by CJ Birch
The matter sails are intricate and complicated, therefore expensive. Because of this there are many safety features built in to protect them. One of which is that, at the slightest provocation, the sails will retract.
It only takes a few good swishes for the sails to feel the movement and close in on themselves. As an added bonus, the cable begins to wind its way around the sail frame, pulling us toward the ship.
“You’re brilliant.”
And she knows it too. Her face is calm and smug, almost like she’d planned this from the start.
Within minutes we’re an arm’s length from the ship and only a meter from the nearest hatch. I use my backdoor access codes and the hatch opens.
As we stand in the decompression bay, the silence of the vacuum still around us, I can’t help but feel we’ve entered the belly of the beast.
Chapter Thirty-one
After we reestablish pressure, I remove my helmet and suck in air. It tastes beautiful.
“We don’t have much time. I’m sure Sarka’s had Hartley set up all sorts of alerts for anything unusual.” Ash dumps her helmet on the floor and rips off her gloves, tossing them aside. “So what’s the game plan now?” Her hair is sweaty and wild.
“We get to engineering. When I had Hartley set up those backdoor access codes, I had him set it up so that if my command codes were ever replaced, I could input a secondary set and they would nullify the replacement set. The trouble is, I can only input those secondary codes from a secure location.”
“So the bridge—”
“Which would be crazy,” I say.
“Or engineering—”
“Which is bat-shit crazy. There’s a good chance Sarka has posted people there to make sure Hartley doesn’t make trouble.”
“Do you think we’ll have a problem?” she asks.
As much as I’d like to believe my crew is loyal only to me, I know there will be a few who may see an opportunity. Dissenters are in every bunch. They’ll have a grudge about something. Either the way I handled the Ash situation or something earlier. It could’ve been brewing for months. Perhaps they don’t like the idea of leaving this planet behind, like Fossick. And then along comes a charismatic leader who can spot the signs. Sarka’s good at rooting them out. It’s his job, finding the wayward and organizing them. And when you add the followers, his numbers grow.
“No. But anything can happen.”
“But he’s a—” She doesn’t actually say it, but her face goes through the thought process. He’s a Burr. Which means his genetics are part of mine.
That’s the tricky thing about Burrs. They’re not only technically enhanced, scientists also manipulated their genetic structure. Burrs are faster, stronger, and more intelligent than the average person. If genetic manipulation wasn’t outlawed, I imagine things would’ve been very different. Instead of genetic enhancements making you a pariah, it would’ve been a sign of affluence.
And then Ash reaches the question I’ve been waiting for her to arrive at since she found out I was Sarka’s child. What genetic abnormalities has he passed onto me?
“It’s fine,” I say.
“Jordan.”
“Let’s go.”
We don’t have the time to get into this right now. It’s a heavy discussion at the best of times. But I’m glad it’s only Ash who knows. She may have her prejudices, but she wouldn’t tell anyone. If the Union knew who my father was, I wouldn’t have this command. I guess it doesn’t matter now, we’ll likely never see the Union again. But I’d hate to see what would happen if my crew found out. I know Sarka won’t hesitate to tell them if it will benefit him.
We take the back route to engineering, down rarely used corridors. I don’t want to bump into any crew and have to explain. Sarka must have told everyone that something bad happened. It’s likely he’s assumed command. There wouldn’t be too many people willing to challenge him. We come across only one crew member. A lone aviator with his head in a tablet. I pull Ash into a cargo hold and wait for him to pass.
My heart is going triple time. It feels wrong sneaking around my own ship. This isn’t the way I want to reclaim it, skulking around like I’m the thief.
Outside engineering, I pull Ash aside. We need a better plan. What if Sarka’s planned for this? I know Ash and Hartley are friends, but he’s smart. He may not value their friendship as highly as he regards his life.
She shakes her head. “I’ve learned in the short time I’ve known him that it’s not a good idea to underestimate him. Let him surprise you, Captain.”
We enter engineering. Hartley and his men hunch over one of the consoles on the far end. Hartley’s explaining something. Something’s gone wrong and he’s not happy.
One of the engineers looks at us and drops a spanner on the ground. It clangs and echoes through the great expanse of the room. The sound pings back and forth between giant server towers.
Hartley stops mid-rant and looks up too. His jaw drops and it takes him a second before he finds his voice. “Captain. Ash.” His mouth closes and opens a few times before he asks, “How?”
I wave him off and sprint forward. We don’t have much time.
“I need access to a secure computer terminal.” I wait for anyone to challenge me, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, everyone scurries around making things happen.
“What’s the plan, Captain?” Hartley asks, pointing me toward a terminal off to the side. Several eyes swivel my way with curiosity.
“Yes, Captain, what’s the plan?” A deep, low voice asks.
I look and find Sarka in the doorway with a large sonic rifle pointed at us. I’m assuming it’s set for a wide dispersal. Ash steps forward, angling herself in front of me. Not that it’s going to do much.
