Torchship Captain

by Karl K Gallagher

  The other bodyguards came in at Annie’s call. They changed into their outer perimeter gear, clothes designed to blend in with office workers or tourists. None of their outfits would fit Guen. Even the shortest bodyguard was a hand taller than her.

  Annie shook her head. “You’re dressed exactly like the kind of people who are staying off the streets now. We all need to look like we’re in the stipend set.”

  “Any stores nearby?” asked Roger.

  A couple others laughed. “The nearest one like that is probably ten klicks from downtown,” said Woon.

  “We’ll just have to scavenge what we can. If you see someone your size pass the word and we’ll cut them out of the herd.” Annie briefed the team on tactics for moving dispersal. “Memorize the key points on this map. We can’t pick a route. Things are too unpredictable. Our goal is the safe house here. If we’re broken up the rally point is the gazebo in Doolittle Park. Alternate refuge point is this apartment building. It’s one of Social Control’s ghost warehouses. There should be a reaction squad based there. If we see transportation that can take the Stakeholder out of the city we grab it. Any questions?”

  “If we see a stipend kid wearing puce, I have dibs,” said Woon.

  No questions interrupted the laughter.

  “Ma’am, any words?”

  Guen could only manage, “Thank you all.”

  Annie wanted to use ‘disaster tourists’ as their cover. Guen tried to act the part by being fascinated by damage instead of horrified. It was harder to ignore her guards as they went past, jogging or strolling ahead then loitering until the pair passed them.

  More than half the guards were out of sight at any one time. This made sense. They were watching out for trouble. Moving independently kept them from being associated with Guen. But it felt lonely. Very lonely. She was used to being surrounded when out in public. This felt naked.

  The stores had been looted. Or maybe just vandalized. All windows were broken. Merchandise lay in the street as if looters had become bored with their booty less than a block after taking it.

  Annie twitched. “Don’t react. Just got bad news. Be ready to run.”

  Guen looked around. Nothing had changed. There was some shouting in the distance. She stopped to wait for Annie as she fiddled with some jewelry lying on the sidewalk.

  “Here, take this.” Annie slipped three sparkly bracelets onto Guen’s wrists. “It’s fashionable.”

  Only true by stipend kid standards. Guen thought they were cheap and flashy. But I guess that makes them good camouflage.

  Some people, stipend kids by their dress, ran around the corner, panting with fatigue. “Pee-kays! Pee-kays!”

  “Player killer” was virtual reality slang for someone who attacked other players in the game. The label had been hung on those who used the collapse of order to let them murder, rape, or otherwise abuse other lower-class folk instead of just members of the government.

  Annie burst into a run, yanking painfully on Guen’s arm to drag her along.

  Guen stumbled. They’d changed direction, heading toward Doolittle Park instead of the safe house.

  Annie added to the “Pee-kay” shouts.

  Woon’s voice came from behind them. “You think you’re tough? Who’s up for some one on one? Who’s a tough guy? You? Think you’re tough without that iron bar?”

  Annie kept them running too fast to look back.

  Doolittle Park swarmed with stipend kids. A band played vector baroque in the gazebo. Hundreds of nude dancers gyrated around them.

  Shouting “PK” brought tall armed men running.

  “Fuck that! This is our park!” shouted the biggest. “Where are they?”

  Annie pointed. She didn’t need to. The PK mob approached with bloody weapons. The big defender ordered his men into a line.

  The PKs smashed the formation. Fighting spread all over the park.

  Annie cursed. She dragged Guen to a public restroom. “In here.” She shoved Guen into a stall. “Lock it, then put your feet on the seat. Crouch down. Don’t let yourself be visible. I’ll get you some safer clothes.”

  Then she left Guen alone.

  Guen waited. She decided she was stuck here until the riot died down or her surviving bodyguards figured out a way to get her out. Heavy feet clomped into the room. Probably a man. She tensed.

  “Put this on,” said Roger. Oh, good, he was still alive. Some clothes came over the door.

