by J. J. Snow
“What’s going on?”
“Ty was just telling me how he wanted to help you offload some of those supplies so he could go back into town and see how Duv was doing with his recruiting,” Reilly said pointedly. “And how he would enjoy doing it in silence as he contemplated the very real possibility of my fist connecting with his face if he speaks again before Seth and I leave to go look at some new ships.” Ty, after opening his mouth briefly, decided to shut it at once. But he continued to wear a wicked grin.
Chang nodded sagely. “We will both go to see how Duv’s, um, recruiting is going, and we will have him report back to you on his, uh, status, Captain.”
Reilly tugged on Seth’s arm, leading him out of the bay. Her ploy to distract him had worked, and he was excitedly chattering on about different types of gunships, the new crew member forgotten, as they walked towards the ship yards.
Once they were certain the Captain and Skeeter were well out of range, Chang and Ty began to laugh raucously as Ty started to recount the discussion. “So then the kid asks me what her specialty is!”—and the two men roared again with laughter. At that moment, a well-rested and somewhat smug-looking Duv sauntered into the cargo bay.
“Well! Look what the cat dragged in!” said Ty.
“Or maybe the cat threw him out!” said Chang, straight-faced, before they both cracked up again.
“So? How was your evening with Hannah?” Ty asked, still grinning wickedly as he began to load his crates on Maude with Duv and Chang.
“It’s Holly, and it was…very nice,” Duv managed with an awkward grin.
“Very nice? That’s not how I would describe it, based on the noise coming through my ceiling. You’d better watch out. After a night like that, I’ll bet she starts showing up here all the time and stalking you at the Iron BAR, around the town, interfering with work. Then she’ll start doing that girl thing with the crying and the sulking when you tell her to bug off. The Captain hates it when personal business interferes with work, especially whiny women!” Ty finished up with a wink, slinging another crate over the side.
Duv paused for a moment, gave them both a pitying look, then leaned in and with a grin told them, “No strings. She told me herself.” Then he hefted another crate up and walked to the TORR while the two of them stared at each other in amazement.
“Does she have any friends?” Ty called out after him.
—————
Reilly and Skeeter arrived at the shipyard gates and began to look for Cirrus Ship Sellers. Halfway down the multiple-football-fields-long walkway, they found a sign pointing them back towards a dubious-looking building that was supposed to be Cirrus Sales Headquarters. Reilly pushed open the door with Skeeter on her heels and looked around. Stale coffee and old papers dominated the desk, along with a cigarette-filled ashtray. A small sign said “Ring Bell for Service,” so she did. Finally, after a few more jangles, a wiry old man in coveralls poked his head in from the side hallway.
“Can I help you?” he asked, waving a greasy wrench.
Reilly looked at him skeptically, then figured what the heck. “Yeah, I’m looking for Leeroy. Marek sent me over to take a look at some ships—”
The man disappeared without a sound. Reilly, baffled, looked at Skeeter, who shrugged. She rang the bell a few more times with no result. They had just turned for the door when the same man walked back out, now wearing black pants and a white shirt while pulling on a pair of black loafers.
“It’s Lee Roy. Lee-Roy, first name, last name, not all together. You can just call me Lee.” He handed Reilly a card and extended his hand, waiting.
She ignored it, looked at the card, and then flipped it back on the desk. “Reilly Campbell. And I’m not sure you are going to be able to help us, since all I’m seeing out back is a bunch of milk runners.” She waved towards the window where the transports sat complacently on their concrete pads like cattle in a field.
“The Reilly Campbell? Captain Reilly Campbell? In my shipyard? Incredible! I am such a huge fan—you are like a living legend—well, I mean, you are a legend and you are living so living legend fits…” Lee Roy continued on his rampaging monologue a few moments more until Reilly lost patience and pushed Skeeter towards the door.
