by Jake Elwood
The captain stared at him, as if looking inside of Chan and reading a list of every sin he'd ever committed. "That could be," he said at last. "It will be five more hours before the relevant offices open back home." By his accent he was a second- or third-generation Venusian, but some people would never lose the habit of calling Earth 'home'.
"It's a bloody nuisance," the captain continued. "They never deny my requests. But the law is the law, and the law says a live human being has to approve every last request for personal information. So I have to decide whether to keep you here in a cell while I wait for the sun to come up on another planet."
The silence stretched out, but Chan felt no need to fill it with self-incriminating words. He thought about his breathing and let the seconds slide by.
The tiniest hint of a frown appeared on the captain's face. "I'm letting you go," he said. "You can pay the fine on your way out. But until your records check comes back, you won't be able to leave Montgolfier."
"Great," said Chan, and stood, wincing as his back muscles tightened. "Is that all?"
"Just one more thing," the captain said. "I've been sorely tempted to punch Mr. Charles more than a few times over the years. I have restrained myself. See that you do the same."
Chan nodded and left.
Chapter 6
"This way. Now left. That's great. I really appreciate this."
Joss had no fewer than six men lugging Rhett for her. They'd been pathetically easy to recruit. She'd simply waited until she saw likely targets coming, then ignored them, busying herself with the impossible task of lifting the robot on her own. They hadn't just offered to help. They'd insisted.
When they neared the storage lockers one man let go of Rhett's feet and hurried ahead. By the time the others arrived he had a locker secured and was holding the door open.
Rhett was slightly too big to fit, even with his knees folded against his chest. Joss left the locker door slightly ajar and decided it would have to be good enough. There were security cameras all over the left luggage area, and who was going to cart off a robot?
The men, apparently a travelling zip-ball team, clustered around the locker, arguing over whether Rhett would fit if they put him on his side. One man wanted to remove the robot's head. Joss ignored them and took out her phone, which had been tingling her leg through her pocket for several minutes.
There was a message from Chan. He must have gotten his phone back. She read it, and frowned.
We are about to be released from police custody. We don't know who might be waiting for us outside.
"I guess he's not going to fit," one of the zip-ball players said. He shrugged helplessly.
"That's all right," she reassured him. "He'll be okay here. It's so much better than the corridor. I really can't thank you guys enough."
They grinned and fidgeted and looked at their feet, and she smiled. They were almost too sweet to be real.
"Is there anything else we can do?" the spokesman said.
"Well, actually … No, never mind. I'm sure it'll be fine." She started to turn away.
"Wait! Hang on. If there's something else you need, we'd be glad to help."
The man's eyes shone with eagerness. His friends behind him wore the same slightly dazzled expression. They'd been in space too long, she realized. Joss was nothing special, but she was possibly the first remotely pretty girl they'd seen in weeks. Perhaps months. A few days in Montgolfier would have them back to their usual selves, but in the meantime …
"Actually," she said, "I do have this one small problem …."
Joss walked out of the police station with Geoff on one side of her and Chan on the other. The six zip-ball players formed a cluster around them, necks craning, eyes scanning for the crazy ex-boyfriend that Joss had told them might be waiting for her. They were clearly disappointed when no one came barging out of the crowd. They escorted the three vagabonds to an elevator bank, where they gave Joss phone numbers and directions to their hotel and the zip-ball courts. Admonishing her to call them without delay if she needed anything at all, they said reluctant goodbyes and at last let the three vagabonds enter an elevator and depart.
She waited until the doors were shut to say, "I lost the suitcase. Also, Rhett is damaged." She told her story succinctly and waited for Chan to yell at her.
"That's too bad," Chan said. "I hope Rhett will be okay." He peered at her cheek. "You've got a bruise coming in." He touched his own cheek. "I'm still winning, though."
The elevator stopped and the three of them emerged into a shopping area. Chan led the way to a quiet corner.
"I wonder," said Geoff.
"What, about the bruise?" Chan replied.
"No, about the suitcase." He had their undivided attention now. "It's really heavy," he elaborated. "The robot could carry it, but the robot's in a locker. A strong man could carry it for a while, but it's a pain. If I was them, I would leave one man guarding it while I went to get a mag cart."
The three of them looked at one another.
"It's not where I got Tased," Joss said. "They got into the elevator."
Geoff walked over to one of the many map consoles that dotted Montgolfier. "Show me," he said.
Joss brought up a map of the hall above them and pointed out the elevator.
"It has only one stop," Geoff said. "Down here, on Deck Eight."
There was a pregnant silence.
Geoff said, "It's only been, what? Fifteen minutes since they Tased you?"
"Maybe twenty," Joss said.
"I bet it took them fifteen minutes to get tired of hauling the suitcase around. I bet there's a man on deck eight right now, all alone with the suitcase, waiting for the other two to get back with a cart."
They looked at one another.
"Can we take one of them, if he's alone?" Chan asked.
"If we take him by surprise," Geoff said. "But it's a risk. And it's only money. Do we really want to risk our lives for a suitcase full of glorified tin?"
