by Ginger Booth
“Non! I insist,” Benoit said, in a voice that acquired a note of steel. “You will wait here until order is restored.”
Ben heard a soft thump beyond their host. Only the top of the penguin butler’s head stuck out of a doorway. A shocking red leaked from it into the luxuriant cream carpet. He considered standing, but on the whole, thought a crouch might give him options. He glanced up at the guards. They were too stoned to notice.
Eli rose, though, and offered Hunter a hand up. Cope used the elevator door to prop himself up, using the movement as cover while he lifted a stunner from the holster of the guard on the left. That wouldn’t work for Ben. The stunner for the other guard lay between the pair, and he lacked pickpocketing skill. He decided his best option was to lunge for Benoit’s thighs and topple the elderly gentleman.
Cope fired the stunner at the still-armed guard first. Then he downed the one closer to him. Stoned guards weren’t worth much.
“We’re leaving,” Hunter hissed to Benoit. “Now.”
“What have you done!” the collector cried in horror. “What are you ruffians –”
Sophie the statue interrupted by staving in his skull with a beautiful stone vase.
“Sophie!” Eli mourned. He didn’t seem surprised that further nude statues were converging on the elevator.
Sophie blew out in exasperation and punched the ‘down’ button on the elevator. To her fellow statues she pointed into the apartments interior, away from the windows with their cold dead view. “Stairs! Escaliers!” She turned to the Prosper party, and grasped Eli’s hand. “I come with you.”
“Thank you,” Eli breathed.
As the elevator dinged its arrival, Ben decided his questions about Sophie could wait. He and Cope hauled the grav lifter inside. The others squeezed in around them. He pressed the button for a floor they bypassed before.
“We’re in dock 1,” Eli told Sophie. He took off his jacket and draped it across her shoulders.
The elevator door reopened to a madhouse of paddies running along a corridor. Someone off to the left shot a stunner into them. Ben pressed another couple buttons. The door closed and they tried the next floor. Screams lay outside the door, so he prevented the doors opening, and tried again with the sublevel below the main corridor. This hallway wasn’t too bad. The throbbing screech of the alarm assaulted Ben’s ears as they turned toward the docks.
“Now we run,” Ben suggested, pointing out the direction.
Sophie bolted ahead, drawing Eli by the hand.
Cope and Ben struggled with the grav lifter, only meant to go so fast. To abandon the moose device was unthinkable. Carrying it, he wasn’t sure they’d go much faster. Hunter halted the lead group impatiently, and beckoned with urgent swoops of his arm.
“Grav tractors,” Ben thought aloud. They had the toolbox, a heavy load in itself. But it contained several hand grav devices, like the ones they used to levitate the soy printer while checking its connections.
Cope swooped down. He slapped tractors on both the antler crate and his toolbox. Every bit as massive, at least they didn’t weigh anything. Ben just had to remember to cut his momentum sooner when walking or running. The toolbox reminded him of this lesson as he staggered a few steps beyond Hunter’s group into the next cross-hallway. Fortunately, it too was relatively quiet.
“Hold up,” Ben ordered. “Cope, you took both stunners? Give them to me and Hunter.” The two of them were the best shots. He handed off his toolbox to Eli. Then he checked his map of this level on his comm. “Sophie, you know the corridors?”
She shook her head vehemently.
The captain thought fast. The university kept few slaves. He bet the students decamped into the corridors to catch the excitement on the main level. That detour added a couple blocks to their route. Quiet halls seemed worth it. “Hunter, watch our backs. Follow me!”
Without the grav lifter, their jogging pace ate up the distance. Before they reached the university, they hit a crowded corridor. Ben chose to dart through the throng for a couple short blocks, then escaped into relative tranquility. As he hoped, by the time he reached the university, the halls were nearly deserted. A few students and faculty gaped at them. Ben wasn’t concerned about them. They didn’t wander around armed.
Prosper’s dock lay on the main level. Even in chaos, station security was sure to cordon it off. Two stunners wouldn’t bully them through armed guards on high alert and expecting trouble.
Zan and Wilder. Well, maybe. He had to get there first.
