Learning the Hard Way 3

by H. P. Caledon

  “Saron and the others put out a few false leads that you guys left in a freighter, so you have to get away from Reeds as soon as you get onboard. That Galaxie is a look at us sign.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t have a lot of choices just then.”

  “Oh, I’m aware. Mike was never reckless.”

  They continued in silence, and Misery felt more and more anxious.

  “Here we are. Visual distance.”

  Misery stretched in the seat to look out the front window, which wasn’t easy in that bucket. But the Galaxie finally came into view with all her gracious curves.

  “Oh, she’s beautiful!” Bramming exclaimed.

  Misery smiled at his outburst.

  “Osiris, this is skiff forty-seven. Osiris, this is skiff forty-seven. I’m dropping off a package you left on the surface.”

  Misery stretched to look at the VID-screen, but it was black.

  “Skiff forty-seven this is Osiris, what package... Bramming?”

  “Yep.” Bramming laughed, and the screen blinked before Mike appeared.

  “Hi!” Misery called and waved over the backrest of the pilot seat.

  “Oh, man, your dad’s gonna be happy now!”

  “Will you open?”

  “Line up on the starboard side, and I’ll equalize pressure now.”

  * * * *

  Mike ran from the cockpit, bellowing for Keelan. “She’s here!”

  “How?” Keelan shouted, running through the hallway toward Mike.

  “With the LA she called in—one of my old teammates.”

  They stopped at the gate to the dock and waited anxiously until everything was reported clear. Keelan squeezed through the door at the same time as Mike, squishing him against the doorframe. Mike understood his eagerness and held his distance to not get in the way again. Keelan jumped into the skiff, grabbed Misery, and held her tightly.

  “Hi, Dad,” Misery croaked.

  “Where did you hide? How did you find this guy? Whose clothes are these?”

  “Dad, cease fire, I’ll give you all the details.”

  Mike looked at his old friend, Bramming Jackson, as he limped down the ramp. He held his hand out to Mike, smiling, but Mike shook his head and hugged his old friend. Bramming laughed and held on.

  “I hear you’re making more casserole?” Bramming finally said and pulled back to look at Mike.

  Mike chuckled. “Yeah. And you?”

  “Wife, two kids, steady job.”

  Mike looked at Bramming’s leg and felt phantom pains in his own arm.

  “Thank you,” Keelan said, extending his hand to Bramming who shook it.

  “We were told to say hi from Saron, Tim, and Ed. They’re here for Karlson, but Misery had a few disturbing things to add.”

  Mike looked at her.

  “The least I could do, since they helped us,” she said and shrugged.

  Mike sighed and shook his head. “It’s no use bringing them in.”

  “Yeah, that was the disturbing part,” Bramming said, pocketing his hands and rocking on his heels. The familiarity of his old friend’s habits made Mike smile even though it looked more difficult than he remembered.

  “Will you share what you got with us?” Bramming continued.

  “Sure. Misery, would you go get the pad from Danny?”

  Misery ran off, and Mike perched on the edge of the opening to the skiff. Bramming did the same while Keelan stepped back, apparently understanding that they needed a few minutes to catch up.

  “So you’re working with Saron, Tim, and Ed on the sideline?”

  “Yeah, the wife doesn’t know anything. She’d get mad as a bull-bug.”

  “We’ve checked every lawman ship and haven’t seen them.” Mike wondered why he wouldn’t have recognized his own team among all the downloaded information from the Chiromancers. Could he have overlooked them? “Not even on approach.”

  “That’s because they fly as legally registered freighters with glitch aliases. They won’t get caught because it’s all true. They just store the bounties with the cargo.”

  “How long did you know we were here?”

  “Since... Saron saw you first. Took a while to see through your new look, but eyes never change as they say.”

  Mike looked down. “Thanks doesn’t even begin to cover it, does it?”

