“Best chance,” Driscoll agreed, and if I were able to form cognitive thought I would have marvelled at how smoothly they worked together.
Roman started to angle us towards the rack and I heard Driscoll on the comm.
“Did you pre-flight both assault shuttles, Kitsano?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Then you’d better take the first. We’ll take the second when we get there.”
There was a pause on the other end of the comm.
“What does Matsumoto say?”
I felt a surge of satisfaction. She wanted to know if Driscoll was following my orders.
“She’s out of commission at present. I’ve left instructions with Ch’ng in case we get separated. He’ll fill you in. See you on the other side.”
“Aye, sir,” Kitsano replied.
Roman jammed a helmet over my head, sealing it and then leaned me against the bulkhead as he and Driscoll sealed their own helmets and double checked the telltales. The shadow river continued to flood into my head, but even through the black mass I could see through the warped window on the small craft bay door. A bright glow filled the Plexiglas as Kitsano’s shuttle lit her engines and left us to die on our own.
Chapter Fourteen
“Hand her to me,” Driscoll said, wiping the screen of his helmet with a gloved hand.
It must have been subconscious since he didn’t have the ability to actually wipe the sweat from his brow, but it made me feel hopeful. I’d noticed what he was doing. I was beginning to get a grip on my own mind again.
The last of the shadows had returned to me hours ago – or at least it felt like it had been hours ago, although that couldn’t possibly be the case. Our ship was still being rocked by missile fire, and she would have been smashed to slag if it really had been hours ago. I still couldn’t move on my own.
Roman passed me off to Driscoll with an exhausted grunt and then scrambled down the ventilation shaft ahead of us. This was the third route they’d tried. All the others had suffered damage and proven impassable.
“Cardinal’s Blood, you are damaged beyond recovery. Our boarding parties are on approach and will dock in your small craft bay in approximately 10 minutes. Any resistance will be met with deadly force. Prepare to surrender.”
Miraculously, the comm systems were still in working order.
“This better be it,” Roman muttered, fiddling with a panel beside the maintenance hatch.
“If it’s not then we’ve lost our shot,” Driscoll agreed.
I was tracking fully now, although I hadn’t regained full use of my body. I wiggled my toes and fingers. Not long, now.
“Got it!” Roman exclaimed, and the hatch sprang open just as Driscoll caught up, towing me behind him.
He dropped me just before the narrow hatch, and shoved himself through with harsh movements that spoke of exhaustion and stress in equal measures. I was pulled through next, bumping painfully against the edges of the hatch. I kicked my feet to try to help, and was gratified to feel movement.
The hatch opened just meters from the other shuttle, and I felt a surge of excitement as I noted that it was humming with life, fully lit, and the shuttle door was open.
“Come on, Aldrin, she’s ready and waiting for us!” Driscoll exclaimed, hitching me up on his shoulder.
My belly hurt from the lift and I almost opened my mouth to tell him that I might be able to walk now, when a whooping shriek and a red beacon shot across the bay in the rotating spin that signalled the opening of the small craft bay doors. Our attackers must have hacked the ship’s computers and she was opening wide to greet them.
My vision suddenly became crystal clear as vacuum filled the shuttle bay, my eyes drifted to the opening bay door, and then snapped back to the shaft we’d exited as a scream erupted from Roman. The opening of the shuttle bay doors had tripped the safety mechanism in the hatch we’d just escaped through and it slammed shut on him, pinning his leg in its jaws.
“Go! Go!” he yelled over the helmet speakers, “Get her out of here!”
“No!” I yelled, too shocked that he would suggest we leave him to realize that I could speak again.
Driscoll thundered up the shuttle ramp, throwing me to the ground as I thrashed against his arms.
“No!” I screamed.
What did he think he was doing? We couldn’t leave Roman. I wouldn’t. There was no point without him. No point to anything.
“Stop fighting me, we need to get out of here,” Driscoll said through clenched teeth as he pinned me down to the shuttle floor.
