Gunship

by J. J. Snow

  “Where exactly did you put them?”

  Seth gestured to the blast doors. Reilly looked in that direction, confused. Nobody was there. Seth grinned evilly and pointed to the doors again. He opened them slightly with the handheld in his lap. The two men gazed out from the crack like frightened rabbits.

  Reilly slowly glanced back at Duv and Tiny. Duv was staring as if he was trying to recognize the person in front of them. His face displayed a mixture of pain and horror as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Meanwhile, Tiny was stealthily loading a wristband that appeared to fire some type of darts. Probably tranquilizers of some sort, Reilly realized. The Gaiden appeared relaxed, as if this were just a training exercise. Reilly wished she could be so detached. She turned towards Seth again. He still sat with his back to them, unmoving, in what Reilly hoped was a gesture of trust.

  “Seth, how long have they been in there?” Reilly asked cautiously.

  “Not long enough.” Seth looked around at her with that flat, dead stare again, then caught himself and gave his head a light shake, as if he was fighting something. “I mean, since they tried to tie me in my bunk.”

  “I asked them to strap you down. We thought you were still out, and Duv was doing some serious flying up there. I didn’t want you to get hurt.” Reilly continued to watch him warily, keeping her hands where he could see them.

  “They came for a different reason. They came to kill me.” Seth tossed Reilly the handheld and then looked back at the men. They shrank away from him.

  “What’s this?” Tiny and Duv came over to look at the handheld as Reilly scrolled through it.

  “They used it to send a signal, the signal that brought the Tethers down. They helped the Tethers take Sergeant Ty.” By this point, the rest of the crew had gathered on the catwalk upstairs and was listening as Seth continued his story, his voice cold and unforgiving. “I turned it off. It was attached to a trigger for an electromagnetic pulse bomb that would have disabled the ship once we broke out of the atmosphere. The Tethers were going to come on board, take us captive, and take the ship. These filthy traitors set us up just to make some credits.”

  The last comment was directed at the captive men trapped between the blast doors. Brynt shot a vile grin back at Seth, who continued to eye him with the look of a cat who was tired of its prey and ready to kill.

  Reilly waved Tiny forward. The Gaiden calmly walked past Seth to the open rear hold. She peered inside, noting the still-intact EMP device. The red light blinked an empty threat at her as she carefully cut the power supply to diffuse it and then handed it out to Chang, who had joined them. She looked at Reilly and nodded. The kid was right, they had been set up.

  Reilly could feel the rage coming to the surface. A slow burn that threatened to explode at any moment, a hatred of the ones she had taken in, had trusted, who had betrayed her, had betrayed them all. She looked towards the men, and everyone who could see her eyes took a step back. Seth continued his own evil stare at his former crewmates. She pulled her blaster out as she strode purposefully towards them, racking the charger and leveling it at them.

  Macen panicked and began yelling. “It was all Brynt, I didn’t do any of it, he just said it would be good money for turning you all in. I just helped ’cause he told me I could get my own ship out of the deal…” He stopped talking as it dawned on him whose ship that probably was.

  Brynt elbowed Macen as best he could in the enclosed space between the two blast doors. “Shut yer hole! Fraggin’ idiot! We’d be getting paid right now if you would’ve just let me shoot that damn kid. And the rest of them would be goners, too!”

  Seth stood and took a step towards both of the men, his face a murderous mask. They instantly froze. Reilly briefly wondered what he had done to scare them so badly. She decided it didn’t matter. They were going to die for what they had done. But before she took care of that detail, she needed to confirm her suspicions. She jammed the muzzle of the blaster between the doors.

