Star Raider

by Jake Elwood

  People here were different from Camulod. They seemed shorter, for one thing, and more likely to be swarthy. Not that you could really make generalizations. Cristobal was a port city, with people from all over the galaxy. That was what she was really noticing, she realized. The diversity. Back home, most people looked more or less the same.

  It made it easier for her to blend in, she realized happily. Among people of every race and size and accent, it would have taken real effort to stand out.

  The excitement of her flight was wearing off, and she was suddenly weary and cold. For the first time she wondered what she should do next. She glanced around, searching for inspiration, and found a woman staring at her, a frown on her face.

  Lark reacted without thought, turning, darting between a couple of pedestrians and into the street. A taxi loomed, she remembered the bracelet on her wrist, and she flagged it down. She piled into the taxi, then gave the only place name she could think of. "Spaceport."

  The cab rolled into motion. "What building, please?" said a smooth mechanical voice from the front dash.

  Lark stared blankly out the windshield for a moment, then said, "I don't know. Take me to the hangars."

  She sagged back in her seat, wondering if she was making a terrible mistake. Cassie would take her back to Child Services! That woman in the street was probably just wondering why a little kid was outside without a rain coat. It meant nothing. Lark reached for the door handle and opened her mouth to tell the cab to stop.

  But it was cold outside, and raining, and she had nowhere to go. And Cassie had cared for her, in her way, for a little while at least. Surely, if Lark told her about Greta selling her out, Cassie wouldn’t send her back.

  And in the meantime, whatever happened, the taxi was warm and dry.

  All her courage exhausted, all her bravado gone, Lark wrapped her arms around her knees, stared through the rain-spattered windshield, and told herself everything was going to be all right.

  "We are approaching the spaceport," the taxi said. "Where would you like to be dropped off?"

  Lark roused herself and looked at the building. A blue and gold tower looked familiar, and she directed the taxi toward it. Soon she recognized the street where she and Cassie had first caught a taxi. After a couple of false starts she found the side street leading to Holcroft's hangar. The taxi pulled up in front and she got out, feeling the rain patter against her hair, wondering what was going to happen next.

  A door with "Hangar Seven" written on it promised warmth and freedom from rain, so she hurried forward. The door slid open and she stepped inside, rubbing her arms. Her shirt was damp, and she continued rubbing her arms as she looked around for the Raffles. She kept a wary eye out for Holcroft, a man she instinctively distrusted, but the only people in sight were busy servicing ships.

  The Raffles was a low, elegant shape near the back wall, and she smiled as she recognized it. If Cassie turned her away she didn't know what she would do. Her stomach took nervous tumbles as she walked, but she couldn't quite squash a rising sense of relief. She was safe now.

  An electric tingle deep in her left ear made her falter. She looked around, suddenly terrified. No one seemed to be paying her the slightest attention, though. Every person in sight wore greasy coveralls. There couldn't be anyone from her father in the hangar. It was impossible.

  But her data implant was tingling. She had a call coming in. Implants couldn't handle the faster-than-light signals that made interstellar communication possible. A call meant someone local.

  And Lark didn't know anyone local. Only Cassie, and Cassie wouldn't have her protocols and contact code.

  That just left her father. He was here. More likely, some agent of his was in Cristobal to collect her. He knew she was gone from Child Services, and he was calling her and hoping she'd be dumb enough to answer.

  Resolutely ignoring the tingle, she started toward the Raffles again. And the tingle started to hit in time with her left foot. Every time she stepped down, her implant tingled. Which made no sense.

  Lark stopped, and the tingle stopped.

  She started walking, and the tingle resumed, in perfect time with her steps. Could the implant be malfunctioning? She'd never heard of a glitch like this, but it was the only explanation she could think of. She continued toward the ship, managed a dozen steps, and finally gave in. With a sigh of exasperation she tilted her head at just the right angle and clicked her back teeth together to open a connection. She was about to click her teeth again to break the connection, hoping that would clear the problem, when Roger's voice spoke in her ear.

