by Mason Adgett
“Close-up on the switch,” whispered Jerry urgently to Jack, who looked hassled and swung around for a new angle.
I stepped up to the com speaker, deliberately forcing Jack to have to adjust. Not very nice of me, I know. “Wilam,” I said into the com, “if you can hear me please respond.”
I waited but there was no immediate reply. I exchanged looks with Charles, then repeated the request. A second later another voice – decidedly not Wilam’s – came through.
“I am speaking to Mr. Gregory?” The voice was chilling; cold, precise, speaking anglish like a native.
“I’m Mr. Gregory,” I confirmed. But I didn’t like how this had turned at all. Of course they – whoever they were – would have information on us, I had already realized that. But this gobo calling me by my name gave it a decidedly personal feeling.
“I am looking forward to meeting you,” the voice said and the knot in my stomach tightened. “I see you have disabled the access door. Futile. We could simply cut through to your compartment if we wished.”
I wasn’t the only tense one. Everyone in the room had frozen in place, eyes wide, listening intently.
“Then why don’t you?” I demanded.
“I have what I desire,” he said. “Later, I will acquire all the pieces I need.”
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
“What are names?” he shot back, and I realized with sudden clarity I was talking to a madman. This was no pirate, or, as I had also considered, some political game... Now I heard in his tone a psychotic element that meant we were in even greater danger. “What of your name?” he went on. “I have another for you. 309J236. Sound familiar?”
“Sounds as familiar as any other random string of numbers,” I said. It meant nothing to me. “What have you done with India and Wilam?”
Charles and Mike were both staring at me intently and Jack moved to get a better shot of my face. I felt like an intense burden had suddenly been placed on my shoulders.
“They are both fine,” said the voice, then added as though an afterthought: “Though their bodies are mere constructs, so what does it matter? You want that I should worry about that which is temporary, a fleeting illusion at most? No, 309. Hardly so.”
I resisted the temptation to ask what the number meant. “It sounds like you are worried about it,” I said. “I can hear it in your voice.”
“Stay out,” he said coldly. I had no idea what he meant. “India is mine. She will tell you so.”
“India?” I asked urgently. “You have her there?”
“Not yet,” he said. “She will tell you later. Now, 309J, you will listen.”
I interrupted, since I hated that sort of power-grabbing demand. “I don’t think I will.” I stepped over to the com, my attitude rather childish, really, and flipped the com off.
I expected someone to object, but instead Charles handed me a napkin from the seat and gestured toward my face. “Your nose is bleeding.”
I wiped at it and discovered he was right. I sighed then flipped the com back on. “Are you still there?”
His voice came back immediately as though he had been waiting. “You are engaging, 309, or I would indulge myself in irritation. But I appreciate your thorny nature, for we are one and the same, you and I.”
“We are nothing alike,” I said.
“Don’t worry, I do not intend you any harm,” he said. “My intentions for you are grander, 309, than you can yet comprehend. All is not quite in place yet or I would tell you more. We can hardly be complete, you see, until I myself am complete. And for that to happen India must be one of us. I don’t expect you to understand at this moment, but you will.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “You’re a madman.”
There was a moment of silence. “I’m not at all mad,” he said. “Never think that, three zero nine.” He emphasized the numbers as though they were an insult, enunciating each as though it had special meaning.
“What are your intentions with India?” I said. “I assume you are interested in ransom. How can you guarantee her safety?”
The voice on the com laughed, a sound so devoid of humor that it made my skin crawl. “I don’t have any interest in ransom. You can keep your money and you can tell the Phoenix family the same. If I wanted to take it, I could take it other ways.”
“If you hurt her we’ll come after you,” Charles interjected. “You sound like you think you’re invincible. I can show you different.” I put a hand on his shoulder and shook my head. I didn’t want him riling up our unpredictable lunatic. Charles gave me an irritated look but backed down.
“Is that Charles Thomas?” the voice asked. “Of course it is. I believe you will come after me, it’s what you’re made for. But you would whether I hurt her or not, so what difference does it make whether I do?”
“What are your demands?” I said.
“I have no demands. I am done here. Mr. Gregory, we will continue our discussion in the future. Tra la.”
“What’s your name?” I asked quickly, but there was no response. “Why have you done this?” But already I could see in the window display the kidnapper’s ship moving, separating from our shuttle. Jerry, noticing the same thing, waved at Jack to get footage of its departure.
“He’s leaving,” Mike said, unnecessarily.
“We’re on a station schedule,” Charles said. “We’re way behind. Give it long enough and they’ll send a law-ship out after us.”
“We could wait for that,” I said. “But people could still be in danger. We have no idea what he’s done to Wilam or the rest of the crew. Charles, how long do you think it would take you to cut through to the pilot?”
“You mean through the door?” He shrugged. “It’s like three centimeters. Probably six or seven minutes.”
“Meanwhile, I’ll work on this one,” I said, indicating the passage to the coach and security cabin.
“Set it at its highest,” Charles said, “it’ll cut through just about anything.”