  “I bet you both are familiar with the purpose of a blast door and what it does to laser rounds? If I fire a laser round in here on an angle and then close this door, that sucker is going to bounce around in there with you. Might even go through you a few times, make some holes. It’s called fire-boarding by pirates and slavers, they use it to torture their victims. Sometimes they actually bet on how long a man will survive. I heard rumor the longest was about a day and a half for one fellow before the round finally ripped through his heart and finished him off. The cold helps keep the blood thick, so you don’t bleed out as fast. I’m willing to bet if I adjust this blaster a bit, I can get it so you live longer than that. Nice radiation burns, loss of a few appendages, and who knows? Maybe you’ll get a lucky bounce that will hit you in the heart or the head, or maybe you’ll just be praying that that next bounce is the one that will end it all. So who wants to avoid all that unpleasantness and tell me where my sergeant is being taken?”

  The blood drained from Macen’s face as Reilly talked. He was already sweating and trembling. Before she could even finish her question, he was already hollering out a response, desperate to escape her wrath.

  “They’re taking him back to Mr. Ray’s space station, and we were supposed to bring you, too. Mmmpfh!”

  Brynt slammed his elbow up into Macen’s mouth, cracking his jaw, then grinned out through the crack at Reilly triumphantly. “We ain’t saying nothing else to you…you ain’t got the balls to do torture on us!”

  Reilly walked to the side and slammed her fist into the control pad for the door. It hissed loudly as it closed. She stood for just a moment, letting the rage wash over her, and then reached for the comms mic and clicked it on. “You don’t have to say anything else. All you have to do now is listen. You made a bad mistake. You took advantage of me, took advantage of my crew. You turned my sergeant over to a murderous psychopath, and you tried to kill my pilot’s kid. And then you tried to take my ship. So you’re right. I’m not going to torture you. But I am going to kill you.”

  She paused. The men were banging on the blast doors now. Brynt was cursing. It sounded like Macen was screaming at him. Good. She continued with her speech, the anger building to lethal levels.

  “This ship and me, well, we got separated for a bit. I’m determined not to have that happen again, ’cause, you see, this ship is my home. If anyone is going to take her, it’ll be after they had to step over my dead body to get there. And if I know anything, it’s that two little shit birds like you aren’t going to be the ones to do it. Now I don’t know about everyone else here, but me, when I see shit birds, I only know one thing to do with them. Enjoy the explosive decompression on your way out!” Reilly pulled down the lever next to the door, opening the outer blast doors and flushing Brynt and Macen into space. The blast doors closed again, and the light showed green as they locked back into place.

  She stood for a moment, mastering her anger. The silence was deafening. Reilly turned to find everyone looking at her. Most looked away, not wanting to meet her gaze. Duv ignored everyone to focus on his son. He had his arm around Seth and was talking softly to him. Chang was the only one bold enough to look her in the eye.

  “This is why I hate hiring new crew,” she snarled to him.

  She holstered her blaster and stalked off the deck towards the bridge.

  “I hope I never piss her off,” Marek said in a low voice once the Captain had disappeared. The others nodded or whispered responses as they began to disperse, heading back to their stations. There was still work to be done and a delivery to be made.

  Chang followed after Reilly. Tiny watched them both leave. The message was clear. Traitors would not be tolerated. She wondered where that would put her in the Captain’s book and then decided she would rather not find out. She hoped she never had to fight Reilly Campbell. She actually was starting to like the woman.

  —————

  “What do you think?”

  They wound u
p in one of the empty corridors leading to the chow hall, where Reilly sat heavily, lost in thought. She turned to face Chang, leaning on the wall, the rage still shining from her eyes.

  “Brynt and Macen were Crazy Ray’s men. They are implanted, which if I remember correctly is how he does all of his employees—except his detainers. It almost worked. Gunny, what are we missing? One, maybe two coincidences, fine—I can concede that. But all of this, no way, there is something much bigger going on.” Reilly got up and stalked the length of the room, then turned. “They’ve got Ty. And I let them get away.”

