Her Last Run

by Michael Penmore

  “Bueno!” Pace’s Santiago broke the laws of physics and grinned even more radiantly than before. “Now step aside, sergeant, and let me do my job. Sí? We’re going to see the Captain. We’re late already. When we’re done with that, you’ll get your orders to move out.”

  The sergeant stepped out of their way, but his eyes stayed locked on Nadie. Santiago-Pace didn’t waste time in leading his ‘escort’ through the hangar floor to avoid any more contests or disgruntled outbursts. His acting skills improved, Isabel noted begrudgingly. The fake Santiago he’d pulled out on the spot was almost as good as the original. Maybe they did stand some chance of success, after all.

  “That was close,” Dreyfus whispered when they entered a brilliantly illuminated hallway leading in both directions. Nobody was there, so the jarhead thought it was a good time for his own brand of advice. “Nadie, don’t step out of line unasked. We’re the lowliest of low, pawns in the games of others. If we accept it and act like we don’t matter, no one will look at us twice.”

  “Easy for you to say. All my mind is telling me to do is shoot those turds until there’s no one left,” Nadie confessed frankly and pulled at her collar again. “This thing is too snug. It rubs my skin the wrong way. It’s choking me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the uniform. Keep it together,” Pace admonished her. The Arbiter kept his focus on the job. There was a bank of two mag-lifts close to their right, and that’s where he guided his steps from there. Nadie jumped in front of him and pressed the call button only several hundred times in a row. She knew as well as everyone else that it didn’t speed up the lifts in any way. It was just her nerves fraying further.

  “Keep it under the lid. We need to stay quiet,” while Pace warned her specifically, it was a timely reminder for the whole group.

  A crewman passed them by without showing any interest. Dreyfus was right, they were like thin air as long as they embraced their unimportance. When the lift showed up, they boarded it all at once.

  “Executive deck,” Pace threw the command as Santiago would. The lift closed its doors and zipped upwards.

  Nadie punched a wall with her bare fist. The cabin shook. The lighting dimmed and fluttered on and off for two seconds before it steadied back to where it was initially. The lift kept on going like nothing happened.

  “Come on, friend. Be the kickass girl I love to know. We’re almost up there with the stars of this crappy show now.” As soon as Isabel had done the comforting, the mag-lift came to a halt. They filed out into a large square lobby. The lights of the executive deck were dimmer than the ones in the hangar bay. The lamps tried to imitate sunlight, but their low intensity only managed to convey the moment when the sun reached the horizon. The floor was smothered by an exuberant red carpet, high pile, a type you’d expect from the President of the Earth Council’s office, not an army troop ship. It had a blue circular logo of the Earth Expeditionary Forces in the middle with words running in a circle: EES Force Majeure - Higher Power.

  “French name? They should’ve kept it,” Isabel mused.

  Four doors led out of the lobby, two on each wall panelled with fake pale wood. The walls had foldable chairs in them, tokens of minimal comfort for anyone stuck in the business of waiting. Offices then, thought Isabel. She looked the place up and down. A single metal bench stood to the centre floor near the end of the room. It faced an impressive wall-high porthole staring at a wide vista of star-studded space. Two leafy self-watering plants flanked the long seat in large pots. Oh, how romantic. Isabel told herself to sigh in annoyance the next time she was alone. She couldn’t say from the distance if the flora was real or a knock-off. Her thumb was everything but green.

  “Wait here until I come back,” Pace ordered the rest of them. “I’ll convince the Captain to release us.”

  Isabel’s head was spinning. She had just become aware of the amount of soldierly inconsistencies around her. Or was it consistency, but taken to an extreme? The Higher Power’s leader was called the Captain. Pace was impersonating a Captain. Dreyfus was a Captain in the USSMC. According to the late Captain Santiago, Isabel was now a Captain, too. Did that mean all of them were equal? Could she order the ship and crew around as she liked? Or was there some sort of invisible distinction she failed to grasp? She quickly abandoned further musings on the subject because her brain was starting to turn into mushy soup. One more stab at comprehension, and it would pour out of her head. Maybe all those pesky ranks were the reason every army type she had met seemed so kicked in the head?

