Chapter 16
“I wonder what kind of ships hit men fly these days.” Karter mused aloud. “Ma, bring it up on the display panel when we get a visual.”
Lex, for the moment convinced that his unpredictable associate was not an immediate threat to his life, approached the panel. As he did, Karter continued.
“In the old days, they used to use converted cargo haulers for everything,” he reminisced. “Just lop off the cargo portion and you ended up with these zippy little boxes with power to spare for all sorts of add-ons. Plus, they could sell the stolen cargo. It was actually really efficient. I’ve always been a big fan of the sort of solutions people come up with when they have limited resources like that. I mean, I used to--”
“Visual established.”
The image jumped onto the screen. Lex’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Karter raised an eyebrow.
“Huh,” Karter said thoughtfully. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
“Is that what I think it is?” Lex asked.
“Do you think it is a VectorCorp Asteroid Wrecker?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s what you think it is.”
VectorCorp, it was generally agreed, was too powerful. They controlled virtually all of the communications--and virtually all of the transportation--in the colonized galaxy. Couple this with the fact that their employee count was larger than the population of most individual countries and their annual profits exceeded the combined GDP of many planets, and it became clear that in the not-altogether-unlikely event that they were to militarize, the resulting war probably wouldn’t last very long. Realizing this, a large coalition of governments got together and decided that, if VC wanted transit and transmission rights for their sectors, then they would have to sign an agreement limiting allowable combat vessels to nothing larger or better equipped than an armored personnel carrier or anti-pirate scout ship.
At the time, avoiding those sectors would have been financially devastating, so VectorCorp reluctantly agreed.
A few years later, the Asteroid Wrecker was unveiled. Those trade routes, the very same ones for which they’d paid top dollar for transit rights, needed to be kept clear, after all. That meant that VC had to be prepared to quickly deal with any rogue piece of space rock that might wander into their vicinity. Thus, they created a vessel with a particle cannon that could bore a hole through a mile and a half of solid iron. Asteroids tend to be found in fields of smaller debris, so, to shrug that off, they gave the ship high-density ballistic plating and a deflection shield powerful enough to protect a large city. Occasionally, the best course of action was to push an asteroid out of the way, so it came equipped with remotely-operated, high-capacity payload rockets. They were essentially missiles without a warhead. And, naturally, in order to facilitate controlled demolition, they kept a ready stockpile of high-yield, directional shape charges. They were essentially warheads without a missile. The removal of an asteroid often required specialized vehicles, so an internal, fortified hangar large enough for a small fleet of one-man vehicles was included in the design. Manning the ship was between two and five hundred VectorCorp employees, each with specialized training in deep space, hazardous environments, and demolitions.
Independently, every feature and function of the Asteroid Wrecker was entirely sensible for its stated purpose. Taken as a whole, the vessel was a utility vehicle that could go toe to toe with a warship.
And now there was one approaching.
“Can that make it through the, uh, the moat, or whatever?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So what are we going to do!?”
“I’m going to go eat some burritos and make sure Solby took a squirt. You’re on your own.”
“For God’s sake, man! This is my life we’re talking about!”
“Hey, you got yourself into this, whatever it is. What am I, your babysitter? Man up and deal with it.”
The panic wrapped its fingers around his spine and wouldn’t let go. It burned in his stomach and roasted his mind. Get away. That’s what he had to do. Every man for himself. Get away and regroup. Get away and hide. Just get away!
Karter opened the door and shrugged against the cold, and Lex shoved past him. The gravity dropped to half when he left the building and the cold hit him like a hammer, but adrenaline has a way of pushing aside the little things like potential hypothermia. Instead, it revealed that 1-G muscles working on a 0.6-G planet gave sprinting a whole new meaning. He covered the short distance between the door and the school bus in two steps, slamming into the door and pulling it open. He was seated in the driver’s seat and grasping for the controls before he remembered that there weren’t any.
“Goddamn it!” he screamed.
