Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  Stand by, Marti said. I think we would like to discuss this.

  Several seconds later Ammo came back on the link. The tone of her thoughts showed she understood why he wanted blood but was a little shocked that he was angry enough to want that much of it. I can’t say I like what you’re thinking, but I’ll not quibble over some incidental loss of life. However, if you’re willing to consider a little different way to play it, I’d like to recommend some details from the Ethan Walker playbook that might leave us a better exit line.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Ethan sat staring at the ceiling with a hand on Marti’s arm. He was counting seconds while they got things set up. Every second that passed was one that might be too many for Kaycee.

  We’re ready and standing by, Ammo finally said through the link. Ethan let out a long breath.

  Good, then let’s take things back, he thought, clearing his throat.

  “I know you’re listening out there,” he said, raising his voice to make sure someone heard him. “Tell Jetaar I can give him the demo he wants now. I can get the door open.”

  “I’m on my way,” the pirate captain said, his voice coming over the console across the room before his face appeared.

  “That’s not how we’re going to do this,” he said, turning to face the screen. “First thing I need to know is that Kaycee’s still alive. Or it doesn’t happen.”

  He shook his head. “As far as I know he’s still got her. I know he wouldn’t be quick with a woman like her. He likes the game.”

  “Yah, I get that he’s a sick fuck who feels powerful because he beats up little girls and weak pirate queens like you.” Fire flashed in Jetaar’s eyes, but Ethan ignored it. Any cracks he could exploit would serve them later. “You need to listen very carefully to me though. So far you haven’t crossed that point where we can’t work together. You want to dance that’s fine, but his turn is over.”

  “You’re in no position to set terms, Walker,” he said, pushing back and pressing his head into the headrest of his seat. He was trying to project confidence, but it came off as hollow. “You’ve played out your chips. I’ve got your crew, and he’s got your girl. I’d say that gives us the last word in how this goes.”

  “Let me expand on what I am saying to you,” Ethan said. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “I can show you how to get inside the Tacra Un, but if Constantine’s crossed that line, you’ll never get into that proxy chamber.”

  There was a long pause. “You’re bluffing.”

  Ethan laughed and made sure he kept his eyes focused on Jetaar’s. “We’ve done this before. Are you willing to wager that I won’t take it to the grave with me?”

  “You’re too much of a fighter to do that,” he said shaking his head. “For the sake of your crew you’ll push until your last breath. It’s not your nature to opt out.”

  “Would you self-destruct your ship rather than be tried and executed?” he asked. “Captain X has already made it clear he intends to end us, so I’ve got nothing else to lose.”

  “I can keep that from happening,” he offered.

  “Don’t lie to me Jetaar. You can barely keep your shit contained when he’s in the room.”

  Ethan ignored the indignant snort he got as a response. Superficially it may have looked like Jetaar meant it, but there was no logic that could make him believe Jetaar had the eggs to back it up if Constantine pushed.

  “I’ll get his word that she’s still alive and that he’ll keep her that way,” the pirate said, visibly holding back on his anger. “Then we’ll be right there.”

  Ethan shook his head. “Wrong. We’ll do this in your throne room, or wherever it is that you all meet.”

  “That’s not going to fly,” he said.

  “Let me tell you why it is,” Ethan said. “I want all of your council to see what I can do for you, and then I’ll expect you to get them to give unanimous support for us getting a pass. The problem is, if you all don’t back this together, then Captain X will just divide you up and take it. It’s obvious he runs all of you by intimidation, and if you don’t stand up to him together, you’ll go into the recycler with me.”

  After several seconds of silence had stretched tight between them. “You’re awfully sure of yourself, Walker,” he said quietly.

  “Constantine doesn’t believe any of this is worth the trouble,” he said, also lowering his voice. “You and I are the only ones that know what you’ve got under you. It would be a real shame to walk away since you’re literally an hour from the promised land.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” Jetaar admitted.

  “Don’t force my hand on this.” Ethan pulled out Kaycee’s med kit and opened it. He pulled the pharma synthesizer out and pitched the bag onto the floor. He didn’t look up at the screen as he started dialing up a drug cocktail. It didn’t matter what he punched into the synthesizer, but he kept dialing things until the screen went red to warn that it was a lethal concoction. When he reached that point, he set it back down in front of him. “I know Constantine hasn’t got the patience for another decade or two of you diddling yourself and promising him the universe on a stick.”

  “Alright, let’s just keep breathing,” Jetaar said. The expression on his face showed that he’d gotten the message. “I’ll do my part, but how do I know you can do yours?”

  “I’ve already got the power turned on in the Tacra Un. It will be a couple days for the core to come up, but you should be able to detect it on your sensors. Tune them to any sub-harmonic of 8.516 terahertz and you should see it powering up. Carson Wayne knows why that’s significant if you need to ask him.”

  “Stand by.” He cut the comm while he rushed to get verification.

  “I’ll be frakked,” he said, almost smiling when he returned. “How the hell did you do that?”

  “You want to find out? I’ll show you. All of you together, at the same time,” Ethan said. “In your throne room.”

  “Alright, you’ll get your show. I will have the guards bring you to the council room.”