“Not without Roman,” I gasped.
“No time,” he argued.
“No time not to,” I disagreed, slipping from his grasp and stumbling three steps down the ramp before I tripped and fell on my face.
A hand caught the back of my suit and threw me back into the shuttle. Driscoll’s hiss of irritation could be heard over the helmet speakers.
“Get up to the cockpit and fire the engines. I’ll do what I can for him.”
I pulled myself up, glancing at him to see if he was telling the truth.
“Go,” he said, gesturing to the cockpit. I waited till he took the first step towards Roman and then stumbled slowly to the shuttle cockpit, fell into a pilot’s seat, and booted the ship program on my implant. It started up slowly.
The small craft bay was almost fully open now. If it hadn’t been for our magnetic boots the vacuum would have sucked us away with the air. We were down to seconds until the boarding party could enter the bay. I fired the engines. The pre-flight was complete and a course was set in. The shuttle required manual piloting to exit the bay, but then the computer could pilot it down to the set destination. Good thing they’d been pre-flighted. It was too much to do on the fly.
I heard banging from the ramp and groaning.
“Up ramp!” Driscoll yelled over the helmet as if I wouldn’t have heard simple speech.
There was a hissing sound coming from Roman’s speaker. Maybe there was a malfunction. I stuck my hand in the holo and twiddled the pixels to pull up the ramp. My pilot program was finally online and I set it to 90% auto. I could tweak what it was doing, but it would do most of the heavy lifting.
“Driscoll we need to get wheels up, now!” I said.
“You can fly it now, right? You uploaded a program into that implant of yours?” Driscoll asked. His voice sounded strained.
“Is everything ok back there?”
“Can you fly it? Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Then get us the hell out of here!”
I jammed the lift, flicked the landing gear up, rotated the shuttle in a computer-perfect spin and as the bay doors finally opened as wide as they could go, I sped forward and spat out of the bay like Lazarus from the grave, hurtling towards the incoming boarding shuttle and swerving away at the last second.
Reprogram shuttle maneuvering to imitate the fall of unpowered space debris, I ordered my implant.
Activating Pre-set Tactical Maneuvering Plan Beta Gamma Niner Seven.
The shuttle twisted and lurched and then it felt like we were in freefall as we hurtled towards Nighshade. Driscoll cursed into the helmet speaker.
“Is there a reason that it feels like you’ve lost control?” he asked.
“I’m trying to avoid detection.”
He grunted. “While you’re at it, correct your destination to Destination Epsilon. Our original choice of landing isn’t going to work out with military scanners watching our descent.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, worried because no one had told me about any alternate plans for destinations.
“Stop second-guessing me and trust that I put in safeguards,” he said harshly.
I frowned, but adjusted the input.
“I can’t hear Roman through the speakers,” I said.
“His suit is damaged,” Driscoll replied after a long moment.
I sucked in air sharply.
“No, he didn’t su
ck vacuum. Stop flipping out and get back to piloting the shuttle,” Driscoll said.
The stress in his voice was escalating. I badly wanted to go back and see what was happening, but I couldn’t leave the controls. Even with the computer handling things, my brain and hands were required to make the adjustments. We had to hit atmosphere just the right way or we’d die. We also desperately needed to avoid detection or our pursuers would be on us before we could crack the shuttle hatch.
Roman? I asked.
Nothing.
Status on Roman Aldrin, I ordered my implant.
Unconscious. Health unstable. Medical attention in progress.
What the...
“Driscoll, how badly is Roman hurt?”
“He’ll be fine. I’m working on him with the med comp.”
“The med comp?” I asked. That was serious if he was using a medical computer. They did all the stuff that normal people weren’t trained to do – sutures, setting broken bones, administering drugs.
“What did I say about questioning everything I tell you?” he growled.
