Her Last Run

by Michael Penmore

  * 4 *

  Libertalia. The eleventh colony. The last world. A secret place mentioned only in whispers, supposed to be created by the Colonials to serve as their final retreat. A green paradise. A fairy tale. A resting place for the wicked.

  Throughout a life of spacefaring, Isabel hadn’t put much stock in tales of hidden worlds. Tall tales of old space dogs, she used to think. Otherwise, she’d know there was a kraken hiding in every asteroid field, a giant serpent on the edge of the universe, and if you started your journey on first Wednesday of the month, you were bound for misfortune. To put it succinctly: a woven basket of cobbleduds.

  Now that she was in her cockpit and finally breaking the stratosphere above Rockwall, she found her mind wandering to an opportunity. According to John Amicon, Libertalia was real. A new colony outside of the explored universe, isolated and on lockdown. The perfect ground for a lucrative business. A paradise? Isabel had seen too many faraway places to believe that. Isolated from other settlements, the people of Libertalia had to be missing many things. Isabel could rebrand herself. Apart from weapons, she could bring them technology and little life luxuries. And if their need was extended into the basics, she could diversify her portfolio: medicines, foodstuffs, clothing... Heck, even the news would count as a hot commodity! Outside of the grid, the Libertalians wouldn’t have access even to the blandness of those staple and boring InfoCore reports. She was sure the planet dwellers would find some way to pay her for her trouble.

  The Anvil’s cockpit was a cosy place. Not grandma’s house cosy, with plush armchairs and sweet cakes piling up on plates set over a hand-decorated tabletop. It was cosy-small.

  Two people could sit at the controls, which were a sturdy and thick metal slab sloping at a slant towards the pilot; the instruments were a colourful jumble of three black screens worked into the exuberant rows of different-sized buttons, bars, numpads, knobs, sliders, gauges, toggles, slits and slats. Looking forward, the pilot got a sixty-degree view of space, not by view screen but the old-fashioned way: directly via a big window made from a sturdy transparent material. From top to bottom, the view was only about thirty degrees as another blocky bank of switches limited it from above. Most of these switches were positioned in such a way that the pilot had to rise to a bizarre squat-stand over the chair in order to press them and to see what she was pressing. Most of that was useless stuff, though, like the defunct air conditioning.

  The chairs themselves had been quite luxurious some twenty odd years back. They provided ample space between the armrests, swivelled 360 degrees each way and were made of real leather which used to be a reddish brown colour, but long contact with various buttocks had faded them into yellowness. And they had long holes in the centre and the armrests had frayed on the edges. The main chair on the left was substantially more worn than the auxiliary one on the right. It sagged a bit but, paradoxically, that made it the more comfy one.

  The room from the backs of the seats to the wide door would accommodate four people, at a squeeze. Some standing passengers might even find the room pleasant enough provided they weren’t taller than five feet ten. What held the ceiling in place was a lattice of support beams, dented all over as if someone’s head had banged against them too many times. Each side had a support pillar surrounded in metal alloy case polished in the centre by thousands of hands that clutched to them in the past. The floor, which Isabel kept clear at all times, panged and bonged in response when heels stepped on it. The surface was a single sheet of thick black metal without the convenience of carpeting. Previous feet had forged a brighter path from the door to the chairs.

  All in all, the cockpit gave a first impression of a worn out cage holding a hugely outdated hodgepodge of physical switches. There was a reason why ships like Isabel’s were a rarity in space. Most would fine them difficult to fly as they didn’t embrace the basics of modern technology.

  The door swished and Isabel turned back to watch them open to both sides. Three individuals entered in a line. Isabel smiled when she saw Nadie. Her lips flatlined at the sight of her blank slate associate, the soldiery type who called himself Mr. Underhill. Last, Jacob Pace sauntered inside the small room, barely avoiding striking a roof beam with his head. The corners of Isabel’s mouth descended to the pits of hell.

  “I told you to stay with the group, Paceman,” she growled as invitingly as a bear awoken in the middle of winter.

  “I don’t particularly enjoy confined spaces,” Pace spoke flatly. He acted cool but the fact he had to bend his knees to fit under the ceiling was a dead giveaway of discomfort.