“Those guys are seriously screwing up my moat,” Karter grumbled outside.
Lex turned and leaned out of the bus to see one of the most awe-inspiring things he’d ever witnessed. The Asteroid Wrecker was approaching from behind the as-yet-unvisited third building in the complex. To call the thing a vehicle seemed to fall well short. It was practically a civilization. It looked like an Olympic stadium floating in the sky; a round, armor-plated monstrosity. The entire perimeter was a thick tube, branching off at one point like a chopped-off letter p. A long notch was cut out of the underside--the currently open hangar bay doors--and spaced regularly along the rim were thrusters. They were built in space, so anti-gravity modules were left out, favoring instead the oversized engines to keep it out of the gravity well of planets and stars when the time came.
Currently, the whole vehicle was wreathed in a glittering ring of violet sparkles as its shields were pelted by a constant stream of debris. The very same debris had perforated Lex’s beloved Betsy, yet from the looks of it, nary a pebble of it was reaching the wrecker.
“Minimal life signs detected,” Ma announced over the external loudspeakers of the building.
“What do you mean? They’re all dead?” Lex yelled.
“No. It is a primarily automated system. Only one human operator,” she clarified.
“Why would they do that?”
“Fewer witnesses,” Karter said simply as he boarded the bus, Solby on his usual perch. “Standard operating procedure when you’ve got wetwork to do. Take an automated vehicle, cut the surveillance systems and long-range communications, and hand control over to your trigger man. If things go south, you can always claim a glitch caused the AI to go rogue, and there will be no evidence to the contrary.”
The bus started up and began to whisk back toward the lab.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Classified,” he said, stroking Solby and leaning back.
“Why are you so calm?”
“Because they’re after you, not me.”
“Karter, these people killed a whole shuttle of people to take out the person who gave me the package. Do you really think they are going to be precise when they come after me? Clearly they don’t care about collateral damage.”
Karter stared thoughtfully at Lex for the remainder of the short ride, seemingly considering the statement. It wasn’t until the doors hissed open again and the inventor stepped out that he finally spoke, turning to his guest.
“You’ve got a point, Lex. Fortunately, I’ve got something which ought to make them open to negotiation.”
“Thank god! What?”
“You,” he said, shutting the door and tapping a panel on the outside, illuminating a sign reading “Door Secured.”
“No. No!” Lex screamed, banging desperately at the door. “Ma! Don’t let him do this!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Alexander. I will do my best to see to it that both of you survive this exchange, but currently this appears to be the only arrangement that gives a reasonable chance of at least one party maintaining life and liberty, and is thus the most ideal course of action,” the computer stated.
Above, the wrecker was near enough for the apocalyptic hum of its engines to rattle the wi
ndows of the bus. Considering the fact that the ship was still a half-mile up, that spoke volumes of the raw power of the vessel. Now that it was out of the debris field, the shields dropped and a ship exited the hangar. It didn’t take long for Lex to recognize it, and thus become aware of just how screwed he was. The smaller ship, looking like a flea falling off of a wooly mammoth, was a DAR--but not just any DAR. It was the same ship that had shot him down two weeks ago.
It was Agent Fisk.
The vehicle drifted down to a few feet above the ground, its nose just a few yards from the bus and Karter. Solby, intrigued by the new visitor, leaped from his shoulder and began to yip and prance about.
“Attention. You are harboring a known fugitive,” echoed the agent’s voice from his ship’s public address system.
“Harboring my ass! He’s right there! I’m not harboring anybody. You, however, are trespassing on my land. So take your fugitive and get out.”
“Trevor Alexander was carrying sensitive information.”
“If you say so.”
“You will be remanded to custody until it can be determined whether you were given said information.”
“Nope, sorry. Look, I did your job for you. Your fugitive is locked in that bus. Realistically, I should be asking for some sort of reward, but because I’m a nice guy, I’ll let you take him for free, and I won’t even press charges for the damages you did to my moat on the way in. But that is the extent of the transaction,” Karter said, turning and walking toward the lab entrance.
