The Alliance

by Jason Letts

“Funny.”

  The concourse was thirteen stories tall and every inch was lined with retail operations selling incoming visitors everything from trinket souvenirs to brain candy to top-of-the-line Voidjet ships. The store for the toothpick shuttle, known officially as the Skeleton, was crammed into a forlorn, dark stall space barely wider than the shoulder width of the salesman, who seemed overly thrilled to have someone to talk to.

  “Can you tell me about the oxygen refresh rate on these?” Rion said to get the conversation going and didn’t even pay attention to the answer. “What about fuel cell capacity?”

  The salesman offered to send him a message with detailed specs, but Rion waved him off, began conversing quietly with Bailor, and pointed to another store on another level before turning back.

  “I don’t know. Is there any way we could take it out for a test flight?” Rion asked, knowing full well that the ship’s small space wouldn’t allow any representative of Skeleton to join them.

  “We can do that, but we’ll need a deposit. The test flight program also places significant safeguards on the system. I’m sure you understand,” he said.

  “Just as long as we can see what it can do,” Rion agreed.

  A few more details needed to be worked out. There were forms to fill out, which Rion input with nonsense. The charges from Bailor’s card were real though and bought them a ride for a quarter of what their other options were.

  The salesperson brought them to the docking bay, where they looked to the end of the airlock for their ride to be revealed. The door popped open by about a meter and stopped far short of the door’s full height. Rion squinted.

  “Is that door broken?”

  The salesperson broached an awkward smile and showed them the way forward.

  “That’s the height of the entryway. Look, this handy dolly slides out, you climb in, and then it rolls back into the unit. Talk about efficient use of space!”

  It was hard for Rion not to be underwhelmed by the small metal cage extending from the Skeleton onto the floor that they needed to squeeze into. If they’d been even a couple of centimeters taller, it would’ve been impossible. As it was, he was uncomfortably close to Bailor as they were sandwiched into the ship.

  “Give it a good workout and we’ll see you back here real soon. You won’t find a more affordable ride with this kind of quality,” the salesman said as the door closed over their heads, sealing them in.

  After a moment of complete darkness, a screen lit up about two centimeters in front of their noses with the operating system. Bailor sneezed and smacked his head against it.

  “This is going to make the Assailing Face seem as spacious as the Regent’s Center,” Bailor said.

  Rion had difficulty snaking his hand up in front of his face to punch in the navigation commands. Claustrophobia aside, this wouldn’t have any trouble bringing them out to an area near the moon Thebe that was nondescript except for a cluster of rock fragments.

  The Skeleton detached from the superstation and began traveling toward their destination. It was unnerving not having any windshield or windows anywhere to see what was out there. All they could do was watch an icon of their ship travel along a dotted path, and hope the ship’s sensors would steer them clear of any ships in the vicinity.

  “Now I’m starting to worry that it won’t be there,” Bailor admitted.

  “I don’t want to think about what I’ll do if it’s not,” Rion said.

  Approaching the target zone, Rion ran a sweep of the area. As it passed over the nook in the stone fragment where they’d left it, nothing came up. Rion furrowed his brow.

  “Either the scanner is faulty or it’s not there.”

  “Wait,” Bailor said as something came up on the screen.

  “It’s showing the ship on the other side of the rock, exposed to the open. I know that’s not where we left it.”

  It was off-putting, but after ten years of neglect anything could’ve happened. If one of the tethers came loose, the ship could’ve drifted around. Rion became more relieved that the entire thing hadn’t vanished completely or fallen into someone else’s hands.

  “I’ll key in our approach,” Bailor said, using the tip of his nose to input the commands. After a while he was using it as effectively as a woodpecker.

  “I’ll ready the autopilot to send this sardine can back to the superstation,” Rion said.

  “It’s going to be a trick getting the hatch to slide open to the proper height.”

