Gunship

by J. J. Snow

  “What?” he asked as he picked up his head, irritated at being disturbed.

  And just like that, there she was. She looked down at him with that same soft smile as his face registered surprise, relief, and joy all at the same time. Before she could say a word, he had picked her up and swung her around while she laughed at him. When he put her back down, she leaned in and stood on her tiptoes to give him a kiss. Duv returned the kiss and pulled her in tight while Chang and the rest laughed and clapped at the display.

  “So you missed me, then?” she asked, a mischievous smile playing across her lips.

  He grinned back. “Hell yes, I missed you!” He pulled her in close again for another hug before turning her loose, but he made certain to keep hold of her hand.

  “Hey! Get a room, you two!” Lee Roy yelled at them while Marek choked on his beer from laughing too hard. Duv waved them off in mock disgust as he sat back down and pulled Holly onto his lap. She smiled back at him apologetically.

  “I would’ve been here sooner, but my cousin was pretty sick, so I was helping out with the kids. She finally got to feeling better today, and when she heard you were here, she had her sister come over so I could break away for a visit.”

  “I’m really glad you did. I was beginning to think it was something I said.”

  Holly shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I did get all of your posts and I wanted to reply, but your account ID was blocked. Anything I tried to send just bounced right back. I’m so sorry about Seth. Have you heard anything else from the doctors?”

  Duv shook his head, eyes down. This was the one thing he hadn’t been totally truthful on. How could he tell anyone outside the crew that his kid was now a Gaiden and hope that they would understand?

  Holly gently tilted his chin up until their eyes met. “They’ll take good care of him. I know you miss him being around, but hopefully you’ll get to see him soon. Until then, you’ll just have to make do with me!”

  Duv smiled at her again. She had such a natural way of making him feel better. He pulled her in close as they watched the fights and she filled him in on local gossip. For a brief moment, he closed his eyes and it almost felt like being home.

  The others continued to cheer on the fights. Marek and Lee Roy joked as they played cards. Before they knew it, the three hours were up. Lee Roy agreed to come back to the ship for a few more hands and some stories. Duv looked at Holly.

  “Do you need to get back to your cousin? Or can you come spend a few more hours with us?” he asked hesitantly

  “Us? Hmmm…actually, I was hoping to spend a few more hours with you, if I’m allowed!” Holly started to laugh as a huge smile lit Duv’s face.

  “What’s wrong with us?” teased Marek as they walked down the street towards the docks. “We’re way classier than Jackson!”

  “And we’re a hell of a lot more fun!” Lee Roy shot her an impish grin, and they all began to laugh.

  Duv and Holly walked hand in hand towards the ship while the rest of the crew continued to joke and cut up. They didn’t speak, but they didn’t need to. It was one of those rare moments when the world seemed just about right, and neither of them wanted to ruin it with words. They walked up the ramp and then on to the common room to continue catching up. Ty and Tiny were working on some rifles in the bay. Tiny waved distractedly as the group went by, calling out hellos while Ty gave Duv a half-hidden thumbs-up and a wink. Duv grinned back and held Holly’s hand a bit tighter. She looked at him and smiled. She knew in her heart she really loved this man. He had been through so much, but here he was, still moving ahead. Of course, that was why she had to kill him, to stop him from feeling the pain and to make Reilly Campbell pay for what she had done. Holly sighed contentedly. If only everything in life were so clear!

  Chapter 19

  Proximity alarms woke the Tether from his sleep. As he stood up to look at his holoscreen, a loud banging began on the door to the back of his ship. He could see a sizable crowd of locals outside, armed and surrounding him. Several were covering down on the front of the vessel with blasters as others ran up and began to bang on the hull. The Tether relaxed and sat back down at the controls. They would be unable to get in, and he could just take off. All of his implants had already been tasked, so other than his goal of bringing in Campbell, there was no reason for him to stay. He was annoyed that the locals had found him and interrupted his plans. He began the flight sequence, when all at once three separate explosions hit, blasting him to the floor. A gaping hole loomed through the smoke and debris, and he struggled as hands grabbed him and held him down, searching for and removing all of his weapons.

