“Yeah?” I boggled at her sarcastically. “Well, if that day comes, I’ll have to think of some other way to get myself killed, won’t I. Any reason you’re still here?”
She held out a tiny plastic baggie that I thought was empty at first glance, but a closer look revealed that it contained two tiny flecks of matter—one white, one black. “Place the white one in your ear. The black one clips onto the inside of your teeth. Miniature transmitters. So the four of us can be in constant contact. Don’t lose them, they cost a lot of money.”
I held the baggie in front of my eye, turning it over and over. One might easily have mistaken the contents for a grain of rice and a dead spider. “What will they think of next.”
“Quantum tunneling is a miraculous technology,” she said, knowing full well that it would irk me. “I’ll be monitoring the three of you from Salvation Station.”
“Well, try not to get a stomach ulcer worrying about us,” I muttered, settling in my chair in an “I would like you to leave now” sort of way. “Hate to think you were being plying inconvenienced at all.”
Again, I could tell without looking that she was rolling her eyes. “Feel free to take off as soon as Derby and Sturb come aboard. I take it you won’t want to fraternize for long.”
“Great,” I said, clutching the joysticks. “Just wait until the two supervillains get onboard, then proceed with the crimes. Got it. Maybe I’ll make them some plying tea and biscuits while they figure out how they’re going to destroy the galaxy with their share of the fee.”
She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. She stopped at the cockpit hatch. “You know, this hero-villain thing is a sign of intellectual laziness. I suspect it comes of wanting to live an adventure story. What is ‘good’? What is ‘bad’?”
“It’d be ‘good’ if you plied off.”
“You were a star pilot for years,” she continued, regardless. “Saving lives, helping to build spacegoing society. Then Quantunneling comes out and you’re left practically destitute. Was that ‘good’? Was that just?”
I heaved a sigh and surrendered to this inescapable conversation. “You didn’t do it ’cos you were expecting a reward. The villains were trying to hurt the innocent or take over the galaxy and you stopped them because no one else would.”
“And how are all these ‘innocents’ you mentioned now? Now that star pilots are no longer around to solve their problems for them?”
I spun my chair around and peered at her from under my cap. “Don’t you have to be back on Salvation? Making sure Blaze has enough hot lemon drinks?”
It took me a few moments to figure out what she was doing with her face, because I could have sworn she looked guilty, and that would have been absurd. “I just think it’s a waste that you find this kind of work so unconscionable. I remember how you worked the president of the United Republic. You have a natural gift for confidence trickery.”
I cocked my head. “What is this? You don’t have to butter me up anymore. I’m already doing your plying stupid heist that’s going to get us all killed. You just make sure those scientists are ready.”
She was staring at her shoes. “For the record, I am sorry. I wouldn’t have enlisted you for this if I hadn’t thought it was completely necessary.”
“You’re serious. You’re actually trying to make amends.” I spun my chair back around. “Don’t bother. The best thing you can do for that is go forth and multiply.”
“Goodbye, McKeown,” she spat, offended.
I listened to her sensible shoes clang-clanging down the gangway and out the airlock, and when silence finally fell, I felt a twinge of guilt. That had probably been the exact opposite of “being the bigger man.” As she would no doubt be happy to patiently explain with her usual infuriatingly superior tone of voice, there really wasn’t any specific reason to be mad at her about any of this. Blaze needed the antidote, and the arrangement had been completely upfront, if you didn’t count the whole “illegal heist” thing. Blowing her off wasn’t helping any. Plying satisfying as it was.
Sturb arrived well on time, knocking politely on the airlock wall. “Hello? Anyone in?”
“Set up in the passenger cabin,” I called down the gangway. “We go as soon as Derby gets here.”
“Hello again, Captain, looking forward to working with you,” said Sturb. I heard him stomp clumsily up the steps and pass through the hatch into the cabin. A moment later, he poked his head back out into the gangway. “Captain?”
