Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  “The passengers in the sleepers are engineered. Augmented,” she said, confirming what he hadn’t yet said.

  “Then we’re not hauling a science station, are we?” he asked.

  She held her hands up. “It really is a scientific outpost, but we’re hoping it will also provide a sanctuary for my people.”

  He drummed his fingers on the glass behind him. “If we don’t get them out of Coalition Space, these Red Wall fanatics won’t stop until they kill them?”

  “Exactly. And if some innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire…” She let the rest of the thought hang.

  “They killed almost eight thousand people in Robinson.” He’d seen the reports on the newswave while he was visiting home.

  “Only three hundred were plussers,” she said. Her eyes told him that every one of them was someone she knew.

  He sighed and looked down at the deck. “It would have been so much easier if you’d led with this when you pitched the run.”

  “I didn’t know if I could trust you,” she said. “The stakes are so high, and there‘s only so much you can tell about someone from their reputation. I wasn’t sure you’d take the job, and if not, I didn’t want you to know enough to compromise our safety.”

  Thinking back over their first conversation, he tried to remember if she was more interested in his character than his skills. Regardless, her point was valid. “How did you end up involved… are you one of them?”

  “I’ve been with them for a long time. Since the beginning,” she said. “It’s my job to keep them safe. It’s reached the point where the only way I can do it, is to get them beyond the reach of extremists who think it’s acceptable to kill thousands of innocents for the sake of their own fear.”

  “And fifteen hundred light years is far enough?” He looked up at her.

  She shrugged. “Hopefully.”

  He realized he was staring again, but she hadn’t answered his question about whether she was one of them. There was something more. There had to be.

  What is missing?

  It probably didn’t matter, anyway. Tapping into his collarcomm he said, “Ammo you’re up. Go get ’em loaded.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the leg out to X-04 Ethan waited while Rene finished the calibration of their new sensors. Once they were operational, he spent most of the almost eighty hours outbound, glaring at the screens like he expected every piece of traffic within scanning range to be another attempt to take them down.

  He knew rationally that it wasn’t likely that they’d have any trouble in the deep, but the whole idea that there were insane flatbrains bent on extreme violence against him and his cargo, fed his already overactive imagination. Insanity tended to outplay reason far too often for him to feel safe.

  It didn’t help that the only reference material he had for learning about plussers was over a century old or based on trashy B-drawer tri-vids. Most of it was more unswung than the reality of the Red Wall’s worst nightmares.

  When they dropped over the threshold beacon for the Transfer Hub Four, he would have sighed in relief except that the Elysium Sun sat a half million klick from the threshold. It was far from X-04’s loading arrays with its containers loaded and the two that he still had to pick up, floating free beside it.

  Two security interceptors hung back several thousand klick but appeared to be watching the ship and the untethered cargo.

  He slapped his hand down on the intership comm the instant he realized how odd the situation was. “Elysium Sun, what’s your status?”

  “Security here wants us to grab and go,” Nuko said, her face appearing on his screen.

  “It looks like you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

  “We need to provision for the run,” Ammo said. “They haven’t stopped you from doing that, have they?”

  “Nah. We got the container packed tight, but that was all the hospitality I could suck out of them. And that was only because you and Luca Chao are still tight. She made sure I’d tell you that you owe her.”

  Ammo frowned and then shrugged.

  “So, what’s up with the jackboot boys?” Ethan said.

  “I hired them,” she said. “I got nervous sitting here with two free floating racks of shuttles and no peacekeepers to keep the natives polite.”

  “Running up the overhead when I let you out alone, I see how you are.” He felt relieved that she’d done that.

  “So, your upgrades aren’t enough?” Ammo asked.

  “Elias has been waiting to cut it in, but since the only way to get it working is to take the main power couplings down then rewire it with the reactors offline, we have to be anchored in place. Now that you’re here he says it will only take a couple more hours.”

  “Good, get him on it. I’ll get Ammo to load the rest of my baggage.”

  “I’ve already got Charleigh sitting in the DSL. She’s ready to—”

  He shook his head, leaning back in his chair and making sure she was paying attention. “Leave the Sun with her. I want you to bring Kaycee over so we can swap out med staff. Ammo can always use the hours in the black.”

  “They want us…”

  “I know, but it will take a half shift to reconnect the habitat modules over to the power core once we get it attached to my load. We’re not going anywhere before that happens. I need to get them on independent life support and I really want to see you before we set sail.” He made sure she got that it was important. She also picked up on the fact that he already had the power core on his load before they loaded the sleepers.

  She raised an eyebrow and nodded. Message received.

  Ethan met them in the shuttle bay control room. Kaycee carried several bags of stuff and looked like she was coming back from an overly expensive shopping expedition. He frowned but said nothing as she walked by.

  “She’s got a shit ton of medical supplies in there,” Nuko said as the doctor closed the lift gate and headed up first.

  “What was she carrying?”

  Personal stuff. That’s all things she picked up before they gave us the riffrush. She said she had everything she needed to take to her quarters, and she was hoping you could get the new handlers to stock the rest of it into the MedBay for her.