“Halt, or I will be forced to use force,” Fisk warned.
“You’re in a ship, moron,” Karter said, turning around. “There’s nothing you could possibly use on me that wouldn’t potentially kill me, and you can’t afford to kill me, because you’re not sure where the info is or if I’ve done something with it.”
He continued walking toward the lab.
“This is your last warning.”
Karter responded with a raised middle finger, not even bothering to turn back to Fisk to deliver it. The mad scientist must have been extremely confident in his interpretation of the facts, because he didn’t so much as flinch as a nasty-sounding weapon started to charge. He didn’t even flinch when it fired into the ground, raining down shattered fragments of stone and spattering the bus with flecks of molten rock. No, it wasn’t a sound that stopped Karter. It was a sudden silence.
He turned, his face emotionless and cold. His eyes turned to a crater blasted out by the DAR’s plasma cannon. There, at the edge of it, a smoldering tuft of black and white fur drifted slowly to the frosty ground. Karter stood statue still, eyes locked on the clump of hair. His cheek twitched slightly.
“You will take me seriously,” Fisk growled.
“Ma,” Karter uttered, eyes never leaving the patch of fur, “it appears that a rather large piece of junk has made it through the moat. Take care of it.”
“Acknowledged,” the computer replied.
The agent began to bark another command, and there was the distinct sound of weapons charging, but an instant later both were wiped out by a network of intense beams of light converging on the ship. Every single roof-mounted laser had targeted him, firing in unison and tracing lines along the hull of the ship, leaving trails of molten metal behind. A force field flicked into existence a moment later, but it only managed to hold off the lasers long enough for the ship to fire up its engines and try to escape. When the shield collapsed, the lasers sliced into one of the engines, sending the ship spiraling off course. It arced up over the roof of the lab and corkscrewed to the ground somewhere behind with a sound of screeching metal.
“Come on,” Karter said, disengaging the lock and letting Lex out of the bus.
“Thanks for coming to your senses and doing the right thing,” Lex said, shaking his hand.
“Shut up. We’ve got a job to do.”
“What do you mean? You took him out, and there’s no one on the wrecker. We’re safe, right?”
“Seems to me that Agent Fisk was a pro. If he’s anything like me--and judging from the fact he wanted you dead, he’s a lot like me--then he would have put a dead man switch on that sucker hanging over our heads in the event he was taken out of commission. Any second now, it is going to wake up and do something unpleasant.”
“Wait, what’s going to hap--”
The rest of the sentence was lost in a rush of sound as the whole of the complex was bathed in red light. The ground shook and a deafening roar split the air as a ring of weapon mounts around the rim of the wrecker decided to show Karter what real lasers look like. Beams of coherent light five feet around marched steadily across the landing ground, slowly working toward each other. Rather than succumbing to the moth-like urge to stare into the source of the light, Lex instead ran desperately toward the lab entrance. It slid open and he and Karter rushed inside. The doors stopped halfway, but Karter pulled open an access panel and cranked them shut.
Even with the doors closed, the sound was too loud to speak over. The lights in the lab were flickering weakly, emergency indicators over stairwells and exits blinking on. For thirty seconds, both men simply stood and endured the quaking earth. Then, as quickly as it came, the sound and shaking dropped away.
“Ma! Damage report!” Karter ordered, marching down the hallway with purpose.
“Partial collapse in the arm-arm-arm-ory-ry. Primary Power coup-up-uplings severed. Wide-ide-ide spread power fluctuation-tion-tion-tions. Affected Systems: light-ighting, environmentals, gravit-vit-vitation, securit-rit-rity. Attempting to restore power by re-re-re-re-re-re- . . . routing through secondary,” the computer reported, voice files stuttering. “Also, I appear-pear to be malfunct-unct-unctioning-ning. How very distressing. Initiating self-diagnosis-nosis-sis-sis.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Lex said anxiously.