He led them up the last ramp he could find to the main level, and they emerged into pandemonium. “Close up,” he warned his group. They trotted to the corner of the thoroughfare to the dock. From here it was a straight approach, right into the teeth of a security cordon of eight.
Enough with the near comms silence. “Wilder, Zan. I’m looking at a dock room door blocked by eight. I’ve got a party of five with two actives. Can you assist?”
“Run home now,” Wilder advised.
“Roger that,” Ben acknowledged unhappily. “Hunter, you and me in front. Cope, watch our six. Do not fall behind. We are charging the dock door. Now!”
He ran out into the corridor, dodging toward pedestrians for a little cover. Naturally these bystanders flinched away as soon as they noticed the odd group pelting toward them. One fell to a laser shot from the guards.
Ben resisted the urge to feel guilty. He didn’t shoot the guy. He kept zig-zagging.
Ahead, fifty meters now, one of the guards fell, then another two. “I take left, you’re right,” he ordered Hunter. Another guard fell ahead of them, and their attention was now all diverted to the attackers behind them. Thirty meters. Ben pivoted to jog backward a moment. Cope had fallen behind a bit, but was herding Sophie along. Eli struggled with the unfamiliar inertia of the toolbox. Ben stunned a bystander out of Eli’s way, then turned forward again.
Twenty meters and down to four guards standing. They were finally in range for a stunner. He paused for aim and shot left, downing his man. Hunter shot right while still jogging, with the predictable miss, numbing a left arm instead of disabling his target. The guard spun and shot his laser at Ben, burning him through the shoulder.
Damn that hurts! His second shot missed, distracted by the pain. But ahead of them, Zan exploded out of the dock and took down the remaining guards in seconds. And they were through, running flat out for Prosper’s umbilical. Ben and Hunter got there first, and wheeled to cover the rest of them. Zan lagged, still shooting up the main thoroughfare.
“Zan, retreat! Now!” the captain demanded.
“Ben, you’re bleeding,” Kassidy noted as she passed through.
“Nanites will handle that,” Ben assured her, not taking his eye off his people. Zan turned a pirouette now and then to take a pot-shot up the corridor. “Kassidy, secure the girl in your quarters, then you’re on damage control. P-suits.”
“Got it.”
Cope passed into the ship while they talked, then Wilder arrived.
“Sergeant, get everyone in and clear this doorway. Report immediately when I can blow out of here. I’m headed for the bridge. Send Zan there.”
“Aye, cap.”
Cursing the pain, Ben leapt to the catwalk on anti-grav, then kept running to the bridge. Teke hastily evacuated his chair and shifted to the gunner’s seat. “Lavelle already took off,” he warned. “Still helping us jam the station guns though.”
“How did he load paddies that fast?” Ben demanded. He should have been way ahead of Lavelle leaving dock. The plan called for Prosper to carry out what Gossamer was doing now.
“I don’t think he loaded any,” Teke replied in a grinding tone.
They traded a long look. “We’ve been had,” Ben concluded.
82
“All in, cap!” Wilder reported. “Ramp closing.”
“All hands, brace for departure,” the captain announced. “We’re going out hot. Everyone is on damage control if you know how. Keep y
our p-suit handy. Chief, secure pressure and take roll call.” Ben checked the ramp status, now sealed. “Sergeant, blow charges on the umbilical. Captain out.”
He kept his eye on the umbilical sensors. The second the charges blew, he backed out of the dock. A pressure alarm screeched, and he punched its button to shut up. Cope sealed the door to the bridge remotely for him. They didn’t have p-suits in here, and weren’t about to fetch them now.
Ben had good people. They’d take care of the breach just as soon as they got their clothes on.
“Am I shooting?” Teke asked unhappily. The physicist wasn’t qualified on either bridge seat.
“No,” Ben assured him. “Zan should be here soon.”
Not that he was paying attention. By eye, the captain was executing a 3D 3-point turn, shifting Prosper nose-out from the station. He chose to aim for roughly 1/3 of a sphere away from Lavelle’s current position and toward Pono north. Much farther from Lavelle’s bearing and their cooperative jamming would fail. Between them, they were spoofing the station’s automatic gun targeting systems.
