The gate inched its way open like some two-hundred-year-old grandpa was pulling it.
“Tui,” Jackson said and put his hand on the ceiling to brace for impact.
And then they shot through the opening, the gate scraping the mirrors of the rental completely off. There was a screech as the gate scraped alongside the car, and then they were through. Jackson glanced back and saw the mirrors tumbling along the road.
“They’re going to take your deposit for that,” Jackson said.
“Sorry,” Jane said. “I was busy killing alarms and spoofing cameras. The security on this launch track is tight. Tui, the second Jackson’s aboard you need to flip around and get out of there if you don’t want to get caught.”
“If it was easy, more people would hijack containers this way,” Tui said.
“What are you talking about?” Jackson asked. “This ain’t hard. All you need is a super hacker, a giant cargo ship waiting in orbit, and an idiot willing to kamikaze leap from a moving car onto a moving train to ride it into space.”
“When you put it that way…”
Outside the Sharmala terraformed zone, Nivaas was a desert of purple-tinged sand and jagged rocks, but thankfully the maintenance road was paved and in good repair, so they could keep this smooth.
They had a good view of the container. It was a big rectangle with a disposable nose cone on the front, and a reusable rocket on the back. It proudly wore the orange and white Splendid Ventures logo, but Jackson still visually confirmed the ID numbers painted on the side, because it was one thing to risk your life to hijack a mech worth millions, rather than a container full of toilet paper or something. Their target had been doing a leisurely 100 kph until it got out of town, but it was already starting to accelerate.
“Pulling alongside,” Tui said.
Jackson rolled down his window. “I think I liked plan A better.”
“Plan A was the dream. And now you woke up. Go!”
It seemed stupidly dangerous, climbing out the window and onto the roof of a speeding car, but truthfully, he’d done a lot worse. He used Raj’s gloves to stick himself to the polymer body of the vehicle, and then pulled himself up and onto the top. He immediately regretted not closing his mask, because some purple sand grit of this planet got him right in the eye. That had been stupid. Luckily, the shaded eye film gave him enough protection that it didn’t blind him, but he unstuck one hand to pull up his hood and visor before an insect hit him like a bullet.
Jackson crouched and held on tight as Tui maneuvered them as close as possible. The captain had come up with this last-minute desperation plan by looking at the aerial view and seeing that the access road ran relatively parallel and close to the accelerator track…Except that what looked easy from a few thousand klicks in the sky was a whole lot different on the ground.
The road was kind of close, off and on. Except there were enough small veers from side to side that Tui had to keep compensating. So they were swaying from side to side. While the container was on a path of unerring straightness…And going faster and faster.
“Your window is closing, Jackson,” Jane warned.
A basic psychological feature of the people chosen to be pilots was that they didn’t get too riled up under pressure. Jackson scanned the road ahead and picked what he thought was the best spot. Then he checked the container—which was now pulling past, even though Tui was giving it all they had—and picked his landing zone near the rockets. It wouldn’t do any good to stick himself to the container if he wasn’t anywhere near an access hatch.
He aimed and launched the grapple. It hit the flat surface of the container and locked on. Monofilament cord reeled out, so thin but strong, it was the galaxy’s best fishing line.
Tui veered away, then curved back. They had to be going 150, the container faster. They were closing again. Nearing the best spot. There was a quick, instinctive calculation of speeds and vectors…
The car closed in.
Now was the moment. And Jackson leapt.
The impact was hard. He slapped at the container wall, but Raj didn’t stick well. He skidded, then dropped toward the maglev tracks.
Tui hit the brakes and instantly fell behind. He hadn’t been kidding about not wanting to run over him.
Jackson dropped another meter, and then the grapple line snapped tight and kept him from falling. It would have ripped his arm from the socket, but Raj’s pressure compensator spread out the impact. That sudden cessation of movement enabled him to get one palm stuck down tight. He followed that by getting a toehold.
