There was a pause. I knew Dolph was also thinking about what might be going down outside between the Scavarchis and the secret police.
I studied the array of screens on the wall console, wondering if I could get an external camera feed.
“Smells a bit in here, doesn’t it?” Dolph remarked.
“Something probably died in the ducts,” I said, recalling Irene’s mice. My lasting irritation at our weapons officer had evaporated. She was going to love this ship as well. All those guns.
I found an optical feed, got a picture of the sandy ground underneath the fuselage, and swivelled the trackball clumsily with the pad of my right forepaw, trying to see behind the ship.
“It was a dog,” sighed a squeaky, whiny voice.
Dolph let out a string of high-pitched yipping barks. I emitted a coughing roar. We leapt in the air and spun around, all four feet off the ground, searching for the source of the voice. I wanted my Midday Special so much it hurt, but it was back in the airlock with my clothes, and you can’t fire a gun with paws, anyway.
The pink-tinged shadows now looked threatening. Light glinted off something moving in the darkness behind the containment loop, where coolant pipes threaded aft around the antimatter injectlon nozzle. I crouched down low, tensed to spring.
“It crawled into the No. 3 engine bell and got stuck,” sighed the voice. “I attempted to coax it out, but it was afraid of me. Thus it died. It was a very sad event. I was able to remove the corpse using one of my remote attachments, but I fear the smell lingers. Not that it bothers me, of course.”
The speaker walked out of the darkness.
Walked is not exactly what it did.
It had three short legs, like a chicken’s, underneath a suitcase-sized triangular body. It moved with a plunging, rolling gait. Several robotic appendages of assorted lengths dangled from its housing. They sprouted various tool attachments, including what appeared to be a laser drill. A screen on top swivelled to face us, displaying a sad-face emoji.
All the fur on my back stood up in a bristly ridge. A menacing growl dripped from my jaws. Logically, I knew I could not hurt this thing with claws and teeth. But logic wasn’t in the driver’s seat right now. Memory was.
I had seen things like this before.
On Tech Duinn, they worked as mercenaries for the Eks.
They were supposedly on our side, but I swear they killed more humans than the Necrosphere did.
Dolph probably guessed where my head was at. He paced in front of me, putting himself between me and the drone.
“So this is what she meant by contents included,” he growled.
The drone rocked back on its rear legs. Its front two robotic attachments jerked up. The emoji on its screen changed to a cross face.
“More animals!” it exclaimed. “Shoo! Shoo! Out, little dirty feet!”
It moved towards Dolph, brandishing its laser drill. So much for its story that the dog had died because it got stuck. I remembered the lost dog notice on the bulletin board outside the scrapyard.
I shouldered Dolph aside. “We’re not animals,” I growled. “When was the last time you heard an animal tell you to sod off, chromebrain?”
The drone’s screen displayed an OMG emoji. The ones on Tech Duinn didn’t have screens like this. They just had guns mounted on top.
“Shifters,” it gasped.
“Got it in one.”
I batted the laser drill down with a heavy paw. The drone rocked on its stubby legs.
“I’m a Shifter, and I just bought this ship.” I remembered that we had not actually completed the paperwork. That reminded me of Gerry. I disciplined my gaze to stay on the drone and not drift over to the optical feed screen. “I have no intention of sharing it with a drone, so out, out, little dirty feet,” I drawled, borrowing the thing’s own phrase.
“My feet are not dirty! I have maintained the ship in perfect order.” It actually was so clean, apart from that smell, you could eat off the decks. “I’m very efficient, friendly, and cooperative,” the drone went on. “I was hired as the weapons officer, but I prefer to see myself in a more generalized role.” Its screen simpered. “I like helping.”
“I just bet you do,” I muttered.
“Whoa,” Dolph said, alarmed.
I followed the jackal’s gaze to the optical feed screen. It was displaying the feed from a camera that must be mounted amidships on the port side. Opizzt had just appeared in it.
He was tottering towards the ship, wearing a suicide vest.
It looked like a bulky canvas waistcoat. But, as with the drone, I’d seen such things before.
