Mission Pack 2: Missions 5-8 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  Kubu whined and hung his head, ears folded back. “Mommy? Why?”

  “Because Inviu is a witch,” Esper said from somewhere behind Tanny, out of her field of vision. “She’s not really saying those things, Kubu. It’s a trick.”

  “Esper!” Kubu said. He started toward her with the same enthusiasm he’d initially shown Tanny, but Inviu stopped him in his tracks.

  “Stop!” Inviu commanded, then turned her attention to Esper. “So… you actually are some sort of wizard. But you’re not here on behalf of the Convocation, are you? This is a kidnapping, plain and simple.”

  “Yeah,” Esper replied. “I guess when you kidnap someone, you get a lot more lawyers involved. We don’t go to that sort of trouble. Kubu’s family, and we look after family ourselves.” As Esper came into Tanny’s peripheral vision, she noticed that Esper had brought one of the stun rifles along. She took aim at Inviu. “Now let them go. We’re leaving, and it only gets uglier from here if you try to stop us.”

  As Esper inched forward, aiming the stun rifle at Inviu, the laaku woman scoffed. “You think you can bluff me? That thing won’t fire. If your magic hadn’t already fouled it, mine would.” Esper froze awkwardly, mid-step.

  But the magical halting was broken a split-second later. “Not on me, you don’t,” Esper warned. “And as for this thing?” She switched her grip, taking her finger off the trigger and grabbing the rifle by the barrel in both hands. “It’s still three kilos of polymer composite.” With that, she swung the rifle at Inviu like a club. The laaku wizard barely had time to dive out of the way. Esper swung again, and Inviu leapt onto a desk, which Esper promptly kicked out from under her.

  Tanny felt the hold on her loosen. Esper must have been distracting Inviu to the point where she couldn’t maintain her iron hold on Tanny’s muscles.

  “Kubu, help me!” Inviu ordered, scampering away from Esper, who cut off her path to the door before she could escape.

  Tanny couldn’t believe the stones on this laaku woman, expecting Kubu to help her after Esper revealed the lies Inviu had forced out of her mouth. He might be a bit naive, but Kubu wasn’t stupid. But to her horror, Kubu started moving toward Esper, and it didn’t look friendly.

  “Esper,” Tanny managed to say, fighting against Inviu’s weakened control of her body. “Look out.”

  As soon as Esper snapped her head around, Inviu darted for the door. Kubu lurched forward like a stiff-legged puppet. Tanny didn’t care how strong she’d gotten, Esper could punch Kubu until she broke every bone in her hand and not phase him. He closed in on her.

  “Run,” Tanny grunted out.

  “Kubu…” Esper said, spreading her arms. “It’s OK. I’m your friend. Inviu can’t do this to you. She can’t make you do things you don’t like.” Kubu kept approaching her. “You are Kubu. You are your own person. Believe that!”

  Kubu kept plodding toward her, but slowed. Esper didn’t back away. If Tanny didn’t do something, he was going to crush Esper flat. She strained against the invisible bonds holding her, but it was as if she were buried in sand. All she could do was twitch a few millimeters and no farther.

  “I believe in you, Kubu,” Esper repeated. She reached out a hand and placed it on the bridge of Kubu’s nose. He stopped. A tense moment passed, then Kubu shrugged Esper’s hand off his nose and licked her.

  Tanny felt herself break free all at once. She stumbled as straining muscles all sprang loose without warning. Kubu turned and reached her in a single bound. “Mommy! Oh, Mommy, Kubu missed you!”

  With a wellspring of tears, Tanny threw her arms around Kubu. “I missed you, too.” She sniffed and pulled away. “But we still have to stop Inviu, or we’ll never—”

  “No,” Esper said.

  “But we can’t just let her get away with—”

  “NO.”

  Kubu followed the argument, looking from Tanny to Esper and back again as they argued. “What are we ‘NO’ about?”

  “We’ve got Kubu,” Esper said. “That’s all we came for. We’ve got to get out of here before someone calls for bigger help than a few park rangers with science rifles.” Tanny couldn’t help noting Mort’s term for technological weaponry.

