Torchship Pilot

by Karl K Gallagher

  The soldier jumped and looked around, dropping his screen. He opened the door partway to answer her. “Hey. You shouldn’t be here. It’s a restricted facility.” He wore half a stripe, marking him as a trained recruit.

  “I just need to get out of the rain. I don’t want to cross the fence.”

  “Go home,” he ordered.

  “I can’t, they’re fighting too much, I can’t stand it. I can go home in the morning, they’ll have calmed down then.”

  “So call it in.”

  “No, no way. If they get another anti-social write-up I’ll have to go to boarding home. They don’t deserve that.”

  “Even after chasing you out into the rain?”

  “They didn’t chase me, I just left ‘cause I couldn’t stand to hear it anymore.” She shivered—not, dammit, acting. “It wasn’t raining then either.”

  “If you’re here at shift change I’ll get in trouble.”

  “Just until the rain stops and then I’ll be gone, I promise.”

  The soldier gave in. “All right. Just stay on that side of the shack so you’re not crossing the perimeter.”

  “Thanks. Um, is there a camera in there? If I’m recorded it’ll mean a write-up.”

  “There’s one.” He reached up to a box on the ceiling and tugged on a wire. “Oops.”

  Mitchie slid in through the open door. “Oooh, it’s warm in here.” She ran her hands through her hair to squeeze the water out. The soldier’s arrested expression showed the pose had worked just like she wanted it to. “I’m sorry, I’ll stay out of your way. I don’t want to mess up your work.”

  “No, no,” he said. “Nothing ever comes through this gate on night shift.” Which was true, and why Pickett had chosen it for their entry.

  “Must be boring.” With a few more prompts Mitchie had him babbling away, not that he had any info of interest. Or much of a life story. She shifted her approach. “Hey—you saved me from freezing to death out there. Can I do something nice for you?” She put her hand on his chest and smiled up at him.

  The soldier blushed. “Um, well, what do you—how old are you?” She felt his heart pound harder under her hand.

  “I’m nineteen.”

  “I don’t know if that’s—um.”

  She dropped to one knee in front of him and slid her hands around his waist. One hand dropped down as her left tugged on his fastenings. “Oh—are you sure the camera’s off?”

  As he looked up she drew the knife from her left boot. “Yeah, sure,” he said.

  She pushed up hard with her left leg, putting full power behind the blade as she stabbed under the sternum. Trained Recruit Whatsisname expired without any more noise. Lousy last words, she thought.

  Mitchie shoved the body under a console without getting too much blood on her. Fortunately the boy’s uniform contained the rest of the mess, if not the smell. She stepped back out into the rain and waved both arms until she saw the rest of the team coming down the hill. Poking around the shack she found the cleaning cabinet and wiped her hands with a rag.

  “It’s past midnight!” said Pickett as he came in.

  “I know,” answered Mitchie. “Can you open the other door without setting off any alarms?”

  The electronics tech started fiddling with the door into the secure side of the fence. “It’s mechanical.” He pulled it open and led the team out. Lavrie lagged behind to overwrite the camera records of their approach with empty images. Mitchie grabbed the dead boy’s rifle from the rack in the corner.

  Their target was a communication antenna on a hilltop, aimed at a relay satellite that the hill blocked from the Central Operation Center’s line of sight. Pickett popped open the door at its base revealing tangled cables. Shu elbowed him out of the way and started picking through them. When Lavrie caught up Mitchie recovered her clothes and redressed while the males had their back turned. The t-shirt she dropped in the mud. Lavrie picked it up and put it in a trash bag.

  The backpacks had all been emptied. Lavrie had hooked the boxes together while Shu had infiltrated a cable into one of the connectors in the box.

  The captured rifle had a thermal scope. Mitchie used it to check for patrols. Everyone seemed to be staying out of the rain.

  “It’s away,” sighed Shu. The three techs took a seat in the mud.

  Mitchie took a knee to hide from anyone on the far side of the hill. “How much longer?” she asked.

  “Not very,” said Pickett.

