by Rolf Nelson
“If we can open this up, maybe move this door here, to there?” Kwon suggests, pointing to the middeck area.
“No, Stenson says we still don’t know what’s in there,” Helton says. “It’s sealed up ti–”
BLAM. A muffled gunshot. Then more in rapid succession: BA-BA-BLAM.
Guns drawn instantly, all four Plataeans cover the door, Kaminski and Harbin jumping with compact rifles to either side, Kat and Lag drawing back with pistols aimed down the middle, Lag speaking into his forearm-mounted com screen.
“All units! Flash Status! Unknown shooter A-Deck! Squad up where you are and hold!”
His screen shows a simple ship diagram scattered with yellow dots that turn green as soldiers report in. One dot turns red, just down the passageway, in the garden room. It’s the only dot on A-Deck other than those in the Officers’ Mess.
“One down in the garden, far corner! Cover and bound!”
Harbin and Kaminski spring out the door, covering the hall in both directions. Lag and Helton, pistols at low ready, move out between them, and they hustle as a group down the passageway. Kwon draws a small lock-blade knife and crouches to one side of the door. Kat stands fast, covering the doorway with her pistol.
Kaminski and Harbin burst through the garden door. They clear the room at high speed and run to the back, covering both sides while Lag moves down the center. They all arrive at the back corner at the same time and stop short.
Allonia stands with a blank expression on her face and a pistol in her hands, pointing it at Darch. He’s lying on a heap of gardening equipment, his head, neck, and body at very unnatural angles. His armor is askew, there are four bloody holes in a tight group in his chest, and the hilt of his fighting knife sticks out from his side.
The pause lasts forever. After a fraction of a second, everyone decides and moves.
Harbin checks the rest of the room.
Kaminski secures his gun and speaks into his wrist com, “Lieutenant Kat needed in the Garden.”
Lag secures his gun and speaks into his com. “Stand down. All units stand down. Squad leaders, check and clear weapons. Come-as-you-are inspection and announcements in the cargo bay in ten minutes.”
Helton secures his gun and carefully steps forward. “It’s all over, Allonia.” He gently takes the pistol from her hands, drops the magazine, clears the chamber. “It’s over. You’re okay.”
“He was, was going to, he…” Allonia stammers. Then her shock and fear turn to rage. “The BASTARD was going to rape me. HE WAS GOING TO RAPE ME!”
Kat’s there now. “Come on. Let’s go outside,” she says. “It’s over, it’s okay.” She takes Allonia by the arm and gently leads her away. “You did what you had to do. It’s not your fault. You’re safe now.”
Helton, Lag, Harbin, and Kaminski approach Darch’s body. The workbench behind him is dented and crumpled, things that had been on it scattered or crushed by his impact. Kaminski leans in to examine the body more closely.
Kaminski: … Damn.
Lag: … Impressive.
Harbin: … Good group.
Helton: Ah, crap.
Kaminski looks closely at the knife in Darch’s side. It’s placed in the armpit, just above the armor, at an angle that probably missed the heart, but punctured a lung. The armor is partially pulled aside from his chest, where there are four bloody holes.
Kaminski: Deep and clean. Sucking chest wound isn’t the quickest way to stop a guy, but definitely fatal without a fast medic. Didn’t secure his armor correctly, or was unsecuring it.
Harbin: Easiest recruit in the lot to kill.
Kaminski examines the bent metal workbench. He puts some weight on it and it barely flexes.
Kaminski: He hit that hard.
Harbin (disgusted): Alone. No restraints with him. Major target selection failure. Improperly equipped, poor location, wrong time. Bad idea, no planning. Pathetically poor execution.
Kaminski: Looks like an unusually vigorous application of rule number two.
Harbin eyes the scene critically, grudgingly appreciative, but looking for nits to pick.
Harbin: Not very efficient. Killed him three times. Four, if you consider the two pairs in center-mass separate. More than strictly necessary.
Kaminski: But for an amateur, any style points she lost in efficiency I think she more than made up for in thoroughness and clarity of communicating “leave me ALONE.”
Lag: His background?