  “You’re making my cockpit a confined space.”

  “You can’t blame me for the poor design.”

  “He’s right,” Mr. Underhill sided with the Colonial leader. “This is a mess of a ship. Antares Class freighter, right?”

  “I call it the Anvil.” Behind her glasses, Isabel’s gaze was skewering the stranger.

  “Why the Anvil?” He looked so puzzled that a scratch on his head wouldn’t be out of place.

  “It’s a sturdy metal block. Not pretty, but it can take a good deal of a beating.”

  “Can it?” One of Mr. Underhill’s eyebrows travelled so high up his forehead, it almost reached that unkempt jarhead hairdo. “It’s a real blast from the past, that’s what it is.”

  Isabel snorted through her nose. “Oh yeah? What would you know about it?”

  Mr. Underhill smiled lightly. His eyes nearly glazed over. “I saw one when I was eight. How long ago was that? 26 years already! Time flies when you’re having a real blast escaping Earth.” He stopped there. Nadie shot him a look of warning. Mr. Underhill reflected on what he had just said and returned to the topic he had started. “But we were talking about this tin can on thrusters, right? So I was eight and it didn’t impress me then. Mind you, I was the boy with a hoopla for anything space, starships in particular. To be honest with you, I’m surprised this museum piece still flies. That Harrison-Ehrenreich solo engine wasn’t supposed to last more than twenty years, and that’s only with proper maintenance. That’s something I find severely underrepresented in here. Everything looks rinky-dink like it’s gonna fall to pieces at a touch.” To illustrate his point, Mr. Underhill held his hand over a support beam and held his breath as he lingered: should he touch the support or not?

  A wicked grimace visited Isabel’s face. “Why don’t you shove your opinions where the stars don’t shine, Mr. Underhill. Nadie, I thought you had better taste in men. What reason did you have for bringing this patronising windbag with you? He has a mouth on him that's even worse than Paceman’s. And he’s trouble.”

  “You don’t even know him, Isa,” Nadie said with a crooked smile. She saw something in the guy. Whatever that was, it must have been deeply hidden because Isabel had trouble catching it.

  “Don’t need to and don’t want to know him, dearie. I recognise trouble when I see it.” She sniffed. “I can smell it on him. Trouble. Why does he use an alias? Mr. Underhill? Mr. Troublehill, more likely.”

  “An alias?” Nadie tried to pretend surprise. She was bad at pretending.

  “A false identity. Taken from Tolkien. Frodo Baggins. The Hobbit.”

  “The Lord of the Rings, actually,” Mr. Underhill waded into the argument.

  “Whatever. It’s not your true name. You just confirmed it.”

  Pace had been keeping quiet as a mouse. He chose his moment to join the conversation with the usual sulkiness of a spider who’d just lost his web to a determined bumblebee. “There’s a certain ex-Space Marine with a bounty on his head set by the Earth Council, or a good portion of the North American section, to be exact.” Pace levelled a piercing gaze on Underhill. “How uncanny. You happen to match his description, Mr. Underhill. Or should I say, Captain Rhys Dreyfus, dishonourably discharged, wanted for desertion, sabotage, unauthorised confiscation of military equipment, treason and sedition… The list goes on but I’m certain you get the flavour.”

  Mr. Und
erhill didn’t focus on denying he was Dreyfus. He seemed to grow a bit in posture, but any effort to look at Jacob Pace from above was doomed to fail. First, he was shorter than the Arbiter. And secondly, both of them suffered from a serious lack of headroom.

  Still, Mr. Underhill sizzled through clenched teeth: “I’m not a traitor.”

  “Don’t care,” Isabel waved her hand with disinterest. She turned to Pace and a shadowy smile crept on her lips. “I just wanna know one thing. How much is that bounty you spoke of?”

  “Cut it out, Isa,” Nadie snapped at her friend. She tied herself in knots. “She didn’t mean to say it, Rhys.”

  “I didn’t?” Isabel shrugged. That bounty was likely going to be chump change anyway. It wouldn’t pay for the inconvenience of looking for an Interpol office authorised to pay up the bond. “Nadie, I don’t recognise you, girl. Associating with the enemy? What would your commanding officer have to say about living so dangerously?”