  “It has to analyze their ice and create countermeasures, then extract the data,” explained Shu. “Should be less than an hour.”

  Mitchie turned to face the trio. “Y’all brought self-modifying code to a Fusion world?”

  “It was in the briefing doc,” said Lavrie defensively.

  “Most of my copy of the briefing doc said ‘DELETED—INSUFFICIENT NEED TO KNOW.’ Y’all really do have a death wish.”

  “It’s self-deleting. They’ll never know we were here,” said Pickett.

  “They’ll know someone was here when they find that boy at the gate.” No one wanted to answer that.

  Mitchie made them keep shifting to different spots. When Pickett grumbled she explained, “You’re changing the runoff pattern for the rain. Don’t need to make it obvious we were waiting here a while.”

  Shu cried, “It’s through! Data’s coming in.”

  “Good,” said Mitchie. She moved back up to the crest of the hill. This time the rifle scope found something. A light approached them on the perimeter road. “Crap. I need to get ahead of that. Meet me at the gate.”

  She slid when the slope allowed it, carefully keeping the rifle’s muzzle clear of the mud, and ran the rest of the way. The light flickered in the rain. She lost sight of it completely when she reached the flat. A boulder by the shack made a good firing position. I’m pretty well camouflaged if it gets here before the rain washes this stuff off.

  The light appeared coming around a curve. It was an open-top one-man skimmer. Switching the rifle scope to visual revealed multiple stripes on the driver’s sleeve. Sergeant of the guard, coming to spank his baby, thought Mitchie. Probably thinks the kid turned off the camera to take a nap.

  She waited for him to reach a straight portion of the road. He moved so little when the bullet hit his chest she thought she’d missed. After two more hits the skimmer veered off the road and rolled over.

  Mitchie trotted up to the wreck. The sergeant was dead. She slung the rifle and opened the compartments at the back of the skimmer.

  Pickett arrived as she started searching the corpse. “I thought you didn’t want them to know we were here,” he snarled.

  “I’m working on that. Take this.” She unslung the rifle and tossed it to him then went back to the sergeant’s belt pouches. “Ha! Dialers.” Mitchie held up a cylinder in each hand.

  Pickett stepped back at the sight of the grenades. “What are they for?”

  “Clean-up.” She twisted the cap to ‘INCENDIARY,’ thumbed the recessed button on the end, and dropped it on the body. Pickett turned and ran. “Not that way! Back to the gate.”

  The skimmer burned brightly as they reached the gate shack. Shu and Lavrie waited with alarmed expressions. “Do you still need those boxes?” asked Mitchie.

  “No,” said Shu, “we’ve each got copies of the data.”

  “Pile them in that corner,” she pointed. She hauled the boy’s body to the middle of the floor. “Lay the rifle by the door.” Her knife was still stuck in his chest. She wrapped his hand around the hilt. “Get out, all of you.”

  When the techs were clear of the shack she committed dialer-arson again and walked out. “Now we were never here,” she said.

  “Looks like we left a mark,” said Lavrie.

  “Nope,” replied Mitchie. “Persecuted recruit flips and shoots the mean old sergeant picking on him, then commits suicide out of remorse. Old story. No need for them to look any deeper.” The techs just stared at the fire. “Let’s get back to the s
hip.”

  Acting drunk as they walked into the Port District was easy. Many hours of hiking in rain and the stress of the mission was telling on them. Mitchie took a flask out of her pack and passed it around. “Drink a little, spill a lot. We need to get the smell right.”

  A pushcart selling mixed drinks gave them something to hold as they weaved through the thinning crowd. Mitchie looked for a manned cab.

  One was dropping partiers off at a bar. She leaned on the driver’s window. “Hey, friend. Take us back to our ship? Skipper’ll pay you there.”

  “Pay up front.”

  “Captain’s good for it. Call him and ask. AS Sunflower.”

  The cabbie called the spaceport and was patched through. The purser was passing himself off as the new captain to the locals. The call ended with, “If any of them throw up in my cab I’m charging you double. . . . Really? Okay.” He looked at the Diskers. “Get in.”