Harbin: Councilman Darch’s second son.
Helton: Great. Wonderful!
Lag: Ah. That Darch.
Harbin: Minor criminal history, but shockingly, no convictions.
Kaminski: Kid might still be alive if he’d learned crime and stupidity have consequences earlier. Instead he learned his parents can bail his sorry ass out.
Harbin gives Kaminski a sharp look for interrupting.
Harbin: So-so shot. Poor self-discipline. Marginal physical condition. Chronic poor judgment. About as useful as running out of ammo. Would have been cut in the first round next week on psych.
Lag: Hell. Connected family. Attempted rape. Broken neck. Air-conditioned with his own pistol and playing scabbard. Cosmically bad execution of an attempted crime. In violation of both direct and general orders, as well as common sense and decency.
Everyone waits while Lag thinks, absently scratching the back of his neck.
Lag: One of the more spectacular training accidents I’ve seen in a long while. Corporal!
Kaminski: Ahhhh, shit, sir!
Lag: He was in your squad, and you have a way with words. You and your team have the afternoon off to clean up the mess and write up one of the most epic death-by-stupidity reports of all time. I look forward to reading it.
Harbin grins wickedly.
Lag: On the bright side, it looks like your training program passes inspection, Corporal. Or else you have an extraordinary student. Please see about setting her up with her own gear. Next time her attacker might not be so incompetent.
Lag turns to Helton.
Lag: Kat’s a good counselor, as well as a lawyer. She’s helped a lot of people after high-stress encounters and will help Allonia work through this one. With the support she’ll get around here, I’m sure she’ll be fine, but it’s always good to be careful for a while.
Liftoff
“I can’t believe you have a printed preflight checklist.”
Cooper, a dashing-looking young man in a blood-red jacket, sits at the pilot station on Tajemnica’s bridge. Kaushik is at copilot/navigation, Allonia at sensors/com, and Helton has command.
“You knew when I hired you this ship was older than any five of us put together,” Helton says. “The AI is quite adamant that we go through it all.”
“You pay the bills, you call the shots.”
Helton picks up the intercom mic. “Stenson, how’s it look?”
“All in the green, if only barely. Main power is just about ready to kick on. And…” The ship lurches slightly, and the pulsing hum of machinery deepens. “Online! Main power is live! Drives are … feeling the power.” It sounds like God’s own Harley is driving by, in need of a valve job and new plugs. “Drives are yellow, rising toward green. Looking like she’s alive again! Three drives nominal. You are now the Captain of a ship, not a shop project!”
“Captain. I like the sound of that.”
“Okay,” says Cooper, “Starting at the top! Ramps up?”
“Up!” says Kaushik.
“Ground feeds, power, disconnected?”
Stenson, over the intercom: “Disconnected!”
“Ground feeds, water, disconnected and secured?”
“Disconnected, hoses stowed!” Kwon reports.
The drive noise settles down to a steadier throb as they work through the lengthy checklist.
“Annnd … that’s it,” Cooper announces. “All systems nominal or acknowledged noncritical. Are we cleared to lift?” he asks Allonia.
“The tower s
ays no; they say we have a land-lock.”
“You have got to be… Why wasn’t I told about that earlier?” Cooper demands.
Helton is surprised as well. “Land-lock? They never told me about it.”
“You didn’t know? A giant lock around a landing strut bolting us to the ground, and you didn’t know? We can’t lift.”
“Are you sure?”
“Who are you paying to be the pilot?”
“I don’t remember the port saying anything about a land-lock,” Helton says. “Must be a mistake. Try lifting slowly, just a tad, see what happens.”
“Are you crazy?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You are nuts.”
“We need to know if we can. Try it. Just a little bit. Not really flying, just … sorta move us up into the air a little bit.”
“Okay. But if something breaks, it’s not my fault, right?”
“Agreed.”
Cooper gently twists the control yoke. The pitch of the engines changes, becomes deeper, more pulsing, with discordant overtones; God’s Harley needs a timing chain adjustment and better fuel, too. He slides up a power lever and turns the control yoke a bit more.
