Outriders

by Jay Posey

  The moment of truth. Piper angled her view first this way, then that, trying to get a good view of the lock. With some disappointment, she discovered her device hadn’t worked exactly as intended. Either she’d misjudged its location, or the pressure from the lock had shifted her catch. At first, it appeared that the lock had seated itself completely, and Piper felt a cascade of defeat, mingled with a wave of relief she didn’t want to admit to. The idea had been sound, at least, if not the execution.

  But then, on second look, she noticed her device was angled slightly inward, which suggested that perhaps it had caught part of the lock. She fished the eating utensil out from her pocket, and carefully inserted the handle just behind her device. It shifted again, and Piper’s breath caught. Fortunately, the device didn’t drop out to the floor. After that near heart-stopping moment, Piper began working the device and the lock once more with a surgeon’s care. Sweat beaded on her forehead, her back and legs trembled from the strain of her unnatural position. But after a few minutes, there was a click, the device fell free, and the door slid open just enough to let light through from the other side.

  Piper froze in place, listening for the sounds of any alarm, movement, or reaction from whatever was on the opposite side of the door. She waited in silence longer than was strictly necessary; she knew that once she slid the door open, everything would change. There was still time to close it back, to go back to bed, to remain safe in the meager comfort of her cell.

  But no. She hadn’t lived her life in fear, not since she’d left her home. Since she’d left the old Maria behind and embraced the new Piper, the talented technical specialist for Veryn-Hakakuri, who had emerged.

  A deep breath. Stand tall.

  Piper slid the door aside and crossed the threshold.

  * * *

  SHE STEPPED INTO A PASSAGEWAY, narrow but long. A few hatches lined the sides; some doors like the one she’d just opened, others larger, on heavy hinges. It was a ship, then, most certainly. And an industrial one, from the immediate look of it. Her first impression was that she was on a drilling rig, though she couldn’t see anything that specifically identified it as such. Maybe it was a freighter. It didn’t appear to be military in nature, at the very least.

  Piper took soft, cautious steps down the passageway, her head cocked and listening for any sound of activity. At least this far, it was quiet, apart from the steady, deep, background hum of the ship. With each step further from her improvised cell, she felt the tether stretching, drawing her back, screaming a warning at the danger. She was free, yes, for the moment, but her freedom brought with it an exhilarating terror; the liberty of a sparrow in the open sky, with a hawk soaring high above it.

  She crept about ten meters down the hall and came to a stop where a second passageway met the first in a T-intersection. There, she checked back over her shoulder, and noticed then the open door she’d left behind. She should have closed it. Anyone walking by would know she’d gotten out. But going back to slide it shut now seemed like a retreat, or a return to a cage. She couldn’t bring herself to turn around. She’d just have to take her chances.

  Piper peeked around the corner, first one way then the other. The second passageway stretched off in both directions, even longer than the one she’d first stepped into. Still no sight or sound of anyone else. She eased around the corner, turning right for no conscious reason, and continued her slow-motion escape.

  As she made her way down the second, longer passageway, an uncanniness settled on her; the heavy, unnatural emptiness of such a large ship without its crew. It wasn’t unusual for freighters or transports to run with just a handful of crewmembers, but this felt different to her. It felt wrong, somehow. Like a city block, abandoned in the middle of the day.

  It occurred to Piper in that moment that she had no idea what she was doing. She’d been so focused on just getting out of the room, that she hadn’t thought ahead to what she would do once she was free. So focused on executing the first plan, she hadn’t even realized she needed a second. Adrenaline poured through her, icing her hands and making them tremble. She stopped again, panic threatening to paralyze her. Maybe she could find the communications room. Or a place to hide. Would hiding be any different than being held captive? Where was she going? What was she even looking for?

  And some quiet, other part of her mind whispered an answer. A lifepod.

