by J. S. Morin
Carl rubbed a hand over his face. Hunker down. Hide. Hope Earth Navy left before they ran out of food or had to turn into jungle savages like the marines who’d once tried living in one of these cities. None of that sounded like a plan he wanted to be part of. Leaving the Mobius also left Earth Navy Intelligence a clue that might lead right to them.
“I’ve got a plan,” Carl announced. “Kubu, can you give us a hand?”
“Sure,” Kubu said agreeably. His language skills had increased as much as his physical size. “What do you need?”
Carl looked from the canid creature to the starship and back again. It was just crazy enough that it might work. “Kubu. Think you can drag this ship into the city?”
Kubu gave a wheezing noise that passed for a laugh. “Of course. The flying house isn’t that big anymore.”
# # #
Tanny was sweating again. Two minutes after getting into the Ithaca heat, she was drenched in sweat. It made her question the use of ever showering anymore. Even clothes—cloying, sticking, heat-trapping garments all—were seeming more a hindrance than a hallmark of civilized life.
Harvesting operations were underway. A series of base camps scattered throughout the southern hemisphere were hubs for giant-wheeled ground vehicles that uprooted and collected all the plant life they came across. The raw materials would be ground up, sampled, and returned to Rucker Syndicate headquarters where an ex-Georgetown xenobiologist would evaluate them for commercial applications.
It was all bullshit. If this weren’t a stolen, squatter moon, this would be legitimate business.
Don Rucker’s number one rule of a business empire was: “You don’t make money on the legit side of the ledger.” A cover enterprise just needed to make enough money to justify its existence. Anything that made real money was best left to real businessmen.
Nothing paid like crime.
Tanny was hoping to do better. This moon was a biologist’s gold mine. The creatures were armor-plated. The poisons were insanely lethal. And the life forms that could survive that environment had to possess invaluable genetic secrets.
“Boss,” the comm squawked. “Miss Rucker.”
“What?” Tanny snapped as she activated her mic. “Can’t you tell I’m in the middle of—”
“You gotta listen to this.” For one of her grunts to cut her off mid-sentence, it had to be life or death. Tanny waited. “Attention: This system is under quarantine. No vessels may enter or leave under the authority of Admiral Vijay Pusan of Earth Navy Intelligence. All broadcasts are being monitored and recorded and may be used in criminal proceedings.”
Tanny’s blood ran cold, and a shiver came over her despite the jungle’s sweltering air. Once the initial panic subsided, her mind kicked into overdrive. Marine training spurred her to action rather than dwelling on the coming storm. “Pack it up! Bug out! Off world! This is not a drill.”
Mriy was by her side in seconds. “What’s happened?”
“Earth Navy showed up,” Tanny explained tersely. “This is it. Where’s Enzio?”
“Gone,” Mriy said. “You chased him off and good riddance.”
“Wait… Enzio… Earth Navy… You don’t think he turned on us, do you?” Tanny asked.
Mriy shook her head. “He’s no fool. Don Rucker would eat him alive.”
Don wouldn’t. Not literally, at least. But the point was valid.
“We’ve got to get off Ithaca like yesterday,” Tanny said. “Let’s just find Kubu and—”
“No time,” Mriy repeated, echoing Tanny’s own words.
“There’s time for Kubu,” Tanny argued. “He’s family.”
“He’s more a creature of this jungle than anything here. He’ll be fine. We’ll come back for him another time.”
Tanny couldn’t believe what she was hearing. While Tanny might have been a mother figure to Kubu, Mriy was his best friend. How could she even think of abandoning him here all alone?
“Never!” Tanny barked. “I’m not going to—”
But her next word was lost. If she’d still been on her marine enhancement drug regimen, Tanny would have had the reflexes to bring up an arm to defend herself. If she’d been jacked up on Recitol, she’d have had the strength in her neck muscles to shrug off the blow.
Instead, Mriy’s paw cuffed Tanny in the side of the head with a measured blow that left her reeling. When her head cleared, she was sitting in the back of a passenger shuttle with Mriy buckling the crash harness.
“We can’t,” Tanny muttered.
“We did,” Mriy replied.