  It was a statement, but Chang knew the question behind it. “It is not the knowing that is difficult, but the doing. We have time. We can make the rendezvous with the Commander and then head back out for Ty. It is obvious that the opposition has been planning this for a while. We need time to plan as well, so we don’t walk into a trap. It was a solid call, and if it was me, I would’ve done the same. The boy may be as much of a key to what is going on here as anything. Maybe the Commander can provide us with some answers.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe we’ll just wind up with more questions.” Reilly paced, frustrated. “But you’re right. Seth needs help, and we need to find out if the programming was an accident or intentional. And Zain is the only one I know who has the assets we need to get him checked out.”

  Chang nodded his agreement. “I’ll run a sweep of the ship. They may have left tracking devices or other things we don’t want on board. And I’ll take a look at their personal effects. Perhaps they left some more clues for us.”

  “Good. That sounds good. I’m going to head up to the bridge and then check on Duv. I think he was trying to get Seth settled back in his room.” Reilly started to leave.

  “Captain, this is the first time anyone has ever taken Ty captive. We’ll get him back, if he doesn’t break himself loose first. And he knows we won’t abandon him.”

  Reilly nodded. “I know. Time to get to work. Thanks, Gunny.” She ducked out the door and disappeared.

  Chang headed to the bay to retrieve the gear he needed to conduct the sweeps. Anything he turned up could only help with deciphering the bigger mysteries. And the Captain was right. There was too much going on for this to be coincidence. The old warrior mulled over what he knew as he worked. He could see a web forming, but to what end he wasn’t certain. He reminded himself of an old Chinese saying as he began to sweep the ship: men trip not on mountains, but on molehills. As far as Chang was concerned, they were in a minefield full of molehills…now they just needed to find the mole.

  —————

  Duv sat in Skeeter’s room, his back against the table, watching his son. Tiny had assured them both that the extra tranquilizer would help to calm his mind and let him sleep, but Seth would only agree to it if Duv stayed. Reilly had looked in on them and was manning the bridge now while Tiny continued working on the edu-system to see what else she could learn.

  As Duv had walked Skeeter back to his bunk, the kid had begun to fill in the gaps. Skeeter explained that the programming had prevented him from telling them details of what had been happening. Now that they had the edu-system, it seemed that he was able to discuss some of it. But his mind was still blank in some areas, and he still didn’t remember what had happened on Roen or pulling a blaster on the Captain. He looked at Duv, obviously frightened and upset by the holes in his memory. All he knew was that his brain felt like it was slowly being overwhelmed by information, like he was drowning in it a little more every day. The day they had gone into town, he had felt better initially, but then something had changed. His head had begun to throb and his vision had shifted back and forth between color and black and white before he had passed out. While he talked, he unconsciously stuck close to Duv, huddling under his arm at times like he had when he was very young.

  Duv listened as best he could. Dealing with the slavers had been bad enough, but this was worse. Someone or something was taking over his son’s mind, and he was powerless to stop the process. Duv felt like he wanted to scream, wanted to fight whatever it was, but there was nothing to fight, no one to lash out at. It was possible that the edu-system had been misplaced and had just wound up in the market where Skeeter had found it. A mistake, someone’s mistake in keeping track of equipment could’ve done this to his son. Duv held his anger in, not wanting to upset Seth, partly out of concern and partly out of fear. It was the fear that he was ashamed of. How could a father be afraid of his own son?

  No one had told Seth that he had killed five men. Tiny had warned against doing this in case the unknown programming had any defensive mechanisms. She feared this information might cause an adverse reaction which could trigger an aggressive response. They all knew what she meant. Duv couldn’t wipe the images from his mind, his son moving so fast, killing those men before any of them could respond, with that vacant look in his eye. He reeled from the shock of the memory, forcing it from his mind as quickly as it had appeared. That wasn’t his son. That was a program. His son was being stolen from him by a machine. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  Seth pulled the blankets up closer around his chin. Asleep, he looked just like a regular kid, a kid with a normal life and a normal family. Duv sighed. If his mother were still alive, she would have had Duv’s ass over this, no doubt. How could he miss something like that fake system, all the signs something was wrong? He leaned back, thinking. If she were still alive, he’d fire off a message via the span and tell her what was going on, get her opinion. They used to post to each other almost every night, catching each other up on the daily happenings, so when Duv returned home it was as if he hadn’t missed a thing. If she were still alive, Seth wouldn’t even be here now. He’d be with her. Then Duv snorted at his foolishness. How well that had worked out, leaving them behind and thinking they were safe! It was his fault they were left defenseless. He could’ve taken a local route, left the ISUs. But no, his damn pride and his love of the military had kept him away, had killed his family. Duv began to berate himself again when his handheld beeped briefly. He grabbed it, irritated by the interruption. The Captain notified him that they had completed the last journey with no issues. A second message followed the first: Not your fault.

