I calculated that we had precious few seconds before we'd make hard contact with the ground. I could easily escape by myself, but there was no way I was leaving the now howling Scatter woman behind. I also didn't believe she'd put up with me wrestling her down the hallway to jump off the ship.
"Liam?" Ada called over comms, sensing my hesitation. "Get off that ship!"
"I can't leave her," I said.
"Your grav-suit won't protect you in that crash," she said. "Get off!"
Making up my mind, I raced forward and toppled the dead pilot from his chair. My AI highlighted the controls, showing their functions. The ship was old but human-designed, and flight controls largely hadn't changed. If I could land at all, it wasn't going to be pretty. The stick the pilot had broken off had a nub left behind. With my left hand, I grabbed at the tiny nub that now served as a stick and throttled back and trimmed with my right to return the ship to level. It was tricky, but I managed to drop enough velocity, turn us around and aim at a section of young trees as I successfully drove us back to ground.
"Don't you ever do that again, Liam Hoffen!" Ada chided angrily, her face popping onto my HUD.
"How's Hambo doing?" I asked, changing subjects.
"He'll live," she answered. "Scatter biology is close enough that the nanites aren't having much trouble now. You need to come back, though. Apparently, your med-patches are wearing off. You had more damage to your body than you mentioned."
"No need," I said. "I'm feeling better than I have for months. Look, stay with Hambo and see if you can get Hotspur going."
"Why do I feel like you're playing fast and loose?" she asked.
"The tech we're up against is old," I said. "I need to push the advantage."
"Don't get cocky," she said, pursing her lips in a familiar way which brought a smile to my face. My relationship with Ada was complex. I suspected that if I'd never met Tabby, I'd have chased Ada to the ends of the universe. As it was, I loved having her as my friend and I appreciated her concern.
"See what you can do to fend off a larger ship," I said. "They've got an armored sloop in system and it will no doubt be looking for us."
"Can do, but Hotspur isn't going anywhere," Ada said. "Having a mountain wrapped around us is pretty good armor."
I turned to the shivering Scatter woman still pressed against the bulkhead. "We’re on the ground. Are you hurt?"
I reached over and rested a hand on her shoulder. I still hadn't had a look at her face, but dirty-blonde locks of hair poked out from beneath her hood. When my hand made contact, the woman jerked away and skittered forward, whimpering. I wanted to be gentle, but every minute I delayed, Bongiwe was closer to death – if she wasn't already there.
"I know you don't trust me," I said, moving forward and placing a firm hand on her shoulder to make her turn around. My heart sank as I took in the abrasions, bruises and filth on her face. There was no telling how old the woman was. I softened my voice. "I'm sorry Belirand soldiers hurt you. We must get off this ship, they'll come looking for it. I need to know if you were hurt by the explosion."
My AI highlighted blood on the floor and traced a line up, disappearing behind the woman. She trembled uncontrollably, incapable of responding. To her, I might as well have been a Belirand soldier. My actions were violent, and I wouldn’t gain her trust any time soon. I stood, pulling her up off the floor. I felt icky as she complied with my command to turn so I could see her back. Indeed, she'd taken damage from the door breach. I pulled out my medical scanner and ran it quickly down her back. The AI confirmed that she needed a large patch on her back and suggested a small patch on a crushed cheek bone.
"You need to leave this alone," I said sternly, as I showed her the med-patch. There was no way I was going to try removing her clothing, so I ripped open the thin material of her cloak – which was pretty much in tatters anyway – just enough to apply the patch to her bare back. She recoiled, but otherwise didn’t object. I pulled her around to inspect her face. She resisted looking at me and I didn't push her beyond what I needed to gain access to her cheek. "This medicine will feel like Nothando's healing stones. Please don't take them off. Now, I need you to get off the ship. I will come out in a few minutes and take you back to Thandeka if you want."
For the first time, the woman dared a quick look at my face and then at the broken aft bridge hatch. "That's right. Go ahead. I'm not going to hurt you or stop you. I'm sorry for how you've been treated."