  “Now you know how I’ve tried to thank you since I was laid up in the hospital with an amputated leg, a rotten pension, and a busted career. But you saved my life. That’s why I’m here now. That’s how you say thank you.” Bramming held out his hand, and Mike took it.

  Calm spread in Mike’s chest, and he wondered just how many friends he still had—even with so many people following him to try to throw him back in jail.

  “You guys need to get out of here,” Bramming said, giving Mike’s hand one last squeeze. “I don’t want to know where to, because I don’t want to get involved in this. This is the first time I’ve ever told my wife a direct lie, and I don’t want to do that again.”

  “I get it.” Mike looked up, finding Misery on her way with the pad.

  “This is everything we got on them,” she said and handed it to Bramming.

  “Thanks for this. And hide! I’ve never heard of a manhunt on this scale before.”

  Mike got up and helped Bramming do the same. They gave each other another hug before Bramming stepped into the skiff.

  “Say hi to the fellows down there. Hope you get something from our research.”

  Keelan stayed back, his arm around Misery. He nodded at Bramming.

  “Nice to meet you, young lady. Stay out of trouble,” Bramming said, waving.

  Misery scoffed. “Yeah, and tomorrow Reeds orbit will turn.”

  Bramming shook his head, grinning, and closed the skiff. Mike, Keelan, and Misery left the bay and watched as the skiff left the ship.

  “I’ll plot our route,” Mike said.

  “And then we better call your mother so she knows everything is all right,” Keelan said, guiding Misery upstairs.

  “Okay. And by the way, from bitter experience, I found a few holes in the study plans.”

  “Better look at those, too,” Keelan said and hugged his daughter.

  Mike stopped to look at them from a distance. What a change in both of them. Far from what he’d expected when they’d fought her in the kitchen that first night where she’d armed herself with a fork.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Keelan was playing tasarik with Danny in the common room while Misery sat next to him, reading a book. He was so glad she was there to fill out the sterile room, so he no longer felt so hollow and powerless. Even though they’d left out quite a few grizzly details, Alice had not been happy about Misery ending up in a situation where she had seen killing someone as her only way out. After the call had ended, Misery told him that she’d changed form, and he still hadn’t figured out how he felt about that.

  In the end, he opted just to relax and enjoy the trip, because the last day’s worry had left him exhausted.

  “Pot. Keelan. Hello, where are you?” Danny sang.

  “Pot,” Keelan said, counting his bet so far.

  “I take physical kinds of payment too.” Danny wagged his brows.

  “Oh, okay, then I bet two slaps to the ears and a kick to the shin.”

  “You’re doing it on purpose,” Danny growled, but failed miserably at pouting. “You can’t even understand a serious dirty innuendo correctly.”

  Keelan just smiled, and Misery snickered behind her book.

  Mike came in looking upbeat. “What?”

  “Just Dad and Danny.” Misery said.

  Mike nodded and took a seat next to Danny to inspect his tower. He then looked at the pot.

  “Whose turn is it?”

  “Keelan has to bet,” Danny said.

  “I don’t have any more to bet.” Keelan took his tower down.

  “So, tasarik isn’t your strong suit?” Mike asked.

 
“Never spent a lot of time playing it, and never for currency.” Keelan pushed his last snacks to Danny.

  “I’ll share with you.” Danny pushed his huge stack of snacks into the middle along with Keelan’s measly one. “But look at that tower!” Danny turned his for all to see. “Had this been strip tasarik, you’d have sat there naked and hot and—”

  “Hey, hey, kids present!” Misery said.

  “Oh, yeah... sorry.” Danny face palmed himself.

  “Hey, Danny, I have a question for you. All of you, actually.” Mike waited until he had their full attention. “Misery talked about more things for the study plan after that mess on Reeds, and it got me thinking. Being on a skip with the two of you—” he pointed at Keelan and Misery “—has made it abundantly clear that you think very differently from me. You take things for granted that I wouldn’t even dream of. It’s not things I’ve learned or been trained in or, as we’ve established earlier, even had the opportunity to develop in my childhood or youth.”

