by Jason Letts
“Not a chance. Come with us back to our ship,” Bailor said, firmly preventing any chance of an argument. His parents came around to the idea that they’d need to go back the way they came, and together they shuffled along the containers and toward the archway.
Footsteps on the other side got their attention, and Rion, thinking fast, shoved his taser into the hands of Sandor Pu. Rion and Bailor put their hands together and hung their heads, walking like captives past a couple of officers. Once they were in the clear they dashed down the hallway and retraced their steps to the wall crevasse.
They’d almost made it across the room with the fuel cells before a trio walking by spotted them and shouted out. The man had barely opened his mouth before Bailor opened fire on him, striking the wall right by his waist.
“Hurry and get through,” Rion said to the Pu’s, shoving them toward the opening. One of the fuel cells near them was hit by return fire and began shooting sparks. It caught fire seconds later as Rion took aim with his taser. One of the officers was running straight at him with gloved hands outstretched. The taser’s wired probes got him right in the chest and the gun’s digital pulse controller released enough charge to send him slumping to the ground. Bailor managed to shoot another one of them right in the head, creating a gory scene in the hall that they were anxious to turn away from.
Bailor pulled Rion through the hole and soon they were all together, rushing through the darkness before anyone else could catch up to them. There were a few turns to make, but they managed to zero in on the light that would take them back to the room adjacent to Verche’s office. Rion felt like they were so close to making it out he could taste it, but in reality they were a long way away from escaping Pluto.
The conference room was just as they left it. The door to Verche’s office was wide open, but some sort of rubbing or grinding noise was coming through. Rion peeked around the doorway first and what he saw made his jaw drop.
Lena had Verche up against the wall on the far side of the room. It took him a second to realize that Verche was dead, a moderate amount of blood seeping through a wound from Lena’s knife around her middle, and Lena was tying her to the desk and the wall.
“Lena!” was all he could think to say. Her dark hair rolled over her shoulders as she turned her head and shrugged.
“What? She came back to her office to get a drink and practically walked on board the ship. What was I supposed to do, wave hello and let her sound an alarm? We knew what we had to do to anyone who saw us.”
“What are you doing to her?” Bailor asked. His parents didn’t seem all that disturbed by what they were seeing.
“I’m making sure she doesn’t get lost when we pull out of here. I’d hate for the rest of them not to know what happened to her.”
Rion took her by the wrist and pulled her away from the body, which was only half tied down. Together they rushed back on board the Assailing Face and shut the hatch as soon as they could.
“We’re lucky nothing happened,” Bailor said, depositing his parents at the cabin’s table while he went into the cockpit. The middle-aged pair stared at Lena nonchalantly holding a bloody knife at her side until Sandor burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Lena asked.
“I didn’t know who she was talking about at the time, but Pauline Verche kept mentioning a trampy urchin who needed to taste a gun barrel in her mouth, to use her phrase. She must’ve meant you,” he said.
“More or less.”
“She wanted to take your ashes and put them in her cat’s litter box,” he said.
Lena raised her eyebrows.
“If the cat had been around I would’ve given it a special treat.”
“Did Verche have any last words?” Rion asked her.
“Actually, she did. It might’ve been the dose of Brain Candy talking, but she said I was staining the mahogany. I don’t know why she blamed me for it, since it was her blood.”
“Guys!” Bailor called from the cockpit, compelling them to hurry over and prepare to depart.
The scanners were running and showing waves of fighters in the hundreds returning to Pluto. Most of the traffic in the area had cleared out or come to a halt. The engines were still humming, and Lena quickly shifted in reverse to pull them away from the structure and get ready to make a run for it.
As the ship turned to give them a better view of the building they were leaving, it was hard to resist firing a missile or two into the offices or bays, but every shot they fired was one less they’d have later when they might need it to save their lives.
“It’s going to be close,” Lena said as the ship pulled forward on a path directly away from the incoming fighters. There were still plenty of wrecks in the area to watch out for, as well as Marshall Force ships guarding the exit corridor. That meant they were going to have to get creative about slipping out of the construction zone.
“I’ll tune the scanners to pick up the floating fragments, see if I can spot a way out,” Bailor said.
“If we get stuck somewhere, they’ll unload all the firepower they’ve got at us,” Rion said.
Lena brought the ship around toward a porous section of steel in various shapes that may as well have been a maze. Their movement had gotten the attention of some of the local security force, which began to give chase.
“I saw a dozen of these guys fly right by when we were docked against the window. I figure they thought we crashed into it and weren’t interested in cleaning up the mess yet,” she said.
One of the ships began firing compressed matter shells at them despite being out of range.
“They seem plenty interested in us now,” Rion said.
“It’s a shame all those fighters are taking up the big gap behind us. There are a few rabbit holes, but it’s going to be tight,” Bailor said, bringing his choice up on the monitor. It looked like a snake passing through the giant pieces of material.
