Her Last Run

by Michael Penmore

  “All of them. Except Pace.” She remembered what John Amicon had told her. The High Command made sure to spread false news. The Arbiter was supposed to have escaped earlier on, in the heat of battle. He was not aboard her freighter. The lie sounded more like what Pace would do than the truth. She expected a coward’s move from him. But he was escaping, after all. Her involvement in his deliverance discomfited her as though it were a big pebble that got in her boot and scraped her foot. She’d throw it out if it didn’t lead to the suffering of innocents.

  Santiago again pulled a hearty chug from the bottle, like a pig mangling a found truffle with her snout. Nearly half of the booze was gone already. Isabel cringed at the cost of doing business with those arrogant EEFers.

  He said: “You are sure the Arbiter wasn’t there?”

  “I’m sure.” What she was really sure of was that she had heard some slurring in his speech. Was he getting sloshed already? She’d love nothing more if he found some excuse to go violently vomit outside of her beautiful ship. She couldn’t wait for the moment she’d be able to pick up her things and leave. If she never saw Santiago and his EEF friends again, that would be too soon.

  Something was up, though. Half a bottle of good and proper whisky and five minutes of conversation wasn’t nearly quite enough to turn a stone-cold sober merrymaker like Santiago into a blabbering drunk. Was he acting to distract her?

  The Captain leaned forward in the chair. He tried to read her. She was damn hard to read, those mirror glasses and all. Santiago couldn’t intimidate her. He didn’t even try. “Just double checking, chiquita. We can never be vigilant! Er, I mean, vigilant enough!” He saluted suddenly with no reason at all and carried on talking, “Captain Isabella, you tell me you’ve got nothing in your hold? Then mind you... don’t mind you if my men take a little peekie and check that out for ourselves?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “I’m not going to knock my person because it will hurt me. I am sure you have secret stashes everywhere. We could take your sheep... ship apart bit, by bit, by bit, by bit...” he rolled his finger and rolled his eyes along. He was getting a little lost about what he was trying to say. Or was he playing at being lost? “What are we talking about? Oh, but we’re on the clockie dockie. The valiant niños y niñas are giving up... I mean gearing up to go planetside! Fight the bandits. Restore order and peace... Piece of what? Cheese. I would totally love some cheese right now.”

  Isabel shook her head very, very slowly. Something wasn’t quite right. Juan Santiago was definitely not himself. Was he drunk? A big resounding no reverberated under her skull. What was that slick EEFer trying to achieve with his lie? The weight beneath the folds of her coat, on the ribs below her left armpit, reminded her that she wasn’t defenceless. Would the big blaster get to sing her song? Or did Santiago honestly lose his touch with the booze and she was getting paranoid in her early middle age?

  Her real age was her carefully guarded secret: you couldn’t tell it by looking at her face, but Isabel was approaching fifty. With every passing day, she was getting more cranky and suspicious.

  Santiago locked his lips on the bottle’s neck for the third time. He sipped for a while, sucking leisurely as though he was using the mindless motion to buy himself time. A drunk racking his brain for an explanation of what he was supposed to be doing on the Anvil? Finally, he let the bourbon go. Pop! said the air returning to the bottle’s glass neck.

  “Ah! So. I know what you’ll have to do now, Isabella. You will have to pay for the passage with something. Something...” he drummed on the bottle with his fingers. His eyes were getting narrower. He was swaying left and right. Was it the bourbon doing its job? Was the Army Captain drowsy already? Or was he wearing down her guard with a play?

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Isabel snapped her fingers in front of the EEFer’s eyes, suddenly concerned about the possibility he was not playing but really, really fell under the influence of strong booze. If Santiago fell asleep on the Anvil, her departure could get delayed by an unbearable margin. “Wake up, Juan. You were just telling me I’m getting waved through the gate.”

  “Nice try,” he seemed to sober up a little. “But there’s a price on it.”

  “A price? I already paid, Juan. We had an agreement, remember. I do my bit and then I leave, no questions asked. You don’t renege on a contract, Juan.”

