by Jason Letts
While the others kept watch, Rion swung the lasso and watched it hook the edge of the wing. He gave it a tug to make sure it would hold him—something he always did because the strength of the magnet was not enough to support someone with Wud’s weight. One day it would give out on Rion as it did Wud.
After that, entering the vacant ship was something he could’ve done in his sleep. He flipped the hatch open almost without looking. Sliding between a couple of heavy steel drums to reach the interior door was a snap. After dropping in, he walked to the galley with his eyes on his sore elbow, which he rubbed vigorously. The galley door was open and he turned to walk through the doorway like it was his own ship. He had his sack in one hand and was ready to begin filling it up. In his mind he was already on his way out.
But he bumped right into the girl with the black eyes.
“What are you doing here?” he said in astonishment, but the answer was obvious. Wrappers, plastic containers, and half-eaten bits of food were all over the enclosed space. She’d dug through all the cabinets and left stacks of cans and boxes that reached all the way to the ceiling. A bottle of ice wine was in her hand. He was surprised at the sudden encounter, but he seemed to be the only one.
“Getting something to eat. I just sort of found my way in here.”
Rion’s jaw dropped open. There was so much that perplexed him in what she just said that he didn’t know what to shoot at first.
“Are you getting something to eat with a pack of wolves? Because this galley looks like it was attacked by starving animals. We have some rules about taking only what we need and leaving things as neat as possible. That way the ship’s owners are less likely to notice and may just think they’d brought less than they’d thought. If word gets out that there are tons of robberies when landing on Mars, that’s going to make it so much tougher on us.”
“If you want to clean up after I leave in a minute, I won’t mind. I’ve been here for almost an hour anyway,” she said, matter-of-factly. That reminded Rion of something else he was incensed about.
“And what do you mean you wandered in here? How did you get to the storage container on the roof?”
“One of the wings was parked close to the wall. I scaled the wall and jumped to the wing,” she said.
Rion was impressed. He hadn’t noticed the proximity of the wing to the wall and was certain that scaling it and hopping from one to another was beyond his capabilities. Her nonchalance pointed him to another conclusion.
“Did you even know about the storage unit on the roof before you climbed onto the ship?” Rion asked, though his mind didn’t wait for the obvious answer before moving on to something else. She didn’t bother to say anything. “We spent most of the last twenty-four hours since we saw you planning this job.”
“I just saw the ship as I was walking past a little while ago.”
She squinted at Rion and smiled, perhaps figuring out how much she’d unnerved him by getting there first and on the fly. Rion glanced at his empty sack, vaguely considering picking through the scraps or grabbing some of the cans on the counter, but he felt so deflated he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
For the first time he felt like he needed to up his game. It didn’t say much for him that somebody stumbled onto the prize he spent all day working to reach. That innate feeling in him came back that he couldn’t stand to be beaten. He’d find a way to be better. He had to.
Rion paused, knowing he was moments away from turning around and heading out the way he came in. He had one more question in mind. He needed to know who he was dealing with.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She looked at him without expression, those two black pools in her head deep enough to fall into.
“It doesn’t matter to you what my name is, and the opposite’s true as well.”
After sliding down the Martian lasso’s line, Rion took a long look at the docking bay wall near the ship’s wing. It had a few ridges and grooves so subtle that he couldn’t believe anything larger than an ant could climb the wall. For him, the thought of getting up that way was absurd.
When Rion returned empty handed, there were long faces among the boys. He was vague about it, not even mentioning the girl, but trying not to lie. Bailor came to his defense.
“It’s like that time we broke into that one ship piloted by robos. There wasn’t a speck of food inside.”
Rion didn’t correct him, and there weren’t any other complaints from Pietro or the others. They settled in for a night of dipping into the stale, expired, or otherwise undesirable food in their reserves as they sat around a small fire pit in the corner of the bay out of sight of the terminal tunnel. Rion was contemplating what kind of a more-ambitious operation they could pull off when more unpleasant news came walking his way.
“I heard you came back empty handed,” Wud laughed. He’d gone out for another job and came back with something vastly more appealing than melons. He had an entire cream stack, layers of ice cream on top of cheesecake on top of mousse puddings extending a meter high, still neatly wrapped and chilled in its packaging.
Every boy there attempted to devour the cream stack with their eyes.
“Can I have some?” Pietro asked in his mousiest voice.
“Of course you can,” Wud replied. “I could stuff myself for days on this and barely make a dent. Would you like a piece, Rion?”
The dehydrated greens Rion had pulled out of his storage bin to eat had never looked so unappetizing.
“I’m all set,” Rion said, not willing to give him the added satisfaction. It was bad enough that most of the other boys could be bought off with a single dinner, leaving him without lookouts or help of any kind except from Bailor the next day.
“That’s too bad,” Wud said, still attempting to rub it in. “Maybe next time you won’t dally around and waste so much time before penetrating. I get into three ships in the time it takes you for one.”