Jackson looked down, saw that his other foot was dangling centimeters from the maglev track flashing by beneath, and carefully lifted it away. He began to climb, like a fly on a wall. He’d been wrong. This was a lot harder in gravity. Space was unforgiving, but it had a few perks.
“Did you make it? Are you alive?”
“Working on it.” Though it was nice how Jane sounded genuinely concerned for his safety.
The rear access hatch was locked, obviously. Plus it was an old-fashioned mechanical, so Jane couldn’t unlock it for him remotely. It took him a few seconds to get his multitool from the pouch on the outside of his pack, but then he used the plasma cutter to burn the latch. Jane couldn’t open this for him, but she could at least jam the alarms his rough methods surely set off.
“I’m in.”
Chapter 5
Inside the container, all was complete darkness.
Jackson turned on his visor light. It illuminated the interior of the car, casting odd shadows. Down the middle of the car lay the Citadel M750, strapped down tight. About it were stacked Splendid Ventures cargo boxes that had also been tightly secured. It looked like a giant warrior in some tomb on his way to Valhalla, surrounded by mounds of loot. But even with all the loot, there was still enough room for Jackson to move, and more importantly, room for him to move the Citadel.
Jackson was something of a connoisseur of mechs, but there was no time to admire this beauty. Shortly, they’d be in space. Nivaas was a little smaller than Earth. So instead of having to accelerate to twenty-nine thousand kph to get to near-planet orbit, you only needed a little above twenty-five. The accelerator would provide a good portion of that speed. The last chunk would be provided by the rocket. And while the track was about eleven hundred klicks long, at a constant acceleration, it wasn’t going to take long to get to the end. The ride now was smooth as glass, though the rocket portion might get bumpy, and he didn’t want to be bouncing around in this can.
All he had to do now was free the Citadel, break into it, and figure out how to drive it well enough that he could escape with it during the three-minute window between when the rocket burn ended and the spaceport gremlins hooked up to guide the container to the Splendid Ventures ship. Going too soon most likely meant a fiery death. Exiting too late and working too slow meant capture by the port authorities.
Right now, the constant acceleration was causing just over two Gs. It was real pressure, but below that of most roller coasters, nothing Raj couldn’t compensate for. They’d start climbing soon—Nivaas had some truly epic mountain ranges—and it would get worse. Being at the bottom of the car was a precarious place. If any of the cargo busted loose, he’d be bludgeoned or squashed.
“How are we doing, Jane?”
“I stomped on the alarms. Nobody saw you. Tui is on his way to the port.”
“Good. I’m going to try and unlock the Citadel. Change my ID again, please.”
“Congratulations. You are now Dwight Oaks, mech pilot at Splendid Ventures. Like most fighter jocks you are extremely well compensated for your talents, but you secretly suffer crippling self-doubt, which you hide behind a veneer of cockiness.”
“Poor Dwight. I kind of like being the priest with the butterflies more.”
“What makes you think I was talking about Dwight?”
Jackson laughed as he climbed up the sleeping mech. “Danger close, Jane.”
It was truly impressive up clos
e. It was the first time he’d ever seen a fifth-generation mech in person. This was by far the nicest machine he’d ever seen, let alone stolen.
When turned on, the Citadel was programmed to hook up to the nearest communications link and send its owners its coordinates and a notification that it was in use. Hopefully Jane would be able to block that until he could get it manually shut off. Otherwise this would be a really short trip. Jackson climbed up the sleeping giant until he was next to the cockpit, which took up a big chunk of the chest cavity. He took the medallion out and held it up to where the access reader was embedded. A light on the cockpit flashed. The Citadel pinged his personal embedded ID chip. He waited. And waited.
“Come on.”
And then the Citadel said, “Passphrase.”
Jackson smiled. “My monkey’s uncle.” Thank you very much, Dwight.
“Access granted.” The canopy opened. A puff of pressurized air escaped.
Okay, so he knew he could get in, he just couldn’t do it yet. He still needed to cut the Citadel free. It was so powerful, it could probably easily rip itself free of its tethers, and then punch its way through the walls. But if he damaged the container at all, SVC would see that immediately. Ideally, the more time it took them to realize they’d been robbed, the more time the Tar Heel had to make its escape.
