Her Last Run

by Michael Penmore

  The Colonial stepped to one side, grabbed the Captain by the waist and used his own speed to toss the officer across the conference table. The Captain flew through a jungle of distorted holographic images and collapsed to the floor on the other side. His determination was stronger than the sting of humiliation, so he stood up and struck another boxing pose.

  “What do you want?!” The man growled, finally acknowledging that talking might be his only way out of the situation. Or he was just buying time, knowing it was running in his favour while he was on his own ship.

  “If you’re willing to listen.” Pace closed his eyes and put his hands together. When he opened his eyelids, he had a changed look and his lips broke into a recitation. “My lord, I warrant you we will play our part, as he shall think by our true diligence he is no less than what we say he is.”

  The ship’s Captain blinked and rolled his eyes to one side, thinking desperately. He puffed up his cheeks then puffed them out as some thought eventually struck him. “Shakespeare?”

  Neither of them said another word then because the door opened and a belated guard rushed in, blaster in hand. He put Pace in his crosshairs at once.

  “Don’t move, intruder! Get down on your knees with hands above your head!”

  “At ease, Karski,” the ship’s Captain calmed down his subordinate.

  “Sir?” Karski didn’t signal acknowledgement. He had his own doubts. “Are you OK, sir?”

  “I said at ease! Put that stardamn blaster away before it fires and damages my guest, or worse, burn holes in this swanky ballroom. Get back to your post and stay there until I say you are dismissed. Is that understood?”

  “But sir, this man-“

  “You’re not here to think, Karski. You’re a drone. You will follow my commands. Leave the room now. That’s an order, Karski! Do you understand?!” the Captain yelled out the last two sentences. Big wet drops splashed to the floor in front of him.

  “Aye, sir. Clear as the Sun, sir,” Karski nodded, put down his blaster and rushed back where he had come from.

  Once the two men were left alone to continue their challenge, the ship’s Captain sent Jacob Pace a glare of warning mixed with suspicion. “So, was that Shakespeare? I’m no theatre guy. Give me Rayguns of Tanzalore any day.”

  “Your assumption is correct. The Taming of the Shrew. First Huntsman in the Prologue, to be exact,” Pace clarified his choice.

  The Captain dropped his fists and suddenly deflated like a punctured dinghy at high sea. “You are Stoyanov’s mole, then?”

  “That’s a crude way of putting it, but yes. In a way, I am his mole.”

  The Captain’s suspicious look remained intact. “You don’t look at all how I expected.”

  “Should I put on a pair of black glasses and start burrowing in the ground? I am the man.”

  The Captain finally relaxed. He found his chair, sat down in it and started rubbing the places on his body that became sore as Jacob Pace tossed him across the table. “First Huntsman, you say. Is that what you think of yourself?”

  “There is a distinctive parallel.”

  “You don’t look the part to me. Yeah, you’re awful quick, but you don’t look like you would pack a good punch.”

  Jacob Pace’s unchanged expression was a front for annoyance. The ship’s Captain was talking in platitudes while there was work to be done. “Would you like me to demonstrate to you how hurtful I can be? Stop spewing nonsense and start cooperating. We have wasted enough valuable time as it stands. Your desire to seize hold of the chameleon-monkey puts my mission in jeopardy, if not to say directly contradicts it.”

  The ship’s Captain cleared his throat and straightened his jacket which got crumpled during the affray. He preened with the remnants of his tarnished pride. “I have a mission of my own. On the direct order from the Fleet Admiral himself. He’s told me to grab the monkey from the smuggler. That’s what I intend to do.”

  “She’s a gunrunner,” Pace corrected.

  “So?” the Captain shrugged. “What’s the diff?”

  “The difference is a fine detail which proves you are inadequate for the task.” Pace rubbed his hairless chin in thought, seemingly oblivious to the grimace of outrage growing on the ship Captain’s face. “Now why would Stoyanov want to do something like that? Is he testing me or something?”

  The ship’s Captain cleared his throat once again and spoke quite smugly, “It is obvious. He wants to secure the animal’s cloaking capabilities.”