“What now?”
“Derby’s already in here.”
“Indeed,” came Derby’s voice from the cabin. “Let us not prolong this grubby little venture any further than is needed.”
“You—” I began yelling down the hall before I remembered there was a perfectly good intercom for this. I thumbed the speaker button and tried to keep my voice level reasonable. “You could have told me you’d arrived.”
“Davisham Derby is a master of stealth.” There was a brief pause and a clinking of porcelain as he paused for a casual sip of tea. “Can Davisham Derby be blamed if his instincts unconsciously—”
I released the button to shut him up, then began preparations to fly, mentally running down the preflight safety checklist and disregarding the usual eight or nine items. I sent spaceport ground control a permission-for-takeoff request, and since this was the least effective way to get the brackets to notice you, I also noisily fired my hover jets.
The roof of the spaceport hastily split apart and the Neverdie took off into the glittering sky above Ritsuko City, bouncing jauntily on her vertical jets. The city council had this weird objection to ships attempting to move between buildings, so I would have to ascend to just below dome altitude and then descend to the roof of the Henderson Tower.
The jets were probably overdue for service, so the climb would take a while. I held the Jet Sustain lever down with my foot, made myself comfortable, and flicked on the local news station.
“. . . cycle traffic is fully backed up on downtown Ritsuko’s Leg, extending to Left Elbow, Collarbone, and Right Elbow,” said the traffic reporter from the city-observation platform at the apex of the dome. “There’s also significant slowdown on Shoulder, Armpit, and around both Nipples. So do expect delays if you’re trying to get to Paizuri Pass tonight for the market.”
“And this is all due to the crowd that has formed in the city center?” asked the newsreader in the studio.
“Yes, I assumed that was obvious,” came the testy reply. The observation platform was a long way from the city’s heating coils, and it was a rare traffic reporter that didn’t start harboring resentment about it. “The crowds are still packed shoulder to shoulder around Henderson Tower.”
“Chock-a-block, Steve?”
“Yes, that’s another way it could be described,” said Steve. “Tell you what, why don’t you come up here and we can sit around thinking of all kinds of ways to say the same damn thing.”
“Okay, Steve, talk to you later.”
My ears had prickled at the mention of Henderson Tower, and that prickle had now spread to all my body’s most uncomfortable crevices. Jacques McKeown couldn’t possibly have a following that big. The convention was probably catering to a couple of fan bases. Hell, going by how freely Daniel was spending his father’s money, maybe he was just drawing a crowd by chucking handfuls of euroyen off the balcony.
“If you’re just joining us, the only news anyone is talking about is that Jacques McKeown, the megapopular author who has never given interviews and whose true identity is a complete mystery, is making his first-ever appearance at Jacques McCon today,” said the radio presenter professionally.
“Mm, could be one of the most significant cultural events in modern history, Linda,” said the other presenter. “Over the years Jacques McKeown has been rumored to be dead, alive, lost somewhere in the depths of space, th
e daughter of the Terran president, and everything in between, so interest in this is huge. Some have decried him as a hack who stole all his best stories from struggling star pilots, and who writes for fat nerds with arrested development, but if those crowds out there are telling us anything, it’s that today it’s chic to be geek.”
“It sure is,” said Linda, her voice dripping with self-disgust.
I swallowed hard. I’d been hoping for a somewhat lower profile than this. Suddenly that email I had sent to Frobisher was starting to feel uncomfortably premature.
A spark flew off the socket where the altitude warning light was supposed to be, so I cut off the vertical jets and set a course toward the roof of the Henderson Tower.
“This just in,” said Linda, interrupting some completely vapid speculation on what the well-dressed star pilots were wearing this season. “We’ve just heard reports that a spaceship is coming toward the roof of the convention center now. Steve?”
“Yes, I’m still here,” said Steve the traffic reporter spitefully. “It’s a red ship, exactly the kind of thing you’d expect a star pilot to fly. I think we’ve got it on the Dome Cam now, so you can see for yourself.”