  “And how do you intend to do that?” she asked Pace.

  “Leave the fine details to me. I can be very persuasive.”

  “And if you don’t come back?”

  Pace dodged answering her question by walking straight through the nearest door on the left. It was the one guarded by a solitary guard in navy blue. The sentry looked at the remaining three for a sec but quickly moved his interest to a handheld device playing videos of cats or some such idle nonsense.

  It is a well-known fact that guards get bored on sentry duty. It is perhaps far less established that they enjoy watching frolicking Maine Coons all throughout that repetitive task. If you take a peek, they’ll hide it or quickly change the channel to sports, but don’t be fooled. It’s Maine Coons from the morning ablutions right to lights out. And don’t get me started on the graveyard shift! That’s the wild, uncharted land best described by one word: Calicos!

  Rocarion looked after the disappearing Arbiter and mouthed the word jerk. Then she waved her fellow fake EEFers to join her at the end of the room, next to the majestic view of those stellar dwarfs and giants which provided specks of colour to the mostly black fabric of outer space.

  “Knowing EEFers, Pace is gonna stay in that room until the end of days. How far do we trust him?”

  “Same as you. Not as far as I can throw him,” Dreyfus admitted.

  “He’s the leader on this mission,” Nadie observed but it was a bland statement. She was still rattled. Isabel decided her friend needed some action to spice up her life. That would take her mind off whatever nasty place she was treading right now.

  “I have a bad feeling about this waiting. We should find our own way out of here. Best that comes to mind is to disable what’s keeping the Anvil nailed to the floor. Then we’ll fly straight out of here,” she made a gesture of flying with one hand.

  “Infiltration. Agreed.” Nadie’s eyes shimmered as she gave a nod.

  “I’m with her,” Dreyfus cocked his head to Nadie. “One condition: we kill no one.”

  “Agreed,” Nadie said quickly. “Isa?”

  “OK. No killing,” the gunrunner conceded, although the promise tied her hands in case of a close call. She knew Nadie enough to tell they were thinking along the same lines: they were saying yes now, but threat assessments would guide their steps later.

  Nadie forked up the next question. “What about Pace? We can’t leave him behind.”

  “I would love nothing better.” Isabel looked back to see if the guard had picked up on anything they said so far. He was so engrossed in his domestic mammals he wouldn’t notice if she produced a ten-foot-long pole and re-enacted the pole vault from the last summer Olympics. “He still hasn’t told us where we’ll find Libertalia. He’s got a radio on him, right? We’ll call him once we’re back in my cockpit and ready to go.”

  “And if he’s not ready by then?” Dreyfus asked.

  “Adios, auf wiedersehen, ciao Mr. Pace. Good riddance. We can find some other place for the lost sheep resting in my hold. With my connections, it won’t take much more than one call over the long space.”

  Nadie sucked her lip, thinking intensely. “What about his intel? He knows too much about the resistance? We can’t just leave him here. He’d lead them straight to Libertalia. And other places where our fight for freedom is still going strong.”

  “Your fight isn’t going strong anywhere,” Isabel remarked. Nadie’s face clouded and that told her may
be she was taking it too fast with the career rebel. There was some easing to be done, but she didn’t feel like playing deaf and dumb to her own doubts. “Are we even sure that Libertalia exists, girl?”

  The more Isabel thought about it, the less she was convinced that the secret colony was real. The logistics of setting up a separate colony from scratch were complex to the level of crazy. The Science Consortium needed years of planning before they started sending in drones for survey and terraforming, and they were the big league. Basically, they had a monopoly on deep space habitats. How could the measly resistance match that level of planning and resource allocation? They couldn’t.

  She wanted Libertalia to be true. She would be happy to find that eleventh colony. But was she a believer? Would she joyfully die for a mirage? Not in your wettest dreams, jolly chap.