  “A verbal contract. Nothing set in stone. Agreements change, Isabella! You need to prove your loyalty to Earth. Let’s barter for your freedom. How about that little thing you got on your knee there? What do you call... it?”

  That did take Isabel massively by surprise, and it did surprise Leon as well. He raised his Capuchin head and looked at Santiago. The chamonkey was smarter than he appeared, beyond all the cuteness, thick fur and shiny tail, and despite spending half his time curled for sleep. He was always paying attention. At times, Isabel thought he was actually smarter than her and just pretended to be the lazy bum because it made his life easier.

  What did Santiago want with her chamonkey?

  “Leon is not for sale. End of that story. You better come up with a better line.”

  Santiago’s eyes narrowed even further, into two tiny little slits, making his face appear slyly dangerous. “Leon. That’s it. Captain Rocarion, your Admiral Stoyanov demands in his genius that you hand over the animal for... what for? It doesn’t matter! He just does, so give me the pet and let’s part ways like friends, OK?”

  “Like I said, he’s not for sale,” Isabel repeated with steel in her words. Her glasses obtained an intense glow behind them. She was getting angry with the Captain’s obstinacy. Who did he think he was, barging on her ship, drinking her best alcohol and making crazy demands like this one? She couldn’t and wouldn’t give up Leon. Ever.

  The time had come for her gun to make that point clear. Her shooting hand wandered underneath the coat. The conversation wasn’t tedious anymore. Danger had crept in.

  “Uh-uh-uh, hands where I can see them,” Captain Santiago whipped up his own blaster surprisingly fast, meaning that he had been holding it in one hand under the table for some time. His speech also became miraculously clear. Rocarion’s suspicion was right. That little Bolivian shnitzwit had been toying with her, trying to make her think his little remarks were nothing but the ramblings of a drunk.

  The blaster pointed squarely at her chest. Isabel showed Santiago the palms of her hands exactly as he requested. No point playing a hero when the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against her.

  “Bueno. I don’t want to make a scene here, Isabella. What’s one little monkey to you? Just hand it over, and I’ll be on my way. We’ll even release your little ship from my hangar so you can go wherever you want, and you can keep whatever you’re smuggling out of here.”

  Isabel sneered. “That’s very generous of you.”

  “Thank you. I try.”

  “But the answer is no. Definitely.”

  “I see.” Santiago covered the top of his gun with one hand and pulled back the chamber for a full reload. He needed to do it to show Rocarion he wasn’t bluffing. One squeeze of the trigger would turn her into a radioactive blob. “I regret that I have to take matters into my own two hands, as the saying goes.”

  Santiago picked up the bottle he’d left on the tabletop and tossed it to the side. It smashed on contact with the hard floor. The amber booze spilled into a shallow pool and trickled towards an expensive carpet. Isabel’s face fell. Not her favourite Persian rug!

  “Sorry about the mess.” Santiago got up and walked around the table to join her and Leon. He reached out with his hand and spoke very softly, “Come to papá, mi hija. Come, mono. Camaleón. Whatever you are. Come.”

  Leon went stiff, and when Santiago reached far enough, he promptly sank his teeth in the soft and plump flesh below the Captain’s thumb. Immediately after, before Santiago’s mind fully registered what had happened, before his mouth hissed and the body recoiled in pain, Leon vanished from vie
w. One moment, he was biting the Captain, and the other he just wasn’t there any longer without bothering to make an exit in between.

  “Oyyy, Madre di compadre! Híbrido! It bit me!” Santiago jumped back and waved his hand in the air while his head was turning in all directions, scanning the room for the presence of a monkey with chameleon disguise. “Where did it go?! Where is it?!”

  Isabel rose from her seat in one fluid movement, and her gun jumped into her hand: the double-barrelled sawn-off hand howitzer packing two plasma-infused shells that would explode on impact. She affectionately called her Greta. Greta never failed her. She was always powerful, always ready to protect Isabel’s interests against those who would try to use her beyond what was reasonable. She was the final argument, the perfect equalizer, the double exclamation mark at the end of an imperative sentence, the cherry on the cake of irrevocable annihilation. Rocarion absolutely loved to pieces her tiny little honey muffin, calibre .45.