One thing Scatters have in common was preternatural speed. Heedless of her injuries, she turned and raced from the bridge so fast that I almost questioned my eyes. What had kept her on the ship before, I couldn't imagine.
I sat back in front of the controls. This ship was a simple machine with manual and automated controls. I spent a few moments looking for a centralized database. Either the protocols were so different that I couldn't connect to them or the vessel simply lacked any type of smart fabric to record. With the broken stick, the old beast would fly best if I programmed the automatic controls. I would have preferred to commandeer her, but I knew better. Even now, the ship showed radar contact with Chappie's heavily armored sloop only fifteen kilometers away. Why the sloop hadn't gotten involved yet was beyond me. I could only imagine that because Chappie saw the planet's inhabitants as mostly harmless, he and his crew hadn’t paid any attention. I grinned wryly to myself as the thought floated through my head. I'd just have to see what I could do to change his mind.
I programmed the ship to take a northerly course, with instructions to set down once it was two hundred kilometers off the northern shore of the ocean that bordered the city of Thandeka. There was some possibility that Chappie would recover the ship if he acted quickly enough, but I hoped he'd neglect it like he had so far.
My AI recognized the dead pilot's face and replayed the video snippet of when he'd taken the engagement rings. I rolled him over and searched his pockets. Sure enough, I found the rings I thought were lost forever. My heart soared and I placed them both on my fingers, with Tabby's on my right hand. I hadn't intended for the pilot to die, but I wouldn't mourn a man whose sins had certainly found him out. He'd earned his final voyage out to sea.
On the way to the hatch, I leaned over and scooped up my old grav-suit. I'd intended to fly directly back to Thandeka to help Bongiwe, but circumstances dictated a different course. Once free of the ship, I looked for the Scatter woman who’d run off. She was long gone, which was probably for the best. I wasn't exactly the type of person she needed right now if she was to start healing her psychological wounds. I hoped she had somewhere to go and hide, but I had no idea how she'd entered the company of the Belirand soldiers in the first place, although I couldn’t imagine it was willingly.
"Hey, I'm coming back," I said, flitting back to where the three soldiers still lay on the ground unconscious. I scooped up their weapons, which I ended up rolling in the grav-suit. As each had a rifle and a pistol, the six guns quickly became unwieldy. "Open the loading bay, would you?"
"Sure, what's up?" Ada asked.
"I recovered my grav-suit," I said. "And it's given me an idea."
"Is it one of your crazy ideas?" Ada asked. "The ramp is lowering."
I pulled a small finger-sized tube from my waist. Upon contact with the palm of my hand it expanded, finger grooves forming for a good grip. I flicked my wrist and a nano-thin wire extended ten centimeters from the end and snapped tight. The wire was impossible to see, although the glow of energy that surrounded it wasn't. The nano-blade would cut through virtually anything as long as the object being struck wasn’t in direct physical contact with the person wielding the blade. Even though the weapon was designed for close-in combat, I had a habit of finding atypical uses for it.
Carefully, I placed my hand on the youngest soldier's back and worked the nano-blade so I cut through the belt and waist of his pants and then down each leg. By keeping my hand on his body, I was able to run the end of the blade between cloth and skin, cutting
the material without injury to the soldier. It was a quick way to remove someone’s clothing. I added each of the pieces to a growing pile atop the crate barricade. I set a grenade marble to a slow, hot burn and dropped it on top of the clothing. At a minimum, they'd need to leave the area to find something to wear before looking for me. Hopefully, they'd be so embarrassed they wouldn't admit what had happened or bring anyone back here to search the cave. My plan probably wouldn't work, but I wasn't about to take them as prisoners nor would I kill them in cold blood.
"What's all this?" Ada asked as I deposited the soldier's weapons into Hotspur's hold and brushed past her on my way to a suit cleaner that would restore function to my grav suit. She caught up with me just as I stripped out of Tabby's grav suit and stuffed it into a pack I'd grabbed from the armory.
"All part of the plan," I said and couldn't resist pulling her in for one more hug.
