“Whoa, Frankie,” he began, chuckling to hide his uneasiness. “You’re freaking me out here. You’re going on like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Maybe there isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Maybe today is all we have. Who knows what waits for us around the corner? I could choke on my breakfast and poof. Gone.”
His heart ached at the tone of her voice. So solemn. “You’re invincible. You’ll never die. That’s for lesser folks like your ex, the one with all the tattoos.” And the broken nose, courtesy of John O’Shaughnessy.
“What’s with you and that guy? He’s old history.”
“Does that mean it’s okay to go beat on him again?”
“John, I was being serious here.” She sighed. “We’re going up against the Imbers tomorrow. Some of us aren’t going to make it.”
“You will.”
“You sound so sure.” She made another halo of condensation and this time drew a smiley face. “He looks like you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Her snort of laughter made him feel so much better. He didn’t like that grave-looking Frankie talking about death and the passage of time. Where had that come from?
She turned. Eyes the color of coffee beans rolled up to look into his face. She reached out, tentatively, fingers outstretched for a gentle touch, then dropped her hand. John realized he’d been holding his breath the whole time.
“I’ll go get Womack out of bed. Get him to install the charge on the reefer.”
Back to business as usual. John felt as if he’d just missed the last train home.
“Your wishes are my commands.”
Frankie punched him on the arm. “Cut that out. Now get me the codes to that old clunker so I can get a look inside.”
They waited in silence until Womack turned up, armed with his ever-present bucket of tools and a cigarette dangling precariously from his tattooed lips. “Show me,” was all he said.
John led them to the reefer, which still smelled of cabbage and onions, no matter how hard he ran the air hose over the deck. When the wide tail hatch dropped to the quay, both Frankie and Womack entered the ship and began to talk about where to put the charge, how to rig the consoles for the remote-pilot bit, how the detonator’s signal would still penetrate the hull if the distance wasn’t too important. All in all, it became quite boring so John let them at it and made his way to his cabin. Dawn would bring a momentous day. Frankie intended to start a war, and wars made folks hungry.
~ * ~
“He’s gonna be some mighty pissed when he finds out. Ma’am.”
Guilt poked its sharp little talons in her side again. John would be angry with her for sneaking out on him this way. For not telling him first. For lying. Even Womack knew how close John and Frankie were. Every time someone wanted something from her, they invariably went through John, who relayed their wishes with his usual dry sense of humor. The ship’s enabler, he’d once called himself. He was so much more than that. To others and to her. Especially to her.
Frankie gritted her teeth even harder. “Focus, Womack. I want to be out by oh-four-hundred hours.” She checked her watch, yawned. “That gives us five hours to rig the reefer.”
With the help of mechanized heavy-lifters, they loaded the massive charge—all two tons of it—into the reefer’s cargo hold. The smell of onions mixed with that of plastic composites. After they were done, she pressed her palm to the comms panel and waited until her OOW responded.
“Position?” she asked as she watched Womack give a couple of last turns to the bolts holding the charge to the rails. “Stop fiddling with the damn thing,” she added in a snarl.
“We’re about to enter enemy space. I’ve had engines cut to minimum. Your orders, Ma’am?”
“Good. Get a fix on O’Shaughnessy’s reefer. That’s what we’ll use instead of the cruiser.”
There was a good five seconds of silence before Bentley replied, “The refrigerated cargo ship?”
“That’s the one. Get a fix and don’t lose it.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
After she was done with Womack—who never took well to someone telling him what to do, but if he wanted to change that, the Navy Lieutenant could bloody well take command tests—Frankie made her way back to her cabin. When she cleared the hold and reached the gangway that’d lead her to the main part of the ship, she came across one of the tacscreens interspersed along the passageways. Not a real porthole, but close enough. A pixellated image of Earth filled the screen. So unlike the old history books. Like a second Saturn with a belt of asteroids—five hundred years of mine slag—in a dirty brown ring. This version was mostly green for the alien acid flowing in a grid that crisscrossed all over the surface, with the equator taking the prize with its thick, glowing belt of lime-colored pipeline. Near where had once been Sorong, Indonesia, a connector tube rose several tens of thousands of meters in the air to L-point 1, about midway between the Earth and the moon, to join with the orbital pipeline. The Lagrange Point One, the one spot relatively stationary. Perfect for their conduit.
