by Tom Jordan
Tommy looked skeptical. “If what doesn’t work?”
Jade winked and opened a channel. “Keillor Traffic Control, this is Ghost of Jupiter. What is the nature of our detainment?”
The male voice of the traffic controller responded in their earpieces. “Ghost of Jupiter, all ships in Bay C are detained for questioning in relation to an unauthorized departure. You are grounded until witness interviews are concluded.”
Tommy flipped switches and navigated menus, his fingers dancing over the controls as he worked to complete a preflight check and power the ship’s systems. Jade watched the status updates as the ship pressurized, its reactor came online, and its thrusters increased their output.
“Keillor Control, that’s a negative. We need to leave immediately. Please disengage magnetic locks.”
“A neg—” The traffic controller’s voice raised a little and he stuttered. “That’s…it’s…you’re locked down! You can’t go anywhere! By law!”
Tommy blurted out a laugh. “Wow, he didn’t like that.”
“I asked nicely,” Jade said.
“You said ‘please,’” Tommy agreed.
Jade felt the surge of unsteady emotion in her chest as she thought about what she was about to do. She evaluated the situation again in her mind, but saw no other way out of it. When she played by the rules of others, all she did was lose.
It was time to make her own rules.
“Release my ship. I’m leaving.”
No response was forthcoming. Instead, the hangar plunged into an eerie, dark stillness as the floating advertisements and wall screens inside it blinked out. Red warning lights began to swirl around the hangar bay, illuminating Jade and Tommy in a flickering crimson glow and sending wild shadows circling within the cockpit.
“I don’t want to eat lasers,” Tommy whispered.
Jade pushed her throttle forward. She wanted to break the locks, but didn’t want to do it too quickly and risk damage to the ship, either by tearing her landing gear off, pushing the thrusters too hard and slamming into the hangar-bay roof, or worse, flipping the ship over. She pushed the throttle a millimeter at a time.
She noticed, with a stab of worry, that the bay’s massive blast doors had begun to slide shut from either side.
“Shit, the doors. We have to move. Any better option than forcing the locks?” she asked.
“None that I can think of,” Tommy said.
Jade eased the throttle farther open. Ghost of Jupiter vibrated beneath her as the ship strained against the magnetic locks holding it to the deck.
Jade’s attention was drawn to light spilling from a door that had slid open on the far wall. A double handful of customs officers poured out, their rifles raised and ready, their silhouettes bulky with black body armor and helmets.
The officers rushed forward, flowing around the ships parked in the hangar. They approached Ghost of Jupiter with caution, taking small, precise steps, their weapons never aiming away from the ship. One of the officers in front raised his hand and then shot his arm out, pointing at either side of the ship, and the other security personnel split to either side of Ghost like a river around a rock. Only two people were still visible from Jade’s perspective within the cockpit.
The agents froze and trained their weapons. From inside the cockpit Jade could tell that the two people in front had their sights aimed directly at her and Tommy. She forced herself to take a deep breath, closing her eyes and fighting a sense of panic. She told herself that there was no way any projectile should penetrate the canopy, which was designed and rated to deal with particles and objects in space that could have a greater velocity or mass than anything fired from a rifle.
Unless, of course, the hangar guards knew that, and had special weaponry she didn’t know about.
Floodlights burst to life, pointing down from each of the four roof corners of the bay. The lights raced over the curves and lines of ship hulls as they converged toward Ghost of Jupiter. A moment later, Jade and Tommy threw up their hands and closed their eyes against the assault of the harsh white light.
The cockpit canopy adjusted to the new level of illumination. The composite material of most starship canopies was rated for viewing stars from relatively close distances, and therefore had photonic autoadjusting properties.
“We don’t have time for this,” Tommy said. He pointed at the hangar doors. “Those doors’ll shut soon. We have to get out of here!”