  “Marti, can you get it taken care of for her?” Ethan asked as the lift returned.

  “Yes, Captain,” it said. He held the gate open and Nuko stepped in first.

  “So, what’s swinging?” she asked while they rode up to the middeck.

  “You haven’t met the client yet, and I thought it was important that you did.”

  “Sure,” she said, looking at him sidewise. Her expression showed that she expected it to be more urgent than an introduction.

  The lift opened, and they stepped out into the lounge. It was empty other than Quinn and three of the handlers who waited for them to get out of the way so they could head down to the shuttle.

  “Coffee and sweets on your usual table boss,” he said as he nudged the closest handler on the back of his head to push him toward the lift. The man nodded and shuffled forward. Quinn shook his head and frowned.

  Nuko watched as the four of them closed the gate and the lift dropped. She frowned. “He looks like he’s not all there.”

  “He’s probably just tired,” Ethan said. “Quinn’s been working them all hard.”

  “Right,” she said, following him over to the table where Kai Wentworth and three of her traveling companions sat.

  They were drinking gojuice and as Ethan walked up, he recognized the smell of something stronger. He was noticing odors a lot more than usual and he shook his head. They all stood up and Kai turned to face him.

  The optic in her cheek porthole twitched as she smiled. She wore a low-cut vest buttoned up to somewhere between her navel and her breasts. Ethan blinked several times as he forced his eyes back up to her face and focused on her facial appliance.

  He cleared his throat. “I’d like to introduce you to Nuko Takata. Sh
e’s the captain of the Elysium Sun and my right hand.”

  “I can see that,” she said, smiling and offering her hand. Apparently, reading Nuko’s confusion, she added. “I knew your grandparents. You look like both of them.”

  “So, you’re from Juno?”

  “I’ve been there, but no. I knew them before they settled there,” she said.

  “Really?” she asked, skepticism edging her words enough that Ethan shot her a side eye.

  “I’m a lot older than I look.” Kai winked unconcerned. “I haven’t seen them in years.”

  Nuko nodded. “They’re both gone now.”

  “I am sorry. They were wonderful people,” she said. “Well, she was a bit of a hellion if I remember right, but still a great person to have at your back.”

  “That’s what grandpa said, too.” Nuko looked down at the floor. For a brief instant her face lit up with what looked like youthful innocence.

  Ethan had never seen that expression on her before, and it was almost as distracting as Kai herself. “I just wanted to introduce the two of you before we make for the edge. Now if you’ll excuse me, we have some last-minute details to go over.”

  She nodded and turned to sit back down. Ethan stepped back, but Nuko remained motionless for several seconds. He cleared his throat before she looked up and followed him over to the table that Quinn had set up for them.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked as she dropped into the seat beside him.

  She turned and looked back over her shoulder at their client. “I swear I know her.”

  “From where?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “But the memory is tied up with my grandparents. It’s just one of those vague feelings you get. Like a remembered dream.”

  “I wonder if that’s because of what she might be?”

  “Our client?” she winked at him. “Stunningly beautiful?”

  “You noticed that, did you?” he asked, grinning.

  “I knew it had to be a woman,” she said. “I even said that to Kaycee.”

  “What?”

  “Why else would we take a stupid, insane, run like this?”

  “Ouch,” he said. “It isn’t her charms that convinced me.” He was close to lying, and he knew it.

  “Yah, sure it isn’t.” She winked. “For what it’s worth I’d have taken the job based on that too. She is almost supernatural, isn’t she?”

  “It’s probably because of what she is.”

  “You said that before. What are you getting at?”

  He leaned forward and lowered his voice, “I think she’s a plusser.”

  “A plusser? Maybe that’s why she looks familiar.”

  “Really? Why?” He could feel a stupid expression of shock that cemented itself to his face despite his best effort not to let it show.

  “My grandparents were both fans of the old tri-vid stories about genetic superheroes. Maybe she looks like one of them.”

  “No, I meant maybe she is actually one.”

  She leaned back and dipped the end of a pastry into her coffee cup. Her face told him she wasn’t on board with his absurd idea. She wasn’t even in the same sector of space.

  Reaching toward her, he put his hand on her arm and held it. “The people in the sleepers are honest to god plussers. That’s what we’re hauling. They’re refugees from the terrorist attack on Robinson Medical.”

  He outlined everything he knew about them, which he realized as he explained it to her, wasn’t much. Fortunately, it was enough to make her a believer, or at least not a total skeptic.

  “Let’s say they’re what you say,” she said, pulling her arm free from his hand and picking up her coffee cup. She stared into it for several seconds as she struggled to rearrange her thinking.

  She shook her head. “I have some real moral issues here. I don’t understand why people think they can make humans better just by tweaking our genes. What happens if we build a better human? Do we all have to agree to let that be done to us, and our children, just so we can compete?”

  “Nobody says we are competing with them.”

  She snorted. “That’s just human nature. We always compete with each other. We always have, and we always will. It’s no frakking wonder the Red Wall is after them. They’re just afraid they’re going to lose.”

