by Rachel Aukes
Birk was surprised at how few ran, especially on this lowest level where the most unsavory of Jaders hung out, and he supposed most of these people weren’t used to seeing violence. He would’ve called out to let them know that they were in no danger, but Birk was struggling for breath.
“Slow down,” he panted out.
Finn glanced over his shoulder, and Birk could tell the other man was sweaty. “We’re out in the open,” he said between sucking in breaths. He slowed down a slight bit.
Birk was surprised to see how easily he found working with Finn, for only knowing the guy for a matter of weeks. Their personalities were as different as water and steel. Where Birk took a lighter approach to life, Finn was a brooder. Must’ve been an Alluvian thing, since Nolin was also a downer at any social event.
Birk figured the closeness with Finn came from the way Finn knew his way around a gun and gave off a sense of reliability, not that Birk completely trusted him yet. He didn’t completely trust anyone except Throttle, and she’d more than earned his trust through the years.
They came to a large open space, and the smell of soup made with sweaty socks and radishes wafted out. “Ah, there’s the cafeteria,” he muttered in between inhalations.
They continued running.
“Halt!”
Birk jerked his head around to see a lone guard to his left. The woman had a rifle, but she moved it to the side to talk into a handheld radio. A shot fired, and she went down. Birk snapped back around to see Finn lower his rifle.
On second thought, Birk decided that maybe he didn’t like working with Finn so much after all. Birk admitted he’d always struggled to fight with women, but he had his “mother” at the orphan house to thank for that. She’d drilled in morals and scruples and anything else that she thought would make her kids into something better than the world around them. Since Birk became a pirate when he was still a teenager, he imagined she’d be pretty disappointed.
But Finn didn’t seem bothered with morals or scruples at all. Birk decided he definitely didn’t trust their newest crew member.
“We’ve got more heading our way,” Nolin shouted and pointed behind him with his thumb.
Birk looked to see a wheeled platform loaded with a squad of security forces speeding toward them. In a rush, he checked his map to find the nearest tunnel entrance, knowing there was one near the cafeteria. Sure enough, a tunnel entrance—with a black X over it on the map—was practically at the cafeteria, and he realized there was a tunnel running below it.
“This way,” Birk exclaimed. He turned and made a beeline for the cafeteria. He didn’t look to make sure Nolin and Finn followed. He trusted they were with him as he broke out into a full sprint. The problem was that Birk had to run toward the security forces to reach the cafeteria, and he saw several guards raise their rifles, even though the street still had many pedestrians. One of the troops fired. Birk squeezed off a couple of shots before he made a hard right to the cafeteria. He weaved through tables and chairs, and he heard Nolin and Finn behind him, the trio sounding like a herd of wild beasts running through a trinket shop.
He also heard shouting behind him and knew the security forces had reached the cafeteria and were now on foot. Not taking time to look at the map displayed on his wrist-comm, he searched for the door.
“There.” Finn pointed.
Birk looked and saw Finn stopping a few feet left of Birk’s path. The man went to his knees and tugged open the cover, which seemed to open easily. He slid down the stairs, and Nolin followed. Birk saw the troops closing in, and he fired off a couple of shots before slinging his rifle and jumping down the hole. He barely grabbed the ladder in time to avoid crashing into Nolin. Birk held onto the ladder with one hand while pulling down the cover with his other.
“There’s no lock,” he said in a rush.
Nolin climbed up by him and shoved the barrel of his rifle through two holes that were likely used to padlock the door shut at one time. Nolin climbed back down.
Birk could hear voices grow closer as he climbed down and aimed his rifle at the door.
“That’s gutter rat territory,” someone said. “I don’t get paid enough to go into the gutters.”
“I’m not going down there,” someone else said.
Arguing commenced. “You go first,” the second voice said.
“We’ll tell the boss they lost us.”
Birk could hear footsteps and voices growing dimmer, and he grinned. “Those gutter rats sure have these guys fooled.”
