by Lia Black
The vessel shuddered, jolting him out of his ruminations. Sean was on his feet before he realized his brain had told him to move, his heartbeat hammering through his skull and nerves jangling. “What the hell was that?”
Rodney was flipping switches too quickly. “Just a little pocket of turbulence. No biggie.” The annoying optimism in his voice had developed a nervous vibrato.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Skimming the top of the Karman Line, they should’ve been above any atmospheric pressure. These shuttles were not made for deep space, and having no internal FTL drives, they relied on jump gates to get them from planet to planet. Rodney was a CSD pilot; these kinds of runs were standard for them. Was Rodney underestimating him, full of shit, or was something else going on? Sean would place bets on all three.
He glanced back at the coffin. Still there and, thankfully, still upright, its occupant’s eyelids remained closed in peaceful slumber. He began to walk to the front of the ship where Rodney was still fidgeting with the controls.
“You had this serviced recently, right? The CMGs and levelers were tuned?” When Rodney didn’t answer, Sean tapped his shoulder, growing impatient and letting some anger slip through. “Hey, Rodney, where the hell did you—?”
Rodney spun around, a gun in his hand, pointed at Sean’s chest. Sean took a hesitant step backwards, raising his arms to shoulder height. He watched Rodney’s ratty brown eyes zip around the ship and guessed what he was looking for. He was calculating a backstop for the weapon’s emission, which meant he had it cranked up high enough to cut right through Sean. A shuttle this size had very little that wasn’t vital for operation. About the only place that could suffer damage safely was near the bunks, which was just where Rodney was gesturing with the gun
“Move over there,” Rodney said. His joking tone was gone.
“The hell I will. What the fuck is going on?”
“That’s not your concern. Just move.”
Sean held his ground. On the navigation panel behind Rodney, he could see an orange blinking light which meant that Rodney had been in the process of setting flight control to a manual override sequence. The orange light indicated that the ship was waiting to hand over control, but the window was fairly limited. The longer he could keep Rodney talking, the closer the ship would come to re-initializing the auto-pilot. Depending on how far off-course they’d drifted in the exchange, the ship righting itself might be enough tilt to take him off-balance and give Sean an opening.
“Whatever this is,” Sean said, trying to remain calm to keep his words slow, “it’s not worth going to prison for.”
Rodney laughed, “Prison? Fuck. Who do you think arranged this?”
Lyttel? Was he talking about the warden, or had everyone at Luna Max been paid off somehow? “Are you going to tell me what ‘this’ is?” Sean asked, stalling as he tried to keep focused instead of wrapping his head around conspiracy theories.
Rodney’s teeth seemed bigger as he took on the full persona of the schoolyard bully. Little boy who gets a taste of power by picking on kids smaller than himself, then tries his hand at taking on the big dogs. “What, I tell you my plan like some old B-movie super villain?” He seemed to consider it a moment then shrugged. “Yeah, why not? It’s not like you have any hope of getting out of this alive. Lyttel paid me to transport Fie, knew I was the man for the job.”
Sean had to assume it was because Rodney was unscrupulous rather than intelligent. “Was me being here just a coincidence?” Sean asked. It was protocol to have two CSD pilots on long-distance transports, but there were at least two other people he knew of who would’ve fit the bill.
