by Jake Elwood
"I mean, what can I do?" Chan said. "Down there, I can do nothing. Nothing except harm. Up here, I can go for help."
He tried to imagine it. The life pod might reach Coriolis Station in two days. It would take another day to come back with help. He might shave off a few hours by radioing ahead, once the station was in range. So long as the wrong people didn't hear him, a rescue mission might reach Enceladus in as little as sixty hours.
He floated, telling himself that two and a half days wasn't so long, that the others would be okay, that it wasn't James Chan's responsibility, that there wasn't anything else he could do. He watched the endless plain of ice go past outside his window and yearned for his old life, where his blunders didn't hurt anyone but himself. He remembered the smell of sludge, and it seemed like a bouquet.
The controls in the life pod were designed to be idiot-proof. The pod computer had already calculated that Coriolis Station was the nearest refuge. There was a tiny touchscreen built into the dash, and it showed a giant red button marked "Take Me to Coriolis Station." He put his fingertip a millimetre over the button and held it there, shaking with the desire to press it. Then he wrapped his hand around the joystick and cranked it to one side.
Landing was rough. The pod wasn't designed to maneuver, and bringing it back to the base turned into a thirty-minute chore. He burned a lot of fuel doing it, too. The pod was close to empty when he finally crashed into the snow half a kilometre from the base.
He entered through the same airlock they had used the first time, and left his helmet besides Singh's on the rack. He could hear Vogel's screams from the moment he left the dormitory area, and he fished the pistol out of his thigh pocket as he walked through the cubicles. Vogel was still strapped to the table, his muscles straining as he fought the strap, finger-thick tentacle sprouting from his neck. Joss, her cheeks wet with tears, clung to his hand. She looked up as Chan came in, pure anguish on her face.
Chan walked up to the table, put the barrel of the pistol against Vogel's forehead, and pulled the trigger.
Vogel went limp, and Chan's ears rang in the sudden silence. He set the pistol on the table. He never wanted to touch another gun.
Joss slowly released Vogel's hand. Her hand was dark with bruises from his fingers. She lowered her forehead to the table and sobbed quietly.
Vogel was limp, finally at peace. His face, at least, still looked almost entirely human. His eyes were bloodshot, the whites almost completely eradicated by red, and Chan closed them. He wanted to remember Vogel's eyes the way they had been back on Coriolis Station, dancing with excitement because he was finally going to escape from the sludge.
Chan cupped his hand around the boy's cheek. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "By all that's holy, I'm so sorry."
Joss reached across and squeezed Chan's forearm. She didn't say anything, just held on, and he put his hand over top of hers and squeezed back.
They covered Vogel with the emergency blanket, and then they walked out into the corridor. "Where's Singh?" Chan asked.
"I don't know," Joss said, her voice dull and lifeless.
"He's dead, isn't he?"
She stared up at him, her face unreadable. "Not so far as I know."
"You're not a spy for Solar Force, are you?"
After a long, silent moment, she shook her head. "I'm…"
"Never mind. Spare me. You know, I actually believed you. All three times. But when you smashed the communication gear, you went too far."
There was hurt in her face. It might even have been real. He shook his head, disgusted with himself for his gullibility. "Goodbye, Joss."
"What?" Her eyes went wide. "What do you… You're leaving?"
Chan nodded. "I'm going into the office area," he said. "I'm going to try to find a spare uplink box." He turned his back, walking slowly, making it easy for her. Singh was dead, of course. Joss was the saboteur, and now she was armed. He hadn't seen her pick up the pistol, but it was missing when he tucked the blanket around Vogel's body.
He'd thought about shooting her, but she held Vogel's hand while he was dying. There was no one else that she could hurt except Chan.
"Captain? Jim?"
He paused at the end of the corridor, his hand on the doorknob, but he didn't turn. "Goodbye, Joss."
He glanced at the ceiling, thinking of the stark beauty of the rings and wishing he could see it one last time. On the other hand, he would never have to smell the sludge of Coriolis Station again, or remember what he had done to Vogel.