  A lifepod, maybe. Though, they’d retrieved her from one before. It probably wouldn’t be too much trouble for them to catch her again. How long would she have? Assuming they weren’t already looking for her, activating a pod would most certainly alert them to trouble. But it would only take her a minute to prep the pod and launch. And what then? Once she was in open space she could at least get some idea of where she was. Maybe she could even use the communications array to call for help, if she could work fast enough. Or maybe, if she was truly lucky, maybe they’d decide she wasn’t worth the trouble and wouldn’t pursue her.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was at least a goal. And a goal was enough to get her moving.

  Piper moved down the passageway cautiously, but with a greater sense of purpose. The fear was still with her, but it was restrained now, tangled up with the urgency of the new plan. Her brain was busy scanning the surroundings for signs or directions to the nearest lifepod, it couldn’t be bothered to focus solely on being afraid.

  Further down, the passageway curved gently leftward, and Piper followed it around with one hand trailing along the bulkhead beside her. The ship had a strange shape, or at least one that was unfamiliar to her, judging from the layout. It occurred to her then that she might very well be in the middle of the ship, that she might need to go above or below or… outward, to find a pod. Another complication she’d forgotten to account for.

  As she continued around the curve, the low rumble of someone speaking caught her by surprise. It made her freeze in place, a mouse in the open when the cat prowls in.

  The person was too far away, speaking too quietly for her to make out the words. But as she stood there, listening for several seconds, it seemed to her that the voice was growing gradually louder. Underneath it, she could hear the edges of some other sound as well, something metallic. Though a woman had been bringing her food, Piper hadn’t actually seen another person in who knew how long, and some deeply human need for connection overpowered her animal instinct to flee. She found herself creeping forward, curiosity drawing her. She moved to the inner curve of the bulkhead, pressed herself against it, slipped slowly around the bend. A second voice joined the first; lighter, tone more familiar. The woman, then.

  Whatever the two were doing, they’d stopped moving. But they were working on something. She could hear the taps and clinks and occasional grunt of effort, sounds she’d been very familiar with on YN-773. It made her think of Gennady.

  Piper continued her glacial advance until the empty passageway ahead of her was suddenly no longer empty.

  The rounded, metallic edge of some device appeared in her view; something large, man-sized, maybe, though she could see only a small portion of it.

  “Is that going to hold?” the woman said to the man, and Piper was shocked at how loud and clear the words were. It brought her back to herself, reminded her of how foolish she was being.

  “Yeah, should be fine,” the man answered. “Probably won’t make much difference to him one way or the other, anyway.”

  Back the other way, then. Piper backpedaled a few steps, slowly, until she was sure she was out of view and not likely to be followed. When she turned around, she was nearly face to face with a man.

  Piper jerked back reflexively and yelped. The man didn’t react at all. And he didn’t look happy.

  “Doc, you all right?” the woman said from behind Piper, and the man raised his hand to silence her. He didn’t take his eyes from Piper.

  “I- I’m…” Piper sputtered. Her mouth started moving without any input from her brain. “I just… The door was unlocked,
I thought…” she sputtered. The man shook his head. He was steel-eyed and sharp-jawed; not overly muscular, but rounded and thick at the shoulders in a way that spoke of long, enduring strength. A man used to work, and hardship. She fell silent under his gaze.

  “I can appreciate you taking some initiative,” he said. “And I can forgive it, once. Once. We all gotta try.”

  Piper couldn’t look the man in the eyes. She dropped her gaze, nodded her head.

  “You want to walk back to your room, or am I going to have to carry you?”

  Piper shook her head.

  “Well come on, then,” he said.

  Piper obediently returned to her room, with the man just behind her, and was amazed at how short a walk back it was. The strangeness of the silent ship and the fear had stretched everything, made it seem like she’d been out for hours, and had covered far more ground. In reality, judging from the thirty seconds or so it took to reach her room again, she’d probably only been out a few minutes.