# # #
Chuck sipped at his martini as he considered the message. Earth Navy. In orbit of his moon. The door to the lounge slid open, and Becky rushed to him, wrapping her arms around him with tears in her eyes and sobs in her voice.
“We’ve got to get out of this place,” she wailed.
Throwing back the last of his martini in a gulp and setting down the glass, he wrapped his arms around his wife. “There, there, baby. Don’t worry. It’ll be all right. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
“They found us, and we’re on their top-secret goddamn battleship,” Becky pointed out. “We’ve gotta leave. Now. Beat feet. Vamoose. Amscray. Why aren’t you moving yet?”
He chuckled. “Can’t believe that glorious little bastard brat of ours did it. How’d he fly a Typhoon with cojones that size? Of all the cheap, punk moves, he turned in his own pop.”
“Which is a great reason for us to depart, post-haste. Exit stage left. Ride off into the sunset. We can write Carl out of the will later.”
Chuck smoothed Becky’s hair and held her close a moment before kissing her. “Listen, baby. We can’t run. We’d never make it. This is my bed. I made it. I gotta lie on it. Speaking of which, I really need to up my game here, because I’m gonna be lyin’ my ever-lovin’ ass off when those jack-booted nimrods get planetside.”
“They’re going to arrest us!”
“Like hell they are!” Chuck said with a grin he hoped was reassuring.
Pieces of a plan floated in his head like debris from a derelict ship. All he needed to do was put enough of them together to build an escape pod.
“We look more than a little guilty, you know, living in their top-secret super weapon. We installed shag carpet for god’s sake!”
“Like hell we did,” Chuck said slyly. “No… I’m seeing it now. We’re the aggrieved parties here. Brad kept us against our will. My word against his, and Brad’s probably long gone by now. No… this is gonna be juuuuust fine.”
“I’m not liking this plan,” Becky said warily. “A lot of people have been calling you boss for months.”
“You’ve never liked any of my best plans,” Chuck said with an easy grin. “Trust me. Old Chuck Ramsey can talk his way out of anything.”
# # #
Yomin sat on a low stonewall that was serving as a bench for her, Niang, and a basic scanner. This was the nearest point outside the effective range of the tech-suppressing obelisk. The Mobius was parked a hundred meters toward the stone middle finger sticking up from the city.
Niang worked at his personal datapad. “The Sagat and the Famicom are out of range. Just picking up the Kancamagus coming up on the horizon.”
“Based on their earlier trajectory, I’m guessing the Dunkirk’s going to park over the Odysseus and stay there.”
Niang nodded with her assessment.
Why the hell hadn’t they cut and run back into the astral? It sounded horrible even in her own head. But what had they gained? Niang was a good guy, but he wasn’t worth everyone’s life.
Was he?
It was a complicated idea. Niang had been a part of the crew but only as a Roddy substitute during an ill-fated attempt at sobriety. He hadn’t wanted to come along on the adventures of the Mobius and Carl’s squabbling band of misfits. Maybe that was it. Niang wasn’t misfit enough. He was a good mechanic and a nice guy but ultimately just one face on a ship that had housed thousands
.
“Damn glad you folks came back,” Niang said, not taking his eyes from the scanner. “Hell, I might not have come back for me just to keep Enzio away.”
“Carl seems to think Enzio’s a victim in all this,” Yomin said with a sigh. “But if I’m sizing this up without the rose-colored glasses, I’m betting he came back for the Squall.”
“Seed money for a new gig,” Niang said, nodding slowly. “Hey. As long as it buys me a ride somewhere nice and non-extraditiony, I’m all for it.”
Booted footsteps on stone caused both their heads to turn and see who it was that approached.
Carl held up a hand in curt wave. “How’s the traffic report?”
“Clogged,” Yomin replied. “We’re hedged in.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Niang suggested. “We’re seeing patterns. There could be a window. All we need is to catch a break.”
Yomin snorted. “Yeah. Because Earth Navy is all about making mistakes.”
“They crashed the most expensive battleship in the fleet on a remote moon and lost it for six years,” Carl pointed out. “The higher up the chain of command you get, the more you get to see that it’s all just a clown show, one officer shuffling the blame to the next, decisions pulled out of ever-higher-ranked asses, and firepower-based decision making.”