He opened the door.
And stepped through, and the door closed behind him. He stopped, puzzled, trying to figure out why he was still alive.
Feet scuffed on carpet somewhere ahead of him, and Singh came around the corner. There was a cold wariness in his eyes, and he kept one hand out of sight behind his hip. Singh, who had fled the first lab while Joss risked her life trying to save Vogel. Singh, who had never quite accepted Chan's authority. Singh, who had always known that Joss was lying.
And what kind of person couldn't trust those around him? What kind of person saw lies on every side?
A liar.
Chan tried to keep his face blank, circling to Singh's right, and Singh turned with him, keeping his right hand hidden. "I heard a shot."
Chan chose a cubicle, pretending it had been his goal all along, and leaned down to tap the screen. "Coms are still down," he said.
"I heard a gunshot," Singh repeated.
"I killed Joss." The lie felt preposterous on his tongue, but a man who would betray his crewmates and leave them to die was a man ready to believe the worst.
"She wasn't a spy at all," Chan said. "She finally told me the truth. You wouldn't believe the things she's done." He stood and walked deeper into the office, and Singh kept turning with him. When Singh had his back to the lab area, Chan stopped.
"I never trusted her," said Singh.
Behind him, the door to the lab area moved ever so slightly. That would be Joss, eavesdropping. Chan raised his voice. "Why did you do it, Singh?"
In reply, Singh brought his right hand into view. He held the pirate's capacitor gun.
"I see you have a pistol," Chan said, for Joss's benefit.
"They offered me a lot of money," Singh said. He looked almost apologetic. "You wouldn't believe how much. They called on the radio, when I was on the bridge of the Mixatonic. At first all they wanted was the location of the ship. Then they said there couldn't be any witnesses." He raised his hands in a half shrug, in a mute plea for understanding, and for a moment the pistol was pointed at the wall beside him. In that moment, Joss shot him twice in the back.
Chan stepped forward, plucking the pistol from his hand, and put an arm around Singh, holding him up. He looked into Singh's eyes, and saw nothing there but a deep, profound sadness. Chan lowered his friend to the floor and held his hand while he died.
Joss walked up, squatted beside him, and offered him the gun.
"I've got one of my own. You keep it."
"I'm sorry," she said.
Chan shrugged. "He wasn't a good man. Don't worry about it."
They left Singh where he lay and walked together to the airlock. Chan picked up his helmet and put it on. Without much hope, he murmured, "Liz, do you copy?"
"Captain! Where the hell have you been? Never mind. Listen, you've got trouble. There's another ship coming in, friends of the pirates. If they find you in there, I'm pretty sure they're going to kill you."
"Well, if it isn't one thing, it's another. Can you come and pick us up?"
"I'm not sure. But you better get outside. Hide over the next ridge, or something. And try not to leave any tracks."
"Roger that." He finished snapping his helmet into place and hurried into the airlock. Joss was already there, peering through the little window, and she said, "I think we're too late."
Chapter 10
"I'm not afraid of the likes of you."
The words were a lie, but speaking them aloud helped Liz fe
el brave. The ship was huge. Vast and enigmatic. It was another mystery ship, with an unregistered transponder. How could you hope to keep a ship that size a secret? She had to call it something, so in her head she referred to it as The Juggernaut.
Right now The Juggernaut was in an equatorial orbit around Enceladus. It wasn't built to land. Instead, it had sent down a shuttle fully half the size of the Raven. Liz and Chan were maintaining radio silence, and she told herself that the continuing silence was a good thing. Surely Chan would've told her if he was dying.
In the meantime, she had work to do. She tapped the screen in front of her, scrolling through the video feeds, trying to find a navigation camera that showed her something other than the hull of the Mixatonic. The Raven was clamped to the derelict ship. Once the Mixatonic had gone by half a dozen times, she figured the crew of The Juggernaut would be ignoring it. So she had waited until the big ship was on the far side of Enceladus from her and the little derelict freighter was just coming over the horizon, and she'd taken off. By the time The Juggernaut was in view the Raven was pressed against the Mixatonic with her engines powered down.