The look of appalled terror on his small face also gave it away.
The secret police surrounded him at a safe distance, aiming their rifles at him.
Gerry knelt behind the half-circle of Kroolth. Blood shone bright on her cheek. One of the vicious little thugs was holding a gun to her head.
“Oh dear,” the drone said. “It appears that the junta’s volunteer auxiliary technology control police have lost patience with Opizzt. They intend to force him to board the ship, whereupon they will detonate that explosive device—killing him, and destroying the ship.” It displayed a new emoji: a face with a tear on one cheek.
“Shut your face, drone,” I snarled. The trouble was, the drone’s read of the situation matched mine.
We were done for.
Unless—
“We’re taking off,” I said. “Now.” I didn’t want to take the drone along, but forcing it off the ship would take more time than we had. Opizzt was 20 meters away and closing.
I hunched my tiger-shoulders and closed my tiger-eyes, bracing myself to Shift back, while mentally calculating how long it would take me to reach the bridge, figure out the controls, and initiate the drive. I thought I could just about make it.
“No,” said Dolph.
I opened my eyes. The jackal stood in front of me, all bristled up to make himself bigger. In nature, jackals are a lot smaller than tigers. However, Shifting conserves mass, so Dolph’s jackal was nearly the size of my tiger. He was looking me in the eye. Have you ever looked a jackal in the eye? It isn’t an easy thing to do.
Even when the jackal is your best friend.
Especially when it’s your best friend.
“No,” Dolph repeated. “We’re not leaving them to die, Mike.”
The thought flashed through my mind: Easy for you to say. You haven’t got any children.
But he was right.
Of course he was right.
Lucy needed a father—who was a real man.
That guy who loved spaceships? He was also the kind of guy who’d never have left Opizzt and Gerry to die.
That guy was me, and I acknowledged it animal style, by swishing my tiger’s tail in a menacing rhythm as I padded back to the optical feed screen.
“Look at Gerry,” Dolph said. “She’s bleeding!”
Yes, she was bleeding. But her face said she was angry and frightened for Opizzt, not for herself. Even at this distance, I seemed to see something in her posture which didn’t match the situation.
Oh, I thought. Of course.
“All right,” I said, as Opizzt staggered to the bottom of the airlock ladder. “Here’s the plan…”
6
Opizzt climbed towards the airlock.
The bulk of the suicide vest deformed his torso. Clumsy with fear, his feet slipped on the rungs of the ladder. The thugs watching from a safe distance jeered. Yet I was impressed.
The little Kroolth’s face was set. He wasn’t crying or cursing. He thought he was going to die and betray his emperor in one fell swoop, yet he hoped that he could save his wife’s life by making this sacrifice, so he climbed the last rungs of the ladder without hesitating, and set one knee on the lip of the airlock.
The thugs yelled in excitement. I picked out the one holding the wireless detonator. He was dancing around triumphantly, earning a look of contempt from the kneeling Gerry
.
I filled my lungs with fetid swamp air, and let out a tiger’s bloodcurdling roar.
* * *
All the Kroolth froze, sniffing the wind for the scary predator. Their beady eyes fixated on the source of the sound—the pampas grass clogging the mouth of the creek.
I had exited from the rear airlock of the ship, shown to us by the reluctant drone, and circled around, as stealthily as only a big cat can. While all eyes were on Opizzt, I’d stalked closer to the ship, edging forward on my belly through the mud and roots.
Now, while the Kroolth were off-balance, I charged out of the pampas grass—straight at Opizzt.
Insensate with terror, he toppled off the airlock ladder right in front of me.
Perfect—except for the fact that the guy was wearing a bomb.
I pushed off the ground into a desperate leap, and intercepted his fall. Mentally saying a prayer to my patron saint, I caught the suicide vest in my jaws.
It did not explode.
I hit the ground running. Keeping my head high, so Opizzt wouldn’t bump along the ground, I turned and dashed back towards the groves of thick, tall grass, carrying Opizzt in my jaws like prey.