“Jackson, you’re three minutes from rocket burn.”
He felt the car rise vertically. The Gs increased slightly. He checked once more to make sure everything on him was secure, then set the timer in his display to three minutes. This was going to get really uncomfortable, really fast.
The Citadel was secured with six straps that locked to the brackets in the floor. Using the plasma cutter on his multitool, he sliced the first strap holding the legs. Then the second. He worked methodically, but the problem with a compact tool with that much power was a lack of juice, and he’d already used a bunch cutting the lock. And so when the blue arc died partway through the second strap, he extended the diamond saw blade and started working on the strap the old-fashioned way. He finished cutting through the third strap and moved to the fourth.
And not a centimeter in, the blade snapped in half. He held up the now useless tool in his hand and looked at it.
Unbelievable.
The seconds ticked down. There was no time for dismay. He got his regular folding knife from out of his pack, and began to saw, but the straps were made of tough material. He put as much pressure into it as possible, but the straps defied the normal steel blade. The timer dropped below two minutes.
“Fifi,” he said and pointed to where he’d been sawing with little effect. “I need you to slice through this. Pronto.”
Fifi crawled out of Raj, sprang to the strap, and began her work.
“Follow the scoring of my knife,” Jackson said, then moved to the next strap and began sawing again. This was unbelievable. The seconds counted down. Fifi finished her strap.
“Here, Fifi. Cut here!” Jackson said and pointed at the fifth strap. Fifi jumped and worked. Jackson moved to the last strap. He was getting dizzy and realized the container had climbed enough that he wasn’t getting adequate air, so Jackson pulled on his mask and clicked it to his hood.
They reached one-minute-forty, then thirty, then twenty-five. He directed Fifi to the next strap and hoped that the religious members of the crew were praying for him.
The clock ticked to sixty seconds and then rolled to fifty-nine. Fifi finished cutting through the last strap. “Good girl, Fifi. Get back!”
Fifi sprang back to the pack.
The Gs increased again. Moving was getting really hard, even with Raj squeezing the blood from his extremities and back to his brain. Then there was a low pop at the end of the launch tube as the rocket motor started its initiation sequence.
He looked at the Citadel. It was time to drive.
Jackson pulled the canopy wide. Inside the controls glowed, blue and green. It was a fairly standard setup—seat, controls, pedals, displays, levers, switches. Though there were a few icons and buttons he didn’t know, he recognized enough of them. He slid into the chair and buckled himself in. It still had that new-mech smell.
A trembling anticipation ran through him. There were two ways to drive a mech. One was with manual controls, stick and voice. That’s how the vast majority of people did it. With enough practice, one could become very smooth. Or at least as smooth as anyone who learned to drive complex, heavy equipment.
But the second way to drive a mech—the real way—was to connect it directly to your brain and make it a part of you. That’s when the mech sang. And the pilot sang with it.
The difference in effectiveness between the two methods was astounding. One made for a lumbering, clumsy, walking tank…which was still pretty darned effective. But the other made it into a supernaturally responsive, quick-handling death machine. The problem was only a tiny handful of humanity had the natural gifts to do so.
But there would be no merge for him today. Or ever. Jackson was never going to jack anything into his brain again, wired or wireless. He didn’t dare.
“Close canopy.”
The canopy began to close.
“Full power.”
The Citadel powered up.
Memories of first soaring in an old Thunderbolt, the mech he’d wielded in the war on Gloss, his home planet, rose in his mind. Along with it came an echo of the artificial joy he’d been flooded with during those days. The craving ran along Jackson’s bones. A part of him still yearned for that mad euphoria, and always would. He ignored that part and locked the skeleton frame around his arms and legs.
The sensors would read his nerve impulses and muscle twitches, then translate those into mechanical movements. It was sort of like driving if you were driving four cars simultaneously. He scanned the status of the Citadel’s systems. They were all a go.
