Her Last Run

by Michael Penmore

  Stoyanov must have changed his mind about keeping them alive, he thought. Or he was counting on picking up the most valuable prisoners as they made their escape from the doomed flagship.

  Rebun was still on the move, although at much-reduced speed. The engines had survived whatever the dreadnought had unleashed.

  Admiral Takanaga opened his lips to speak but he closed them again when a new sight presented itself. A couple of much smaller Colonial ships sprang out from under the Rebun’s wing and targeted the superdreadnought. He recognised their classes: a corvette and a minor patrol ship. Channelling the fullest of daredevil modes, they moved to engage the titan ahead of them.

  “Signal them to disengage!” Takanaga shouted. But it was already too late. Part of the enemy ship lit up like a huge halogen torchlight and sent out two short, perfectly aimed beams. The Colonial ships got caught in their light and immediately broke up into debris. The brave got snuffed out without a warning shot. The Admiral’s cool blood boiled at the travesty of life taken away so lightly.

  “Can you steer her?” he asked the helmswoman.

  Her eyes narrowed. She flexed her hands over the console, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that she intended to stay and carry out any command. “Yes, sir, I can.”

  “Good.” He scooped up Issei Takanaga over his shoulder and stood up. “Rebun is a proud ship. Let’s show the Earthers we have claws. Bring her to full speed and ram the life out of that hulking menace,” he waved towards the superdreadnought before making it towards the lift at the back of the bridge. “You have the con.”

  “Where are you going, sir?” the shaking Chief Warrant Officer asked him.

  Admiral Takanaga skipped a step. “I have a... duty to fulfil. All of you, abandon ship as soon as you have plotted the course. Don’t let this moment be your last one. Live to fight another day. That is an order. The resistance needs you now more than ever. It has been an honour serving with you all.”

  After the shore up talk, he pivoted and ran into the mag-lift, slumped not just by the body of his unconscious son on his back but also by the immense feeling of guilt. He fully intended to stay with the ship until the end, but he had to make sure his son survived. Issei’s mother was a strong woman but she would crumble if her husband and only son died all in one go. One of them had to live.

  The door closed. “Escape pods,” he signalled mournfully in the hope that when they reached the escape deck, there’d be at least one capsule left to take his boy safely out of the disaster he had wrought. What exactly Issei would be taken into, the Admiral was hesitant to think.

  “Father.”

  Admiral Takanaga jumped at the stirring over his shoulder.

  “Father, put me down.”

  “Issei. Don’t speak. You are hurt.”

  “I’m not. I’m fine, father. Put me down.”

  Admiral Takanaga did. He scrutinised the slightly taller man from top to bottom. “Are you strong enough to stand, son?”

  “I am. Sorry about this.”

  “Sorry about whaaaAAAAAH!” The Admiral went all stiff as a stun blast caught him in the upper arm. He fell to the bottom of the lift, temporarily paralysed, discombobulated but conscious.

  His son put back a blaster in a holster above his hip and sagged down to one knee above the father. “I can’t let you die today, father. You’re too important. I know things are looking bad right now but you’ll find a way to save the day. I’ll buy you as much time as I can. Admiral Stoyanov and his cronies haven’t seen everything this old battleship can do.”

  The words reached his ears crisp and proper but Admiral Takanaga’s brain was too muddled to make a full connection. The jolt spread from the arm across his whole body in waves, coursed through his veins and synapses, his muscles tightened and relaxed at random. It was a temporary experience but the knowledge it would pass made it no less unpleasant.

  The mag-lift made short work of the ride down to the hangar. Issei scooped up his father and entered the overcrowded deck where all semblance of order seemed to disappear under the hasty cloud of unscheduled evacuation. Everyone, from a cook’s assistant to a quantum stabiliser technician, was trying to hitch a ride.

  “Make way for the Admiral!” The crowd listened. Where Issei moved, the road opened. Admiral Takanaga rested uncomfortably in his strong arms, trying to make sense of the twisting and bobbing lights and colours. They reached a ring of people surrounding a tiny two-man ship formed into the shape of a ball. Two mechanics in coveralls were banging at the closed door and signalling the man inside to open it. They quickly moved away in search of a different transport when they saw the commanding officer, apparently wounded, being lifted to the capsule’s only empty chair.