“I’ve had my fill of this moon,” Niang said with conviction. “Playing outlaw is fun when you’re nowhere near the front lines. All the scratch I’d made working for Chuck Ramsey is tied up in assets I can’t liquefy. I just want a fresh start; don’t much care where. If my options are live in this Stone Age city, get caught by Earth Interstellar Enhanced Investigative Org, or take what’s behind the mystery curtain, I’m pulling back that curtain.”
“Even if it’s a battle fleet with orders to fire on anything that moves?” Yomin asked.
Niang shrugged. “Guns that size, we wouldn’t even feel it.”
Yomin’s mouth went dry.
Niang looked down at his datapad and his eyes lit. “Wait! This is it!”
“What’s it?” Carl asked.
Yomin didn’t care. Any news that provoked a reaction like that was good news to her.
“The Ruckers are bugging out. They’re attempting to run the blockade. They must have fifty ships.”
“Saddle up!” Carl bellowed the order for all to hear. “We’ve got our window. Time to blow this hot dog stand and never look back.”
# # #
Carl took a head count, remembering he had two more than he’d left with. As everyone came aboard, it was time for a final request and a final offer.
“Kubu, can you pull us back out to the jungle?” Carl asked.
The huge canid nodded, sending slobber spattering. “Oh yeah. Easy.”
Carl rode the Mobius like a dog sled, trying not to imagine the damage being done to the landing gear as they scraped along a second time. But damage that didn’t affect spaceworthiness wasn’t a problem right now. They could deal with that some other time.
Like when they weren’t running from Earth Navy.
Carl watched the screen of his datapad to track their progress. When the screen flickered reluctantly to life, he shouted out the partially open cargo bay door. “That’s far enough!”
The ship stopped moving, and Carl lowered the cargo ramp. Leaning against the wall, lost in shallow thought that grew deeper by the moment, he waited. Kubu loped around and stood at the bottom of the ramp.
“You’re going to leave now, aren’t you?” Kubu asked.
Carl tried to picture him as the Doberman-sized puppy they’d rescued from the Gologlex Menagerie. That psychopath who’d run the place had planned for creatures the size of dinosaurs, so Kubu hadn’t been so daunting a challenge to keep. Aboard a light freighter with passenger room for eight or ten humans, tops, Kubu exceeded the Mobius’s capacity by weight if not by number.
Looking over his shoulder, Carl stared at the Squall. He’d won a racing contest just to put himself in positions to steal it. He’d fooled billions of people, become a minor celebrity, and faked his own death just to walk away the owner of as smooth a toy as a guy could ask for.
Carl sighed from the bottoms of his toes. “C’mon, Kubu. Help me drag this little ship out of here. It’ll be tight quarters, but you’ll fit. We’ll drop you off someplace safe and comm Tanny to come find you.”
“Mobius to Carl,” Roddy’s voice came over the earpiece to Carl’s comm. “Our emergency escape plan was counting on us hauling ass. Why’s the cargo bay still open?”
“We’re taking on one last passenger,” Carl replied.
Kubu backed up a step. He shook his head. “Too small.”
Carl took two steps to close the gap, fighting upwind against the hot, heavy stink of the oversized puppy’s breath. “It’ll be fine. You’ll only need to be in there a few hours. Maybe a day.”
“Carl? You can’t be thinking of stuffing Kubu back there,” Roddy said. “The navy ships don’t know we’re here. They’re all in pursuit of the Ruckers. We’ve got to get while the gettin’s possible.”
“Mommy?” Kubu said, cocking his head. “Mommy left?”
Carl clenched his fists and pursed his lips. The giant mutt had ears like spy drones. “Yeah. Tanny’s gone. It’s just gonna be you and a bunch of unfriendly types left here if you don’t get in.”
Kubu shook his head. “I’ll wait. Mommy will come back. You don’t have lots of food. The flying house got too little. I missed the jungle. It’s nice here.”
“But—”
“I’ll wait,” Kubu insisted.
Taking a deep breath, Carl nodded. He tried to tell himself that it was for the best, but he couldn’t believe that. Whatever else he considered, however, there was no force he could use to get Kubu into that cargo hold without his compliance. Anything Esper did with magic would render them unable to fly.