Jackson worked the controls, engaged the skeleton, and rose. Or at least his tiny movements against the skeleton mimicked rising in a truncated way, and the Citadel’s computer extrapolated the rest. His wishes were transformed into mechanical exertion, and the Citadel rose like a wrathful demi-god.
“Whoa.” This thing was smooth.
The timer was counting down. The rocket was about to go off. Since the Citadel was unstrapped, he needed to brace himself and hold on. Mechs were sort of man-shaped, two arms, two legs, because it turned out when you hooked your brain directly into a machine, that was intuitive. By stick, however, it still took some getting used to, and since Jackson exerted a bit too much pressure, the Citadel’s fist smashed a crate flat. On the bright side, whatever was stored in there turned out not to be explosive. Jackson crouched and pushed the mech’s palms against both sides of the container. Carefully. Because Jackson didn’t want to knock a big obvious hole in the side. He clicked the skeleton to lock it in that position, perfectly still.
The rocket ignited with a mighty roar. The force crushed Jackson back into the seat, but Raj kept him conscious. For this part all he could do was hold on.
The container blasted through the atmosphere. Jackson passed that time using his eyes to flip through the Citadel’s menus until he could figure out how to shut off the signal beacons and go dark.
This thing was impressive. It had active camo skin over a layer of non-Newtonian fluid armor that could take hits from a tank’s main gun. Jackson pulled up the power plant, and grinned when he saw that it was a thorium reactor putting out numbers sufficient to light a small city. He kept flipping tabs. The computer was powerful—but not an actual AI, because mankind had learned the hard way about sticking those in combat machines. The sensor suite was the best he’d ever seen. And the weapons…so many weapons…Most of those were unloaded for safe shipping, but Jackson knew they had most of these munitions available on the Tar Heel, because the captain prided himself in being the one-stop shop in illegal gun running.
This was a nice mech. It wasn’t just the big things, but also the little touches. Everything
in front of him turned into a display. This thing had no blind spots. The Citadel’s cockpit was so insulated that even though he was riding in an unaerodynamic brick on the end of a massive solid-fuel rocket, it was quiet. The liquid armor layer made such an effective shock absorber that the only reason he knew the container was shaking so violently was because the sensors told him so.
The rocket blast and thrumming vibration of the car suddenly stopped. The pressure lessened, and all was silent. That was his signal. They’d reached space. Jackson closed the Citadel’s status tabs and started a new three-minute timer on his display.
That was how long containers usually coasted between their rockets stopping before the robotic gremlins that controlled orbital traffic took over to steer them to their final destination. Nivaas commerce ran on a very tight schedule.
Jackson unlocked the Citadel’s limbs, and very gently moved toward the main door. Since Jane had squashed the alarms, he pulled up the manual override. The instructions for accessing it were in his visual. He brought up the access screen and punched in the maintenance codes Jane had found. The wall in front of him flashed “You are now on override” while a male voice repeated the message.
“I’m ready to move, Jane. How are we doing on blind spots?” If someone was looking in their direction, there really was no such thing as stealth in space.
“There’s Taco Control, the SVC Profit, and two gremlins with eyes on the container now. I’ll do what I can to confuse and divert. There’s a lot of cargo moving fast right now, so I’m going to send you a very specific trajectory navigation worked up to minimize exposure. Stay between the cars. Hopefully nobody will get a good look at you and just think your heat signature was just debris.”
“Debris from what?”
“The explosion. But don’t worry about that. The captain’s just had to adjust plans again.”
Jackson sighed. There was a human-sized locking lever on the door. It looked tiny beneath one of the Citadel’s fingers, but Jackson managed to turn it without snapping it off. The doors made a satisfying snick, indicating they had unlocked, and then they began to open. There was a sudden whistle and whoosh as the remaining air inside the car blasted into space. Small bits of grit flew out with it into the starry blackness. That pressure change was enough to move the Splendid Ventures car off course. And the port watchers would note it.
Gun Runner Page 6