  She put Santiago in her sights. The Captain reciprocated at once. Locked in close quarters, they could not miss each other. It was a Bolivian standoff, one against one, where the accuracy didn’t count for much, only the speed of the trigger finger and the lightness of the trigger itself.

  “Don’t be stupid, Isabella. Put your blaster away.”

  “You go first. And get off my ship, while you’re at it.”

  “Impossible. We got you on lockdown, Isabella. Where are you going to go?”

  “That’s none of your concern. Just get outta here before I put the extra hole in your stupid Earth Expeditionary mug, understood? Comprende, mudbrain?”

  He did not comprende. He just talked some more. “Suppose you outshoot me, chiquita. What then? I have my men posted right outside. They are going to burst in here and gun you down. If, by some miracle, you outshoot them too, there are two hundred and fifty soldiers gathered in the bay outside. I’m pretty sure you can’t outshoot that number. They’re my army. Who do you have on your side? An invisible mono?”

  “Not just a monkey. A chameleon-monkey.” She thought she saw a sliver of motion between her and Santiago, right where she wanted it. “Leon! Now!”

  The air shimmered in front of Captain Santiago, and Leon suddenly materialised in the spot. The chamonkey couldn’t attack matter when he was in his cloak. But he could jump and reveal himself just in time to do what needed to be done. The chameleon-monkey didn’t even wait for Isabel to finish; he reappeared right next to the EEFer’s wrist and clenched his jaws hard. Captain Santiago howled and nearly dropped his gun. Leon kept his incisors locked deep in his skin, and the officer went into a frantic dance, trying to shake off the intransigent creature. That was Isabel’s cue. She moved in with a swift kick right in Captain Santiago’s groin.

  “Bolas de burro!” he groaned in his own fashion. The gun finally slumped to the ground as he held himself by the afflicted spot. Leon dropped off and bounded back to Isabel’s side. He stood on two legs and jumped up and down around her, doing his own version of a victory jive.

  Isabel raised Greta to meet the EEFer’s eyes so that he could see straight into the barrel ends. “End of the line, Capitano. Get off the Anvil now. You’ve outstayed the welcome.”

  “You’re making a huge mistake,” Santiago wheezed between bouts of moaning and panting.

  “No. You just made one, pal. Leon stays with me. Always.” She twirled Greta on her finger to show him how confident she was in her control of the gun. “My last warning. Get up and leave while your head is still attached to your neck.”

  Santiago didn’t reply to her offer of mercy. His eyes swivelled up to the ceiling, reacting to a strange noise swimming in from above; it was the screeching and straining of metal. Isabel glanced up as well. Her eyes refused to budge from a spot on the ceiling when they saw what they saw. A large portion of the aluminium plate buckled down, forming a sizeable downward-facing hump. Before she could figure out a reason in her head, the long sheet burst at the seams and detached itself with terrible screech.

  Isabel and Leon both jumped back as one. The creature chirruped as the woman narrowly avoided getting squashed under the load perched on top of the sheet. Captain Santiago didn’t have such luck.

  **

  10 minutes earlier in the room upstairs

  The Colonials squatted on the hard cold floor in an empty space. Swaths of dark blue light swept through their bodies, reaching every corner of the long room with crawl spaces reaching out through the walls. The illumination was due to the anti-detection emitters embedded in the walls. They also doubled as lamps but would be highly energy-inefficient if used for that purpose alone. The hiding spot was shielded from sensor scans at the price of sapping juice from other systems. That’s why the ship below had some dark places, and others where lighting was so poor you wouldn’t recognise your own mother.

  The gunrunner’s passengers sat in groups of three and four and talked in whispers. Pace was the exception. He had told them to stay as quiet and still as they could, then embodied the advice by sitting all alone. The Arbiter didn’t seem to relish company. His thoughts were his alone. He cut an uninviting dark figure in one of the room’s corners.

