by David Ryker
I sucked my teeth and grimaced. “So much for a utopian society. You’re just as corrupt as the rest of us.”
Glaavus turned side on, ready to leave. He didn’t take kindly to the last comment. “Mr. Maddox, I hope I can count on you to follow through with this. You know what will happen if you don’t.”
I waved him off and headed toward Greg, yearning to be back at the controls. “Yeah, yeah,” I sighed, “save the universe and all that.”
11
“Welcome back, James.”
I slotted down into the pilot's seat and got comfortable. It fit like a glove.
The seat was a lot more comfortable than I was used to, and the environment was a lot nicer, too. The exposed wires and spartan feel that the F-Series had was gone, and had been replaced by polished panels and extra controls. What half of them did I had no clue.
“Good to be back,” I said, not trying to keep the grin off my face. “Thought I’d lost you there for a while.”
“I did think that I wouldn’t survive. I wasn’t sure if you had, either.”
I leaned back against the headrest, feeling the memory foam seat hugging me in all the right places. “Takes more than a little bit of sand and some giant lizards to finish me off.”
“Giant lizards?”
I laughed. “Never mind. You got scooped up by those scavs, right?”
“That is correct.”
“And Alice saved you.” I still couldn’t quite reckon with it. It wasn’t like her — but then again, she wasn’t acting like her, so I didn’t know what to make of any of it. Something had gone down on Jokka, but I couldn’t say what.
“Yes.”
“You know what happened to her?” It was a longshot, but maybe he’d have some idea — seen something. The AI core’s eye ran as a camera and recorded video when they were disconnected. Maybe he’d seen something.
“I do not.”
“Do you have any video of what happened?”
“I can play back the footage of the scavengers’ facility if you would like.”
I checked my watch. We were on the clock, but I had a minute. “Sure. Start at the crash and spool forward to Alice.”
He said nothing more, but on the screen a black feed appeared, a timestamp in the corner running quickly on. It stayed black for a few seconds as Greg’s core tried to pull video off the trashed cam-dome, but the time-stamp told me that three days had gone by, and then it stuttered and crackled before coming to life with a video feed that displayed two ugly faces. They looked down, the fish-eye lens making them look even filthier and mal-proportioned than they were before. One was about as far from human as humanoids got and had big yellow eyes and a trunk of a nose that hung down over a wide and dark-lipped mouth, two gaping nostrils flapping as it breathed. The other wasn’t too far from human, but it had a flat nose, black eyes and a mouth like a frog. There was no audio, but they were talking to each other while they went to work on the core housing. Greg sped it up again and ten minutes later they both dug pry-bars into the space around it and then levered it out. A hard tug saw a warning message flash on screen that said ‘Disconnected from power source — now running on battery power’ and then they carried Greg away, the feed showing a swaying view of the filthy floor.
The one with the trunk tossed him onto a workbench and he spun through the air, landing and settling on his side. The room was a long corridor more than anything. On the right behind a latticed steel cage, I could see a huge scrap heap with some automated arms sifting through it. A couple of figures moved around on the debris and sparks from blowtorches leaped into the air as they dismantled old ships and mech.
On the left was a wall lined with workbenches and doors. I guessed it was underground, judging by what Glaavus had shown us earlier.
Greg sped up the recording again and hours began to elapse, figures darting quickly back and forth across the screen. They cleared off the scrap heap and disappeared, the light fading from above it. Dusk was approaching. He paused the footage without warning.
“What gives?” I asked, reaching out and tapping on the screen.
“I have reviewed the footage ahead — you may find it distressing. Are you sure you want to continue?” Greg’s voice was even and flat, but it still made me sit up in my chair.
I cleared my throat and tapped the screen again. “Just play it,” I said quickly, feeling my fists curl.
Greg let the video resume. The space was quiet for a second and then two flashes lit one of the corridors that fed off to the side.
The guy with the trunk for a nose came stumbling out of the opening, one hand clutching the side of his head. Blood was streaming through his fingers, from his ear by the looks of it. His other hand was holding on to his trousers, unbuttoned and hanging around his thighs. He was trying to pull them up, but didn’t make it two more steps.
Another flash went off and he sprawled forward in front of the camera, a bullet between his shoulders. His hand moved from the side of his head and I could see half of his ear missing.
Alice appeared from behind him, a pistol raised and smoking. She was wearing a tank-top, but it was torn off her shoulder, clinging on to one side and barely covering her chest. She was holding it in place with her free hand.
She stepped forward toward the crawling scav and leveled the pistol, putting two rounds coldy into the back of his skull. She stood up straight and looked around, turning to face Greg’s core. Her face was covered with blood. It was running out of her mouth and down her chin, dripping onto what was left of her shirt.
I reached out and tapped the screen, my mind racing. The image froze. It didn’t take a lot to piece together what had happened — or at least almost happened. The scav with the trunk had tried, but Alice had fought back — bitten his ear off, taken his pistol, and then put him down. I breathed quietly, my jaw set. I should have been there. What if they’d…? No, I couldn’t think like that. They didn’t, and she made it out.
