by Diane Carey
Following a few classic moves of strategy and some not so classic, George Kirk sneaked through the enemy ship one corridor at a time, doing everything possible to annoy anybody who might go before or come after him—anything, at least, that would not damage the outer protection of this ship. That had to stay.
But everything else—he turned off lights, he dried wet areas and wet down dry ones, broke every corridor access control panel he passed, and when possible he locked any doors and panels. Maybe he couldn’t fight every one of these people, but he could sure lock them in and hinder their paths and keep them from talking to one another.
He kept the others moving about a half corridor behind him, and made them duck and hide frequently while he scouted ahead. Ordinarily that wouldn’t have been necessary, but they had Veronica Hall to carry and to protect, and that meant being more responsible for their own well-being. A man could always be more reckless when he had only himself to care for.
He had scouted the upcoming corridor and was about to wave a come-ahead to Robert and Carlos, when he suddenly found himself waving them back and ducking for cover himself. He heard voices.
One . . . two voices.
He ducked under a piece of collapsed ceiling, then craned his neck to see if the others had managed to double back and hide. They must have—he couldn’t see them.
“You know, I never used to get mad just on principle,” one voice said, “I always like stories about the Old West—”
George almost shouted. Jimmy! His son’s voice!
Alive! Jimmy was alive!
He forced himself to remain hidden until he could case the situation . . . now he heard footsteps!
“Goody,” a second voice spat out.
“—people stumbling on each other and clashing,” Jimmy went on, “border disputes, culture wars, conflicts over law and land, the way the future’s going to be etched out and whose rules are going to be the best for everybody . . . but is that what you’re doing? No. You lowlifes are just trying to make a few coins for your pockets. This is no interstellar dispute, no encroachment on somebody’s space. It’s just brainless piracy.”
George ducked and held his breath. He had no weapon other than a short pipe. All he could do was peek out and see—
The tall, thin man shoving Jimmy around a corner!
No—not a man. Another boy. Hardly older than Jimmy, at second glance. Maybe a year or two older, with the teasings of a mustache that hadn’t really grown yet, shoulders that would be wider by the month, no waist at all, and long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Both boys were battered and looked as if they’d been picking through a junkyard for parts.
A knot twisted George’s heart. Jimmy’s hands were tied, his clothes filthy and bloodied, his face smeared with blood too, and the tall boy was holding some kind of palm weapon on him.
“I’m warning you,” the tall boy said. “Keep your mouth shut.”
“Take it, then,” Jimmy whiplashed. “Why are you hanging around with these people? Ever since we left the bridge you’ve been steaming and spitting about these lugheads you have to yes-sir. They’re just a gang. No purpose. Just ganging together because nobody else in a civilized place’ll take ’em. Not what I’d want to do with my life. These dumb funguses around you—they’re not a team. They use your talent and your inventions, but they don’t give you any respect. What are you really getting?”
“But . . . out!” Roy breathed through flaring nostrils. Suck, hiss, suck, hiss. “Nobody’ll ever tell me what to do again. That’s what power gets you. You just shut up and . . . shut up.”
Jimmy knew he was hearing just the right level of annoyance in Roy’s voice, and stopped dead in his tracks. As George watched, not daring to breathe, his son turned on the other young man and stood him down right there in the smoky corridor.
“You resent that you’re not in charge, don’t you?” Jimmy challenged him. “You don’t like following rules you didn’t invent or don’t see reasons for yourself. You can’t get anything past me. I know all the excuses by heart. You’re annoyed with life and you want to get on with it. So why don’t you?”
Backing off a telltale step, the other boy demanded, “Why don’t I . . . what?”
“You want something. You want more than this,” Jimmy badgered. He felt his hazel eyes burn in a glare. “What are you doing here with these idiots? Anyone who would hang around here has to be an idiot himself. I don’t know what you want and I don’t care, but I know you’ll never get it here.”