Penetration was Wud’s favorite word for breaking into a ship. Each syllable was heavy with Wud’s gloating and stung Rion’s ears. Tearing off a stalk of his greens with his teeth, Rion slowly masticated.
“Even a cream stack will be nothing compared to what we’re going to get from our next job,” Rion promised, catching the attention of some of the boys.
Wud laughed, quickly plopping down and pulling the cover off the towering dessert to draw back their eyes.
“Oh yeah, I’m sure. Biggest break-in of the century from the scourge that strikes fear into every lame old Espirit. You’re probably waiting for the Assailing Face to land so you can put one over on Reznik Igorovich,” Wud said.
Referencing Reznik and his mysterious ship, the Assailing Face, was good for instant laughter among their group. Hardly a night went by when he wasn’t brought up in one way or another.
“Who would be dumb enough to crack the Assailing Face?” Pietro chuckled. “Everyone knows that if anyone other than Reznik gets inside they are dead meat. Every inch of it inside and out is a weapon.”
“Even the toilet can kill you,” Wud said. “That’s because he built it himself from stolen scraps while he was indentured at the thermal plants on Mercury. See, he was just like us. Poor, stuck, and alone, but he transformed himself into the solar system’s deadliest threat. Right now he’s hunting down crooked gamblers off Jupiter.”
“No!” Pietro cried out, his bangs hanging over his eyes. “He’s ransacking the Marshall Force construction site at the Pluto project.”
“No,” Bailor objected. “Considering everything he’s done, he’ll lie low for the rest of his life with all of his money and plunder. He has everything he needs and has paid back everyone who wronged him. Now he can live in peace. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Not a chance. Reznik will never rest as long as he has air in his lungs and blood in his veins,” Wud said. “He’s a born killer who knows no one will stand up to him. That’s because no one has ever seen him and lived.”
&nbs
p; “I heard he’s a robo anyway,” Pietro said. “He can’t be killed.”
Rion was as enamored with the myth and the legend of the Assailing Face as any of them, but his curiosity was always in the details that hearsay never touched on.
“Doesn’t it make you wonder why there’s no official record of either Reznik or his ship even existing? Who in the Alliance thought that deleting him would keep people from knowing about him? And what are the capabilities of his ship? How come no one has figured out the extent of its weapons system?” Rion said, beginning to get lost in his imagination.
“Nobody knows because no one has seen the ship and lived to talk about it. That’s why there’s no record either. The Alliance can’t pin down one concrete fact about it. No one really has the faintest clue what it looks like or what it does. All that’s out there are some hastily transmitted audio clips of people screaming that a face was bearing down on them in space before they’re obliterated,” Wud said. It seemed like he had more to say, but then he opened wide to stuff his mouth full of pudding.
The fire crackled. Up above, ships ascended and descended while lights from satellites and vessels orbited above Mars’s bubble.
“Wouldn’t it be amazing to be up there flying around in a mindblowing custom ship like that?” Bailor said.
Wud snickered.
“For you guys it’s a daydream. For me, it’s only a matter of time. I’ve got so many charges that sooner or later I’ll have enough to buy my own ship. Then I hit the big time and can go anywhere I want. Custom modifications, amazing destinations, whatever. You’ll probably all be here munching on dried greens after another botched job.”
Rion had almost gotten himself fully distracted and forgotten about his vow and the ensuing taunt that got them talking about the Assailing Face in the first place.
“Just you wait. This next job will be one that nobody will forget. We might even go after one of the bigger cruisers, one so big that there’ll still be people on board while we’re inside. Money, food, valuables, who knows what we’ll find?”
Hungry was the feeling in Rion’s gut as he went about the task of planning a more impressive heist. Wud and the other boys thought little of his promise to pull off a big plot against a larger ship, and even Bailor had his doubts.
“I don’t care that we didn’t get anything from the Espirit,” he said. “We don’t need to do anything stupid and get ourselves killed because Wud brought back a cream stack.”
They passed down a tunnel toward a wing of the spaceport with wider docking bays reserved for larger ships. These ships routinely had full crews, sophisticated defense systems, and valuable cargo, not to mention marks aligning them with one or another major corporation. Rion hadn’t been down this way in more than a year before wandering through five times in the last week since his vow.
“I’m going to tell you something I didn’t tell any of the others. There was food on that ship, but that girl we found had gotten in there first. She’d made a mess of the galley and I couldn’t bring myself to pick up any of the scraps. So it’s not only Wud who’s showing me up. This girl who hasn’t been here long enough to need to clip her fingernails yet is as well. I’m better than just a common thief picking off easy targets.”
“Her? Really? I figured the worst had already happened to her or somebody got to her in the colony,” Bailor said.
“She’s strange, not like the other girls who were left behind before. There’s something about her that doesn’t make sense,” Rion said.
They continued on, scouting out the different bays and the different ships. Most of them had been there on their last trip, and Rion was beginning to have doubts about the possibility of getting into anything around here.