“No! Wait, wait, wait! I have some of the best gunships in this solar system or any of the nearest three, and I am betting I have something that will work for what you need. Just follow me out back here… …Right back around here…” he waved them both out into the yard, Reilly following reluctantly only after Seth enthusiastically tugged her out the door. Lee Roy began to thread his way through the huge transports towards the back pads while hopping on one foot and messing with the heel of his loafer. “I keep ’em locked down back here ’cause the damn kids are always getting around them and trying to break in to play pilot…no offense, kid,” Lee remarked to Skeeter, who was lost in his own world as he gazed up at all of the ships. “But I have the best stock around, just you look!” He pointed to the area in front of them.
“Cool!” Skeeter breathed in awe. Reilly, initially skeptical, also took a breath. Marek was right. Lee Roy might be slightly off, but he sure knew his ships. She walked forward towards the first two gunships, looking at them with a critical eye as Lee Roy began to rattle off the specifics on each one. As she moved through them, the prices went up, but so did the capabilities. Some of the gear was the latest stuff, found only on actual ISU gunships. Reilly didn’t comment on this or ask how Lee Roy came to acquire them, but she was impressed. Her opinion of Marek also increased. As they were rounding the last gunship, the most capable one yet and a sleek, fast ship that Reilly liked, Lee Roy’s sales pitch was interrupted by an exuberant Skeeter, who skidded around the front end of the ship waving like a madman at Reilly.
“No way! It’s your gunship, Captain—you gotta see it!” he gasped and then tore off again.
Reilly raised an eyebrow curiously and looked at Lee Roy, who smiled sheepishly. “What can I say? Your kid’s got good taste.”
“My gunship, huh? Well, let’s see it, then.” She walked towards the back of the ship she had been looking at. Reilly turned the corner. An all-black gunship sat parked on the pad by itself.
“There is no way…” Reilly walked slowly towards it, not believing her eyes. It was a Dark Angel-model gunship with rotating Bofors laser turrets, stealth armor plating, and twin rail guns with high-speed accumulators.
“Where…how…did you get this?” she asked in amazement as she walked up to the ship and touched the side to make sure it was real, and then again like she was meeting an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long time. “It does look just like my old ship from my time in the ISUs…but there’s no way. I lost her years ago.”
Lee Roy stood back, smiling, taking it all in. “Oh, it’s her all right. Let’s just say she turned up a few solar systems away in rough shape, so I bought her cheap and then got her tuned up a bit. She’ll blast past all of the latest ISU Dark Angels out there. Marek helped me put her together, and once we got her squared away, I was planning on keeping her. I wasn’t figuring on actually ever meeting you, so this was a sort of family project for us and a way to keep some of the old ISU history alive. I served myself back in the day, on one just like her. I was the mechanic and a gunner’s mate. That was quite a while ago.”
Reilly still looked skeptical. This gunship was in beautiful condition. The last time she had seen her old ship was when they were being evacuated off the planet after they had been shot down by an X93 battery. A gaping hole had been torn in the side, the protective stealth armor scattered around the crash site where they had held off a rebel group until reinforcements had arrived. She had placed the charges herself to blow up any sensitive electronics on board and had watched the detonations from the air as they left.
“It’s really her, go ahead an’ look. She’s mostly the same, just gave her a bit of a facelift and some extras to bring her on-level with the newer models, no dis
respect to her original self of course.” Lee Roy gestured to the nose of the ship where the Ident tag would be located. Reilly walked to the front of the ship. A titanium plate was embedded in all true gunships and stayed with the ship for its lifetime to provide a verifiable identity. She rubbed the nose of the gunship where the plate was set, covered in the thick red dust Roen was known for. As she brushed it off, the numbers revealed read: XD97FW1.
“This is my ship. But I saw it blow when I left…you would have had to rebuild everything!”
“Well, not everything. She was a mess, but we did salvage what we could, and besides, most of the blast damage was to the bridge and primary mech—and of course the hull, where that battery opened her up.”
She looked back again at Lee Roy, still amazed. Skeeter hollered from the back end of the ship.