He paused after the last statement to see the reaction to it.
And there was one. A good one.
Jimmy’s eyes narrowed, and he was reading the other boy’s face.
“I’m using these people!” he insisted. “This is temporary! It’s just bad luck that I’m here for the moment!”
“I don’t believe in luck,” Jimmy said. “Show me ‘luck’ and I’ll beat it.”
“What about you!” Roy accused Jimmy. “What’re you doing here? You could’ve escaped in that pod! You think those idiots in that other ship appreciate what you did?”
Jimmy pushed forward so fast and so suddenly, with eyes so enraged, the other boy stepped back a pace.
“Those people were willing to lay their lives on the line for me! They’re not perfect, but at least they’re trying! They have as much in common with you and your crew as a stallion with a cockroach!”
George clamped his mouth shut tightly and begged for the situation to change so he could go out there and grab his boy and hug him. The words warmed his aching ribs and made him grin in spite of what was happening.
Jimmy had paused and realized he was losing control, and quickly changed to get it back. He lowered his voice for a touch of drama.
“Then there’s these pigs you ship with,” he added. “Ever dawn on you they might be using you?”
The tall boy stood there stiff, boiling, staring, with the hell being annoyed out of him.
As George hid and watched, he tried to deduce what was happening so he could help his son, and figured that Jimmy was jockeying for position.
And not just position for fists and kicks—position for a psychological advantage!
“I’ll be damned,” George whispered as he skewered the tall quarry and tried to analyze that face.
Whoever the captor was, he wasn’t a happy captor. Jimmy was getting to him.
George watched as his antagonistic son wagged bound hands in front of his captor’s flaming eyes.
“Never thought of any of this, did you?” Jimmy persisted. “How much have you gotten out of this? I can guess that you invented those shields, not these other clowns. You’re so stupid, you don’t even realize what you’ve got. You’ve found a way to survive inside the Blue Zone and you’re trying to pick parts of a salvage and sell them? You’re the only one who can work on them, right? What’s it gotten you? The pennies you can scrape up out here in deep space? You know how much that’s worth? Talk about stepping over dollars! You could’ve sold that science and had anything you want! Not only could you have had anything you want, but you’d have been Roy Moss, the hero!”
George almost got up and applauded. He had to fight the inclination and force himself to keep hidden and keep collecting information.
So that was the story—this kid had invented the special shields.
The one called Roy Moss stood there, virulent, jaundiced, gawking at a brutal fist of reality that had bruised him square in the face. His eyes went glassy—this meant something to him.
A hero . . .
George saw Jimmy grate his teeth with satisfaction, and realized his son had this other boy figured out. This pony-tailed wetsock wanted people thinking well of him. That was the key.
Jimmy had the key in his hands.
Dig, dig, dig—
“You’ve been with criminals all your life, haven’t you?” Jimmy picked at him. “It never occurred to you to go legitimate, did it? You could’ve had people thinking well of y
ou all over the galaxy! What are you instead? A common crook. Now you’ll be lucky just to live long enough to grow a beard.”
Roy Moss looked like a child about to have a panic attack. He seemed to know the other boy could read his reactions, and looked as if he were fractured in a dozen places. He aimed a finger at his antagonist’s freckles.
“Look, razormouth,” he growled, “someday they’re all going to owe me! I’m just making sure I get what I deserve.”
Jimmy retreated into satisfied silence, but not before George heard him mutter, “So am I.”
George twitched until his legs hurt. His teeth ground and his jaws ached. Jump them! Go on—one, two, three. . . . Do it right now. . . . Nobody takes my son.
His legs wouldn’t work. Training had drilled bolts through his knees. He couldn’t go up against a wild-eyed kidnapper with a weapon after finally seeing proof that Jimmy was all right.
Down the corridor where the two boys had gone, doors swished and squawked. His chance was gone.
Now what? Had he done right?
This scouting-ahead business had its drawbacks.