  “We got him, Shep! What do you want us to do with him?” one man called out.

  Shep walked over, armed with a battle rifle, and looked down at the Tether. Their eyes met and the Tether bared his teeth, snarling in a dangerous grin. Shep looked at him for a moment more and then shot him in the head. The men holding him down stood up slowly, some of them a bit shocked.

  Shep spit a wad of chew out on the ground and safed his gun before slinging it again. Then he looked around at the others, steadily meeting their gazes.

  “You see this?” he said as he kicked the dead Tether’s body. “This is space trash, a parasite that came down to kill us. You find any more of these on patrol, you let one of the patrol leaders know. We’ll come out like we did tonight and kill it. You don’t give it mercy, and you don’t listen to its lies. If you do, you’ll be dead before you can blink. There will be more that show up like this one, maybe some other weird shit too. You find it, you call it in. Keeps you safe and keeps your families safer. Understood?”

  The men nodded or “Hooahed” in response before breaking off into their teams and heading back out into the desert on patrol. Shep waited a moment longer with his team as they searched the remainder of the Tether vessel. One man came back with an active handheld that he passed to Shep to examine. Shep scrolled through it, nodding to himself, then pocketed the thing and waved the team ahead as he began moving back towards town.

  “C’mon, boys. It looks like someone is determined to keep messing with Captain Campbell and her crew. You’d think by now they’d have learned”—Shep shook his head as they scanned the landscape for anything unusual—“but then again, some folks just aren’t as smart as others.”

  The rest of his men gave an appreciative laugh but remained focused on the terrain around them. If someone was messing with Captain Campbell, then it was certain that before long they’d wind up messing with Shep too. Which meant the fight was coming to them, like it or not.

  —————

  Reilly was surprised when Trace shook her awake. She realized that the crew had returned and then jumped, worried that something had happened.

  “No, everything is fine,” Chang said, recognizing the look in her eyes. “But Shep has come by with interesting news that you need to hear.”

  Reilly looked around to find Shep and two other men she didn’t recognize standing off to one side. They were dressed in desert-night camo and tactical gear with battle rifles slung on their backs. She pushed aside the military blanket and gratefully accepted a cup of coffee that Trace pushed at her. The old metal military clock told her it was around three a.m. She accepted a silver handheld from Shep as he sat down on a nearby chair and began to talk.

  “When you landed, we had already seen enough strange activity to reactivate full patrols. So my men were watching for anything or anyone that stood out. Sure enough, they see this guy checking out your ships. It looked like he was checking your perimeter security on a handheld. So they followed him. Turns out he’s a Tether. We went back and finished the job this evening, but when one of my boys found this, I wanted to make sure you saw it too.”

  Reilly had already found what Shep wanted her to see. She set her coffee down and flipped through the screens.

  “No pictures and only partial names,” she noted, handing the device over t
o Chang. “Still, it tells us that he had eight implants here. I was hoping to not find any.”

  “I have my patrols watching for any additional Tethers, but we are stuck on the implants.” Shep sipped from the mug Chang passed him. “Any ideas on how to find them?”

  “Yeah, but it won’t be pretty. Gunny, can you find Tiny? She’s the one who came up with the plan, so I’d like her to explain it.”

  Chang nodded, handing off the device to Trace as he headed down to find Tiny. A few minutes later, they were back. Tiny looked as if she had already been awake. She nodded curtly to Shep and the others, then looked at Reilly, who passed her the handheld.

  “Looks like eight implants. Shep thinks there may be more. I’d like you to share what we know and some techniques he and his teams can use to help identify them.”

  Tiny continued to play with the handheld, looking at the names. The Tether had shortened them, which would make it harder to identify who they were, and that left them with limited options.