Rodney chuffed. “Of course not. Lyttel figured a pilot who gets jump-sick isn’t going to notice a course change between shifts. I’d actually planned to shoot you in your sleep but you—”
A chirp sounded from the navigation panel as the orange light turned red. Rodney jerked his head around in response, but before he could react, the vessel’s auto navigation took back control and did a hard roll to port, trying to return to its previous course. The motion sent them both stumbling. Rodney tried to grab the pilot’s seat with one hand to steady himself and keep the gun aimed at Sean, but Sean used the momentum of the bank to throw his bodyweight into Rodney. Leading with his shoulder, he knocked the wind out of Rodney, holding him down with his body as Rodney’s back hit the console. Sean’s eye watered from the heat of the weapon’s discharge as it came close enough to singe his hair. A shower of sparks erupted from a ceiling tile just behind him and the lights dimmed, then flickered out, leaving only the lights on over the console. Sean grabbed Rodney’s wrist, smashing his hand against the panel, trying to get him to release the gun. The muscles of Rodney’s chest tensed against Sean’s, warning of an attempted head-butt. Sean pulled back and Rodney’s head bounced off his chin instead. Sean’s teeth clacked together, sending a small jolt of pain through his temples, pissing him off more than hurting him. He arched back and brought his elbow down across Rodney’s face. He felt those big fucking teeth break; blood and spit wet the sleeve of his uniform shirt. Rodney’s hand jerked and the gun popped from his fingers, clattering to the floor. One problem solved. Sean started to get Rodney turned around beneath him so he could handcuff him when something outside the window caught his attention. A black emptiness loomed just outside, so big, it blocked out the stars. His first concern was that they had ended up on course for a black hole, but that didn’t seem right. Sean’s brain was trying to make sense of it when he realized it wasn’t an emptiness, but a hulking black mass; the hull of a ship or space station.
“What the fuck…?”
Tiny lights rose like bees from a hive, that Sean realized were ships, heading their way
“What the hell is that out there?” Sean yelled in Rodney’s face.
“They want Fie,” Rodney said, his voice slurred and wet-sounding though the blood filling his mouth.
Sean didn’t bother to ask what for. Two of the ships headed towards them he recognized as capture vessels. The flash of light indicated they were readying a trawl particle net between them. Rodney hadn’t been trying to reach the station. That would have gone far beyond the ability of the jumper’s engines—like trying to fly an airplane to the moon. He’d been trying to disengage the ship’s controls so that they could be leashed and dragged in like a stubborn pet.
“Oh hell no.”
Sean shoved Rodney off the console and dropped into the pilot’s chair, disengaging auto-pilot to take control and get them the hell out of here. He didn’t know what was waiting in the belly of that black monster, but he wasn’t going to wait to find out.
He engaged the rear burst thrusters, allowing the ship to pop back to avoid getting caught in the snare, but it wasn’t quick enough. The capture vessels managed to snag the right stabilizer. The ship began shuddering through the tug-o’war as it tried to continue moving backwards. He could hear the groaning and popping along the hull from the strain, and the sound of the engine changed from an uncomfortably shrill whine into a shriek.
“Fuck it.” Sean quickly strapped himself in, fighting for control of the shuttle. He diverted all available power to the snagged right engines, putting them into a hard turn. Sean instinctively ducked back as sparks showered down from the damaged panel above; whatever Rodney had hit had finally given up. It didn’t take long to figure out what that was; a sensation like being lowered into water began to rise up from his feet as the gravity controls failed. “Strap in you dumb fuck!” Sean yelled at Rodney, but Rodney seemed more interested in trying to reach his gun.
Sean took a deep breath, getting his mind back into the focus of battle. The turn had pulled them loose, but they were far from being free. Sean sent alternating bursts between the port and starboard engines, making the ship tantrum as they zig-zagged, trying to stay just out of reach. The starboard engines were beginning to protest and overheat from the stress. Alarms sounded and lights strobed across the console. Out
of the corner of his eye he saw the gun float by and Rodney’s hand outstretched, trying to grab it. If he managed get hold of it and shoot, they’d both end up dead. Right now Sean was hoping that at least he might get out of this alive, but he couldn’t do two things at once. He had to focus.
Sean closed his eyes briefly, getting himself back into the head space of pilot in battle, separating mind and body until his movements were intuitive. His fingers moved across the controls like a maestro, silencing alarms and getting the forward thrusters back online. When they engaged he gave them full power, trying to get them as far away as quickly as possible, and hopefully put some distance between Rodney and his gun. A small fire flared up in the damaged ceiling tiles and the engines on the right began to cough like a emphysemic dog.
