“I said I’m not ready!” His eyes went wide.
Rork reached for the button to open the hatch.
“You’d better not do what I think you’re about to do!”
Rork hit the button and pulled the panicking preacher with him into space.
17
ZERO FLOATED outside the ship, his cheeks filled with air, his eyes darting from side to side.
Rork laughed. He pulled Zero’s suit off and inserted his feet the right way. He jerked the pants up and covered Zero’s chest. He plopped the helmet on the mystic’s head and felt the vibration as it clicked into place.
Zero exhaled. “W-w-w-hy did you do that? I told you I wasn’t ready!” he said over the suit-to-suit radio.
“You’re fine. They always fill the magnetic bubble with atmosphere anyway. It’s just a little cold.”
Zero hugged his hands to his body. “You could have killed me. I probably have frostbite.”
“‘The body is but a shell for the soul,' right?” Rork smirked.
Their abandoned ship approached the John McCain’s dock, a wide sliver of black protected by a magnetic field. Rork and Zero floated alongside of it.
Zero looked up at the gray hulk and flinched. “We’re going to crash into it!”
“Relax. We’re stuck here until they terminate the field. Once they do, we’ll use our maneuvering jets and fly out of here.”
“They’ll just bring us back in. This is a stupid plan.”
Rork sighed. “Do you see how big this thing is? Even if they see us, they’ll think we’re space junk.”
“They blow up space junk. I watched something about that.”
Rork rolled his eyes. “It’s your first time in space. I get it. You’re scared.”
Zero stared at Rork, his eyes wide. His now darkened helmet darted from place to place as he surveyed the area around them.
“The real view will open up once we escape,” Rork said.
“Of what?”
A dizzying wave of distortion appeared behind the back of the ship.
“What the...” Zero waved his arms in front of him.
“Jets now!” Rork punched up the jets on his control panel. Zero and the ship fell away behind him. He got beyond the leading edge of the John McCain and a bright glow assaulted him from his right.
“Rork!”
Oh, brax. Rork stopped his acceleration with a quick tap. “Control panel, left wrist, full acceleration, back jets. Now!”
“I-I-I can’t use computers! I don’t know what this is!”
“Just try, man, for Jupiter’s sake, just give it a try!”
Rork used his side jets to orient his front to the EDF ship. He continued gliding away from it at five meters per second, according to his control panel.
There was no sign of Zero. Rork brought his control panel up and configured ten times magnification on his left eye. The dock of the John McCain zoomed into detailed view. Sophia’s ship sat on the deck. Soldiers in EDF navy blue gathered around the open rear airlock. One soldier scanned outwardly, binocs held to his eyes. He turned to look in Rork’s direction.
Where the heck are you? A white object hurtled past Rork, to his side, about twenty meters away.
“Ahhhoohhhhh!”
“Left wrist, cut your acceleration. I will come to you.” Rork activated his side jets to orient himself to a spot just ahead of Zero’s current trajectory and activated his rear rockets. He burst forward.
“I’m feeling kind of hot now,” Zero said.
“Did you cut your acceleration?”
“Where do I throw up in this thing? Is there a bag?”
“Did you cut your acceleration!” Rork looked down at the blue and white globe below. An orange and yellow glow skipped across water. White pillars followed by cloud waves stretched across to the far horizon. Deadly. But very beautiful.
“How should I know!”
Zero’s feet rolled over his head. Rork laughed at the man’s basic incompetence. He wanted to come out here. I didn’t force him.
“What the hell happened now?” Zero screamed.
Rork intercepted the hapless mystic. He activated his foot rockets to match Zero’s yaw. He grabbed the guru’s control panel and reversed his foot rockets, then his own.
“I really have to—” A deep gurgle interrupted Zero and his helmet clouded with a rainbow of digestive debris.
Rork suppressed a laugh. He eased their acceleration in sync. They floated now at approximately the same rate of speed, facing each other, the Earth spread out below them, the EDF ships behind Zero. “Did you catch the view yet?”
