by C. Gockel
"They don’t have enough staff," Brad said. "They’ve set up guards at the most likely places, though, and the exit from the mine."
"That’ll make life difficult."
"I think we can get around it."
They had to get out the front entrance to reach the Centurion, past two guards and then more guards at the landing pad. Easy-peasy.
"Now check; are our IDs still in your quarters?"
Well, of course they would be, but she checked anyway. "Yes."
They took the lift to the second level and followed the route she’d taken to collect the antivenin. As she’d hoped, the Ptorix tunnel was still sealed. She opened the door and they hurried to the main tunnel while she kept checking security. One in the control room, two in the hangar, two at the front entrance, two in stores, one in the kitchen, one in her room and another two on the landing pad.
"Show me," Brad said. "Who’s at the front entrance?"
She brought up the pictures from the personnel records. "Hey, they’re miners."
He nodded. "They don’t have enough security staff to cover everything for a whole day. Good. That gives us an advantage."
"It does?"
"Yes. Neither of them have a background in the military, for instance, or it would have shown up on their profiles."
"Yes, but they have weapons. You realize, don’t you, that as soon as we step into that drive they’ll see us?"
He simply ignored her, as though it didn’t matter, damn it. "Can you block their comlinks?"
"Just for those two?" She checked the system settings. Yes, easy enough, a simple transmit and receive setting for an ID. "Yes. Now?"
"No, not yet." He switched to implant. "You will stay hidden until I tell you. As soon as I step into the tunnel, you kill those comlinks. Understood?"
Huh. Whatever you say. Who did he think he was? "Okay."
He pulled out his pistol, checked it, caught her eyes in a meaningful glance, and stepped into the tunnel. Allysha deactivated the two comlinks and connected to the sensors so she could see what he was doing.
The guards stood on opposite sides of the closed entrance. Stood was probably the wrong word. One of them yawned and rubbed a hand over his mouth. The other one swung his laser rifle in an arc as if to give his arm some exercise. Tired and bored, they didn’t see Brad immediately. He walked toward them as if he belonged. But then again, they’d been told to look for a woman, hadn’t they? The one who’d yawned straightened up, jerked his head at his colleague who stopped swinging the rifle. They both turned toward Brad.
"Drop the weapon, Stone, and put your hands on your head. Come out, little lady, or your boyfriend gets it."
Ludovic. His voice dripped gloat. Where had he come from?
"Stay where you are," Brad said through his implant.
She stepped through the door ignoring Brad’s angry stare. "Don’t hurt him. This is nothing to do with him."
"Very good, little lady. I’m sure Mister van Tongeren and Mister Tepich will be thrilled to see you."
He lifted his comlink as the two guards jogged up the tunnel toward them. Well, she could stop him from contacting van Tongeren, anyway. She shut down the security system.
The gloating smile on Ludovic’s face faded, replaced with a frown as he pressed buttons, switched channels. She suppressed the smile. "My comlink’s broken. Can you two get a channel?"
"Did you do that?" Brad.
"Yes."
"Be ready to move."
The two men tried their devices, exchanging glances, their attention on the comlinks in their hands.
Brad spun around and smashed his forearm against Ludovic’s face. Blood spurting from a cut on his eyebrow he staggered back, his pistol clattering to the ground. Brad caught his arm, pivoted and flung him toward the other two, following hard in his wake. A red beam flared from a pistol, zipping over Brad’s shoulder. His fist crashed into the man’s jaw throwing him backwards. Ludovic scrambled to his knees. Brad kicked him in the side of the head. He collapsed. Allysha scooped up Ludovic’s pistol and fired at the third man. He groaned, clutching at his arm. She’d shot someone. Bile rose. She swallowed, quickly, as Brad jogged over to her.
"Well done." His chest heaving, he took her arm. "We’ll have to be quick."
He collected the guards’ fallen weapons, stuck Ludovic’s pistol in his belt and slung the two rifles over his shoulder. One of the men groaned and made to sit up. Brad shot him. She stared at him, her stomach roiling, aghast.
