by Ben Wolf
“Or girl,” a female voice said from behind them.
Justin whirled around with his metal arm outstretched, ready to send a stun pulse into whoever was there, but he stopped when he saw Arlie’s telltale red hair.
He glanced back at Captain Marlowe, whose reaction was virtually nonexistent. He hadn’t even turned back. Had he known she would be joining them?
When he finally did turn back, he gave her a nod. “Nice of you to join us.”
She held up one finger. “Don’t start with me.”
Captain Marlowe raised his hands. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
“That makes one of us.”
“We were just talking about what might’ve gone down,” he continued. “Nothing good.”
Justin started to ask, “How do you know the guy—”
“Or girl,” Arlie cut in.
“—or girl died?”
“Didn’t see anyone come out of here on a stretcher,” Captain Marlowe said. “None of the crew had visible injuries, either, so he probably stiffed before they landed. If he was in the captain’s chair, he was probably a military man, so they probably buried him in space like we did with Gerald.”
“You were watching when the crew left the docking bay?” Justin asked.
“Of course. Recon.” Arlie shook her head at him. “A ship like this docks, you find out everything you can about it.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Captain Marlowe said. “Because the damage this ship sustained isn’t normal. It has me worried.”
“Worried how?” Justin asked.
The remaining screens in the cockpit flared to life with green light, and Keontae’s voice sounded, this time considerably louder than before.
“Good news, bad news,” he said. “Good news is that I’m through their shields. Bad news is that most of the data’s corrupted somehow. Scrambled, almost.”
“A security feature? To prevent hacking?” Arlie suggested.
“Nah. Would’ve picked that up,” Keontae said. “This data was wrecked before I got here. Either they did it themselves, or whoever or whatever attacked them did it. So far, no luck on figurin’ out what kind of cargo they were carryin’, and the crew roster is fragmented worse than the inside of that console. Did find some video, though.”
The screens crackled with snowy static, all in hues of green. As the images sharpened, the coloring changed to black-and-white with just a hint of green around the outer edges.
The resolution was crap, but Justin managed to make out the shape of a star in the background. Then beams of white light streaked toward the screen at a furious pace, and the whole picture quaked with each impact.
Then, in the background, a dark silhouette broke into the star’s light.
“Freeze it there,” Captain Marlowe said. Something about his voice sounded different. Less certain, perhaps, than usual.
They all stared at the nearest screen, examining the shape of the thing blocking out a good chunk of the star’s light. It was probably a ship of some sort, but Justin couldn’t tell anything about it from its shape alone.
Captain Marlowe and Arlie, on the other hand, straightened up and shared a look of concern.
No—it wasn’t concern. As he stared at them, Justin recognized the emotion for what it was. He’d seen it more than enough times back in the mine on Ketarus-4 to know it.
It was fear.
Terror. Restrained, but terror nonetheless.
“We need to leave.” Captain Marlowe’s voice was every bit as resolute as it usually was, but now a sense of alarm edged his words. “Now.”
Justin placed his hand on the screen, and Keontae tremored his way back into Justin’s arm. “What’s wrong?”
“No time to argue. We need to get off this ship.” Captain Marlowe nodded to Arlie, and they both headed toward the Persimmon’s ramp.
“Is someone coming?” Justin called after them as he followed their quick pace. “If someone’s coming, maybe we shouldn’t just storm off this ship like a marching band.”
“Not this ship,” Captain Marlowe said back to him, over his shoulder as the three of them hurried down the ramp and onto the docking bay floor. “The Nidus. We need to leave this whole place right away. An hour ago. Three hours ago. Hell, we never should’ve come here in the first place.”
“Why? What was that thing in the video?” He muttered to Keontae, “Do you know what their problem is?”
[Some sort of ship. A big one. Beyond that, no idea.]
As Keontae finished speaking, the earpiece in Justin’s ear screeched to life with a relentless beeping noise. He’d reinserted it before they returned to the docking bay, but that annoying beeping made him want to rip it from his ear and smash the earpiece under the heel of his boot.