“I can’t even—” Zero spat. He dry-gargled and spat again. “...even see my—”
Rork grabbed his wrist and activated the helmet’s self-cleaning process. The helmet magnetized, shook gently and the remains of Zero’s last meal fell away.
“Oh! About time—” Zero caught sight of the Earth laid out below him. His mouth hung open. He closed his eyes and began to mutter.
“Only a damned mystic medicine man would close his eyes to a view like that!” Rork activated his side jets and Zero rotated gently to face the blue and white scene below.
Zero opened his eyes and looked away. “And what is that, over there?”
In the distance, a gray crescent hung, its surface a dark grid of squares with shiny spots neatly placed among them.
“Luna. Of course.”
Zero returned to his muttering.
Rork looked back at Earth. “It’s a stupid planet anyway. You live in plenty with soft dirt under your feet, blue air above you and green trees to shade you. Real gravity holds you snug. Out here, all we have is dead black space but you people have to control that, too. It’s a sickness and like all bugs it dies in the frozen light-pure vacuum of space.”
Zero opened his eyes. “I see the wondrous creation of the Universe, a tiny ball of life, so small, so rare and precious. It is beautiful beyond words.” He sobbed.
“Sure, the planet itself is pretty, like a piece of hard candy, but what’s inside of it will make you sick if you eat too much. Anyway, I’m a selfish snoof so I’m no better than the other sons of bitches around here.”
“But you are better, Rork, because you risk everything you have to help others.”
“Utter prappery. This is about me and what I want.”
“You brought me up here, just as I asked and at great personal expense.”
“That’s how much of a fool you are, with your mumbling and your cryptic sayings. I came up here for me. You were just the price I paid.” And Lala is a price I’m paying, but for what? What am I getting in return? It’s a price I won’t pay.
“‘The fool who knows his folly becomes wise by that fact,’ says the Buddha. Thank you, Rork.” Zero beamed at him.
Rork rocketed himself away from Zero. He wanted to pick a fight and, thus, get to the truth of something, anything. Like why that inner voice told him he was a disloyal fake and a failure. He wanted to pluck that feeling out of his chest and toss it down at the double-dealing planet below. He wanted to watch that idea burn up in the atmosphere like a dead hunk of space rock. If there was anything Rork Sollix refused to be, it was disloyal. A fake came in a close second.
“What’s that?” Zero asked.
“What’s what?” Rork refused to look.
“It’s coming up fast. I think it’s a ship. Maybe they’ll pick us up.”
I guess we will need to make some effort to get out of here. Rork rocketed himself around and searched the abyss in front of him. “Holy brax!” He brought his wrist up but it was too late. The shiny yellow and orange wall of a Barbary ship slammed into him.
His suit’s chest panels expanded on contact and absorbed most of the impact but the unrelenting metal also smashed into his helmet. The silicon-based material cracked. Rork’s world became a labyrinth of opaque whiteness with random spots of visibility as the universe rotated around him from bright, blue Earth to pitch black and back
again, over and over, the air squealing out of his suit.
18
“HE’S COMING around, again!”
The words intruded on Rork’s mind. His eyes, never closed, began transmitting signals to his brain again. He dragged his arms up to his face and struggled to hold them there. He burned precious fuel to stop his head over heels flipping.
Zero crashed into Rork, chest squarely to chest. The two men bounced away in different directions just before the brightly colored wall of the Barbary ship tore through. It turned and adjusted its course to make another pass.
“What a mess you have put us in.” Zero heaved and coughed.
“This is not the time to assign blame!” Rork judged the Barbary ship’s trajectory. It would come around at him again. He mustn’t move, or the ship would change its course and he would never reach the airlock. It was Zero that had to do it.
“When can we assign blame?”
“You need to come around to my side, about twenty meters ahead and ten—” Rork started. A sudden pinching ache erupted in his chest and spread like wildfire up to the crown of his head and down to his toes. His body tensed like a live wire.