  “But she’ll—”

  “NO!” Esper shouted. “This is why Mort sent me. This isn’t an assassination; it’s a rescue. Come on, Kubu, we have a thingy out front that drives like a snake or a snail or something. It’ll be fun.”

  Kubu nodded. “Mommy, come with Esper and Kubu?”

  Tanny took a slow, shuddering breath. “Yeah, OK.” The tactical training ingrained deep down in her said that leaving Inviu loose was a mistake, that she’d come after them sooner or later—maybe as soon as they exited the building. But she had Kubu back, and until they were safely off-world, that was a tenuous thing. “Let’s go.”

  # # #

  The plans Mort had passed along had included an inventory of ships that Inviu of Chapath kept on site for various uses. Most were for cargo and large animal transport, dependent on larger carrier ships or astral gates for interstellar travel. But one was a Gaedri-class low-end luxury transport with its own astral drive. That was going to be their ticket off-world.

  As Tanny piloted the crawler toward Inviu’s landing pad, a glow of main engine thrusters caught her attention. “Shit,” she muttered.

  Esper looked up to the sky; Kubu looked to the ground. “Where?” he asked.

  “What was that?” Esper asked, following Tanny’s gaze.

  “Pretty sure that was our ride,” she replied. “Inviu must have bolted straight for it when she ran. I would have thought she’d put up more fight for her refuge than that.”

  “It explains why you and Kubu were able to break free,” Esper said. “I didn’t think that was anything I did, but it was hard to be sure. Magic’s not the easiest thing in the world to keep track of.”

  “Well, nothing to do but keep going,” Tanny said. “Worst case, we steal a sub-orbital and find our way to a starport.”

  Esper snorted. “Since when are you the optimist? I can think of loads of cases worse than that.”

  The landing pad was all but deserted. If Inviu had more ships there earlier in the day, her workforce had already used them to evacuate the area. All that was left was a touring ship—one of the transparent-bottomed craft meant for fly-overs of scenic landscapes.

  “Can you fly it?” Esper asked, laying a hand on the hull.

  Tanny walked around the ship, a foreboding sense that someone was on the way to arrest them gnawing at her. “Maybe. It’s only got one engine right now—other one’s half taken apart—but I don’t see any damage. It looks like it might be spaceworthy.”

  “That’s all we need right now,” Esper said. “Get in.”

  The three of them piled inside, and Tanny took the pilot’s seat. She adjusted the chair to human anatomy as best she could, but it was clearly intended for a laaku pilot. A quick pre-flight check confirmed the dead engine (half its parts were on the concrete outside), but otherwise the ship looked functional. One red indicator on the sensor panel caught her attention. “Strap in, we’ve got company coming.” The target ID function on the little tour ship was shit; but the incoming ship was large—at least a patrol ship. “I don’t know how much evasive maneuvering we can do with this, but maybe if I get us to the mountains—”

  “Head to orbit,” Esper said.

  “This thing has no star-drive,” Tanny argued. “They’ll have us dead to rights.”

  “Leave atmosphere, and call in our surrender,” Esper said. “That’ll buy me time to drop us astral.” Whether Tanny was meant to hear the last part or not, she did, but Esper added, in an undertone, “Plus time to pray.”

  Tanny swore under her breath and plotted a trajectory nearly straight up. “Kubu,” she shouted over her shoulder, over the rush of air still audible through the too-thin hull. “If we die, this is Esper’s fault.”

  “Esper’s nice,” Kubu scolded her. “She helped rescue
Kubu. Kubu didn’t like it at Not-Mommy’s house. Why are we not in the flying house?”

  “Kubu,” Esper said. “I’m going to try something that isn’t easy. I’m going to need quiet. Can you be quiet for a few minutes?”

  “Kubu can be quiet,” Kubu said. He opened his mouth and snapped it shut.

  “Good boy.”

  Esper was right; he was a good boy. And a big one. As much trouble as they were in to get him back to the Mobius, someday soon he wasn’t going to fit aboard. First he’d be relegated to the cargo hold for not fitting through doors, then they’d reach a point where they couldn’t keep enough food aboard to sate his volcanic appetite.

  But that was a problem for another time. For now, they had the next few minutes to live through and perhaps the next twenty or so years in prison.

  “We there yet?” Esper asked.

  “Watch out through the floor,” Tanny snapped. “No, we’re not orbital yet.”