  “I’ll bring my automech with me since it carries the Shan Takhu Language database we created. And I want Kaycee there,” he said.

  “I’ll talk to X.”

  “Understand this, if he’s already done with her, then it dies with me.” Ethan picked up the pharma synthesizer pushing the button to load the concoction into the derma syringe. He dropped it into his coverall pocket.

  “Make sure he understands I’m not bluffing.”

  “Yah, I got that,” Jetaar said.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  The council meeting room was not in the center of one of Tortuga’s domes, instead it sat in a nondescript building along the outer edge of the largest structure. It clung like a soap bubble in the back corner of another larger bubble, right against the edge of the Tacra Un itself.

  Outside it may have seemed plain, but inside it was an impressive auditorium two hundred meters across. Terraced seating ran in concentric half-rings around a central stage that itself was fifty meters across. Obviously, it was a stadium they used for other things because it was horribly impractical for holding meetings.

  The four guards Jetaar had sent for him, brought Ethan and Marti in from the center of the audience area and marched them down the sloping ramp to the floor of the arena and toward the stage. A single set of stairs rose to the platform and the guards around him stopped there.

  After waiting for an invitation from Jetaar, one of the two in front headed up to the stage while the other nodded and waved Ethan and Marti past. The two behind followed them all the way to the top and stopped there. Ethan didn’t turn, but he heard them both holster their weapons.

  “Captain Walker and his robot, as requested,” the one in front announced, stopping in the middle of the stage area, and stepping sidewise several meters. “Be advised, Captain Walker, you stand before the combined power of the Commonwealth Council. Mind your tongue.”

  A single round rise
r stood in the middle of the open space and the guard gestured for him to take a position on the platform.

  Ethan paused for several seconds as he surveyed the situation. Marti stepped up beside him and he reached out to touch her arm. The link was instantaneous. Stay here and watch this one. When the dance starts, he’ll be the one looking to spill blood.

  Understood, she said, turning and stepping several meters in the opposite direction.

  Jetaar sat near the center of a long-curved table close to twenty meters across. A taller section of the table beside him had a small podium on it. It must be for whoever was conducting their meetings, but at the moment it sat empty. Constantine was far to the outer edge on the left side. He sat in a chair and Kaycee stood beside him.

  As Ethan stepped up on the platform, he realized that although she’d been wearing her basic duty coveralls when he’d taken her, she was now only wearing a thinskin and he had her in binding cuffs. Even with the blinding light that burned down on the platform shining in his eyes, he could tell she had dark streaks across her body and one of her eyes was swollen closed.

  Despite what he knew he needed to accomplish, he almost launched himself at Constantine in a blind rage. It was only the fact that he was holding a live fire pistol pressed against her side that stopped him.

  At least she’s alive, he reminded himself, swallowing the acidic fire that rose up inside him. Struggling for control, he tamped it down deeper until he felt ice water pump through his veins in its place.

  He scanned the table, recognizing several of the captains from when they’d first come to see what he was doing in the lab. Most of those who sat to the left were the ones who had deferred to Constantine’s authority, but the ones farther around the table in the opposite direction seemed older, and perhaps more seasoned. If there were allies to be made, they’d come from the right.

  Clearing his throat, Ethan focused his eyes on Jetaar. “Where is the rest of my crew?”

  “Alive—”

  “For now,” Constantine interrupted. “Whether they stay that way depends on what you give us.”

  Ethan turned his head in Captain X’s direction and nodded. “Turn loose of her.”

  “Not likely,” he said, sliding the barrel of his gun from her ribs and upward toward one of her softer spots. She went rigid and closed her eyes. “She’s useful to keep you motivated.”

  He clenched his jaw tight and glared. “If you don’t let her go, you’re going to need a ride home.”

  Constantine laughed hard enough he almost fell out of the chair. “You can’t be so stupid as to believe I’m intimidated by a roaring mouse like you.”

  “You’ve got about five seconds,” he said, taking a step off the riser and squaring himself. He shrugged. “It’s your call.”

  “Walker, what are you doing?” Jetaar asked. “Get back on the platform.”

  “He’s bluffing,” Captain X snarled.

  When Ethan glanced at Jetaar, he was shaking his head. He’d played that game before and it didn’t end well.

  “Three seconds.”

  One of the other captains sitting several seats to the right of Captain X pulled a gun and pointed it at Ethan.

  “This isn’t between you and me... yet.” He held his hand up in the man’s direction and shrugged.

  “You wanted a demonstration.” Turning in Marti’s direction Ethan nodded. “Let me begin by showing you the door.”

  A screaming man fell out of the sky.

  He hit the floor flat on his back, but to his credit he bounced to his feet and drew a very lethal looking sidearm. He spun around taking a quick survey of the room.

  “This would be your first officer, I assume,” Ethan said, turning back to face Constantine.

  “Ivars Thorgood,” Marti supplied.

  “Tell Ivars to stand down,” he said.

  “What the frak?” Captain X stared at his first officer and Kaycee squirmed as she tried to pull away. He tightened his grip on her arm and twisted it until she nearly collapsed forward, but he kept his attention focused on Walker.

