The Hidden Prophet

by Benjamin Douglas

  “OW!” a male voice yelled.

  “Sorry!” Ada called. “You might want to strap yourselves in back there—I don’t think things are going to calm down for a bit!”

  “Easy to say when you have straps,” one of the pretty boys mumbled. Ada glanced back through the door, and saw Doctor Saran kneeling on the floor, helping the other man sit up. It looked like they had both been thrown from their bunks.

  “Did you say a comet-hopper on the roof?” Ada subvocalized.

  “Affirmative. Unmanned.”

  “Huh.” She rubbed the back of her head where she had slammed into the seat. “Bone Crusher still up there?”

  “Yes. He is—no. He has exited the roof.”

  “He’s back down inside the tower?” she said out loud. A note of panic touched her voice, as another fighter made a close pass of the tower, this time dropping off a light missile. There was a violent explosion, and a small ocean of siding fell away from the building to the ground.

  “Affirmative. He has entered the elevator shaft.”

  “Great.” She shook her head. “What’s he thinking?”

  “Not many options, with Crush,” Joyce said.

  Ada considered. “Moses, is he chasing more, ah, life-forms?”

  “Affirmative. There are six in the elevator car, which has stalled partway down. He is descending toward them.”

  “He’s not in an elevator car?” Ada smacked her forehead. “Oh, Crush.”

  They were peeling up the side of the tower now, but it was difficult to climb while fighters kept passing by, guns blazing. Moses rocked them left and right, flying defensively. Ada’s sore body protested. In the back, the pretty boys were laying on the lowest bunks, stomach down, gripping the sides with white knuckles.

  “Look out!” Joyce yelled. A fighter came out of nowhere and took them head-on, as if to play chicken. Moses spun them away from the tower just as the fighter lobbed a missile their way. The missile shot to the ground and exploded, but the fighter jetted out and stayed on their tail.

  “Moses, we don’t have any guns?”

  “That is correct. There are no munitions mounted to Cupid’s hull.”

  Ada clenched her teeth, swallowed a scream of frustration. A lot of good their shopping spree back in the belt had done them. What they should have sprung for were a couple of decent ship guns, instead of filling the cargo bay with food and drink. What good did that do if you were too dead to enjoy it? She thought for a moment of donning her suit and standing in the airlock, firing back at the fighter with the small-arms blaster on her multitool. But that wouldn’t do a thing against the hull of a Gatling.

  The lightbulb flickered in her mind.

  “Moses, do we have alcohol on board”

  “Yes, Ada.”

  She unstrapped and stood, wobbling and almost falling into Joyce as Cupid pitched again. “Take care of the cockpit,” she said, then passed back through the living area and into the cargo hold.

  “You’re going to drink in the middle of all of this?” Joyce hollered after her. “Without me?”

  Ada grabbed her spacesuit on the way and struggled into it, slamming against the wall more than once. She was going to need to sleep for a month after all of this just to get the bruising down, she was sure.

  “Alright,” she subvocalized, standing in front of the dispenser. “I’ll take the highest proof you have. Hit me.” A ding, a compartment opened, and Ada took out a shot glass full of clear liquid. “Oh, Moses, no. No, no no. I’ll need much more than this.”

  Another ding, and this time four bottles of high-proof inner-world liqueur appeared. Joyce joined her, gaping at the bottles. “Not wasting time, are you?”

  “These aren’t for me,” Ada said.

  “No?”

  “Nope. Party favors. For our aerial guests. Wanna help?”

  Cupid bucked, and Joyce fell to the floor. Ada fell forward onto the dispenser, reaching in to keep the bottles from falling out.

  “I think you’ve finally cracked,” Joyce said.

  “Maybe.” She grabbed two of the bottles. “Hand me those other two in a second, will you?” She stepped into the airlock, set the bottles down, and took the other two from Joyce. Then she shut the airlock, locked her arm through a bit of cargo netting beside the hatch, and told Moses to open the door.