“I’m curious.” Sarka takes a step forward. “How were you planning to take back the ship? I have all the command codes now. And as for your ship,” he spreads his arms. “Let’s say I’ve made some improvements. A few added securities in case somehow you managed to reenact The Great Escape.” He folds his arms across his chest, which emphases his oversized muscles. He means bombs. He’s planted bombs on my ship. “So what was it? Plan a siege? Or were you planning some more sabotage?” He points at Hartley. “I suspected he staged most of our mechanical failures. Hartley assures me this ship is unable to go faster than a snail. But if the chain of command were to change, I suspect that might also change with it.” He raises his eyebrows at Hartley, who doesn’t look contrite in the least.
I told Hartley to keep the ship in orbit as long as possible, to sabotage it if needed. I knew from the beginning Sarka would find a way to take this ship. The last thing I wanted was to unleash him on this galaxy. Even if Sarka convinced the crew I was dead, it’s nice to see my orders outlast death.
I know my father. He’s been playing the long game since he got on board. He’s always planning till the wake. I must have heard it a million times growing up. Plan until your wake. Always plan ahead, then plan some more. He’s thought all this through with angles we haven’t even considered. At least up until this point, I’ve been able to keep up. Sarka’s been playing nice since he arrived, if not making friends, at least not creating enemies. He could’ve convinced them to let him help them back to the Posterus. And to show me how right I am, the door to engineering slides open and Yakovich walks in. The same Yakovich we left for dead in the middle of a jungle.
“Yakovich.” Ash looks as surprised as I feel. “We thought you were dead.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.” She nods in our direction, but otherwise, her face is expressionless. She plants herself between Sarka and the door. For the first time, I’m not sure whose side she’s on. It’s possible he’s been talking her up since I posted her at his door. “Death does happen to be a side effect of leaving someone behind in a dangerous jungle.”
“That’s not what happened.” Ash steps forward, her hands curled tight into fists.
I pull her back. This is exactly what
he’s hoping for, anger, confrontation, and when we’re distracted, he’ll make his next move. Ash looks back at me, then at my hand wrapped around her wrist. Every emotion flashes across her face, surprise, resentment, hurt, frustration.
Yakovich looks calm as always.
“I found her abandoned in the woods and helped her back to the ship before returning to rescue the rest of the crew with reinforcements,” Sarka says.
“More like you were following us. You saw an opportunity to bribe your way back onto the ship and gain access to weapons.” Ash is closer to the truth than anyone here realizes.
Sarka’s eyes gleam. This is his moment. “Or it’s possible that I’m a better captain than some people.” He’s almost crowing as he says it. “I’d never leave one of my defenseless crew behind to be dinner for some overgrown moss monster.”
“You goddamned son of a bitch.” Ash launches herself at him and in that moment, chaos erupts. I try to pull her back, but the engineers push me aside as they rush the door. Yakovich lunges for Hartley, curling her arm around his neck and bringing him to the floor. She whispers something in his ear and before I can wonder what it is, a beefy arm encircles my throat. I feel a sharp sting on the side of my neck.
“That will be enough of that.”
There is silence as everyone turns toward us.
Sarka digs the knife in deeper. He smells like sweat and pears. The subtle fruit aroma reminds me of my mother. It was her favorite soap.
“You wouldn’t.” Ash picks up Sarka’s discarded gun. Her fingers squeeze the handle. There’s a quiet shuffle as everyone lines up along an invisible line, flanking each side of Ash.
“It would surprise you, Alison, what I’d do for freedom.” He takes a moment, waiting for everyone’s attention. I close my eyes, because I know what’s coming next. “Even kill my own daughter.” And then, to make sure we’re all on the same page, he adds, “And she’d do the same. Wouldn’t you, Jordan?”
As he planned, there’s shocked silence. He’s been waiting to drop that bomb since he came on board. Keeping it safe until it would do the most damage.
Ash steps toward us, gun raised, eyes pinned on Sarka.
Sarka chuckles. “Looks like a good time to be moving on.” His grip tightens around my neck. It’s becoming hard to breathe, and I realize he’s trying to pull me back through the door.
I have two options. Dig in here, and see what happens. More than likely someone’s going to get hurt. Or I can let him lead me away where I’m the only one who’ll get hurt. But where could he be planning to go? I decide on the latter.
The last look on Ash’s face as I disappear through the exit is total panic. If I know her, it’s only a momentary setback until she comes up with her next crazy plan to rescue me. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Once we’re a good twenty meters outside of engineering, Sarka stops to pull my arms into restraints.
“In all honesty, Jordan, I’m impressed. I was completely shocked to see you back here. I don’t know how you did it, but that is some serious ingenuity right there.”
“Don’t.”
“What? No, I’m serious. You should be proud of yourself. You are proving to be one hell of an adversary. Of course, I’ll stop right here to take some of the credit. I am after all, the one who got you started on escaping.” He tightens the cuffs. They cut into my wrists.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Is this where you reenact the good father role? Tell me again how my dead mother would feel if she could see me now? Then drug me, tie me up, and leave me for dead? Or better yet, tell me how I look just like her.”