  He smiled sadly. She knew him well. Duv hung his head. She was right, of course. It still ate at him every day, but if he had been there, he likely would have died during the initial onslaught. The slavers had engulfed the planet rapidly, and regular civilians were not allowed to be armed, so they had no means to fight back. Just like it wasn’t his fault that Seth had purchased an ISU programming device. He sighed. It didn’t make it any easier, but it forced him to put things in perspective. He wouldn’t stop worrying, but the Captain was right, kicking himself in the teeth wasn’t accomplishing anything either. If only there were something he could do.

  Duv began to put the handheld away, then paused.

  He opened the span and went to his old post site. The messages from his family were all still there, in folders sorted by family member and date and year. He read through some of them, remembering how it had been when they were all together. Since the attack, he hadn’t written at all. There was no one to write to. His only remaining family was his crew and his son. But writing had always helped him before, and he needed some way to deal with this, to channel his fear and his anger and release it somehow. On a whim, he set up a new folder.

  He leaned back for another moment before he began to type. He didn’t even have her span information…what an idiot. He mentally smacked himself again for the sendoff he had given Holly. He’d be lucky if she was still waiting on him when they got back. The Captain and Tiny were right, he was definitely lacking in the romance department…of course, not nearly as bad as Ty with his damn guns!

  The thought jolted Duv. They were moving in the opposite direction now, farther away from Ty by the minute, to get Seth help. Reilly had made the call. He knew that even without the delivery and Seth’s conditi
on, they still would’ve had to pull together a plan, and that would take time. A rushed rescue attempt could get Ty killed or wind up getting them all killed. Even so, Duv still felt like he was being forced to choose between his son and his best friend. Just thinking about it made him sick. Ty had been crew with him for over twelve years, they were like family, had been through tough times together. On top of that was the guilt. His last words to Ty had been pretty bad. They hadn’t talked at all in the days following the gambling fiasco. He felt a hollow spot in the pit of his stomach. In battle they had learned to speak plainly, to say what they meant, to get over grudges quickly, because you just never knew who was coming back and who wasn’t. How had he had forgotten that rule?

  Duv knew what Crazy Ray would do to Ty if they didn’t get to him in time. His stomach lurched at the memory of the torture he had seen Crazy Ray do in the past. Rumor had it even the worst of those were no match for what happened to the people on Crazy Ray’s most wanted list. He reserved a special level of pain for anyone occupying his #1 Most Wanted slot. Ty would be kept alive for days and tortured to the brink of death, then brought back and tortured again. All so Crazy Ray could get his revenge and add Ty to his video collection of victims.

  Duv glanced over at Skeeter, resting, peacefully unaware of his father’s inner turmoil. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, choose between them. When the Captain went back out for Ty, Duv knew he had to go too. Unless the situation with Seth was worse than they knew. Then his first priority was as a father. Ty would understand that. But if they were able to help and Seth could fly…or maybe the Commander would agree to keep Seth while they took on Crazy Ray? The kid had been through enough already. The last thing he needed was another violent episode and more psychopaths to mess him up. Besides, he couldn’t get much safer than a covert ISU location. He would be protected there, and the doctors would have more time to get the programming out of his head. More than anything, he wanted Skeeter to get better, to be a kid again. He wanted his son and his friend back. He just hoped it wasn’t too late for either of them.