Her plan was to wait for the orbit of the ship to bring her in close to The Juggernaut and launch a surprise attack. The only problem was, she was blind.
At last she found a couple of cameras on the aft of the Raven pointing to the sides, one port and one starboard. She toggled between them until she caught a glimpse of the other ship, high above. It was a giant silver cylinder, blocky and graceless, built to operate in vacuum, not atmosphere.
She switched to the targeting system for the ship's laser. Immediately, an image of The Juggernaut appeared with a red rectangle around it. Liz swore as she realized the Raven was using radar for targeting. If the crew of The Juggernaut was paying attention…
They were. Warning lights flashed all over her screen as radar from The Juggernaut lashed the Raven. She saw flashes of light on the ship high above her, and the bridge trembled as shots slammed home. No fresh lights appeared on her screen. There was no damage. The Juggernaut was shooting up the Mixatonic, but that wouldn't last.
Liz fired the laser. The rectangle around The Juggernaut briefly turned green. Then more lights flashed, and the ship shook around her. A warning light came on, indicating a blow to the hull. Not every shot was hitting the freighter.
She fired again, and again, then kept her finger mashed against the screen. There was no good reason to pause between shots. She was happy to cut The Juggernaut in half, if she could manage it.
More and more weapons opened up on The Juggernaut. The big ship was freakishly well-armed. The Raven vibrated with the impact of rail gun rounds, jerked and shook with the explosive impact of missiles, and shifted in her orbit as laser beams sliced parts of the Mixatonic away. Only the fact that the other ship was targeting the derelict freighter kept Liz alive.
The Raven's automated systems kept the laser beam focused on The Juggernaut, and Liz kept the laser firing. When the other ship vanished from her targeting screen she had a brief surge of joy, until she realized that the last explosion had set her spinning. The Mixatonic was between her and The Juggernaut. She lifted her finger from the button, flexed her fingers, and waited for the spin to bring the other ship back into range.
Two targets appeared on the screen, then a third, and none of them looked like The Juggernaut. Liz switched views to the navigational camera and whistled.
The end of the cylinder was gone. The ship was now a jagged, irregular cone with a huge chunk of wreckage floating beside it. A life pod was dropping toward Enceladus, and she saw another pod eject from the ship, then another.
Liz brought up a damage report. The Raven probably had a dent on her port side, but the hull was intact. There was no real damage.
"Yo ho, yo ho," she murmured, and grinned. "The pirate's life for me."
She turned on the radio. "Captain?" she said. "You there?"
The answer was immediate. "We're on the roof of the base. We could really use a lift out of here."
"Coming right up." She released the magnetic clamps, dropped away from the Mixatonic, and dove for the surface of Enceladus. She skimmed low over the ice and came sweeping up on the site of the base.
There was some sort of hatch on the roof, and a cradle that looked like it was designed to hold a lifeboat. Four men in dark green vac suits were crouched around the cradle, using it for cover. A dozen metres away were two more figures. She recognized Chan and Joss by their vac suits. He was crouched behind a low chimney, a pistol in his hand. Joss was off to one side, lying flat behind some sort of metal fixture.
Liz swung the Raven around so she was facing the four men in green. That put the aft airlock closest to Chan and Joss. She hit the controls for the airlock as she brought the ship down.
"Buddha's backside!" Chan sounded deeply rattled. "Liz, you won't believe what just fell out of the airlock."
"Oh, him," she said. "I forgot about that. Don't worry, he was the only one."
Small arms fire rattled on the hatch plate welded across the front of the bridge. Liz ignored it, bringing the ship down slowly, waiting for the thud of impact, but before she touched down she heard Chan on the radio. "We're on board. Get us out of here."
"What about Singh and Vogel?"
His voice was as cold as the surface of Enceladus. "They won't be coming."
"Roger that," she said. A ping told her that the airlock was closed. She took the ship straight up and left Enceladus and its monsters behind.