  “Like,” Keelan asked but remembered their many conversations while eating cheese or healing on Spec Edit five. He’d just asked to make sure Danny and Misery were up to date, too.

  “You have certain ways of working in a city image. Things you both do. Like the alleys and fire escapes and running over rooftops and hiding in the crowds. I remember that proud look on your face, Keelan, when Misery finally opened up and began sharing details of how she’d managed until then.”

  Keelan smiled proudly and winked at Misery.

  “You’ve trained us, too,” Misery said.

  “Yeah, but when my training fails, some over tuned survival instinct takes over, and you two just keep going. In the same manner, I might add, without having discussed your approaches. That’s what I wanted to get at,” Mike said.

  “I agree with Mike. You’re better at hiding than Mike, because you were just impossible to follow or even find on Reeds,” Danny said.

  Keelan glanced at Misery, who winked at Keelan.

  “If it wasn’t because of a set of eyes in the back of my head that I didn’t even know about, Misery would still have been on Reeds, no one would have covered the Galaxie, and Keelan would still be climbing the walls here and be a danger to anyone around him. Put in another way—”

  “Eyes in the back of your head you didn’t know about?” Danny asked.

  “The kind of friendships where you’re just the eyes they need,” Mike said, obviously still touched by what his old teammate had done for him. “Networks I didn’t even know I still had. People I haven’t seen or heard from since they left their service on Spec Edit twelve.”

  “And your question for me?” Danny asked.

  “If Misery had been forced to dump her cards, she wouldn’t have had any way of leaving us even a short and vague message through a portal. We only caught it because thirty Chiromancers were looking for anything to do with her. So my question to you is—would you teach us a way to... I don’t know what it’s called, but is there a hack or something the Chiromancers could teach us to get a message to you fast if we end up in a situation like this again?”

  “Teach you to hack?” Danny exclaimed.

  “I know you keep it all secret—”

  “No, no, Mike, you’re misunderstanding the reason behind my outburst. I can teach you little things because it takes a lot of time. The rest is something I have to make and set up for you.” Danny’s eyes went out of focus, and a finger began drawing in the air.

  Mike smiled at Keelan.

  “And the rest of your thoughts?” Keelan asked. “You don’t normally rattle off a stream of thoughts without having more on the program.”

  Mike nodded. “A brainstorm exercise in the military. We each make a list of our strengths, weaknesses, resources, networks, and other abilities. One thing is to know what each of us can do, but if we start these lists, it might put relations into perspective that we hadn’t thought about.”

  “Networks,” Keelan mumbled and thought about who, other than Mike, Alice, Misery, and Danny, he could put on that list. With Alice came Jerry and Billy.

  “And with this connected and floating among the sats you’d always be able to reach me,” Danny mumbled, and his eyes cleared and focused again. “Okay, I’ll teach you to hack, but other than that I have to teach you to make hardware. I can’t teach you all of it, so some will have to wait until we’re on Verion with my group. Let’s start with electronics,” Danny said and got up.

  Keelan looked at Mike, who smiled and looked after Danny with an expression full of friendliness.

  The word group stuck in Keelan’s thoughts, and Saleek and Koolmok and the entire pack made it onto the network list as well. Even Ratkins. And Keelan had wanted to categorize both him and Lewis as Mike’s network passed on by association.

  Danny returned with a bunch of techy stuff and looked at the stack of snacks on the table. “Keelan, could you push our snacks down the table so there’s room for this?”

  Keelan swept the pot down the table, and Danny released what he was carrying.

  “What’s that?” Misery asked and picked something up.

  Mike and Keelan found an unidentifiable something to study, too.

  “That is a thingamabob. Mike’s holding a bobbamabob, and Keelan has a funkymabob. Each on their own they can’t do shit. Well, actually this one can toast a wiener if you connect it with a tower for code breaking... perfect voltage, but other than that.” Danny shrugged. “We now get to take them all apart and put them together to become something new.”