Everything that wasn’t bolted down or strapped in started bouncing off the walls as gyroscopics failed—Rodney and his gun included—and the ship started rocking. Even if Rodney reached his gun now he’d be too disoriented to fire it. Let him fucking try.
Sean was pushing the vessel hard and it was responding about as well as he’d expected. The ship went through one complete revolution and began to pick up a rolling momentum as the propulsion jets on the right fin died completely. Although jump gates made Sean sick, this kind of impeded flying had never been a problem for him. That’s why he flew the war birds in the military. They were crew ships that held up to twelve troops, which could go from cruising altitude, to maneuvering through an asteroid storm in deep space, inside of minutes. But this was a tiny transport ship in a wide-open field. The capture vessels weren’t very fast, being the equivalent of intergalactic tug-boats, but he had a feeling that if somebody wanted Fie badly enough to kill a cop to get him, there’d be a faster fleet on the way. Out here, this little blue planet jumper was easy to spot and take down. On the surface of a planet, however, there were a lot more places to hide.
Navigation control was still working; Sean set it to trying to find the nearest hospitable planet as he continued to weave the ship away from the laser sights of the faster incoming vessels. He’d lost track of Rodney, but had no doubt he’d been battered unconscious by now. Probably knocked out by his own fucking gun. They would undoubtedly crash, but assuming Sean survived, there was a chance that he wouldn’t suffocate or freeze to death before help could arrive. It was a long shot, but he’d rather die on his own terms.
The nearest hospitable world in this system, according to the navigation matrix, was Terra Huygen. It was a mid-sized planet that once hosted several mining facilities that extracted rare, dense metals from under the surface. It was perpetually a balmy forty to sixty degrees Fahrenheit, but the atmosphere had enough nitrogen and oxygen to be breathable. It was close enough that the ship might be able to maintain enough power to breach the planet’s atmosphere before the drive core burned itself out. It wasn’t a great solution, but the only chance he had. Sean would rather face the possibility of dying in a crash to meeting who, or whatever it was, that wanted Mercury Fie so badly. It was obvious that they wanted him alive; the ships that were tracking them were fast single-man fliers, incapable of firing, but unlike the capture vessels, more than able to keep up.
He swallowed back the sick burning up his throat and quickly re-set course, re-engaging the auto-pilot, then closed his eyes and waited. There was nothing left for him to do but hang on and hope for the best.
6
Mercury struggled to clear the fog from his brain. His temples throbbed with a dull pain and the blood traveling through his veins felt sluggish, half frozen. He smelled something burning, and the sharp, bitter lilac fragrance of oxygen. When he tried to move, it felt like he was fighting quicksand and he found he could only go so far without being limited by a solid object.
The last thing he remembered was being in his cell. The guards outside had been so anxious he swore he could taste it through the walls. Then a pink haze of gas started billowing from the vents, filling the room and making him feel sluggish. The guards stormed in and shot him with several tranquilizer darts, then shot him with more when he kept moving.
His eyelids were sticky, and forcing them apart felt like he was tearing off skin. Blinking away the haze, he tried to make sense of the silver spiderweb in front of him. Once his vision adjusted, context came: he was looking through broken glass. A flicker of orange light created a soft, irregular strobe beyond the glass. Something was on fire.
From the coffin-like closeness, he guessed he was in some kind of stasis pod, but there was no power to it; the oxygen he’d smelled had just been remnants from the tube attached to his nose. His brain did a few slow cartwheels as he tried to understand his situation, then he remembered hearing some of the guards talking about the tribunal. A shuttle then, but it appeared they had crashed. Before too long his sealed chamber would be filled with carbon dioxide from his own breathing and he would suffocate. That would be a very disappointing way to die, hardly the blaze of glory he deserved. Mercury took a moment to gather up his strength, then lurched forward.