  She stripped out of her thousand-key dress. It was trash now, the mob would kill anyone wearing something that fancy. The wad of clothes she caught included some underwear, fortunately stretchy. The pants didn’t stretch. They were the latest fashion in the stipend set, shiny polymer fabric studded with metal stars. Exhaling, tensing muscles, and pulling hard on the belt loops let her pull them up to her hips. Her thighs were painfully compressed. The lower half of the legs was slashed into ribbons, dangling to her ankles. Metal mirrors at the end of each ribbon tickled her shins. She hoped she could walk in this without it cutting her. Roger hadn’t tossed over any boots.

  Roger led her to the rally point. Everyone had changed. Some of the clothes had blood on them. Annie must have mugged a man for her outfit. The scarlet shoulders had black metal spikes on them.

  The fight with the PKs was over. Guen couldn’t tell who’d won. Dead and bleeding bodies were everywhere. Even the walking wounded hadn’t been bandaged.

  Woon and three others were missing. Annie said, “This is everyone now. We’re going north through the park. Bounding overwatch flanking primary pair. Move.”

  The bodyguards slouched off.

  Annie and Guen started strolling.

  They passed the gazebo. Smashed instruments surrounded it. Dead dancers made a ring outside them. The survivors must have dressed. No one in sight was nude.

  “Hey, I know you.”

  Annie muttered, “Look down,” and walked a little faster.

  “I know you! I do.”

  The stranger was coming closer.

  “You—you’re a Stakeholder! Everybody, the blonde girl is a Stakeholder!” She was shouting loud enough to get attention through the crowd.

  Annie looked around at the converging crowd. “Dammit. We’re fucked.”

  The other bodyguards recalled into a defensive ring. It made a nice visual confession of Guen’s status.

  Guen made a snap decision. “I’ll talk to them. I need a platform.”

  A lamppost was the only option. Roger stood next to it and made a stirrup of his hands.

  A quick boost put Guen halfway up the lamppost. The decorative ring held her feet while she clutched the top. The movement attracted even more of the mob than the hostile ring confronting her bodyguards.

  “Good people! I was a Stakeholder! But now I’m a revolutionary like you! I found out their lies and I reject them!” She projected her voice firmly. Any quaver would mark her as a victim. Speeches in Council had given her practice in talking to hostile crowds but this one was different. As she extemporized on the evils of the Fusion’s government she threw in all the stipend-kid slang she could remember. Fortunately her Demeter accent didn’t sound like Pintoy’s upper class. She let her vowels blur instead of trying to make them crisp, the opposite of how she’d talk in Council.

  Her rhetoric fell on eager ears. Confirmation that they were right to riot, proof of their suspicions, and denunciation of their enemies soothed the void in their souls. Applause, cheers, and echoes of her key phrases filled the air.

  All that was left of their needs was leadership. When they called on her Guen answered, certain that denying them anything was death for her and her people. When they asked for a target she gave them Social Control’s apartment building.

  Roger guided her onto his shoulders. Most of the mob followed her. Some ran ahead. When she arrived at the building it was already a battleground. The Ministry had sent staffers there to hide. Now they were being flung out of tenth-story windows. The mob cheered and chanted Guen
’s name.

  Hebe Station, Dirac System. Centrifugal acceleration 5 m/s2

  After a week of extra shifts as prisoner guards the crew enjoyed being released for shore leave. Hebe Station was barren compared to Pintoy, but it wasn’t work and no one wanted to kill them.

  Not even the ex-prisoners. After finding the local law unwilling to intervene in a ‘political’ matter Zhang Jue’s crew sought berths on whatever ships were leaving soonest.

  Mitchie and Hiroshi used the station library to analyze the list of ships entering the Dirac System from Pintoy. Shuai Xi stood out.

  “No stops between the gates. No public flight plan. And the timing’s right,” said Mitchie.

  Hiroshi looked up from his datasheet. “It’s also owned by Tall Mountain. That’s his cousin’s corporation.”

  “Right. Let’s get everyone back aboard and chase it down.”

  Capitol City, Pintoy, gravity 9.4 m/s2

  There hadn’t been a food delivery to Doolittle Park in two days. Everyone was cranky.