The ship lifts slowly but unevenly, held down at one corner for a moment, then there is an earthy rending sound, and it rips a sizable chunk of concrete and dirt out of the ground, attached to one of the landing struts by a large curved metal bar. Tajemnica slowly rises, thirty, forty, fifty meters in the air. She is blocky, angular, and unrefined compared to the other ships on the ground or flying in the background. The pulsing rumble from the drives slowly steadies. One of the readouts in Engineering has a bank of eight indicators labeled Pads. Seven are green, but one is flashing red.
Helton grins happily at the excited people on the bridge. A catchy Celtic reel starts playing over the PA system, snappy, happy, full of life and energy, a modern take on a traditional dance tune that perfectly mixes with the powerful bass roll of the ship’s drives. It takes a moment before anyone notices it.
“What the hell?” says Cooper.
“Time to celebrate, Tajemnica?” Helton asks.
“Correct, Sir,” the Ship AI says in a cheerful female voice. “First free flight in more than a century is worthy of celebrating, is it not?”
“She has her dancing shoes back on!” Allonia says. “Of course she’s happy! Can’t you just feel it?” She closes her eyes and dances a quick impromptu jig, a delighted expression on her face. “Now we don’t have to just dream about the places we can go together! You can just … she WANTS to FLY!” Cooper is skeptical, but quite willing to watch Allonia dancing.
“Allonia,” Helton says, “if you are quite done anthropomorphizing a dance partner I’d really not want stepping on my toes, please inform the tower that they seem to be mistaken about the land-lock, and we’d like clearance to take a short low-level test flight around the port before landing.”
“Tower, this is Tajemnica. Do we have clearance to do a short flight around the port? Over.” She waits a few moments, then shrugs. “Well, they haven’t told us not to.”
“Give it a shot,” Helton tells Cooper.
“Hang on.” Cooper moves the steering yoke gently forward, and the ship slowly heads off on a large curve around the port, not quite level. “Pretty sluggish,” Cooper says, monitoring readouts and adjusting controls.
“She’s only barely at minimum takeoff power,” Helton says, unconcerned. “It’ll take a while to fine-tune the engines.”
Tajemnica flies slowly along, glowing faintly, the whole ship swaying as the chunk of ground hanging from the landing strut swings. Then the strut twitches, shakes, and finally kicks like a dog shaking something off its foot. The hunk of earth and concrete flies off and drops away, and the strut retracts from full to partial extension, matching all the others. Tajemnica shakes for a moment, then stabilizes and levels out.
“Don’t know what the hell that was,” Cooper says, “but it feels better now.”
On the Pads readout in Engineering, the last red light turns to green. In one corner of another screen, unnoticed by Stenson and his crew, a condition light comes on. “Bubblegum: Full Pack.”
Off a street near the spaceport, a truck parked in front of a “No Parking” sign in a private lot has been flattened under the hunk of fallen concrete and earth. The logo on the side of the truck says Seymore Cust–.
After completing a quick, easy, swooping circle around the port, Tajemnica returns to the airspace above Pad D9. She lurches, then sags at an odd angle as she settles gently to earth, just missing a newly made hole in the ground.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Helton proclaims, “we have ourselves a magic carpet!”
“Not the most elegant craft I’ve ever handled, but she flies,” Cooper says.
“Never thought I’d see a view from up there, from in here,” Allonia says, still swaying and tapping to the music. “She’s perfect!”
“Didn’t see the power go above 90% current max,” Kaushik reports. “We can fly with a decent load even without tuning things.”
Helton grabs the com mic. “Stenson, how are things down there?”
Stenson voice echoes oddly through the speakers. “Glad we’re down. I’m pretty sure I can fix it. One accelacomp failed, one was about to. Got a lot of good flight data that’ll help sort out a few problems. How’d things go there?”
“Wonderfully! She’s going to be a great dancer!”
Stenson chuckles at Allonia’s bubbly enthusiasm. “Baby steps before dancing, but good to hear! A few more test flights like that and I might even certify her to take off with people aboard!”
