by Glenn Smith
A moment passed in silence, and then the commander responded, “You have five minutes, Mister Dehner. Anything more and I will fire on her to disable your vessel. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Commander. Five minutes. Star Eagle out.”
As soon as Geoff closed the channel again, Nicole asked, “I don’t get it, Eric. Why board us? Why not just take us in tow?”
Dylan turned to her and put on the most sincere expression he could. “I can’t answer that without possibly compromising classified information,” he told her.
“How are you going to get us out of this, Eric?” Geoff asked him calmly, too deflated to keep yelling. “Can you at least tell us that?”
How indeed? That was a very good question. After all the trouble he’d brought their way, he owed it to them to provide some means of escape. “First,” he began, “you tell these two men to release me.” Geoff nodded, and Carlos and Verdai reluctantly let him go. “Thank you,” Dylan said, straightening his clothing, stalling for time. How?
“Well?” Geoff prompted him. “We’re waiting.”
Dylan glanced around him at the others. They were all staring back at him, just waiting for him to fill them in on his plan for their salvation. “Carlos,” he began, “you know this ship and its computer well enough. Do you think you can use it to mess with theirs?”
“The computer hasn’t been made that I can’t mess with,” he proudly replied, “but why?”
Another good question. “You want to escape, don’t you?”
“Personally,” Geoff interjected before Carlos could respond, “I think I’d rather cooperate with them at this point and be allowed to go on our way as soon as you assure them that we’re not involved in whatever you’re up to.”
“After the way you tried to run, I’m not so sure they’d believe that now,” Dylan told him. Then, when Geoff dropped his gaze to the deck, he added, “Don’t worry, though. We won’t have to kill anyone.”
He was starting to formulate and develop a plan.
“Kill anyone!” Nicole exclaimed. “What are you saying? We’re going to fight them?”
“Not exactly. Here’s the plan.”
* * *
A Security patrol skiff was somewhat larger than a standard fleet skiff and carried a crew complement of six—the commanding officer and pilot, an NCO team leader, and a four-person security quick response team. Lieutenant Commander Rogers knew this particular team well, and he had no doubt that they were more than up to the task of handling the crew of the small vessel they were currently holding in their grappler.
“Standard boarding and detention procedures, Chief,” he told the NCO as the older man joined his team in the airlock.
“Yes, sir,” the NCO replied in his deep, gravelly voice—the result of having let a violent suspect cut his throat years earlier. Then he turned to his team and said, “Something about this one doesn’t feel right. Exercise extreme caution.”
“Prepare to board as soon as I verify hard seal,” Rogers told them.
* * *
“Okay, Geoff,” Dylan hollered from his seat on the couch. “Now.”
Geoff opened the channel to Ranger one-six. “Ranger one-six, this is the Star Eagle. Our repairs are complete and our airlock has been cycled. You may board when ready.”
“No tricks, Star Eagle. Solfleet Central Command has been notified of your capture. The starship Katana is on its way here.”
Dylan’s heart sank. God willing, this would all be over before the Katana arrived.
“Understood, Commander. Star Eagle out.” Geoff closed the channel and dimmed all the emergency lights to their lowest settings, then headed down the gangway to join Dylan and the others in the forward section of the lower level. Only Stacy remained absent from the group.
Minutes later five armed and lightly armored SP troops came through the airlock, raising their rifles to more defensive positions as they recognized that the ship’s interior lighting was too dim to allow them to see clearly.
The largest member of the team turned toward Dylan. His eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, and Dylan realized immediately that they were biotronic implants. Either the man had been blinded at some point in time or he was a cyberclone. Either way, the low lights wouldn’t be causing him any difficulty at all. “You are Dylan Graves,” he said in a deep, thundering voice.
“Special Agent Richard Jennings, S-I-A,” Dylan replied.
“You are Dylan Graves, a wanted fugitive,” the man responded as though Dylan hadn’t even spoken. You are now under arrest by authority of the United Earth Federation and Solfleet Central Command.”
Dylan started to stand up, but one of the troopers pushed him back and then shifted his rifle over and aimed it right at Dylan’s chest.
“Dehner?” the big humanoid called.
“Right here,” Geoff and Nicole both answered together.
The NCO looked over at them. “Mister Geoff Dehner,” he began, “your vessel is hereby temporarily impounded and will remain the property of Solfleet until such time as the authorities authorize its release back to your custody. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good.” He faced Dylan again. “On your feet,” he commanded.
As Dylan started to stand up, the trooper who’d leveled his rifle at him backed slightly away but kept a close eye on him. The NCO holstered his sidearm, then spun Dylan around and patted him down.
“Sit,” the NCO told him when he finished. Dylan sat. The NCO turned and pointed at Geoff. “You. Get up.”
“What’s going on?” Stacy asked as she climbed out of the starboard observation bay. The troopers all looked over at the scantily-clad young woman for just a second or two, but that was all the time the others needed to pull the hypodermics out of their pockets and inject the troopers before they could react. The drugs worked instantly, dropping the troopers where they stood.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Nicole asked Dylan.