  “Major Remorra… is laughing at us from the stars.” Nadie looked outside to space as though she expected to find her old CO waiting for her there. A sense of loss etched itself in her face, making it sharper.

  Isabel thought she understood that look. The Major had been like a substitute mother to the Colonial fighter woman standing before her. Now that the officer was gone, Nadie’s world must have tumbled down like a glass tower. The resistance, her home, was on fire. Considering those circumstances, she was holding herself together quite nicely.

  The news of Major Remorra’s demise somehow wouldn’t fit inside Isabel’s head. She had done plenty of business with that larger-than-life military gal. They had a solid understanding: payment upfront for a clearly defined cargo. The Major was different than most soldiers Isabel had come in touch with. She seemed invincible but she also knew how to have fun. Nothing in the universe could ever put her down. She’d cheated death so many times, it was difficult to fathom she did not outlast the war she’d been fighting from day one. Some speculated she had started it.

  “So it’s true? The unshakeable Augusta Remorra finally sips a tea with the devil?”

  Nadie nodded only slightly. There were loss and pain entrenched deep in the fibre of her being. Still, Isabel’s curiosity won over any feelings of sympathy: “How could that unthinkable thing ever happen?”

  “She dropped a black hole on Hellraiser’s head. It swallowed them both.”

  “Wow! You’re talking of Marine Marinade?” Isabel gave a whistle. She was impressed. That clusterthwack of a military catastrophe had been big enough to bring down the entire Space Marine Corps like a little house of cards. She noted how Rhys Dreyfus, quiet and simmering down from the former micro outburst, winced at her mention of that name. Pieces of a puzzle came clicking together in her head.

  Remorra died fighting the Space Marines. Dreyfus had been one of them, now disgraced. Did he switch sides and then step into the void the Major had left in Nadie’s life? Nadie was young. She had lost her one cause and could have thrown herself behind another to fill the empty space. Too bad her choice was so lousy.

  “Wicked. I wondered if you iron girls had something to do with the infamous Prox Doom,” she threw in another name coined for the disaster. An event of such magnitude had to go into folklore. People were naming their children after it! Come on, Prox, stop fighting with your sister or you know how it will end... “Lots of people had it in for nasty old Hellraiser. Your ma’am did the universe a favour. That dirty son of a slug got what was coming to him.”

  Nobody picked it up from there. Nadie looked numb. Dreyfus seemed to calm down - maybe he wasn’t totally rotten if he didn’t care about her verbal thrashing of Hellraiser, a fellow Space Marine. Pace remained still like a clean stone slab, not a move, not a sound. For Isabel, that inanimate state was near perfection; she didn’t care what the crackpot Arbiter was thinking. Her eyes were getting overtired with his and Dreyfus’ presence, though. If they didn’t serve a useful purpose, why were they bothering her?

  “All right, you male nitwits. Air quality has gone down to sewer level because of you two. Go back to your little room upstairs, will you? Nadie, you stay. I wanna play catch up.”

  “I won’t leave her alone with you,” Dreyfus positioned his hand on Nadie’s shoulder. He thought his behaviour was charming.

  “How touching. Wake up, knight errant. Nadie and I were already best friends when you were picking empty slugs from your jarhead range. We’re so tight, I’m gonna let her sit in this here chair.”

  Nadie pulled Dreyfus’ hand off her and made an approving move on the empty co-pilot’s seat, right next to where Rocarion was. She was landing on the cushion when a distressed shriek sent her jumping back to her feet. A small ball of shimmering brownish fur rose up, jumped, bounced off the chair’s armrest and went straight for Isabel’s shoulder. It had a coiled tail full of shiny scales. They reflected the cockpit’s diminished light and acted like a kaleidoscope, changing their hue with every move, some white, some red, some brownish-green.

  The ball perched right next to Isabel’s cheek and started rubbing itself against it. A cute monkey head came out of its top. It chirped animatedly but did half of the talking with its front paws. They kept pointing to Nadie and to the co-pilot’s chair which had seemed so empty before it cannonballed out of it.