  Mars’ atmosphere whipped into the airlock and pushed her against the wall. It was far thinner than air in a terraformed hab, but at the speed they were moving, it was enough to make it difficult to stand. She gritted her teeth and found her balance, still holding two of the liqueur bottles. “Moses, I want you to let him onto our tail.”

  “He will fire on us.”

  She pursed her lips. Her plan wouldn’t help anything if they were flying to the ground in a fiery ball of death. “Can you get us above him?”

  “That may be possible. Hang on, Ada.”

  Her knees buckled as Moses fired liftoff thrusters and cut the main thrust, sending them hopping up about five meters. The fighter, which had been zeroing in on them from behind, passed beneath them.

  Ada threw the two bottles into the front end, and immediately shot her mini-blaster from the multitool. The hull of the fighter erupted in a sea of flames. “Ha!” The fighter shook his wings, trying to douse, but the liqueur has spread over cams and sensors, and wasn’t going anywhere. The end of the Gatling’s wing clipped the tower, and it spiraled out of control, shooting away from Cupid.

  “One down,” she muttered, picking up another bottle. “Come at me.”

  “They are obliging,” Moses announced. Another fighter zoomed in behind them, and proceeded to fire kinetics. Cupid dodged to the side, and the loose bottle on the ground rolled out.

  “No!” Ada tried to stop it with her foot, but was knocked down with another lurch. Her left hand gripped the netting, and pain erupted in her wrist. “Ahh!” She let go, slid onto her butt, and locked her elbow through the netting instead. She would need that looked at again.

  The fighter swung side to side behind them, strafing. Ada ducked against the wall, as bullets dinged against Cupid’s stern. Few found their way inside. One ricocheted against the top of the hatch and came down, burying itself in the floor mere inches from her leg. Ada swallowed.

  “Moses, we need the altitude advantage here.”

  “Working on it.” Cupid bobbed up, but the fighter followed. They tried the same thrust maneuver as before, but the fighter wised up, peeling off to the side instead, then circling around for more shots.

  An explosion from beneath them send Cupid flying up, tail over nose, and Ada was slammed into the floor, which was now the stern. She lost control of the last bottle, which sailed down into the path of the fighter. It shattered against the hull, and she followed it with another quick blast from her multitool. Again, the Gatling was wreathed in tiny flames. Again, it lost control, this time veering away from the battle. Cupid righted herself and kept working her way up toward the top of the tower.

  “What was that?” Ada asked.

  “Another fighter crashed into the docking structure,” Moses said. “A stray bottle of fine liqueur had somehow found its way all over his exterior sensors.”

  The bottle that had rolled out. Ada laughed, leaning back. Cupid popped up over the lip of the roof and circled down. “Shut the hatch, Moses, and set us down.”

  Back inside the cargo bay, Ada removed her suit. “Thanks for this,” she said to Joyce, holding up the multitool. “Don’t know how I ever lived before this thing.”

  “I wouldn’t have given it to you if I’d known you would just use it to blow up all the booze.”

  Chapter 21

  Lucas’ heart leapt into his throat. The elevator was plummeting down with some hundred and seventy floors to go, and he was stuck inside it. He was about to die. And all he could think about was that he hadn’t thanked Caspar enough for everything she had done for him and the crew.

  “Jump!” Darren barked at him. He was still hang
ing over the edge, one arm extended toward Lucas, the other gripping the edge now.

  Lucas bent his knees again and kicked off as hard as he could. If it had been anyone other than Darren, he might not have made it, because they had entered freefall, and it was almost impossible to get enough momentum to reach the ceiling. But Darren dropped halfway back into the car, grabbing Lucas by the shirt, and tugging him up. Something felt like ice slapping him in the face on the way over. He popped out onto the car roof and saw that he and Darren were alone. Good, he thought, fleetingly; the others will live.

  “We need to jump,” Darren yelled, his voice lost in the scream of the car as it ground down the shaft. “Now!”

  Lucas nodded and leapt into the air once more, this time into the void of the shaft. He imagined reaching out to grab the service ladder, but thought better of it. Stopping that quickly would likely tear his arms out of their sockets. More likely he would break a few bones and not be able to hold on anyway.