  “My knees go weak looking through the floor,” Esper replied. “Like the glass is going to break and—”

  “Shut up!” Tanny ordered. “If Mort’s taught me anything about wizards, it’s that believing is seeing. You might wreck the floor thinking it’s fragile.”

  “Good point.”

  Esper managed to keep her wits for long enough for the tourist ship to escape Nythy’s atmosphere. She brought it to a halt, with the thrusters canceling out the planet’s gravity, and opened the comm. “Pursuing vessel, this is… this is the Convocation-controlled vessel Merlin IX.” Good Lord, she was starting to sound like Carl. “I demand to speak with your ship’s wizard.”

  That ought to have bought them some time.

  “Unregistered vessel, cut engines and prepare to be brought aboard.” Apparently whoever was after them wasn’t taking the bait. How did Carl always manage to find the gullible ones?

  “Pursuing vessel, halt or we will be forced to incinerate our hostage,” Tanny said into the comm. There was a concerned whine from the passenger compartment. Closing the comm, Tanny turned and shouted back. “Don’t worry, Kubu. It’s a trick to help us escape.”

  Whatever the response from the hostile vessel might have been stopped mattering a moment later. The Black Ocean faded to gray; its stars vanished into the muddy uniformity of astral space. The ship’s lights and consoles went dead for a few seconds, then slowly came on again, one by one.

  “You did it!” Tanny shouted.

  Esper sighed and collapsed into one of the passenger seats. “Looks that way. How far did I drop us?”

  “No idea,” Tanny replied. “This thing isn’t built for astral travel. It doesn’t have a depth gauge. So there’s… no way to navigate. Or did Mort teach you a trick for that, too?”

  “Now we wait,” Esper said. “And hope Mort finds Carl and comes after us.”

  Tanny sighed. “Well, I’ve heard worse plans. This thing got a holo-projector?”

  # # #

  It was ten hours later. Ten long, tense hours spent discussing life, plans for the future, and contingencies for what they might have to do if help didn’t come. But as Tanny was napping with her head pillowed on a snoring Kubu’s flank, a voice came over the comm.

  “Hello, tiny tin can at a weird astral depth,” Carl’s voice came through the tourist ship’s comm. “I’m looking for a lost dog. Have you seen him?”

  “Kubu is not a dog,” Kubu said, lifting his head.

  Tanny scrambled for the cockpit.

  “Tiny tin can… I don’t know what you girls are up to over there but—”

  Tanny hit the comm. “Carl! Thank fucking God. I never thought I’d be so happy to hear that reedy voice of yours.”

  There was a long pause. “No one over here with a reedy voice named Carl. Sorry, you must be the wrong tiny tin can lost at 7.83 astral depth. We’ll just keep looking.”

  “Dammit, Carl,” Tanny said. “You can’t take gratitude, can you? Just get us on board. We’re starving… especially Kubu.”

  “Roger that, slightly grateful tiny tin can with a snide pilot. Roddy’s got your measurements, and Rhiannon’s reparking the Camero so you’ll fit. Oh, and we’re jettisoning that barge of yours before we leave. We don’t have room for that shit. What are we, a warehouse?”

  “Thanks,” Tanny said, slumping into the pilot’s seat. “Any idea what was after us?”

  “Fuck no,” Carl replied. “Mort had us drop to pretty much this exact depth before we got near the system. Had us limp along at the shallow end up ‘til then. It’s like he knew you’d be right here.”

  “There’s a story there, I think,” Tanny said to Esper with the comm closed.

  “A couple at least,” Esper agreed. “What the hell’s a Camero?”

  # # #

  Carl strode into the common room, where three hungry refugees were chowing down on all the food they could shovel into their mouths. In one instance, that amount was frightening.

  “Well, I set us a course for border space. No place in particular,” Carl announced. “We can sell off the Squall and live off the profits for a long time. I don’t think we’re going to be welcome in ARGO space for a while.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Rhiannon griped from the couch, where she sat with Lloyd.

  “Where’s Mriy?” Esper asked through a mouthful of sandwich. “I haven’t seen her since we got back.”

  “Sleeping off a bullet wound,” Mort replied. “Might accept a bit of your help once she’s up. Wouldn’t let me do more than cauterize the hole.”