  “You’ve got him,” said the man who finally opened the door from the inside. It was the eagle-eyed fighter pilot, Troy Sandy. He saluted Admiral Takanaga as the son inserted him carefully into the chair and strapped him in. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll get you out of here safe and sound.”

  The Admiral tried to speak. All that escaped his lips was a gurgle.

  “Is he all right?” Worry painted long lines in the pilot’s forehead.

  “Just slightly frazzled,” Issei Takanaga said. “He’ll be back to his old self in a minute or two. Take care of him for me, will you?”

  “He’s safe as a Bank of Sirius deposit box.”

  “Didn’t they just have a break-in?”

  “Not in their deposit boxes. One thing the robbers couldn’t crack, and that’s where the real money is.”

  “Never mind that,” Issei dismissed Sandy’s comments with a hand gesture. He leaned over his father for a face to face. “This isn’t a goodbye. We will see each other again, in this life or the next.” He hesitated for a bit, glanced at Sandy, then planted a quick kiss on the Admiral’s forehead.

  A series of bangs came from way above. It sounded like someone was peppering the wall with a peashooter, but probably meant the EEF were shooting at the Rebun again, and hitting too.

  “Time to go.” Troy Sandy’s hand hovered over the door lock.

  Admiral Takanaga was getting a hold on his senses. He wanted to act but he still couldn’t move or speak.

  “One day we’ll be free. The Colonies stand.” Issei straightened up and offered his father a springy salute.

  Troy Sandy punched the lock and the sheet of curved glass that was the door distorted the image of the tactical officer paying his respects. Tears streamed down Admiral Takanaga’s eyes. This was mutiny. By his own child. And pre-planned, too.

  “Hold on to your ammo belt, Admiral. It’s going to be one rocky eject.” Troy Sandy scrambled the bird into the air and straight out of the perfectly functioning airlock. There was a mass of other capsules escaping the Rebun but the pilot quickly asserted independence from the mass exodus. The sphere in his possession had one critical advantage: it was fitted with a short-range long space drive capable of making one jump.

  Feeling was returning to Admiral Takanaga’s limbs. Control manifested in his thrashing about. The capsule was claustrophobic and the whizzing of battle seemed much closer to the watcher than it was indeed.

  Troy Sandy appeared unfazed. With a couple of mild curses and a few lame quips, he used the small size of the capsule to its full advantage, picking a perilous course from one ship debris to another, hiding from a lock by many sensors scanning the battlefield at once. At one point, he went for the madman’s option: two corvettes were locked in a seemingly matched fight, exchanging bright lights of laser and plasma projectiles; he flew right between the starships, weaving between the projectiles and avoiding them with rare brilliance, as though he was able to predict where three lances of destructive fire would appear before they did.

  Admiral Takanaga didn’t see half of it. He closed his eyes throughout the ordeal, gripped by fear of the many colourful blasts catching the capsule and turning it into instant space dust. It never happened. For his many vices, Troy Sandy was a genius flier.


  When the Admiral opened his eyes, he saw the outer space stretching, and thinning, and turning into liquid. The ship had jumped. He tried to find his voice again and it came out like a cricket with a grain of gravel stuck in its mouth:

  “Where... are we going?”

  “Rockwall, sir.”

  “Turn back to the Rebun.” The instruction was calm but somehow immediate. The supreme commander of the Colonial Navy was back.

  “No can do, sir. That ship has sailed, if you catch my drift?” Troy Sandy dismissed the Admiral’s command with a saucy wink and focused on flying instead. It may have been insubordination, but it was the right call. Takanaga’s return to fitness came too late to turn the tide. Battle of the Breach was lost.

  * 3 *

  Rockwall, seat of the Colonial Congress

  “I was jettisoned by my own crew,” Takanaga replied with his remarkable stoicism intact. He cast down his stare and almost mumbled the next part. For him, it must have been the pinnacle of shame. “By my own son’s mutiny. I tried to save him. He saved me instead. A young, vigorous river filled with rapids jumped out of its bed to preserve an old, dying trickle.”