He couldn’t be just Jimmy’s father right now. He couldn’t suspend Robert and Carlos and an injured girl who were trailing a corridor or two behind him. There was a job to do, four people under his command, not just one.
And Jimmy . . . wasn’t exactly whimpering and crying for Daddy.
George backed up a step and forced himself to think. Keep gathering information, get familiar with the terrain, find the point of command and the points of weakness, don’t leave anything unchecked—
“Hold it! Freeze!”
Including the corridor behind him—
Damn!
Caught off guard, George did as he was told—froze solid in the middle of the nasty, broken, smoky, damage-littered corridor, just as he was ordered by the sizable individual of questionable planetary background who spotted him.
There was proof. Thinking too much about one member of the crew instead of the whole plan—and he’d let himself get spotted.
Okay . . . shift to plan two.
He turned slowly, hands up.
In front of him was a craggy human holding some type of mean-looking hand laser. George didn’t recognize the make, but the weapon made him hungry.
He wanted it.
He’d burned his up in the tractor beam, and now he wanted that one.
His son was on this ship, working on weakening a key mind; it was up to George to weaken other things.
Ticking off five seconds, he hoped Robert and the others were using the seconds to hide. Then he put both his hands up and said, “I give up.”
The crag lumbered toward him.
George put all his experience to work and tried to look submissive. He dropped his pipe and put his hands on the wall and spread his legs, just as he liked his own prisoners to do.
“I give,” he repeated. “I’m lost. I can’t find my way around your ship.”
“Yeah,” the large, dirty man said. “We like it that way.” As he approached George, he paused and poked a wall communication panel. “Bridge! This is Munkwhite. I got one of ’em! They’re down here on the anchor deck!”
He waited, but there was nothing but static responding. He punched the buttons harder.
“Bridge! This is Munkwhite! Somebody answer me!”
Static. Crackles.
“Damn it, what’s the matter with this thing?” He kept an eye on George while cranking on the tuning knobs for a few seconds and cursing.
“I busted your system,” George offered, peeking over his own shoulder. “Didn’t want you creeps talking to each other.”
“Sure you did! Shut up!” The man turned his frustrated attention back to his captive, came toward George, and started patting him down for weapons.
George didn’t resist. In fact, he held his breath, hoping—
Pssshhht
Munkwhite’s expression of anger turned to one of surprise. His eyes went wide, he staggered back, gasping, “That’s not fair! That’s not f—”
His eyes glazed over as he stared at the hand he’d been using to pat at George’s clothes. He staggered back, legs spread, then fell over like a stone and hit the deck full-length.
George drew a long breath and pushed off the wall, wincing at his own wounds and trying to control his limp.
“Good idea,” he commented. “Always pat a prisoner down.”
From his pocket he’d pulled his booby trap: one of Veronica Hall’s medical hypodermics. He expended the used cartridge which Munk–what’s-his-name had so accommodatingly injected into his own hand, then replaced it with another dose, just in case somebody else got a jump on them too.
Of course, now he was armed . . . with the laser weapon he had so recently coveted. Then he opened a wall storage panel and ungraciously crammed Munkwhite into the wall to sleep it off where he wouldn’t leave a trail, and with a few not-very-kind shoves managed to close the panel almost all the way and get it nice and jammed.
“Don’t worry,” George added. “Three or four hours and you’ll feel . . . just terrible. Besides, nobody promised you ‘fair.’ Robert! Come on! I’m going to corner these bastards on their own bridge!”
* * *
When Roy Moss dragged Jimmy back to the bridge to report to Big Rex that everything was broken or sabotaged and a lot of the crew were missing or unconscious, there was a distinct difference in the tone of voice from the nineteen-year-old knot of frustrations. Jimmy deduced it might be one of the first times, if not the first time, that somebody had gotten the best of Roy in an argument without using fists. These deadnecks around here had never been any competition for Roy, and he didn’t like being told he was an idiot by somebody smart. His intellect was all he had to hold over these other bandits. He wasn’t big like his father, or tough, or powerful. He was used to being the smartest kid in class. Everyone else had fallen easily under his “everybody else is stupid” catch-all.
