by Jason Hutt
“You’ll never take us!”
“Please,” Leigh yelled, “Stop. That’s not why we’re-”
“They’ll die my way! Not yours!”
Hannah heard a click. She peeked around the doorway. She could see a middle-aged man, with long dark hair and full beard, hugging two children close. Their terrified eyes briefly met hers. Something silver glinted in the man’s hands.
“Run!” Leigh yelled.
Hannah sprang to her feet, took two long strides, and then the explosives in the man’s hands detonated. A wave of heat washed over her back and she felt something hot slice through her sleeve. She fell forward, felt a pop in her ears and then a rush of air swept past her toward the cafeteria.
The corridor lights went out and the emergency lights once again came on. This time, they were accompanied by the warble of a cabin depressurization alarm. Seconds later, the cafeteria door slammed shut and the alarms cut out.
Hannah laid on the floor, ears ringing and arm bleeding, as she saw the faces of those children now burned into her mind’s eye.
***
Hannah stepped off the lift, bottle in hand. Doctor Leigh had found the almost empty bottle of cheap vodka buried in a maintenance closet in the bowels of the hotel. He gave it to Hannah with instructions to go try to forget what she saw.
Hannah took a pull from the bottle and winced at the burn. She hadn’t drunk much alcohol in her life; she had heard her mother complaining about her father being piss drunk too many times to ever think it was a good idea. Now though, the pain of something else, something other than the vision of those children, felt good.
She took another drink as she ambled through the deserted corridor that led to the observation deck. Most of the families were below, trying to setup living arrangements, scavenge supplies, and just trying to find some sense of normalcy.
The door to the observation deck slid open and there stood Max, staring at the wondrous colors of the nebula that filled the view. He turned toward her with a surprised arch of his grayed, raggedy eyebrows and then immediately caught sight of the bottle in her hand. His smile widened.
Hannah suddenly regretted taking even a single sip. She looked at the clear liquid sloshing around in the bottom of the bottle and then handed it to Max. He took it with a smile and proceeded to take a long, slow gulp from the upturned bottle. Max lowered the bottle with a refreshed sigh.
“You have no idea how much I needed that,” he said.
She tried not to sneer but her hand involuntarily curled into a fist.
“Sorry,” she said, “Didn’t think anybody’d be up here. I was just looking for a quiet place to sort through things.”
She gave Max an apologetic wave and stepped back toward the door.
“When did she tell you?” Max asked.
Hannah stopped and leaned against the lift door. “About a year ago. I was looking for an old picture when I came across one of the three of you.”
Max nodded.
“It’s a weird feeling,” Hannah said, “To see yourself in a picture that you were never a part of, to look at a life that you never had. It took a while to not be angry about it, to not feel like my mom was trying to recreate someone else’s life. I could see it in her eyes sometimes, that sadness, that recognition that things were not what they could have been.”
“I don’t see it that way,” Max said, “You’re your own person. You never existed before the day you were born. Just because you happen to be a genetic match for someone who used to exist, doesn’t mean that you lived before.”
“If you really believed that, if you really believed that I wasn’t her, why weren’t you there?” Hannah asked, wondering a bit why she decided to talk about this now.
“Did your mom tell you why I couldn’t be there? Why I left?”
Max offered the bottle back to her, but Hannah refused with a slight wave of her hand.
“Bits and pieces. Told me you worked to pay off the debt of having me created.”
Max looked down at the floor. His cheeks flushed red.
“The truth, Hannah, is that I couldn’t look into your eyes anymore. I…”
“No, don’t tell me,” Hannah said, holding up her hands, “You can say all you want that I’m my own person, that may even be what you believe, but it’s not what you see when you look at me. It’s not what shows on your face. Every time you look at me you look like you’re going to collapse to your knees and start bawling. My mom could at least hide it slightly; you wear it like a badge of honor.”
They stood in silence staring into the cosmos. Max couldn’t muster even an insincere denial. Hannah started shaking her head.
“I don’t want this life,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be hiding on some abandoned space station, living in constant fear that someone is going to jump out of the shadows to get me. I don’t want to die like that man, those children, did back there.”
Max took a long drink, just about emptying the bottle.
“This is awful,” he said with a half-hearted smile.
Hannah’s teeth clenched.
“I don’t want to be you,” Hannah said, “God, I don’t want to be you.”
Max laughed.
Hannah could feel her cheeks burning.
“When you were younger,” Max said, “I couldn’t bear to be around you.”
“Thanks.”
Max ignored her. “It’s different now. There’s no ghost that walks behind you. There’s nothing I expect you to be. There are no memories that you’re stepping on.”
“Well, that’s wonderful for you,” she said.
Max sighed. “I’m sorry about Sharon, about your mom.”
“I am, too.”
“We’re all that we have left,” Max said.
Hannah shook her head. “No, Max. There’s no ‘we.’ It’s great that what happened over the last couple of days scared some sense into you. But there’s no ‘we’ and there never will be.”
