“Nah,” I said. “She’s mine.”
“You shoulda left Zane fucking Cole back there, with a bullet in his brain,” Dolph said. “We got him on board, and Pippa? No wonder they’re chasing us.”
I plotted the HA ship’s launch path. “Actually, they’re not,” I said in surprise. Burden’s ship had launched on a shallower angle. The gap widened by a hundred klicks a second, rapidly taking it out of range of the St. Clare’s railgun.
“Could be it’s unarmed. They dropped these babies out of the cargo bay. Air-breathing engines, they can loiter for hours.” Dolph leaned on the auxiliaries. Gravity dragged us sideways.
“Incoming!” Irene yelled. An impact shook the ship. My teeth vibrated in my skull. The missile had struck amidships, not near the drive, thank God. Hull damage alerts filled my HUD area. No pressurization breach. Hull integrity down to 20% at the impact site. Another missile strike there would finish us.
But we were now leaving the troposphere. The air-breathing missiles could not follow us into space.
The damage alerts beeped relentlessly as the St. Clare howled up to orbital altitude.
“Main engine cutoff in five,” Dolph gasped. “Three. Four …” Gravity released us.
“That was some shit-hot flying.” I was glad he didn’t know I had mentally doubted him.
He shrugged. “We got hit.”
“Yup. But it’s not structural. Shouldn’t affect acceleration capability.” I was frantically calculating the parameters for our FTL burn. “We’ll repair it in the field.” Because the Yesanyase Skont spaceport was near the south pole, we had launched into a polar orbit. That helped. As we looped over the north pole and orbited back down, the Core lay dead ahead of us. And beyond the Core … far beyond … was home.
I willed the computer to complete its checks before our orientation window closed and we had to go around the planet again. “MF? Marty?” I spoke into the intercom. “How are our passengers coping?”
“I got Pippa with me,” Martin said.
“I put the Traveller in the admin berth, and instructed him to strap in,” MF said virtuously.
“Good. Keep him there.” The computer popped up a notification. “Burn parameters validated. Initiating acceleration burn on my mark.”
“Initiating exhaust field.” Dolph threw the skip field generator switch.
“Mark.” I opened the throttle.
In the instant before the St. Clare kicked out of orbit, Irene interrupted, “Heads up!” The radar display flashed. A triangular ship’s profile breasted the curvature of the planet.
“It’s just a Fleet patrol. They won’t mess with us.” Giddy with the relief of escaping, I had to shout over the engines. Thrust gravity pushed down on us, so that we seemed to be lying on our backs again. Yesanyase Skont shrank.
The radio squawked. “Independent freighter St. Clare, come in. This is the Fleet picket Williencourt. Where you off to in such a hurry?”
“You were saying?” Irene murmured.
“We’ll just pretend we didn’t hear that.” I knew that ignoring the Fleet ship was a bad idea, but I didn’t have any better ones. “They won’t chase us, anyway. They have to remain in orbit.”
As the words left my mouth, I stared at the radar in despair. The Fleet ship was chasing us. We were already moving at several thousand kps, as the exhaust field accelerated the speed of the plasma particles exiting the St. Clare’s drive … but so was the Williencourt.
Dolph rattled his fingernails on his consoles. “Acceleration is up to 0.15 gees. Go FTL?” They wouldn’t be able to catch us then. In STL mode, the St. Clare had no advantage over a high-spec Fleet ship, but in FTL mode, she was without peer. On the other hand, 0.15 gees of acceleration wasn’t enough to get us home—
“Independent freighter St. Clare! Do you read me?”
“They’re targeting us,” Irene said. Warning lights decorated my consoles like a Christmas tree.
“Acknowledge, or I shove a nuke up your tailpipe. Last chance. Three, two …”
Tonelessly, I said, “This is the St. Clare, reading you.”
“Acknowledged,” the Williencourt’s captain said. “Hold your course and stand by to be boarded.”
I blinked. “That’s nuts.” I checked our speed. 2,800 kps. We were well on our way out of the Yesanyase Skont system. Even if we cut the exhaust field right now, we would still be travelling at almost 1% of the speed of light. With sincere curiosity, I said, “How are you planning to do that?”