"You just killed him. Like that."
He glanced at her. "Stunned. He’ll hurt, but he’ll live."
A jerk of his head and they were off. He closed the personnel door behind them and destroyed the lock with a blast from a laser rifle. Then they hurried along the road to the landing platform. Without climate conditioning the air was warm and humid and very still. The night smelled of damp earth but at least the rain had stopped. Even so, heavy droplets plonked down from the overhead canopy onto their shoulders and heads.
"What happened back there?" Brad asked as they jogged along. "They knew where we were."
"Yes. I suppose they must have got Sean to look at the code."
"He can do what you do?"
"He’s a good engineer. Not as good as me, but good with human systems."
"So we didn’t see Ludovic on the screen because –,"
"Because Sean used my function to hide him, yes."
Rain started to fall again, hard and strong, beating a tattoo on the road.
"Hm. We’ll have to be careful. We might be expected."
"True. But they won’t know where we are, either."
The platform, bathed in light, towered into the sky just ahead.
She ran a hand back through her sodden hair. "What now?"
"They’ll be expecting you to turn up, under guard. So that’s what we’ll do. Call the lift but stay concealed."
The way he said it, just like giving orders. She called the lift down. Nerves tingled everywhere. Her mouth was dry.
The lift soughed open. Empty. Brad nudged her forward and they slipped inside. He held the laser rifle he’d stolen from the guards in both hands. "You go first, understood?"
She nodded.
The guards had taken refuge from the rain as best they could against the Centurion’s sides. She walked forward, aware of him behind her.
"When I tell you, drop."
"Yes."
He stopped. The two men came toward him, weapons unslung, through driving rain.
"Now."
She dropped into a crouch. The red beam sizzled over her head. Slammed backwards, the guard fell onto his back, still twitching. One down. A beam seared toward her, over her head. Brad fired again but the other one scurried around behind the space ship, returning fire. She slithered across the wet surface. The first guard’s gun lay where he’d dropped it. She gathered it up, rested her weight on her elbows. She’d never done this before. Oh, buckrats. You pointed that end, pressed the trigger button. It couldn’t be that hard. The guard slammed off another beam.
She aimed, and pressed the trigger. The laser beam shot out. She missed. He swung around, his mouth an O of surprise. Brad’s next shot caught him in the back and pitched him forward on his face.
Her heart hammered harder than the rain. She wasn’t used to this sort of thing. But at least she hadn’t killed him.
"Well done. Let’s go. We’re sure to get company." Brad flicked his fingers without looking at her, already on the way to the Crusader.
She pinged the connection to the ship’s IS. Secure, of course, as it would have been for the K-400. But every ship, she had learnt, had a manual override in case of system failure. She had a set of codes she’d dragged from the InfoDroid, like a set of keys for different shaped locks. The third code got her in. She found the encrypted pilot codes embedded in a secure data layer and started a function on her techpack to crack the crypt. Five minutes, seven. At last.
A siren began to wail
from the direction of the mine, loud and strident above the thunder of the rain. They’d hear it in the settlement; that was the idea. Concentrate, Allysha.
This was a bit different. The ship worked on cards, not implants and she didn’t have a card. Damn. She concentrated, pushing down the panic reflex. Brad had an ID card for the mine; she’d try that. She replaced the pilot entries with Brad’s name and his Tisyphor ID card and withdrew.
Water soaked her hair and dripped down her neck. She blew at a droplet that had collected on her nose. "Okay, we’re ready to go. I hope." She pointed at a slot next to the closed ramp. "Slide your ID card in here."
He slid the card in, a panel opened and he hit the revealed button. Accepted. Allysha heaved a sigh of relief as, drive motors whirring, the ship extended its landing ramp. They ran inside, shaking themselves like wet canines, before the endplate hit the platform.
"No talking IS on this ship." She spoke normally but her heart still pounded.
"It’s GPR. I wouldn’t have expected it to." He hit the button to withdraw the ramp.