The lift opened behind them and Victor stepped out. He looked them over and smiled.
“The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree,” Victor said.
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” She said.
“What’s up, Victor?” Max asked.
Victor inhaled and held his breathe. “I need you to make a run, Max. Actually, I’m sending both ships out. We need food, water, medicine, and any other supplies you can rustle up. Total headcount is two hundred and five people and we barely have food and water to last us the next few days. I need you to hit up your supply chain and get us whatever you can as quickly as you can.”
“Our contacts have been compromised. They’ll be looking for us,” Max said.
“I know that, Max,” Victor said, staring him in the eye, “But we have to take that risk. What good is it if we evade capture but slowly starve to death?”
“Shit,” Max said.
“Desperate times, Max.”
“All right,” Max said, “I’ll do this but then I’ve got my own business to take care of. Do you understand?”
Victor nodded. “You’re going after her, aren’t you?”
“I can’t let Eleanor rot in some Republic prison for the rest of her life. I’ve got to try and get her out.”
“How’re you going to do it?”
“Great question,” Max said, “You’ll have to let me know if you’ve got any bright ideas.”
“I’ll think about it,” Victor said, “How soon can you leave?”
“Give me an hour.”
“Thank you, Max.” Victor offered his hand and Max shook it.
Hannah waited until Victor was gone and then said, “I want to come with you.”
Max looked at her with raised eyebrows. “I thought you just said there is no ‘we.’ Not a good time to pick up the family business, kid. You heard Victor; chances of success are slim on this one.”
“Those chances go up with someone to help you, who can slip in and out of Republic secu
rity nets without being tracked,” Hannah responded.
“I don’t plan on filing forms with customs myself. I’m not doing this.”
“What would you like me to do? Sit here and twiddle my thumbs while the Republic hunts us down? I can’t stay here and do nothing.”
“What do you think you’re going to do out there?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “Find a way to fight back. Find a way out.”
“That’ll just get us both killed,” Max said.
“I’m not going to die like those kids, Max. If I have to, I’ll die fighting for my freedom, but I won’t die cowered like some rat in a cage. The Republic can’t track me; they’re afraid of me because I can slip by all their carefully placed sensors. I don’t have a chip in my neck to tell them who I am and where I am. I can help you.”
Max grimaced. “I still don’t like it.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” she said, “But we don’t have a whole lot of options.”
Max downed the last little bit of vodka in the bottle. He looked at the empty bottle with a brief sad glance and let out a long slow sigh as he turned back to the fiery reds and yellows of the nebula.
“Fine, you come with me but you do what I say, when I say it.”
“Fine,” she said.
“I can’t tell if this would make your mother scream or cry.”
“Probably both.”
Chapter 5
Akimbe stood in the center of the briefing room surrounded by three-dimensional, full color projections of the other ship captains in the battle group. Word had been received; the task force was Akimbe’s to command.
The commanders of the other three remaining interceptors stared at him with the captains of the task force’s half dozen support ships standing behind them. Akimbe’s Chief Intelligence Officer, Lieutenant Graves, stepped forward into the middle of the ring of officers. Akimbe stood at attention, his muscles locked tighter than the plates of the hull.
“Sirs and madams,” Graves began, “While we have achieved our goal of destroying the Maisha colony, our mission is far from complete. We estimate that up to as many as two hundred and fifty dissidents escaped during the raid, including several prominent targets.”
Images of the high priority targets appeared in a ring above Graves’ head. Akimbe looked from face-to-face. He stopped on the face that was new to the top ten most wanted list, the face of the young woman who had almost bested him. Hannah Cabot’s picture was a still from their engagement. Her face was contorted into a grimace and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Akimbe stared at her eyes, studying every nuance, memorizing every detail. He had wanted to move her up the priority list, but Naval Command denied the request.
“Yes, these people are on the run,” Akimbe said, tearing his eyes away from Hannah’s face, “But we must give them no quarter. We cannot allow them to regroup and gain strength. We cannot allow them to find like-minded individuals with which to ally. We must press the attack and obliterate this festering boil.
“If any of these individuals set foot on a Republic world, I want to know. But they will be too smart for that. They have people, like this woman,” Akimbe said as he nodded at Hannah’s image, “That can slip through our net undetected. With no identification chip, we cannot track her entrance or exit from any spaceport. We cannot sweep for her presence in any system. She can slip in and out of anywhere undetected. We do not know how many others like her escaped.”
“Correct, Commander,” Graves said, “These people are running. They’ll need a place to sleep. They’ll need food to eat, water to drink, and a pot to piss in. We are monitoring freight departures from every world, space station, and outpost in the Republic. We are searching for any shipments that could be of value to them. We are analyzing every flight plan and trajectory filed with the spaceport authority. If anyone ventures off the beaten path or deviates from their filed plan, we will know. We are monitoring every jump beacon and confirming entry and exit points.