  “Do be quiet when I’m thinking,” Pace snapped at the man. “Now listen close because I am not in the mood to repeat myself. I want you to release the Anvil and everyone on it. Along with the chamonkey. Right now. I will give you this piece of hair in return,” Pace flashed the little box again.

  The ship’s Captain sat back in the chair and crossed his arms. He was starting to think for himself, which was perhaps not the best thing for him to do. “And why would I do that? I need the monkey or I’m in boiling water. You’re still a high-ranking Colon to most of the fleet. I can throw you and that Colon-sympathising smuggler in my brig, then parade you down fifth avenue on Earth V-day all the way until I collect a medal and my admiralship.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pace couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the stupidity glaring right at him. So many holes in the half-baked plan. For starters, Stoyanov would confiscate the monkey and take away both Pace and Rocarion from the man’s custody. This individual was clearly a rare breed: a ship’s commander who was also a downright cretin. Why would Stoyanov rest such an important mission on the shoulders of an imbecile? The answer was simple: because the Fleet Admiral didn’t bank on success. He was sending Pace a message; a clear warning that the ‘mole’ shouldn’t take his position for granted.

  The ship’s Captain smiled terribly, obviously unaware of the weak points which appeared to Pace instantly. “You are at my mercy. That little ship... The Angel, you said?”

  “The Anvil.” Pace wasn’t sure why he even bothered to correct the man.

  “Sure. The Anvil. The point I’m making is, it can’t go anywhere without my say so. You’re stuck. You’ve got to work with me instead of belittling me and barking orders. I own you.”

  The skin on Pace’s face straightened in a horrific way as if there was a mechanism underneath it, a secret design for lifting it and getting rid of all the wrinkles in an instant, but a tad too much. “No. I belong to no one. I am Ypsilon.”

  The ship’s Captain raised one brow, and an arrogant smirk lifted one corner of his mouth. “Oooh, I am so, so scared, mister spook, or counterintelligence secret agent, or… whatever you are.” He waved his hand at Pace and looked to the side, faking boredom.

  “It is obvious you do not grasp the severity of your situation. Try to undermine me, and you will be finished before the day is over.”

  The Captain banged his fist on the projection table. The piece of furniture finally gave up on trying to project anything and turned into a solid blank slate of blue light; its eerie glow illuminated his grave face, adding an otherworldly factor to it. “I don’t like you saying such things. They sound like threats. How about I just fire you out the aft like I said earlier.”

  Pace did something rare for him. He sighed. He’d tried to be nice to this dolt, but it didn’t work. So he changed his tune, turned up a coldness in his eyes, shifted the menace in the voice to the maximum. The monster inside him came out to play. The beast spoke in a slow and precise near-whisper, which still had a tone of a warning growl. It treated the Captain as though it was explaining some fundamental truth to a small child. The words held back something visceral, the promise of violence and abuse:

  “You have not heard me threaten you yet. But if this is how you wish it... Intimidation is one of Ypsilon’s strong suits. We are even better at delivering it. We know that sometimes, to achieve a lot of good, a lot of bad has to be done first. Let me tell you what will happen if you disobey my orders today...


  “First, they’ll disgrace you. You’ll lose your ship and your rank. You will have a humiliating trial under charges so embarrassing, I just won’t mention them now because I don’t need the trouble of reducing you into a blubbering fool. They’ll sentence you to life in prison at some backwater small world with only the most rudimentary facilities and no prospect of ever leaving. Io, perhaps?

  “Then, when you’re rotting in a little 2x2 cell where you can’t even stand up straight, feeling sorry for yourself, you’ll find out your disgrace is just the beginning of your family’s misfortune. You will hear some devastating news about your loved ones.

  “Your brother Andrew likes old motorcycles, doesn’t he? He’ll have an accident on the road. Don’t worry, he won’t die. Vegetative state, no prospect of recovery. His wife, Beth-Anna, she loves him beyond what words can describe, doesn’t she? She’ll keep on paying for his life support after the statutory funding dries up, which is to say within a week. Some administrative error will mean he won’t get his six-month extension. Trying to keep the machines plugged in will break her financially. Euthanasia is a crime. Perhaps she’ll reach that breaking point and turn to the option which will send her to prison too?