“We must negotiate with them. They will see reason and give us a ride somewhere.” Zero hung in the blackness, not far away now.
A hulking mass of metal passed in between Rork and Zero. Something told him it was one of the EDF ships, but nothing other than the pain mattered now. He mustered the strength to speak.
“You need to come around the back of the Barbary ship and get into the airlock. I am the bait. I can’t do it. Jupiter, I can barely see at all!”
“ESS John McCain to fugitives Sollix and Malik, stay where you are. We will reacquire you.”
“Something’s beeping. Something about low fuel,” Zero said.
A pulsating blackness crept into the edges of Rork’s visions. His head had a gravity all its own. The squealing out of his helmet pushed him farther from Zero. “Just do it, Zero!”
“ESS John McCain to commercial cargo sled Fist of Dollars, break off your assault on the fugitive Sollix and return to your previous course to the planet.”
The Barbary ship came around again. Rork found his wrist and rocketed just above it. He grabbed for a hold on its flat top. The top lit up. Three EDF soldiers hovered above him in an open-topped toboggan. The rear thrusters powered down in a loss of brilliance and the front rockets flashed.
The Barbary ship slipped away from him. There was no sign of Zero anywhere. The pain relented briefly.
“I can’t—” Zero started. “I just don’t even have the first—”
The EDF soldiers split into a triangle and, holding hands, they fell upon Rork.
One reached out a hand to grab Rork’s suit. “We’re going to save you.” His eyes met Rork’s.
The pain returned, stronger than ever, an electric charge that burned at the slightest movement. Rork triggered his boot rockets and flew straight up through the middle of the triangle. One of them grabbed him and Rork flew off course, past the toboggan to its side. The soldiers spun off but quickly recovered and dove back in.
Rork kicked away the attached EDF interloper. Two alarms beeped, one after the other, over and over. They sounded far away now. He punched up his acceleration and slammed into the toboggan. The alarms disappeared. He couldn’t hear himself breathe. His vision reduced to a tiny field in front of him, most of it covered by his helmet’s maze of cracks.
An EDF soldier fell in front of him, his mouth moving.
Rork felt the toboggan controls and found the accelerator. He punched it up and looped back, searching for the Barbary ship. He needed oxygen now. Anything else would mean losing consciousness and a quick death. The idea almost seemed like a blessing but he curved right and twisted his helmet, desperate to find an unbroken patch of glass.
There the damned thing was. It was escaping now. Rork made a U-turn and headed straight towards Earth. He came up on the back of the ship and matched its velocity. He grabbed the airlock door, opened it and threw himself in.
He bumped into another body, hit the green compression button and passed out.
Rork’s cheek stung. Every muscle ached but the tension was releasing. He sat up in the airlock, his helmet off. Zero crouched in front of him. “Finally did something useful. Good job.”
“Your negativity selects for undesirable quantum outcomes.”
Rork rolled his eyes.
Zero held his tan palms up, his heavily-browed cinnamon eyes sincere. “It’s true. And can we assign blame now?”
Rork sighed. He searched the compartment. “We have no weapons and we have to take the bridge before this thing starts re-entry. Let’s go.”
“Perhaps we can negotiate?”
Rork burst through the door and propelled himself up the corridor with the last fumes of fuel in his suit. Every bulkhead door was open for as far as he could see. He passed through one, then another, with ease. He cut acceleration and listened. No sound. Every berth, every cargo space, it was all completely empty.
“Is something not quite right?” Zero asked from far behind him.
Rork rocketed ahead again, straight up through the middle of the ship, and motioned for Zero to follow him. He sailed through one bulkhead door, his foot grazing the bottom edge of the circular door, almost catching.
“We have to search for her,” Zero yelled.
“No.” This was a trick. He just sensed it. He had to take the bridge and quickly. He could not permit it to enter the atmosphere, much less to land on a planet full of cops and EDF soldiers. He would search the compartments later but she wasn’t here.