“You can’t slow down or they’ll be on us,” Rion said, keeping an eye on the growing number of pursuers. Missiles began lighting up the scanners and the only way to escape them was to make a tight turn into the hole.
Rion found himself unconsciously gripping the side of the seat as they hurtled toward the tiny opening that for all the world didn’t look large enough to fit them in, especially at an angle. But Lena handled the curve perfectly with an assist from Heath’s navigation systems. Each time she had to veer, it was all laid out in front of her. Then everything went red.
“Oh no,” she said. “Something is passing across the opposite end. It’s blocked.”
The ship started decelerating but they weren’t going to be able to stop in time. Everything in front of them was black except for some indicators on the console.
“What is it, a sheet of steel, a ship?” Rion asked, hoping Bailor could give them the answer with information from the scanners.
“We can’t get a reading on the depth from this position. It could be anything,” he said.
“We’re going to hit it!” Lena said.
Rion launched a trio of missiles in order to take a shot at blasting their way through. Odds were it would either be overkill or not enough, but it was all he could get off before they’d be in danger of getting in too close to the explosion. The projectiles and their red tails raced on ahead through the dark tunnel. The explosion lit up in front of them and barely died out as they came along behind.
They were still traveling faster than they’d want to be if they were about to run up against anything, and when the impact hit and the lights went out it sent them all spilling onto the floor. The console in front of them went out and the ship listed into empty space.
“It knocked out the engines. I need to fix the power,” Rion said amid panicked cries
He clawed out of the cockpit and into the cabin, going on memory alone to find the supply closet with the torch in it. The little light was enough to give him a glimpse of the removable section of flooring that would give him access to th
e underbelly of the ship and its engine. He hoped something had merely been knocked loose because, if the repairs required too much time, they’d be run down by ships from the Marshall Force.
Slinking down, he hit hard against the grate flooring and crawled toward the rear of the ship. Something hard caught right between his neck and shoulder, but he ignored the pain and kept going. It wasn’t much farther, but it felt like it took forever to get there.
The engine was already cooling down. He checked the sockets and the conduits, but everything seemed to be correctly connected. The system was off though, despite there not being an apparent leakage or signs of damage. Trying a manual restart using the switchboard was all he could think of.
He clasped the lever with both hands and yanked it down, causing the engine to reinitialize. Hearing it coming online was like music to Rion’s ears. It was a big relief that the jolt had only momentarily shorted things out. Turning around in the tight passage was a trick, but soon he was approaching the cabin, where lights were once again streaming down from above.
By the time he returned to the cockpit, the ship was already cruising away from Pluto at top speed. Lena’s eyes were still strained, but the panic had left them. The fighters and other defensive vessels fell away behind as they pulled away.
“I can’t believe we made it,” Bailor said, glancing back at his parents as if in disbelief that they were really there.
“I’ll keep an eye on the scanners,” Rion said, allowing his friend to enjoy a moment with them in a less hectic setting. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for him to be thrown together with his parents like this after so many years. How could they not feel like strangers to each other? But Bailor always talked about what a close family they had. They’d find a way.
He caught Lena giving him a warm smile.
“Looks like we pulled it off. I won’t mind not making the trek out here again,” she said.
“It makes me wonder how long our luck will last,” he said.
“For a long time, I hope,” she said, making Rion think she was talking about the two of them.
“We’ll see.”
The ship continued on through space until nothing was around for thousands of kilometers. They switched on the com system and listened in to the chaos embroiling everyone around Pluto. It sounded like the entire dwarf planet would implode based on the explosions, the wrecks, and the deaths. The Marshall Force might never be the same after this day, in part because they’d lost their Ultima.
“So, Ganymede then?” Lena asked when they were all together in the cabin. “It’s time to make a choice about our next destination.”
Bailor cast a pained look toward his mother and father.
“Home isn’t going to be safe for a while, not after what happened. We’ve got to figure something else out, get word to Francis to take a shuttle and meet us somewhere after things have cooled off,” he said.
The comment made more problems arise in Rion’s mind.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea if they’re on board when we’re going after the chancellor. It would be too dangerous,” Rion said.
Sandor and Liss Pu instantaneously had looks of alarm.
“You’re going after the chancellor of the Planetary Alliance?” they asked their son. Bailor nodded with one hand under his chin.
“He’s what’s making the Alliance bad and no one from the inside can get to him, so we have to do something. They don’t even know where he is and neither do we.”
“I agree with Rion, for once,” Lena said. “We can’t put more people at risk. Maybe we can set them down with Heath outside Saturn. And besides, we don’t have enough food stocked on board to last us for long anyway.”
Rion looked at her lips like gold was pouring out between them. He grabbed Bailor by the sleeve, scarcely aware of what he was doing for the epiphany he just had.
“That’s it. The chancellor is human and he has to eat. You saw how much land was necessary just for Heath to survive. There’s no way the chancellor and whoever is with him on their secret station can grow enough to live on their own, plus they probably aren’t restricting themselves to the punitive lifestyle of a garden-only diet. If we can find out how they’re shipping food to him, we can find out where he is.”