  “Consider what we know about Pace. He’s a guarded, selfish shnitz. He might just be pulling crab out of his backside to keep us playing our parts quietly without asking questions he can’t answer.”

  “If that’s true then he might be selling us to the ship’s Captain right now,” Dreyfus came up in Isabel’s support, even though he pulled a face that showed clearly this was a temporary truce.

  “So you can sometimes think, dredge fuzz,” she paid him back. “I bet that’s what he’s doing right now. We’re doomed if we stay here, Nadie.”

  “I’m as suspicious as you are but until we know for sure, let’s keep all options on the table,” Nadie said. “We’ll worry about Pace after we’ve done what needs to be done. First order of business, disable the anchor holding the Anvil in place. Any ideas where we might start looking for it?”

  That was the old Nadie Isabel knew and admired. Her friend was again thinking straight and to the point. Give the girl something to do and she will overdeliver. That said, Isabel hadn't the slightest notion where to look for the off switch.

  “It’s on the second lowest deck, near the ship’s central axis,” Dreyfus came to the rescue. Nadie and Isabel looked at him as if they just noticed a sentient alien land on the roof with a big sign advertising the interplanetary girl scout cookie sale.

  “That’s detailed,” said Isabel.

  The ex-Captain explained why he was so confident: “I was the boy with hoopla about space, and I read a lot of ship schematics in that time. This unit bears a close resemblance with the old BG-39 Interstellar Transport. It might even be the exact same design.”

  “See? He’s got his uses,” Nadie told Isabel with a satisfied smirk.

  “We’ll see about that,” Isabel grumbled and moved for the mag-lift.

  * 7 *

  The briefing room was spacious but steeped in darkness. One of the walls was entirely transparent, but it had been dimmed on purpose. The only source of light came from a long conference table set in the part of the room farther from the door. That’s where the ship’s Captain sat with two other high-ranking officers - one naval in a deep blue uniform, one army in olive green. They all sloped over what the table’s surface displayed: a big tactical map of Rockwall’s surface, with troop movements updated in real time. It was the progress of EEF ground assault.

  “They’re moving fast. Where’s the fighting?” the ship’s Captain growled, anxious about the Higher Power’s delay in joining the invasion.

  “I think the colons surrendered, sir,” his naval commander offered.

  “Surrendered? All of them? How punking disappointing. Here I was hoping for some real fight for a change.” The ship’s Captain looked up. The corners of his lips drew even lower than they were already when he saw who had entered the room. “Santiago! What took you so long? One little smuggler is too much for you, Spanish guy?” He waited for the man to burst out in Spanish and remind him that he was a South American, not a European. He knew something was not right when the expected response didn’t come. The impatient look turned into a frown of surprise and mild concern. “Where’s the monkey thingie?”

  “We need to talk in private,” Santiago fired away. His rank was subordinate to everyone else in the room, but the ship’s Captain quickly granted his request.

  “Go check the troops one final time. Tell them they’re going out in five.”

  The senior officers walked out without objection. As they did, the army one glowered at Santiago with contempt, but the Army Captain didn’t react at all. It was an old, known animosity. As long as the men didn’t jump at each other’s throats, the ship’s Captain saw no reason to get involved.

  The ship’s Captain reclined in his chair and put his arms across his chest. He didn’t either like or dislike Juan Santiago, but if the trooper leader didn’t deliver according to orders, there would be hell to pay for the failure. For both of them. “Well, Santiago? I gave you one simple task and you seem to have botched it. What’s so important that you have to hold up the entire assault group on V-day?”

  Santiago closed the distance between him and the table. He put one hand on the surface, temporarily distorting the image of a platoon of EEF ground forces crossing a ridge on the way to one of Rockwall’s villages. With his other hand, he reached under the tunic and delivered a small black box. The letters DK were engraved over the narrow metallic fastening.

  “What’s that? Don’t tell me you vapourised the monkey! I’ll be very angry if you did! The command wanted it pretty bad!”

  “This is bio-stasis. It arrests the degradation of genetic material. Look inside.” Santiago opened the box. Inside was a tuft of hair.

