by J. S. Morin
As he climbed into the cockpit, Carl worried that he might have missed something. Every pilot of a Typhoon was supposed to know the basics of how to maintain it; most of them could have been starship mechanics if they were inclined. But Carl had cheated his way through the academy testing, and his squad-mates had always covered for him after that. Something about the way all the trillions of little parts interacted just wouldn’t settle into any form of sense in his head. He’d spent too much time with Mort as a kid and seen too much magic for science to seem scientific.
Knowing that there wasn’t much he could do if he found anything, Carl skipped the pre-flight checks. Since there was no spray-paint, empty beer cans, or girls’ underwear inside the Squall, he made the assumption that the teens who’d spray-painted it hadn’t had the nerve to open it up. A few days on the side of a road shouldn’t have hurt it any.
The engine hummed to life, and Carl grinned. He loved the music. He liked the style. But this backwater world was no place for a spacer. He hammered the throttle as soon as he was clear of the billboard he’d parked behind. On the trip out, he had kept low and slow to stay off sensors from the orbital nannies that enforced the retrovert lifestyle, finding and keeping out off-worlders and their tech toys. But now it was time to get shit done, and there was no hiding what he was planning to do next.
“Yo, Tanny,” Carl said into the comm. “Tanny, answer me. Roddy? Pick up the comm. Need ya, buddy.”
A few seconds later, the laaku mechanic came on the comm. “Hey, Carl. Mort and Mriy went looking for you.”
“They found me,” Carl said. “I had to leave them back on the side of a highway, holding off the cops. I’m coming in hot.”
“Why is it never a nice, leisurely departure?” Roddy said. “Why’s everyplace we leave gotta involve the word ‘flee’ or ‘escape’? You ever think I might be doing maintenance on the engines, or something?”
“That’s why I keep the fridge well stocked,” Carl replied. “To keep you from being ambitious and proactive. Have the cargo bay open and engines fired up. I’ll take the helm, but I want you to get us off the ground before I get up there.”
“That much of a hurry, huh?”
“That much of a hurry. We just pulled the fire alarm, and ARGO’s going to come down on us before too long. Those retrovert cops aren’t the problem, it’s who they’ll call for backup.”
“I’m on it.”
Carl closed the comm and opened a new one. It took him a moment to remember the comm ID, since it wasn’t programmed into the Squall. “Hailing. Lost little girl, come in.” When there was no response, he repeated the message, and then a third time before he got a response.
“Jesus, Carl,” Rhiannon said. “You ever stop to think I might have company over? It’s not cool for me to be using this thing planetside. Quit being such a square, and patch it through the phone.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up!” Carl said. “This is serious. Lloyd, Mort, and Mriy are in trouble. I’m rushing back to the Mobius to go pick them up.”
“Sounds like a bad scene,” Rhiannon said. “Lay it on me.”
“Mort broke me out of jail while Lloyd was there,” Carl said. “It got all… well, like everything I do. Lloyd came along instead of playing dumb, so he’s caught up in this.”
“No way!” Rhiannon said. “Lloyd wouldn’t get himself tagged. He’s a total dork; wears his suit on the inside, you know?”
“Listen to me,” Carl said. “Shit flows downhill from this. We’re taking Lloyd with us and bugging out. Making tracks. Fleeing the scene? You dig, Sis?”
“Fuck.” She got the idea, which was good, because Carl was running out of period-authentic lingo to use on her.
“If you want to join us, have anything you want to bring with you in the car when I get there.”
“Where do I meet you?” Rhiannon asked. “How soon? Oh, and fuck you, Carl.”
“Yeah, fuck me,” Carl agreed. “But just be in the driveway in…” Carl checked his sensors and did some guessing. “Let’s say twenty minutes.”
# # #
Carl sprinted through the Mobius, which was in the air before he set the Squall down in the cargo bay. As the ramp closed behind him, he could see that Roddy was bringing it about, setting in a course for the way he’d just come. He skidded to a halt and slammed into the co-pilot’s seat.
“Move over,” he ordered Roddy.
“Always a treat with you around,” Roddy said, easing back on the throttle before leaving the controls momentarily unattended.
