by TR Cameron
The beam required thirty seconds to melt the lock, and each one of them ratcheted his frustration higher. He kicked the door open and found a frightened man in a transparent helmet and a vacuum suit holding a pistol in the room ahead. Jax flicked the selector to stun and blasted him. The energy discharge made his target lean to the side in the missing gravity, revealing another more confident-looking person standing six feet away. A second shot took her out. No more foes were visible in Engineering, so he sprinted to the far end and climbed the staircase to the upper level. Over on the Grace, systems would be coming back to life one by one, each making it less likely that he’d be on board when she jumped out of the system.
An ambush awaited him at the top of the stairs. Two crew members in the bubble helmets and identical vacuum suits fired as soon as his helmet came into view. He’d heard a shuffle an instant before and ducked, so the rounds flew safely over his head and rebounded from the ship’s walls. On the plus side, at least they’re smart enough to have the right ammunition. But they’re also attempting to kill me rather than capture me, which is far less awesome.
He blasted the pair with two quick shots, then stunned them again for good measure as payback for their efforts to shoot him. It was downright creepy how their unconscious forms tried to float away but couldn’t overcome the magnetic power of their boots. Four down. Maybe four left. If I were going to set up a second ambush, I’d do it in that big open area. Probably a lot of stuff to use for cover. And then someone else protecting the pilot, who will be busy trying to bring the ship back up. He nodded to himself. Made sense.
Like the Grace, this level had a central hallway with rooms on either side. He drifted cautiously along it, opening doors as he came to them, and discovered storage areas and a locked door he didn’t bother attempting to open. After another thirty seconds, he was ten feet back from the open area on the map and saw a dining table set in the middle of the room.
He moved carefully into the space, traversing his rifle left and right with each step, prepared for wherever his potential enemies might be hiding. The only warning he had of the impending attack was a scuff from above. His head snapped up to see a body flying through the air at him. Magboots and grip magnets. Clever. He had no time to react other than to shove his gun at the oncoming form.
Jax counted himself lucky the big man didn’t have gravity to assist. That would probably have resulted in at least broken bones from the initial contact. Instead, he staggered and then floated to the side as his weapon smashed into his helmet and the impact of the heavy body overcame his boots’ grip on the metal floor. He snagged the edge of the table with his foot and got his boots back on the deck as the other man found his feet. With a nod of respect for his rival’s audacious move, Jax raised the rifle and depressed the trigger.
The weapon failed to fire. Damn. The shock must have damaged it. The strap around his neck precluded him from using the rifle as a club, so he let it fall as the big guy came in at him holding a large wrench. His foe must have pulled the object from the heavy tool belt attached to his suit, which was a higher quality model than the rest he’d seen the pirates wearing. He delivered the tool in a looping overhead smash, the face inside the transparent faceplate of his helmet twisted and angry. I suppose I would be, too, if they’d invaded the Grace. Unfortunately for the man, while he might have been a trained fighter, there was trained and then there was trained. Jackson Reese was the latter.
Combat instincts kicked in, and he circled his left arm up and around to intercept the blow. An instructor in basic training had drilled into the recruits that a block wasn’t a defensive move; it was an offensive strike that happened to serve a protective purpose. The force of his movement combined with the unyielding metal of his prosthetic limb as it smashed into his foe’s wrist. While vacuum prevented the sound of the joint shattering from reaching his ears, which were filled to capacity with his own hoarse breathing, the way the pirate’s face blanched told the tale. The wrench fell away and Jax smothered the instinctive follow-ups to the block, keeping his feet on the ground instead of launching a front kick and resisting the urge to chop at the man’s neck with his free hand. The latter was a decidedly good decision, he thought, since his bones might not fare well against the metal collar securing his foe’s helmet.
In the time it took the other man to get his thoughts in order through the cascade of pain that was doubtless coursing up his arm and through his body, Jax pulled the second rifle from its spot on his back and stunned his foe into unconsciousness. He pursued and secured the drifting weapon, shoving the wrench into one of his suit pockets. So far, he’d followed the directive not to kill anyone, at least as far as he knew, and hoped he’d be able to continue. But it never hurts to have a backup plan, and since I’m down to one functional gun, this will have to do.
The ship’s main lighting came up all of a sudden, and gravity returned. Cia had warned him that those would be two of the first systems to return, along with communication and sensors. He ran to the front of the ship and found the pilot compartment hatch closed and locked. He activated his comm and asked, “Grace, are you still there?”
“For the moment.” It was possible he’d never been as relieved to hear another person’s voice as he was right then.
“Can you patch me into the comm connection between the ships?”
“It’ll take a sec. I have to thread a signal through the jamming I’m throwing up to keep the Twinkletoes from calling for help.” After a short pause, she said, “Okay, go.”
Jax said, “You in the pilot compartment. Your crew members are out of commission and will stay unconscious for at least another fifteen minutes. That’s plenty of time for me to burn through this lock and then burn through you, and still have enough left over to secure them all before I take your ship as a prize.”
The familiar voice was now more angry than arrogant. “Do you have any idea of the trouble you’re bringing down on your heads? You should be running for your lives.”
