Heretic: Archangel Project. Book Three

by C. Gockel

  “Tell me in the tick,” Gunny said, motioning for him to follow him down the hall. “We have to move out fast.”

  “I’m going, too,” said Manuel, as James and Gunny strode to the access ladder.

  Eyes on James’s back, Noa grabbed her engineer and held him back. He was needed here as much as she, maybe more, and he’d get in the way out there. Manuel twisted his arm away. Looked back at her, his lips parted as though to deliver an angry tirade … but whatever he saw on her face made his retort die on his tongue.

  “Come on,” Noa said, stepping to the elevator. “Let’s go to the bridge.”

  A few minutes later, Noa and Manuel were at the helm, watching the tick that Noa had meant to use for her away team to the gate the next wake cycle. It was already loaded with provisions and weapons. In her mind, the light that was James stilled at a spot within the craft. She imagined him putting on his seat belt in the small, cramped space that smelled of sweat and human detritus.

  The voice of Chavez, the tiny tick's pilot, cracked over the ether. “Release cycle initiated.”

  Noa watched in the monitor as the tick’s “legs” detached and folded up.

  Over the general ether, Noa said, “Bring him back.” To James alone, she said, “Be careful,” and sent the glowing ball of light they passed between them over the ether. “I don’t care about collateral damage. Not this time,” Noa whispered over the channel. “Save that little boy and come back to me.”

  “Is that an order?” James responded quietly across the ether as Chavez said, “Laying in course.”

  “Yes,” Noa said.

  “Then I guess I have to obey,” James replied. His thoughts were as expressionless as his face in the real world. For some reason, it made a chill come over her.

  In the monitor, the tick’s engines fired, and the little vessel bolted off toward the narrow space between the rocks that Wren’s ship had taken.

  Over the general channel, one of the men on the away team, a member of the Atlantian Local Guard, asked, “How will we get close enough to them to board?”

  “As soon as we get visual contact, we will send a lightbeam, and offer them what they want,” James replied.

  “Which is?” the man asked.

  Noa released a breath. She knew the answer to that question.

  Across the ether, for all to hear, James replied, “They want me.”

  Chapter Nine

  James sat strapped into a seat that folded out of the walls of the tick. A long piece of ripped fabric dangled from the ceiling just in front of his nose. It smelled like sweat and unwashed human. Around him Briggs, Ling, Gunny, and Chavez were settling into their own seats. These were secondary observations as he tried to focus on the tiny vessel’s ether, surveying the external monitors as they exited the cluster of rocks, and the conversation of his crew mates.

  The ancient tick that Wren had stolen came into view, and just beyond it he saw the vessel it must be rendezvousing with. It was about a third of the size of the Ark in diameter and length, two short wings, and a blunt bow.

  “Daewoo Class 9 Tramp,” Chavez said. “Maybe four decades old. More maneuverable than the large freighters, capable of lightspeed, and sturdy enough to withstand gate hops.” She dipped her chin and gripped the steering bars harder. “Also, it’s fully armed. Forward phaser cannons on either wing, and it’s got two turrets—real ones—above and below.”

  James focused on the monitor and saw two sturdy polyglass domes above and below the other vessel. Both domes gleamed with blue—their phasers were ready to fire.

  Chavez leaned back in her seat. She didn’t say aloud, or into the ether, that they were outgunned.

  In the seat beside her, Gunny whistled. Craning his neck around to meet James’s eyes, he said, “Ready to send the lightbeam transmission.” He nodded once. “You’re on, James.”

  James's mind connected to the lightbeam transmitter that would turn his thoughts into digital pulses of light. Static flared across his skin. He still wasn’t sure why he had fought to do this … but now it was an order from Noa. “Unknown ship, this is the archangel.”

  Around him, thoughts flew across the ether from the Ark. “The archangel? Wasn’t that who the Luddies were trying to apprehend when your ship was at Adam’s Station?”

  James's left hand fluttered. He was unsure of what to say.

  “Sure thing,” Gunny responded over the general channel. “The professor’s got some mighty tech in him. His folks worked for Fleet and used some classified augments to fix ‘em up after he got himself squished to a pulp doing some mountin’ climbin’. Luddies want it mighty bad.”