  "Stop. Don't approach the ship."

  Lark froze.

  "You're under observation," Roger said. "Try to be less conspicuous."

  She stood there, helplessly frozen by indecision, then gathered herself. There was a ship just to the right of the Raffles, a gray corvette with the looks of a warship. She walked toward it, gaping up at the ship with her best look of wide-eyed wonder. She had the Raffles in her peripheral vision, and a jolt went through her as she saw a vaguely humanoid robot standing immobile in front of Cassie's ship.

  "Roger!" she whispered excitedly. "There's a robot in front of the nose!"

  "I'm aware of that," Roger said calmly. "Try not to stare."

  Lark turned her back on the Raffles and strolled along in front of the corvette. She could see the robot in her mind's eye, painted in stripes of white and dark blue. "I think it's a police robot," she murmured.

  "You are correct," said Roger.

  "Oh," she said, feeling foolish. "I guess I'm not really helping."

  "You could help a great deal, if you're willing," said Roger.

  Lark felt her pulse increase. "What's going on? Where's Cassie?"

  "Cassandra is in a great deal of trouble, I'm afraid," said Roger. "She has been arrested, and the ship has been impounded."

  "Oh, my god." Lark's feet faltered to a stop, and this time she decided she was far enough away from the robot that it didn't matter. "What can we do?"

  "I have a plan," Roger told her. "It will require you to break the law and to take some risks. Are you willing?"

  Lark thought about the alternative, which involved being dragged back to her father's apartment, and bared her teeth in a savage grin. "Where do I start?"

  "Circle around the LX87," Roger said.

  "Huh?"

  "The ship to your left." There was no impatience in Roger's voice. "The corvette."

  "Oh. Right." Lark started walking.

  "You'll approach the Raffles from behind," Roger continued. "I'll give you further instructions when you arrive."

  Lark walked around the corvette, fighting the urge to hurry. She made herself gape up at the ship, but she barely saw it. It seemed to take forever to circle around the nose of the sprawling corvette, but at last she was between the ship and the back wall of the hangar. There was no one in sight, and she picked up the pace. As she came up behind the Raffles she opened her mouth to report her position to Roger, but he spoke first.

  "There's a hidden hatch on the underside," the AI said. "Do you know what a condenser vane looks like?"

  "Um, no."

  "Look for an elongated triangle just to the right of the center line of the ship. No, further to your right."

  Lark looked more to the right, wondering where the ship's cameras were. Roger seemed to know exactly where she was. She found the vane, a flat piece of metal that tapered to a point, and rapped it with a knuckle. "Is this it?"

  "Yes," said Roger. Then, with a hiss, a meter-wide panel slid open, revealing an opening on the underside of the hull. "Climb in as quickly as..." Roger let his voice trail off as Lark scrambled through the hatch and into the ship.

  She was in a narrow, cramped space hardly bigger than the toybox back at Child Services. When the hatch slid shut it was quite dark. A few tiny lights on the wall gave a weak illumination, and she held still as she waited for her eyes to adjust. "What a dumb place for a hatch," she m
uttered. "Why didn't you put it somewhere convenient?"

  "Because then it wouldn't be hidden."

  "Oh. Right." She worked her way forward on hands and knees, bumping her ribs on bits of ship's equipment that intruded into the crawl space. The passage widened, and she was able to rise to her feet when she reached a flimsy hatch. She opened the hatch and found herself in the main corridor that ran from the cockpit to the galley.

  "I need you to collect some equipment from a locker just aft of the galley," Roger said. He guided her along until she found the locker, then told her to look for an elastic headband with a blue disc on the front. The disk was a camera. When she had the headband in place he was able to see everything she did. Roger described half a dozen tools, and Lark rummaged through the locker, holding up one device after another in front of the little camera. A few things were familiar, like a laser cutter and a mass driver, but the rest were just mysterious mechanical shapes.

  When all of her pockets and both of her hands were full, Roger sent her back through the crawl space and out the hidden hatch.