“Perfect for my surprise too,” she whispered.
She knew every little detail by heart. Distance, speed and strength of both gravitational pulls. Everything.
Gritting her teeth, Frankie turned her back to the tacscreen and its green planet. Goddamn Imbers had ruined everything.
Without even thinking about it, she rounded the corner and was standing in front of John’s hatch.
She’d already said her goodbyes of sorts. Any more time spent with him and she just might let the cat out of the bag. Not an option. She needed her head clear. Yet her hand rose, forefingers ready to press the chime. Another civvie perk. None of her crew had chimes on their hatch. Hell, she didn’t even have one.
Just a couple minutes. Maybe she could find some excuse to talk to him. Ask about the next procurement, or…whatever else. She wanted to see him again.
What the hell is wrong with you? Think, Beaumont. He’ll ask questions, he’ll give you that stare-through-your-soul look. And that insufferable grin if he thinks he knows what’s going on.
Frankie backed away from the hatch, torn between the woman in her wanting—desperately—to buzz his hatch, and the commander of a fleet going to war. That commander needed to have her ducks in a row and her neurons firing in sequence.
She practically ran to her cabin. Maybe if she walked quickly enough, she wouldn’t turn right back and buzz the damn hatch. Or maybe the dark clouds above her head wouldn’t follow.
Once safely inside her cabin, she prepared her stuff for the next day, as if she weren’t preparing to fly a ship right into the dragon’s mouth.
“Stop it,” she snarled at her reflection. Dark circles, frizzy hair, thin lips. Yup, she looked like shit. John probably could guess something was up with her. She wondered why he hadn’t made a big stink of it the way he sometimes did.
Going through the motions of normal life gave her something to occupy her shaking hands. She showered, brushed her teeth, clipped her nails. She donned her best coveralls, her least objectionable boots and sat on the bed to wait for oh-four-hundred hours. No way she was sleeping.
Navy Lieutenant Womack’s words floated in her head like the echoes of a distant gong.
“He’s gonna be some mighty pissed when he finds out. Ma’am.”
~ * ~
She was slipping.
John held on to Frankie’s hand, sweat pearling at his temples, his heart hammering, lips numb from grimacing against the strain. He was losing her. He didn’t know why or how. He couldn’t see a thing. Had no idea where they were. Up, down, no exterior stimuli except her. Nothing other than the feel of her hand—he’d recognize the feel of those hands among a thousand—in his, with sweat a lubricant slowly eroding their grip. He couldn’t lose. He had to hold on. Against everything and everyone.
“Hold on,” he snarled through his teeth. His shoulder burned, as did his bi
ceps. While he may have been a fit guy who pumped iron regularly, his lovely Frankie still was no nymph.
By a tiny measure, he felt her slipping. Then by another.
“Don’t let go,” she implored.
“I won’t.”
“John. John?” Her voice sounded so far away. Getting farther. Fainter. “I’m sorry. I have to go. Please don’t be mad.”
“Go? Where?”
“You can’t come with me. Not this time.”
“The hell I won’t.”
“I’m sorry… We ran out of time.”
“Frankie,” he growled. “Frankie.”
Her hand slipped out of his. He screamed something, had no idea what. He just had to give voice to the fear, the horror, the shame. He’d dropped her. He’d let her go.
He’d let go of the woman he loved.
The split-second realization snapped him up like a broken bow. John hit his head against the deckhead above and rolled off his bunk. Muttering curses, he rubbed at his forehead. A nightmare? What the hell was that about? His heart still thudded hard enough to make him feel nauseous.