  They free-falled over the car. It was pointless. The car would hit the bottom, and they would hit the car, and it would be one big ugly pile of smoosh.

  One more explosion rocked the tower, this one bigger than those before it, and everything changed. They began to slow, even though they were still falling in midair. The car slowed with them. It was the strangest sensation Lucas had ever experienced. He knew, logically, that they were falling, had been falling, at the same rate, but it felt like they had slowed.

  No, they had slowed, and now they were slowing exponentially. Was his perception of time slowing down, because he was about to die? Or—he laughed nervously—were they already dead, and this was how he experienced the last few sparks of random neurons firing in his brain, like a surrealist dream?

  The elevator car hit the bottom. Darren reached out and grabbed him, and kicked the wall. They float-fell across to the other side of the shaft, where Darren kicked again. This slowed them even more, so that they zigzagged the last few meters and collapsed onto the elevator roof, hitting hard enough to leave a few bruises, but, shockingly, no more than that.

  Lucas sat up. “The gravity is off!”

  “Indeed.” Darren sat beside him.

  Native Martian gravity was weak enough to buffer the fall. The only problem was intertia, which Darren had counteracted before they hit, whittling it down to an acceptable risk. Lucas shook his head, laughing. “You saved my life. Again.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “No, I’m not sure I am. I want to know why.” He pulled himself to his feet. “What’s in this for you? We both know you don’t need this ship, this crew. Come on. Mulligan was here before you. She’ll be here after you’re gone. What’s really going on?”

  Darren stood, crossed to the ladder, and began climbing.

  “You going to answer me?”

  “Nope.”

  Lucas started after him. His comm crackled to life. “Sir? Are you there?”

  “Caspar!” he said with a big smile, his voice ringing up the shaft. She laughed at him. He’d never heard anything so wonderful.

  “Grav’s off, Sir; I guess that’s why you’re alive?”

  “Seems to be the case. We’re climbing to you.”

  “That’s a long climb.”

  “Longer if you talk,” Darren said over his shoulder. He had gained a substantial gap. Lucas ignored his comment.

  “Are you on the roof? Is the hopper ok?”

  “The hopper’s been destroyed, Sir.”

  Lucas stopped climbing and cursed, thunking his head against a rung.

  “But we’ve got a new plan,” she said. “Prepare to be rescued. Sir.”

  What?

  He heard the wire coming down, slapping against the walls of the shaft, long before he saw it. It was a good, thick synthetic weave, the sort that might be used for top-of-the-line climbing rope. Darren grabbed it and rode it back down to his position, then told Caspar to hold over the comm. He secured it around Lucas and himself, fitting a number of tight knots before telling her to pull them up. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride Lucas had ever had, between sharing the space with Darren and occasionally having to deflect the wall, but it beat climbing, even in the low gravity.

  When they emerged on the roof, it was to a flurry of faces, and a different ship. Something like the comet-hopper, but a little bigger, sat on the pad, a few meters away from the smoldering remains of the ship they’d come down in.

  “You’re hurt!” Caspar reached out to him, wiping his forehead. He flinched, grimacing, at the sting. “Sorry, Sir.” She stepped back. Her hand was covered in blood. He reached up and felt it on him, hot and sticky. He must have cut his face on the lip of the car ceiling. No matter. He hadn’t died on the fall. That was going to be bouncing around in his head for a few days.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  The others were standing around him, joined by a hulking, muscle-bound man he’d never seen before.

  “Who are you?”

  “Bone Crusher,” the man said. “Ladies call me Crush.” Something about his smile was endearing, though Lucas felt wary about getting too close to anyone with that circumference of biceps.

  “We need to move!” a woman called from the hatch of the ship. “Crush, come on!”

  “Time to go,” Crush said. He turned and trotted toward the ship, then stopped and looked at them. “Ya comin’?”

  “New plan,” Lucas nodded. “Follow the giant.” They moved across the landing pad and filed into the ship, finding themselves in a small cargo bay. As soon as they were in, the ship took off.