  Keelan gaped while Mike looked confused.

  “Do you have a diagram?” Mike finally asked Danny.

  “No! That’s what we’re gonna make.” Danny plopped down next to Mike again. “I’ll ask the colors for the rest of what we need to know.”

  * * * *

  Mike stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He’d finally gotten used to having a beard and even liked it when trimmed, but he still felt wrong and disheveled when it got too long, and he wasn’t allowed to do anything to it. Like comb it. Since Reeds, he’d kept it because the itchy hell of letting it grow out was not smoothing he wanted to go through again.

  In a few hours, they’d land on Verion Four in a closed dock, which Danny’s dad had secured for them, and from there they’d drive to the Techno Chiromancer’s place. He didn’t have to look as disheveled. He could comb his beard.

  Someone knocked on the door to his room.

  “Come in!”

  Keelan showed up in the door to the bathroom. “You’re not done,” he established.

  “No. I was contemplating taking the beard off, but I can see you didn’t.”

  “Don’t wanna,” Keelan said, shrugging. “Still skipping.”

  Mike looked in the mirror again and decided to do nothing to the beard.

  “Did you guys pack?”

  “Yeah. Danny called his dad, and everything’s in place. Our in-flight window will open in half an hour.”

  “I thought we had longer.”

  “And that’s why I’m disturbing you in the middle of shaving.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “I’ll bring your luggage,” Keelan said and left the bathroom.

  “Thanks!”

  * * * *

  Keelan had gathered all their things in the cargo hold and was packing most of it in crates along with the food that couldn’t last while the ship was laid up. Danny ran around flustered and checked and rechecked his gear.

  It made Keelan smile. “Do you have everything?”

  “Huh?” Danny came up to face him.

  “Do you have everything?”

  “I think so,” Danny looked at his bags. Then he knelt again and checked a bag.

  “If you forgot a funkybob, then we can just go get it later since the ship’s in a closed dock. Or they have a funkybob, too.”

  “They?”

  “Yes, your friends. Or have you overlooked the fact that you’re goin
g home now?”

  Something seemed to finally get through to Danny, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Keelan stopped what he was doing and went to him.

  “I thought I was going to die in there,” Danny said quietly. Keelan put an arm around his shoulder, and Danny seized the opportunity to hug him tightly. Keelan let him and held the young man, stroking his back.

  A sound made Keelan look up, finding Misery at the end of the stairs, smiling at them.

  “Our in-flight begins shortly. Lock down and get up here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Keelan tried to step back from Danny with no such luck. “Come on, we need to finish closing these off.”

  Danny nodded and pulled back to wipe his eyes. He then zipped up his bag while Keelan finished closing the crate.

  Mike was sitting in the pilot seat and was ready by the time Keelan and Danny took a seat. Keelan stayed close to Danny, because he seemed so out of it. Misery saw her opening to take the copilot seat.

  “Adrianna, Adrianna, this is Verion Four. Your window is now open, are you ready?”

  “Verion Four, this is Adrianna. Yes, we are ready.”

  Danny rocked in his chair, and Keelan put a hand on his arm. Danny smiled and grabbed the offered hand, squeezing it tightly as they broke through the atmosphere, and he didn’t let go until they felt the thud in the ship as it touched down on the ramp to be moved into in the closed dock.

  “Now you’re home,” Keelan whispered, and Danny exhaled shakily.

  “My dad’s here. He’s gonna inspect,” Danny said, smiling.

  “Then follow me down so we can close up,” Mike said.

  Danny jumped from the seat before he’d even unbuckled. He succeeded to get out of the chair in the second or third attempt.

  “Guess we’re home, too,” Misery said once Mike and Danny had left the cockpit. Neither her eyes nor her tone showed any hint of joy.

  “Yeah. And when we find the time, you’re going home to your mom. And then we’re home,” Keelan said. As hoped, that prospect put some joy in her hard gaze.

  “When?”