  Spaceport security skipped checking IDs after smelling Pickett’s breath. The purser sent the cabbie off happy. Mitchie reached the cargo hold first.

  She’d ordered Setta to jack up fares to discourage passengers, but there were still a dozen of them standing in the hold. She quietly told the techs, “Go up to the galley. We’ll want to secure the data where that lot won’t trip over it.” The trio headed up the ladder.

  With all the new cargo containers the passengers were crowded into less than a third of the hold. There was something odd about them. Mitchie realized she hadn’t seen any of them do the ‘I wasn’t looking at you’ head turn. None of the men were looking at Setta either. Not putting up with ogling was a relief, but seemed out of character for men that age.

  Mitchie waved the deckhand over.

  “I didn’t trade any body parts this time, ma’am, I swear,” said Setta. “They just coughed up more stuff whenever I pushed them.”

  “How are the passengers? Did you have to slap them down?”

  “No, they’re fine. Kinda shy even. A lot of this stuff is payment for their passage.”

  Mitchie looked over the passengers again. By Fusion Navy standards they were all a month overdue for a haircut. Ages were all within a few years of thirty. Outfits were all business-fashionable in medium shades of brown or gray. Any one of them she would look right past on a sidewalk. All together . . . This is what my undercover work instructor called ‘conspicuously inconspicuous.’

  “Carry on, Setta.”

  Mitchie headed for the converter room hatch. Down below Guo was instructing his newbies in how to prep for launch. They came to attention as she came in.

  “As you were. Do you have any food down here?”

  “A case of survival rations, and some snacks,” answered Guo. The ‘why’ was in his expression.

  “I think the passengers are a hijack risk. Hard-lock the hatch behind me. We’ll figure out shifts for you later.”

  The EM3 asked, “If they’re hijackers why are we taking them, ma’am?”

  Mitchie grinned. “They’re our ticket out.”

  The purser and Setta were the last to be informed. They came up the ladder to find a pistol-armed Shu guarding the hatch.

  The purser gasped then tried to cover his embarrassment by snarling at Setta, “Don’t you get alarmed when someone’s waving a gun around?”

  She laughed. “On this ship nothing surprises me anymore.”

  Either their smuggling contacts or the employer of the passengers arranged their safe passage to the Turner gate.

  The trip through the Turner system had only one bit of excitement. Mitchie missed most of it. Pickett heard someone trying to unlock the main deck hatch. He popped the hatch open and shot the guy in the chest, then slammed it shut. The leader of the passengers began ranting over the PA.

  Hiroshi had the con. He cut the torch, fired the maneuvering thrusters to let the passengers drift into the middle of the hold, then burned the torch to slam them into the deck at twenty gravs.

  Mitchie had been woken by the shot. Lying alone in bed she said, “Crap. I’m going to have to write a report on that.”

  To the amazement of all on board the shot guy lived.

  The passengers were cowed enough that Mitchie allowed shift changes for the converter room to go through the hold. Guo appreciated getting to sleep in a real bed again after a week in a hammock.

  She didn’t let him get much sleep the first night.

  As they cuddled Guo worked up the nerve to tackle a dangerous topic. “Hey. Maybe when we get back you could try transferring to work for Admiral Galen?”

  “To do what?”

  “Command a ship. They’re desperate for anyone with leadership. You’d get a destroyer at least.”

  Mitchie rolled onto her back. “All I know of ship combat tactics is running and hiding. I’ve never worked on a warship, I don’t know how to run one.”

  “They have a school for that. It’s on Nevaeh. The rest you have down.”

  “I’m trying to imagine it,” she said. “Half the crew would hear rumors about Schwartzenberger and assume I murdered him to take command. The other half would hear rumors I fucked Galen to get a warship command. Pass.”

  “You wouldn’t be working for an admiral who hates you.”

  “No, I’d be working for some commodore who might be pissed I took his protégé’s slot. Besides, Chu can’t hate me that much. He’s giving me missions.”

  “Maybe he hates you and wants to get you killed,” said Guo.

  “If he really hated me he’d park me on an asteroid base somewhere and let me rot.” Mitchie shivered, remembering when she’d thought she was headed for that.

