by Chance Maree
Spade shot his sister an expression that looked quite sour, even for a moose.
Celine crouched for a closer look into the cut. “I'm saying that this differs from what the medical doctor described as a standard com implantation. Tyr's com is attached to another device which has been embedded into his skull. I think I can pry off the com, but I'm worried about disturbing the rest of it.”
“Do what you feel is right,” Spade said with a kindness that took Pots by surprise.
“Can’t you just disable the com?”
Celine nodded, obviously relieved. “I'd forgotten about that! The doctor had suggested that disabling the com would be safer, but the director said removing it was bloodier, and more dramatic.” She changed the setting on the laser and waved it over the com with light strokes. “This com will never work again.”
“Shoot this into the wound.” Spade handed a syringe to Pots, who promptly passed it to Celine. The tiger-faced actress gave the siblings a withering look before inserting the tip of the disperser into Tyr's flesh and releasing the valve. She retrieved the laser scalpel, reversed the head, and, holding the skin together with one hand, sealed the cut. A little sterilization solution and a bandage later, Celine declared the operation complete. “I hope it worked,” she said with a shrug.
“I gave him the whole vial. He'll be out for another hour or two.” Spade bent over in close examination of Tyr's face, an amalgamation of colors and textures unlike any in existence outside of a special effects studio.
The boy stirred.
Backpedaling, Spade stammered, “Whoa! No way should he wake up that fast.” Spade made a quick bow to Celine. “Great show, ma'am,” he said, looking at her chest with more than a little appreciation. “If I wasn't a fan before, I am certainly one now. Anyway, I'd love to stay, but killer-boy might bear a grudge, so I best be on my way.” Spade slipped a few packages from a cabinet into his pocket and then headed towards the door. “Good luck getting the kid out. And don't worry about me—I may be low on the tree, but I'm no snitch.”
Not a snitch, maybe, but my brother is soon to be a high and loose moose. I should stop him. Pots glared at Spade, but decided it would be pointless to try.
Tyr woke instantly, disoriented, with fists swinging, but refrained from accomplishing anything lethal. By disabling the com, Celine had given the boy such relief that he appeared to float through the corridors on their way to the space raft container. When they reached the docking station Tyr embraced Pots and Celine. He stepped up to the hatch and, after a moment of hesitation, squared his shoulders and recited,
We therefore have great cause of thankfulness;
And shall forget the office of our hand,
Sooner than quittance of desert and merit
According to the weight and worthiness.
“You're welcome, King Henry,” Celine purred. She performed an elaborate bow.
Pots was surprised to discover that how much she too would miss the boy. “Where will you go?”
“I feel responsible for Ata. If I find her alive, I intend to make certain she stays that way. I'll scavenge the cities for supplies, but I want to learn how to survive off the land. Whatever happens, it'll be better than bending my knee to Gunner.”
Pots stepped forward and pulled Tyr into another embrace. Into his ear, she whispered, “You will not need to stay hidden for long. I swear to you, Gunner's reign is about to end.”
⁂
“We are all living under Gunner's thumb,” Pots told everyone on the ship who would listen. Those who had been recently rescued were most likely to argue, but none were comfortable with the prospect of war with a civilization capable of turning them into animals. While Pots hadn't canvassed all 2000 of her shipmates, through random sampling, she estimated that public opinion sided generally against the commander. Although no one volunteered to help stop Gunner, neither did anyone threaten to protect him.
For dependable allies, Pots sought out Victor, Josh, Casey Wu, and Spade, inviting them to meet her in an unused rec room in the oldest section of the ship. To Celine and Dr. Byrd, she made her intentions clear. Pots was confident they would welcome a plot against Gunner.
At the scheduled meeting time, only Celine, Byrd, and Josh entered the room. Victor had sent a com message that he'd been called to join a round of rescue flights to Aristotle and Mandela. Helpfully, her husband had added, “Gunner is leading the mission to Aristotle. You can expect us back in two days.”