Lavelle pulled away, luring Ben to follow. Ben replied by taking aim at the closest station gun and blowing it to hell. “Lavelle, my next shot is on you.”
“Don’t be that way, Ben,” the pirate crooned. “We’re leaving safely, see?”
Ben aligned to his chosen heading, and Lavelle fell out of joint jamming range. He reached to disable all of his transponders – one ship, one shuttle, two skiffs. Then he rotated his heading a bit further, and gunned the engines, maximum thrust for a narrow miss on a vast solar snowflake on his way out of SO interdiction. He shifted to keep the array between himself and the station. Having no other option, he ordered the computer AI to take over the guns.
The station’s planetoid busters tracked toward him. With rapid fingers, he keyed in a chaotic evasive pattern into the piloting AI, including variations on their acceleration. That would help in a moment, but first he veered hard to down-and-right, hard enough to sway his head 30 cm despite the inertial dampeners.
“Cap, don’t do that.” Cope complained.
“Noted.” But Ben had no regrets, as two lasers from the orbital passed by them safely. Unfortunately, now out of interdiction, the ship suddenly rolled and took aim at an asteroid threat.
Every shot he took advertised his position to Lavelle and the station. Speaking of which, Ben noted that Lavelle’s ship had also gone dark. He had no idea where the pirate was. Well, some idea, he realized, and added another 5 degrees vector away from where he suspected that was.
The pressure doors behind him opened, and some p-suits slithered to the floor. Ben’s ears popped with the sudden thinning of his air. Zan slipped into the gunner’s seat while Teke escaped, re-sealing the bridge behind him. Blowers came on hard to restore his oxygen level.
“We’re hiding, Zan. Don’t shoot anything if you can avoid it. Watch hard and flick it to me to dodge. Got it? Now going full manual.”
Ben’s focus narrowed. Nothing existed except himself and the obstacles he threaded his way through at the highest speed he dared. His shoulder burned and ached. He ignored it. The hull was holed again, once, twice, four times. Zan muzzled the alarms for him and handled reports from Cope regarding damage control. Zan also needed to shoot now and then. Ben accepted that, and smoothly altered heading afterward.
The ignored drone of conversation beside him assumed different tones as time oozed by. The first involved a casualty.
The second occasion, Zan insisted on capturing his attention. “You want to talk to Gorky?”
“Where is he?”
Zan checked, then his hand dropped from the console. “Not at Hell’s Bells.”
They took Gorky to the Saggy industrial platform to get his inertial dampeners cut out and replaced. The job took weeks. During the long slow trip there, Ben and Teke put a temporary makeshift in place. An ‘inertial compensator,’ Teke dubbed it. An extra dampener compensated for the field instability in the real ones. Ben was so delighted to have a physicist aboard to calculate a novel solution.
But if the Heavenly Bodies left dock, it relied on the kludge, not a proper repair.
“No,” Ben breathed sincerely. At that moment, he never wished to speak to either of his fellow captains again. “Silent running, Zan. Acknowledge no hails.”
He couldn’t head back to Hell’s Bells. In a moment of crystal clarity, he realized they had no safe harbor, only the vast black empty of space. For now.
That wasn’t sustainable.
“Brought you dinner,” Ben announced. “Hunter made donuts to cheer you up.” He handed the plate to Cope.
The chief sat propped on his elbows in the middle of the cargo hold floor, his legs stretched out before him. Above, part of the catwalk railing had a Cope-sized hole in it, broken steel bent into a midair traffic hazard. Flung off-balance during a violent maneuver, Cope saved the load he was carrying but broke his femur.
Ben’s left shoulder was still sore, so he levered himself down with his right hand and a grunt. Yang-Yangs engendered strange first aid. Cope’s broken femur caused agony if he moved, so he sat right here to heal. Ben could move fine while holding his shoulder immobile, as long as he didn’t put a load on it. Which stuck him up in the rafters as second engineer getting the interior damage from the holes resolved, while a very cranky chief engineer sat down here and rained suggestions on him.
“Sorry,” Cope offered. “I’m surprised you’re willing to feed me. I’ve been rego useless. And a bastard to you.”