"You should know, Hotspur still isn't responding to my commands," she said when we broke apart, not questioning why I needed the hug. "Anino really has us locked out."
"Keep trying," I said, taking my freshly-cleaned and repaired grav-suit from the cleaner. Where Tabby's suit fit okay, mine fit like a glove and I quickly transferred the weapons.
"Were you wearing those rings earlier?" Ada asked, noticing the engagement rings. I thought we'd talked about it. She'd either forgotten or was being sneaky in getting more information from me.
"Nope, I recognized the guy who stole 'em," I said.
"Seems like one of those rings needs to be returned," Ada said, tilting her head to the side. "Don’t be wishy washy about it. Behind all that flak she throws up, she's scared. She needs to know you're all in."
I smiled. "Not sure why it took talking to you for me to figure that out."
"Not hard to figure out at all." Ada slapped me playfully on the butt as I jumped into the anti-gravity column that shot me up to the bridge deck. "Where are you going?" she called after me.
After gathering Marny and Nick's grav-suits, I jumped back to the lower deck where Ada watched me expectantly.
"I started something by taking on those Belirand thugs," I said. "Time to knock the rust off some old friends."
Chapter 18
Trust is Earned
As I flew from the cave, I carefully lifted above the tops of the tall pine trees that covered the mountainside. Searching the sky, I was unable to find any Belirand ships in the vicinity. Apparently, Chappie had either found Prince Thabini or decided to chase down the cutter I'd sent on a one-way trip to the sea. It was possible he’d just given up, but I didn't think that was likely, given my read of the man.
The tree cover gave me some small protection as I didn’t want to repeat being shot at by a ship. It was odd and maybe a little disconcerting to not be the focus of my enemy. Chappie had given me a small amount of attention but poured on the resources to hunt down and find Prince Thabini. Chappie was tipping his hand. He feared Prince Thabini so much so that he was willing to ignore me. I grinned to myself. I was pretty sure I could change his opinion on that matter.
I was always surprised at how quickly time moves when dealing with stressful events. The Fraxus sun was showing midday, which meant Bongiwe had been suffering for hours. I pushed the guilt I felt at her sacrifice into that dark hole in my being I saved for such things. It was a neat little box that would open itself, ambushing me at the most inopportune time to swallow me in a sea of self-recrimination.
No, right now, I couldn't afford to think about anything beyond the mission and how I would, in broad daylight, make it back to the Scatter resistance's hidden chambers. My grav-suit had data-streams from my first venture into the subterranean passages of Thandeka with Bongiwe. However, I hadn’t been wearing the suit the second time and had no idea where she now rested. I’d expected Thabini to lead me back, but now I needed to figure out some other method to find my way.
Approaching Thandeka, I noticed two cutter class ships circling the city in a slow patrol. Periodically, one or the other would loose a blaster bolt, impacting something well beyond my vision. Chappie was sending a message to the small city. We're pissed and we’re taking it out on you. One more treasure to stuff in that dark box.
Tactically, keeping control of a large population with a small force is difficult. Chappie was using fear and grand shows of strength to achieve his objective. In truth, what little control he had of the small city was given to him by the Scatters. It was obvious the people of the city would only help Belirand when they were directly confronted. The Scatters had hidden my presence once and I was counting on them to do so again.
Upon reaching the city's outskirts, I dropped low enough so I just cleared the river's surface. I was counting on Belirand not having sufficient scanning technology to pick up a human target so close to water. Entering the city, the river's banks had been improved. Fired clay brick and large cut stones kept the waterways defined, giving me even more cover.
Belirand's attack on Thandeka kept most of the inhabitants indoors and I grew concerned that as stealthy as I was being, my movement would be detectable. With some hesitation, I eventually dropped into and submerged beneath the green, brackish waters of the canal.
The going was slow, but uneventful aside from a few bumps from larger fish than you might expect next to a city. Those experiences were placed in an entirely different box, one that liked to pop open in sweat-laden nightmares.