  “But that will be only the beginning. I understand you own a pretty little house at 65 Elmswood Drive, Carverdale, MO. I’m sorry to inform you that it will burn down one night. A spark in that rickety old central heating you were supposed to replace two years ago, but it was just too bloody expensive, wasn’t it? Your wife will not get out in time. Poor Roslyn. She shall be interred quietly at the expense of the town council. No one will come to her funeral. The stigma of association with a criminal of your sort will decimate her social circles a long time before her unfortunate passing transpires.

  “Your children will be put in foster care. The care givers will be abusive. Hal, your sweet little boy, won’t remain so sweet after the foster father deals with him inside his fancy wood-panelled office. Repeatedly. The pictures will spread far and wide over the neuronet. He’ll eventually run away from the house of torment, too late to avoid the dark mark it will burn inside him. He’ll turn his hand to drugs and booze, commit crimes to finance his habit and end up in prison, or dead, or both.

  “Your daughter Calista will find some new friends who’ll hook her up on Sauron. Still, she’ll have some academic potential thanks to her love of physics. But then the first pregnancy… will fail abysmally. But the second won’t. Her dealer will not be willing to support the baby he will have made. The situation will scupper your sweetie’s chances of going to college. She’ll be a single mother struggling with addiction and overbearing social services. Life will slowly drain away from her, and when they finally take her little pearl away to live with strangers on the other side of the state, well, no one will have trouble understanding the reason why she took her own life, even if there is a hint of a suggestion it may not have been a completely voluntary suicide… There won’t be such a hint, of course. Ypsilon operatives are very thorough and careful in their work.”

  Pace stopped himself there. With one blink, he changed back into the person he was before he launched into the graphic tale; a reasonable man with a mission to complete.

  “But let’s not dwell on this nasty scenario. There is a way you can avoid it. I’m sure you are a responsible adult who looks after his family’s wellbeing at all times. Or do you really want to take your chances and see if what I said will happen exactly as I said it? There might be some slight variation, improvisation. Such discrepancies are unavoidable when we’re talking about an operation to span over so many years.”

  Pace’s words hit home. It wasn’t the threats by themselves that did the job, but the accurate details about the Captain’s family, which caused the man to lose all motion and his skin to go beyond pale. His hastily pumping heart redistributed the blood among the extremities and drained all colour from the cheeks and chin. His round eyes stared at Pace and at nothing else for a long while. A ship-wide fire wouldn’t catch his attention in this minute. He tried to speak three times before quiet words finally squeezed out from his narrowed windpipe and a strained croak just barely managed to convey, “I’ll take the hair. Please.”

  That last little word contained all the begging the universe could contain. Convinced that he had achieved his goals, Pace picked up the man’s hand, opened it, and dropped the stasis box in the outstretched palm. “Wise choice. Try not to lose it. I promise your cooperation will not go unnoticed. You will be an admiral soon. Last word of advice, if I may?” The ship’s Captain nodded quickly. He was eager for Pace to finish his visit. “Don’t open the box again. It has limited use, and the contents will degrade quite fast if you squander its power on satisfying some petty curiosities.”

  The ship’s Captain nodded dumbly. He wasn’t certain that he wanted the box at all. He was confident, however, that he never wanted the bad luck of seeing or hearing from Jacob Pace again.

  * 8 *

  Things were going just fine. Isabel’s opinion of Earth navy hadn’t improved. They hardly met anyone on their way to the control room. The controls weren’t even guarded. Everyone was busy preparing for the Rockwall assault or already celebrating their widely expected victory.

  The fake EEFers swept in. The room was long and narrow, with a line of computer consoles up against one wall and just one person supervising them. He looked like a computer engineer straight out of a bad cartoon, with a crumpled shirt and unkempt hair. Unarmed and busy doing something with a single screen, he didn’t notice them. On closer inspection, his eyes turned out to be closed, and a thin wire connected his temple to the computer. Stuck on the neuronet playing World of Peacecraft, perhaps?