  “I have created a gate. As you know, Gaiden are also coded, and while we’re not implanted, we are susceptible to gating as well.”

  “A gate?” Shep looked confused. “What does that mean, ‘gating’?”

  “It is one of the few ways an implant or a Gaiden can be killed.” Tiny looked over at Reilly. She had found the gate equipment soon after becoming part of the crew. It was in fact what had tipped her to the possibility that her cover had been blown and that the crew knew what she was.

  “Gating was designed to remove implants quickly in order to prevent them from getting into the regular population and causing chaos. Later, it was used during the Rebellion to kill off Gaiden who opposed the AOC. A gate consists of four points that connect four directed-energy weapons. It can be made to be any size, small enough for a person or large enough for a ship. A normal person can move through the gate with impunity. An implant cannot. The gate has a detector that will sense the coding in the brain. In turn, a signal is sent to indicate that a threat is present and the gate immediately goes active to neutralize that threat.”

  “Neutralized how?” Shep asked.

  “The implant is hit with the beams of all four directed-energy weapons at the same time and killed instantly.”

  “And there are no other ways to remove the implant from the individual?”

  “Yes, but they are more time consuming. If you are able to identify an implant, the device can be removed surgically if it is near the skin. All implants are programmed to attack when attempted removal of the device occurs, so you must dose them and keep them under until the surgery is complete and their brain chemistry returns to normal. If the device has a kill switch, it may detonate, killing the implant as well as the surgeon. These must be defused before removal. I’m not certain what types we are dealing with here, but I know if we start to remove them successfully, Welch will simply turn to the kill-switch-enabled implants to stop us.”

  Shep ran a hand through his tangled hair and put his patrol cap back on. “Well, it sounds like we are going to be limited then on options to save individuals. Let’s focus on what we can do to stop them. How can I identify them?”

  Tiny pulled out her handheld and hit a button. An application popped up, and she showed it to Shep and the others. “You can install this on any handheld. I modified the code from an older program. It will recognize any coded individuals in a specific area. For example, if I search the area of space occupied by the ship, I will find one coded individual, myself, reflected in that space as indicated by a red dot…”

  Tiny trailed off, staring at the screen. All of the people on the ship showed as blue dots. She showed as a red dot in the middle of a bunch of blue dots. But just down the hall, there was one blue dot and one red dot as well. The list of partial names ran through her head again. Trv, Lam, Zed, Hly, Crs, Brt, Knh, Mcl.

  “Duv!” Tiny and Reilly were both on their feet and sprinting down the hall as fast as they could. Tiny pulled open the hatch to Duv’s bunk room, hoping they weren’t already too late.

  —————

  Duv felt strange. He and Holly had gone back to his bunk and started talking about everything that had happened since he had left. It was so easy for him to talk to her that he found himself telling her the truth about what had happened to Seth, his drinking, his fight with Tiny, everything. She sat and listened, sometimes asking questions but mostly leaning her head on his chest while they sat on the small sofa at one end of the room. As he finished, she leaned up and kissed him again. Before long, they were both lost in each other, and the last thing Duv remembered was wrapping Holly up next to him and drifting off to sleep.