“Trust me, it’ll work,” he replied, feeling far less confident than he hoped he sounded. The expression on Nicole’s face told him that he might not have sounded all that confident, either. “This one,” he then told her, ignoring that expression as best he could and pointing at the only female member of the boarding party. Nicole pressed another hypo to the young woman’s neck and then hurried forward to close and seal the airlock. Then she went topside while the others sprawled out on the deck to act as though they’d all been stunned unconscious.
The young woman stirred. After a moment she opened her eyes, and found herself gazing at the business end of her own pistol, held in Dylan’s hand as he knelt down beside her. Dylan then grabbed her by the throat with his other hand and squeezed her windpipe just enough to let her know that he meant business. She grabbed his wrist with both hands and stared up into his eyes, clearly frightened.
“I won’t hesitate to shoot you if I have to,” he told her through gritted teeth. “But I would rather not have to. Get up.” He pulled on her throat until she had no choice but to sit up. Then he lifted, forcing her to pull her feet in underneath her and stand up, even as she continued pulling at the hand around her throat that threatened to crush the life out of her if she tried anything. Dylan pushed her back against the bulkhead and made sure she glimpsed the others without allowing her to get too good a look.
“Are they all dead?” she asked.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” Dylan told her, ignoring her question, acting as though he were on the verge of losing control. “You’re going to contact your commanding officer and tell him what’s happened here. Then you’re going to convince him to let me go, free and clear. No shadow in my wake. If he agrees, I’ll drop you off somewhere safe and he can pick you up.”
“I... refuse,” the young woman managed to say.
Dylan squeezed a little harder and raised the pistol to where she could see it. “Killed by her own team leader in the confusion of a firefight,” he s
aid. “What an unfortunate circumstance. Your death will be that much more difficult for your next of kin to accept when they’re notified that you were killed by friendly fire.”
“You’re insane,” she accused, wheezing.
Dylan raised his eyebrows and snickered as he stared at her, then stopped and waited, praying that she wouldn’t call his bluff as he stroked the trigger lightly with his fingertip.
“All right,” she said. “You win.”
Dylan released her throat and grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and pushed her into the bulkhead so quickly that she had no chance to make a move against him. Then he grabbed a handful of her uniform between her shoulder blades and guided her over the sprawled “bodies” toward the gangway. “No tricks,” he said. “One more death won’t make a bit of difference to me. They can only execute me once.”
“You’re no member of Solfleet,” she said. “Who are you really?”
“None of your business,” he answered as they started up the gangway.
“How could you kill your own crew?”
“As I told your commander, they’re not my crew. I hired them to bring me out here. They didn’t even know Window World existed.”
“How the hell did you know it existed?” she asked him as she stepped up onto the flight deck. “It’s supposed to be classified.”
“That, too, is none of your...”
She spun on him suddenly and struck his elbow, throwing off his aim, and then kicked the pistol from his hand. Dylan glimpsed a fire in her eyes as he charged her. He blocked her second kick, one aimed at his solar plexus, only to be struck hard up under his chin by her third. She’d knocked him back and off balance. He grabbed for the railing, but his hand found nothing but air. She whirled around and kicked him square in his chest.
Time itself seemed to slow as he fell backwards through the air, vaguely aware of the far off echo as his boot heels struck the metal gangway steps. The ceiling appeared strangely distant now, and the air suddenly rushed from his lungs and a shroud of darkness overtook him.
Chapter 65
The next thing Dylan knew, someone was slapping him none too gently across the face, first on one side and then on the other, which wasn’t exactly his idea of the best way for someone to bring him back to consciousness, especially considering the pain he was feeling in his jaw. He opened his eyes and endured one more slap, and then reached out and grabbed the hand in mid-swing before it struck him again on its way back. Then he focused on Nicole, kneeling at his side. She had been slapping him? “What happened?” he asked her.
“Girl kicked the shit out of you,” she replied rather bluntly.
“Yeah, I remember that part,” he told her. He rose up onto his elbows, then gently probed both sides of his head with his fingertips and found the whole left side to be tender to the touch. “With what, a gravity boot?”
“Well... gravity did have a role to play,” she replied as she helped him stand up. “You fell all the way to the lower deck without touching a step. You should’ve seen yourself.”
“Glad you enjoyed it.” He looked forward and saw that all four male security men lay out cold on the deck. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Topside, waiting to see how long Commander what’s-his-name will go without hearing from his boarding party before he does something about it.”
“And the mule who kicked me?”
“Also topside—unconscious, in restraints, and strapped into a chair.”
“Restraints? Where’d you get restraints?”
“Courtesy of our Naku friends, apparently,” she told him. “One of the warriors must have dropped them when they were here.”
“Okay, wait there,” he told her as he stood up and headed toward the sleeping cabin.
“Wait a minute!” she shouted. He turned back to her. “You’ve got us committing crimes against Solfleet for you! Just what the hell is going on?”
“You won’t get into trouble for what you’re doing. I promise.” With that he headed into the sleeping cabin. He went to his locker and retrieved his handcomp and recall device, clipped the one onto his belt and slipped the other into his pocket, and then left the cabin and started up the gangway.