He made a shushing noise over the end of the other man’s sentence. “Let’s not be stupid. You stole something you shouldn’t have. You’ll go back to whoever paid you, explain that it didn’t work out, and return the money. That’s the easy way. The hard way is you, your crew, and your ship disappear, then my partner and I get a new, better ship and new, better identities from the price the two ships command, and the rest of your clan never finds us again. So cut the nonsense and open the damn door.”
A sigh followed, and then the barrier opened. He ordered, “Come on out here, nice and slow,” and the man complied. His voice had made him seem bigger than he was, but Jax got a sense of competence and intelligence from his appearance and imagined the bluster was as much an act as anything. Jax escorted him into the dining area and had him sit down, then pulled a roll of tape from the tool belt of the pirate with the broken wrist and secured his captive’s feet to the chair.
He asked, “Okay, where is it? I know the package never got off this ship.” He knew no such thing, but the more he’d thought about the situation, the more convinced he’d become that it was still on board. There hadn’t been enough time to offload the cargo before the Grace showed up, which the pirates would have doubtless been immediately informed of. The pirate leaders on the station would have likely made the decision to keep the problem away from their enclave until it had all been sorted out.
His captive sighed again. “Some people are about to be really pissed off at you. And no matter how you threaten me, if I’m alive, I’m going to tell them every single thing I know so they don’t kill me.”
Jax nodded. “I can respect that. Now, hand it over.”
“It’s in the cargo hold. Small white box in Locker Seventy-three.”
He frowned. “You wouldn’t be screwing with me, would you? I think I need some assurance.” He removed the tape and pulled the pilot to his feet. “Lead the way.”
It turned out that the man had indeed been telling the truth, and Jax retrieve
d the package without incident. He looked down at the box, which had no visible seam or lock, and shook his head. “Such a small thing to cause such big trouble.” He took the man back to the dining room and taped his feet again, then headed for the hatch he’d demolished. Attached to the wall next to the opening was a lucky find he hadn’t noticed on the way in. He pulled the magnetic grapple gun from its bracket, sighted through the scope at the hull right beside the Grace’s hatch, and squeezed the trigger. The projectile hurtled across the intervening space, unfolding as it flew and trailing a thin cable, and latched onto the other ship slightly to the side of where he’d aimed. He climbed carefully out of the hole in the Twinkletoes to keep his suit intact and hit the button to activate the motor to pull him in.
He activated his comm on the way over. “Knock, knock, Grace. One to come aboard.”
Cia replied, “About time. Get your dawdling ass in here and let’s go home.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jax ducked under a sweep of the blade of Cia’s knife and stabbed his own forward. She blocked downward, her forearm redirecting his wrist away from her body. The pilot continued the motion with a backspin kick that would have caught him in the ear if he’d risen again. Instead, he stayed low, shuffled in, and used his greater mass to lift her up and off her feet, upending her. She landed on the heavy mat that covered the metal deck of the Grace’s training area with a grunt and a curse.
“Damn you to hell, man.” She laughed. “We’re knife-fighting, not doing judo.” She flicked her plastic weapon at him and he batted it aside automatically.
“You’re the one who tried for the kick.”
She laid back and closed her eyes. “Oh. Yeah, I guess I did. Well, you’re bigger than me. It seemed fair. And if you make a short joke right now, I’ll go into the pilot cabin and depressurize the ship. See how your bad self likes asphyxiation.”
He shook his head and extended a hand to her. She accepted it, climbed to her feet with a groan, and checked the comm on her wrist. “We’ve only got another hour. Probably should hit the shower and run through the prep to bring her in.”
Jax nodded. “Sounds like a plan. I’m going to see if I can figure out how to get into that box.” He followed her out of the training area and into the workshop.
She chuckled. “I don’t think that’s part of the assignment. We’re only supposed to deliver the thing. Of course, you haven’t been doing a particularly good impersonation of a rule-follower so far.” Her tone was neutral, but in it was the recognition that he and she were fairly different in that area.
“Maybe we’ll get extra credit.”
She waved as she walked toward the forward section of the ship. “Maybe you’ll get yourself blown up. Been nice knowing you.” They’d already run the thing through a full sensor scan that had come up empty of any threats, but that wasn’t definitive.
He called, “Thanks, love you too.” She made an obscene gesture as she took the stairs down out of his line of sight. He stretched, his body unexpectedly achy after invading the other ship in zero gravity. There’s got to be a hot tub somewhere in the castle, right? Maybe a bikini-clad masseuse to go with it? If not, I’m going to take a two-hour shower when we get back. He retrieved the box from where it was secured in one of the upper cabinets and set it down on the white plastic worktable. Two t-shaped rods were attached at the sides of the table, and he used them to clamp the cube to the surface to prevent the thing from flying off if the ship maneuvered. In a drawer underneath was a multimodal sensing unit. They’d examined the box once for hazards but hadn’t done more than that.