I peered up through my cockpit viewers at the upside-down tower that hung from the center of Ritsuko City’s dome like a rectangular stalactite. The viewing platform at the very bottom was clearly angled toward me, and I suddenly felt naked.
“Now, what do you make of that, Linda?” asked the second studio presenter.
“Well, if that is Jacques McKeown’s ship, then obviously he places a lot of importance on authenticity,” replied Linda. “You’ve got to think, someone with his kind of money and popularity would be able to afford a ship that isn’t so—”
I swiftly reached out and snapped the radio off, because I’d decided I didn’t want to know how that sentence was going to end, and neither did the Neverdie. Lord knows I was in the doghouse enough already.
Another thought occurred, one that I hadn’t thought in some time, but which for a while had been making me wake up with a start each morning and fumble for my gun: this might be exactly the kind of thing that the real Jacques McKeown would notice. After I stole his royalties, and while I’d been dishing it out to the deserving star pilots, I’d spent the whole time peering over my shoulder like a nervous meerkat, but no one had come forward to try to stop me. It came to the point that I was approaching every blind alley and closed door hoping he’d finally jump out with a knife and put an end to all the plying anticipation.
Eventually, after a sufficient amount of nothing had happened, I’d decided he didn’t know about what I was doing with his money. After all, he’d never cared about collecting it, because apparently he lived under a rock with all the other small wriggling life forms. But he’d have to be living under Olympus plying Mons not to notice this.
Suddenly, I remembered the miniature transmitter that Warden had given me, and fumbled with the baggie. The speaker very nearly fell right down the back of my seat cushion, to be lost amid the discarded grains of rice from countless sushi-sandwich lunches, but I caught it just in time and stuffed it down my ear.
“. . . must be thousands of them,” came the voice of Malcolm Sturb, as clear as if he were in the room.
“Huh,” said Derby, reluctantly impressed. “I must learn not to underestimate the credulity of the masses. Little boys no longer grow up, it seems, they merely expand.”
I clipped the microphone onto my tooth, very nearly spearing myself through the gum in the process. “Ow.”
“Are you reading us, McKeown?” asked Warden, from some no doubt extremely comfortable chair back on Salvation.
“Loud and clear.”
“I was just saying, Captain,” said Sturb. “It was a good idea of yours to bring the heist forward to tonight. There must be thousands of Jacques McKeown fans down there. One of them would almost certainly figure you out before Sunday.”
“Hmph,” bristled Warden. “They may yet figure it out before tonight, looking at these numbers.”
“So what do you suggest we do about that?” I asked archly. “Bit late to turn around and pretend we were never here. They’ve noticed the ship now.”
And as the Neverdie drew closer to the rooftop landing pad on Henderson Tower, I could see that quite a crowd had formed to notice the ship. Some of them were holding up signs that were still too far away to read, but more than enough meaning was conveyed from the prevalence of hearts drawn with the careful curves and diligent shading of the truly psychotic.
The landing pad was clear, though not because of any self-restraint on the part of the fans; bikers surrounded the perimeter of the landing ring, looking like slightly overdressed professional wrestlers as they stood in alert poses, aggressively shoving back anyone who tried to get closer. Safety didn’t seem to be their main concern, however, as Daniel Henderson himself was in the middle, staring adoringly up at me. He was standing in the perfect spot to be “accidentally” decapitated by the emerging claws of a descending landing leg.
I won’t deny that the thought crossed my mind, as did the one about ditching the whole caper and speeding away. But despite everything, I still didn’t have it in me to wish death on Daniel Henderson. He just wanted to be liked and hang out with space heroes. It wasn’t his fault that his dad had been too busy slitting throats to learn how to be a proper father.
“Captain? I’ve had a little brain wave, if you’ll indulge me,” said Sturb. “We could help you out, if you want. I’ve got Jimi with me. If you need any help with their questions, we can feed you information on Jacques McKeown’s books through your earpiece.”