  Her job, Roger explained, was to disable a panel the police had sealed to the hull of the Raffles. The panel, unfortunately, was on the side of the ship, in easy view of the police robot if it happened to turn its head. "It has been two hours since the robot took up its position," Roger assured her. "Its head has not moved in that time."

  Of course, for two hours there hadn't been a kid fifteen meters away making noise with a bunch of tools. Lark tried not to dwell on the thought. I'll be as quiet as a butterfly in vacuum. She crept around the side of the Raffles, rolling her feet from heel to toe to keep the noise of her steps to a minimum. The panel was chest-high, square, as wide as her shoulders and as deep as the width of her palm. She set down the tools in her hands with infinite care, then took the mass driver out of her pocket and set to work.

  Roger talked her through every step. She deactivated a magnetic seal at each corner of the panel, then lifted away the front to expose the insides. Roger had her play the camera over the interior of the panel, which looked like an incomprehensible jumble of electronics to Lark. She used various tools to drain power from capacitors, solidify the mercury in a mercury switch, and cut through a couple of wires. Other than a faint hum from the mass driver, she managed to work in almost perfect silence. The robot, always visible in her peripheral vision, never moved.

  At last Roger told her she was done. "Get ready," he said. "When you make the last cut, an alarm will go off. I'll open the main hatch."

  She picked up a couple of tools, held them awkwardly in her left hand, and lifted the laser cutter. "Higher," said Roger. "A centimeter to the left. Another half a centimeter. There. Cut that wire."

  She pressed a button on the side of the cutter, ruby light flashed, the smell of burning plastic came to her nose, and the robot turned its head.

  "Done," said Roger. A ramp dropped down from the hull beside Lark. She was on board before the ramp touched the floor.

  The ship lifted and shot to one side, sending Lark reeling against the bulkhead beside her. She'd barely regained her footing when a vibration ran through the Raffles, followed immediately by the ship tilting sharply and making a hairpin turn. Lark went tumbling head over heels down the main corridor, squawking and wishing she knew more cuss words. By the time she regained her footing the ship had stopped tumbling around her. She found herself close to the cockpit, so she entered and slid into the co-pilot's seat. There was nothing in sight through the windows but clouds.

  "Please don't touch anything," Roger said.

  "Okay." It seemed somehow more natural to speak to him here, in the cockpit. She thought of him as the brain of the ship, essentially. A click of her teeth broke the connection through her implants. "What are we going to do now?"

  "There is no way to contact Cassandra directly," Roger said, his voice coming from a speaker on the dash. "I fear we will have to engineer a jail break."

  "Wow," Lark said, staring at the speaker. "Okay."

  "I could attempt it on my own," Roger continued. "The odds of success increase significantly if I have your help."

  "Of course," said Lark. "What's the plan?"

  "It's fairly straightforward," Roger said, "although it may sound a bit risky at first. Here's what I need you to do…"

  CHAPTER 7

  Lark stood on a rooftop five stories above the street, rain plastering her hair to her forehead, shivering from a combination of cold and dread. She wore a harness of sorts, made from electrical cable looped around her legs and waist and tied with knot after knot. A cable as thin as a strand of her hair was clipped to the harness. The cable trailed fifty meters or so into the sky, where it was tethered to the Raffles.

  The ship hovered over the gap between Lark's building and City Hall, which loomed on the other side of a wide boulevard. If Roger had his facts straight, the Cristobal police had their holding cells on the fourth floor, just on the far side of the glass and aluminum wall that Lark could see before her. Cassie was right there, hardly any distance away, unless she was in an interrogation room, or giving a deposition in the courtrooms on the ground floor, or any of a thousand other possibilities that Lark didn't want to think about.

  "Get ready," said Roger's voice through her implant. The AI's utter lack of emotion was strangely comforting. It was hard to panic when he insisted on remaining so perfectly calm.

  Something flashed through the air between the ship and the wall of City Hall. Glass shattered, smoke billowed, and aluminum struts gave a tortured scream.