I’d never heard him like that before. He always seemed so self-possessed and almost indifferent. My stomach felt like a pit and my mouth was suddenly dry, but I had to focus on flying. I tried to keep my mind on that, on the complicated patterns my hands made and the output from the holo.
“Entering atmosphere in five...four...” I began the countdown wondering if it was only for my own benefit.
“...three...two...one. Atmosphere.”
The shuttle bucked into the pre-programmed path for Destination Epsilon, and once again the flight was rough as we hit weather. I pulled up the screen image that the sensors were relaying from outside.
All I could see was a massive storm and swelling waves for kilometers around. Almost as soon as I’d looked around the shuttle plunged into the water and I was seeing only water, water, water, and still we were sinking.
What the...?! Shuttles were built to float. They were designed to dock on water when needed.
“Driscoll!” I called.
“It’s a bit dicey here,” he said.
“We’re sinking in an ocean!”
“Hold on.”
Hold on? I bit back a curse. Hold on? At least the shadows were staying out of this.
It’s up to you to do something, Vera. I told you not to trust Patrick Driscoll. He’s going to get you killed. Change the heading and get out of the water! Zeta was right on cue.
My hand hovered over the holo, considering. Driscoll was distracted. It could have been a mistake. I needed to reverse course. I thrust my hand into the holo.
“I hope you’re not thinking about changing course,” Driscoll called aloud from the back of the shuttle. His voice was faint and it echoed. He must have removed his helmet, which come to think of it, I could do, too.
“What’s going on here, Driscoll?” I asked with an edge to my voice.
“Ch’ng’s underground contacts are also under-sea, as it were. When you see an amber glow, head for it. Dock as you would in deep space. The docking clamps operate the same and have the same markings.”
I was noticing a glow a little to the left and far below. I angled towards the glow. He was right. Looming before me was a docking hatch, complete with markings that my implant recognized immediately and configured my movements to match. The soft clunk of a successful dock met my ears and then the sound of a pump and cycling hatches as our coupler was secured.
We were docked. To what we were docked, remained to be seen, but here we were. My ears felt like they wanted to explode. I had thought that nothing threw your system for a loop like entering atmosphere from space, but it turned out that following that up with a deep sea dive was even worse.
I pulled off my helmet, unsealed my gloves, shut down the engines, and put the shuttle on standby. We were officially docked. I felt queasy unease replace the tension of piloting a small craft for the first time. What had happened to Roman that Driscoll had taken this long to deal with?
A sudden horrible thought occurred to me. What if he wasn’t back there at all? What if Driscoll left him and was hiding so I wouldn’t know and couldn’t check? Terror seized me and I bounded for the back of the shuttle, twisting through the narrow passage into the med comp section.
Relief flooded me and darkened my vision for a moment when I saw Driscoll, helmet and gloves stripped off, working over a mobile gurney with Roman lying underneath. He was stripped out of his suit and in only his under layer. My eyes flickered over his chest and face. He was breathing and his face was pink. Unconscious, but alive.
I started to breathe out, but then my breath hitched in my throat. His leg was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
“What...?” I began.
“Got caught in the hatch back on the Cardinal’s Blood,” Driscoll said.
A wave of nausea tore through my belly as fear drained the blood from my face while anger rose upwards to meet it somewhere in my chest.
“And you didn’t think that was something I should know?” I asked, slowly and quietly so that he wouldn’t be able to miss my fury.
“You just piloted a shuttle into atmosphere and then a submarine dive for the first time. I thought I should leave you to it,” Driscoll said sourly, but his eyes blazed with that light he got when he looked at me.
I wasn’t interested in his pride in me right now. I was worried about Roman. I crossed to the med comp and read off the diagnostics.
“You have much experience with trauma patients?” Driscoll asked wryly.
“No,” I admitted, but I bit off the word hard, daring him to say more.
“He’s stable. He’ll live. His leg is gone, but rejuvenation is possible.”
“For a price,” I said, darkly. “And we’re a touch low on funds.”