  “Well I can’t think of any I’d rather see lose Darwin’s Race than a bunch of dimflatch fanatics that will blow up children to make a point,” he said.

  She leaned back and let out a slow blow of air. It rumbled like a growl from deep in her throat. “I can’t argue that,” she admitted.

  She twisted to look at Kai again. Her companions had disappeared, and she sat at the table alone, staring at the wall. “Who else knows?” she asked.

  “I haven’t discussed it with anybody yet. I wanted to talk it over with you first.”

  “We should tell the rest of the crew.”

  “Kai’s concern is that we keep it need-to-know,” he said. He stared across the room at her. It felt like she was listening even though she was fifteen meters away and they were almost whispering. “The more people who know what we’re hauling, the greater risk to their safety.”

  She nodded. “And ours.”

  “You’ve got a new copilot and medtech on your ship. And between us we’ve got eight new handlers. That’s a lot of loose variables.”

  “I’m not sure I like that.” She pulled her mouth sidewise into a frown.

  “I just told Quinn to keep an extra eye out but didn’t tell him why.”

  “I guess I’ll tell Angel that, too,” she said.

  “For now, it’s my problem, since they’re all aboard my ship. You just need to keep an eye on my ass.”

  “I knew there was a reason you wanted me over here. That’s the best proposition I’ve heard all day.”

  When Ethan glanced over at Kai, she was grinning but still staring at the wall.

  He winked, standing up and pulling Nuko to her feet by her hand. “Come on, we’ve still got a couple hours before…”

  He looked over at the lift as Kaycee appeared. Frak, I need to introduce her, too. He dropped Nuko’s hand and held up a finger. “A quick detour.”

  Marti and two of Quinn’s handlers followed her onto the deck. As he stepped toward her, she stopped so abruptly that the automech skidded to a halt. The handlers lacked sufficient traction to match its braking curve and slammed into the massive Gendyne body from behind, scattering their cargo of medical supplies as they crashed into it.

  Kai snapped to her feet like she wanted to help, and Kaycee spun to face her, cocking her head to the side and glaring. She turned to face Ethan and shot him dead with her eyes.

  When he didn’t immediately understand what was going on, she shook her head and pivoted back toward the lift without a word of explanation.

  “What the hell was that about?” he whispered over his shoulder to Nuko.

  “She doesn’t like how I smell,” Kai answered from across the room, shrugging before she walked off toward the access corridor to the habitat container.

  She was listening.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It would be several months before they reached their destination in the Veil Nebula, and even though Ethan’s relationship with Nuko was irregular and casual, there was something urgent in the moment. Just knowing that if they didn’t take pleasure together when they had the time now, they wouldn’t have a chance again at least until they completed their outbound leg, gave their passion more of an edge than normal.

  They’d finished, showered together, and Nuko had taken her shuttle back to the Elysium Sun all before Marti told him that Ammo had completed loading the last cargo containers and they were ready to depart.

  “What about the Sun?” he asked, slipping back into his coveralls and clipping his collarcomm into place.

  “Sunny is reporting that their engineering work is nearing completion and they will be ready to boost within the hour.”

  The
AA on the Elysium Sun was a full iteration above Marti in computing power, but Ethan just didn’t feel a connection to it. It had to be the experience level that made the difference somehow, and because of that he hadn’t ever asked it for reports. He also resisted accepting anything Sunny said at face value. He chose not to question how accurate the estimate was, since he didn’t want to come off as condescending or prejudiced against artificial persons. Especially in Marti’s eyes.

  “Is Ammo on the ConDeck?” he asked.

  “She is in her quarters. She claimed the need to ‘rinse the sweat off’ after completing the loading.”

  Ethan grinned, remembering his first time loading a long train. The work was easy if you concentrated, but it could still be stressful knowing that one heavy handed move, or look away at the wrong moment, and you could crush a coupling and ruin the load. “How’d she do?”

  “Adequate. She completed the connections faster than anticipated, and there are no reported connection failures.”

  “I’ll tell her you called her adequate,” he said, standing up and heading for the door. “I am sure she will appreciate the compliment.”

  Stepping out into the corridor, he paused. The physical diversion he’d just shared with Nuko had been distracting enough to drive away his thoughts about Kaycee’s strange behavior, but they came crashing back when he heard her voice coming from behind Ammo’s door. She was apparently angry about something because her voice was almost loud enough to rattle the bulkheads.

  He took several steps toward her quarters, not sure if he wanted to get involved. He ran the ship casually, since most of the time it wasn’t necessary to pull rank and enforce discipline to get the job done. It was easier to let them work together like a family to sort things out, and it kept his own stress levels down too. But this sounded serious.

  Like to the point of hurling projectiles at each other.

  As he stood outside the door, he realized that it was only Kaycee who was shouting. He couldn’t hear what Ammo was saying, but the one side of the conversation he could understand, was enough to make him think he might have to intervene.

  “I know where you come down on this…” Kaycee roared.