I swallowed hard and pressed play again.
Alice lurched into motion and walked toward the bench Greg was on. She moved to the side of the screen and started rummaging for something.
A second later she pulled off her tank top, Greg’s feed showing only her hip and the bottom half of her stomach, and then pulled on a loose shirt.
In the background, I could see movement and I nearly called out to her. It would have been pointless anyway — this was a recording — but she didn’t need it.
She spun on her heel, crouched low and squeezed off two shots into the approaching scav — the other guy with the frog-mouth – who sank onto his knees and fell forward, a bullet through his head.
Alice moved forward quickly. She pulled a pistol out of his limp grip and shoved it into the back of her trousers and then rolled him onto his side, roughly pulling his arms out of the sleeves of the jacket she was wearing when she’d shown up to rescue Everett and me.
She pulled it on and then came back toward the camera. She veered off at the last second down another corridor, pausing momentarily. Something had caught her eye.
She turned her attention to the camera and came closer, stooping to look into Greg’s eye. She shook her head and bared her teeth for a second in a strange half-smile before wiping her chin on her sleeve and grabbing Greg’s core. The feed swung around and then went black, the time-stamp still running.
“What happened?” I said, my voice a little hoarse.
“I believe I was in her pocket.” He sped it up again, the only thing punctuating the darkness the vague blinks of muzzle-flash as they bled through the material of the jacket. Then, Greg was pulled out and stuffed into one of the parts-nets in the back of the ship. Alice retreated down the hull and jumped into the pilot’s seat. Mac and Fish both dragged two limp bodied to the door and pushed them out, closed it and then strapped in quickly. The ship juddered, peeled away from the landing pad, and then accelerated out of the crevasse and into the setting sun.
“Do you want to keep w
atching?” Greg asked.
I shook my head and closed the recording. “No, I’m good.”
“Are you alright, James?”
I exhaled slowly, running my hands through my hair. “Yeah, I’m okay.” I didn’t know what to say to her — or whether to say anything. I was rolling it over and over in my head.
Static cut through the silence in the cabin and I sat up, startled.
“Red?” It was Alice.
“Yeah?”
“What’re you doing? We’re waiting on you.”
“Shit. Sorry, I’ll be there in a second.” I pushed back into the chair and slid my feet into the pedals. Greg flicked the screen over to the live feed and I wheeled him around. He felt lighter than usual, more responsive.
The hangar was all but empty. The others had already loaded their rigs on. It was just me left.
I circled behind the ship and sidled up the ramp, pulling Greg into formation behind Mac’s HAM.
“See you soon,” I muttered, patting the top of the head-rest affectionately as I popped the hatch and climbed out.
The others were already in the cockpit. All except Everett. She was still at the bottom of the ramp.
I jumped down and turned to her. “You good?”
She smiled at me, arms folded. “Yeah, I’m good. Just wanted to say good luck before you set off.”
“Wait, you’re not coming?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.
She stared up at me. I couldn’t read her expression. Half forlorn, half something else. “Not this one, Red. Someone’s got to get back to the Federation — tell them what the hell’s going on, take Volchec’s body back, too, for her family.”
“But we’re not supposed to tell anyone—”
“Not the truth, dumbass. But when they don’t find any bodies on Jokka, they’re going to wonder what’s happening.” She dipped her head back toward the hangar. “I’m going to take the scav’s ship, head back there and give my account of things — tell them that the Free did a sweep of the crash before they bolted, scooped you four up and took you as prisoners before taking off. I’ll tell them that the scavs found me at the crash site, took me prisoner. I’ll say I overpowered them, stole their ship, tried to give chase, lost you guys somewhere out past Aelock — checked out a couple of nearby planets, and then headed back to Jokka to rendezvous with them and debrief when I detected their arrival.”
“And you think they’ll buy that?” I folded my arms. I was hoping she’d say they wouldn’t and come with us, but she just sighed and shrugged. She was going to try and pedal Alice’s story as her own. She must have spoken to her while I was out, but made the decision just then.
“Don’t know — they’ve got no reason not to. If none of us turned up, they’d be more suspicious. At least this way, if they figure out that it’s Aerra that the Free have headed for, and they turn up to find you guys there, at least you’ve got a little plausible deniability.”
“I don’t like this, Dem,” I said quietly, stepping back down the ramp.
“You don’t have to like it, Red, but it’s what’s happening. So go on, get out of here. Go save the universe.” She snorted at the last bit. It was still unbelievable.
“You should be coming with us.”
“Humph — I don’t think so. You guys are all pilots, got your rigs — me? Nah, I’m better suited to this sort of thing. I haven’t seen real action for a while now. Notia was fun, but… I’m not anxious to get shot at again any time soon.” Despite her reasoning, she seemed almost wistful, saddened even.