“I’m going as fast as I can!” Jade said. She continued to push the throttle forward, increasing the output of the thrusters and intensifying the vibration of the ship as it fought against the magnetic locks. Her jaw rattled until she clenched it, and she had to tighten her grip in order to keep steady pressure on the throttle. She glanced over at Tommy, who clutched the armrests in a white-knuckle hold. Jade tried to keep her breath steady and quash her worries over what consequences would arise if she failed to break away from the locks in time. The doors seemed to be closing faster, accelerating to meet in the center of the hangar opening.
Jade was about to talk to Tommy when a new, gruff voice cut into their earpieces.
“Give me that,” the voice said, followed by the sounds of something being yanked away. “Ghost of Jupiter. This is Keillor Deck Control. Power down right now. Step out of your ship.”
“I’m going to decline!” Jade shouted over the roaring turbulence caused by the fight between her thrusters and the magnetic locks. “As I said, I really need to leave right away! If you’re not going to release the locks, then please tell your guys to get clear for their own safety!”
“You’re still sure about this?” Tommy called to her as he gripped his seat.
“They'll detain us. It'll be too late to reacquire the create, or Audacity. This is the only way.”
“Ghost of Jupiter,” the agent on the deck responded in her earpiece, “stand down right now or we will open fire and—”
“Bite me!”
Jade muted the comm channel and pushed her throttle nearly to the limit. She pressed her left foot pedal to engage her port thrusters. With a metallic thundercrack, the ship snapped to starboard and broke free from its magnetic bonds. The two agents she could see down on the hangar floor were pushed backward off their feet by the sudden wash of force from her turbines. One skidded on his back, his legs kicking. The other tumbled across the hangar, his hands clawing at the deck—until he ended up wrapped around a ship’s landing strut.
The view outside the cockpit tilted dramatically thanks to Jade’s sideways shift, and rather than straightening out the ship, which was her first impulse, she turned it around on its side so that it would face the hangar’s opening to space. The view outside the cockpit rushed by in a blur. Tommy covered his mouth with one hand and gripped the chair with the other.
Jade could see the shrinking black rectangle of space and moved toward it, racing to blast out of the opening before the metal doors closed.
“We’re going for it!” she shouted to Tommy. “Hang on!”
The two doors shot closer and closer, moving with surprising speed for objects so large. Part of her mind wondered whether the doors were not affected by the gravity being generated in the hangar, which might cause them to move so fast if they’d been set up with some sort of nearly frictionless mechanism. Ghost raced closer. Jade swerved to avoid the larger parked ships in the dock, then stood Ghost on its starboard wingtip so that its long body would squeeze vertically between the left and right doors. Jade squeezed the ship through and looked up as she passed. They’d slipped between the doors so closely that she could see the toothed, interlocking edges as as Ghost sliced through the crack.
Ghost of Jupiter shot out into the black of space, and Jade suppressed a tiny impulse of jubilation. Getting distracted by emotion would only hurt her flying, and she couldn’t afford that. She and Tommy weren’t out of trouble yet.
She rushed to plan her next move. “I’m taking us into the asteroid field to shake any pursuit. I nee
d to concentrate. Anything on radar?”
Tommy didn’t respond, so Jade looked over to see what was going on. He continued to clench the seat with his eyes shut a white-knuckle grip.
“Tommy! I need you!” she yelled.
Tommy’s eyes popped open as she startled him back to awareness. He sucked in a sharp breath. Whether he was overloaded from fear, nausea, or a combination, Jade couldn’t say. All she knew at the moment was that she needed his help. He looked over, his brow glistening with a sheen of sweat that gleamed with the blasts of the station’s cannon fire.
“Going evasive to shake this cannon fire. Tommy, I need your help. Look down at the radar. Tell me if anyone is following us.”
“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay.” His voice sounded a little steadier the second time. “No one following.”
“Good. Find us a jump point in the direction I’m heading. I’m going to weave through the asteroid field and use it to break line of sight.”
“Got it. Okay.” Tommy tapped the controls in a frenzy, flicking through menus. “Just a moment.”