Joss traced her fingers over the bruise on her cheek and remembered the agony of the Tasing. She thought of the awful beating Chan had suffered, and a hot spike of rage shot through her. "Hell, yes," she said.
"Damn straight," Chan said.
Geoff bared his teeth in a nasty grin. "Good," he said. "Let's go."
They returned to the main hall, where they bought three models of the SS Kerrington from a souvenir stand. The models were as long as Joss's arm, cylinders carved from Venusian rock. They were solid and quite heavy.
They would make excellent clubs.
There was no sign of a gangster with a cargo lifter hurrying across the hall, and a treacherous part of Joss was relieved. If they were too late, there would be no conflict, no danger. She was by no means sure she was ready to tackle even one of the vicious men who had caused so much harm.
The three of them got into an elevator and began their descent to Deck Eight. The air was tight with tension. Joss rested the ship model on her shoulder, holding it just below the bow in a two-handed grip. I'm ready for this. I can handle this. We can do it. God, I wish Liz was here.
The doors slid open and the three of them burst into the corridor beyond.
It was empty.
They were looking at each other, the tension slowly draining away, when a face appeared in the middle of the wall a dozen strides away. There was a nook of some sort in the side of the corridor, and a man was there, peering out at them. A familiar, hard-faced man in a business suit.
For an instant Joss and the man stood frozen, staring into one another's eyes. Geoff and Chan were oblivious. Then the man jerked his head back and Joss hurled herself at him, shouldering Geoff out of the way. She charged down the hall, and the men, after a frozen moment, followed.
The gangster was just sliding a laser pistol out of a shoulder holster when Joss reached the little nook. She swung her ship model at his head and he flinched away, taking the blow high on his shoulder. The gun swung up, and she slashed down with he
r club, hitting him on the wrist. His arm dropped, the pistol fell, and he swore, grabbing his wrist.
Chan and Geoff shoved past her, clubs thumping against flesh, and Joss stepped back, leaving them to it. The laser pistol lay on the floor in front of her, and she picked it up. It was locked to his handprint, so she set it back down and used her ship model to smash it into fragments.
Chan and Geoff backed away, panting. She retreated to give them room. They blocked her view of the gangster, but the man didn't seem to be moving. Both ship models were broken, and Geoff dropped the chunk that he held. After a moment Chan followed suit.
The suitcase stood in the other corner of the nook. Joss dragged it into the corridor, grunting with effort. When she let go of the handle Chan took over, his face contorting with effort as he heaved the suitcase clear of the floor. "Now what?" he gasped.
"Next elevator," Geoff said. There was a second bank of elevators a little ways down the corridor, leading to the city's lower levels.
They were half way to the elevator bank when a chime behind them announced the return of the elevator they'd arrived in. Joss didn't look to see who was coming out. A cold certainty filled her, and she sprang ahead, mashing the button for the down elevator. When she turned, Chan and Geoff had the suitcase slung awkwardly between them and were coming toward her at a clumsy hopping run.
Behind them, three men maneuvered a cargo lifter out of the up elevator.
Chan, Geoff, and the suitcase were three good hops from the first elevator when one of the thugs finally turned his head. The man stared for a long moment, then let out a cry and reached for something under his coat. The others turned, someone swore, and an elevator door finally slid open.
The three fugitives piled into the elevator. A laser beam sliced the air behind them an instant before the doors slid shut. Joss hit a button marked "7," the only floor button in the elevator, and sagged against the side of the elevator, panting. "Oh, my god, that was close."
"We're not out of this yet," Chan said. "The elevator only goes to one place. And there are three elevators."
That meant blocking the doors open on Deck Seven wouldn't help. The gangsters would be only moments behind.
The doors slid open and they lugged the suitcase out. Joss looked around, and felt her stomach sink. They were in a long corridor with blank walls. There wasn't even a corner closer than a hundred meters away. Even if they abandoned the suitcase and ran for their lives, they wouldn't make it.
"There," said Chan, pointing at the wall across from the elevators. "Get that open." He was looking at Joss, which didn't make sense to her until she realized she was still holding a ship model. She headed across the corridor and finally saw what he was pointing at.
There was a service door, painted the same color as the wall. It had no visible handle, just a card reader.
With the strength that desperation brings she hefted her stone club and slammed it end-first into the door where it met the frame, at the level where a handle would normally be. Plastic cracked, red light flashed on the little card reader panel, and the door slid open a crack.
"Got it on your first try," Chan said. He let go of the suitcase, wrapped his fingers around the edge of the door, and heaved.
The door slid open a few centimeters, retracting into a pocket in the wall. Chan braced a foot against the jamb and heaved again, and the door slid until there was a twenty-centimeter gap.
"We can get through that," Geoff said. "The suitcase will even fit."
Abandoning the suitcase would have been wiser, but Joss wasn't about to suggest it, not after what they'd been through. She slid through the gap into the darkness beyond, and the men grunted behind her as they worked the suitcase through the opening.
She looked around, seeing only gloom at first, then more and more as her eyes adjusted. She was in a narrow gap between walls, an industrial space no more than three meters wide, crammed with pipes and cables and tubes. Catwalks glinted in the gloom above her, and she could see open space through the metal slats that formed the floor beneath her feet.