  When they reached the door, a small splotch of tan on the floor inside caught Piper’s eye. She realized it was a bit of the paste she’d used to secure her device to the door frame, and she had the presence of mind to step on it as she entered the room. It was tricky in that split second to judge how much pressure she could apply without crushing it into the floor, but she didn’t have any chance to ensure she’d gotten it right. The man continued into the room right behind her, and with his presence shepherded her towards her bed.

  “Sit down,” he said. Piper sat on the edge of her cot, kept her left foot firm against the floor. To her relief, she felt a bulge just behind her big toe. Thankfully, the device had stuck. “You sit there, keep your hands where I can see them, and don’t move.”

  Piper nodded, kept her eyes on the floor, clasped her hands in front of her and rested her forearms on her knees. The man turned and crouched down by the door. He examined the lock, ran his thumb along the door frame and the edge of the door.

  “It was just open,” Piper said, quietly. She didn’t raise her head, but she lifted her eyes towards him. “I don’t even know why I checked, I just thought–”

  The man glanced over his shoulder at her and silenced her with his look. Piper returned her gaze to her hands, but watched the man with her peripheral vision. He worked a few moments more, stood and checked the upper part of the door. The man’s hands looked rough and heavy with strength, like a carpenter’s, but his movement had an almost lyrical fluidity to it; like a pianist, or a surgeon.

  And Piper realized, the woman had called him “Doc”. Was he the one that had repaired her injured wrist?

  He turned back around, caught her watching him.

  “We’ve been trying to keep things as friendly as we can,” he said. “I don’t know what happened here, but do it again, and we’re not going to be so nice anymore. Understood?”

  Piper nodded. The man lingered in the room for a span, his heavy silence pressing home the point. It occurred to Piper then that none of them had laid hands on her except to tend to her injuries. But she understood from the way the man held himself that there was no guarantee such behavior would continue, if she made any more trouble.

  He gave her a curt nod, his point thoroughly made, and then left the room. The door slid shut, the lock clicked, and Piper was prisoner once more. The door shifted back and forth a few times, the man – “Doc”, she reminded herself – undoubtedly ensuring it was properly sealed. Piper flopped down on her bed, with tears of stress and exhaustion and defeat welling up and falling unheeded.

  It’d been so stupid. So foolish to break out with no idea what to do next. She’d accomplished nothing other than angering her captors. And the precious few minutes of freedom, as haunted as they’d been, made her return to captivity seem all the more bitter. She lay on her bed weeping for herself, weeping for what she’d lost, and for the unknown future that lay ahead.

  But even in the midst of her despair, Piper’s mind was at work, of its own accord. Working on another plan. And after she’d cried her tears, and had settled enough to hear it, her mind whispered to her once again.

  It seemed obvious to her then, lying once more in her cell. Of course she would try again. She had to. Because now, she knew what she had to do.

  TWELVE

  “CAPTAIN?” a voice said, calling Commodore Rianne Liao back to the real world. She looked up from her desk, where she’d been watching a short video loop of her husband and two sons at play.

  “Yes,” Liao said. She closed out the display and blinked away the memories, her mind already cleanly detaching itself from the family she’d left back on Mars and fixing itself on the one she commanded on her ship. “What is it?”

  Commander Bismah Gohar, her executive officer, stepped through the door into her quarters, with a secure pad in hand.

  “We just received this from Command, coded IMMEDIATE,” Gohar said. He was tense, serious, as he handed the pad over.

  Liao took the pad, synced with it, activated the graph. There was a lot of information attached, but the action items were clear and succinct.

  “You’re sure this is properly authorized?” she asked, looking back up at her XO.

  “I confirmed it with Central,” he answered. “We’re not the only ones to receive it.”

  “Something going on back home that I missed?”

  Gohar shook his head. “Not that I know of, captain. Nothing on the news, anyway.”

  “I’ll have to make some calls,” Liao said. She got to her feet, straightened her uniform. “But before that, I guess we better hop to it.”