  Isabel giggled and petted the monkey with a strange lizard tail. She engaged in a strange conversation, her words counterpointed by the animal’s chirrups. “Easy. Easy there, Leon. You know how hard you can be to spot. No harm done. But she didn’t. She didn’t sit on top of you. Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Come on, lay it off, buddy. I was wondering what hidey-hole you found for yourself this time. Been here the whole time, huh? Listening to private conversations? No? Sleeping? You do a lot of that, you know? Maybe too much. OK. OK. Did Nadie give you a fright?”

  “I frightened it? It was shonking invisible!” Nadie stomped a foot.

  Leon hissed and Isabel stroked his head from ear to ear to calm him down. “Don’t mind her, love. She’s just jealous.”

  Leon stretched up higher and a ripple surged up and down him. The wave was transparent, giving the impression of parts of his body disappearing and reappearing before everyone’s eyes.

  “What is that curious thing?” Dreyfus pointed, which was quite rude and Leon didn’t hesitate to pull a face and tell him that in his monkey voice.

  “Intriguing,” Jacob Pace agreed with the former Space Marine. The Arbiter took one step forward which brought him close to Isabel and her pet. He reached out to touch. His hand landed on Leon’s fur and lingered there a short while until the creature’s hair stood up and the monkey hissed a warning past two rows of exposed needle-sharp teeth.

  Isabel shoved Pace brutally to the back of the room. “Hands off, pal. He bites.” Without pause, she switched focus to Dreyfus. “This thing is a living creature and you just hurt his feelings. Right, Leon?” She rubbed the little guy’s cheek and he chirped again, this time to demonstrate his displeasure and wounded pride. Isabel smirked. “What’s wrong with you, people? You look like you’ve never seen a chamonkey in your lives.”

  “A chamonkey?” Dreyfus repeated the name dumbly.

  “Yeah. A chameleon and a monkey rolled into one. Climbs like a pro and… you know that thing the chameleon does?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “And you won’t. As far as I know, Leon’s the only one.”

  Before she sat in it, Nadie made sure the chair was truly empty this time. As the only visitor acquainted with Isabel’s companion, she didn’t make a fuss about cutting the conversations short. “That’s enough zoology for today. Rhys, Isabel’s right. You and Pace need to disappear before we reach the blockade. Make yourselves invisible now. Scoot. I’ll be fine, I promise.” She fanned her hand several times, shooshing them away.

  “If you say so...” The ex-marine looked mightily confused, switching between Nadie, Leon, and Isabel. He jumped on the chance t
o speak about something he knew. “Shouldn’t you go too? I mean, you’re not just any cut-and-paste member of the resistance. You were with the Widows. They’ll hate you for the things you’ve done.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s whiskers how they feel about me doing my job,” Nadie fired off much more excitedly than anyone might expect of her. Isabel felt it was a good moment to step in and reinforce the shooshing.

  “Go. She’ll join you in a minute, mister love-struck jarhead. We have lots to discuss. Pace, why don’t you take him back to the luxury suite I prepared for you?”

  “If you can call it that.” Nevertheless, Jacob Pace moved to take Dreyfus by the elbow. “Come with me, Captain Dreyfus. We’ve seen enough of the controls to know we’ll be useless here. Let’s discuss our mutual futures and leave these two ladies to talk about theirs, shall we?”

  Dreyfus nodded. Before stomping out of the room, he said to Nadie: “Don’t keep me waiting long.”

  “No prospect of that, Rhys.”

  When the two men left, Isabel breathed out loud. She didn’t care much about Dreyfus who seemed like a bit of a harmless dolt. Pace was another story. Quiet and imposing, he always brought tension with his presence. She couldn’t relax while the grim Arbiter watched her every move and listened to her every word. Her inability to tell what he was thinking was like a cheese grater to her sense of stability.

  “Finally. I thought those two would never go away. Men are stubborn idiots.”

  “What do you wanna talk about?” Nadie asked.

  “Straight to the point. That’s what I like about you, Nadine.” Isabel opened a compartment in the instrument table and took out some food for her chamonkey. Leon sat down on the floor and started eating his meal: some dried bananas, but mostly nuts. He wasn’t a monothematic eater at all. “First, my condolences, girl. Your old woman was good people.”

  “She was better than good. She was kick-ass awesome.”