  Guen tried to boost morale by wandering about and chatting with people. Hunger left her too weak. After walking a quarter of the park she went back to their gazebo and collapsed on a bench.

  Not many other people were standing up. Even the perimeter guards let their sticks and pipes rest on the ground. Most weren’t even sitting. They just laid on the ground.

  One young man was fiddling with a datasheet and some other boxes. Guen couldn’t see the point. When she turned on her datasheet it just said “NETWORK VERIFICATION NOT FOUND—OPERATION PROHIBITED” and turned off again.

  The tinkerer let out a whoop. “It works!”

  A friend next to him sat up. “Do you have news? Is food coming?”

  “I’m looking. There’s no net. Not much message traffic. All I’m finding is military.”

  Two young women ran over to him. “Are they going to help us? Are the Marines coming?”

  “I’m not finding anything yet. Wait.” He kept tapping on the datasheet. “Here’s something. General Order: All naval and Marine units are to remain in their bases until orders are received from responsible civilian authorities.”

  “They’re not going to help us?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  The dejected women wandered back to their blankets.

  An older man walked up as the tinkerer kept typing. He waved a datasheet. “How did you get a connection? Mine says the network still isn’t working.”

  “Oh, it isn’t. I have some connection units programmed to simulate the network permission signal. That let my datasheet function. I’m trying to find out what is working.”

  “That’s an unmonitored computer?” The man’s voice rose.

  “Well, yes,” said the tinkerer. “But it’s perfectly safe. If—”

  The big man’s muddy boot caught the tinkerer in the ribs. “You bastard! We have all these problems and you want to bring a Betrayer down on us!”

  The shouting brought more people over.

  Big man’s accusations made them angry.

  Tinkerer gasped out an explanation that made things worse.

  “Think he’s working for a Betrayer?” asked someone in the crowd.

  Another answered, “Careless or traitor, he’s just as dangerous.”

  The tinkerer’s friend jumped up. “Hey, he’s just trying to help.”

  Fists silenced him.

  The boxes attached to the datasheet were stomped into pieces.

  Guen stood up—or tried. Annie’s hand on her shoulder pushed her back down to the bench.

  “I have to do something, or they’re going to hurt him,” said Guen.

  Annie said, “It’s too late.”

  Someone had found a ten meter long cable. The crowd dragged the tinkerer and his friend toward some lampposts.

  Guen whispered, “I just wanted to help.”

  “So did he. Look where it got him.”

  Joshua Chamberlain, Danu System, acceleration 10 m/s2

  “All hands, successful jump. Prepare for high acceleration in thirty minutes.” Mitchie put down the mike. She’d take a break for personal needs herself but first she wanted to make sure they were on the correct course.

  Hiroshi reported, “Nav box has our location. Producing a vector for the Yalu gate. And . . . we’re inside the error cone. Need to run for a bit before we can do any corrections.”

  The navigation computer retrofitted to the bridge had precise sensors, but Joshua Chamberlain was still flown by hand. Trying to make tiny corrections would just waste fuel in repeated overshoots. Mitchie wasn’t worried about it. Wasting a few percent of the delta V budget on large corrections was the price of being an analog ship, and they had plenty of fuel and reaction mass on board.

  Mthembu babysat the comm box. It worked well enough as an independent system if someone could tell it “give up and start over” occasionally.

  “I have a news dump from the relay buoy,” he said.

  “Shipping status?” asked Mitchie.

  “Sent the request. May have to get it all the way from Traffic Control Central.” He fiddled with the box’s screen. “Huh. Shuai Xi is in the news dump.”

  An announcer’s voice came on in mid-sentence. “—leaving the Steeplechasers in an excellent position to win the Planetary Cup. In racing news, a new space speed record has been set for the Danu System. The luxury yacht Shuai Xi reached a speed of four point three eight percent of lightspeed, breaking the old record of four point oh three set by Shining Hermes twenty-three years ago.”

  “Gosh, Bill,” said another voice. “Is there a race going on this week I didn’t know about?”