Carl slid into the pilot’s chair as Roddy moved into the co-pilot’s. “Well, shit happens.”
“It’s all your fault, you know,” Roddy said. “All your fault. From being here in the first place, to Harmony Bay shitting bricks over your crash-and-burn at the race, to Phabian Investigative Services giving us the scan-job.”
“Well, add ruining my sister’s life to the list,” Carl said. “We’re swinging by Rhiannon’s place after we grab everyone else. Where’s Tanny?”
“She and Esper took a transport ship,” Roddy said. “They couldn’t wait for you to get back before they went after Kubu.”
“Just the two of them?” Carl said. “Shit.”
“That’s your fault, too, I guess.”
Carl had to ponder that one a moment before it sank in. Why would the two of them running off get dumped in his lap? It sounded more like Tanny couldn’t keep it together long enough to form a proper rescue plan. “It was Mort, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, the big guy wouldn’t drop the Mobius astral without you on board,” Roddy said. “Not that Tanny cared about leaving you on Peractorum until we got back.”
“We’ll have a word about that later,” Carl promised. Tanny was getting out of hand. Carl not being on the ship sort of put her in charge, but it didn’t make the Mobius hers to run off with and leave him stranded. “Looks like I owe Mort one, huh?”
Roddy made a rude noise of flapping lips. “We all owe that crusty old bastard more than we could ever pay back.”
“Still…”
“Yeah,” Roddy agreed. “I know. Hey, where’d you leave the jail breakers?”
“Just off Route 66,” Carl replied.
Roddy rolled his eyes. “You nostalgic fuckers. A whole colony without one original idea in it.”
While the Mobius was nowhere near as agile at the Squall parked in its belly, in a straight line through atmosphere, it was nearly as fast. But the comforting bulk and the lack of a panoramic view through the canopy made the return trip feel more relaxing. An overlay holo-display cast the nighttime landscape in easily viewed shades of green, making navigation a simple matter of backtracking the Squall’s course, plus a bit of rounding error for the part he took on foot.
When he spotted the police cars floating in mid-air, Carl slammed on the thrust reversers and brought the Mobius to a halt. Mort had taken the defensive posture down at ground level a bit farther than Carl had anticipated. This wasn’t just going to make the local papers. They were going to have every investigative branch in ARGO here pretty soon, maybe even someone from the Convocation. Magic like that didn’t go unnoticed on civilized worlds, even when those worlds tried their damnedest not to seem civilized.
“Roddy, grab a seat in the turret and cover them,” Carl said. “Fire a few warning shots.”
“Are you nuts?” Roddy asked. “We can’t just—”
“Yes,” Carl snapped. “I am. We’re putting astral between us and ARGO for a while after this. A lot of it. Now go! And open the cargo bay while you’re at it.”
Carl kept them on the outskirts of what he guessed might be the range of Mort’s fuckery when it came to the laws of physics. For having known the wizard twenty-something years, it was still guesswork figuring out how far and how badly he could screw with technology.
Roddy’s first volley kicked up huge plumes of dust in the dry dirt fields on the side of the road. The greenish bolts of plasma hadn’t flown quite straigh
t, taking a curved path to the ground, but Roddy had given the squad cars a wide berth when he fired. After a second blast, the cars drifted to the ground. When they’d settled onto their own suspensions, Carl backed the Mobius up to the three fugitives, cargo ramp first.
“We’re… aboard,” Mriy grunted on the comm a moment later. She sounded bad. But Mriy was tough. If she hadn’t died of her wounds by now, she ought to be able to recover. Maybe once they picked up Esper, she could do something to help.
Carl trusted that Mriy had already hit the controls for the ramp. He gained altitude and put the shields up—just in case a bullet got lucky.
“We can’t leave without Rhiannon,” Lloyd’s voice came over the comm.
Carl gave a rueful smile. Not a bad guy, Lloyd. Might do a good job looking after his sister. “Already on the way. Called ahead. She’s packing as we speak.”
