by Adam Carter
“There are more,” Haskell promised, returning to her chest. “Maybe at some point we’ll actually get around to a question-and-answer session.”
Arowana was not sure how much more she could take. She knew Hawthorn would be on his way to save her, but she had never been one to have anyone ride to her rescue. She had been trained as a security guard and there had been no one but herself to rely on when Securitarn had stolen her in the night for experimentation. If she was going to get out of this alive she was going to have to see to it herself.
“Aha,” Haskell said, turning round triumphantly. In her hands was something which resembled a corkscrew, which she was slowly turning with its handle. “Matilda and I, we had a lot of fun with this one. First, though, I have to explain to you the five points of entry this thing is going to make. It all adds to the ambiance, my dear, because there’s nothing better than to know what’s coming.”
The entire room chose that moment to shake and Haskell almost fell over. She scowled in annoyance and pulled out a radio.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Turbulence,” Rayne replied. “A load of flak just appeared out of nowhere.”
“Flak? Are we talking ice or rock?”
“Neither. Looks like this is metal debris.”
Haskell frowned, looked to Arowana and said into the radio, “This is an attack.”
“Captain’s not sure. He says we might just have wandered into what’s left of a satellite. Joyriders draw them off-course sometimes to use as target practice.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence. This woman’s friends are coming to rescue her.”
“Captain says …”
“I don’t care what the captain says. You tell him this is an attack.” She snapped off the radio and dropped her tools back into the chest before slamming down the lid. Arowana was about to taunt her, to tell her their love session was going to have to wait, but she had learned her lesson about such things.
Haskell stormed out the room without a word, furious that her pleasure had been interrupted. She turned off the light as she closed the door, plunging Arowana into darkness. Hanging in tortured agony, her body a mass of blood, sweat and unshed tears, Arowana took several deep breaths and sought a way to overcome the agony. For eventually Haskell would return and when she did Arowana wanted to be ready for her. She was through being a victim: it was time for Arowana to find a way to fight back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
So far it was working, which was something of a shock since Hawthorn had not believed they had much of a chance of the whole flak plan doing them any good at all. He trusted Hart, that was not the problem: it was more that he trusted the crew of the Obsidian to have been more observant than they were. Being in the business they were, and having discovered an imposter aboard their vessel, Hawthorn had expected them to have every crewmember physically looking out the windows. Having fired the flak missile, however, Hawthorn had seen no sign that anyone was even aware his small craft had made contact.
“Gordy, help!”
Hawthorn reached out a hand, grabbed Cassiel by the leg and hauled her back. They had landed their craft onto the side of the Obsidian, attaching with incredibly strong magnetic clamps. From there they had donned thin spacesuits and hopped their way to an access duct. The gravity within the Obsidian would be artificial normal, but on the outside hull the two of them were pretty much spacewalking. That the Obsidian generated a small gravitational force gave their suits something to latch onto, and the smart computers within those suits were able to fool the universe into believing there was more gravity here than there was. That was not exactly the most truthful explanation of how the suits worked, but it was precisely how Hawthorn had explained it to Cassiel.
Unfortunately, she had panicked and forgotten the first thing he had told her: never drift away from the hull. There was no gravity in the depths of space, and momentum would carry her away without any form of buffer. If he had not grabbed her foot to haul her back, she would have floated away forever.
He decided against giving her such a lecture and concentrated on getting her feet back onto the hull.
She collided with him and wrapped her arms about him as they tumbled. “You saved me, Gordy.”
“Do you have to call me Gordy?” He extricated himself and made sure they weren’t both now floating away from the Obsidian. Once he was reasonably certain they were not in danger of a long and terrible death, he re-evaluated their distance to the hatch and set off towards it. Cassiel clung to his arm, which impeded his ability to hop, so he compromised by holding her hand.
“Can’t we just walk?” she asked in a skittish voice.
“Walking takes too long. Dragging our feet might puncture the suits, too. Hopping is quicker and so long as we never go too far into the air we’ll be fine.”
“But it’s so dangerous.”
“You never saw the old Moon-landing footage from the sixties?”
“Sixty what?”
“The nineteen sixties. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin?”
“I heard Wraith talking about West Aldrin,” she said, perking up a little. “It’s on Ganymede, I think.”
“And named after Buzz Aldrin, yes.”
“Oh. Who were they?”
Hawthorn shook his head. “Without them, we wouldn’t be out here.”
“Were they slavers, then?”
“What? No, they weren’t slavers. They were ... You’ve honestly never heard of them?”
Cassiel shook her head. The suits they wore were grey, but otherwise a little like those the astronauts had worn on the Moon. Through Cassiel’s faceplate, of course, Hawthorn could only see her masked face.
“What about Michael Collins?” he tried.
“Sorry, never heard of him.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re alone there.”