Now Roy had this Kirk kid around, who might not be a science wizard, but who knew how to plumb for feelings and annoy them out. He wasn’t used to having someone around who could smell traps and figure things out and anticipate trouble. This Jim Kirk had an amazing survival instinct and was trying to get under his skin and find out why he was doing what he was doing. Whenever Roy had said anything, it hadn’t gone over Kirk’s head like it did all these brutes around them. Jim Kirk caught and deduced everything. Not just words, but glances, looks, grunts, grumbles, posture. Figuring out mechanics was one thing, but being able to sift motivations . . .
“The whole ship’s falling apart!” Rex Moss was howling as the two boys came back onto the bridge. He rounded on his son. “Haven’t you got the intercom mended yet?”
“You said it yourself,” Roy grumbled. “The ship’s falling apart.”
“Well, get it back together!”
Roy had started to pick at the control boards, but now turned to look past the frantic bridge crew, what few of them were left, and glared down at his huge father.
“Don’t you understand?” he accused him. “It’s them! They’re sabotaging the ship! I warned you every step of the way, but you didn’t listen! They’re on board now, and I don’t know what I can do for you!”
“Nothing,” Jimmy piped up. “You can’t fight Starfleet on equal terms and win.”
Both Mosses turned at the same time and howled, “Shut up!”
Jimmy settled back in satisfaction, one eye on Big Rex Moss, and one eye on Little Roy Moss, and enjoyed the steam coming from both. The malignance between father and son was like a sumptuous appetizer, and he wallowed in his talent for siccing them on each other. There was enough antagonism on this bridge to stoke and light, and Jimmy felt strangely at home in the odium. He felt an evil side rising in himself, a side that knew just what to do, just how churlish to be, and just how to tease acrimony into erupting. There was a brute inside him, a cad who seldom got the chance to fledge, and now was its perfect time
. Pick, pick, pick—that’s what Jimmy Kirk did well.
Suddenly somebody screamed, “Antimatter leakage!”
The alien who had yelled was down the deck from Jimmy, arms stuck halfway into an open wall panel and reminded Jimmy of the jury-rigging and faking-it that had gone on between himself and the others in the cutter’s hold. He remembered Carlos Florida’s phrase—under the hood.
He recognized the alien as an Orion, and knew better than to get close to an Orion who was panicking.
And this one was.
So was everybody else. Antimatter leakage? Bad?
He kept back as the thieves dodged this way and that, shouting down crawlways and pounding on unresponsive panels, then dodging again.
“What can we do?” Big Rex Moss shouted. He turned from one crewman to the next, grabbing them each by the collar or the sleeve as they scrambled past him. “Stop the leak! We’ll blow up! Do something!”
Jimmy surmised that the best he could do was stay out of the way and let them panic. He surmised maybe his father was doing something to fake a leak or create the illusion of a leak. If so, it was to his advantage to stay calm. If the leak was real, it was to his advantage to stay out of the way and let it get solved.
“The port warp engine!” the Orion shouted into a small screen that played erratic lights on his face. “Detonation thirty seconds! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!”
“Do something!” Rex Moss called.
“Twenty-six!”
All at once, everybody on the bridge turned not to Rex, not to the Orion engineer, but to Roy Moss.
Big Rex himself lumbered toward his son. “Well?” he bellowed.
Roy straightened and looked down at him.
There was something different. For the first time Jimmy noted that his words from the corridors hadn’t gone unrooted. There was something distinctly changed between Roy and Rex Moss. Something beyond a son’s fear of a brutal father.
This was a coarse glare of challenge and offense.
Roy glowered down at his father and rancorously said, “Yes?”