  “You just aren’t good at taking instructions are you Xavier?” he said, taking another step forward and nodding again.

  The sky opened up and rained Captain X’s crew into the meeting room. The first one landed right on top of Thorgood. The second took out the guard who had warned Ethan to mind his tongue. Another twenty or thirty men followed those two over the next couple seconds. The tangled chaos of crashing bodies probably resulted in more than a few crushed bones and the bellowing cacophony behind Ethan drowned out almost everything else in the room.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jetaar yelled over the chaos.

  “Not. Bluffing.” Ethan answered, without turning in his direction. “This is a little trick I learned when somebody did it to my crew.”

  He took several steps toward Constantine and lowered his voice. “Now turn loose of her, or your ship is next.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, swinging his gun in Ethan’s direction.

  “I don’t think you’re my type,” he said, nodding again. “But I will most definitely fuck you.”

  An explosion shook the stage and echoed around the inside of the half-dome like thunder. Even the squirming pile of flesh behind him fell silent as the floor plates rattled.

  “That was the Shadowhawk.” Ethan announced, shrugging and waiting for the reverberation to die down. “I warned you that you’d be walking if you didn’t turn loose of her.”

  He took several more steps toward the table, never breaking eye contact. “Now, I recommend you let her go, or you might not even be walking. Am I not making myself clear enough for you to get the idea here?”

  Constantine jerked his pistol back toward Kaycee, but before his arm had completed the arc, Quinn leaped out of thin air behind him and swatted the gun away from his intended target before it went off.

  The crack of the live fire round snapped, but the slug hit the gray wall of the Tacra Un and ricocheted harmlessly across the room.

  The handler cranked down on Constantine’s arm to pry the pistol free before he could try again. Literally picking him up by his head, Quinn tossed the startled captain against the wall like a sack of recycler biscuits. The crunching sound of shattering bones as he rebounded and crumpled to the floor was loud enough to send a clear message to the rest of the council.

  They had removed Captain X from his seat. Possibly permanently.

  “Now, anybody else?” Ethan said, spinning toward the captain with the drawn pistol and pointing a finger at him. “You maybe?”

  The man’s eyes opened wide as he froze in place. Another wave of bodies began to cascade down onto the stage from empty space.

  It took only a few seconds for everyone on the council to realize that all of their first officers had joined the pile of Captain X’s crew in the middle of the room.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “He’s still breathing,” Quinn said.

  He’d rifled through Constantine’s pockets for the key to Kaycee’s binder cuffs and was working the locking mechanism without looking down. As soon as her hands were loose, she snatched the pistol off the table where the handler had set it and pointed it at the unconscious captain.

  Quinn stepped back and nodded. She rattled off two quick rounds and Ethan’s mouth fell open in shock. Turning the gun around, she handed it to Quinn.

  “And he’s still breathing,” he said again. “Bleeding a lot more than he was, but he’s alive.”

  “He’ll live, but he’ll never reproduce,” she hissed, kicking him as she stepped around the table and walked over to where Marti stood. As she approached, Ethan could see how much Constantine had torn her up. The streaks he’d seen across her body were knife cuts and the bruising on her face looked like broken bones.

  “Do you want me to finish him?” he offered as she walked by. “I would gladly do it at this point.”

  She shook her head as a single tear rolled down her face. “Is
that who we are now?” she whispered.

  “Maybe,” he whispered, even more shocked to realize it might be true.

  While he’d been paying attention to her, several of the captains had jumped up. Fortunately, Quinn had kept them at bay with the gun Kaycee had handed him. He held it pressed squarely between the eyes of the nearest pirate captain and looked like he was debating the same things as Ethan. His arm shook as he held his finger away from the trigger.

  “We can’t sit for this!” one captain roared. “They tried to murder Captain X right in front of us.” Ethan spun in the direction of the voice. It was the one who had pulled his pistol to back up Constantine.

  “If we wanted him dead, he’d be dead and not still bleeding,” he said.

  “They also destroyed the Shadowhawk!” one of the men yelled from the pile behind him.

  Ethan nodded at the captain with the gun and Angel appeared behind him. She twisted the pistol out of his grip and cranked his arm up behind his back. He fell forward, and she slammed his face down on the table several times before she pushed his own gun up under his ear and pulled the hammer back.

  Glancing over to see where else he might be facing problems, Walker watched Jetaar waving his arms and trying to get everyone to calm down and shut up. It was probably pointless, but the sound level dropped slightly. The indignant howling of the captain under Angel’s control carried over the noise.

  Ethan walked up to the table and bent down to study the man’s face. “I chose to bring Constantine’s crew here. There are other places with far less air where we could have taken them. Would you like a demonstration?”

  He stared into Ethan’s eyes and realized it wasn’t wise to push his luck. He shook his head and Angel turned loose of him, letting him drop back into his seat.

  Ethan straightened up and turned to face the room. The pile of bodies was untangling itself. Several of them looked like anger was taking over from their confusion and Ethan waved his arm in their direction. Raising his voice enough to be heard, he said, “I just offered this captain another demonstration. Should we see how well you all do on the outside of the dome?”