They stood in a foyer, with hatches to two sides. Brad went forward, into a semi-circular cockpit. Three upholstered seats faced arrays of instruments and displays that cast a soft, multi-colored light. The ship wasn’t new but it had been well maintained. He holstered his pistol and slid into the pilot’s seat in front of the four view screens showing front, back, left and right of the craft.
Status lights flashed as the ship performed its systems checks. The instruments on the left monitored engineering, showing fuel, shields, hull integrity and life support readings. All green and ready to go. The last journey had hardly dented the supply of anti-matter. On the right she recognized sensor data, short range and long range, and what looked like weapons. At least, she’d seen missiles on holovids.
Brad glanced over the console in front of him. "Allysha, can you initiate engine ignition?"
"Um… More information?" Way out of her comfort zone. She went over to the engineering station.
"There’ll be a warm-up for both engines. Shouldn’t be more than one button. Ah, here it is." He leant over her and turned a dial. The engines began to hum. He squeezed her shoulder, sat down again and started setting the navigation systems.
"This thing is armed," Allysha said, sitting down in front of the weapons arrays.
He glanced at her. "Yes. Armed luxury cruiser. At least we’ll be comfortable."
The harness clicked into place over her shoulders and knees. While he scanned the outside screens, she stared at his profile. He looked hard and uncompromising; probably the sort of look his soldiers were used to. Or maybe it was reserved for unsuitable married women. Oh, buckrats, she hoped it wasn’t.
The ship lifted off the pad and gained height rapidly, rising through the thick cloud into clear air. To the right, the galactic core blazed, surrounded by its corona of attendant stars.
"They’ve launched pursuit," he said. "Move over to the engineering station and try to follow my commands."
She shifted, hanging on to the seat backs to compensate for the angle of the deck.
"Put maximum power on the aft shields. That’s the top row of controls. Push them up. And then find the rear thrusters and set them to full."
Boy, was this a fast learning curve. Allysha pulled up the schematic of the control panel from the ship’s user manual. Aft shields… yep, top right. Push the little lever. Rear thrusters… bottom right. The power gauges surged.
She turned to look at the view screens. The rear view showed Tisyphor, a shadow with an arc of brightness where the sun still shone, hanging against the black of space. A red dot approached from the darkness, coming fast and gaining. Van Tongeren’s R-400, complete with missiles. The front view showed a yellow rectangle hanging in orbit beyond the larger moon. The jump gate. Her heart began to thump a little harder.
"Return to the landing platform or be destroyed." The voice hissed over the speakers, not someone she knew. Nerves sparked through her. Destroyed?
"Talk to them," Brad said.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. I don’t think they’re wanting to destroy you."
She opened a channel. "The job’s finished. I’m going home."
"Is that Miss Marten?" She’d startled them. He sounded uncertain.
"Who did you think? The festive fairy?" But tingles raced up and down every nerve in her body. Please be right, Brad.
Brad grinned. "We’ll be fine. But put all power on the rear shields. Top left levers."
She pushed the levers up, hoping he was right. Though how he could be so sure she didn’t know. Either way, the R-400 was closing the distance. But the gate was closer. She could even see it, glittering in the rays of Tisyphor’s sun.
A status light flashed and words snaked across the bottom of the screen. "Approaching Jump Gate."
The markers on the perimeters of the gate began to blink; two flashes, a pause, two flashes, red to the left, green to the right, white pulses along the top and bottom.
Status changed. "Gate entry locked on."
The ship swept between the lights. All sense of movement ceased. The view screen displayed nothing.
"Jump successful."
The harness withdrew from her shoulders and legs and her seat tilted to upright.
Brad let out a deep breath and smiled at her. "That’s as close to flying manually as I ever want to get."
"We were lucky to get away," she said.
"Oh, I don’t think so. I doubt they’re in such a hurry to destroy you after going to all this trouble to collect you."
"So what does that mean?"
"That we need to be careful. But more of that later. Tell me about Sean O’Reilly."