  That was just a warm-up shot, Lark knew. Its purpose was to send innocent bystanders fleeing in terror. As she watched, another flash sent more glass and aluminum flying. There was a long moment of silence, during which the mad thumping of Lark's heart almost drowned out the distant sound of screams and the approaching wail of sirens.

  Then the side of the building exploded. Lark shrieked in spite of herself, throwing up a hand in front of her face. Bits of debris thumped against her forearm and bounced off of her stomach and legs, and someone on the street below let out a bellow of alarm.

  "Now," said Roger, and Lark made herself lower her hand. The wall of City Hall was obscured by billowing smoke, but Roger would know if it was safe to jump.

  Lark ran forward and flung herself off the roof.

  She fell, screaming in spite of her best intentions, and the cable harness bit into her thighs and abdomen. She realized from the rush of the wind that she was swinging forward. A black wall of smoke seemed to hurtle toward her, and she tried to decide whether to let go of the cable long enough to cover her face.

  Then she swung into the smoke, and her stomach dropped as Roger released more cable. She fell, with nothing below her but smoke and broken aluminum struts. She didn't have the breath to tell Roger he'd miscalculated, didn't have the breath to scream again. Then a last wisp of smoke dissipated, the shattered end of a tile floor appeared, and she landed hard, less than a meter from the edge.

  "Get up," said Roger, no trace of sympathy in his voice. "The holding cells are ahead on your right."

  She stood, coughing, and ran forward. Blank grey doors lined the corridor on either side. The cable unspooled behind her as she ran. She scanned the walls, looking for controls that would open a cell. When she came to the holding cells, though, the doors stood open. The fire alarm would have seen to that, she supposed. Two cells stood empty. The third held a burly man who was doubled over, coughing.

  Cassie was coming out of the fourth cell .

  "Cassie!" Lark shouted, and Cassie's head whipped around. "This way!"

  As Cassie came toward her, a man rounded the corner beyond the holding cells. He wore combat armor and carried a long-barreled stunner, and the gun swung, lining up on Cassie's back. Lark clawed at her leg, hauling the stun pistol out of the holster strapped there, and Cassie's eyes went wide. The stun pistol wobbled in Lark's fist, sweat making the butt slick against her palm, and she fired. A white flash la
shed out, far to the side, and Cassie hit the floor.

  The world seemed to narrow until nothing existed but the man, his stunner belching white flame. He must have missed, because Lark was able to fire again, then again. All she could see was the man's chest and the muzzle of his stunner, huge as a flood tunnel, rock-steady in his grip as Lark missed him again.

  Then Cassie's hand plucked the stun pistol from Lark's grip. The pistol hummed twice and the armored cop disappeared, dropping from the narrow tunnel of Lark's vision.

  Lark squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again. There were two cops on the floor, both twitching with the effects of stun blasts. She hadn't even seen the second one.

  The hallway wobbled, and she wondered if Roger was bombing the building again. Finally she realized that Cassie had her by both shoulders and was shaking her.

  "Lark. Lark! What's the plan?"

  Lark stared at her stupidly for a moment, then jerked her head toward the destroyed end of the corridor. "This way." Cassie ran into the smoke, and Lark followed, saying to Roger, "I've got her. We're coming."

  When they reached the broken end of the corridor, Lark shouted, "Grab onto me!" Cassie responded by grabbing the harness on either side of Lark's waist, hoisting her off of her feet, and leaping into space.

  Roger was raising the ship and retracting the cable the instant their feet left the floor. Up and up they rose, until the smoke dissipated and Lark could see the rooftops of the city center far below. A couple of police flitters converged on City Hall and did their best to pursue, but the Raffles was already above flitter altitude.

  They rose until Lark saw the edges of the hatch on either side. The cable went through a pulley on the ceiling of the hatchway. Cassie swung her feet up, got them onto the ramp, and Roger brought the ramp swinging up. A moment later Lark found herself seated on the deck, the hatch sealed, the rescue complete.