“Tha-a-anks.” I sarcastically extended the word until it was fully three syllables long. “But don’t worry, Sturb. No star pilot needs help with the details of Jacques McKeown’s traccy books. He ripped them all off from people I know.” A moment passed. “Ex. Ex–star pilot. You know what I meant.”
“Are you sure?”
“You just stay on the ship and stay quiet. So I don’t have to worry about you mind slaving people on top of everything else.”
“Okay, if that’s what you want.” Sturb sounded slightly hurt. I was getting more and more annoyed with him. He’d shown much more commitment back when I was saving planets from his cyborg collective, but I felt like I was the only one still putting the effort into our mutual hatred.
“Of course he won’t accept,” said Derby. “Have you forgotten? He’s a dashing space hero, and we are foul villains, and he can’t be seen associating with us, because he may never again be allowed to join the other dashing heroes when they have a great big bubble bath together and pat each other’s backs for being such paragons of do-gooding.”
I allowed the conversation to dribble away into seething silence and concentrated on landing. The ship was directly above the landing pad now, and I could no longer see Daniel Henderson, so I’d just have to finish the descent and hope he wasn’t so starstruck that he wouldn’t get out of the way when the landing legs came out.
I could still see part of the crowd, though, bubbling away at the bottom of my view like the vat of boiling oil into which I was willingly lowering myself. They seemed to have stopped trying to force their way closer and were now mostly staring in wonder at the Neverdie, some with their mouths hanging open, the rest coughing up exhaust fumes.
The landing legs thumped down onto the tarmac, and I felt the ship creak and rattle as it settled, accompanied by the backing vocals of the deactivating jets.
As I gripped the armrests of my chair to stand, it suddenly struck me that this was the very last point of no return. I could still conceivably stay where I was, reactivate the jets, and speed off to somewhere nice and quiet to hide, preferably somewhere with a soft floor into which I could bury the corpses of Derby and Sturb after I had shot them both in the head.
I chewed on my upper lip for a s
econd, listening to the crowd’s halted, expectant murmur. Then I stood up and made my way to the airlock.
If I ever did acquire the ability to travel back in time and kick myself in the doints, and the moment I’d first agreed to the heist was fully booked up by other future versions of myself, then this moment would have been my second choice.
Chapter 8
As I opened the Neverdie’s external airlock door, everything descended into chaos. The roar of the crowd was a tidal wave washing away all other sound. A fusillade of camera flashes popped and snapped at me from every angle. All I could do was stand there dumbly in the middle of this assault of light and noise, like a weather balloon in a fireworks display.
A large black shape that smelled like Mr. Heller appeared to my left, and something meaty and powerful clamped around my arm like the jaws of a playful hippo. Then I was hurried past a heaving mass of fans that a row of bikers was just barely keeping back, and bundled into a narrow maintenance hallway.
Heller was joined by a second bodyguard who took my other arm, and my feet barely touched the floor as I was propelled along a concrete passage like an urgently needed kidney through the corridors of a hospital. Finally, I was brought to a door with a handmade sign reading Green Room and practically hurled inside.
The green room also had much of a hospital about it—a hospital just behind the frontlines of a bitter, prolonged trench war. The soft couches and coffee tables that had been set up for my benefit were virtually all being occupied by moaning patients with a variety of blunt-impact and crush injuries. About half were bikers, and the rest I assumed were convention staff; they were younger, wearing T-shirts adorned with the logos I’d seen on the convention posters, and many of them seemed to be suffering from their pimples having traumatically burst.
“All right!” said Daniel Henderson, who had apparently been hustled along directly behind me. He was drenched in sweat, and his grin had acquired the merest hint of mania. “Great turnout this year, guys. Whew. Oh, Mr. Heller, hey, I left my tablet on the helipad, could you get it?”
Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash Page 8