Oh, buckrats. His face might as well have been a mask. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, whether he approved, disapproved. But then, why should she be embarrassed? Lots of people had failed marriages. "He’s my husband. You know we’re estranged. Marriages don’t last forever."
"Help me to understand, Allysha. Why were you here with him at all?"
"He was in trouble – financial trouble. I agreed to do this one last job with him and then that was it, divorce."
Still nothing. He’d steepled his hands, one elbow on each armrest.
"We’ve been married for seven years. It was fine for a time, then a couple of years ago he started staying out, drinking too much."
He’d always drunk too much. She’d been sure she could change him. So sure.
"I found out a while ago he was gambling. I paid off his debts and he swore to me he’d stop. I told him if he kept on the way he was, I’d kick him out. And as far as I knew, he did stop gambling and if he had affairs he kept them secret. Then, to cut a long story short, I came back from the job I did on Brjyl a day early. I caught him in bed with some blonde bimbo—in my bed, in my house. I threw them both out."
Just the thought of it made her blood boil. Two-timing, devious bastard. After all she’d done for him.
"But you came here with him," Brad said.
"Yeah. He came back three days later and said he’d gotten himself into debt with the local Ptorix crime boss, a very nasty gangster called Bronx. The debt was huge, much larger than I could have managed. So then he said what about that Tisyphor job? He’d mentioned it before, you see, and I hadn’t been interested. It seemed easy enough, stuff I’d done before."
She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. How could she have been so bloody gullible?
"Allysha, why didn’t you just leave him to it? It was his debt, not yours."
"No. You don’t understand. Ptorix law doesn’t work like that. Sean owed so his family owed. Especially if you’re talking about a thug like Bronx. You owe him and you don’t pay, they fish your body out of the Ull river. Possibly in a variety of locations. He might be a lost cause but I didn’t want to see him dead. Or me."
"Do you still care about him?"
"Are you kidding me? Do I look like such a complete dimwit?
He used me. I’ll never forgive him. Never." And if Brad Stone thought he was helping by making her admit she’d been a naive idiot he could think again. He’d dropped his hands, looked a little more relaxed.
"I noticed him a few times at the tavern with various women. I find it hard to imagine why you would marry a man like him. He’s superficial, self-centered, a liar."
Funny he should say that. Her father had said the same thing and so had Xanthor. But she’d fallen for him straight away and wouldn’t listen to a word against him.
"Do you? What do you know about him? He was good looking, charming, a great dancer, a damn good engineer and he was good in bed. Things changed." She found herself kneading her arm with one hand and stopped.
"They do. And now he’s sold you. Like a commodity. You really have no idea what this Tepich person wants of you?"
He didn’t have to be right, damn him. "No. Never heard of him."
"When we reach Chollarc I’ll see what we can find out about him. And about O’Reilly."
The way he said the name sent a tremor through her. "Sean? Why do you need to know about Sean?"
"You can’t marry me until you are no longer married to him."
Allysha’s heart gave a little fillip. He still wanted to marry her. At the same time a tingle of doubt rose in her gut. Brad was ruthless with people who got in his way, like the guards. He hadn’t killed them but she had little doubt he would kill if he had to. She was over Sean but she didn’t want to see him hurt. Or dead.
"It just means a divorce."
A slight smile. "Of course."
She stared at him. Dark skin, black hair, eyes like black holes. When he was like this she couldn’t even begin to read him. What did she know about this man, after all? He could be an assassin, a murderer. He was certainly an agent of some sort; he’d said so. Except when he made love he was different. Then he was gentle, passionate and not very good at it; although he was very willing to learn. Warmth rose to her face at the memory. What words could she use? A contradiction, an enigma?
She connected to his implant. Brad Stone, retired Sergeant, never married, date of birth, service dates, promotions. She’d seen it all before. And you’d need an InfoDroid to change this sort of information on a human cranial implant. "Maybe it’s time you told me a bit more about you. Is your name even Brad Stone?"