FIRST MISSION
Cobb’s
Kaminski drives a light truck through an industrial area with widely spaced buildings, most of which have small front office areas, Allonia next to him. He is out of uniform; she wears a turtleneck.
“You’re sure you want to do this so soon after?” Kaminski asks.
“Yes, I’m fine. Really. I talked a long time with Kat. It’s okay.”
“Usually it takes a while to really work through something like that.”
“Stop worrying! I’m good. I know what he did was wrong and what I did was right. As Kat said, he killed himself by choosing to do something stupid. I just happened to be the one that had to make sure he won’t do it to anyone else, ever again. The world is a better place for it.”
“I know the training squad is better for it. Many lessons for them, there.”
“It was weird,” she says. “He came at me, said we should be alone together. Then everything suddenly was in slow motion; his lips moved, but no sound came out. I don’t remember seeing anything but him starting to get undressed as he got closer. He reached for me, I brushed his hand aside. He drew back to hit again, a big, slow wind-up that turned his body, so I grabbed his knife and stuck it in him. He just stood there, but turned back to face me. I thought I must have just hit his body armor, so I grabbed his gun and aimed it at him. He still stood there with a goofy expression on his face, his lips moving but no words. I shot him, but the gun didn’t make any noise, and he didn’t do anything but look surprised. I waited forever for him to fall, so I thought there must be something wrong with the ammunition, so I shot until I started to see blood. I stopped and waited for him to fall over, but he just stood there like a post, looking at me with a confused expression. I wanted some room, so I kind of put my foot up on him and gave him a shove, and he seemed to leap into the air and drift across the room like we were in space, and bounced slowly off the bench onto the floor. So I covered him until you guys showed up an hour later. So much for the cavalry showing up to save me.”
Kaminski chuckles. “You were too fast for us. Classic tachypsychia, tunnel vision, and auditory exclusion. Sounded like a full-auto pistol to me.”
“Yes, Kat explained it to me. I’m sorry he did what he did, but … choices have consequences. I’ll never forget it, but I’m not going to punish myself
for defending myself effectively. Maybe with more training I’ll be less of a target, and I won’t have to do that ever again.”
“Sounds like a healthy attitude, one that not many come to so easily. That’s what my dad always said: if you ever do have to shoot in self-defense, make the most of it. Shoot anyone that needs shooting, as many times as you have to. No point in doing a half-assed job of saving your family the cost of your funeral.”
He pulls into a mostly empty parking lot and parks in front of a large building with only a couple of windows in front. The sign over the door reads Cobb’s School of Public Relations. “Here we are.”
“I thought we were going to find a proper gun for me?” Allonia says as they get out of the truck.
“And this is the place to go.” Kaminski retrieves a small satchel, closes the truck doors, and they head toward the building.
They walk into a large, well-lit showroom, full of glass cases full of guns, with many more hanging on the wall. There are windows to one side, and a door prominently labeled: “Range Area — Ears, Eyes, Brains Required. Politicians Prohibited.”
All sizes and shapes of guns are on display: long guns, handguns, belt-fed, and a couple of tripod-mounts, including a remote-control auto-cannon. There are many small stacks of cases and half-empty shelves with boxes of ammo. There are reader boards showing specials:
Alien Apocalypse Pack — belt-fed 12-ga Mossington with RC mount and 1000-round belt for only 1999!
Buy a case of ammo, get free range pass!
25mm Rifle Grenade classes starting next Tuesday — sign up now!
Kaminski leads Allonia over near the range area, where a slender young lady with short hair and a few small tattoos and piercings is behind the counter.
“Hey, stranger!” she says. “Hope you’re not here for another large-case order. Supplies are tight.”
“Hey, yourself, Vera! New shooter today, needs the beginning decider package.”
“Great! Always glad to get someone the right fit in feminine protection.” Vera turns to Allonia. “He knows his stuff, listen to him when it comes to guns.” Then she drops her voice and says, “Good to see you came more properly dressed than that one.” She looks down at the far end of the counter, indicating an artificially enhanced and heavily made-up young woman in a very low-cut top and spray-on-tight pants who hangs on the arm of an older man picking up some guns and shooting supplies.