  A slight man with sandy blond hair made his way to Lucas and brought a device up to his forehead. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “Mind if I take a look at that?”

  Lucas shook his head and leaned back against the wall, letting the man work. He scanned, washed, and put a bandage on it. “Sorry for the rustic nature of this,” he muttered. “Getting low on bots, and something tells me I might need them for something more serious on a trip like this.”

  Bots? As in nano-bots? Lucas frowned. When it was over the doctor stood back, looking at him. “That should do for now, anyway.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Call me Saran. And you’re welcome.”

  He nodded at Saran. “This your ship?”

  “Oh, no. I’m just a casualty of war, I’m afraid. You’ll have to go up to the cockpit if you want to speak with the lady in charge.”

  The ship rocked to the side, jostling everyone in the cargo hold.

  “Everybody just hang on to something!” a woman’s voice called. “We’re in for some more creative flying!”

  Lucas followed the voice forward, to a small cockpit. Caspar was already standing in the back. The pilot and copilot chairs were occupied by women—one he had never seen, to the right, and one that he immediately recognized. The pilot.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Guys, it’s getting crowded in here,” she said, eyes on her console. “Give me space to breath. Moses and I are trying to save all of your butts.”

  Darren popped his head through the door, spotted the pilot, and, for perhaps the first time since Lucas had met him, looked surprised.

  “Bet you’re glad we didn’t kill her now, aren’t you?” Lucas muttered.

  “I heard that,” she said, eyes still forward. “Who’s trying to kill me now?”

  “I believe they are,” Joyce said, pointing out the little viewport in front. Gatling-class flyers were zipping in and out of sight.

  “Keep us low, Moses, keep us low,” the woman to the left said. Another tower loomed ahead. They accelerated toward it, banking at the last possible moment and swing around it like a tightly whipped slingshot. Lucas braced himself against the ceiling, thankful, for once, that he had the height to do it. This flying made Randall’s Pallas slingshot seem like a leisurely stroll by comparison.

  But if the weaving in and out of buildings seemed like gambling with their lives, Lucas had to admit it see
med to be working; the Gatling fighters, a larger, heavier class than this ship, lacked the maneuverability to keep up. Soon they had left them far behind.

  “I think we lost them,” Lucas said. The pilot twitched at his voice, but didn’t turn just yet. Her jaw and lips moved, as if she were talking to herself. Maybe it was a combat thing?

  “Wishful thinking.” She pointed at a tactical display on her console. Lucas peered forward and saw the ships that had been pursuing them had broken off, but a wider net had been cast, and was closing.

  The woman in the copilot seat shifted her weight, arms crossed. “You’d think they’d leave us alone, now that Dumbrador’s dead.”

  Lucas shot her a glance. “Lady Umbrador?”

  The woman peered at him. “What’s it to you? You don’t look pretty enough to be one of her… boys.”

  “Now, now,” the pilot said, “play nice and keep the peace, Joyce. We can let Crush throttle our guests for answers after we’ve escaped certain death at the hands of the militarized cartel.” She paused. “Unless one of you is an outstanding pilot. In which case you should really be sitting in this chair speaking with Moses right now.”

  “That’d be me.” Caspar pushed her way forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. She looked askance, as if she hadn’t expected anyone to call her bluff, shrugged, and removed an earring. “Put this on. Do what he says.” She handed it to Caspar and crawled out of the chair. Caspar put on the earring, looked surprised for a moment, then climbed into the chair and began finding her way with the console. It wasn’t long before her hands were flying, and the ship was jetting around even more wildly. Lucas hoped that was a good thing.

  The woman turned and faced Lucas. Her face dropped.

  “You.”

  He shrugged. “Thanks for the ride.”

  Chapter 22

  “CRUSH!” Ada shoved her way back to the cargo hold. No. No way. Not them. “Why are these—these people onboard my ship?”

  Bone Crusher was standing in front of the dispenser, holding a few cubes of ice to his swollen knuckles. From all the violence-doing, Ada supposed.