There was a squeal and the sound of air escaping, then a pop as the vacuum released and latches broke apart. The pod was still upright, which was either a favorable coincidence or it meant that somebody had tried to land the shuttle rather than letting it do a spinning free-fall. Mercury stumbled out and felt things pulling through his flesh, finally releasing him with a series of sharp plucks. Something else tugged painfully on his cock—oh, catheter. He shuddered and carefully withdrew the long tube, knowing that it was going to sting the next time he peed. Pity it hadn’t been inserted during something a lot sexier than a medical procedure. At least then he might have had a fond memory to accompany the burn.
The first thing he saw was a dead man. He was a young red-head, wearing a CSD flight suit, with blood on his face and his body bent at an impossible angle over a piece of sheared metal. Mercury snatched off the man’s cap and gave it a quick shake before plopping it onto his own head. He searched the broken body for weapons and noticed the pulse-pistol on the floor. From the acrid scent of the barrel it had been fired recently, which Mercury took to mean the dead man wasn’t the only crew on the ship.
The fire was near the front, on the control panel. As he made his way forward, he found the second body. Another man, laying like he’d managed to release himself from the pilot’s seat just after the crash. This one moaned when he nudged it with his foot. Interesting. The man was also wearing a CSD uniform, but his was tactical with the three stripes of a sergeant on his arm. Mercury pressed the gun to the back of the officer’s head, but something made him hesitate to shoot. The cop had a nice ass, and when Mercury rolled him over, with the exception of a large bloody cut across one cheek, he had a handsome face. His hair was a color between gold and red, fuller on top and shorn to about a quarter-inch everywhere else; straight nose, strong jaw, nice lips...but what of his eyes? Mercury pulled up a lid. Green. A lovely natural shade like pine, and the fact that the pupil constricted when exposed to light meant his brain was likely still functional. Well that settled it then. He could be used as a hostage at the very least, and since it never took very long for Mercury to get lonely, some entertainment.
Inside a large gym bag near the bunks, he found an old-fashioned pistol, the kind that shot slugs as ammunition. It was a nice piece and hadn’t been discharged recently.
Both were cops. Both had guns. One was dead. Just as well. Even without the dead man’s face being a mess of blood, Mercury could tell he wasn’t as handsome as Sergeant Pretty Green Eyes.
He’d just finished gathering up all of the weapons, food, and other items he could salvage when he felt a foreboding buzz through his jaw; familiar electrical signals filtering through the walls. Hunters, from Sol—even shielded, there were enough leaks in their armor that vibrations from their communicators were hitting a specific note in his brain. They must have assumed no one was conscious in the ship because they were exchanging so much radio traffic. He pinpointed their exact locations and
movements outside and determined there were five. Fools. Probably rookies, sent down with a transport ship to take him away. How insulting. Mercury stationed himself to the right of the door, waiting for the first one to come inside.
The hunter was wrestling to get the sliding door open. With no power, he was obviously having a tough time of it, but Mercury had faith. If there was one thing he knew about the hunters, it’s that they were tenacious. Part of the job requirement, he supposed. When the hunter succeeded and stepped into the ship, Mercury jammed the barrel of the old-fashioned pistol up under his helmet and pulled the trigger. There was a wet pop. Meat-scented smoke leaked from the seals in the helmet and the body went limp. Hot blood ran in rivulets down Mercury’s hand as he held the body aloft a moment before he pulled it deeper into the ship, away from the open door. The others would be waiting for a signal, likely assuming the first hunter was still making his way through debris. Mercury gathered up the dead man’s weapons and removed the very useful body armor, quickly donning it as he kept vigil on the entrance.
He heard the tinny chatter of voices through the speaker in the dead man’s helmet, growing more desperate as the other hunters tried to make contact. They would not attempt to enter the ship after losing communication with their comrade. They would call in and wait for reinforcements to arrive, but Mercury was ready to leave now.