  Isabel couldn’t make her mind about which was the more appropriate reaction: Oh wow, your own son? That’s harsh! or Don’t worry Takkie. You have other children to be proud of! Both were an awkward crate of tripe which didn’t meet the test. Isabel stifled the sarcastic instinct and kept her mouth shut. Her eyes swerved to watch the remaining Colonial people who streamed past her end of the table; a naive and desperate bunch vying for her rescue.

  Close to the huddle of Takanagas traipsed a woman whose size was close to taking two seats in a row aboard an airliner. Despite this, she had a firm bounce in her step and a convivial aura helped by a deluge of frank, white-toothed smiles she flashed at everyone whose eyes locked with hers. She was black, but not of the same stark contrast as her polar opposite husband Lucius Dodenya. The Quartermaster’s wife was a boisterous presence. The whining little man who proposed killing Isabel a minute ago hadn’t worn down her optimism, and it was clear that the current end state the resistance was facing hadn’t managed to diminish her either. She ‘whispered’ to Admiral Takanaga in a voice that carried all the way to Isabel’s ears; she offered reassurance in the form of kind platitudes.

  The two people closing the ranks seemed at extreme odds with most of the procession. Where all the previous people, apart from Troy Sandy, were untrained civilians, these two definitely had lived through the grit of war. The man drew a blank in Isabel’s mind. Dressed in generic plain cotton clothes, he had the stance of a soldier and the hairdo like one of the Space Marines, although this was slightly frazzled. He cast glances of a man out of place, looking for a glimpse of something familiar, or maybe scanning for an exit.

  The woman who walked by his side was someone Isabel knew very well. The gunrunner briefly considered if jumping with joy was too childish a reaction. The sight of the young Asian woman wearing a close-fitting night operations outfit brought a genuine smile to her face. Her inner thoughts furnished her with a name and details: Corporal Nadine Chu, freedom fighter, member of the resistance’s best, or perhaps the only special operations unit - the Widows. Above and beyond that, Nadie was a long-unseen friend, the last face Isabel expected to see among this sorry lot; the only person she’d invite to join the Anvil of her free will, without a promise of reward.

  She wanted to get up and join her friend but Nadie, her mysterious companion and the rest of the group gathered in the vicinity without approaching the table. They understood clearly what they were waiting for now. Isabel Rocarion was to make a decision and she found it a toughie. Nadie smirked at her from the sidelines, a sort of friendly challenge contained within the gesture. She saw it, barely acknowledged it, and snapped back to the beginning of the group where the Amicon twins were playful, babbling seemingly random words and enjoying efforts to escape from their mother’s hold. Somehow, she kept them in line.

  Isabel couldn’t bear to look at the little people for long. They tugged at something she wasn’t supposed to have: heartstrings. She turned back to John Amicon instead, the runaway winner of the worst father of the year contest.

  “They’re too many, John. You’re asking me for a miracle.”

  “You are a miracle worker.”

  “I’m supposed to smuggle out the most wanted resistance people under the noses of the largest ever war fleet assembled in space. That’s a considerable amount of work.”

  “For a considerable reward. I’ll throw in that case,” Amicon pointed at the money cache still clutched by Lucius’ paws.

  The Quartermaster pulled a face of concern mixed with disdain and hugged the object close to his chest like an overprotective mother hen. “No. I won’t let it go. We’ll be paupers without it!”

  “Lucy?” Dodenya’s wife sang from the sidelines. He looked at her and his expression sailed fluently to confusion.

  Isabel stifled a snort with quite some effort. “Lucy?”

  “Lucius,” John Amicon immediately addressed the man to head off the glare of mad anger welling in his eyes. “Hand over the money, please. It’s not the end of the world. We won’t have any use for it where we are going.”

  The small African peered at Isabel as though his intention was to peel her skin off. Instead, he loosened his grip and scratched his bandages.