  They could feel the ship slowing down before the slightest bump indicated that they’d tapped the Assailing Face. A sense of optimism washed over Rion with enough force to make him shutter his eyes. It was going to happen. They’d have their chance.

  Plugging into the Assailing Face’s systems and coordinating the hatch with the Skeleton’s took some time, but when a secure seal came with the sound of sliding doors, Rion couldn’t wait to get out. He hit the switch to extend the dolly, which rolled out onto a platform at one end of the ship’s cabin.

  It was dark and cold inside. Slowly, they climbed out of the dolly and stretched their aching limbs. That’s when it hit them, a smell. Rion wanted to say something about it, but breaking the silence seemed impossibly hard. It was like the smell of body odor but a little bit worse.

  Bailor gestured toward the cockpit, where they could turn on some lights and start to get things moving. They went together, trusting their outstretched arms to guide them toward the doorway and around the captain’s chair. Touching the console illuminated the buttons, including one that activated the cabin lights. Suddenly the darkness inside vanished.

  “Hi.”

  The unexpected sound was almost enough to make Rion jump out of his skin. He jerked his head around to see someone sitting on the table they’d just walked past. Bailor had tossed his arms up in shock and lost all control.

  But it wasn’t just anyone sitting there. The jet black hair, wiry frame, and pools of night for eyes. It was Lena. She started laughing so hard that she listed against the wall. Tears spilled down her cheeks and it took her a minute to calm down enough to speak. In the interim, Rion noticed how unkempt she looked. Not exactly healthy.

  “You should’ve seen the looks on your faces,” she said, still struggling to keep her laughter in check.

  “Have you been here all this time?” Rion said, voicing a disturbing thought. He remembered she liked to be alone, but being cooped up here for this long seemed dreadful.

  “No,” she said simply, but her voice cracked and she coughed.

  “What are you doing here?” Bailor asked.

  Lena didn’t answer right away. She wiped some of the hair off of her cheek and rubbed her left eye. Then she swallowed and took a moment to look hard at them, her neck craning forward a bit.

  “I’ve been waiting for you. Are you ready to get started?” she asked.

  Rion couldn’t help but feel puzzled. There shouldn’t have been any way for her to anticipate what they were going to do.

  “Ready to get what started? How did you know we’d come back?” he asked, in awe of her much like the first time he saw her.

  “We’re here to resurrect Reznik and continue the mission of the Assailing Face. It was only a matter of time. No one could know about this and resist the call forever,” she said.

  She stood up, giving Rion a chance to notice she wasn’t wearing any socks or shoes. Her skin was pale to the point of appearing sickly, but she looked strong nonetheless. When she gave them a hug, there was no doubt left about where the smell came from.

  “But how long have you been here?” Bailor asked.

  Lena rolled her eyes.

  “A long time, but it’s not like I’ve only been here. I’ve had to get food. I’ve had to do things. I’ve had to get ready for when you came back. Reznik’s taught me so much. This ship is really a marvel. I’ve still barely scratched the surface figuring it out, but I can fly it,” she explained.

  Rion wondered how she managed t
o do those things without giving away their secret, or getting herself killed.

  “What do you mean she taught you so much?” Rion asked. Lena raised her eyebrows and glanced to the left, but Bailor interjected before she could answer.

  “Did she leave a journal, a log, instructions?” Bailor couldn’t hide his excitement. The side of him that loved books and old texts hadn’t changed at all.

  “Yes,” Lena said, brightening up. She rushed past them into the cockpit and sat down in the chair, bringing some writing up on the console. “There is so much written down about what she did and how she did it.”

  But Rion had other ideas than to sit around and read through the ship’s archives.

  “Let’s save that for later. Now that we’re here why don’t we take this baby for a quick spin. Show us how it works. And while we’re at it, I’ve always dreamed of lighting up that face. Even if no one’s watching, I say we make this one token gesture that we’re entering the fray.”