He scanned the device with thermal imaging, sound, and vibration response, and focused radiation that would penetrate most materials to reveal what was inside. None of them revealed anything, and he growled in frustration. “I wonder how the Professor would react if I took a hammer to the damn box.” He activated the comm to Cia. “Hey, are there any more powerful sensors that we can use on this thing?”
After a pause, she answered, “You could try putting it in the med capsule. That might have a couple more options. I’m not sure.” She’d shown him the Grace’s medical unit, which was a fully enclosed bed with robotic arms and such on the interior. She’d said the pod could handle fairly major surgeries at need and was far more advanced than what would normally be on a ship like this because she so often flew alone.
“Okay, I’ll give that a try.” He released the cube and took it down to the cabin that had been retrofitted into a medical area. He placed it in the center and closed the canopy, then connected his comm to the medical system, and it began scanning and feeding him results. One of the scans showed a line running around the middle, and he ordered up the detailed data to find out what had detected the anomaly. “The thing did something called a capillary mapping scan and discovered a seam, but that doesn’t tell me how to get through to it.”
Cia said, “Hang on.” A minute passed, and she continued, “Okay, found the manual. Probably the seam doesn’t go all the way through, which is why the regular scans didn’t find it and the one that’s designed for the tiniest blood vessels did.”
“I know what capillaries are, believe it or not.”
She laughed. “Well, I guess you can take it from here, smartass.”
Jax replied with a sigh, “No, go on.”
“Take a laser scalpel and cut along the line you found. I bet once you expose the seam, something else will happen. It’s probably the mechanism by which it unlocks rather than the place it opens.”
“That’s pretty scientific right there. I’m not sure my Neanderthal brain can handle it.”
Her tone suggested she was smiling sweetly. “Do you want me to come down and do it, you big, strong, stupid man?”
He killed the connection with a grumble and grabbed the tool she’d recommended. He would have opted to do the slicing somewhere other than the med bay if he could have since if something went wrong, he was likely to need the equipment that surrounded him to remain undamaged. With the canopy open, he selected the capillary scan again, and the line appeared. It was strange watching the display on his left wrist while cutting along the path with his right hand, but he powered through the discomfort.
When it was complete, a soft click sounded, and a circular portion of the top rose slightly. He killed the scan, grabbed the protrusion, and lifted, and a plastic cylinder came out with a memory stick in the middle. He sighed and rolled his eyes at the universe. A memory stick got me into this mess, and now here’s another one. I bet it won’t cause any trouble.
Neither the ship’s comm nor the Academy’s had a slot for the device, so he took it forward to the pilot compartment and held it up for Cia to see. She asked, “What’s stored on it?”
“Dunno. Your comm system is, like, ancient tech.”
She laughed. “Or maybe you Special Forces types are spoiled. Ever think of that?” She pointed at a panel near his chair. “That opens. You’ll find some non-networked computers in there that should be able to read the thing.” He sat down and pulled open the cleverly disguised cover. The computer turned out to be about the size of his palm and twice as thick as his hand. It weighed about as much as a pistol. He bobbed it up and down. “I take it back. Seriously ancient tech. What is this, twenty-first century?”
“Shut it, you. Old case, newish hardware. It’ll do what you need it to do.”
“If you say so.” He didn’t really have any doubts, but irritating the pilot was fun every time he did it. He powered the unit up and waited for it to go through its diagnostic cycle, then slotted in the memory stick. The device offered him a rotating circle to show it hadn’t frozen but nothing more for almost two minutes, enough for him to start to lose faith in the whole project. It was a snipe hunt. A useless test, just like being back in basic. The thought was infuriating, so when the machine beeped and the display shifted, it was like a gift.
Until he realized what he was seeing. He’d expected, based on what the Professor had
implied, that what he was retrieving would be useful to his personal improvement. He’d taken that to mean that it would help with the integration of his prosthetics, which was the reason he was at the Academy, after all. But the device in front of him was reading like something else entirely. He only had a basic understanding of computer systems, enough to operate them and recognize what was valuable. And this, if it was what he thought it was, was valuable indeed.
He handed it to Cia. “Is this what I think it is?”
She peered at it briefly, then flicked on the autopilot and performed a second, longer, inspection. “It’s a piece of an artificial intelligence. This looks like personality routines, maybe? I don’t understand the code well enough to know for sure.”
He nodded. “I’m not sure what part of the system it is either, but I think it’s an AI component, too.”
She gave a low whistle. “Do you know how much that thing is worth?”
“A lot, I’d imagine, if it’s as advanced as it seems to be.” He was trying to keep his anger in check and mostly succeeding. Maybe I misunderstood, or I heard what I wanted to hear. Have to give these people the benefit of the doubt, Stephenson wouldn’t have screwed me over. “Why do you think he wants it?”
Cia handed it back and took over the piloting duties from the computer system. “I couldn’t even hazard a guess. What I’m wondering right now is how pissed off the Professor is going to be when he finds out we opened it and discovered what it was.”
He chuckled and repeated his earlier statement. “A lot, I imagine.” She nodded, looking worried but trying not to show it. “Listen, this one’s totally on me. I made the call to open it. Hell, you weren’t even there.”