I cut a square about two thirds of a meter across, drawing the lines first then retracing over and over again as it gradually burned deeper and deeper through the metal. My back started to hurt with the repeated motion of stooping, crouching and standing. I looked over to Charles to see if he was having the same problem but he had chosen to cut in a circle, standing in one spot the whole time. It looked a little better, maybe, but it seemed like it was hell on the neck.
“It smells terrible,” Mike said.
Not just that, a moment later a light sprinkle of water showered us when the fire alarms went off. This also caused the one door we hadn’t disabled – the one Charles was working on – to open automatically. “Nice,” Charles said.
“Go check on Wilam,” I said. I waved at Jerry. “You go with him.” I turned back to my own work, which had to be almost complete, I thought. I had burned through at least a couple centimeters. I focused on the task and a minute later I was able to push the square of metal through to the other side where it clattered loudly onto the floor of the passageway. The resulting hole was big enough I could easily squeeze my shoulders through and crawl to the other side, but Mike, who was much bigger than me, gave it a skeptical look.
“You don’t have to come with,” I said, shuffling through and looking back at him. “I’ll be fine. The bad guys are already gone.”
“I’m coming,” he said, and backed through, feet first, pulling his arms last, so that it stretched his shirt up to his nipples. Not the approach I would have taken, as I think it even exaggerated his size. But eventually he joined me on the other side.
I looked back through the hole at Jack, lifting an eyebrow to ask if he was coming. He did, having no trouble at all as he was about my size. The passageway was narrow and more dimly lit than the cabin had been. Jack looked back at the light coming through the cutout and said, “How would you feel about going back through again. It would be a more dramatic angle if I could get it from this side.”
; “No,” I said shortly. “It’s a waste of time and besides I’m not going to put Mike through that.”
“Thank you,” said Mike. Jack looked disappointed.
“At least let me vid you from the front,” he said, and moved ahead of us, walking backwards. “Don’t look at me,” he said – responding no doubt to my irritated scowl – “just pretend I’m not here.”
“Fine,” I said. “I won’t even warn you if I see a pirate, a kidnapper, a booby trap, depressurized cabin, anything like that.” I was joking, of course. We could easily see to the end of the passageway, the door to the coach cabin lit with a green light. Were the cabin depressurized it would have secured itself immediately. Not that there couldn’t be a pirate or kidnapper still on the other side, but this too seemed unlikely.
I acted nonchalant, but to tell the truth I was terrified. I didn’t expect any more overt danger, not right at the moment, but I feared what we would find on the other side of the door. At best the room was empty, but even then our situation had changed dramatically. What had been a simple inter-planetary investigation – practically a field trip – had turned into a kidnapping, a hostage situation, and a criminal conspiracy with who-knew-what sort of political and legal implications on Asitot.
I stopped Jack before he reached the door’s sensor. “You two get behind me, just in case.”
Mike gave me a stern look and put a fat paw on my shoulder. “I don’t think so, Mr. Gregory. This is my job.” He moved me behind him and activated the sensor. The door opened with a smooth swish and my eyes immediately fell on the two bodies in the corner.
“Oh my,” said Jack. “It’s Gina and Susan.” He started toward the two figures then drew back. “Do you think they’re okay?”
I saw no sign of blood or injury but I didn’t think they were okay. They looked like rag dolls, one thrown on top of the other. I recognized the director, Gina, buried beneath the other, her long black hair disappearing under one of the seats. The other woman had short red hair cropped close to the head. Her face was visible, turned directly towards us. Her eyes were closed. I guess she could have been sleeping but I doubted it.
“You want to go back and wait for us?” I asked Jack. “It’s not a problem.”
He took a few deep breaths and shook his head. “They’re dead, aren’t they?” He lifted his shoulders with effort and gave me a brave look. “No, I’ve got to get footage. Gina would want quality footage.” He thought about it again, though, and his face crumbled. He looked at me for guidance. “Would she? Would she want footage?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Jack. I really couldn’t say.” I stepped up to the bodies, putting two fingers to Susan’s neck to verify what I already knew. “No pulse,” I said. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
“How did they die?” asked Mike. “How did he do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said again. I checked Gina as well, trying to disturb the bodies as little as possible. Jack looked at me with a brief spark of hope but I shook my head.
There were two more doors leading out of the coach cabin. One I presumed to be security. The other I immediately realized connected to the same service cabin that Adula and Ruisha had disappeared into. I stepped first to the service door. It opened with a wave of my hand and fearing the worst I stepped through. Adula and Ruisha lay discarded in a corner, arranged in an eerily similar fashion to how we had found Gina and Susan.
There’s no way to describe how I felt then. Hopeless, defeated. My stomach turning, but not in nausea or terror, just a cold, sinking feeling of loss. I didn’t know any of these people well but to be a part of life turning so suddenly to death made me cold.
I closed the service door and moved to security. I took a deep breath and waved at the sensor. The door slid open and now – now I felt nauseous. Nikolo and his partner did not appear to be sleeping as the others had. They looked instead like they had been beaten, their faces bruised, bloody, practically unrecognizable. And they were clearly dead, each with a charred, black hole in the center of the forehead.