  Nadie accessed the nearest computer station and pulled some valued info. She was still jerky, and the words she said had a definitive edge. “OK, I identified the Anvil’s energy anchor. It’s got a unique signature and has to be turned off at a specific terminal.”

  “Which one?” Isabel gave the row of screens a gander, but she couldn’t tell the difference. They were all generic.

  “That one,” Nadie pointed to the machine with the IT engineer at it.

  “Of course, it had to be that one. OK, someone’s getting the boot,” Isabel raised her foot to demonstrate the instrument she was going to use.

  “Wait,” Dreyfus landed his hand on Isabel’s shoulder. She shook it off like bird poo.

  “Keep your grabbers off me, you twerk. What do you want from me now?”

  “You can’t just yank him off the network. I heard the results can be quite nasty.”

  Nadie nodded. “I heard of it. Epileptic shock.”

  “Bunch of humanitarians,” Isabel clicked her tongue in dismay. “OK, I promise I’ll do this nicely. But it’s just because I don’t want him spitting over me, OK?”

  “You’ve got a real heart of gold, don’t you?” Dreyfus jeered.

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t mention it to anyone, dredge fuzz.” Isabel quickly approached the guy who was lost in his game beyond noticing what was going on in his real surroundings. The wire shimmered with bytes of data crossing back and forth between him and the machine. “Hello there, handsome Pete. Care to share with the needy?”

  She got no reply, as predicted. Isabel moved up closer and her nose curled up and nearly died at the smell. His hair was oily, stiff from lack of wash and he stank of cheese and garlic. Stifling the need to jump back, Isabel got close to his ear and hollered: “Hello?!”

  The guy woke up with a start and a series of blinks. His hand moved up and quickly disconnected the wire. Then he looked at her, trying to focus his narrowed pupils. “What’s going on? Who are you? Why are you disrupting me?” He noticed she was wearing a grunt’s uniform and his face grimaced with contempt. “Do you know what the short-term effects of rapid disconnection are?”

  Isabel put one hand on her hip and another on the man’s shoulder. Thank the stars for the glove! He must have worn that shirt for weeks. “Heard some rumours.
Listen, would you care to move to another station, please? Me and my friends need to do something on this one. It’s an emergency. Matter of life and death, really.”

  Slowly, his face stretched into a smile. It made him look a bit like a frog. Isabel knew what was behind that long grimace. She was almost overcome by a nagging desire to punch him on the nose. That might improve his looks, actually. She heard pancaked faces were all the rage this season. But she found the strength to resist.

  “What do you need? Maybe I can do it for you, save you some time? Time we could spend together? You know what I mean?” He winked at her. He winked at her!

  Isabel went straight to plan B. She took off the EEF rifle from her shoulder and jabbed the point at his midsection without bothering to charge the chamber with plasma because she might be tempted to squeeze the trigger and splash his body in a wide radius. “I can imagine, you ugly plonk. Get off the console now!”

  “Whoa! Take it easy!” the engineer raised his hands into the air and took his butt off the chair. “What, are you loco or something? Shooting a guy because he makes one innocent joke? I don’t even fancy you that much. Here, take it. All yours,” he pushed the chair towards her. After a second of indecision, he threw in, “I’m gonna be back here in ten minutes. Will that be enough time for you and your friends?” He cast a glance to Nadie and Rhys. They didn’t move. Nadie looked like she was even more inclined to rearrange his kidneys. Rhys looked uncomfortable like a man willing to simply disappear on the spot rather than face him.

  “It will be plenty. Thanks,” Isabel said. “Actually, make it thirty, or I will hook up with the intranet and tell all your online friends you have a mermaid avatar on Bazoomgang.”

  The sound that escaped from the guy’s throat could be described as a growing eeeeenghang! Or like a kettle coming to a boil and finishing with a big gong smash. He couldn't take it and ran away with a continuing screech. Nadie and Rhys approached. The ex-Marine had a strange look plastered on his gob.