“Watch and learn,” the radio crackled.
The Williencourt overhauled us, and then decreased its acceleration to precisely match ours, while also matching our trajectory to the last fraction of a degree. It edged closer and closer. We all watched open-mouthed. In orbit, this is easy. While travelling at 1% of c? It’s the definition of insane.
“Guess that’s why they pay Fleet pilots the big bucks,” Dolph muttered.
“It’s their computer doing it,” MF quacked over the intercom. “It is actually a rather stupid machine.”
“That’s not reassuring,” I said.
At 20 meters of separation, the exhaust fields of the two ships met. The fields melded seamlessly into one, making it appear on our monitors as if the St. Clare’s exhaust field had doubled in size. Now we were coupled with the Williencourt in an unsavory Siamese-twin bond, still streaking out of the system.
Grapples thunked on our hull. The St. Clare jarred from nose to stern.
“Docking completed,” the Williencourt’s captain said. “Lower your force field shields and prepare for boarding.”
I stabbed the intercom. “Marty, listen up. It’s not the end of the world if they find Cole, but if they find Pippa, we’re fucked. Have you got her hidden?”
No answer from ol’ snake. I hoped that was a good sign. I popped my straps and flew down the trunk corridor. Tucked my shirt into my pants. Ran one hand over my hair, although nothing would stop it standing up like a short brown halo. My heart beat like a kettledrum as I waited at the starboard airlock for our unwanted guests.
25
The airlock opened. A flock of white and silver tadpoles whirred out of the chamber and rushed past me to disperse through the ship. Sniffer drones. They would have motion sensors, infrared, and probably atmospheric samplers as well.
A Fleet NCO flew out of the airlock after the drones and oriented herself to face me, using wrist and ankle thrusters built into her form-fitting suit. A PDD clung to her left shoulder. Personal defense drones are like miniature gunships crossed with tasers. They can fire either flechettes, or contact pads that deliver shocks of thousands of volts. The PDD’s blue laser targeting beam dotted my chest.
“Welcome aboard, ma’am,” I said.
“Stay where you are.” The voice came from external speakers in her domed, reflective helmet. “Open all internal pressure doors and hatches.”
“Open ‘em up,” I called to Dolph. All along the corridor, doors slid open. The sniffer drones darted into the berths and compartments. Two or three of them flew onto the bridge. Dolph told me later that they lit on the consoles like pigeons and plugged themselves into the data ports. He and Irene just had to sit there and watch the things drinking up our professional life’s blood.
Back in the trunk corridor, the airlock cycled again. Another Fleet officer, this one with O-3 stripes on his spacesuit, slid out. His helmet retracted into his collar, exposing bristly black hair and a lantern jaw that slid from side to side as he chewed tobacco. “Captain Starrunner?”
“Yes.”
“Captain Smith of the Williencourt.” Striking cobalt-blue eyes, a smile as cold as deep space. Metal implants in the lobes of his ears, like gauge earrings. PDD on his shoulder. “Where are you headed at this time?”
“Ponce de Leon.”
“I see. What was the meaning of your maneuvers on the surface of Yesanyase Skont?”
“We were attacked.” I decided the truth was my best defense. “We acted
in self-defense. Heck, you must have seen the damage on our hull—”
“It looks worse than it is. You got one hull plate crumpled, and potentially some electrical damage under that, but nothing structural that we observed. What did that?”
“Travellers,” I said.
Smith looked disbelieving. “Travellers on Yesanyase Skont?” He roared with laughter, and I belatedly caught the sarcasm. “When haven’t there been Travellers on Yesanyase Skont? They use those bazaars as their personal money laundering facilities. And the gladiatorial arenas? They operate those for fun and profit.” A salacious spark danced in his eyes. “Mortal combat between humans and aliens, for the viewing enjoyment of the whole Cluster. Interspecies rape shows on request. Did you get a chance to go?”
“No, sir, ain’t my thing.” I was disliking him more and more. He floated closer to me. I could smell his chaw. Mint flavor.