Nolin frowned. “I don’t want to know the things they’ve done to have the rest of the colony so afraid of them.”
“Good point,” Birk said.
Finn looked up from his map. “This way.”
They jogged—not ran, thankfully—through the tunnels to get to the East side. It took several backtracks and more than one wrong turn before they reached the tunnel that led to the docks.
Birk had known they were coming up on it by the smell and sounds rather than looking at his map. The air had become heavy, and the stench kept Birk’s mouth open, so he didn’t have to breathe through his nose. The first rats they met were farther back than he expected. It was a group of young men, all tied together at their hips with bandanas.
“It’s okay,” Birk said. “I’m here to help. Where’s Mutt?”
One pointed down the line. They seemed to calm down, but still gave him the stink eye like they didn’t trust him. Birk came forward and looked to see a line of people that seemed to go on forever. Hundreds, no, thousands of people were lined up down the tunnel, and every one of them was tied to the person next to them. It was the longest human chain Birk had ever seen.
He glanced back to Finn and Nolin, who both seemed as surprised as Birk.
Birk led the way down the tunnel, moving as quickly as he could, but he had to slow down sometimes to step around and over people sitting on the floor. Mothers nursed babies. Old people looked minutes from death. Birk realized there were far too many people crammed into far too small an area. The air had to be getting close to becoming too heavy with carbon dioxide and the plethora of gasses that did nothing to help a person stay conscious.
Birk didn’t try to count the number of people breathing in the small tunnel. Instead, he focused on the distant end of the line, or what he hoped was the end. Tension was making his muscles too rigid, and he forced himself to move faster. Seconds felt like minutes—they probably were minutes when Birk looked behind him to see how far they’d come—but he eventually reached the front of the line.
The orc of a man named Axe stood at the front, his shoulders taking up half the tunnel width and his battle-axe strapped to his back. As Birk came closer, he could see another pair of legs beyond Axe.
“Excuse me, big boy,” Birk said as he nudged by the orc.
Axe looked down at him. “It’s about time.”
Birk shot him a quick grin before stopping next to Mutt.
“It’s about damn well time,” Mutt said. “My people will start dying in here if we don’t move soon.”
Birk handed Mutt his spare rifle. “We’ll be moving in no time.” Birk maintained eye contact with the leader while he tapped his wrist-comm and initiated a call to Throttle. As soon as she answered, he spoke. “We’re at the docks and ready to go.”
“Give me two minutes,” she said and disconnected before he could say anything else.
He’d about asked her how it was going, but it was probably a good thing that she disconnected so quickly. She’d never been one for small talk when in the middle of a mission.
“You heard her. The gravity goes down in two minutes,” Birk said.
Mutt grimaced. “We’re sitting ducks in here like this. All they have to do is block both ends of this tunnel, and we’re goners.”
“Better leave the door cracked, then,” Birk said, then nodded toward the door. “I’d better check to see what we’re up against.”
“I’ll go with you,” Mutt said.
>
Birk glanced down to find that Mutt wasn’t tied to Axe.
Mutt patted what looked like a whip made out of yellow jellied plastic. “I can get myself over to the airlock just fine.”
“What’s that?” Birk asked.
“A gift from one of my guys who used to work outside the colony. Do you want to know about the rest of my outfit, fashionista, or can we get on with this show?”
Birk’s brows furrowed. He’d never been accused of having any sense of fashion before. But maybe here, in a new system, all the rules had been rewritten.
Mutt cracked open the door and looked through the narrow gap; then he opened it and stepped outside. Birk looked over his shoulder to Nolin and Finn. “I’ll be right back,” he said and followed the leader of the gutter rats into a narrow hallway much like the one he’d been down before, except this one turned at the end. Birk hugged the wall, but Mutt walked right down the middle.
The leader of the gutter rats slowed when he reached the crook in the hallway and crept a couple of paces around the turn. Birk peeked over the man’s shoulder. Before them was the public hallway for the East docks. Large windows on the far side revealed various ships docked down the hallway. The hull of the Gabriela filled the entire expanse of window. It wasn’t pretty, but Birk was sure happy to see it. He grinned.