Jade kept glancing downward to the holomap hovering above her lap. She expected to see one or more ships in pursuit, but nothing appeared. She reduced her velocity and pulled back on the stick, flying up in a curve that took her behind an asteroid many times Ghost’s size. She exhaled in relief at having broken the line of sight to the station. Anyone watching would have a hard time tracking her, and it’d get more difficult to see her with each asteroid she passed. Since Tommy was busy, she looked through her menus until she found the setting to deactivate the ship’s running lights. She didn’t want to be spotted, either visually or by instruments.
The bright cockpit faded to a soft nocturnal glow as the interior dimmed. A notice appeared in the floating information window, warning of the potential legal and safety implications of disabling the outside running lights. Jade cleared the warning, feeling more sure that her already mostly black ship should now be functionally invisible, other than a low heat signature. She took out her earpiece, feeling like she was breaking some sort of mental connection to the Keillor asteroid by doing so. With the lights reduced to a soft glow in the cockpit and the dull asteroids floating silently around the ship, a distinct sense of relief flooded her body.
She weaved from asteroid to asteroid, choosing a course that wasn’t a straight line away from Keillor. She didn’t feel like taking any chances.
“Jump point,” Tommy said softly as a distant waypoint blinked onto her map. She nodded her thanks, and weaved among the asteroids for a further fifteen minutes before the rocks floating by the ship decreased to cantaloupe-sized masses.
“Almost out of the field,” Tommy said. “ETA for the jump point is in thirty-nine minutes.” She was tempted to turn on the autopilot setting, but felt more secure leaving her hands and feet on the controls.
Jade looked over at Tommy. “You doing okay?” she asked.
He let out a big sigh. “Yeah. I think so.” They sat in silence for a moment. “You’d think all the bounty hunting I’ve been doing would prepare me for something like this, but it didn’t. This was different.” He put a boot up on the console and rubbed his eyes with his palms. “How are you staying so cool through this?”
She thumbed her stick absently. “Just using what I already know. I always try to stay calm when I fly.” She tied her hair into a knot to get it out of her way. “I think this feels more doable after everything that we did on Balenos…everything that happened to us there, and what Marco did to us. Life has been pounding us and I’m tired of it.”
“You’re much more confident than before, you know that?” He grinned. “I can’t believe we just did that with the mag-locks.” He gestured with his hand flat, as though it was a ship tilting and breaking away. “Just like that.”
“Didn’t know what else to do,” she said, bouncing her shoulders in a shrug. It was the truth. “I figured enough force should break the electromagnets. Ghost has strong thrusters. It seemed like our best chance.”
“Good call, Captain,” Tommy said. His grin faded. “I’m having trouble relaxing here. I feel like someone’s going to come get us. I don’t know if I’ll get used to being on the wrong side of the law.”
“Ooh, that’s right,” Jade said. “Looks like we can’t go back to Keillor. Sorry about that.” She searched her thoughts for a moment, thinking of the right way to express the sentiment she felt needed to be said. “Promise me you’ll tell me if I’m taking risks you don’t like. I know we have the same objective, to get this crate and take control of things, but…”
“Don’t worry,” Tommy said. “This is new ground for both of us. We’ll figure it out as we go.” He busied himself navigating menus and updating his floating displays. Jade knew Tommy well enough to discern there was something he wasn’t saying, but decided not to push him. The action they’d taken went against his nature of avoiding confrontation, and she wanted to give him space to deal with the emotional consequences.
She decided to change topics to something within his comfort zone. “Was it just the cockpit repair for Ghost back at Keillor? Did you do anything else?”
Tommy lit up. “Actually, I did!” He began counting on his fingers. “First, I got the hull patched up. The big stuff, anyway. Next, I tried to get a reload on the ammo you spent. The micro-rails just shave off tiny rounds from a metal block, so that costs next to nothing. You fired all your shrapnel missiles, but they didn’t have any more. At least, not without an obscure Arms Endorsement License I’d never heard of, and a two-week wait.