“What are you doing?” Nicole asked him.
“Wait there,” he repeated. “I’ll send the others down to join you.” As he reached the top few steps he glanced to his right to make sure the young woman was in fact still unconscious and restrained, and as he did so he heard Commander Rogers’ voice coming over the comm. speaker, demanding that someone respond immediately to his increasingly angry hails. He sent the others below as he’d said he would, except for Verdai, and then closed the hatch to isolate the flight deck from the rest of the vessel.
“Are you all right?” Verdai asked him.
“I’ll live,” he answered. “How much longer do you think you’ll need?”
“Not too much longer. I’ve already completed the preliminaries and isolated the memory. If you can give me about two more minutes I can edit their records. It will appear as though the vessel whose power readings they detected, the vessel they scanned, was one other than ours. It will be as though they never encountered us.”
“It’ll be as though their ship never encountered us,” Dylan corrected. “I doubt very much this security team will forget us anytime soon.”
“But with the physical evidence telling a different story, Solfleet authorities may choose not to pursue their tale, or at least to first eliminate the possibility of shared psychosis.”
“Maybe,” Dylan cautiously agreed, “but given what lies ahead, I wouldn’t count on that delay being a very long one.”
“And what does lie ahead?” Verdai asked him directly.
“I’m sorry, Verdai, but I really can’t tell you that,” Dylan replied.
“Well, even if Solfleet does follow up quickly, as far as these security troops will know, Geoff and Nicole and the rest of us were nothing more than hired hands whom you forced to do everything you commanded.”
“That may be true,” Dylan cautiously agreed, “but you should probably repaint this tub anyway, first chance you get. No point in advertising who you are and making it easy for the authorities to watch you after all this, should they choose to do so. Change your look, change the name of your ship... even the name of your company if you have one.”
Verdai sighed, but nodded his head in agreement. “Geoff will not like that or want to do it, but I do see the wisdom in your suggestions.”
“He’ll like it better than he’d like any of the possible alternatives,” Dylan quipped.
“A good point that I cannot argue with. I will suggest to him that he follow your advice.” Verdai extended his hand. “A short time ago I was ready to kill you myself. Now I am wishing you luck in... in whatever it is you are doing.”
Dylan shook the Naku’s hand. “Thank you, Verdai.”
“You are welcome, and thank you.”
“For what?” Dylan inquired. “I’ve brought you nothing but trouble since we left Mars.”
“That is partially true,” Verdai agreed, “but although you got us into this mess in the first place, you have also provided us with a way out.” He released Dylan’s hand, tapped a final key to enter and initiate his program, and then said, “Ready.”
“There’s a data-chip in my bunk under the pillow. Payment in full. Say good-bye to the others for me?” Dylan requested as Verdai stood up.
“I will,” Verdai replied, and with that he headed below while Dylan opened the first-aid kit mounted on the bulkhead and prepared a hypodermic for his hostage.
He pressed the hypo to her neck and then took a step back to watch while she fought her way toward consciousness. Her eyes fluttered after the first few seconds and then she opened them and blinked several times, presumably to bring her surroundings into focus. Then, almost immediately, she started pulling against her bonds. Eventually, however, when she’d apparently realized that her efforts were in vain
, she relaxed.
“Are you done?” Dylan asked her, not without a touch of sarcasm. She just stared up at him and clenched her teeth with murder burning in her eyes. “Good.” He moved behind her and unfastened the straps that were holding her in the chair, stood her up, and then asked her, “Are you going to behave yourself, or am I going to have to bond your mouth shut?”
“Fuck you!” she spat.
“I guess that answers that question.” He walked her backwards, opened the small storage cabinet, and then reached in and grabbed a conduit sealant patch. He peeled its backing off with his teeth and then slapped the patch over her mouth, muffling what he imagined was probably quite an interesting lineup of colorful remarks and suggestions. Then he walked her forward to the pilot’s station and sat her down in the chair, moved behind her, and then reached past her and opened an audio-only channel to Ranger one-six.
“Commander Rogers, this is Commander Jennings aboard the civilian cruiser. I deeply regret that it has come to this.”
“About damn time you responded,” Rogers barked angrily. Then he said, “You’re not a commander and your name isn’t Jennings. You’re no Solfleet officer.”
“Shut up and listen,” Dylan demanded.
“The hell with you! Who the hell are you? Where’s my team?”
“Who I am is not important,” Dylan replied evenly. “As for your team, let’s just say that they’re no longer a factor in our negotiations.”
“What does that mean? And what negotiations?” he asked. “I didn’t agree to negotiate with you about anything! Nor do I believe that I will anytime soon!”
Dylan sighed somewhat dramatically, then told him, “I really would have preferred that we engage in civilized negotiations. However, that was not to be.”
“What the hell...” The commander fell silent for a moment when Dylan switched on the ship-to-ship visual link to allow him to see that he was holding the young security policewoman hostage. Then, in a much more congenial tone of voice, the commander asked, “What exactly do you want?”
