursuers. He sensed he was almost at the entranceway, could even smell the familiar interior of his ship. Only a few more steps then no-one would be able to stop him.
But then, the expression on Grizzel’s face changed. A look of horror came over him. Tiffin heard footsteps. Clanging footsteps… coming from inside his ship.
“No!” yelled Grizzel.
Tiffin turned. He saw nothing but a blur bounding towards him. Then, the blur sprouted arms, which grabbed at his gun-toting arm. His training asserted itself. Almost without a thought, his free hand grabbed at the attacker’s wrist, found the pressure point, and gave a twist. The stranger yelped in pain and buckled to one side, right where Tiffin wanted him.
He grabbed the stranger by the throat and pulled him upright. The struggle ended with Tiffin pressing the stun gun against the man’s head and manoeuvring him into position as a human shield.
With his attacker subdued, he checked the wheelchair. All was good; it had passed through the entranceway and was in a corridor aboard the ship. Then he looked at the face of his attacker, a panting, scared-looking young whelp.
“I remember you,” crowed Tiffin. “Little Spudge, isn’t it?”
Spudge gargled in reply.
“Don’t you hurt him!” cried Grizzel.
“I don’t want to,” replied Tiffin. “So I’ll do you a deal.” He retreated towards the entranceway. Spudge, his neck in Tiffin’s tight grasp, followed suit. “You let my ship leave unharmed, and no harm comes to your little lad here.”
“Just wait a minute,” said Grizzel, his voice suddenly cracking. “Don’t take the lad. If you want a hostage, take me instead. Take me!”
Tiffin stepped partway aboard, until just his and Spudge’s heads poked through the entranceway. “No, I’ll stick with this one thanks. Computer!” An acknowledging beep came from inside the ship. “Lift the ramp.”
The ramp began to move upwards.
Grizzel waved his fists in a rage. “So help me, when I catch up with you I’m gonna—”
“Tut-tut!” said Tiffin. “You forgot rule number one: don’t threaten the hostage-taker. And unless you want to be showered by molten metal, I suggest you open the hangar doors.�
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“I’m sorry, Grizzel,” wheezed Spudge.
Tiffin yanked the lad aboard as the ramp completed its ascent, becoming an air-tight seal over the entranceway.
“Just stay calm, lad,” came the old technician’s voice through the rapidly closing crack. “Don’t do anything stupid and you’ll be all right. We’ll get you out of—”
The doorway closed with a thud, then hissed as it sealed itself airtight. Tiffin felt elated. He was aboard. It was almost over.
“Right, Spudge my friend…” He released his grip on the young man’s throat and gave him a hard shove. Spudge thumped against the wall and collapsed spluttering to the floor. “… take a seat. Sit on your hands and don’t move.”
Spudge did as he was told.
Tiffin glanced over his shoulder down the passageway. The wheelchair had bumped into the wall and come to a stop. Its occupant was still out cold.
Spudge massaged his throat and looked up at Tiffin. “Where are you taking us?”
“No questions,” he replied. “Computer: transfer conn functions to panel C9.”
A blank screen on the wall beside Tiffin illuminated with a bank of virtual controls. A visual feed from outside appeared in a corner.
Excellent. The hangar doors were opening.
With one hand pointing the stun gun at Spudge, Tiffin used his other hand to control the ship. The engines whirred into life. The thruster jets fired. A moment later, the ship wobbled and lurched from side to side as it lifted and cleared the hangar.
Tiffin felt the adrenaline drain away, and his body relax. In a few minutes, they’d be in space and at warp speed long before planetary defences could be mustered to intercept. He was as good as gone. There was nothing more to worry about.
Except one thing. One little vague thought that still bothered him and hadn’t quite drained away with everything else.
“The ramp,” he muttered. He looked at Spudge. “It was already down when I arrived. When you attacked me, you were… you were on the ship. You were already in here, weren’t you?”
Spudge said nothing, but his expression revealed everything. He looked like a toddler who’d just been asked what had happened to the missing chocolate.
“What were you doing in here?” demanded Tiffin.
Again, the young technician stayed silent.
It was time to play hardball. Tiffin marched over to a small locker mounted next to the entranceway, flung it open, and pulled out a proton pistol.
Spudge went stiff at the sight of it.
“This one will do rather more than stun you,” said Tiffin, waving the gun menacingly. “Now tell me… what were you doing in here?”
40
“This thing is a death trap!” yelled Tyresa as the police car spun around another corner. The inertia flung her along the back seat and careening into Ade’s side for what must have been the twentieth time.
She was starting to wish she’d found an alternative means of getting to the spaceport. After reporting Colin’s disappearance, she’d tracked down Chief Gilper and demanded a driver. The Chief had been uninterested until Tyresa had said she wanted to be taken to the spaceport as quickly as possible, whereupon a turbo-charged pursuit car plus driver had appeared in less than a minute. The Chief said he was only sorry he couldn’t drive her there himself.
If this trip was anything to go by, the average lifespan of a police driver on Procya must have been pretty short. The driver, stoic and silent like all the other nameless grunts on the force, had got them to the spaceport faster than Tyresa thought possible. The journey through the city had been bad enough—shimmying from lane to lane and dodging vehicles as well as pedestrians—but things only became worse once they passed inside the spaceport’s perimeter walls. The grid of narrow avenues meant they now had to turn ninety-degree corners at high speed with monotonous regularity. Even Ade was probably feeling sick, and he didn’t even have a stomach.