  Lena looked hesitantly over the controls on the console.

  “I can cast off the tethers, no problem. I’ve never actually lit up the face before. We’ll have to figure out how to do it,” she said.

  “Leave that to me,” Bailor said, leaning forward and running his eyes over all of the buttons and levers. “Unless either of you have an insatiable hunger for software I don’t know about, I’m willing to bet I’ll be the one studying the finer points of how to operate this thing.”

  While he began investigating, Lena went ahead and detached from the tethers and warmed up the main propulsion engine, which pushed them around the debris in the field. She showed them how to dive, strafe, and spin.

  “Here it is,” Bailor said. “Are you ready to declare the Assailing Face back in business?”

  Rion and Lena nodded, helping Bailor throw the switch, which was hidden in another compartment under the console. A bright glow surrounded the windshield as the lights came on, residual energy from the auxiliary engine. They shared a cheerful moment of celebration at the beginning of their venture before switching the face back off.

  They were about to ramp up their velocity and continue cruising when they saw something in front of them.

  “Is that a ship?” Lena asked.

  “It can’t be,” Rion said. “Smaller even than a Skeleton.”

  Together they peered forward at the little ball of light about to fly past them at an angle. It was a good opportunity for them to get familiar with the scanners.

  “It’s just a delivery drone, a non-intelligent robo,” Bailor reported. “Why don’t we test out the weapons systems and turn it into space dust.”

  Bailor’s comment made Rion think of something he hadn’t before.

  “I don’t think we should. The weapons have been sitting here for ten years as well. There’s no telling if any of the arms have gone dead or gotten jammed into place. Trying to fire anything without a proper inspection could get the entire ship blown up,” he said.

  Lena cringed.

  “I’d hate to get killed trying to attack a defenseless delivery robo,” she said.

  “Well, what do we do about that? It’s not like we can head back to the Jupiter superstation and ask for a dozen seekers and a cream stack. Trying to get weapons from the Alliance or the Marshall Force wouldn’t end well either,” Bailor groaned.

  Rion racked his mind, trying to think, but he couldn’t come up with anything.

  “Reznik actually didn’t build a fair percentage of this ship. She mentions a technician and inventor named Heath Diff several times. If he’s still out there, maybe he could help us out,” she said.

  Rion shrugged.

  “Even if we could find him, what makes you think he’d help us out,” he said.

  “If he cared enough about what Reznik was doing to put all of this energy into this ship, maybe he’ll be sympathetic if we tell him we’re taking up the mantle,” Lena said.

  Bailor, to the far right, continued to tap commands into the monitor. He probably appreciated not having to use his nose anymore.

  “If I can access the flight logs and detect a frequent destination, that might be enough of a trail for us to follow,” he said.

  They waited and watched until Rion couldn’t stand it anymore. He went in the back and began taking off panels to peek at the hardware, which he was sure would be his responsibility to manage. He’d never loaded a missile launcher before, but he had a feeling he would have to learn. Soon enough Bailor called for him to come back.

  “Saturn. I figured it out,” Lena said as Bailor rolled his eyes.

  “You figured it out after I told you that Reznik made repeated trips to a spot along the outer ring, far away from any known settlement. It would’ve made another good hiding spot if no one was there, but considering her trips span roughly fifteen years it’s reasonable to suppose that someone is there to stay.”

  Rion nodded, glancing over the data.

  “It’s as good a place to start as any. We sure can’t kick this operation into high gear until we turn this ship inside and out and make sure everything still works,” he said.

  “Speaking of which,” Lena said, “what does high gear look like? What are we actually going to do to…‌?”

  “Roll back the Alliance’s oppressive tide and curb corruption in the planetary municipalities?” Rion said, finishing her question.

  “Yeah, all that,” she said.

  Rion and Bailor exchanged glances.

  “I don’t know, but whatever it is we’ve got to get people’s attention, do something that people can’t ignore and that can’t be twisted into something else.”