Chapter 11
When Enceladus was lost in the darkness behind them Liz put them into a slow orbit around Saturn, moving at the same speed as the ice below them. The three of them sat at different bridge stations, looking at one another as the silence stretched out.
"You're bleeding," Chan said, looking at Liz's hands. The web of skin between thumb and index finger was torn on both hands.
"Oh, yeah." She flexed her hands. "Scab broke, I guess. I'll clean it up later." She looked at him, shrugged, and gave him a lopsided grin. "You should see the other guy."
He thought of the broken corpse that had tumbled out the aft lock. "I think I did. How did you kill it, anyway?"
She fidgeted, not meeting his eyes. "I came up with a cunning plan to electrocute it. When it didn't work I just wrung the damn thing's neck." She looked up. "That reminds me. We need a new welder."
He blinked at the non-sequitur. "Okay."
She scowled. "Never mind that. What the hell have you two been up to? What happened to Vogel and Singh?"
Now it was Chan's turn to squirm. "Singh sold us out," he said. "We had to shoot him."
Liz shrugged. "He was an asshole. I thought about shooting him myself."
Chan chuckled in spite of himself. Then he told her the story of the base on Enceladus. When he reached the part about Vogel's infection his voice broke, and Joss took over. She glossed over his absence, made it sound as if he'd never even thought about running off. She made him sound strong and brave. He could hear the strain in her voice as she told Liz how Vogel had died. She'd liked Vogel.
Everyone did.
At last Joss described how they'd fled up the stairs and onto the roof. "Then you picked us up," she said.
"The jerks on the roof," Liz said. "We shouldn't have left them alive."
Chan shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Singh already told them about us. We don't even know who they are, but they'll be hunting us."
The three of them looked at one another, grim-faced.
"So what do we do?" Liz asked. "Go back to Coriolis? Keep looking for the Mary Alice? We never did find it."
Both women looked at Chan, and he stared back, waiting for them to make a decision. But they just kept waiting.
I just lost half my crew. I broke under pressure. I did my best to run out. You don't know the details, but you must be able to tell. You can't still want me to be in charge.
"Captain?" Liz said. "What are we going to do?"
He
opened his mouth to tell them that he wasn't a captain anymore, but no sound came out. I ran out once before. If you actually want me for a captain… I guess I won't run out again. "Not Coriolis," he said at last. "It's the only place they know to look for us." He shook his head. "Even that hairy-faced pirate would go to Coriolis first." He stood up and paced to the edge of the steel plate over the front window. The rings made a glittering plain, with Saturn rising like a golden wall beyond.
"It's a big solar system," he said, "and we have a fine ship. We'll find another port, we'll find cargo or passengers, and then we'll get the hell away from Saturn for a while. Neptune, maybe, or in toward the belt. Wherever the cargo or the passengers take us."
His hand stretched up to trace the ugly seam where glass met the hatch welded onto the front of the ship. Repairs were going to cost a fortune. "Actually," he said, "belay that. We're going back to Enceladus. Just for a moment."
Joss and Liz gazed at him, not protesting, waiting for him to finish.
"We're picking up what's left of the Mixatonic." He patted the hatch beside him. "We have a fine ship, but we need some cash. We'll sell the wreck for scrap. Then we'll head for the back of beyond. We have the Raven, and it's a big, wide solar system full of opportunity."
"Aye aye," said Liz, and brought the ship around.
Chan turned and watched the ice in the rings race past. "I'm sorry, Vogel," he murmured. "You won't get to see what comes next. But we'll keep the dream alive."
Author Notes
Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your comments. Go to http://jakeelwoodwriter.com to leave me a note or to learn about other stories, or sign up for my newsletter to hear about new releases. I can be reached by email at [email protected].
Voyage Two, Takedown on Titan, is available now.
I'm also the author of Star Raider, a serial now collected into one volume, available from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W0E1KOO. Cassandra Marx is a thief, and a good one. This time she got greedy, though. She swiped a priceless artifact from Carmody, the most powerful man on Hesperus. He's been beating his daughter, Lark, so Cassie took the kid too.