Justin reached for it, but the beeping stopped, replaced by Captain Marlowe’s voice instead.
“Attention rig-runners of the Viridian,” he said. “Sorry to disturb you this evening, but our time aboard this ship has come to an end. Report to the docking bay in thirty minutes or less. Anyone not here in time will be left behind. Do not test me on this.”
Justin hurried to catch up with Captain Marlowe and Arlie. “Are the repairs even done? The legs? Are they fixed?”
Captain Marlowe shook his head but didn’t look back. He was heading for the rig instead of toward the docking bay doors. “Doesn’t matter. We’re leaving either way.”
“Why?” Justin repeated. “What did you see?”
Captain Marlowe stopped at the base of the rig’s ramp and turned back. He pointed to Arlie first. “Prep the cockpit. Fire everything up. Get her up and running.”
She nodded and bolted past them into the rig.
[Guess you’re not gonna get an answer, JB.]
Captain Marlowe pointed at Justin next. “Can your friend run a diagnostic of the rig for me and tighten up anything that’s loose in the network? We need to be legs-up before that thirty-minute deadline is up, if possible.”
“Yeah, of course, but—”
“No time to explain. Get him in the ship, and do what he says. Got my own problems to worry about.” Captain Marlowe clapped. “Move, Barclay.”
Without another word, Captain Marlowe bolted up the ramp into the rig.
Twenty minutes later, the majority of the Viridian’s rig-runners had answered Captain Marlowe’s summons, as had the Nidus’s welcoming team of soldiers and Officer Wendell, whose face seemed to have gotten stuck in a perpetual scowl.
Justin and Keontae had finished the majority of the diagnostics and optimizations, with Keontae handling the majority of the work, as usual. Meanwhile, Officer Wendell and Captain Marlowe argued about something just outside the ship, loud enough that Justin could hear their voices but not their words from just inside the boarding ramp, even over the hum of the rig’s engines.
The remaining stragglers from the crew continued to gradually board the rig, all well within that thirty-minute limit that Captain Marlowe had imposed. Like Officer Wendell, each of them wore frowns and angry expressions.
Justin didn’t blame them. He’d had to totally abandon his plans to meet with Hallie again at the restaurant, and it soured his stomach.
Worse yet, not only would he probably never see her again, but he also had no idea how he could possibly let her know that he wasn’t going to make it. So her final impression of him, despite the great morning they’d shared, would be that he was the kind of jerk who would just ghost a girl.
To make matters even worse, the last of the rig-runners to board was Lora. Amid Officer Wendell’s protests about the Viridian’s abrupt departure and Captain Marlowe’s curt responses, Lora stormed up the boarding ramp. She noticed Justin right away, and it was too late to hide, so he got a full measure of her dagger-eyes.
It made him regret bailing on Hallie all the more.
“Enough,” Captain Marlowe snapped. “We’re leaving, and that’s final. You’ve got no legal authority to keep us here, so we’re going. T
ake the damned credits and get the hell away from my rig.”
Justin shifted his attention back to the confrontation in time to see Captain Marlowe tromping up the boarding ramp, shaking his head and muttering to himself.
Their eyes met, and Captain Marlowe asked, “Everyone aboard?”
“All except Rowley.” Justin pressed his hand against the nearest console, and Keontae tingled back into his arm.
“Forget him.” Captain Marlowe waved his hand. “He made his choice. He’s in their custody, and it’s not worth fighting to get ’im back. One more dick buried in a mountain of ’em. Retract the boarding ramp. We’re done with this godforsaken—”
An alarm wailed throughout the docking bay, and all the overhead lights began to flash red. The sight of it took Justin back to ACM-1134, but the sound of the alarm was so different that he didn’t have to linger in that memory for long.
Even so, this couldn’t be a good thing… whatever it was.
[The hell is that?] Keontae asked.