The ship rumbled under their feet. Rork pushed the suit rockets to the max and they sputtered out, unevenly. Against his will, he turned and slammed into a corridor wall. He curled up, bounced off of it and glided into the bridge. He skidded across the floor in the artificial gravity.
Rork crawled to his knees and Zero zoomed in. The sage kneecapped him and sent him nose-first into the floor before crashing into the bridge controls himself.
“Ever resourceful, Rork. I admire that about you. Too bad your journey ends here.” Barbary’s visage smirked down at Rork on the front viewscreen.
“Is she even on board?”
Barbary shrugged, that devilish smirk of his firmly in place.
Rork got up and limped to the control panel. He looked up at Barbary. The old man towered over him. “Make your funeral arrangements, you soul-sucking bastard.” He cut the connection.
“What are we going to do?” Zero asked from the floor at Rork’s feet.
“You’re going to get the hell out of my way. That’s step one.” He massaged his chin. He tapped some buttons on the bridge controls and considered the ethereal blue mass that loomed in his way.
Zero crawled to the back of the bridge. “Step two?”
“Step two is you shut your audio port and let me do my thing.”
Zero rolled his eyes and slouched back, his hand over his face.
I have no idea what to do. The thought dawned on Rork with the finality of a rung bell. He crashed into the co-pilot’s chair and let his eyes lazily dance across the stunning view of his new cage. Escaping a second time would be much harder. He frowned and crossed his arms.
A red bar flashed on the viewscreen. “Hull integrity compromised. Three minutes of oxygen remaining before complete decompression.”
Screw this. Rork tore into the display. Engine control. Password required. Steering. Password required. Rork brought his fist down and cracked the display.
A bright streak caught his attention. A large ship exited the atmosphere and coasted out of Earth orbit. He squinted. It looked like the trainship and the trainship had a docking bay. The might just be able to...
“Zero! Let’s go!” He stood up. “We’re going to do something Barbary didn’t think of.”
“Something cosmically stupid?”
Rork nodded. “Naturally.”
19
/> “JUST PULL wires!”
Rork and Zero ripped the bridge control panel tops off and grabbed at the wiring below.
A white flash blinded Rork and a sharp zap tickled his eardrums. Zero stumbled in retrograde and fell straight back like a triggered domino. Rork kept working.
Zero sat up, his face unnaturally pale.
“Cargo hold compromised. Sealing internal bulkhead,” the ship’s computer announced.
Flames licked the edges of the viewscreen. The door from the bridge to the cargo area slammed closed. The wheel turned until a hard metal on metal sound echoed.
“What was that?” Zero pulled himself up but wobbled and steadied himself against the wall.
Rork stopped ripping wires. It wasn’t helping. “We’re burning up in the atmosphere. Barbary is controlling the ship remotely and he’s killing us. Without suits, we’re locked in here now. This thing will burn up, explode or crash into the surface of the Earth.”
“Can we survive that?”
Rork laughed. He sat down in the captain’s chair, put his elbow on the edge of the control panel and parked his chin on his hand. He was wiped out. Just a quick nap, then I’ll come up with a plan. His eyes closed of their own accord.
“What if we asked someone for help?”
Rork grunted. We don’t deserve help. “A pair of fugitives. Who is going to help us?”
“Isn’t that a ship down there to the, uh, right? Do they have a docking bay?”
Rork opened his eyes and stood up. “We can’t turn. We can’t turn!” Rork pounded his fist against the metal frame of the control panel and it dented.
“If your neighbor will not come to you, you shall go to your neighbor.” Zero stood up and grinned.
“What’re you prapping on about now?” Rork slouched back into the chair.
“Is this the radio?” Zero touched his cracked control panel and scrolled through the menus. “Aha! Um, hello out there. We have a problem.” He looked up at the ceiling and waited.
Rork waved his hand in dismissal at the naive mystic.
Rise the Renegade (Rork Sollix Book 1) Page 10