“Data bussssssssss corruption found. Reboot recommended.”
“Not yet, I need you awake for now. That thing is going to shoot at us in about eight minutes,” Karter said, hurrying down the hall.
“You mean shoot at us again, right?” Lex said, keeping pace.
“No, that was just the targeting laser.”
Lex stopped.
“What . . .”
“It painted a cross hair on the complex. The actual weapon is going to be a little more exciting when it goes off. We should probably try to stop it before then, because we won’t be around afterward.”
“Well . . . well, can’t Ma just shoot it down with the lasers?”
“Those are for pushing debris around and zapping turds. Any half decent shield will shrug them off. If we hadn’t sucker-punched Fisk, they probably would have had trouble with him.”
“Approximately half of our lasers have been damaged-aged-aged or destroy-troyed in the targeting las-las-las-las-las-as-as-as-sssssssssss . . . speech module malfunction, activating alternate speech modules.”
“Yes, fine, we get the point!” Karter snapped.
Suddenly an explosion rocked the building.
“What now!” Karter growled.
“Aviones de ataque han sido desplegados,” the computer alerted.
“What!?” Lex moaned.
“Attack drones. Lex, I’m going to need you to get out there and try to deal with them. Aren’t you glad I rigged up some sneaky weaponry on your ship?”
“Me? Get out there? What are you going to be doing?”
“Trying to scrape together a weapon to take out that wrecker before it knocks the planet out of orbit.”
“You mean you have all of this crazy crap and you don’t have any weapons!?”
“I’ve got enough weapons to overthrow a world government, but they are all over in the armory, which is the first thing they went after.”
“So you put all of your weapons in the same place!?”
“Knowing what you know about me, do you think it would be wise to have weapons readily available?”
“No . . . I guess not.”
“
Right, so get down to the hangar, and quit wasting my time!”
Lex ran toward the elevator, but considering the fact the lights had yet to be restored, it seemed like too much of a gamble to trust it. Instead, he threw open the doors to the staircase and bounded down them, skipping as many steps and hopping as many banisters as possible. About half way down, the lights finally stopped flickering.
“Parcial de energía restaurada.”
“I don’t speak Spanish!” Lex exclaimed breathlessly.
“Teilweise Power restauriert.”
“I don’t even know what language that is!”
“Deutsch. Sie sollten sich überlegen Erlernen weiterer Sprachen.”
The monolingual pilot ignored the statement and kicked open the doors to the repair bay, throwing open the hatch and climbing into the cockpit of his repaired ship.
“Öffnung Hangartore kaufen. Viel Glück, Herr Alexander.”
“Whatever you say, Ma.”
The instant Lex was in the seat--which was the same fancy model that had been in the DAR, he would have to thank Karter for that--he felt the panic start to subside. He was still scared out of his mind, but this was a ship. This was his ship. It was the one thing he was good at, the one thing that he didn’t have to think about. His fingers found their way to the appropriate switches, powering up systems, adjusting straps. Tweaking, tapping, testing. When the systems were ready, he juiced the throttle.
Karter did good work. The acceleration was astounding, multiples of what old Betsy had. He put some distance between himself and the swarming drones and pulled a hard turn. The ship was as nimble as it was fast. It left his old one in the dust. Yet . . . Perhaps it was because he’d reused some components, or perhaps it was some engineering mojo that he would never understand, but somehow this ship felt like Betsy. It was something in the rattle of the engine, in the hum of the electronics. The body of Betsy was dead and gone, but the soul was still kicking.
A moment of thought dredged up the procedure necessary to get his “gun” functional. When he held down the release and flipped on auto-lock, all of the little moving dots on his ship’s sensors were suddenly updated with ranges and estimated hull integrities. He popped a stick of gum in his mouth, wrapped his hands around the controls, and grinned.
“Let’s do this.”
Bypass Gemini Page 20