I was, too. When the door closed, I’d probably never see her again. We were just four pilots going up against an entire armada. The odds were definitely stacked against us. I said all that I could. I knew there was no convincing her. “Stay safe, Dem.”
She smiled at me, genuinely, and we both twitched like we were going to go forward to hug each other. But we didn’t. “You too, Red. Don’t die, okay?”
I clenched my jaw. “I’ll try.”
She came up the ramp a step, standing close to me. My arms moved a little, unsure whether to embrace her or not.
She met my eye for a moment and then slapped the door release.
The ramp started whining upward and she stepped back, cupping my cheek with her hand for just an instant, and then she was gone.
I staggered backward and the door closed and sealed. I stood there staring at it until I heard my name echoing down from the cockpit.
I shook it off and cracked my knuckles. It was time.
12
Rhona was a great pilot. I wasn’t sure if it was her programming, or if she’d learned it along the way — I had no idea how old she was, and I doubted that she aged, so she may well have been flying for five hundred years for all we knew — but she was precise and confident, and with the power of the Raptor at her fingertips, she didn’t spend any time screwing around.
There were two seats at the front of the cockpit and four across the back, facing inward — two on each wall.
Alice dropped in next to Rhona, desperate to run her hands over the controls and help however she could. She was still on edge, but I couldn’t blame her. I could tell now that it was just a case of trying to keep herself busy. She wasn’t giving herself any time to grapple with what had almost happened. She was compartmentalizing, pushing it down to stay on the task at hand. I had to admire it.
My stomach churned as Rhona wheeled us around in the hangar and then headed through a wide set of sliding doors. A long tunnel lay ahead and she accelerated hard down it.
The walls seemed to close in as we picked up pace. Ahead, the floor rose up into a slope, but Rhona didn’t slow down and with the sort of maneuver that would need super-human reaction times and not a shadow of a doubt in the mind of the pilot, she swung us upward and eased the thrusters up to full blast.
Everyone groaned as the force pushed us back into our seats and then sunlight was streaming in through the cockpit windows.
The tunnel spat us into the air and we streaked upward through the soft white clouds. Rhona kept the throttle pinned and the hull shuddered, the mech in the back clanging as we climbed.
Fish was like a statue, head back and eyes closed as we flew. Mac had his teeth gritted against the pull, hands on his harness.
We burst through the upper reaches of the atmosphere and the hull stopped shuddering.
Rhona gave just a cursory check over her shoulder to make sure none of us had emptied our stomachs, and then turned back to the console. “You all okay back there?”
We all grumbled in agreement.
“We’re about a day and a half out from Aerra in hyper. I’ll get us lined up and going as soon as we can. The sleeping quarters are on the lower deck — there’s food and water enough for you, too. I hope everything’s to your liking — we don’t have much need for the stuff, so it was a bit of guesswork.” She flashed us a smile from the corner of her mouth and typed some coordinates into the screen between her and Alice.
I was starving and wasted no time in heading down to the lower deck, which wasn’t dissimilar to the one on our Tilt-wing. I was warming up a nutrient pack when the kick of hyper made me sway on my feet.
Something flashed in my peripheral and my hand shot out automatically and snatched the falling knife I’d used to open the pack out of the air.
I swore, releasing the thing and watching as it tumbled to the ground. I’d caught it by the blade and it’d cut into my thumb.
Blood flooded my mouth as I shoved it in, sucking on it and probing the cut with my tongue. It wasn’t too deep, but it was throbbing already.
I hunted for something to staunch the bleeding but by the time I’d found the first aid kit and got it open, I didn’t need it anymore.
I pulled my hand out and held it up to the light to inspect the damage, but it didn’t seem to be anywhere near as bad as I’d thought. The opening had already knotted over with congealed blood and was tingling, the throbbing fading with ea
ch beat. I watched it for a minute, not believing my eyes as the wound started to close over. By the time two had passed, it was completely gone.
A knock at the door made me jump and I turned to see Rhona standing there. She was already in the room, her knuckles raised to the frame. “You okay, Maddox?”
“Call me Red,” I said reflexively, my thumb still raised. I put it down and smiled at her. “And yeah — I’m fine, why?”
She measured me for a second. “You should eat.”
I swallowed and glanced at the oven, my nutrient pack now swollen and steaming. My mouth started salivating at the sight of it. I couldn’t remember being this hungry since… ever. My stomach was churning. Sure, I’d been out for a few days, but still, it was so strong that any thoughts of my thumb miraculously healing as it had were dispelled until I got something in my belly.
Rhona said nothing as I reached into the oven and pulled the pack apart, dumping the contents into a bowl on the top — pulses and protein paste. In seconds it was gone and I was fumbling with another pack and tossing it into the oven.
She watched me intently from the doorway, hitting the release and closing it only when I turned back, the second pack already inflating.
“Let me take a look at your hand,” she said, taking it before I could say anything in protest.