  The Amicon twins were the ones who obviously didn’t listen. They were adorable but completely out of touch with the situation. Luckily, the walls were soundproof and covered the noise of them toddling about, poking at the lamps, chasing after moving lights and asking everybody three times to play with them. They were the only ones able to stand up and run under the area’s low ceiling.

  Rhys entertained the tots for a while, playing tag, picking them up and carrying them around on his back as he tottered on his hands and knees, laughing, having obvious fun. Nadie watched him but she wouldn’t budge from her spot. The hardened Colonial commando sat against a wall, seemingly engrossed in the middling task of cleaning one of her blasters with a small cloth. She only placed the weapon in its holster on her right hip when the fugitive Space Marine bid end to frolicking with children and rejoined her.

  “You have a way with kids,” she told him.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re feeling stressed?” she asked him casually. Her style of casual was the quiet rasp of a woman constantly on edge, keeping her guard up in the anticipation of the next blow.

  “No,” he panted after the energetic play session. “Should I be?”

  “Not worried the Earthers will find us?”

  “Not really. You wouldn’t be sitting here idly waiting for that to happen, would you?”

  “No,” Nadie removed a long serrated knife from a holder at her ankle. The blade gave a rustle and a shine in the light. She examined the edge with the tip of her index finger.

  “Would you mind not doing that maybe?”

  “What? Blades spook you out?” She glanced at him with a lopsided stare and a shadow of a smile.

  “Not me. Others.” Rhys nodded to the civilians around them. Some were gawking. The children were about to crawl towards them, lured by the shine of Nadie’s deadly blade, when their mother and Troy Sandy both grabbed them. The tots kept kicking and screaming while they were being dragged away to a safe distance. Their caterwauling lasted for less than a minute. That’s the switching power of a child’s brain.

  “Fair point.” Convinced by the racket, Nadie sheathed the knife with the unpleasant sound of metal sliding against synthetic material. “You didn’t tell me how your chat with John Amicon went. Learn anything useful about your father?”

  Dreyfus’ face clouded. Ever since he’d left Earth in a hurry, his only goal had been to locate his only remaining relative. Captain Ryan Dreyfus of the USSMC had been missing for nearly a decade, since 2079. The presumption was that he betrayed the Space Marine Corps and Earth’s interests wholesale by siding with the rebellious Colonies. The last person who had reliably seen him was John Amicon, the man he was supposed to catch. Rhys had high hopes that a conversation with the godfather of the resistance would shed some light on his father’s whe
reabouts and motives. It did, and it didn’t at the same time.

  “I’m not sure,” he sighed.

  Nadie nudged him in his soft underbelly. “What’s that supposed to mean? Did he join the resistance or not?”

  “No, and Amicon doesn’t know where he is. The only lead he could give me was that dad went to the fringe space.”

  “Is that all? The fringe is a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Don’t I know that,” Rhys shrugged and brushed the stubble on his chin. “He said dad was looking for a woman called Trish.”

  Nadie perked up above her usual subdued self and stretched against the backdrop of the wall behind her, stretching her arms for a full stretch. “That’s a start. Who is this Trish supposed to be?”

  “Some engineer with unconventional ideas about long space communication transponders. I’ll head off your next question: no, I don’t know why my dad would like to meet her. And I don’t know where in the fringe she went.”

  “She has employable skills. Someone would know her. Are you gonna look for your old man out there?”

  “I dunno. I don’t think I have that much to go on.“

  Nadie nudged him again. “Stop complaining. You’re the one who droned on and on about your dad all along the way to Rockwall. I don’t believe for one second you’re gonna drop the matter now. You will find him, Rhys. It’s important to you. He’s your blood.”

  Rhys smiled broadly. “You’re awfully optimistic. More than ever.” He saw she was starting to close down again, so he quickly moved on from the personal to the matter they were discussing. “Of course I’m gonna find him. He has to explain himself. I won’t quickly forget all the bad blood the Corps gave me simply for being the son of ‘the biggest shonking traitor in the USSMC’.” His face contorted in a grimace at the bad memory. “He didn’t defect, I’m sure of it. He had a good reason to release Amicon and go off the grid. I just can’t grasp what it is.”