“Captain! You’ve got to see this! They painted the doors!”
Reilly turned slowly and walked to the back, already knowing what had gotten him so excited. Her heart rose in her throat as she stepped around the back end of the bird. There it was. During their time in the ISUs, each gunship had had its own flag. Ty had resurrected a flag from Earth long past and painstakingly transferred the design to the back of the gunship, bit by bit each time they had downtime, until it was perfect. Since they were the Death Adders, it just seemed right that this flag was theirs. The design was a bit faded now but still could be seen. The snake, coiled over two crossed battle rifles and ready to strike, was centered on an olive drab background with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” over it, and written under it was “Liberty or Death.” They had all lived by those words and sometimes died by them. Those words were a promise, a sacred oath that no matter what, when the Death Adders were called upon, they would respond fearlessly in the face of danger to free the enslaved and protect the innocent from whatever horrors the universe had sent their way.
Reilly looked over at Skeeter, who was beaming. “Well, I guess we should go in and take a look, huh?”
He nodded as Lee lowered the cargo doors for them. Together they stepped up into the bay.
Everything looked brand new. Some of the wiring would need to be redone to Reilly’s specifics, but even the backup generators and armor-protected mech rooms exceeded her wildest hopes for a new ship. There was enough room to house a full crew and a small complement of troopers. The bridge and gunner’s turrets had the latest in virtual holo-displays and laser tracking, and the HAILE system was the newest one available. Reilly discreetly pointed at it while pulling Lee off towards the common room. Skeeter immediately sat down and began to dig into its guts to determine what he could get it to do.
About twenty minutes later, he trotted back down to the cargo bay, where he gave Reilly two thumbs up. The new system easily interfaced with the classified access he had pirated and was ten times faster than anything he had worked with before. He couldn’t wait to dig in more and had already come up with some new security additions that he wanted to run by the Captain once she decided to make the purchase. He couldn’t think of a reason why she wouldn’t make it, but just the thought that she might not made him anxious. Aside from that, the weapons on board were all military grades or the best black-market gear available. He ran through the specs on each weapon in his mind. No matter what they came up against, this ship would be capable of holding her own in all but very extreme situations. This was the right ship for them, he just knew it. The twin rail guns alone made the ship a formidable threat, and with the rapid accumulators, they could fire four bursts a second, maybe six if they boosted the gas array and then vented the barrels to reduce the likelihood of overheating… Seth stopped in his tracks. How did he know about rail guns and accumulators? In fact, how did he already know how every weapon on board this ship worked, the specifics on each, how to optimize them, how they interfaced and could be employed singly or as a group? He had barely known the parts of a battle rifle when Ty had handed him his first one just the other day.
“What do you think?”
Skeeter jumped. He had been so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t noticed Reilly watching him. He paused a minute to clear his head. He’d have to figure out what was going on later. The Captain wanted to know what he thought of the ship…well, what did he think of it? He looked up and answered honestly.
“It’s the first place that’s felt like home in a long time. I feel like I belong here, like it’s familiar. I don’t know why, but this ship just feels right. I know that probably doesn’t make much sense, but, well, that’s just how I feel.”
Reilly nodded silently. It made perfect sense. She felt the same way. This was her old ship and the nearest she had felt to home, a real home, in a while. This ship had carried her through some tough times, had carried the entire crew in fact. They had gone through some shit in this old bird. From the looks of things, they were all in for some more tough times ahead. A solid ship and one her crew already knew would be a big asset over having to learn the ins and outs of a completely new vessel. She turned back to Lee Roy.
Lee Roy grinned. “I know, I know. I can already hear your argument. I know what a gunship means to a captain, especially this one. So you can save your breath. It’d be cruel for me to keep the two of you apart. I can’t say that I’m going to be happy to see her go, though. Me and Marek put a lot of time and love into getting her ready. She flies like a dream, too.” The old man looked a little misty-eyed for a moment.