  “What’s that? You plan to clone yourself? Infest the universe with little Santiagos? Sneezy Bolivians taking over the world by numbers?” the ship’s Captain laughed at what he obviously thought was a hilarious joke. Santiago didn’t move one muscle in his face.

  “Not myself, Captain. The chameleon-monkey. Observe closely.” Santiago lifted a single strip of hair from the box. The strand shimmered on the air and kept changing in hue until it matched its surroundings perfectly. It seemed to go even further and turn itself transparent for a short time.

  “Incredible! So it is true! The perfect camouflage…” the ship’s Captain reached out across the table, hoping to pluck the hair from Santiago’s hand. Santiago resisted by closing the tuft in a fist which he pulled out of his commanding officer’s reach. “What do you think you are doing, Santiago? Give it here!”

  “Not yet. First, you have to do something for me.”

  “Do something for you? Haha! You inconsequential Bolivian shnitz! You’re forgetting I’m your CO, for Jupiter’s sakes! Hand it over right now, or I’ll fire you out the aft!”

  “Now, now, now. That’s not the way you want to speak to me.” The quiet threat in Santiago’s profoundly transformed voice dominated the whole room.

  It was not the Bolivian’s voice. Pace was speaking, velvety and foreboding syllables stepping out in neat order. He opened his mouth wide and removed the pea-sized device from the crevice under his tongue. His face instantly flickered to its original hard shape and to a bored expression of someone who’s been forced to sit through another boring lecture by a teacher who had nothing new or exciting to say.

  “You!” the ship’s Captain fell back into his chair as though struck down by a speeding bullet.

  Pace remained where he was. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I do!” the ship’s Captain felt a wave of fire spread over him, from the arches of his soles to the tips of his fingers. As the first shock passed and the nerve-tingling paralysis reduced to a mere inconvenience, he sprang back to his feet and fumbled with his belt. “Gah!” was the only word that came out as he realised he’d left his service blaster in his quarters this morning. But it didn’t bother him for long. He wanted a fight and this was it.

  The Captain looked at Pace, and a devilish smile blossomed on his thin lips. He jumped on the tabletop, scrambling the entire battle feed into delicate squares of light rising from the table. Jumbled pieces of data struggled to translate themselves into a visual feed. “Come to kill me, Col
on? I don’t know how you managed this dirty little trick with looking exactly like Santiago, but it will be the last thing you’ve done, period! Prepare for the fight of your meaningless little life!”

  The ship’s Captain jumped off the table on Pace’s side and swung viciously with both arms, trying to reach his face. Pace stepped back deftly. Never the one to be discouraged from brawling, the ship‘s Captain kept swinging in a quick succession of uppercuts and straight punches, but he wasn’t fast enough. The Arbiter of Colonial Congress was always a fraction of a second faster, even when the attacker tried to fake his moves. A dance ensued, with the Captain a wild whirling dervish and Pace a disciplined waltzing lead.

  “Stay still, frogger! I’m gonna grind you to a pulp!”

  “Doubtful. I will keep moving until you calm down or exhaust your strength, whichever comes first.” Pace wasn’t concerned at all. He saw he was approaching a bulkhead behind him, so the Arbiter waited for the right moment and ducked under the Captain’s jab. The officer snarled, pivoted and tried to land a strike after strike, again and again, but the same thing kept happening. Pace was too fast to be caught by any of the punches. And he didn’t hit back.

  “What did you do with Santiago?” the attacker gasped out between lunges. His strokes grew slower and slower as his breath shortened.

  “Nothing. I wasn’t involved in that unfortunate accident. I regret to say it left him unable to continue in service to Earth,” Pace said in a flat way suggesting that regret had never entered his mind. “Can we stop this pointless dance now and talk like civilised people?”

  The ship’s Captain paused to catch his breath. He placed his hands on his thigh fronts and breathed deeply. “Just give me a sec. You’re one fast klutz, do you know that, Colon? Of course you know.” Without giving notice, he broke into a run to try and tackle Pace.