  James hadn’t concocted any of that … but he didn’t think he could have concocted a better lie as an explanation.

  The questioner whistled. “Thought Luddies didn’t like augments?”

  Gunny snorted. “They don’t want anyone else to have ‘em.”

  “No response,” said Chavez. “We’ll be in range of their ether in a few seconds.”

  “Ciphers on everyone,” Gunny ordered. “That boat can slide into this tin can’s ether in a few minutes.”

  “Our buoys are working. We can still reach the Ark,” Chavez said. “Maybe Ghost will be able to hack into its systems?”

  James already had hacked into the strange ship's systems. An unfamiliar human said, “A kid’s heart ain’t going to get us more than a month’s S-rations!”

  “It’s better than nothing, you idiot!” Wren replied, docking the tick.

  “Not really. Adam’s Station is closed to all but Luddie transports, Atlantia is picked clean, and Libertas and Luddeccea are blasting people out of their skies.”

  And someone else muttered, “Might not even be a month’s worth.”

  James wanted to reach out through the ether and directly touch their minds. Instead, he interfaced with the lightbeam transmitter. “Ask Wren how much the Luddies offered for me. Amnesty? A life on Luddeccea, where you don’t need a mask to breathe, where there is food? It’s amazing food, by the way. I wonder how long it has been since your friends had a steak, or fresh fruit.” James licked his lips at the memory. The lightbeam transmitter encoded James's words, and James knew it had been received when the other ship's ether erupted in Wren's protests. “Don’t listen to the freak! Let my tick loose and let’s get out of here!”

  “We outgun them, Wren,” one of the tramp’s crew said. “They’re not going to attack us.”

  “Receiving lightbeam transmission,” said Chavez. “Sharing audibly.”

  A speaker in the tick cracked, “What are you suggesting, Archangel?”

  “A trade,” James replied. “The boy for me.”

  Gunny’s eyes slid to him, and a furrow formed between his brows. He whispered into James's channel. “And then?”

  James glanced at the older man. Gunny was sitting sideways in his seat, looking back at him.

  “I hadn’t figured that out,” he admitted. He knew that the tramp’s crew was unlikely to use plasma rifles though, for fear of endangering their own ship.

  “It’s a trick!” Wren said to the tramp’s crew. “He’s impervious to stun fire.”

  “Bullshit,” said someone else. “Augments, cyborgs even, they all go down with a stun.”

  Another said, “I feel guilty about stealing a kid … but this archangel is probably as much an asshole as any of us.”

  “He’ll attack us,” Wren cried over the general ether. “I hit him with a stunner …”

  “You missed,” one of the tramp’s crew snarled.

  “They’re releasing Wren’s tick,” Chavez said, and in the monitor’s digitalized zoom James saw the tramp pulling away from the tick Wren had commandeered.

  Gunny unhooked his safety belt. “Chavez,” he said aloud. “I want you to approach that tick. Make it look like you’re trying to put something between us and their guns.”

  “I was already doing that, and I am trying to keep something between us and them!” Chavez sn
apped.

  Chuckling and heading to the back of the tick, Gunny replied, “Well, keep it up!” He was grinning ear to ear and he winked at James in passing. The sergeant pointed at one of the Atlantian guardsmen. “You, you’re with me.”

  Before James could ask, his attention was diverted by further conversation on the tramp. “Even if he is stun resistant, we have other toys.”

  James glanced over to see Gunny wrestling a space suit from the wall.

  Ghost's voice came over the ether, in a new cipher Noa had given them before they'd departed. “I'm into their system, putting it on your comm now!”

  The comm hissed, and Wren's voice cracked in the tick. “We shouldn’t be talking on the ether. They could have hacked us.”

  “Lizzar balls, no they didn’t! I haven’t even hacked their ether,” said a member of the tramp's crew. But then all ether conversation on the other ship stopped.

  Using the cipher, Gunny cried out, “Ghost, can you control that ship’s computer?”