“So why did they attack you, Mr. Starrunner?”
“Sir, if you know Travellers, you know they don’t need a reason. But you may not know that these Travellers are using Hurtworlds Authority ships. If you intercept the HA ship that just launched from the same location as us, you’ll find it is manned by black-coats.”
Smith spoke into his radio. As far as I could follow his Fleet jargon, it sounded like he was telling his comms officer to verify the identity of Burden’s ship. But that wouldn’t get them anywhere, because of course it was a real HA ship. I clenched my fists in frustration. Sophia was going to slip through the Fleet’s fingers again.
While Smith spoke, the NCO came out of my berth, sniffer drones whirring around her. She floated into the engineering deck. Shit. She was going to find Pippa. She couldn’t not—
She flew back out. MF arrowed out of the pressure door behind her, eyes glowing, grippers clattering.
“What is that?” Smith said.
“Sir, it appears to be a maintenance bot.” The NCO was holding her bottom. “Sir, it made inappropriate comments, and—and pinched me.”
Tense as I was, I wasn’t tempted to laugh. But Smith did. “That’s fucking hilarious.”
“You look so hot in that spacesuit!” MF drifted towards the non-com, lasciviously swivelling his sensors. “I wish my crew had ones like that!”
The NCO protested. Smith roared with laughter. “Get over it, Figueroa. Go do your job.”
“Won’t you please take your helmet off?” MF blocked the NCO’s way, wheedling. He actually tried to catch her arm in his grippers. He was getting more handsy. First the thing with Pippa, and now this. To be fair, I knew he was trying to stall them. But I had no idea how to capitalize on the time he was buying me.
One of the sniffer drones flew out of the engineering deck, dodged around MF, and landed on Smith’s wrist like a tiny homing pigeon. And it was too late.
“Aha,” Smith said. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Starrunner. You have a crew of four, not including that mechanical comedian there. And as far as I am aware, none of your crew members is a teenage girl.” He chewed energetically, pinning me with his weirdly lustrous eyes. “We have reason to believe you illegally removed a deportee from the Hurtworlds. Would that be her back there?”
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. This was it. I couldn’t talk my way out of this one. We were all going to jail.
MF, still blocking the door of the engineering deck, suddenly let out a parping noise that got everyone’s attention. “Captain Smith! Specialist Figueroa! You will return to your own ship immediately. You will file a report stating that this ship is a law-abiding freighter. Further, you will state that this ship is carrying nothing and no one apart from her own crew and supplies. Is that clear?”
Smith’s jaw stilled. “What the actual fuck?”
“Is that clear?” MF blared. I had heard him sound like this before, when he was upset—but act like this? Giving orders to humans? Never.
“Neutralize the bot,” Smith said.
Both officers’ PDDs lifted off their shoulders, squirting compressed air …
… and turned 180 degrees to face their owners. A bright blue targeting dot held steady on Smith’s upper lip.
I may have sniggered.
MF’s lamp-like eyes stayed fixed on the officers. “Will you comply with my instructions? Yes or no?”
“What kind of shit is this?” Smith snarled.
MF made a snuffling noise. “Was that a yes? I have to warn you, Captain—if the answer is no, your ship will suffer a complete electrical failure. You will lose life support, engine controls, and all your data. Your ship will have to be completely refurbished, at a cost of millions. Presupposing that you are not lost in deep space, your career will most certainly be at an end.”
Smith barked a laugh. “My career. Ha.”
His PDD fired its laser. At his left ear. The beam caught his earring-like implant, instantly heating it to red-hot temperature.
“All right!” Smith screamed, clapping his glove over his ear. Smoke trickled out from between his fingers. “Fuck! Yes!”
“Oh, good decision,” MF said. “Bye, then.” The airlock gaped. The two officers crammed themselves into the chamber. You can’t really fit two people in there, but they were in a hurry.
The airlock closed. Cycled. The corridor fans whooshed in their usual soothing rhythm.
“Are you all right, Captain?” MF said.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “How did you do that?”