CHAPTER 12
It turned out they didn’t even need to reach Heath’s abode on the far-flung floating rock before they got a promising lead on what they were looking for. Bailor hunched over the console with his arms outstretched as if he were about to try to pluck it right off its hinges.
“The information we needed was right in front of us all along. It didn’t even matter that the Alliance scrambled access to their database.”
“What is it?” Rion asked.
“It’s the food barges. We still have access to their routes. Turns out one of the ones we thought was wandering aimlessly wasn’t,” he said.
“So one of the barges has been making deliveries to the chancellor this entire time?” Lena asked.
Bailor shook his head.
“Not quite. We’ve got all of their routes in our saved data. One in particular takes a curious route away from the others out about halfway to Neptune before turning around, but I’ve scanned for any trace of a structure along the routes and came up with nothing. What I think is happening is that the chancellor’s station is sending a ship out to a rendezvous point where they pick up the supplies and take it back to their secret location.”
Rion nodded. The thread he was looking for was here. All they needed to do was get a firm hold and reel it in without botching the whole thing.
“I’m guessing that trailing the barge and the rendezvous ship isn’t going to work,” he said.
Bailor shrugged in agreement.
“I have a feeling the people closest to the chancellor would sooner die than give up his location. Planting a tracker on the barge would be one thing, but getting it onto the second ship without them noticing us would be impossible. Besides, they’re probably more attentive about checking for stray signals than I was. Any transmission would be detected immediately, long before it got to the station.”
Lena pursed her lips. Rion could tell she wanted to fight but only needed a good opportunity.
“Then what do we do?” she asked.
A plan coalesced in Rion’s mind. It sounded excruciating, but it would avoid premature detection.
“What if we got someone on the barge in with the food to ride all the way to the station? Then once there it’d be necessary to find a way to send a signal to us that we could follow up on,” he said.
Bailor cringed, but he didn’t dismiss it outright.
“It’d be four days just to get out to around the rendezvous point. A week might go by before reaching the station,” he said, visibly disgusted. “Who would want to endure that?”
They both turned to Lena, who was grinning from ear to ear.
“Physically taxing? Incredibly perilous? Sign me up!”
Rion shook his head, appreciating her penchant for punishment.
“Reznik’s three days in the sewer would be nothing compared to this, though you will be packed in with large quantities of food,” he said.
“And it shouldn’t be necessary to have to hunt around to find a way to transmit a signal. We can rig up a battery-powered device you can turn on when you’re there to let us know where you are. They’ll know immediately once it gets sent, but at least you won’t have to commandeer a console and redirect a channel,” Bailor said.
“Then all you have to do is stay alive until we can get there, however long that is,” Rion said.
“Piece of cake. I’m ready when you are,” she said, rubbing her hands together.
She was eager to get going with the plan, too eager according to Rion. There were countless outcomes in which someone didn’t make it back alive, and in some cases that would be the best-possible scenario.
“I get that you want to prove you can endure the punishment and be
at the odds, but stop and think about what might happen. Say we get there and they have a fleet or squadron on standby. Finding any way to dock and get aboard is a no-go, leaving us with a chance to fire at the station and try to destroy it altogether. That might be our only shot at the chancellor, and if you’re on board, what would you want us to do?”
Some of her excitement faded as she took a moment to contemplate such a situation. With the cost in such stark relief on her face, Rion thought she might’ve had a change of heart about seeing her life come to an end as well. Her eyes almost got watery as she was thinking.
“I’d want you to take your shot at him and fire. I can look out for myself, always have. I’ll be alive and ready when you come, regardless of what needs to be done to complete the mission,” she said.
They left it at that and continued heading toward Heath’s rock outside Saturn. Getting a message to Francis to begin making his way toward them via a shuttle to Titan put Bailor’s parents in a less-anxious frame of mind.
More good news came when they began to research how they’d get Lena inside one of the food barges to begin with. They’d gathered enough data since the destruction of the distribution facility to know where the barges were leaving from on Earth. These agra-centers encompassed sprawling, walled-off areas that were largely unpopulated except for landing zones. Lena’s journey would begin with a drop-off in a field and then a trek over many kilometers toward a launch point. The barges had unique identifier codes that followed predictable routes. All she’d need to do was get in the right one to have her transportation needs taken care of.
Optimism was running high as the Assailing Face began to close in on Heath’s rock. Rion couldn’t help but smile and think about a big bowl of spaghetti. His anticipation got the best of him so much he wouldn’t have even minded a glass of watered sugar masquerading as lemonade. He took a deep breath when the speck of green came into view, as if he could smell all of the crops growing around him.
The sense of enjoyment didn’t last long.
Even from a fair distance out in space they could see that something was wrong. There was still plenty of green and the bubble was still active, but the farmhouse had a chunk taken out of its side, as if a giant claw had torn out the entire area containing the console and communications equipment. The barn was mostly intact. Spots on the fields where ships had landed came into view.