They continued in silence and soon enough reached the hatch. It was a small opening accessible via a circular handle, akin to those found on submarines. Hawthorn had installed many such hatches in his career and had known the Obsidian would have had a few scattered about. They were a legal requirement for vessels over a certain size, for they could be opened from either side and were primarily used for emergency exits.
Releasing Cassiel’s hand, he knelt before the hatch, took the metal wheel in both hands, and heaved. The wheel strained in resistance, but Hawthorn was a strong man and once he could feel it turning it obeyed him relatively quickly.
“What’s the plan once we get inside?” Cassiel asked.
“We keep out of sight and eavesdrop on people.”
“Who’s to say they’re going to be talking about Iris?”
“They probably won’t be; but then, she’s a prisoner and how many of those could the slavers possibly take? Not counting the slaves, I mean.” He glanced over to her, reminding himself of the strange catsuit Cassiel was wearing under her astronaut’s gear. “You’re dressed as a ninja, Cass; since this is a stealth mission you’ll fit right in.”
“And I have my sword.”
“You brought your sword?”
“I’m a ninja. Ninjas are never far away from their swords.”
“Cass, you’re not a ninja, you’re just sort of dressed like one.” He paused. “Do you even know what a ninja is?”
“They were Japanese.”
“So were a lot of things.”
“And they wore dark clothes.”
“And?”
“And … And they knew ninja stuff.”
Hawthorn despaired, but Cassiel was doing no harm. She was young and impressionable and it hardly mattered whether she was still playing dress-up. Cassiel was an odd one on a vessel filled with odd people. Having grown up within an enclosed society like Themisto, she had not learned too much about life outside her own world. Cassiel’s time spent on Jupiter’s Glory was a journey of discovery and wonderment and Hawthorn could not fault her for that. She may have been
eighteen, but she was still very much the child she had likely never been allowed to be.
The hatch hissed as the handle turned one final time and air escaped to the vacuum. Hawthorn pulled it open and revealed a tunnel. Dropping into it, the gravity of the Obsidian immediately seized him and he slid down the shaft several metres before passing through the transparent gossamer covering the end of the tunnel. The shaft was indented with rungs so when used as an emergency escape the crew could clamber out relatively quickly.
He found himself in a small chamber with solid black walls and a meagre amount of illumination. He had barely taken in the scene when Cassiel collided with him from behind.
“Sorry,” she said, picking herself up and dusting Hawthorn down. It took an effort to stop her doing such a strange thing.
“My fault,” he said. “I was too busy being appalled by the flagrant disregard for safety protocols.”
“Disregard? I thought you said the hatches were mandatory.”
“They are, but they need to lead into large open areas, not poky little rooms. The point of fire escapes is that everyone needs to know they’re there, not to hide them away.”
“Gordon, does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. People could die.”
“I meant does it matter for us? We’re trying to rescue Iris from slavers. This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done and you’re worried about safety precautions.”
“Safety first, Cass.”
He moved through the door and entered a corridor. There was no one about, which was pretty much as he had expected. When he had been on the Obsidian before he had been surprised at how few people there were around, although supposed the same could be said by anyone wandering the corridors of his own ship as well. Being a slaver vessel, it seemed most of the space needed to be used for the slaves rather than the cargo-handlers.
It still made him angry to think of human beings as cargo, made him angrier still to know that such a practice was not illegal. He did not know how far he would go in his rescue of Arowana, but that all depended on how they had treated her. That he was dealing with slavers conjured up horrific images, but he had to force himself to remember this was just another job for these people. They could have been hauling cattle or grain, and if such traders discovered a potential buyer was lying about their identity it did not mean they would mistreat her. Arowana was locked away somewhere while Captain Gardener tried to figure out what to do with her. The most she would have suffered would be a few bruises as she fought them when they moved in to capture her. In fact, there was a chance she might even have overpowered her captors and was still roaming around free somewhere. Certainly her training would be greater than anything Gardener would have anticipated. Then there was that massive Securitarn brain to keep her alive and safe.
“Gordy, you all right?” Cassiel asked.
“Just worried. I’ll be fine.”
She placed a hand upon his arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
Not having much to say to that, Hawthorn went back into the small room and slipped out of his spacesuit before shoving it through the gossamer and stuffing it into the tunnel. No one would see it there and someone could only find it if they were entering the tunnel themselves. Cassiel followed his example before smoothing down her black attire. Not for the first time he wondered what she looked like under that catsuit. He had seen her wear a variety of things, but none of them had revealed quite as much about her appearance at that catsuit. For a religious acolyte, she certainly did like to show off her curves.
“We should get some uniforms,” Cassiel said. “We’ll knock a couple of guys over the head and steal their clothes.”
“For one thing, you’re quite distinctive with your face covered. For another, these people probably don’t all wear uniforms.”
“Oh. I didn’t think of that.”