Finally, having unwound the path Bongiwe and I had first taken through the tunnels, I ended up in the large subterranean cavern where I’d met Thabini. My grav-suit was more than capable of illuminating the darkened interior and I recognized the crystals and the bench against the wall. My hopes had been for nothing. The cavern was completely devoid of people, Scatter or otherwise.
I was about to give up when my suit caught the smallest movement. I spun, trying to lock in on the shape detected by the sensors, but saw nothing. Whoever had been there disappeared as quickly as they'd appeared. I lifted from the cavern floor to cover the sound of my movements and went over to inspect the area, discovering a small opening in the cavern wall that would have been otherwise difficult to locate.
"Please, I'm lost," I whispered harshly. "I need to find Nothando and Bongiwe. I have medicine." My AI prompted, asking if I wanted to translate to Scatter tongue. I quickly acknowledged the request and slid into the passageway.
"I can help Bongiwe," I whispered again, turning down the winding, rocky passageway.
"There is no help for her," a woman's voice answered quietly.
"If she draws breath, it might not be too late," I said. "I am Liam Hoffen. I went with Thabini to get medical supplies."
"I know who you are." The woman stepped into view as I pulled around a bend in the tight passageway. I stopped short to avoid bowling her over. "Thabini was captured by Bell-e-runde," she said. "Bongiwe has joined our family in the afterlife. Our prince was wrong to trust you. You have brought ruin to our people."
"Please take me to her," I said. "It may not be too late." It wasn't lost on me that she referred to Bongiwe as her family.
"Follow and remain quiet," she said, turning quickly and moving through the passageway. Without the grav-suit, I would have had difficulty keeping up, as the ground was uneven and she was fast. Thankfully, the technology was more than enough of an equalizer.
After a few minutes, I recognized features along the route. When we walked down the long ramp that I believed went beneath the canal, I knew we were back at the great hall where Bongiwe had been taken.
I pulled my helmet back and was surprised when the guards who stood on either side of the thick wooden door recognized me. Of course, the cautious looks could have been induced by fear. Both seemed very unwilling to cross the angry little elf who accompanied me.
Bongiwe's body lay on a stone pedestal. She'd been wrapped in a white linen cloth, her arms pulled tightly to her side. Seeing my approach, Nothando intercepted me.
"How long?" I asked, pulling my me
dical scanner out and slipping around him so I could run it across Bongiwe's body. I'd seen plenty of death and knew the ashen-gray face held no life well before my scanner confirmed it.
"She passed a short time after you left," he said, gently. "There was nothing you could have done to save her."
Tears welled up in my eyes. The Scatters were a beautiful people, full of grace and dignity, and in Bongiwe's case, courage and honor. She'd given her life in the belief that I was more important than she was. I hated that. I bent over and hugged her impossibly-small frame, allowing guilt to fill me.
"Leave her. You have no right to touch my sister." The small Scatter woman who'd led me here spoke with venom.
"Joliwe, please," Nothando said, trying to stop her as she pulled at me.
I stood from Bongiwe's body as Joliwe grabbed my arm. I considered her, wiping tears from my eyes. "No, Nothando, she is right. Bongiwe's death is my fault. She was trying to save me when she was shot by Belirand."
"Our prince was taken from us by Bell-e-runde this day, too," she said. "Your clumsy, self-centered willfulness has done more damage to our people than Bell-e-runde could possibly do in decades. Do you know that they float over our city and shoot at the innocent? Did you know that they have called for us to turn you over to them before they will stop?"
"I have no defense," I said, looking sadly at the woman. Like Bongiwe, she had light blonde hair, almost to the point of being white. Her skin was pale and her eyes glowed a bright green. If anything, she was a little taller than her sister. Right now, her soft face was covered in a mask of anger.
"They will kill Prince Thabini in three days if you are not found and turned over to Bell-e-runde," she said. "You must turn yourself in."
I nodded in agreement. I'd tell Ada what happened and she could meet back with Marny, Nick and Tabby. I doubted they would be able to return in time to rescue me. The Scatters needed Prince Thabini more than they needed me.
Privateers in Exile Page 19