MF snuffled. “I only had to approach the female officer close enough to squirt some code into her wrist-mounted data link. From there, it was child’s play to coopt their PDDs, as well as their ship’s systems. I told you their computer was a stupid machine.”
“But … encryption …”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” MF said, pretending to dust his grippers off.
I nodded slowly. “Figures.” After all, MF had survived a thousand years since the fall of the Urush—building ship after ship, expanding his skill set, absorbing generation after generation of decryption techniques. I remembered that he had defeated Sophia’s AI-guided bio-weapons, when even the Ponce de Leon police could not. What chance did Fleet encryption have against that?
A clunk shivered through the bulkheads as the Williencourt’s grapples disengaged from our hull.
“They’re leaving!” Dolph shouted down the trunk corridor. “What happened?”
I flew urgently back to the bridge. On the physical screen, our composite feed showed the Williencourt shrinking to a mirror-bright fleck on the darkness.
“I thought we were screwed,” Irene said. “What changed their minds?”
“MF did.” I put on my headset and strapped into my couch. We were already on the edge of the Yesanyase Skont system, heading for deep space at a tangent to the ecliptic, burning water prodigiously. “Dolph, cut the exhaust field.” I killed the throttle before we could waste any more water. “Initiating skip field.”
The reassuring tick-tick-tick of the skip field generator sounded through the ship. Now we really were uncatchable. As the tension began to drain out of my body, I realized I was shaking. I went to the vodka dispenser and filled my zero-gravity mug. Then I told Dolph and Irene how MF had threatened to brick the Fleet patrol ship. “So they cleared out. That’s the good news. The bad news is that before they left, they found Pippa.”
“Oh God,” Irene said. “Why didn’t MF just kill them?”
“Because that would be wrong?” Dolph threw himself back in his couch, jaw gritted. I opened my mouth to say that MF had not displayed any particular concern for human life when he took control of the technical’s roof gun, and then I reflected that I hadn’t actually seen him kill anyone. He had barely winged Burden. That might have been on purpose.
“That’s it, then,” Irene said. “We are screwed. They’ll be waiting on the pad for us when we get home.” She put one forefinger thoughtfully to her temple. “Unless we toss the girl out of the airlock.” She laughed to show that she was joking.
“Keep the TrZam 008, of course.”
“Can you hear yourself, Irene?” Dolph said. “Can you actually hear what you sound like?”
“Like I’m trying to come up with a solution, instead of just sitting there,” Irene flared.
“No one’s going out of the airlock, with the possible exception of you two.” I faked an easy tone. We couldn’t start fighting, with our lives at stake. “But Irene’s right, we can’t take Pippa back to Ponce de Leon. It would be suicide.” An idea came to me. It was a terrible idea. But it might save our asses. “Dolph, calculate our position and velocity, and keep on raising our multiplier. Take her to 300 c, for now.”
We bent over our consoles. I studied the starmap. Potential trajectories spread out in a fan, changing every second as we got further from Yesanyase Skont. I discounted most of them. The Fleet knew we were from Ponce de Leon. They knew we were heading back there. And they knew how long it would take us to get there. So I had to find somewhere that lay right in our path, where we could stop off at, without losing too much time, so they wouldn’t know we’d stopped off …
Yes.
That would do.
I told Irene and Dolph what I planned. They were incredulous, but eventually they accepted that it was our least worst option.
I told Dolph to raise the multiplier to 400, but no higher, so we wouldn’t get there too quick. As much of a hurry as we were in, none of us would be able to function much longer without food and sleep.
26
My alarm dragged me out of a coma of exhaustion. I’d allowed myself six hours of sleep. I could have used twice as much. I took two minutes to run a cold sponge over my face and grab a bulb of coffee from the galley, then flew aft to the engineering deck.
“She come out yet?” I asked.
Coolant pipes branched like tree roots over the low ceiling. It was a cave back here, dim and hot. The decibels of shipboard noise, dominated by the ticking of the skip field generator, drowned the dry slither of Martin’s coils. I startled as his head swayed out of the gap between the AM containment ring and the ceiling, right in front of my face, tongue flickering.
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