Ben shrugged, and winced. Wrong shoulder. “Need to talk. We’re hiding in space. We can keep that up for a while, four or five months tops if we eat recycled. But we can’t comm anyone. Hunter and Kassidy can’t start their revolution. We can’t talk to the kids. I want this resolved. How long will it take?”
Cope popped a green donut and chewed thoughtfully. “We got a whole ship full of stakeholders on this, Ben.”
Ben curled a lip at him. “Yes, I’ve come to that conclusion. Quire and Zan?”
“Want to get back to Denali,” Cope supplied.
“Ah!” Ben crooned, enlightened. “Eli? I think I know.”
“We need bio tests on the drive.”
Ben nodded, pleased that he guessed right. “So when do we test your new antler toy?”
“Thought I might get off the floor first. Holes in the ship repaired.”
“Cope? Cool it. I wasn’t criticizing. My shoulder hurts.” He gingerly pulled his T-shirt down and checked the laser hole’s progress. Like a scab, he couldn’t resist pulling off a sheet of burnt flesh, leaving healthy pink beneath. A clean-fleshed depression the depth of his thumbnail remained, gradually filling in as nanites rebuilt the substantial muscle. Grossed out, he decided he shouldn’t do that while eating. He popped another donut into his mouth.
“Pick up that dead skin,” Cope ordered.
Ben plucked the sheet up from the floor, folded it in half, and deposited it on the donut plate. “Sar,” he reminded the chief.
Cope snickered in spite of himself. After some companionable chewing, he resumed the previous thread. “Morning. To try the antlers. Healing like this wipes me out.”
“I had all these fun ideas for sleeping together tonight.”
“Not unless we use bunk beds.” Cope noticed he was being cranky again and didn’t wish to. He shot Ben a bashful smile. “Take an IOU?”
“Deal,” Ben purred. “So decisions on that other thing are premature?”
“Now I’m lost.”
“What is the ‘done’ condition, Cope? How do we get there from here?”
The chief nodded. “We consult those other people. But, for Spaceways? When we’ve tested the quantum moose. Then the micro warp. Hopefully declare success. Or at some point, we call it a failure and return to the drawing board. Give you back free run of your ship.”
“OK. And how long does that take? Days, months, years?”
“If everything goes perfect?
And tulips magically bloom up the staircase in pink and red?”
Ben laughed this time. “So we assume it’ll go like most engineering projects.”
“Experimental engineering,” Cope quibbled. “Don’t hold your breath.”
“Well, at least the moose-bot is straightforward,” Ben claimed optimistically. “It either works or it doesn’t, right?”
They slept together that night after all. Sleep being the operative word. They shared tender moments while getting undressed. Upon lying down, Ben zonked out in mid-word.
Cope was more than ready for the moment of truth by mid afternoon the next day. Turning on the quantum moose wasn’t that simple. The antlered device had input-output ports and a power socket, not a display and power cord. He and Ben labored all day in his cabin devising peripherals.
They weren’t very impressive peripherals. The thing output analogue audio and grey scale video, at only 1064x640 pixels. Ben decided to display that on a corner of his wall monitor, only an arm-length wide. At full screen, each dot would be distractingly large.
Meanwhile Teke and Elise worked assiduously to set up every kind of electromagnetic field measurement they could think of, with detectors surrounding the antlers. Kassidy set up cameras to capture the world-shattering dramatic moment of speaking to another world in real time, no lag. She’d beam that to the galley for the rest of the ‘stakeholders’ to watch.
Mercifully, she left a couple hours ago. The modest cabin was crowded.
The engineer itched to take the machine apart and study its innards. But they agreed – no risking the device until after contacting Nanomage. He was only allowed to poke inside in the meantime if it didn’t work. Which left him almost hoping it had a screw loose.
Finally he turned it on. Predictably, Teke and Elise got all excited about their field readings. They begged him to hold off on making the next move while they studied the field. Ben set Wilder onto his assigned task of keeping Judge and Willow busy on a chore in the engine room. The vested crew he summoned to the galley, and told Kassidy to start the show.