Spade's reply to Pots was a pointed—“Thanks, but no thanks, and good luck with the coup, sister.”
Byrd sat with Rafiki happily perched on his shoulder. The monkey hopped back and forth between the psychologist and the actress. On the corners of his beak was a small crease. “What did Gunner do when he discovered that Tyr had…escaped?”
“He demanded that I be put in detention,” Pots replied. “I asked him who he had in mind to fly Alpha Horizon on the journey back to Earth. Then I suggested that Gunner had two options: he could play the good father, relieved that his son was free, or he could figure out a way to explain his role in raising Stevenson's illegal bio-weapon.”
Byrd beamed as Rafiki scampered around the rec room, chattering. “Gunner chose to appear as the devoted, yet conflicted father, of course.”
“For now,” Josh grumbled. A line of worry marred his furry brow. “Pots, you know you're on Gunner's hit list. He’s not the sort to tolerate threats.”
“Gunner needs me. At least for the short term. He'll make his move after we reach Earth. So we have to trap him before I take the pilot's chair. You just have to keep him in lock up until we can turn him over to the authorities. They'll assign a new commander and fill the ship with supplies and evacuees. We'll be back on Ostara within a standard year.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Celine said, “except, I think I missed the part about how we go about trapping the commander.”
Pots’s pride had to be swallowed. “Anyone have any ideas?”
Celine extended her hand to Rafiki, who screeched with excitement and climbed up into her arms. “The monkey and I can handle it.” Byrd looked uneasy, but Celine flashed a look that made the man hunker deep into his chair. “We'll need your help too, Doctor. You, too, Josh.”
“What do you have in mind, Celine?” Pots wondered what movie plot the actress planned to reenact this time.
“You have to leave this one to us,” the tigress said. “If Gunner gets a whiff of you, he'll be on his guard. Rafiki and I are much less threatening, aren't we, sweet boy?” The furry creature scurried up Celine's arm onto her shoulder.
“Great,” Pots mumbled. “Our lives are in the hands of a cat and a monkey.”
⁂
Two standard days later, the shuttles returned to Alpha Horizon with a couple dozen more two-legged survivors. Pots had prepared a statement to be read after Gunner's capture, outlining his crimes along with as much supporting evidence as she could transcribe. To ease her anxiety—and in anticipation of many days ahead lying immobile in the pilot’s chair—Pots was sweating on a cardio unit in the gym. She planned to report to Alphie's control station in under two hours.
Victor's voice came over her com. “Thought you might want to know, on the way back to the ship, we buzzed over Galileo.”
Pots staggered off the trample belt. “Gunner was with you?”
“Yes, and we saw two riders on horseback running across the plain. One of those riders was Tyr.”
Pots’s legs felt weak. A moment elapsed before she could speak. “Is Gunner going after him?”
“I don't think so, but as Gunner watched the boy, he said something I found downright revealing.”
“And what was that?” Pots watched sweat float from her arms and drift towards the intake valve.
“A quote from Sun Tzu, something like, even the finest sword plunged into saltwater will eventually rust.”
“Are you going to help us, Victor?”
“I am not.”
Pot
s lowered her head. She and Victor never agreed about anything. Gunner had brought her husband to Ostara just to make her miserable.
“However, darlin',” Victor continued, “don’t let me stand in your way.”
To his credit, Victor had never interfered with Pot’s ambitions or desires. After all these years, perhaps she had neglected to appreciate the man.
CHAPTER 34
Commander Gunner Dovmont
Sun Tzu wrote, one may know how to conquer without being able to do it. Commander Dovmont knew he was in trouble when that particular quote entered his thoughts.