The Kroolth thugs stared in shock, drawing together into a defensive knot. Their cute little hostage plan had not anticipated the sudden appearance of a dangerous predator—what’s more, a predator unknown on Gorongol.
They had no way of knowing the predator was me.
Of course, Opizzt didn’t know it was me, either. He struggled weakly as I charged into the grass. The sickly sweet smell of the explosives in his vest stung my tiger-nostrils. I noted the bunched wires connecting to a detonator in the small of his back.
As I splashed through the muck, I chewed through the shoulder of the vest. I had gambled on the Kroolth being too astonished to trigger the explosion immediately. That bet had paid off, but they wouldn’t stay confused forever.
Good thing Dolph was on the case.
As I waded deeper into the bog, I heard a deafening rat-a-tat-tat behind me. Rounds zipped through the grass plumes. About a thousand little birds started up in terror, it seemed like from right under my feet.
The drone had assured us that the turret gun was loaded. Thank God, it had been telling the truth.
Now I just needed Dolph to get it turned round the right way.
With grass plumes falling on my back, rounds whizzing over my head, and my paws sinking into hot, gloopy mud, I dropped Opizzt. He immediately ripped the suicide vest off over his head and flung it into the grass. He had a good arm. It travelled at least ten meters before it vanished into the bog. I cringed, bracing for the explosion. All I heard was Dolph wasting more ammo.
Opizzt turned to me, his thin arms spread. He was four feet tall and unarmed, facing a tiger. Yet he was ready to fight for his life. Never say that evolution can’t be beat by spirit.
“It’s me!” I said urgently. “Mike. I mean, Will. Oh, never mind.”
He blinked. Then he said, “They know you are here. Oah, I am sorry. When they threatened Gerry, I told them.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “They would’ve figured it out soon, anyway.”
“Gerry!” he moaned, jumping in a vain attempt to see over the grass.
“Of all of us, she’s probably the safest,” I said cryptically. Then I crouched lower. “I never normally do this, but—hop on.”
Opizzt didn’t hesitate. He flung his leg over my back and grabbed hold of the fur at the scruff of my neck. He weighed no more than Lucy.
I bounded through the swamp, heading away from the ship.
We got far enough away to save our lives before the suicide vest blew up. Muddy water, pieces of fish, and clods of earth with grass still attached flew over our heads in a lumpy hailstorm. It had been a pretty big bomb.
I waited out the falling mud and then ran on. Opizzt hammered a little fist on my shoulder. “Gerry! Gerry!”
Opizzt might be worried about his wife, but I wasn’t. Admittedly, our masterful, spur-of-the-moment plan had all the hallmarks of a classic Mike-and-Dolph production: start running and fighting, let the bad guys fall where they may. We had not built in any leeway for rescuing Gerry. But I had a feeling she didn’t need rescuing. There was more to the gorgeous scrapyard manager than met the eye, and I had bet that as soon as the Kroolth thugs didn’t have the drop on her, she’d be able to take care of herself.
I would have won that bet if there’d been anyone around to take it. When Dolph stopped firing, I left the cover of the swamp and circled back between the ancient, now bullet-riddled spaceships. Sure enough, as I approached our plesiosaur, Gerry rose from a crouch and dropped the two body-armored Kroolth thugs she’d used as a shield. The Kroolth that Dolph had missed had been put down by the energy pistol in her hand—a small sleek thing with a nasty green glow at the nose, small enough to fit in her cleavage.
I’m a sucker for a dangerous woman. I nearly fell in love with her on the spot.
However, this one was spoken for. I halted and let Opizzt slide off my back. He sprinted up to his wife. She picked him up, and they kissed passionately.
I averted my eyes and saw Dolph standing on the airlock stairs.
He gave me a thumbs up. Then he made a googly-eyed face at the loved-up couple. After a few more seconds he pretended to check his watch.
I coughed. I still had my tiger’s cough, although I was so muddy there could be no trace of my tiger’s stripes remaining visible. That was just as well. I’d burned too many of my forms in the past. I didn’t want to burn this one.