Thankfully, Tyresa spotted their destination before any vomit made an appearance.
“There!” she cried, pointing to one of the hangars ahead. “That one’s ours.”
The hangar doors were open. As she leaned forward to look for incoming vessels, a spacecraft emerged through the roof. It was sleek, dark and angular, and Tyresa recognised it immediately: an Erd ship. Doubtless, that was Tiffin’s ship, and Colin must have been on it.
She’d missed him by just a couple of minutes.
Dammit! Tyresa thumped the chair in front of her and stamped her foot. If only she’d got here a few minutes earlier. If only she hadn’t let herself get waylaid outside the hospital, she might have stopped Tiffin there. If only she hadn’t stuck her nose into Abraman business and had instead just left the non-believers to get a pummeling from the riot police.
Well, maybe that last thought was taking her regret too far.
She watched the Erd vessel lunge upwards into the sky, leaving a contrail arc behind it before disappearing into the clouds. In only a few minutes, the ship would reach warp speed and put Colin beyond her grasp forever.
The cop car came to a screeching halt outside the hangar, narrowly missing a young security guard running through the exit. Tyresa clambered out, Ade right behind her, and sprinted through the doorway.
Inside the hangar, all was surprisingly quiet. The Turtle, the only ship in the hangar, sat just where she’d left it. The only person there was a technician, standing motionless in the middle of the huge space.
She turned to the android beside her and gestured to the Turtle. “Ade, you go start ’er up.”
“Very good, ma’am,” he replied and dashed off towards the vessel.
Tyresa meanwhile ran towards the technician. “Hey you!” she called out.
He turned, and Tyresa recognised him as Grizzel, but he looked very different from the gruff, cantankerous old grouch she’d encountered before. He looked gloomy. His eyes were moist, and he breathed through gritted teeth.
She skidded to a halt. “Did you see who was on that ship?”
He nodded. “It was the Erd man,” he croaked. “He’s got your friend, and he took one of my lads hostage, too.”
“He what?”
Grizzel was close to tears. “It’s my fault. I wasn’t here. I’d left Spudge on his own.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get him back,” assured Tyresa.
But even now she knew her words were pretty empty. By the time she got up through the atmosphere, Tiffin’s ship would probably be nothing but a trail of warp dust.
She turned to leave.
“Wait!” yelled the technician. “There’s something you need to know.”
“What?”
“The Erd ship can’t go to warp speed. Its drive has been deactivated.”
“How do you know?”
“Spudge did it,” explained Grizzel. “When the spaceport heard about Colin, I thought about that Tiffin fella. He’d been asking earlier about you and your friend. So I called Spudge and told him to get out of the hangar, but the lad didn’t listen to me. He said he was going to deactivate Tiffin’s warp engines. That way, if he was the kidnapper, he wouldn’t be able to get away. But then, Tiffin arrived while Spudge was still aboard and…”
Grizzel choked up and couldn’t go on.
If it was true, the situation might not be so hopeless. Maybe the lad had managed to buy them some precious time.
From behind her, Tyresa heard the engines of the Turtle powering up. It was ready to launch.
“Don’t worry,” she said, squeezing Grizzel’s arm. “I’m going after him right now.”
“Please be careful,” he called after her as she ran. “He’s a good lad really!”
Tyresa boarded the Turtle, leaving Grizzel to watch the ship lift off, turn to the sky and roar off through the clouds.
41
“You did what to my warp engines?” cried Tiffin.
Spudge, still sitting on the floor, looked up, puzzled. “Do you need me to explain it again?”
“No, I don’t need you to explain it again,” shouted Tiffin. “I need you to undo what you did right now!”
“I can’t. I told you: I took out the warp field regulator rod.”
“Then put it back.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why?”
Spudge looked sheepish. “I left it in the spaceport.”
Tiffin almost fell over from sheer impotent fury. What in the hell was he supposed to do now? The Abraman Navy was probably scrambling at that very moment. Trying to escape them without warp speed would be as effective as a duck trying to out-paddle a speedboat.
His only chance was to jury-rig the engine somehow, but that was beyond his talent. He was no technician.
But the kid was.
“Well,” began Tiffin, leaning over Spudge, “you’d better get creative and make the engines work without a regulator rod.”
The young lad shook his head. “Not possible.”
Tiffin refused to believe it. There was always a way when you found your balls on the chopping block. He raised his proton pistol and pointed it at Spudge’s head. “If you need some motivation, here’s a dose for you.”
Spudge cowered and looked at the floor. “Shooting me won’t help you,” he stammered.
“No, but it might make me feel a bit better.”
The kid said nothing. For his part, Tiffin thought he was putting on a convincing show of being a stone-cold killer. Surely, Spudge had no way of knowing whether Tiffin was bluffing. Which made his refusal to cooperate all the more impressive. Brave lad, was he? Noble? Strong on the inside? Fine. There were still ways to reach those like him.
Tiffin marched over to Colin, still slumped over in his wheelchair. He put the pistol’s muzzle against the unconscious man’s temple.
Spudge perked up, looking aghast. “What are you doing?”
“Simple.” Tiffin chose an aloof demeanour, a casual, ruthless murderer. “If my mission is now bound to fail, then Mister Douglass here needs to die.”