He had let go…
“Jesus.”
When he could hear himself think again—the swoosh of blood flow drowned even his thoughts—John sat back on his bunk and leaned his elbows on his knees. Sweat coated him from hairline to boxers. On the produce crate that served as night table, his watch showed 03:10 in aqua blue. Both dots blinked like eyes on a robotic beetle. He slipped it on, snapped the clasp in place. He couldn’t put his finger on it but something bugged him. A detail. A bubble in a murky pond. Rising little by little.
Frankie must have been getting ready to join Womack down in the launch bay. He was such a softhearted moron for her. And now his reefer would serve as cannon fodder. Great. Where would he find another ship like it, with a hull thick enough to stop food-spoiling gamma rays? Hell, even comms didn’t come through.
John slowly stood as the realization surfaced. “Wait a minute…”
No long-range comms could penetrate the reefer’s hull. So exactly how were they planning on remote-piloting the thing all the way to Earth’s moon? The Magellan would have to remain close, that was how. Frankie didn’t mean…
No, she’d never put her crew at risk.
“Shit.”
He’d never thrown his clothes on so fast.
By the time he reached the launch bay, his watch indicated ten minutes had elapsed since waking from his nightmare. Womack had his back to him, bent under the reefer’s tail section.
“Womack.”
The man whipped around. Instead of the morose welcome habitual from the man, John received a sort of awkward glare-wince combination that stopped him dead in his tracks.
“What do you want?” He always spoke around his cigarette. Drove John absolutely nuts.
“The reefer, you won’t be able to take it out far enough.”
Womack shrugged as he drew near his tools bucket. A long pipe clamp gleamed yellow in his fist. “It’s all good, O’Shaughnessy. No need to worry.”
“How do you know it’s ‘all good’ since I haven’t told you the problem?”
“Fuck, just go back to your galley, ’kay?”
Blood drained from Womack’s face when John cut the distance between them by two long strides. He stopped only when he towered over the shorter, thicker man. “Damn right it’s my galley. And you mind your mouth. I’m not above dropping a throat oyster in your soup next time you show up in my galley. Got it?”
John wasn’t known for his temper but this smirking man just might trigger a bubble of testosterone to burst out. “Now, for that problem, you want to know what it is or not?”
“Sure. Shoot.” With the pipe clamp still in one hand, Womack indicated the reefer’s side hatch.
Finally the man showed some sense.
John preceded Womack and had to duck underneath the dormant ship’s stunted wing whereas the engineering officer merely leaned his head sideways. Rivets and plate seams encrusted with rust resembled scars.
“That hull—”
Pain exploded between his shoulder blades. Tiny suns burst behind his eyelids. As heat spread downward throughout his body, John turned just in time to see Womack coming for another hit with the pipe. Instincts saved him from having his skull bashed open. But his elbow took the brunt. Something crunched.
Womack seemed as surprised as John that he still stood. He backed away by a hesitant step, pipe proffered accusingly in front of him, as if John was supposed to go down the first time. Well, tough shit.
John charged.
Womack brandished the pipe with practiced ease. John let him come. A twitch of shoulder heralded the man’s attack. The pipe made a swoosh when it sliced downward at a forty-five-degree angle. Using his height to his advantage, John let the pipe arc harmlessly by, waited for the perfect window of opportunity—poker helped with patience—and struck. He grabbed the pipe as it reached its apogee, tugged the shorter man closer. A punch on the snout whipped Womack’s head back. But the riposte came sharp and quick. A knee that would’ve emasculated him had it touched its mark landed instead on the inside of John’s thigh. It still hurt like a bitch. With a grunt and his hand still around his end of the pipe, he kicked low. His aim was true and he landed a good hit at Womack’s ankle.