  “What’s so bad about an asteroid? It’s safe. Restful. You deserve a break.”

  “I don’t want a break.”

  Guo decided to keep pushing. “What do you want?”

  Mitchie stared at the ceiling. “I want to hurt them. I want them all to feel as much pain as I felt.” She turned on her side to look Guo in the eye. “That’s what intelligence missions give me. A chance to hurt the Fusion. I’d never have that much opportunity commanding a warship.” She smiled. “Besides, warship commanders aren’t allowed to screw any of their crew.”

  “Well, in that case . . .” Guo pulled her close.

  Turner System, acceleration 10 m/s2

  Mitchie added the noodles to the boiling water. Then she tossed in some more, just in case someone was famished. Remembering months of short rations during the trip to Old Earth made her overfeed the crew when it was her turn to cook. She checked the pot lid was in place, ready to snap on if acceleration stopped.

  Behind her Guo said, “In Classical times the Master’s philosophy was used to guide society as a whole. That’s not practical today, except for parts of Tiantan. Now we use it for self-improvement. It’s a way to set standards for ourselves and learn to meet them.”

  Mitchie looked over the table. Most of the crew wasn’t there yet. The new mechanic, Ye, had asked Guo about the book he was reading. The follow-up questions had elicited a summary of the Confucian Revival. No surprise, it was Guo’s favorite subject.

  What did surprise her was following the entire conversation without asking for any translations. Her Mandarin vocabulary had filled out. Or at least she’d learned her husband’s favorite words.

  “What’s the hardest part of it?” asked Ye.

  “Living up to the principles. Memorizing the rules just takes time. Obeying them takes work. How much work can depend on your situation. Respect for authority can be hard when you’re at the bottom of the ladder.” Guo pointed at Ye’s two stripes. “The higher you go—” he touched his own rank insignia, a rocker over three chevrons “—the easier it gets.”

  Mitchie mentally rehearsed her comment to make sure she had the pronunciation right. “Filial piety is easier when light-years away from your family,” she said in Mandarin.

  Guo nodded.

  She hugged him then turned back to the stove.

  ***

  The
smell hit her as Mitchie closed the cabin hatch. The memory came back to her vividly. It didn’t fade until she’d emptied her stomach into their sink.

  Guo had been reading on their bed. He dropped the book on his pillow and stood. “Honey? What’s the matter?”

  She turned the water on to clear the sink and spat. “Sorry. Bad memory.”

  “Are you coming down sick?” He stood behind her and put a hand on her forehead.

  “No, don’t think so.” Mitchie waved at where the toilet folded into the bulkhead. “Did you just use the crapper?”

  She saw him pale in the mirror. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll turn up the airflow, I didn’t realize—”

  “No, leave the vents alone. It wasn’t that.” The sink was mostly clean. She scooped up some water to rinse her mouth. “The smell just reminded me of something. Nasty bit from Lapis.”

  “You’ve been vague about that data raid,” said Guo. “I knew it had to be worse than you were admitting.” He stroked her shoulders and back. When she relaxed enough to lean into him he guided her onto the bed. Guo removed her boots and began rubbing her feet. “So what happened?”

  “There was a gate guard,” she reluctantly began. “Just a kid. Had to be fresh out of training camp. I manipulated him like clay. But I knew he wouldn’t let the team through. So I knifed him. Had to secure the body. It smelled of shit. Shit and blood.”

  Guo moved up to her calves. “But the mission was successful.”

  “Yeah. They may still not know we were there. I just hate having to kill the kid.”

  “There were three thousand men on that battleship. If you can save us having to blow up another one that’s a lot of lives for the one guy.”

  “Not the same. This was . . . personal. Intimate. Treacherous.” Mitchie paused. “I keep seeing him with Derry’s face.”

  Guo’s fingers paused for an instant on her leg. Mitchie rarely talked about her one-time fiancé. Derry’s death a decade ago in a Fusion intimidation incident had put her on her career. All her efforts to hurt the Fusion were revenge for Derry.