  “Nope. When we asked why the rush Shuai Xi’s captain replied, ‘Sometimes you just have to stretch out her legs.’”

  Both laughed.

  “I’d hate to try stretching my legs at forty gravs,” said the second voice.

  Mthembu cut off the recording as they moved on to a player’s contract negotiations. “Forty gravs?” he asked. “Can they handle that for day after day?”

  “If they have hydraulic couches, yes,” said Hiroshi. “Much better support than these things.”

  “And if they can afford that they can afford the best high-grav drugs,” said Mitchie. The drugs strengthened the walls of blood vessels to keep them from rupturing under higher pressure. The run through Argo had already made a dent in Joshua Chamberlain’s military-issue supply.

  She activated the PA. “All hands, we are discontinuing high acceleration. Rest of cruise will be at ten gravs. That is all.”

  “You think he’s deliberately evading us, ma’am?” asked Hiroshi.

  “If he set up a decoy at his apartment and a decoy ship he’s serious about not being followed. It wouldn’t be much extra effort to have a spy send word ahead about a pursuing ship.”

  “So he’ll get to Tiantan a week or two ahead of us.”

  “Yes. And there’s no point killing ourselves to cut that lead in half.”

  Capitol City, Pintoy, gravity 9.4 m/s2

  Annie didn’t want her to go to the party. Guen overruled her. Staying alive meant keeping the mob happy. Part of that was avoiding ‘hoity-toity’ behavior such as going to cocktail parties. But another part was being friends with other people the mob liked.

  The mob loved Professor Corday. So when he sent an invitation Guen accepted.

  The mansion used to belong to a stakeholder. Now “The People’s House” was painted over the door. Clear plastic covered the smashed windows.

  The furniture inside was ripped. Holes spotted the walls. But the floors were swept clean. Everything was neatly arranged. Guen noticed all the chairs were usable. Broken ones must have been cleaned away.

  Professor Corday met them in the foyer. “Stakeholder Claret. Thank you so much for coming.”

  “I’m not a stakeholder any more. It’s just Guen now.” She shook his hand firmly. “This is my aide, Annie.”

  “Pleased to meet you. Everyone’s in
the buffet room. Please, enjoy yourselves.”

  The buffet grabbed their attention. Food at Doolittle Park varied among real, none, and basic synthetic paste. Fresh fruit and cooked meat were spread on ping-pong tables around the room. It felt like a flashback to two weeks ago, before the uprising.

  Once they’d eaten enough to take the edge off Guen surveyed the crowd. Corday had kept his guest list secret. She was certain he had an agenda, but there hadn’t been any hints.

  One guest was instantly recognizable even through the swarm surrounding her. Guen pushed through to her. “Kimmie Z! I loved you in Heartbreak Beach.”

  “Miss Claret. Thank you so much. I had so much fun making it.”

  “Just Guen, please.”

  “Then I’m Kim.” They shook hands. The crowd backed off a bit.

  “You had such chemistry with Blake.”

  Kimmie turned her head in an artfully practiced bashful look. “Too much chemistry according to some.”

  Guen remembered that had triggered one of her many break-ups with Rocco. “And Night In the Woods, that’s another favorite of mine.”

  After a few minutes of mutual appreciation of Kimmie’s holos Guen stepped back to let someone else have a turn with the actress. This left her next to a tall young man with fresh scars on his face.

  “Hi, I’m Guen.”

  “Jozzy.” His handshake was tentative, as if he was afraid of hurting her.

  “Nice to meet you.” Guen realized she had no idea how to talk to a total stranger. She normally had a full briefing on every attendee before entering a party. If a stranger approached her in public he’d have something on his mind, and Annie would do an identity search and whisper key information in her ear.

  Fortunately Jozzy wasn’t as tongue-tied. “How did Kimmie Z know you? Did you meet before?”

  “No, this was our first time. She’d heard of me because I was in politics before.”

  “Oh. Is that why you were invited to the party?”

  “I don’t know. The Professor didn’t say. Did he tell you why he invited you?”

  “No. I figured it’s for killing those cops. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done.”