Throughout his career, Gunner had worked with military personnel—persons disciplined, trained, loyal, and obedient. This small band of civilian volunteers he now commanded couldn't handle a rescue mission without guidance at every step, and even with guidance, they often misunderstood, misinterpreted, or simply forgot his instructions. A mission that should have taken five standard days had taken ten. Yet, Gunner was determined not to leave Ostara until he felt they'd done their best to rescue anyone smart or lucky enough to be walking on two human legs. To his surprise, only a dozen soldiers had survived, none of whom were above the rank of Private. Hadn't any of my lieutenants been able to evade the enemy? More than likely they had tried to save citizens instead of themselves...
Without military support, how was the commander going to fulfill his promise to his men? Gunner's only hope lay with reinforcements and resources from Earth. He needed soldiers, weapons, and cooperative worm-mole pilots. Engineer Wu reported that she and the crew had seen five white worm-moles carrying manufactured structures around their necks. During the rescue mission, no one had sighted a single robot or native, for that matter. They must have evacuated the planet using their own worm-mole ships. And where there were worm-moles, there would be wormholes. Gunner could chase after them with Alpha Horizon and one or both of the other ships—Beta-2-Nun and Gamma's Charm. The planet Gaia might not cooperate, being likely caught up in religious wars. Perhaps the people of Atlas would listen to him, which is what Barbara had suggested. Gunner breathed deeply. In the past, he’d succeeded on missions with fewer prospects.
The long gap since the last transmission from Earth headquarters worried the commander. Until they reached Earth, or made contact with another worm-mole ship, they had to rely on Pots to fulfill the role normally distributed among a minimum of four pilots. He’d deal with her later.
Tyr's escape was a relief, actually. The boy was out of the way on Ostara, and could be easily found if Gunner had use for him. Deciding what to do with Julius also weighed on Gunner’s thoughts as he walked down the corridor. Casia could take care of his son while Julius was an infant, but Gunner wanted to raise Julius to be a leader…
A woman screamed.
“Frog flipping rabbit balls, what now?” Gunner mumbled as he turned towards the commotion. He found Celine holding her hand over the opposite forearm. Blood seeped between her fingers.
“Oh, Commander! There's a monkey loose on the ship! The little beast jumped out of nowhere and attacked me!”
Gunner scowled. Byrd was on the ship. The doctor likely smuggled his pet aboard, too.
Celine looked up at the commander with needy, golden eyes. She was beyond doubt the most exquisite, best smelling woman in the universe. With a shaking and bloody finger, the sultry tigress pointed. “I saw the creature dash into a room down there.”
Gunner removed his officer jacket and headed down the corridor. “Don't worry, Ms. Amore. I'll catch it.”
The six rooms along the corridor were sleeping quarters that had been converted to detention units. Violent situations triggered by hysteria and panic under stressful and over-crowded conditions had necessitated means to temporarily constrain citizens. If the monkey had wandered into one of those small, empty rooms, Gunner was certain cornering it would be relatively easy.
The commander heard a cheerful, chirping sound behind a partially open door of the last room in the corridor. He widened the gap in the outer barred door with a gentle push of his finger. A shaft of light reached from the hall into the room and fell upon the figure of a monkey. The beast ignored Gunner. It remained squatting, calmly eating from what looked like a bowl of grapes.
Moving slowly into the room, the commander slid the padded door closed behind him. He heard the click of a lock. Whirling around, Gunner pushed the soft, interior door. To his relief, it opened. He pushed, then pulled on the barred door, to no avail.
Turning back towards the monkey, Gunner realized that in zero gravity, it couldn’t possibly be sitting in the middle of the floor, much less eating fruit. Now that the inner door was wide open, light from the corridor brightened the interior of the cell. The monkey looked up, chirped again and resumed eating grapes. The scene looked like a home movie, a hologram, on a continual loop.
“There, there, Rafiki,” a tinny voice echoed from down the hall.
“Byrd?” The commander shouted, “I know you're out there! Come and open this door.”
Dr. Byrd stepped into view. The monkey, secured by leash and harness crouched on his shoulder. Byrd's long, thin beak and skinny white-feathered face next to the more human looking tamarin on his shoulder nearly made Gunner laugh. “You’ve had your fun. Now unlock the door, Doctor. You can consider that both a polite request and an order from your commander.”