The nav computer had updated with local maps. It recognized the address 413 Mapleview Terrace and showed Carl a course and an ETA of two minutes—God, were starships convenient. A scan off the orbital comm chatter didn’t show up with anything unusual, but it was scant comfort. Back when they had Chip, he’d have been listening in on encrypted-law enforcement channels. But just about anything could be on its way to Peractorum through astral and the Mobius wouldn’t know until it was too late.
Mapleview Terrace was the same bland, cookie-cutter happy factory that every other residential zone in the ‘burbs seemed to be. It was just like Mom and Dad’s old place in San Jose, back during the brief period when they’d lived here. Ranch floor plan, white picket fence, postage stamp yard with vibrant green grass. It was easy to pick out Rhiannon’s place, because it was the only one with a woman in an orange dress frantically stuffing suitcases into a Camero.
The Mobius landed only briefly. It was just long enough for Rhiannon to drive a ‘68 Camero replica into the cargo hold and park it beside the Squall. Carl stayed up in the cockpit, dreading the fallout from his sister’s unplanned addition to the passenger manifest. Hopefully, if Lloyd were any sort of boyfriend, he’d calm her down before the subject of fratricide came up.
Carl headed for space.
Tanny being Tanny, she had left a detailed itinerary of the rescue mission, along with three alternate rendezvous points for afterward, and a comm ID to get in touch with her anonymously if things went sideways. But with Mort aboard, Carl figured there was a chance they might even head her off before she did anything stupid on her own.
Esper wasn’t going to be nearly enough backup for a rescue.
# # #
There were times when Esper seemed like her old self. At the cafeteria on board the Milky Waltz, she’d ordered herbal tea and chocolate cake for breakfast. They’d watched Love Letter Dynasty together in their shared berth, weeping over Laurie and Jackson’s tragic affair while drinking sweetened wine. Without the guys around, it had been like a vacation.
And then there were times when she seemed distant, shouldering her way through crowds and glowering at overly talkative servers. Tanny wanted to talk to her about it, but there was the mission to consider. If it took Esper letting her mind wander into Mort’s dreams to turn her into the soldier she needed to be… for a few days that would have to do.
But that trip was behind them now. They had arrived on Nythy, the vowel-free laaku colony world where Inviu of Chapath had set up her refuge. It was an unauthorized terraformed world, not part of ARGO’s master plan to fully colonize the galaxy. Its gravity was 1.1 of Earth’s, which put it 5% over the threshold for sanctioned habitation. Of course, after a while planetside, most people didn’t notice the difference, and with an illegally terraformed atmosphere and imported wildlife, Nythy made for decent living.
“I feel like an idiot in this getup,” Tanny whispered. “How did I let you talk me into this?” The sleeves of her tunic were baggy, and she had her hands stuffed inside opposing sleeves, mimicking Esper’s posture.
“If we want Kubu free and clear, we need to get in without them knowing who’s coming,” Esper said. “I don’t think your phony IDs were going to do the trick.”
“And your phony wizard trick will?” Tanny asked. “At least you could have let me know before I paid for the IDs.”
“You should have told me about it, and I would have stopped you,” Esper replied. “And Mort and I have already pulled this trick. I’m no Mort, but I think I can pass you off as an apprentice.”
“You think…” Tanny muttered. “I can’t even remember the last time I wore a skirt. I must look ridiculous.”
“It’s January 9th, 2561,” Esper said. “Next time I make you wear one, you’ll know. Besides, you look cute in a skirt. And black is definitely your color.”
They left the starport on foot, but soon found a communal transport heading for the Duploth region, which was their destination. There wasn’t much infrastructure, just a concrete pad and a service desk—pay at one, wait near the other. It was half an hour until the next shuttle. Tanny and Esper sat down on a bench by the pad and waited.
“I’d feel better if we had a datapad with us,” Tanny said. “Shipping our tech to Keesha Bell seems like cutting our own throats.”
“She’ll hold onto it for us,” Esper replied. The calm assurance in her voice was new as of the past few days. She didn’t hedge and suggest and qualify, she just said things like she meant them. “Besides, to get in without raising a ruckus, we need to stay in character.”
“And without a blaster, you think I won’t end up killing Inviu,” Tanny reasoned.
“Maybe,” Esper said. “But I bet if you really, really deep in your heart want to, you could kill her with your bare hands. No blaster just means you can’t do it without thinking.”