A bell chimed in the corridor outside. The elevator was arriving. They were out of time.
With a grunt of effort Chan headed for the nearest descending staircase, dragging the suitcase along the floor behind him. Joss started to follow, but Geoff's hand closed around her upper arm. He pulled her back, and they went in the opposite direction. When she resisted he whispered, "We have to lead them away. Come on. We can move faster than he can."
She let him lead her deeper into darkness, trusting him to navigate, her eyes fixed behind her on the receding rectangle of light that was the service door.
Geoff stopped, and Joss stood frozen beside him, her breath unnaturally loud in her ears. She could smell dust and metal and grease, a hint of antiseptic coming from Geoff, and her own nervous sweat. The service corridor was just a jumble of dark shapes around her. Strips of light glowed here and there, but the only significant source of light was the doorway they had come through.
The enormous shadow of a man appeared in the doorway, and Joss gasped in spite of herself. More human shapes appeared, until hardly any light made it through.
"Now," Geoff said, and his hand tugged her sideways. Hard metal caught Joss's ankle, and only Geoff's hand on her arm kept her from toppling onto her face. She was at the bottom of a metal staircase.
She and Geoff raced up the staircase, and the metal rungs rang and echoed with their footsteps. She heard voices behind them, and the clatter of pursuing footsteps, and she ran faster.
She missed the top step in the darkness, stumbling when her foot came down on air, and Geoff grunted beside her as he stumbled as well. She wanted to pause and get her bearings, but fear drove her forward. Her shoulders brushed against mysterious metal shapes on either side, and then two parallel lines of tiny lights appeared, marking a walkway. She let Geoff go first and followed close behind him.
They were in a long, narrow chamber with silent metal cylinders on either side, like enormous pistons. Joss couldn't imagine what any of it was for. She hurried forward, a hand against Geoff's back, and bumped into him when he stopped suddenly.
"Locked," he said, and she saw a door in front of him, much more solid than the service door downstairs. He rattled the knob, muttered a low curse, and turned. She was close enough to feel his breath on her face, and she took a step back. "We'll have to hide," he said, his voice low and hoarse. "And hope for the best."
She turned, moving back along the lighted track, instinct telling her that the best hiding place would be as far from the door as possible. Vertical cylinders lined the side of the room, each as wide as her outstretched arms. A gap separated the cylinders, a dark space just wide enough for a thin person to squirm through. She stuck an arm into the nearest gap and glanced back at Geoff.
He was gone.
Footsteps clattered on the stairs. She didn't have much time. She pressed herself into the dark opening and wormed her way as far as she could behind one of the cylinders. It was a poor hiding place, but it would do for a few minutes at least. The searchers might be careless, or the unforeseen might happen. She focused her attention on breathing, taking in long, slow, silent breaths and fighting the urge to pant.
Chan slid the suitcase down a flight of steps, galloping to keep up. When he reached the bottom he dragged the suitcase forward another dozen paces or so, then picked it up and carried it to reduce the noise. He could move faster when he held the suitcase in one hand, but the strain on his fingers was too great. Soon he had to grab it in both hands, the weight pressing hard against his thigh with every step. He lurched down a narrow corridor, trying to keep the corner of the case from grazing the wall.
A hum of machinery ahead of him grew steadily louder as he crabbed his way along. He came to a vast machine mounted on one wall, a pump of some sort that stood three times his own height. It filled most of the corridor, and he squeezed past it with difficulty. After that the corridor grew wider and darker. For
another thirty steps or so he was guided by a strip of lights along the wall at chest level. Then the lights ended, and the corridor grew darker with every step.
He was moving blindly when he hit a wall. He set the case down and explored the environment by touch. He was in a room about four meters wide, with mysterious pieces of equipment jutting up from the floor at shin-bashing heights. There was nowhere to hide and nothing he could use as a weapon. The only feature of note that he could find was a ladder near the corner. He stared upward and saw only darkness.
A surreptitious brush of a foot against steel in the darkness behind him told him he was running out of time. He returned to the suitcase and lifted it, smothering a grunt. He heaved it over to the base of the ladder, then set it down and spent a moment opening and closing his right hand, preparing it for the ordeal ahead.
Then he picked up the suitcase in his right hand, grabbed a rung in his left, and started to climb.
It was brutally difficult. Each step put an eye-watering strain on his knees, followed by the nerve-wracking experience of letting go of the rung with his left hand, beginning to topple outward, and making a desperate grab for the next rung up. It would have been awful in a well-lit room with no one hunting him. In the dark, with a desperate need to be silent, it was hellish.
When he was eight rungs up and the fingers of his right hand were screaming, his head bumped metal. He hung there in the darkness, unable to even feel around for an opening. At last he managed to hook his left arm around a rung, stretch his left hand down, and heave the suitcase up until he could curl the fingers of his left hand around the handle. Panting raggedly in the darkness, he moved his right foot up one rung and shoved his right knee under the case until his leg held most of the weight. The metal case cut into his thigh, the rung bit into his elbow, and fresh pain blossomed in the fingers of his left hand, but he was able to let go with his right hand and probe the darkness above him.