····5····
I closed the door and also my eyes, taking several deep breaths to steady myself. It took a few seconds before I could clear the image from my mind. Jack, meanwhile, had seen everything as he followed me to each door to get footage. He looked at me with wide, frightened eyes, his mouth slightly open, trembling from head to toe. Still he tried to do his job, manipulating his cell with a variety of focused gestures. Based on the complexity of the motions his camera app was not simple to operate, but professional quality stuff rarely was.
“What is it?” said Mike, who at first had been preoccupied with his inspection of Gina and Susan but now saw the expression on our faces. I don’t know how I looked but Jack’s face was pale and it seemed like he had aged ten years in five minutes. Mike shook his head grimly. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I said.
“How?” he said, his voice tinged with desperation as though our lives depended on the answer. “Some kind of poison?” He clutched at my arm. “How did he do it?”
I shook him off. I had no desire to revisit the details and didn’t think a grisly description was warranted. Mike was just muscle. “I don’t know, I told you. I think both security guards were shot with a laser. Assassinated, it looked like.” Jack took a position where he could capture both of us in the image at the same time, in profile.
“Everyone’s dead,” said Mike.
“Well, we’re not. Not yet,” I said.
The door swooshed open and Charles came in followed by Jerry. Charles looked grim but I saw no sign of the same devastation I was feeling. “We found Wilam,” he said. “He’s unconscious but it doesn’t look like he’s been hurt. I think he’s okay. It’s hard to tell. He’s been drugged or something.” His eyes fell on the bodies in the corner. “Are they all right?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “They’re not breathing.”
Charles being Charles had to check for himself. He gave me a long, tired look and shook his head. I waved him over to the security door and allowed him a quick look at the guards inside. His jaw worked, his teeth grinding, a tic of his, a sign of his frustration. “Dammit,” he said. “Damn that maniac.” I could tell by his expression he found the words inadequate to truly express his feelings on the matter.
“We need to wake up Wilam,” I said, “and get this shuttle moving again. There’s nothing we can do for them.”
“I’m sorry,” Jerry said, “but could you move over here? I need to get several shots.” He looked like he was about to ask Charles something – maybe to repeat his “Damn that maniac” phrase so they could try to turn it into a tagline or something, but when he got a look at Charles eyes he turned instead to Jack. “Did you get the discovery of the bodies? I want to get an angle from each door and from above, to set the scene.”
Jack looked for a moment as if he hadn’t heard, then shook himself. “In here you mean? What about security? You want the same for the guards? That room’s a little darker but I can change the exposure to make up for it.”
“Stop,” I said. “Just stop.” The door to the security cabin had automatically closed again and now I moved in front of it, barring entry. “We’re all going back to the cabin to wait. Charles, I need you and Mike to get Wilam back on his feet so we can get back in motion and alert the authorities.” I folded my arms across my chest and waited for them to move, then followed them back through the hall. I was the last one to crawl back through the square in the door and saw they were all now staring out at the window display, distracted by a new object that had appeared in the distance.
“Now that’s a law ship,” Mike said. “I’m pretty sure that’s an inter-cosmic Glinyan assault unit.”
Mike tended to be right about that sort of useless info, probably something he had picked up from his game. I didn’t know. But it was obviously a law-ship with the standard array of lights moving in the “stay-where-you-are” pattern. Glinyan ships had
a very different look than Guvian, it seemed. Whereas the gobo pirate vessel had been formed of blocks stacked upon a platform the Glinyan assault vessel was composed instead of a single large globe with triangles – pyramids, really, sticking out in all directions. It approached slowly and cautiously with still a minute or two left before it reached us.
“I changed my mind,” I said. “Mike, you stay here and keep everyone calm. Charles, come with me to the cockpit.”
“Why do you think we’re not calm?” demanded Jerry.
“Please,” I said. “Just wait here.”
I waved my hand over the sensor and moved through to the cockpit, allowing Charles to take the lead once we were through the door. It was only a few short steps to the pilot’s cabin, a small cubicle with barely enough space for two, all the controls within easy reach of the single chair. Wilam was strapped into it, his head drooping to one side, a headset similar to a cell phone hanging crookedly from one ear. A little line of spittle ran from his mouth to his cheek and we could hear him breathing loudly, almost snoring.
“I tried to wake him,” Charles said. “Whatever knocked him out, it was some pretty strong stuff.”
I moved behind his chair and carefully removed the headset from his head, slipping it onto my own ear and peering through its digital display lens. An indicator blinked red and I slapped at it, turning it green. Immediately I could hear a voice through the headphones. It sounded like a man speaking gibberish, something with a lot of consonants and not nearly enough vowels.
“Hello?” I said. “I’m sorry, I do not speak Guvian.”
The deep voice stopped abruptly, then continued a moment later. Still gibberish. “Anglish?” I said. “I speak Anglish.”
After another brief moment of silence I finally heard something I understood. “Who have I? This is not Wilam Skis sa Skamkam? Please recite your number of registration.” Every word was enunciated slowly and clearly with pauses between the phrases as though the speaker was being fed the words from a translator. Apparently they didn’t have an officer on board who spoke anglish.