“What about that fat Pacelark with the Kline pharmaceuticals symbol? It’s got two entry ramps and no one posted guard. If we could lower one of the ramps…”
“There’s no way to do that manually, and without an access code the ship would lock up in a second. If I remember right, there’s a way to pop off one of the windshield windows with a screwdriver and some acid, but that takes hours to do while you’re right in front of the cockpit. I’m not sure a bunch of pills for baldness or wiener growth are the big score we’re looking for anyway,” Rion said.
Bailor’s shoulders drooped as he was shot down.
“What about that one?” Bailor asked, pointing to another bay. Inside, they spied a ship with a wide wingspan and a warbird appearance. Rion stopped to stare at it, but not because it would make for a good target.
“I don’t even know the names of some of these new ships, much less the layouts, because they weren’t in my books back home. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to read up and I’ve forgotten a lot of the details. That’s part of why we kept going after the same ships,” Rion said.
“If I come across anything on ship design in any of my books, I’ll let you know,” Bailor said, trying to be helpful. Bailor had a habit of stealing books along with food on his jobs, but his favorite subjects were history and computer systems, which rarely came in handy for their current profession.
They approached a bend in the tunnel that led to a series of storage warehouses and began to slow down before they inevitably turned around. The very last docking bay, the one farthest away from the spaceport’s control towers, was empty.
Right then, an announcement came over the loudspeaker.
“Arrival imminent, bay two twenty-one.”
Automatically, the boys’ eyes glanced up at the windows near the top of the tunnel to watch a large ship descend before them. Lights running horizontally along the exterior swiveled their beams in a spiral, creating a dazzling effect on the ground as the ship landed on extended, pillar-like landing pads. When the ship settled under the docking bay’s lights and he got a good look at a roof molded with small domes, like bubbles packed together, something began to click for Rion.
“I remember that ship. It’s a Star Yacht. It was brand new back when I read about it and they only had one generation. It’s a few years old now, but privately owned with a few supporting crew members,” Rion said.
He trailed off as he recalled the price tag of millions of charges. If they had money like that, he was willing to bet there were all kinds of valuables inside. Jewelry, gadgets, even robos could be had.
Bailor tugged on his sleeve and the pair hastily ducked behind a hefty cleaning cart in the tunnel as the ship’s entryway ramp lowered to the ground. A man clad in white, the owner, dragged a man in uniform, the pilot, to the surface. The owner wore a sparkly ring and earring studs, either of which would be enough to completely change their lives. He shoved the pilot toward the underbelly of the ship.
“That’s why you check these things before you take off, so we don’t have to get towed and make pit stops like this. Fix it, fix it, fix it now,” the man bellowed, his face growing red.
Rion eyed the ship greedily as its distinguished passenger returned inside. He’d never even seen a Star Yacht before, much less broken into one. If he got inside, he’d be tripping over things that would make Wud’s stash of charges look like a hill of beans.
“You don’t think we could actually get something out of that ship, do you?” Bailor asked.
Rion saw that his friend was wide-eyed and more than a little nervous. The way the owner treated his pilot would be far kinder than he’d be to them for trying to lift some of his riches, but if they got enough they might never need to break into another ship again.
“I do, and I know the way to do it,” Rion said, his cheeks stretched from such a wide smile. Together they scurried from their hiding place to find a good location to plan. That ship wouldn’t be there long, but they wouldn’t need long to put a plan into action.
They retreated back through the port almost halfway to their home base, pushed open a gritty door to an ill-lit maintenance corridor, and descended a ladder into a damp drainage basin. When it came to the utmost need for secrecy, this spot
couldn’t be beat.
“OK, what’s the plan?” Bailor asked. His white teeth were barely visible in the dim light.
“We know a few things already. There’s likely to be people both inside and outside the ship. The most important thing is finding a way to distract them, get them out of the area even for a short time,” Rion said.
“I could trip the alarm again, give you a chance to get in there while everyone is rushed out of the port,” Bailor suggested.
Rion frowned and shook his head.
“The alarm triggers heat mapping to see if everyone cleared out of the area. If someone stayed behind, there’d be plenty of interest in finding out why.”
“Then what do you want to do?” Bailor asked.
This was going to have to be more complex and risky than any of their previous plans. He tried to picture it all in his mind to see if it would really go the way he imagined it would.
“Distracting the pilot outside would be easy. I can put on some old overalls I have, grease up my hands, start talking about engine parts, and convince him I’m with the spaceport as a mechanic. I’ll make up another problem with the ship, either pulling him away to show him where to get parts or at least keep his back turned long enough.
“What I need you to do is get access to one of the administrative monitors to send a message to the ship. Come up with an excuse to get the port monitor away—an overturned cleaning cart, unattended luggage, someone passed out—and then transmit to the yacht that the regent learned about their arrival and wants to meet with them if they can come immediately. I have a feeling their vanity will make them bite, even if the message is from the spaceport authority. Do you think you can handle that?”
In the dim light, Rion could see Bailor’s teeth start to chatter.
“If I don’t convince the attendant…if I don’t finish sending the message before they get back…”
Rion had to grab Bailor’s shoulder to calm him down.