by M. D. Cooper
he complained.
When prom arrived, Lyssa was secretly pleased to find herself in a restrained mating dance with another gray parrot with lovely gold eyes.
The game ended with a spiral of birds flying higher into the sky, Lyssa and Fred standing in the center of the tornado. Overcome with emotion, Lyssa joined the rising birds and experienced joy like she had never felt, swelling as part of a greater whole toward some bright ceiling.
He didn’t move. Fred remained rooted to the floor, spreading his wings and turning his head to look up at her with one eye at a time, his black beak opening and closing indecisively.
Lyssa hovered in the air, flapping her wings so she could look down at him. His gray parrot form blurred and glitched.
CHAPTER TWELVE
STELLAR DATE: 09.14.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Mars 1 Port Authority Terminal 983-A4
REGION: Mars 1 Ring, Mars Protectorate, InnerSol
Petral’s voice came over the Link, cutting into Andy’s mind like a knife.
Andy and Tim were in a lift heading back to the main level for the port of entry. The car was packed with tourists and other spacers in shipsuits. A woman next to Tim kept scowling at the puppy as it whined into Tim’s neck.
Fran said. She must have been waiting for Link traffic.
Petral’s voice was icy.
Andy glanced at the puppy squirming in Tim’s arms.
Andy took a deep, slow breath and looked around the lift car at the various faces of other passengers lost in their own thoughts. Any one of them could be an agent of Heartbridge. Or just someone out looking for a bite to eat.
When the lift doors opened—in roughly one minute—they would have three hundred meters of terminal to cross before reaching the maglev that led out to the docking ring where Sunny Skies was berthed.
The terminal would be filled with people, benches, vendor stalls, planting boxes, cargo, and whatever else might serve as obstacles between the lift and where they needed to go. That didn’t account for whatever Heartbridge might be doing in space right now, gathering another drone attack or—the easiest solution—manipulating the Marsian Port Authority to put a hold on their flight release. All a hold required was a bribe, or even simpler: anyone could send notice of a bio-hazard or funds owed for some medical service. Port authorities everywhere were always looking for reasons to hold a ship and draw more docking fees.
Andy gritted his teeth. Petral had said she could hide them among the hundreds of ships that left Cruithne for Mars 1. Whatever had happened, he couldn’t blame her. He should have known it was only a matter of time before an entity like Heartbridge realized Worry’s End had arrived at the Ring. He had expected to have more than three hours.
“Tim,” Andy said. “Move to this side of me.” When Tim didn’t respond immediately, Andy shifted him to his left side.
“Hey, Dad,” Tim complained. “You’re waking up Em.”
“I don’t think Em was sleeping. I need to be able to hold your hand. When the door opens, I want you staying right with me. So we’re going to hold hands, all right?” He glanced down at Tim, realizing his son wasn’t going to be able to hold a squirming puppy with one hand.
“Here,” he said, and unfastened the front of Tim’s shipsuit. It wasn’t as loose as he remembered it being, a reminder that he needed to buy the kids clothes soon. “Put him in here and we’ll zip him up. It will be easier to carry him that way.”
“Are we going to have to run, Dad?” Tim said, eyes growing wide. “Like at Cruithne?”
The woman who had been scowling at the puppy shifted her disapproving gaze to Andy. He ignored her and adjusted Em inside Tim’s shirt. The puppy licked his hand but was otherwise compliant.
“You’re a calm little guy,” Andy said. He put his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “You’re a good little guy, too. I just want to make sure Em is secure while we’re crossing the terminal. If he got out of your hands in a place with all these people, it could be hard to catch him again and he might get hurt. If you’re going to take care of him, you need to start thinking ahead to the things that might go wrong.”
“All the things?” Tim asked. “That’s a lot of things. I’d be worried all the time like you.”
Andy smirked. “Not all the things. Just the most likely things.
The lift stopped and the doors slid open, disgorging its passengers into the busy terminal. The hollow sounds of vendors and overhead announcements reached inside the car.