Gerry put Opizzt down. They both turned to me, eyes shining. Black-clad Kroolth thugs littered the ground, but Gerry paid them no mind. She walked towards me, head on one side. “Shifter, huh?”
“Is it that obvious?” I said.
She laughed.
“Secret squirrel, huh?” I said.
Of all the possible reasons for a dangerous babe like her to be working in a place like this, the only one that really made sense to me was that she was secretly employed by GITOut, the General Intelligence Triangle (Outer), humanity’s main spy agency.
The skin around her eyes tightened for a microsecond. But all she said was, with a smile, “Why would you think something like that?” She squeezed Opizzt’s small hand. “I’m just a girl trying to run a business with my husband.”
And that too, I thought, was the truth. They really did love each other. It was plain to see.
“A job,” Gerry went on wryly, “which you have just made a lot harder.” She moved the nearest corpse with her toe, and wrinkled her nose.
“Oah, do not be ungrateful, Gerry!” Opizzt said, scandalized. “They saved our lives!”
“They did,” Gerry conceded. “I’m just saying.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, if it helps, there’s something in my ship which may come in handy when their friends come looking for them.”
“What?”
“A quarter-ton of perfectly ripe bananas.”
7
We spent about half an hour helping the Scavarchis tidy up, a.k.a. shoving all the corpses into the marsh. Then we filed the paperwork. The plesiosaur ship was now mine, free and clear.
“Er,” Gerry said, once the registration was safely on its way to the PdL servers, “it comes with a certain, um, appendage which I may have forgotten to mention…”
“We’ve met it,” I said. “No problem,” I lied.
The drone tried to prevent me from getting back on the ship. I was no longer covered with mud, as I had allowed Opizzt to turn the hosepipe on me, despite my anxiety about revealing my stripes. But now I was dripping wet.
“Out of my freaking way, drone,” I growled. “Here’s a terracentric anthropological factoid for you: When cats are wet, they get bad-tempered.”
The drone displayed an emoji of a face blowing a kiss.
I squeezed past it and went to Shift back to myself. “That thing’s going out the airlock as soon as we get into
space,” I grumbled to Dolph. “Machines with egos—can’t stand ’em.”
“You have a droid nanny for Lucy,” Dolph pointed out.
“Droid, not drone. There’s a big difference.” Nanny D, my daughter’s live-in nanny, was a royal blue humanoid who carried out my instructions to the letter. She did not have an ego. That was one difference. Nanny D did not have weapons attachments. That was another difference.
“I asked it who was paying its salary,” Dolph said. “It said it’s on sabbatical from the Completion.”
“Just like the ones on Tech Duinn.”
“That was a while back, Mike. I think we should give it a chance.”
I ran my hands through my wet hair, pondering whether I was being irrational. I didn’t want anything to spoil my lovely new ship. But today had reminded me that Dolph had sound instincts. I might be the boss, but we were a team. I had to listen to him.
He handed me a Kroolth-sized towel with the imperial monogram. I dried my hair and put my clothes on.
“All right,” I said, “we’ll keep it. As the janitor.”
“I heard that,” said the drone from the corridor.
“Good,” I said. “Now polish the toilets.”
We waved goodbye to Gerry and Opizzt and took off.
The ship handled even more sweetly than I had hoped. The engines lived up to their awesome specs. The transition from air-fed mode to rocket mode was as smooth as butter. I didn’t even have to use the main drive to get orbital, as the empty ship only massed 25 tons. At 180 klicks, I cut the engines.
Gorongol turned below us, mostly sparkling sea, dotted with small continents that were brown in the middle, green at the edges. A troubled planet. A suffering planet.
“Home?” Dolph said.
“Home,” I agreed.
But instead of initiating the FTL drive, my right hand hovered above the comms console.
I turned to look for the drone.
It was floating submissively at the back of the cockpit. We were all floating. There were couches for a pilot and co-pilot, but Dolph and I were never going to get into those unless we shrank three feet. At best, they served as hassocks to hook our toes under.
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