The engineering officer must have decided he didn’t want his pipe anymore and let it go. He came at John as a wrestler would. Aside from their boots scraping along the deck, the fight was strangely quiet. The impact forced out a great hoomph of air. The pair went stumbling back, arms twisting for weak spots as they grappled, feet dancing around the pitted deck, and crashed against one of the reefer’s skids. Armored metal dug into John’s back. Both men grunted in pain.
“What the hell…is wrong…with you?” John panted.
Womack tried to elbow his way out of the snarl of limbs but couldn’t. “Th-th-the show must go on.”
“What?”
While John was trying to pull an arm out of the hold to punch Womack again, the shorter man snapped his head down. With the difference in height, his head-butt caught John on the chin. Still, his teeth grated together. Surely he’d just lost a filling.
“Jesus Christ, man. What are you talking about?”
Eyes like chips of black onyx, Womack just laughed. “Fuck, you don’t even know, do you? I thought you were here because of her.”
“Who?”
“The captain.”
Frankie?
John’s heart thudded once hard then resumed arrhythmically. What the hell was going on? Womack must have seen an opening in the way John straightened because he went for it. Kicks, punches, joint locks. But as confusion gave way to fury—was Frankie in trouble? His Frankie—John parried every one. After a devastating punch to the belly, Womack bent in half, gagging.
John grabbed the man by the back collar of his coveralls and hoisted him up to his level. “What’s going on with Frankie?”
Here he was again, using violence because of Francine Beaumont. What was that woman doing to him?
“It’s bigger than you and me. Or her.” Womack’s breath smelled of cigarettes and adrenaline enhancers. “It’s bigger than all of us.”
“What’s bigger?” A good shake added emphasis to his rising temper. He was sick of this.
“We know about the comms on that old clunker. We know it can’t get through. So we’ve fixed it.”
“Don’t take me for a fool. You can’t fix something like that.”
Womack tried to break John’s hold on his collar but failed. “We found a way around it. She did.”
“How?”
A look of triumph passed over the man’s tattooed face. John didn’t like it one bit. What did that man know about Frankie that she hadn’t told John? Wasn’t he her best friend? Wasn’t he the one person she trusted, or so she claimed? Maybe he’d been the best friend too long, had been taken for granted. And if that didn’t leave a bitter taste in his mouth.
/>
“She’s going.”
A sudden drop in blood pressure made John see stars. Whoa, what was that about? His cheeks felt numb.
“What’s that supposed to mean? She’s going where?”
Womack shoved away from John. And when his fist came, right for the snout, John didn’t seem to be able to parry. He took the hit, barely felt a thing. His hands and feet had also grown numb. To his shock, his kneecaps connected with the deck. That should’ve hurt a lot more than it did. Even his busted elbow didn’t throb anymore.
“She’s going.” Womack smiled a mean one as he pushed John back with the tip of his boot. “She’s going with the ship.”
His world vacillated.
“No,” he croaked.
“Yeah. She has more balls than all of us combined, that broad.” Womack disappeared from his field of vision to return carrying the pipe clamp once again.
Frankie… No, no, no, no.
She couldn’t be on that ship when it…
A suicide mission?
“We’ll have to find ourselves a new cook on top of a new captain, now, I guess. Nothing personal. It’s for the good of everyone. And I mean everyone.”
He raised the pipe clamp.
Supine on the cold deck, John could only stare at the underside of his reefer, incapable of movement, incapable of mental processes that required more than four neurons. Horror flashed through him. Frankie was going to sacrifice herself. She was going to die on that ship. His reefer, which he’d conveniently offered to her after she’d lost her stealth cruiser. He’d basically facilitated her suicide.
Everything went fuzzy. Sounds, vision. A metallic taste invaded his mouth. Then black.
Chapter Three
At oh-three-fifty-six, she left her cabin and locked it, before making her way to the engineering section. She met few people. Good. Not a great time to strike up a chat in the passageway.
She reached the launch ramp in record time. That or she hadn’t noticed a thing on her way there. She knew every rivet anyway.
Metal Reign: An Impulse Power Story Page 3