“We are monitoring passenger manifests and scanning the history of every ship captain. We will know the history of those captains and if they’ve ever come into contact with any one of our targets. We will collect surveillance video to monitor face-to-face conversations, decipher lasercomm packets transmitted through jump beacons, and sift through any other recordable data. If they so much as breathe on someone, we will know what trace elements they exhaled and what worlds they come from.
“We’ve got all operatives doing facial recognition scans on security footage on more than a dozen worlds. We’re trying to collect fingerprints from Maisha, but that may not be possible. We’re also searching for any voice recordings. We’re looking for anything that we could scan. These illegals may not have chips, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find them.”
“That’s a start,” Akimbe said, “But scans can be fooled. What else? I’m looking for ideas.”
“We can use the public’s help on this one,” Commander Lum offered, “Offer enough of a reward and put their faces up in so many places that someone is bound to report something of use.”
Graves said, “We’re likely to receive a lot of garbage data. We’ll be inundated with reports to sift through.”
“Do you have a better suggestion?” Akimbe asked.
“No,” she admitted.
“How can we help you?”
“I’ll need coding support to develop some filtering algorithms. And I’ll need eyes. Lots of them. We’re casting a broad net. We’ll need all capable hands to analyze it.”
Akimbe smiled. “Commander Maduri,” Akimbe said, nodding to one of the other ship captains, “Draw up the wanted notices. The reward is a year’s rations for anyone who reports information that leads to their successful capture. In the meantime, we’re dispersing the group. When they pop their head up, I want us to be ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want all of you to assign any able body not assigned to the watch to support Lieutenant Graves. Lieutenant, you organize your teams as best you see fit. I want regular reports. Any questions on your orders?” Akimbe made eye contact with every officer; none offered anything in reply.
“Very good, then. Let’s get to it.”
The projections faded, Lieutenant Graves marched out of the communications room, leaving only Akimbe and Roland Demir. Roland stared at him without speaking.
“What is it, Roland?”
“She’s in your head,” he said.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“This girl threatens the foundation of the Republic. She flaunts her lawlessness with every breath she draws.”
“And she survived a fight with you.”
“Yes. Yes, she did. I won’t let that happen again.”
***
Max checked the charge level on his disruptor pistol; he wasn’t about to let Hannah take the lead on this one. He slipped the weapon into its holster and rested his hand on the grip. The weight felt odd on his hip. He pulled the back of his pants up slightly.
The ship emitted a beep and an indicator light appeared on the airlock wall.
Reggie’s voice erupted from the intercom, “Pressure is equalized, Captain.”
“Copy, Reggie. Open her up.”
Max looked back over his shoulder at the now maligned passenger section. Reggie and Hannah had worked feverishly to tear out half of the seats and turn the area into a makeshift cargo hold. The removed seats had been piled on top of the ones still in place. At best, the hold looked like a spaceport scrap yard.
Hannah was on the far end of the cabin, checking to see how securely she had attached some new cargo latches. She had been distant throughout the trip, but Max had to admit to himself that that was probably for the best.
She looked over at Max after checking the last strap. “We’re as ready as we can be.”
Max stood in front of the hatch as it slowly opened. His heart raced slightly; his palms were slick with sweat. He closed his eyes bri
efly and pictured himself with a cold frosty mug in his hand; he could almost taste the golden liquid in his mouth.
Max stared at the dimly lit connection between the two ships; the hatch on the other end was still closed. Slowly, it began to open and Max tightened his grip on the pistol.
The barrel of a plasma cannon with a muzzle as big as his face stared back at him. Holding it at his hip was an older man with wispy gray hair and two-day old stubble. He was clad in gray coveralls and the skin of his hands and forearms was stained with bluish grease. He offered Max a lopsided grin.
“Lord almighty,” he said, “I didn’t really think it would be you. It’s been a helluva long time, Max.”
“That it has, Christian.”
Max exhaled as the older man dipped the barrel of the cannon away from Max. Christian just stared into the distance.
“It’s been…what? Twenty-five years?”
“Something like that.”
“Max, will you relax and take your damn hand off that pistol. Assuming you still handle guns like you used to, you’re more likely to shoot yourself in the foot than anything else,” Christian said as he laid his own weapon on the deck of his ship, “If I was gonna shoot ya, I’d of done it by now.”
Max felt some of the tension drain from his chest. He blushed slightly. “Sorry, Christian, we’ve had a bit of a time lately.”
“You must have to come knockin’ on my door,” Christian said as he stepped forward and offered his hand. Max shook it heartily.
Christian looked over Max’s shoulder at Hannah. “That your little girl? Boy, she’s all grown up now, isn’t she?”
Max gave him a sheepish smile.
“I’m not who you think I am,” Hannah said.
Christian looked at her funny.
“It’s a long story,” Max said.
Christian eyed Max. “Some other time then when things aren’t so pressed.”
“I appreciate you coming out here, Christian. Hard to know who to trust. You always did me right in the old days; I was hoping you were still in business.”
“Yeah,” Christian said as he chewed the inside of his lip, “I can’t say the wife was too thrilled that I heard from you. We’ve seen the news reports.”