“You do, you know.” When I don’t say anything he continues. “When I first saw you on the bridge, I thought it was her at first. It was a weird flashback moment. You looked like she did when I first saw her.”
“Before you abducted her.”
“I gave your mother a choice and she chose me. Was it always easy? No, but she loved me.”
I turn now and glare. “Don’t for a second pretend you knew her. You knew her as a woman playacting.”
“I knew her better than you. You only knew her as a child knows a parent.” There’s a sincerity in his voice I’ve never heard before. “It’s a shame you didn’t get to know her as a woman.”
“Why? Because you think that would change my opinion of her? You can pretend she loved you all you want, but we both know that’s a lie.” He’s not going to pull me into this fantasy world. He can talk all he wants, but it won’t change the facts.
“If that’s what you need to believe, I’ll respect that. But you don’t think it strange that all our ships were out on patrol at the same time? Haven’t you ever questioned how easy your escape was?”
“You’re saying you knew?”
“I’m saying I helped plan it.”
I shake my head. “Just like that? You let us go?” It’s like watching a globe that’s flipped on its axis. My whole world upends and I’m left watching trying to make sense of an inverted picture. “I don’t believe you.”
“The plan was to rendezvous with her once she’d gotten you to Delta. But the Union attacked your ship and I heard you’d both died. Is she really dead?” The way he asks leaves no doubt in my mind that he loved her. But I’m not convinced that she loved him back.
“We escaped in a pod. Mom took something that killed her, to conserve oxygen for me.” Is that what happened? Or is it more complicated than that? Did she plan it with him with no intention of ever going back?
He pulls me along the corridor. “You still don’t believe me do you?”
“No, I don’t. Why would you help us? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Because I knew if you were to have any sort of life, you’d need to do it on the Belt. Otherwise, you’d end up yoked to some slag and buried under a pile of brats. And you’re better than that.” He brushes his hand along the wall. “You made it here all on your own. Captain of your own ship.”
“Such a pretty picture. Why would you even care what happened to me?”
He tugs me into a chute and points down the ladder with his knife. “I’ll go first, you’ll follow. No funny stuff or I cut your Achilles, yeah?” He raises his eyebrows, waiting for confirmation from me. I nod.
“Why would you care?” I ask again.
He steps on to the first rung and lowers himself until his head is poking out of the shaft. “Best not to try for two escapes in one day. I’ve still got my insurance policies stashed around the ship.” He motions for me to step on to the ladder, which I do. It’s a little awkward at first with my hands restrained in front. But eventually I find a way to climb without falling.
“I care because you’re blood.” He lowers himself one rung at a time. “And no matter what happens in this galaxy or the last, that still counts. Always will.” His voice echoes through the chute. For the first time in my life, I wonder if he’s telling the truth. Did Mom and he plan our escape? Would it matter? Would it change anything? He doesn’t care about me now, or he wouldn’t be doing this.
He motions to stop on deck two. The only things on this deck are the weapons locker and the escape pods. My blood drains, leaving my body cold and numb. I know what he’s planning to do. I try to rush back up the ladder, but he seizes my ankle and yanks me down. I fall in a heap at his feet.
“Don’t look so scared. We’ll be fine. I have it all planned out.”
Before I have time to argue, he pulls me to my feet and thrusts me forward. He punches a control panel with the fist holding the knife. It scrapes the wall, leaving a fine line. The door to an escape pod rushes open and I panic. The last time I was in one of these didn’t end well, with Ash shooting off into the unknown. Is this what she felt? This gnawing, gut-wrenching fear? There is no way we can survive this. These pods are not meant to land on surfaces. There’s no heat shield. The atmosphere would burn us up in an instant. That must be what he’s planning because there aren’t any ships around to rescue us. I try to tell
him this, but he puts the knife to his lips and makes a shushing sound. He pulls me over to the command chair and straps me in. Without any hesitation, he initiates launch.
“This isn’t going to work. We’ll never make it to the surface,” I say.
But instead of answering, he hums to himself as he buckles himself into the passenger seat. The door shuts with a loud whoosh and we wait in silence. And it’s that moment I realize my father is a lunatic. He knows we’re not going to survive. And he doesn’t care. I pull at the restraints, but they’re too tight. A thin line of blood drips down my wrist.
And without any more preamble, we launch, shooting straight into a stomach dropping spin. From the window I see the Persephone, then space. My ship, then space. Behind the Persephone, the planet orbits the sun. And then it all winks out of existence. Everything. The Persephone, the planet, they’re all gone. As we spin, all I can see is stars. Far away suns with their own orbiting spheres. Beside me Sarka cackles like he arranged for this to happen. As if everything I’ve ever cared for were a conjurer’s trick hidden under a big black cape.
Only with this trick, it’s gone forever.
About the Author
CJ Birch is a video editor and digital artist based in Toronto. When not lost in a good book or working (because, you know, bills) CJ can be found writing or drinking serious coffee, or doing both at the same time. To learn more about serious coffee visit www.cjbirchwrites.com
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