  “Stop it, Lucius. You’ll break the skin and make it worse. The last thing you want is an infection,” Doctor Sandy remonstrated him. It was the nicest-sounding admonition Isabel had ever heard.

  “We are paupers.” Lucius pushed the box towards Isabel with a moan.

  She didn’t open it. She already knew what lay inside. The gunrunner was suddenly richer than ever. One million cosmos put her on par with some serious players on Procyon, Gliese, on Earth even.

  John Amicon gave Isabel Rocarion the perfect gift: the opportunity to claim that money, and money alone, swayed her decision: “Breaking the bank all for me, John? I’m so touched. All right, I’m in. Just keep the little ones away from the engine room. I won’t take responsibility if one of them falls into the reactor pit.”

  Amicon’s wife looked like she was in fear of the floor giving in under her children and her. She hugged them extra close. Isabel sent her a mirthless half smile.

  “So what’s the plan, Johnny?”

  Amicon didn’t give her a reply. Jacob Pace beat him to it. His dark eyes bore into her like two stabbing knives. “A remarkable change of heart. You are really just a mercenary and a smuggler, after all.”

  “I don’t see any family of yours here, Paceman. What’s the matter? Nobody loves you?”

  “Not all of us had time to raise families.”

  “That’s true. But at least I have friends.”

  “Criminals don’t have friends. Just associates.”

  “That is quite enough,” John Amicon said forcibly. “The plan is simple. You will use your magic to hide our people on your ship and spirit them away from capture. I understand you’ve secured the right of safe passage through the orbital blockade. Otherwise, you’d never risk coming here now to see us. You are too well-informed about what awaits us at the hands of the EEF and you’re intent on avoiding that fate. I’m counting on your self-preservation skills. Once you clear your way past Admiral Stoyanov’s fleet and Jacob thinks you’ve reached somewhere safe, he’ll give you your final destination.”

  Isabel shifted in her seat as though it had sprung several splinters at once. Her gaze fell on Jacob Pace and she cringed. “What’s Pace got to do with this?”

  John Amicon didn’t respond immediately. When he did, the sound of an earthquake could almost be heard in the background. “He’s coming with you.”

  Isabel straightened and pulled her shoulders together. “Oh like hell he is! I wouldn’t let this crooked cop set foot on my ship even if I was a mouse and he was the emperor.”

  “This bit is non-negotiable, Isabel. We’ve already set our pla
n in motion. EEF think Jacob’s made his escape in one of the ships who broke from the battle. Pursuing that lead will distract them for a time. Time you will need to use well before they find out our families are missing. And of course, capturing us will make them arrogant and cocky. Attention will naturally swerve towards the leaders of the Colonial Congress and High Command. You just keep pressing the accelerator until you’re at the destination.”

  “Why go to all this trouble with saving Pace? He’s the least deserving of all.”

  “You realise I’m standing right here?” the Arbiter asked. She simply ignored him.

  “Seriously, John. Why him? Why not you, or Sandy, or the Admiral?”

  “Or me,” Lucius came out with a squeak. No one heard him. Everyone focused on the Amicon-Rocarion debate.

  John Amicon took some time to formulate his next answer. He looked as serious as the stone statues of kings and generals of old. Isabel knew why he was capturing her gaze for so long. He was speaking even when he was silent. His face, his arms, his entire body was showing her how invested he was in this course of action. There was absolutely no point in trying to negotiate the Pace aspect because he gave no wiggle room on that.

  “Because Jacob knows way too much. His head is filled with things no EEF operative can ever put their hands on. I mean never ever. The resistance isn’t just us, it’s not just Rockwall. There’s people spread all over mankind’s reach. I really can’t say more than that. Jacob is the key to our people’s safety, to what remains of the resistance after we are gone.”

  “Then kill him,” Isabel suggested, drawing gasps from the room, most notably from Dr. Sandy. Pace himself appeared untouched. “Seriously, it’s the best solution if you want to keep those other people permanently safe.”

  John Amicon slowly shook his head. “There’s something only he knows that cannot be lost.”

  “What is it? What’s so important that this jerk must go free?”

  “He’s the only man who knows the location of Libertalia.”