  “Aye, captain.”

  As Liao led the way back to the bridge of CMAV Relentless, her thoughts were divided. Half of them were occupied by a running checklist of all the necessary operations for changing course. The other half tried to untangle the mystery behind her new orders. What would be the motivation behind tightening the approach corridors around Mars?

  There was already tension between her planet and Earth over the Central Martian Authority’s management of the flow of trade and traffic. And though Liao was a staunch supporter of her own world, she understood the Terrans’ concerns, however unfounded she herself thought they might be. And now, the CMA seemed to be taking the very action that the Earthlings had been so anxious about. Any further restriction of access to Mars would only exacerbate the issues. The fact that there had been no obvious emergent threat only made it all the more worrying.

  But none of her uncertainty mattered when it came to her duty. As she stepped onto the bridge of Relentless and assumed command, she set aside her worries and directed her crew to their new course of action.

  THIRTEEN

  LINCOLN’S first thought was that he had thrown up in an artificial pine forest. When he opened his eyes and saw the shredded fabric of a car’s roof interior, he realized that someone else had thrown up, long ago, and he was just lying over it. He intended to curse, but the only sound he made was a weak groan.

  “Hey, there’s our man,” someone said from the front of the vehicle. A face appeared. Mike. “Hey buddy. Sorry about the headache. And, you know. The rest of you too. You got ornery. Had to use a stunner to settle you down.”

  Now that Mike mentioned it, Lincoln noticed that his arms and legs were heavy and aching, like he’d had an intense workout the day before. He thought about sitting up, but his abs didn’t cooperate.

  “Just relax, cap,” Mike said. “Be home in a few.”

  Lincoln closed his eyes again, drew half of a deep breath and had to stop because the smell almost made him sick. He cleared his throat.

  “We get jumped?” he asked.

  “You did,” Mike answered. “Not the most subtle extraction ever, but looks like it worked all right. I think you might’ve hurt mas’sarnt’s feelings though.”

  Lincoln gave sitting up another shot and, with some effort, managed to roll himself up on the bench seat. Mike and Wright were both up front.

  “You just
snatch-and-grabbed your ranking officer?” Lincoln asked.

  “Yes sir, we did,” Mike answered. “Pretty fun, actually.”

  “You could’ve given me a heads up.”

  “Had to make it look real,” Wright said.

  Lincoln touched his jaw, felt the puffy tenderness.

  “I thought you were supposed to keep me out of harm’s way,” he said.

  “I might’ve hurt you a little,” Wright said. “But you weren’t in any danger of actual harm.” She glanced over her shoulder at him then and in the light coming in through the windshield, he saw the silhouette of a goose egg on her forehead, just above and in front of her right temple.

  “That my work?” he said, pointing up at the injury. Wright touched it lightly with her fingertips, gave a little shrug.

  “Next time I’ll go deeper on that hold.”

  “Next time I won’t fall for the ol’ kiss-me trick.”

  “What?” Mike said, looking at Wright. “You did not!” he said, laughing.

  “Are you going as fast as you can, sergeant?” she said, not amused. “We need to get back and see how much damage we just did.”

  “Nah, I let the car take over, to keep us inconspicuous-like. We got time. I want to hear more about this kiss-me trick.”

  “You think they’ll buy the detector-as-a-tracking-device bit?” Lincoln said, ignoring Mike’s comment. “I assume that’s what you were after.”

  “Won’t know until we see,” Wright said. “But I think it’s safe to say your little walk just burned three of us for any more live surveillance.”

  “Yeah, gosh, too bad we all had to go along instead of just me, on my own, huh?” Lincoln said, getting a dig of his own in. “Might not be a total loss, though.” He activated his augmented reality holoscreen and accessed his image capture databank. The most recent one, taken more by reflex than by conscious thought, was the image he’d captured just before Mike had stunned him. A picture of Black Coat.