“Okay, Lee. So I need to know. What’s your best price?” Reilly queried.
Lee grew serious. “For you, Captain, seeing as it’s your old ship and all, I’ll make you a deal. But it’s either the whole deal or not at all.” He paused while Reilly considered and then nodded for him to proceed. “I’ll sell her to you for three quarters of a million credits. We both know that’s low, ’cause talking to the right people could easily get me a full million, maybe more depending on add-on weapon options. Then again, it’s been months since I’ve had someone coming in looking for a gunship. Mostly selling those milk runners you pointed out up front these days. They pay the bills, but this one here will set me right for a while. But I’m only giving you this deal if you hire my Marek on as your new mechanic.”
Reilly raised her eyebrows as he continued. “He’s the best mechanic we got down here, but he’s been dying to get travelling again, and he practically rebuilt this bird from the ground up when we got her. Just like it’s not fair for me to keep you from your ship, I can’t separate my boy from her either. He’s put some of himself into her, and it’d be like tearing out a piece of his heart if I let her go without him. And I know if he goes with you, well, he’s practically in the best hands in the galaxy. He’s bound to go sooner or later, and I’m no fool. I know how dangerous it is out there. So if it’s got to be, then I want him up there with you and your crew.”
Reilly paced while she thought about it. Skeeter was off bouncing to her left, practically ready to jump out of his skin while he watched her. It was obvious that he was keen on the ship too. Duv had said they needed a mechanic, and if it was someone who knew the ship down to its bones, then so much the better. And the price was damn fair—Lee Roy knew he could get more elsewhere if he waited, but he would still be set from selling her this one ship. She checked her handheld. The ship would take almost all of it, and it wasn’t likely they would land another job as lucrative as Vervian for a while. But then again, there was very little chance she’d have the money or the option of buying a ship as well turned out as this one. Not to mention the sentimental value. She grinned at the irony of it.
She’d talk to Ty and Chang in the morning about salvaging parts from the old ship. They’d also be getting credits in from the Vervian sales, and that would help too. The looks on their faces when she showed them their new ride would be worth it, especially Ty, who was already grouchy about having to settle into a new ship. She turned back to Lee Roy.
“I have to talk to the rest of the crew, but I’ve got a few spots open.
And my sergeant says Marek is the one of the best mechanics he’s seen, and a solid gunner, too. If that’s right, then I’ll be glad to have him. I’ll be seeing him later over at the Iron BAR, so I’ll bring it up then. If the crew agrees and Marek likes the terms, then he’s got a spot. Deal?”
Lee Roy thought about it a moment more, then spat in his hand and extended it to Reilly. She did the same, and they parted ways after she promised to get back to him the next day on her final decision. But they both knew the decision had already been made. Lee Roy waved them out and disappeared back into the run-down office to draw up a contract.
Reilly quickened her pace. It was getting late, and she still had some business to do before meeting the Commander. Skeeter followed behind in a daze. Poor kid…he wants that ship almost as bad as I do! she thought and pressed ahead. It would be good for him to have someplace that felt like home. It would be good for all of them.
Seth followed behind Reilly, pretending to be in awe of the ships they were passing. He really didn’t have to pretend too hard. Every ship they had walked by, he was able to mentally call out all of its weaponry, automatically knew the standard and alternate configurations for each, down to the smallest screw and electrical wiring diagrams, and could determine appropriate employment for a variety of air, space, and even some ground battlefield environments. He shivered mildly, trying to figure out what had happened, what had changed. And how he knew everything there was to know about every weapon that came into view.
—————
When Reilly returned, Duv had a roster of forty names of folks interested in the crew slots. They needed to hire a mechanic, another gunner, a flight engineer, and an electronics expert. The rest of the jobs were nice-to-haves, meaning Reilly could get the work done without filling these slots. Chang already doubled down as combat medic to the crew and Ty took care of organizing cargo, so there was no need for a full-time load master.