Walking back into the corridor, they took the direction leading to the command deck. Hawthorn was waiting for Cassiel to ask him how he knew the way, but she did not. He did not know why he wanted to show off his engineering knowledge in front of her, but there was something infectious about Cassiel’s sheer joy of life. Also, the design of spacecraft was something he knew better than Arowana, so it was the one thing he could boast about.
The fact Cassiel did not ask was a little annoying, but he would get over it.
The closer they came to the command deck, the more crewmembers they saw. There was tension to the air, for Hawthorn’s trick with the flak had confused people. From eavesdropping on their various conversations as they passed, Hawthorn learned that the captain had no idea what was happening. Confusion would be Hawthorn’s greatest weapon, yet it would only last for so long.
They arrived at a point which was only three corridors away from the command deck, but here Hawthorn stopped. Peering out from behind a wall, he could see far too many people.
“We’ll never get there,” he said. “I think I made a mistake. I assumed there weren’t many crewmembers on this ship, but instead they’re all concentrated in the one area.”
“I could cause a distraction.”
“You could, but then I might have to come rescue you, too.”
“You could cause a distraction. Then I could rescue you both.”
Hawthorn was about to chide her, for this was not a game, but she was so filled with youthful exuberance it was difficult to find fault with anything she said or did. Besides, her suggestion was not such a bad one. Captain Gardener had met Hawthorn and knew what he looked like. Gardener also knew he was a decent engineer, and there was a chance Hawthorn could bargain his skills to save Arowana.
“Is there any other way into that place?” Cassiel asked. “A secret entrance perhaps?”
“Cass, people don’t generally build secret entrances into their command decks. It defeats the object of putting all the protections in place.”
“They have defences?”
“I’m not sure. There’s no standard defence pattern for a ship like this, but you never know what traders have installed. And when those traders are slavers, there could well be anything here.”
“I wonder what it’s like to be a slave.”
“Probably pretty bad.” He did not want a repeat of their earlier debate. Then he saw someone he recognised. “Hullo, this is interesting.”
“What is?” Cassiel forced her face past him so the two of them were staring around the corner. “Who’s she?”
“Carla Rayne.”
“I don’t like her.”
“You’ve never even met her.”
“I still don’t like her.”
Hawthorn had never heard such ice in Cassiel’s voice and wondered what was wrong with her. Carla Rayne was a perfectly pleasant young lady. That she was also a slaver did not do her any favours, but one would never have known such a thing from the way she behaved.
Pulling Cassiel back behind the wall, Hawthorn said, “Maybe we could talk with her.”
“Talk with her? You mean get her on our side.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know this is a slaver vessel.”
“Maybe she doesn’t …? Did you actually just say that?”
“I just can’t believe someone as sweet and innocent as Carla knows what goes on here.”
“Sweet and innocent? That girl’s the enemy, Gordy, and if you can’t see that I’ll have to be the one to pound her face in for answers.”
“Whoa,” Hawthorn said, dragging her back just as she tried to lunge around the corner. “No one’s pounding anyone’s face in, Cass.”
“Well we should do something. We need to take her prisoner.”
That was something with which Hawthorn could at least agree. “All right; but we’re not harming her.”
“Maybe a little.”
“No. We’re not monsters, Cass. We’ll take her somewhere secluded and talk with her. She might willingly take us to Iris.”
“And I might strip naked and convert to atheism.”
“The trick’s going to be in getting her to come this way.”
“I’m not, by the way.”
“Not what?”
“Going to strip naked and convert to atheism.”
“No, I never thought you were going to.”
“That’s a relief,” Cassiel said, visibly relaxing. “It’s just something I came out with. In my society, suggesting we see each other naked is a declaration of marriage.”
“That’s fine. It was a joke, I get it.”
“Only, I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression of …”
“Cass, it’s fine.”
“Not that I find it repulsive that you might want to see me naked. It’s just that you have Iris and I … well, I was just joking, right?”
“I know, you told me that. Could we maybe concentrate on what we’re doing and stop this ridiculous conversation.”
“Ridiculous?” Cassiel asked, sounding hurt. “Gordy, this is a staple of Themistonian society. We don’t flirt by flashing a bit of skin. It’s all or nothing with us, it’s not ridiculous.”
“All right, it’s not ridiculous. But can we drop it?”
“I … Fine.”
Hawthorn had no idea what had got into the girl, but he was sure she was now sulking. He was fairly certain she was blushing as well, but that was only what he could pick up from her body language considering he could not see her face. He glanced back down the corridor to see Rayne finishing her talk with one of the other crewmembers. She was heading straight towards where Hawthorn and Cassiel were hiding.
“This could be easier than I figured,” he said. “We’ll let her pass us, follow her and jump her when she gets far enough away from everyone else.”
Cassiel did not reply: she was still sulking.
The two of them pressed themselves up against the wall and watched Rayne stride past them. Where she was going in such a hurry they could not say, but they followed at a discreet distance. They lost her at one point because two other people appeared and they had to wait for them to pass, but they soon caught up to her.