  Ghost responded, “I’m already on it … but the ship seems to be configured in a way that is very non-standard. Their Chief Computing Officer is obviously very paranoid about one of his crew trying to seize control of his ship through the ether—”

  “Can you do it?” Gunny demanded.

  “I need time!” Ghost responded.

  Gunny snorted. “Well, you don’t have it.”

  “Luddites,” Ghost hissed.

  Closing the helmet of the suit, Gunny hobbled over to the tick's tiny airlock, beckoning the now-suited Briggs beside him.

  “What are you up to?” asked Chavez.

  Gunny winked at James. “James's plan!”

  Noa stood on the bridge of the Ark, Manuel and Monica beside her. Ghost was sitting in the empty cockpit chair. The chief computing officer’s eyes were closed, and he was mumbling to himself. “That shouldn’t be like that.”

  The doctor's, Manuel's, and Noa's eyes were on the skylight, but their minds were in the ether. Their focus was on the Class 9 Tramp. The image filtered through the away team's tick's external sensors was grainy and flickering. Her apps pulled up a three-dimensional model of the vessel with highlighted features and stats as she watched the tramp break away from the tick Wren had stolen. Noa saw the scene shift slightly as Chavez altered her course to take cover behind the other vessel.

  “If they jump to lightspeed, they’ll never catch them,” Manuel said.

  “They won’t,” said Noa. Oliver’s heart, which was an entire world to him, wouldn’t be able to buy more than a month’s rations for the crew, if that much. James was worth more, perhaps enough to buy the entire crew safe haven on Luddeccea—as long as their augments could be removed or turned off. Her fingernails bit into her palms. She felt her face crumpling in fury.

  “Look, they’re coming about,” Noa said.

  She heard Manuel gulp.

  The ether went black.

  Noa’s breath caught.

  “What?” Manuel said, leaning forward, as though that could relight the mental picture.

  James’s channel lit up in her mind and he spoke in a new cipher they'd picked before the away team had taken off. “The tramp’s computer has already hacked into the tick’s ether. We’re switching off the ether hookup to the monitors, but we’re fine.”

  At the same time, Ghost’s hacked line into the tramp’s ether exploded with the tramp's crew’s curses, and then, “I just broke in and they switched off the ether ship controls and started using a cipher!”

  Wren’s thoughts cracked through the channel. “We have to get out of here! They’re probably listening in already.”

  “Shut up and give us the cipher, Wren!”

  Noa’s mind leaped at the opportunity. “Chavez,” she said, “Wren knows we were using the writings of Primp for our cipher. Use it and feed them some lizzar dung.”

  Chavez didn’t reply, but her thoughts suddenly erupted in the Primp cipher. “Wren is such a lousy lay. I hope we can send him out an airlock. Maybe that will cool his huge fat ego.”

  Noa’s eyes went wide. She’d known that Chavez and Wren had a thing—a very short thing—but the ensign had been very professional about it. Up until now.

  “They know I know their cipher!” Wren’s thoughts screamed.

  “I dunno, maybe that girl’s just expressin’ her honest opinion,” said one of the tramp’s crew.

  At nearly the same instant, James said, “Gunny and the corporal are out.”

  “Out where?” Noa asked.

  “They’re going to try and reclaim Wren’s tick. We have a plan. Tramp’s now in visual range,” James replied, even as someone else on the tramp said, “Maybe Wren’s right about them using a different cipher. I’m getting some gibberish.”

  Noa had to buy time for whatever it was Gunny was doing, and keep the tramp’s crew from discovering it. In the Primp cipher the tramp team had so quickly deciphered, Noa said, “Chavez, I don’t want you spreading any more distracting, crude, and frankly unprofessional gossip about your romantic escapades.” And crossed her fingers that the ensign would catch her meaning.

  In the same non-secure cipher, Chavez replied, “Yes, Commander. But I gotta say, I sure hope Wren can hold his breath longer than he can go in bed.” And Noa let out a breath of relief.

  “She’s baiting you!” Wren cried.

  One of the tramp’s crew corrected him. “She’s sure baiting you.”

  “I’ve never known a man who could be so proud of a toothpick!” Chavez added. “And let’s talk about his non-toothpick skills! Wait, I can’t, because he has none!”