“Granted.”
Once again he had the sound of someone trying to talk me down from a ledge. Was I such an emotional basket case that everyone around me had to walk softly? I used to pride myself on my iron self-control and internalized emotions. I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
There was a clanging on the side of the shuttle like someone was knocking on the hatch with a spanner. Driscoll wiped his palms on his skinsuit and strode out of the med comp section.
I reached out and took Roman’s hand, trying to transmit calm, loving emotions. My warrior. My beloved warrior, broken and maimed. A tear slid down my cheek, scalding me with recriminations.
Driscoll’s head popped around the corner.
“We have to go,” he said in a clipped manner, his face and eyes tight. Trouble.
“Roman,” I said, wiping the lone tear away angrily.
“You’d better carry him,” he said, and there was a warning in his voice that I shouldn’t question him.
I decided to trust his judgment on this. After all, if we were meeting Ch’ng’s men then they were dangerous criminals and Driscoll had far more experience with the criminal elements than I ever would. After all, I still wasn’t certain that Driscoll’s Own weren’t criminals.
I hitched Roman up over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry, anxious that I was hurting him, and only just able to support his weight. Fortunately my life hadn’t been roses and lilacs lately and I’d put on a little muscle. One leg and one arm hung over each of my shoulders. I flinched as the composite medical attachment on his stump of a leg rubbed against my hip. It didn’t hurt my hip, but it rubbed my heart raw.
I’m a Matsumoto. The thought swam up from the depths of my pain. Not a lot of comfort, but maybe something to remember. Funny that as much as I hated my family I still felt strength from our heritage.
I left the med comp section back into the open troop compartment. The hatch to the outside was flung open and behind it a dark passage with green light dripped noisily. A tiny runnel of water was leaking through the hatch into the shuttle. The corners of my mouth turned down. It looked like we’d hooked into an under-ocean sewer. I would have complained, but th
ere were bigger problems.
Three men and a woman had made themselves at home in the troop compartment. The woman had eyed me up and down as soon as I entered the compartment, and she was still staring at me. All that hostility was practically screaming ‘cat-fight prelude.’ I pretended that I didn’t notice her.
Driscoll was negotiating with the oldest of the lot. He was short and wiry and he was wearing a strange jacket reminiscent of a shitagi. Perhaps fashions had changed since I’d been on a Blackwatch world, or perhaps it was just his personal style. It was heavily embroidered with heritage symbols and was a little ostentatious for my tastes. His eyes narrowed when he saw me enter the room, but he made as if he didn’t see me. Behind him, the other two men looked like the types you could find just about anywhere. They usually wore suit coats with black t-shirts underneath and not much in the way of jewelry. Everything was fitted to show off their physique and remind you of who they were – the muscle.
“Norio Ishii says he will transport us to my contact,” Driscoll said to me, without breaking eye contact with Ishii.
“For a price,” Ishii reminded him.
“Which my people will pay you upon our arrival.”
I pursed my lips. I hated negotiating with overt criminals - a category that included practically everyone these days. Speaking of not trusting, Zeta had been oddly silent lately. Maybe I’d finally found a way to shut the shadows up tightly enough that they couldn’t break into my thoughts all the time.
“We’d like to see some up front,” Ishii said, glancing in my direction, “No one said anything about an injured man.”
“That changes nothing,” Driscoll said.
In response, the two men doing their best to imitate small mountains rolled their shoulders. The cranky woman started popping her knuckles. My mouth twitched irritably. I don’t like knuckle cracking. I suddenly felt glad that Roman hadn’t wheedled a promise of pacifism out of me just yet.
“We’ll pay when we arrive,” Driscoll said again.
Ishii made a great show of eyeing us all up and down. “And the shuttle is mine, of course,” he said, his eyes narrowing with the satisfaction of slaughtering helpless sheep.
The Matsumoto (The Matsumoto Trilogy Book 3) Page 9