  “There’s no shortage of events going on in the solar system that can get you noticed. We could participate in the Milky Way race that zigzags from Neptune past all the other planets to Uranus, or crash it. If we flashed the face at the finish line, there’d be no missing us there.”

  “I say we use the element of surprise and fly right up to the Alliance flag-station around Earth and rain hell down upon them,” Lena said with a ravenous gleam in her eye that made Rion flinch.

  “You talk about the element of surprise like the element of iron or calcium, with physical properties you can count on. Showing up to the flag-station would just surprise them with a chance to blow us up and wipe us into history. We’re going to have to figure out a deliberate plan. Maybe this Heath Diff can help us with that,” Rion said.

  He signaled for Lena to chart a course for their destination outside Saturn and hit the accelerator. The ship lurched forward, sputtering for a moment and making Rion think that the engines would need to be checked over as thoroughly as the weapons systems. Right about now he could’ve used forty more years of engineering experience, but the increase in velocity smoothed out and the ship began humming along perfectly, as far as Rion could tell.

  They hadn’t gone far before a red dot appeared on the scanners. Staring at it for a moment didn’t make it go away.

  “That’s a ship,” Lena said, but that wasn’t the most concerning part.

  “It’s assuming our flight path. It’s following us,” Bailor noted. Rion continued to watch the scanners as a wave of anxiety hit him.

  “It’s catching up. Something’s spotted us, and it’s not about to let us go. We need to be ready to fight,” Rion said, knowing that was pretty much impossible.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Can you pick up the pace?” Bailor asked.

  “I’m trying,” Lena said, already maxed out on frustration. “Can you stop rubbing up against my shoulder?”

  The three of them were crammed into a cockpit designed for a single person, trying to figure out a large control panel with no labels in dim lighting. They were sure of the direction they were going in, that they were being followed by a rapidly gaining vessel, and little else. Rion watched the red dot gain ground on them while he attempted to produce more information from the scanners.

  “I can’t tell if it’s an Alliance ship, some pirate
, or a weekend cruiser looking to borrow a cup of sugar,” he said, slamming the butt of his fist against the side of the panel. He had recollections of Reznik being able to gather all sorts of tidbits about anything nearby, but he was stuck.

  “Maybe it’d be better to see what they want? We could figure out how to send a message over an open channel,” Bailor suggested.

  “What about this? We turn around and tear them to shreds. This is the Assailing Face. If we hit enough buttons, one of them is sure to make the other ship explode somehow. That big one looks like it would do the trick,” Lena said, her hand extending out over the console.

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure that flushes the waste. Are you saying you didn’t use that at all while you’ve been on board? That explains the smell,” Bailor said.

  Lena crossed her arms and sat back with a hard look on her face.

  “You figure it out then.”

  After a few more idle taps, Rion managed to bring up a screen with a more detailed image of the approaching ship.

  “We’re going to have to do something quick. The ship is assuming an attack position, and I can see blaster turrets extending into position on each side of the top fin there. It won’t be long until we’ll be in range for it to start rattling off fire at us,” he said.

  “You still don’t know what it is?” Lena asked.

  Rion cringed.

  “I don’t see any emblem or insignia on it. It looks like another rogue ship trolling the area for stray vessels to rob. They probably don’t know what they’ve stumbled onto. Mostly all they’ve got on us is our heat signature and an imagining scan with a rendering of our shape. They might know the Assailing Face if they saw it, but I doubt it.”

  On cue, once the gap shrunk a little farther the pursuing ship began to issue blaster fire from its turrets. The shots that missed whizzed by around the windshield in front of them, but plenty connected, pelting the rear and making the ship shake.

  “You’re going to have to use some of those maneuvers you showed us a little while ago,” Rion said.

  “I’m sorry,” Lena said way more defensively than Rion thought was necessary. After so much time alone, she seemed to easily take things personally.