  Now he thought he was dreaming but he wasn’t certain. For one thing, he couldn’t move at all. He watched Holly smiling sweetly at him as she sharpened a knife, talking to him softly, telling him how much she loved him and how she was going to protect him from all the pain he had been through. No, he knew it had to be a dream. He laughed as he heard a loud crash in the background. Tiny and the Captain appeared, and some other people too, then oddly enough Holly tried to fight the Captain with the knife. It must be a show, a demonstration fight. He wondered at that, since he knew Holly couldn’t fight. Everything moved very slowly as the Captain knocked the knife from Holly’s grasp and Holly tried to punch her. Then Tiny moved in and pinned Holly to the wall. The Captain looked very big to him now, and she was asking him something but he couldn’t understand the words. When she looked away, he could see Holly was still fighting like a wildcat as Tiny forced her to the floor and held a knife to the back of her neck. The Captain went over and pushed her back down. Duv was feeling more uncomfortable now. The dream didn’t make any sense, and he could smell blood as Tiny dug the knife blade deep into the back of Holly’s neck. A moment later, she pulled something out and held it to the light. The Captain took it and pocketed it. Holly staggered up, shaking her head and looking confused before lunging back towards the Captain. Tiny grabbed her arm again, pushing her down to the floor as she tried to fight her way to her feet. A distinct snap rang out, and then Tiny let Holly fall. Duv was angry now. He wanted to get up, but he couldn’t move. He needed to reach Holly. Tiny filled his entire vision now. She disappeared as a blinding white light hit his eyes, and then the room went dark. Duv relaxed again. Definitely a weird dream, he reassured himself as the smell of the blood began to fade. He hoped he would wake up soon.

  When he finally did wake up, he found he was alone in his bunk. He looked around the room. Holly’s jacket was still next to his on his locker door. Duv sat up as his head rang out with pain. He shook it gingerly before standing and looking at the metal floor. His eyes were a bit blurry, but when they cleared, he could make out the spot that had been scrubbed clean. He pulled on his tac-pants and boots, threw on a shirt, and practically ran up the ladder towards the common room.

  Chang saw him coming. “Slow down!” He put a hand to Duv’s chest to stop him from pushing by towards the medical bay. “You were drugged. You need to move slowly!”

  Duv pushed Chang’s hand away. “I thought I was dreaming. What happened? Did that fraggin’ Gaiden kill Holly?”

  Before he could say anything else, Ty had him backed up to the wall. “Tiny didn’t kill anybody. She saved you and your girlfriend’s life. So whatever wacky shit you saw while you were drugged up, you’d better forget it, because it didn’t happen!”

  Ty held him tight until Duv nodded, then slowly let him go. “I saw her stab Holly with a knife in the neck and then she broke her arm. But it was all from the drugs?”

  Chang grimaced. “No, that actually happened.”

  “What? Why?” Duv asked angrily.

  “Because she came here to kill you, Duv,” Ty said bluntly. “She was one of the implants.”

  Duv shook his head and then gave Ty a shove, trying to get by him again. Ty pushed Duv back against the wall, using his forearm to hold him. Chang tried to calm them all down, but the noise drew
the rest of the crew to the common room. Duv was pushing Ty and cursing at him. Ty was telling him to shut up and relax. Reilly and Tiny came in at a jog as Marek stood, his arms folded, shaking his head in frustration, just inside the hatch.

  “Duv! Duv!” A lone voice cut through all the shouting, and Duv turned to see Holly come through the opposite hatch, one arm in a sling, looking frightened. He elbowed Ty off of him and sprinted over to her. The room got quiet.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered, holding her face in his hands and touching her head, shoulders, waist, and then her arm gently, checking her over unconsciously.

  “I’m okay.” She gave him a shaky smile. “The Captain and Tiny have been taking good care of me while you were…out. Duv, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

  Duv hushed her, glancing back at the others as he pulled her in. “I know, I know. It wasn’t your fault. Shhh! It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere, you’re okay now.”

  He walked her over to the sofa and helped her to sit, gently wiping away her tears as he placed one arm around her protectively. He looked over at the Captain and held out his hand. She tossed him the implant that Tiny had removed. He looked it over. The small silver capsule felt hard and cold between his fingers. He reached up and brushed Holly’s hair aside and looked for the knife wounds, but found nothing but new, smooth skin. Holly looked at him tentatively and then gave a soft smile at Tiny. Duv met her glance and then looked over at Tiny and gruffly nodded his thanks. Tiny walked over and delicately manipulated Holly’s arm while Duv watched.