Andy patted the pistol at his waist and took Tim’s hand. Together, they exited the lift and turned left to join the flow of people heading down the terminal toward the ports of entry maglevs. The crowd looked just like it had before, with travelers focused on their destinations and vendors trying to sell them things.
Andy swallowed. She was right. Petral hadn’t failed to hide them. He’d lit a thousand-meter sign pointing to their presence on the Ring. He glanced down at Em, who was nuzzling Tim’s neck and looking out at the terminal with wide brown eyes. The expression on Tim’s face as he held the dog was enough justification for now.
he said.
Fran pressed.
Petral chuckled over the Link.
The corridor opened into the sweeping main terminal, lined on Andy’s left by the maglev terminals that spidered out to the docking rings at regular intervals. At first, he didn’t see anything unusual. Then a soldier in M1G uniform appeared in the crowd. More appeared, and Andy realized they were walking into a cordon.
“Tuck the dog inside your shirt, Tim,” he said, not looking down. “All the way.”
“But he won’t be able to breathe.”
“He’ll be fine. Do it now.”
Tim obeyed, adjusting the collar of his shipsuit so Em slipped down inside. Now Tim looked like he was hiding a stuffed toy in his shirt.
Andy looked around the terminal, desperate for another direction to walk that wouldn’t look like they were avoiding the soldiers. He checked the ceiling for sensors. The ornate carvings seemed to have made this area free of overhead surveillance. The walls were lined with entry ports and their close-proximity scanners or vendor’s stalls. The plant boxes scattered throughout the space may have hidden surveillance equipment but it was impossible to tell among the greenery. As he searched, he expected eyes to meet his but no one appeared to be paying attention.
A toy store on the far side of the terminal came into view. Andy pulled Tim and pointed toward the store. “Look at that,” he said. “You want a toy?”
Looking confused, Tim only nodded as Andy pulled him away from the thickening group of soldiers covering access to the maglev terminals.
“We’re going into that toy store,” Andy said. “We’re not going to buy anything. We’re going to walk in and then look back out to watch the people in the terminal. Do you understand?”
“Em’s scratching me,” Tim complained.
“Keep him still. “
“I don’t know if I can, Dad.”
They were nearly to the front of the toy store. A clear plas display held hundreds of tiny drones playing out a space battle, shooting colored lights at each other. Several robotic stuffed animals tottered around the floor in front of the entrance.
“Ow!” Tim yelled. He pulled away from Andy and struggled with the front of his shirt. “Stop, Em! Stop scratching me!”
Tim’s high voice cut through the crowd. Faces turned their direction. Andy studied the crowd frantically as he moved to grab Tim’s hand again.
“Tim,” he hissed. “Be quiet.”
“Stop, Em!” Tim shouted, turning the dog’s name into a high-pitched squeal that sounded like air-raid siren.
Andy grabbed Tim and picked him up sideways against his chest in a sitting position. Tim squirmed, kicking his legs and nearly knocking over a display of stacked multicolored balls. Ignoring Tim’s angry cries, Andy moved deliberately into the shop without looking back to see if anyone was watching. He turned so Tim couldn’t kick anything as the dog started yelping with fear, trying to fight his way out of Tim’s shirt.
The store was barely ten meters deep. Andy ran between high shelves stacked with packages and rows of motion-activated dolls that waved their arms and cheered as he rushed past.
At the back wall, he found what he had been hoping for: a plain door into a rear stock area. Andy pushed his way through and slammed the door closed with his shoulder, then faced forward to find himself staring at a young man with an armload of stuffed toys.
“Hey!” the man said. “You can’t be back here.”
“Give me a second,” Andy rasped, panting. He dropped Tim and grabbed his shoulders to make him stand still.
“Now unfasten your collar,” Andy said, trying to keep his voice calm.
Tim struggled with the closure.
“What are you doing to that kid?” the clerk asked. “You need to get out of here. I mean it.”
“Is there another exit?” Andy demanded.
“Uh,” the man stammered. “There’s a hatch into the maintenance tunnel but that’s admin-only.”