  Carl shuddered. “Yeah, not sure I’d let you do that much.”

  “So where are we going?” Tanny asked. “We don’t have supplies to be down in the astral forever.”

  Carl looked to Rhiannon and Lloyd. “Well, we should probably find a place to drop you kids. You didn’t sign up for this—”

  “For real,” Rhiannon muttered.

  “But we can make a stop anywhere you want to get off.”

  Lloyd hugged Rhiannon close. “Thanks. But for now, I think we’re fine right here.”

  Siege of Mortania

  Mission 7 of the Black Ocean Series

  J.S. Morin

  Siege of Mortania

  Mission 7 of: Black Ocean

  Copyright © 2015 Magical Scrivener Press

  Space wasn’t as huge as everyone made it out to be. Sure, it was infinite. That would have been great for someone looking to become a nomad until he ran out of fuel and food, willing to die in the bleak nothingness that made up the vast bulk of that infinity. But for a crew searching for a place to actually hide and live, there were fewer options.

  This had been the great topic of debate among the Mobius crew and her two guest fugitives. They had kicked ARGO hard enough in the shins that the Allied Races of the Galactic Ocean would be putting in some considerable effort to find them. Any part of the Milky Way deemed “safe,” “secure,” or “allied with Earth in any way” was solidly off limits.

  The ship drifted safely through a deserted sector of astral space. They weren’t aimed at any star system, populated or not. Gathering in the common room, the crew hashed out options. The holo-projector, so often used for mindless entertainment, was now linked with datapads, displaying habitable worlds as they were proposed.

  “What about Shephan IV?” Roddy suggested. The chimp-like laaku mechanic worked the datapad with one foot as he reclined, sipping a beer. The image of a blue-green world was replaced by a barren, gray lump of a planet. “No atmosphere, but there’s an abandoned science outpost there.”

  Tanny glanced down at the readouts on her own datapad. “They’d have stripped it of anything we need. Sure, we might hole up there a while, but we need supplies more than a spot to land.”

  Over at the kitchen table, not watching the succession of rejected worlds, two women sat on opposing sides of a small electronic battlefield. Each held an assortment of plastic cards in hand, shielding the informative sides from her opponent. One by one, they fed the cards into a slot in th
e battlefield projector, where each was scanned and uploaded.

  “This is the silliest damn game,” Rhiannon muttered. “What the hell is a Yorkan Berserker?” Her flower child lingo had faded rapidly after she had left the New Cali colony and its retrovert interpretation of middle twentieth-century Earth.

  “You shouldn’t have given that away,” Esper replied. She sat cross-legged in her chair, wearing baggy pink pajamas. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail high on her head. “Now I know that you’ve got one.”

  “So somehow knowing I’ve got this screaming guy with an axe is going to give you an edge?” Rhiannon said. “Please… you’re going to polish the floors with me. Isn’t there anyone else you can practice on?”

  “It was either you or Lloyd,” Esper said. “Mort can’t lose to me even on purpose, and everyone else but Carl refuses to play.”

  “Then make Carl play you,” Rhiannon said.

  “Technically he’s captain, so I can’t make him,” Esper said with a sigh. “Besides, he’d beat me every time too, and Mort said I’d pick up bad habits watching him play. But don’t worry, this’ll be fun.”

  There was an electronic ding, and Rhiannon’s face lit with a smile. “Oh, I’m sure it will be.” She rose and removed a batch of fresh chocolate chip cookies from the food processor. They filled the kitchen with their scent.

  “I wouldn’t mind a few of those,” Roddy said from the couch.

  “Me either,” Carl added. The captain of the Mobius half leaned, half sat on the arm of the couch, paying more attention to the can of Earth’s Preferred in one hand than to the datapad in the other.

  “I’ll pass,” Mort added with a smirk. There were times when the ship’s wizard knew more than he let on. In fact, there were few times when he didn’t. His food-stained hooded sweatshirt and unshaved beard made him look more vagabond than practitioner of the anti-science arts, but it was a sham.

  Rhiannon giggled. “Somehow I knew you’d recognize the smell.”

  “What?” Carl asked, frowning at Mort. “They’re chocolate chip.”