Carl stuck out a hand. “Good luck, Kubu. I hope she comes back soon.”
Gingerly, Kubu reached out a paw of his own. The awkward, semi-opposable thumb made gripping for a proper handshake tough, but there was never a hope of a traditional grip when one party’s hand was ten times the size of the other.
“Bye, Carl. Don’t get shot by navy people.”
Carl curled his lips in a smirk. If only more people were that direct. “Thanks. I’ll try.” He climbed up the cargo ramp and hit the button to raise it. As the ramp rose, he offered Kubu a salute.
# # #
Amy got them up through the atmosphere but directed Carl to take over the flying once he arrived in the cockpit.
“You sure?” he asked. “I might be the better shot, but you’ve always been the one with the golden evasive maneuvering.”
Amy nodded quickly. “Yeah. You’ve got this.” She buckled into the passenger seat and folded her hands across her stomach. He wondered how many husbands debated how to divide the dogfighting duties with their pregnant wives.
Now that he thought about it, probably Juggler and Vixen.
As they approached orbital space, the comm erupted. “Vessel Daggerstrike, you are in violation of an Earth Navy quarantine notice. Please return to the surface and await further instructions.”
Carl perked up. “That was downright friendly. I had really expected—”
“Any failure to comply will result in the destruction of your vessel.”
He smiled. The galaxy had returned to normal. “Now that’s the Earth Navy I remember.”
The intraship comm opened. Yomin’s voice carried from her quarters. “Head us toward the gas giant. The Ruckers are heading for the edge of the system, using a shelter formation to get the lead ships into astral first.”
Carl shook his head. That was the best loyalty money could buy. The men and women on those screening ships would die letting a few escape into the deep astral. Their families would never have to worry about money. For getting his little girl out of this mess alive and not in Earth Navy custody, Don Rucker would make sure that their depende
nts had roofs over their heads, food on the table, and the best educations.
And as a bonus, they demanded concentrated fire from the battle fleet to try to stop the screen from working. Captains and admirals hated getting outmaneuvered, even if it was just a bunch of syndicate strongmen laying down their lives to get their boss to freedom.
“Roger that,” Carl said. “Keep the channel clear unless the situation changes. Oh, and Daggerstrike… I like the false ID you came up with.”
“Got it from an old book,” Yomin replied.
“What did I just say about keeping the channel clear?” Carl asked.
Amy reached across and slugged him in the shoulder. Her accompanying scowl made the placement of blame clear.
Rather than take his chastisement lying down, Carl punched the comm. “I was just popping by to pick up some non-navy equipment that had been left behind. Nothing to worry about. Carry on chasing those thieves and murders.”
“There’s no way they’re buying that,” Amy said.
Carl shrugged. “Every second whoever sent that message spent chatting with us is less breath to spare ordering us dusted.”
“Vessel Daggerstrike, this is your final warning. Reduce thrust to minimum, return to the surface, and—”
“No can do,” Carl cut in. “My crew voted, and no one likes it down there. We’re heading to the super duper secret base hidden in that gas giant. I’ll relay the coordinates once we land. You’ll be really happy to find out what’s there.”
“There’s nothing there but another moon that Mort crashed,” Amy said. “What are you thinking?”
“Mostly that scanning through a soup of hydrogen, helium, and methane will be a lot harder than tracking us through vacuum.”
“Yeah, but we can’t survive it for long,” Amy protested. “What’s the plan for after that?”
A flash on the radar brought back old memories. “Typhoons,” he said in a hollow voice. “They must have scrambled from the Dunkirk the instant we were spotted.”
“Make the call,” Amy said. “You want the gun turret or the pilot’s chair?” The implication was clear that she would take the other.
Indecision gripped Carl’s heart. What had Chuck warned him of as a kid? Don’t get in the way of the dominoes you topple? This was all Carl’s doing. Ithaca would have been hidden and safe if he hadn’t ratted them out. There could have been other ways to have a wedding on Earth, but Carl stuck it to Chuck and Tanny at the same time in the process. Now, Typhoon pilots were going to die because he decided to come back and rescue Mort from the shit avalanche he’d set off.