“Is it unlocked?” Andy asked. He reached into Tim’s open shipsuit and grabbed the terrified dog.
“That’s all right, buddy,” Andy soothed. “That’s all right.”
They puppy was surprisingly muscular and his entire body was trembling. Andy set him on the floor and Em immediately positioned himself between Andy’s feet, looking up at the clerk with distrust.
“We’re turning his world upside down,” Andy said.
“Jeez,” the clerk said. “You bought one of those ship dogs? Did you make sure it was clean first?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Andy asked.
“Usually they’re implanted with all sorts of tech. Pirates use them to hack ships from the inside.”
“You’re kidding me,” Andy said.
“They’re basically little transponder-amplifiers.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“No,” the clerk said, taking a step back from Andy’s angry expression. “I’m studying for the police entrance exam. It was a question on the test.”
Andy picked Em up under his front legs and held him out so he could see his bare stomach. He couldn’t find any scars from surgery, which didn’t mean anything. He held the puppy against his chest for a minute before passing him to Tim.
Someone pounded on the door at Andy’s back.
“Terminal Security!” a voice shouted, muffled by the thick door. “Open this door.”
Andy locked eyes with the clerk. “You better run,” he said. “They’re going to come in here shooting. You got an office or something where you can hide?”
Eyes wide with fear, the clerk nodded. He dropped the stuffed animals, spun and ran away between the storage racks.
Andy pulled out his pistol and checked the charge indicator. He had about thirty shots. He looked around quickly for something to brace against the door but found only the speed racks stacked with product.
“Get out of the way, Tim,” he said, pointing toward the back of the room.
With Tim clear, he put the pistol back in his waistband, then jumped to grab the tallest shelf he could reach. He hung for a few hearbeats, the thin metal digging into his fingers, before rocking back toward the door. The rack tumbled over with him. He rolled away to avoid getting crushed between the falling boxes and the door. When a box hit his foot, however, he discovered they were only full of more stuffed animals.
The door slammed open as someone hit it from the other side and caught on t
he rack. A muscled arm reached through the opening, followed by the grimacing face of an angry soldier.
Andy sprinted between the high shelves. He found Tim beside a square hatch sealed by a rotating pressure lock. Andy grunted as he forced the handle, then yanked the door open and pushed Tim through.
“It’s dark in there!” Tim said.
“It’s going to be darker in here,” Andy answered. He ducked to follow Tim through the low door in a dimly lit maintenance tunnel, then pulled the hatch closed behind him and spun the handle from the inside. Getting Tim behind him, he used three shots from the pulse pistol to warp the sections of the hatch where the lock engaged.
When the sound of the shots died down, Andy realized Em was still whimpering and Tim had been soothing him quietly, saying, “It’s all right, buddy,” mimicking what Andy had told him before.
Andy looked up and down the tunnel, trying to remember where they were in relation to the overall terminal. He chose the right-hand direction and took Tim’s hand to lead him deeper into the dark.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
STELLAR DATE: 09.14.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Mars 1 Guard Sector 985 Garrison
REGION: Mars 1 Ring, Mars Protectorate, InnerSol
Petral seemed to have stopped caring about where they ran, only that the path was leading them generally toward the outer edge of the Ring. Cara struggled to keep up with the long-legged woman as she led the way down a narrow corridor with closely spaced doors on either side. Every so often, a bleary-eyed M1G soldier stuck their head out a door to squint at the light and complain about the noise, then get an eyeful of Petral. Mouths fell open, faces were rubbed. One soldier had the presence of mind to grin at her, only to get a hard shove out of the way when he stepped too far into the corridor.
When they reached the bulkhead door at the end of the barracks hall, Petral spun the lock and yanked open the hatch. “Keep an eye out behind us,” she told Cara. “I don’t want any of these heroes trying to sneak up on us. For now, all they know is that we’re running through a restricted area. If it was just me, I could act like I was escaping an abusive…” she paused, then finished, “person. With you along, we’ll need a better story. You’re still my niece. We’re in a hurry to make a flight off-Ring.”