Mutt nudged him and pointed. The hallway was still nearly empty, thanks to the stomach flu that was going around, but it wasn’t completely empty. At least a dozen guards, all wearing West security forces uniforms, stood at the airlock to the Gabriela. Jakob West must’ve sent them before he made the announcement to Jade-8.
“I was hoping we’d all be boarded before they got over here,” Birk said.
“I’m not surprised. I pegged you for an optimist,” Mutt said.
Birk glanced at the bearded man. “And I pegged you for a pessimist.”
Mutt shook his head. “No. I’m a realist. It doesn’t matter what it is, things always go down the shitter.”
Birk turned back to the guards, contemplating how to take care of them. He supposed they could have a shoot-out, but Birk really didn’t want to kill anyone else if he didn’t have to. Unfortunately, he realized there was no way around it. Those guards would have to die.
“We take them out after the gravity goes out,” Birk said. “That’ll throw them off enough to mess with their aim. We’ll run a lower risk of any of ours getting hurt.”
“Good plan. They’ll be sitting ducks,” Mutt said, then added, “As soon as they’re down, I’ll get to the airlock and open it.”
They headed back to the tunnel and opened the door.
Above them, all the lights brightened, and alarms rang out.
Birk squinted.
“I bet we’re about to lose our feet,” Mutt said. Within the next couple of seconds, he started to lift.
Birk smiled when he felt his feet disconnect from the floor, and he powered up his grav boots. He grabbed Mutt’s coat to keep him from floating off. “She did it,” he said, his words full of pride.
Mutt pulled the whip-thing off his belt. He unwrapped it and lashed out. The cable clung to the floor. Mutt pulled himself down to it.
“That is a handy thingamajig,” Birk said.
Nolin and Finn stepped out. Nolin had a hold of Axe’s belt.
“We have to clear out fourteen guards before we bring the rats—er, I mean colonists—out,” Birk said.
Nolin released Axe.
The three men in grav boots hustled down the hallway while Mutt moved a few feet at a time, each time recollecting and swinging out the sticky rope. Mutt looked more like he was trying to ride a wild bull than glide, but Birk knew that moving in zero g was a lot harder than it looked. While the boots stuck to the metal floor, the rest of their bodies were weightless, and Birk found that he always had to keep his muscles tense to move semi-naturally through zero g.
When they reached the large hallway, Birk waited while Mutt covered the remaining distance.
“I wish I had a pair of boots like yours.” Mutt floated ahead of Birk with the momentum he still carried.
“You’d move faster,” Birk said.
The guards across the hallway were floating. About half were still reaching for something to grab. The other half were either holding the edges of the airlock or a compatriot who’d managed to grab something.
Birk aimed for a guard who had a chain forming off his foot. He aimed and hit the guard in the thigh, exactly where he’d intended. The guard cried out and let go, leaving the two hanging off him also floating. More gunshots fired, mostly from either side of Birk, but a couple of guards managed to return fire.
The guards were down in no time, and Birk felt it to be a hollow victory. Rather than wallow on it, he turned to Nolin and Finn. “You two start pulling that human chain to the airlock. I’ll get Mutt to the controls.”
Birk turned to Mutt. “It’ll be faster this way.” He jumped up and grabbed Mutt’s ankle and pulled the man like he was a balloon. Birk walked, knowing full well that jogging with a passenger would spell trouble. Crossing the hallway felt like a great distance, and he realized his boots’ magnetism level was set too high. He lowered the setting and found walking much easier. He reached the airlock. He tried to avoid the dead and wounded guards, but he walked through several droplets of blood on his way to the control panel.
He lowered Mutt, who reached out and grabbed the edges of the panel and used the sticky rope to hold him close to the panel. “I’m good. Now go and help my people.”