“See, Rafiki, that man doesn’t appear so mean without a bag in his hand” Byrd said. “And look, he’s watching our home movie.”
“Shame I didn't bring a bag big enough for you.” Gunner grabbed the bars.
Byrd jumped back.
“Savor each minute I'm in here,” Gunner growled, “because you’ll regret your part in this charade the moment I'm out. You can bet your life on it.”
Byrd's eyes widened and his beak parted. Panting, the doctor looked nervously down the corridor. His mouth closed and he waved to someone. Intimidation wasn’t going to work this time. The timid psychologist scurried away.
Gunner paced across the padded floor to the hologram projection box in the corner of the room and proceeded to throw it through the bars, against the wall of the outside corridor. The explosion and shattering of the mechanism was truly satisfying. But, the commander would allow himself no further outbursts. He sat cross-legged, locked his boots to the floor, and tried to meditate but found his thoughts tangled in self-flagellation for failing to recognize the simple ruse Celine had used to lure him into what was now, obviously a trap. Neither frustrated nor angry, Gunner observed the working of his mind with detachment until the energy was spent and calmness followed. Only then did the commander turn to Sun Tzu for counsel. As though in reply, a quote he hadn’t read in years drifted like perfume in the wind: To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself, and in the General’s wisdom, Gunner found comfort.
CHAPTER 35
Pilot Pots Kahn-Anderson
Pots undressed and stood facing the pilot's chair. She felt the swirl of air warmed by environmental control mechanisms that sensed her presence in the room. I've waited so long for this.
Everything was perfect. Tyr was free. Gunner was in custody. No one had objected, but his door would be guarded around the clock to prevent aid from reckless or impulsive sympathizers. And Pots was about to taste the expansive thrill of hyperspace.
Alpha Horizon was ready to be awakened, and although the itching had passed, Pots continued to miss melding her consciousness with the giant creature. Oblivion of thought, heightening of senses, peace, power, freedom—the pilot stepped forward, eager with anticipation.
Chief Engineer Wu's voice came over Pots's com channel. “We're receiving a transmission from Earth, marked urgent, for the commander's and captain's eyes only. Pots, come to the command deck, immediately. Somebody needs see this, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me.”
“Chikoshu!” Pots began her customary string of pilot Japanese curses. Sh
e pulled on her stretch suit. ‘For the commander's and captain’s eyes.’ Both of those positions are vacant at the moment. The pilot ran down the corridor, up two inter-floor ladders, through another corridor, and up the ladder to the command center.
The center was deserted except for Wu, who sat slumped at a console. The fur on her face had thinned, she was missing a patches of whiskers, and her green eyes were glassy and sunken. Pots wanted to say something humorous, but could only manage to blurt, “Gee, Casey, you look like something the cat drug in.”
“I've been working this post for a standard year, at least.” Engineer Wu’s voice was barely a whisper. “It's getting dangerous. Everyone's starting to make mistakes. We've started training people to help, but it'll be a while before the critical roles can be turned over. We need more people. Preferably people with technical skills. Sorry I wasn’t involved in the mutiny, but, you know...”
“Don't mention it, Casey. Let’s compile a list of the personnel we need and transmit it to Earth. They'll have enough time to put people through decontamination before we arrive.”
“Headquarters has ignored every requisition request we’ve sent. They can only give us what they have available. I have a feeling this transmission for Commander Dovmont is bad news.”
“Broadcast it.” Pots crossed her arms. “No more secrecy, no more random hierarchies. It's time we start acting like adults.”
“You might want to rethink that. People are on edge without the commander at the helm. The news could be devastating.”
Pots stood by the ship’s communication panel. “How do you work this?”
“You want it ship-wide?”
Wu shook her head and opened the com.
“Attention, everyone,” Pots began. Her voice was raspy, so she turned her face away from the mic and cleared her throat.