Justin just shook his head and stole a glance at Officer Wendell and the Farcoast soldiers. Each of them held a hand to one of their ears, as if listening to something amid the screech of the alarm.
“Shit,” Captain Marlowe spat. He rushed back down the boarding ramp and looked out the nearest set of entry fields.
Justin followed him, also peering into the void of space but seeing nothing.
Arlie’s voice crackled over the comms in Justin’s ear, asking the very questions on Justin’s mind. “What is it? Are they refusing to let us leave?”
“Shit,” was Captain Marlowe’s only response. He clenched his fists and stopped short of the nearest entry field. “Shit! We’re too late.”
Justin still couldn’t see whatever Captain Marlowe was seeing.
[The hell?] Keontae asked. [What’s he so freaked out about?]
Justin continued to close the distance to Captain Marlowe’s position. “Maybe it’s a bunch of ships.”
[Even so, a ship this size can probably handle a damned armada.]
Now only a few feet from Captain Marlowe’s position, Justin caught a glimpse of something large and dark gray drifting by outside the Nidus. He slowed his approach as more and more of the new ship cruised into view, blotting out the countless stars behind it.
It was much bigger and much closer than it had been in the video Keontae played aboard the Persimmon, but its shape was unmistakable. Unique. Whatever this ship was, it was the same one from the video.
[Oh… shit…] Keontae uttered.
“What is it?” Justin found himself asking aloud.
Dozens of massive guns and turrets ran along the ship’s surface, along with several other implements that Justin couldn’t identify. The vessel looked both heavily armored and well armed—perhaps excessively so. And the ship itself looked pristine and new, as if it had never even seen a battle before.
The truth of it hit Justin as Captain Marlowe said it aloud: “It’s a warship.”
And as it drifted along, Justin saw a familiar orange-and-teal logo emblazoned on the ship’s side—
The logo for Andridge Copalion Mines.
Justin added his own thoughts to those of Keontae and Captain Marlowe.
“Shit.”
11
The ACM warship wasn’t even a quarter of the size of the Nidus, but Justin had no doubt it could obliterate the colonist ship four times over.
“You see it, Arlie?” Captain Marlowe asked.
“I see it,” she replied over the comms.
Justin finally understood Captain Marlowe’s frantic behavior and the terror underpinning his actions. “We need to get out of here.”
Captain Marlowe shook his head. “I said we’re too late. Take off now, and they’ll shoot us down. They won’t even bother trying to stop us. They’ll think we’re trying to run.”
[We would be tryin’ to run,] Keontae muttered.
“Right now, our only play is anonymity,” Captain Marlowe said. “They don’t have a reason to chase us. In fact, they’re definitely after the Persimmon, so we’re not even on their scanners. I intend to keep it that way.”
“So what do we do?” Arlie asked.
“Remain calm. And get everyone off the rig again. Fast.”
“You’re asking for a mutiny,” Arlie mumbled. “Hurry aboard. Hurry to get off.”
“No choice. If we’re all aboard the rig when the soldiers board the Nidus, it’ll look suspicious. Can’t say we’re about to leave while we still have a busted landing gear and records on why we showed up in the first place, and we can’t say we just got here, either.
“There’s no good solution.” Captain Marlowe popped open his silver case, removed a metal stick, and crunched down on it. “We need everyone to disperse throughout the city. Remain anonymous ’til we get a chance to get out of here, or until Andridge leaves.”
“How long will that be?” Justin asked.
Captain Marlowe shook his head. “Depends how quickly they find what they’re looking for. I’d bet my military pension they want one of two things: either someone from aboard the Persimmon or whatever was stored in that suspension crate.”
“Or both,” Arlie said. “I’ll give the order.”
As they stood there, watching the ACM warship match its flight pattern with the Nidus, the rig-runners began to disembark once again.
The thought of ACM grabbing Hallie shook every fiber of Justin’s being. She was clearly brilliant, and whatever had gotten her aboard the Persimmon was important enough that ACM had sent an entire warship after them.