“But,” he said, clearly savoring the story, “the supplier had some ship-to-ship guided missiles in stock. Simple and reliable, and somehow legal. I figured since your…er…our micro-rails are forward facing, we might do well with some missiles that we can drop and just let them track the targets, regardless of where they are around our position.”
“Sounds good,” Jade said. “Fire and forget, once their fields are down?”
“That’s right!” Tommy combed his hair out of his eyes with his fingers. “They were very well equipped at Keillor. With enough time I could have set us up real good.” He shook his head. “Oh, well. It’s a big galaxy out there. We’ll find someone else with some nice upgrades once we sort this business out. Anyway, I had a supplier lined up to bump up our main lasers and heat sinks, but didn’t get the purchase ready in time, which is just as well since the deposit was nonrefundable.”
“Cool,” Jade said. “So the micro-rails are good to go, particle cannons are the same, and now I have missiles I can fire that will track targets?”
“Bingo.”
Jade made tiny adjustments to keep her on a direct course to the jump station, now that she was free of the asteroid field.
“There’s some bad news, though.” Tommy poked his fingers together nervously.
“Which is?” Jade steeled herself.
“We’re pretty much out of cash. The canopy, maintenance, hull fortification, missiles, ammo, a field tune-up…we have very little left, so we have to pull this off.”
Jade shrugged. “That’s where I was before this started. No change there. What’s left on the timer?”
Tommy checked a menu floating in front of him. “Ten hours.”
“Okay. Ten hours to find the crate and return it. We’re under twenty minutes to the jump point. What’s our destination system?”
“It’s called Eidera 195.”
“Eidera 195,” she repeated. “We have to find Audacity, assuming Marco hasn’t unloaded the crate already. Hopefully he hasn’t and we can surprise him.” Marco thought he’d outsmarted Jade and Tommy. Perhaps that hubris meant he’d written off the possibility of being found. Then again, Tommy believed Marco was working with a partner, a concern that wedged in Jade’s mind like a splinter. She wished she had a better plan with fewer unknowns, but this was the only way.
“We should shoot to disable Audacity if we find her,” Tommy said. He rubbed his palm
s together. “I would love to get Henning back his ship. I can target the thrusters and some subsystems for you to hit. Just don’t use the missiles or you’ll waste the ship.”
Jade gave him a sideways glance. “Okay. I’ll do my best. I want to get Henning’s ship back too.” She smirked. “We’ll have to track him down after and see how many four-letter words he comes up with.”
As they made additional plans, Ghost of Jupiter approached the jump point. Jade took a deep breath in and let out a sigh. “Are you ready for this?”
Tommy didn’t hesitate. “We can do this. We have to.”
“Prepping for jump,” Jade said. She sent a request to the jump station, which looked like an interconnected array of blocky modules. It acknowledged her request and dispatched a pair of robotic ships, each about twice the size of Ghost. They floated beneath the ship, their articulated couplers mating with Ghost’s SFM charge ports. Jade’s SFM drive would draw upon their massive capacitors in order to power its jump to the Eidera 195 system, and the drones would return to the jump station for charging after she vanished from normal space.
“Target system’s location is set. Ready when you are, Captain.”
Jade shot Tommy one last smirk. “Thank you, Flight Commander. Jumping in ten, nine…”
Chapter 22
Tommy’s telemetry data led Ghost of Jupiter to a gas giant. The planet was a spherical cauldron of gray and white hues, mixing light and dark together in graceful whorls.
“We just passed where the crate was half an hour ago,” Tommy said. “Those are the most recent coordinates. I wish this thing updated more frequently than every hour, but I can’t change it without accessing the crate physically.”
“It’s okay,” Jade said, cycling through the celestial bodies listed on her map. “You got us this far. We’ll figure it out.” She tapped her thumbs on the chair’s armrests as she skimmed the entries, then stabbed a finger at the hologram. “Because this has to be it.”