Birk turned but first went back to the guards. He began pushing them out of the way of the airlock, figuring the kids in the tunnel didn’t need to see that sort of thing close up. The guard he’d injured was still conscious but barely, and Birk noticed that he’d severed an artery with his hit. He scolded himself. Every time he tried to do the right thing, it backfired. Maybe he should consider being a realist like Mutt. There’d be fewer disappointments in life.
He gingerly pushed the guard away and hurried back to help Nolin and Finn. They were just emerging into the hallway. Birk realized the reason for the delay when he saw the way people moved through the angled hallway like pinballs. The tight turns formed a bottleneck in moving the weightless passengers toward the ship. While Finn worked at moving people around the corners, Nolin was at the front of the line, leading Axe at a snail’s pace.
Axe held his rifle at the ready, though he looked like he was about to be sick. Behind the orc, some cried out, others cursed. All the way down the line, Birk could hear mutterings and complaints. He wrinkled his face. And vomiting. He heard plenty of that taking place.
They should’ve used longer ropes. Some of the people were practically tied together. Some parents and children really had tied themselves together. Every single person was tied to the next person. Most were linked together by bandanas or shirts, others by blankets. They would all make it onto the Gabriela, even any killed on the run to the colony ship, though none of them would be running. They’d all be essentially flotsam, tugged to the ship by the three with grav boots.
For living on a colony floating in space, Birk was surprised at how poorly the Jaders handled zero g. It was like none of them had been without gravity before, though he knew there had to be some workers who’d spent plenty of time working on the station from the outside, as well as all the pirate crews. Knowing that there were still those Jaders out there, he didn’t let his guard down and scanned both directions of the hallway for trouble.
When he heard two whooshes in quick succession, he spun around, nearly losing his rifle, to see both the dock’s airlock and the Gabriela’s outer airlock open. “All right!” he called out to Mutt, who almost smiled.
Nolin reached the airlock and began moving faster once inside the Gabriela’s gravitized airlock. There, he tapped away on the panel near the ship’s inner airlock door. Within seconds, the door opened.
Nolin held up his thumb. “We’re good. All environmentals are operating withi
n standards.”
“Then get her started up,” Birk said.
As soon as Axe was tugged through the inner airlock, he landed hard on the floor, falling on his butt. Nolin let go and said, “I’ve got to get to the bridge.” And he took off running.
Axe yanked on the rope tying him to the man behind him. That man, along with the next three people, flew into the gravity-filled ship and tumbled into a heap.
Axe winced. “Sorry.”
Birk reached out to help the passengers untangle themselves so more could board. “It doesn’t take much,” Birk warned Axe. “Think of them like helium balloons.”
Axe nodded and began tugging more slowly.
A woman stepped forward. “Where should I send everyone?”
Birk frowned. “Good question. Uh. Have them start filling in the crew quarters on level eight. Each of those quarters have seats that they should buckle themselves into. There’s so many of you that we won’t have time to check on everyone before takeoff. It could get a bit messy right after departure.”
She gave him a worried look. “How messy?”
He waved her off. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll be just fine.” He leaned closer. “Just be sure to have them buckle themselves in. You know, just in case.” He winked.
She didn’t seem to believe him, but she turned away and began directing the passengers right after they landed in the gravity. Birk walked back across the hallway to help Finn at the bottleneck. Between the two of them, with one on each corner, they found a rhythm, and the passengers began to move faster toward the airlock.
“Help!” a girl screamed.
Birk and Finn shot each other a glance. “I’ll take it,” Birk said, and worked his way around Finn and down the line.
“Help!” she screamed again. “The line broke!”
The cry came from the tunnel, and Birk climbed through the door, careful not to jam up the older woman trying to fit through with a bag as big as herself. Once in the tunnel, he walked as quickly as he could down the line. It was easier this time, with no one on the floors, and he soon found the problem. A gap was growing bigger between the chain and about a hundred or so passengers falling behind. The girl at the front was doing what looked to be the breaststroke but making no headway with all the soup of movement behind her.