  “Ummm … Chavez,” Manuel said. “We need to get Oliver back.”

  But Chavez was on a roll. “I’m amazed that in the vastness of the nebula he could find the tramp because let me tell you what he can’t find—”

  James’s voice cut across the ether. “Are you prepared to make the exchange?” He didn’t use a cipher.

  In the ether, one of the tramp’s crew members said, “Just you. No tricks.”

  “No tricks,” James responded.

  “Who is this?” Noa demanded.

  “Captain Murd, of the Rambler,” the voice answered. “Who am I speaking to?”

  No use lying. Wren could tell all; he probably already had. When had he sent the signal to their ship? “Commander Noa Sato of the Galactic Fleet.”

  There was an infinitesimal lag as her thoughts were transported via lightbeam over the ether extenders in the buoys. Just enough for the muscle in her jaw to tick.

  “A Fleet commander … a woman of her word.”

  Noa raised an eyebrow. Lizzar dung and they both knew it. They were betting they could overpower James. And of course they could. With a few flicks of their fingers, they could suck the air out of the airlock he entered and wait for him to pass out. Her brow furrowed as she remembered their trip through the tunnels of Adam's Station. He might not pass out.

  Over the ether, someone aboard Murd’s tramp said, “We can blast out of here before they play any tricks.”

  Murd didn’t respond.

  Noa called across the ether, “No tricks. If you hold up your end of the bargain. But before we do anything, we want proof of life.”

  There was a pause, longer than the time it would take for her words to be transmitted. And then over the ether came a sound, a soft, repetitive thump-thunk.

  “That is his heartbeat!” Monica said from across the bridge. “It’s elevated … but he’s definitely alive.”

  Noa’s jaw got tight. “Our vessel will dock with yours,” she said. “If that boy isn’t in our hold within thirty seconds of the archangel stepping aboard your vessel, my crew will blow their vessel and yours to Kingdom Come.”

  It was a bluff. The tick had no such self-destruct function, although given a little more time they could have outfitted it with that capability.

  “It will be the most excitement I’ve ever had with Captain Wren,” Chavez said in a voice that sounded
almost gleeful. Noa’s eyebrow rose at the venom behind Chavez’s thoughts.

  “We’ll make the trade,” the voice replied.

  Beside Noa, Manuel said, “How will we keep them from firing on the tick carrying Oliver away?”

  He wasn’t asking how James would get away. Noa was praying it had something to do with Gunny’s “plan.”

  Muttering something to himself, Ghost abruptly opened his eyes. “I’ve got the guns in the tramp turrets, but not the damn nav controls yet!”

  Noa breathed out a sigh of relief. And then swallowed hard. The tick couldn’t achieve lightspeed; neither could the Ark at this point. All the tramp had to do was get to the edge of the cloud—jump to lightspeed—and then every hour they took to repair the Ark would be minutes on the tramp. They’d be safe in the paradox of lightspeed travel. Noa wouldn’t be able to order pursuit … the risks at this point would be too high.

  She loved James more for this plan, and hated him, too. She felt a lump form in her throat. So this is what Tim felt every time she went on a mission in Six?

  “Initiating docking,” Chavez said.

  Noa’s fingernails bit into her palms again. James's connection to her was open, but he was silent, knowing that even if he wasn’t understood, he would be heard, and that was likely to cause suspicion.

  She schooled herself to calm. She’d do exactly what he was doing if their positions were reversed. Her chronometer app told her that five minutes had gone by. One of Sterling’s men said, “Checking plastitubing shaft … pressurized. Ready to open the tick's airlock, Commander?”

  It took Noa a moment to realize it was a question.

  Murd’s voice rang over the ether. “We’re ready on our end.”

  Over the ether Oliver’s heart still thudded, too fast. Or maybe it was her own heart she heard.

  “James?” she whispered, sending the white ball of light to him.

  There was that infinitesimal lag again.

  And then Noa’s vision went completely red. Manuel screamed beside her. Monica grabbed her forehead. In her mind she was exploding in a moment of pure, unadulterated rage. “Cut the ether, Ghost, cut the ether!”