Tanny couldn’t take it any longer. “What’s gotten into you? Mort can’t be having this much effect on you in a couple nights. You haven’t even gone into his head since we’ve been… wait, you haven’t, right?”
“No,” Esper said. “And it’s been weird waking up in modern times multiple days in a row. But I don’t know, maybe I’m just growing up. I ran away to the One Church for protection and for answers. I got some of one and not nearly enough of the other. Mort’s got answers. I don’t like a lot of them, but he offers them up anyway. They’re better answers than I had, at least.”
“So Mort’s put you off the One Church now?” Tanny asked. “Jesus, he’s one cold-hearted bastard. Take away solace in life and the comfort of the next…”
“No, just a more complete picture,” Esper said. “He’s studied history like you wouldn’t believe. The scriptures, the heresies, the histories that get stuffed in a closet because they don’t agree with ‘popular’ history. He’s got copies in his head, and I’ve read a bunch of them. It helps to see past the politics and the secular power grabs to the divinity beneath. Mortal men acting on behalf of God with real magic, performing miracles with His gifts. Atrocities in His name and in defiance of His laws. Humanity is shit, a lot of the time.”
“There!” Tanny said. “That! You didn’t used to curse like that.”
Esper just shrugged. “I used to think there was something inherently wrong with certain words,” she said. “I was brought up that way. But a lot of how I was raised was fucked up. Fucked. Fucking fucked the fuck up. Am I supposed to go tell a priest I said that? Half of them sin daily anyway. Does he have God’s ear any more than I do? Is He not listening to me right now? There’s nothing in the Ten Commandments about vocabulary; English wasn’t even around back then.”
“I can see you’ve had some time on your hands,” Tanny muttered. She started to check her datapad for the dozenth time before remembering yet again that it was in a shipping crate en route to Champlain VI.
“A lot of the confusion comes from translations,” Esper continued. A dam had burst, and all the things she’d been keeping silent on had flooded forth. Tanny now regretted poking holes in that dam. “A lot of other races that heard God’s word kept simpler versions. Ten was a
lot of commandments, possibly because humanity—as I mentioned—has been pretty shitty over the years. But the tesuds have a single commandment: ‘In all actions, seek to lessen suffering.’ It’s such a catch-all. So simple, but so hard to wrap your head around.”
“How do you quantify suffering?” Tanny asked. “Sounds like a great way to rationalize theft from the rich.”
“Ah,” Esper said with a grin. “But if they were pious, they’d have used the money to reduce suffering already. Still, the theory has its flaws. Temporal ignorance of the greater suffering in the world and worlds beyond is one of the key theological topics in the tesuds’ equivalent of the One Church.”
Tanny let Esper ramble on. It was nice that Mort was broadening Esper’s horizons beyond fire-and-brimstone morality, but Tanny had come to terms with the lack of a caring god a long time ago. She’s seen too much—hopefully more suffering than Esper would ever know about. There very possibly was a god, but he didn’t give a counterfeit terra about humanity.
…otherwise he might have sent that shuttle along just a little ahead of schedule.
# # #
Under the guise of prospective donors from the Convocation, Tanny and Esper had no trouble arranging a tour at the Duploth Refuge for Sentient and Displaced Species. They were met at the shuttle depot by a young laaku in a green and white uniform. He was piloting a blocky, weather-worn cargo shuttle that looked like it had seen heavy use outdoors.
“Welcome to Duploth,” he said, extending a hand. Tanny and Esper each removed a hand from their sleeves to shake with and returned to their Convocation-approved ‘I’m not here to do magic’ poses. “I’m Chimjo of Nederhal, park ranger for the reserve. Climb aboard.”
The interior of the shuttle had a barnyard odor, reeking of animal sweat and rich soil. The seats were old leather, worn and cracked, with harness-style straps for the occupants. Tanny strapped herself in as soon as she sat down; Esper never removed her hands from her sleeves as she took her seat. Out of the corner of her eye, Tanny kept watch to see how Esper handled keeping her seat on a bucket of bolts that probably didn’t have its own gravity generator—hence the restraints.