It made Hallie all the more alluring. But more importantly, Justin realized he had to do something about it.
He had to warn her.
Or did she already know? Had the same alarms in the docking bay sounded throughout the rest of the Nidus?
It would be hard to miss the huge ship cruising alongside them. Perhaps Hallie did already know, and perhaps she and the rest of her crew had already sought shelter.
Good thing, too, because the entry fields all around the rig rippled and warped as dozens of transport vessels soared into the docking bay, each of them bearing the orange-and-teal ACM logo. They hummed in a chorus of optimized, copalion-burning engines and set down on the docking bay floor.
“Shit,” Captain Marlowe said again. He called out to the rig-runners leaving the Viridian. “Arlie, shut ’er down. Everyone else, look busy. Don’t run. Don’t hide. Comply, keep quiet, and this will pass.”
[‘This will pass?’] Keontae repeated. [The hell does that mean?]
The hatches on the sides of the ships opened up like dragons spreading their wings, and dozens of soldiers filed out. They wore dark-blue camouflage armor that reminded Justin of the rocks back on the desolate surface of Ketarus-4, tactical belts loaded with equipment, and helmets with reflective gold face shields.
Each of them carried a pulse rifle that looked comparable to the ones carried by the Farcoast soldiers, but there were hundreds of ACM soldiers, compared to the handful of Farcoast soldiers who had accompanied Officer Wendell.
The ACM troops swarmed throughout the docking bay like locusts, and they quickly overtook the Viridian, her rig-runners, and the Farcoast soldiers. Justin stood there with his hands raised, complying, hoping they wouldn’t be able to identify him.
As far as Justin knew, ACM was done with him and had been ever since they’d released him after the incident on Ketarus-4. They’d even told him outright they weren’t going to prosecute him for his role in what happened at ACM-1134—not that they knew anything about it anyway since Carl Andridge had ordered the site destroyed before his death.
But even so, they’d released him with a warning that he was a person of interest to the company and always would be. The term “person of interest” didn’t have a good connotation attached to it. It meant he was on their “shit list.”
And being on the shit list of a galaxy-spanning corporation was never a good thing.
&n
bsp; Enough ACM soldiers had entered the docking bay that several of them each took individual people aside and began to question them, including Justin. Still others surrounded the distant Persimmon and stormed up her boarding ramp like pirates.
But for now, the Persimmon and Hallie were the least of his concerns. The six ACM soldiers standing before Justin, separating him from Captain Marlowe, constituted a far more pressing issue.
He caught a quick glance and a slight nod from Captain Marlowe, and it somehow set him at ease. More nonverbal communication, again not discussed in advance, but Justin got the message all the same: “Play it cool.”
That, Justin could do. Probably. If these guys were assholes, it would be harder.
“I said show me some identification,” said the lead soldier, who wore a sergeant’s bars on his shoulders. His voice came through his helmet sounding tinny and distant.
“Under whose authority?” Justin figured a bit of pushback would be normal. Too much cooperation might get them wondering.
The sergeant raised his pulse rifle slightly, not as a threatening measure but as a reminder of who the big dick in the conversation was. “ID, or I’ll tell my men to hold you down while I shove the business end of my rifle up your ass and liquefy your insides.”
Justin scoffed. “Someone wasn’t hugged enough as a child.”
That actually got him a few chuckles from the other ACM soldiers, and Keontae laughed too.
“C’mon, man. I’ve got a job to do,” the sergeant said, his voice lighter now. “Sooner you cooperate, sooner you can go free.”
“Same here,” Justin countered.
“Then show us some ID, and you can get right back to it.”
[Probably enough pushback, JB. Best to comply at this point.]
“Yeah,” Justin said aloud. “Okay, fine.”
He held out his right hand, palm up, and produced a holographic image of his personal details. It displayed his name, his date of birth, and some of his vital statistics—but only the bare minimum required by Coalition Law. After all the shit ACM had put him through over the last year, he’d made it a point to learn his rights and stick to them.
