“He told me straight on, he sold you out along with all the framework technology. I guess I should thank him before you kick his ass.”
Jonas laughed for the first time since they sat down, it was a huge relief. “I guess so. Speaking of which, where is he?”
“He's in the brig. You can see him if you want. There's an extra code you need to punch in to speak to him though, it's zero eight one one.”
“I think I will,” Jonas took a long look at Jake, and after a moment he looked back at him. “You going to be all right?”
“Yeah, no matter where I came from, I've come most of the way myself after Alice dropped me off on the Samson. I can't complain about the stock I'm bred from either,” he offered his hand. “I'll get you back to Ayan as soon as I can. At the same time I want you to remember; you always have a place on this ship.”
Jonas shook it firmly. “I might take you up on that. On a ship this size there might just be enough room for the two of us. What about Alice?”
The pair started for the exit but saw a small personnel lift at the end of the bar. Jake shook his head as they made their way to it around a few tables. “Strange thing about that, I owe her as much as you do. If she hadn't have broken me out of wherever they were keeping my pod I'm sure I would have been mulched or put to work in a mine somewhere. Besides, for years now I've thought of her as my daughter, my blood. I even looked for her mother for a while. Why shake that kind of love?” The word felt strange, he couldn't recall the last time he'd said it aloud, maybe he never had. There was nothing to remember before being let out of his cocoon. Somehow, when he thought of Alice and his long search for her, that word, love, felt right, and it brought a smile to his face.
“I'll be honest, the last time I knew Alice before she became human, she was busy turning that super carrier into a slaughterhouse. I'm having trouble forgetting that, especially considering the body she chose. I'll get over it though, it's just a little eerie, that's all.” Jonas said with a chuckle.
The lift lit up as they approached and they stepped inside. It was just large enough for five people comfortably. Jake selected the bridge, while Jonas selected the brig. “I have to see him.”
“He was taken by Vindyne. They double crossed him about the same time they took you. When I crossed Regent Galactic they let him out of their inventory and sent him after me with the Triton. Their mistake.”
“You can say that again.”
The lift stopped on deck fourteen and both of them stepped out of the car. Jonas started for the brig and Jake started in the other direction towards the command deck. “I'll head to the bridge when I'm done.”
“See you there,” Jake said with a nod.
Lucius Agrippa Wheeler
He woke up shivering. The headache was secondary to the sensation of freezing from the inside. I'm nude for pity's sake! The least they could do is turn up the heat! Wheeler thought to himself as he pounded on the twenty centimetre thick transparesteel panel between him and the rest of the brig.
The lights were out. It was night watch and he couldn't see anyone else in the brig aside from the Minister. With a code securing the high priority cell he knew there was no way he could get out. He had never found a way out of the special containment cell. Some of the other ones were a little less hardened and with some ingenuity and pain it was possible to escape, but they had placed him in the highest security unit.
The headache worsened and as he began to shiver he realized he had a serious fever. His thighs twitched, there was a burning starting just above the knees and it was moving up. What the hell did they do to me when I was in stasis? He thought to himself.
Wheeler's teeth chattered and he clamped them shut, laying down on the bench. Guess they flipped the switch, pulled the plug, sent the signal. Why does it have to be so God damned slow? I hate super corps, dealing with 'em always costs almost as much as you're getting paid in the end. Even when they're pulling your God damned plug they've just got to get that last shot in so you know they've got all the power and you're just another little worker getting crushed in the gears.
The lights came on and he swung his feet off the bunk onto the cold floor. His arms huddled around him. “Jonas! Or should I call you Jake. Come to see me off?” He said with his best attempt at joviality.
The other man smiled at him as he walked up to the cell and entered the four digit code that would allow the audio box to work.
Lucius looked at him again, there was something very different. “You are Jonas, aren't you? They busted you out.”
“Alice found me. One of your friends wanted to present me to her as some kind of gift, it backfired.”
“The real deal, I can't believe it. You can be the first to spit on my grave, lucky thing, it's going to be a long line,” He chattered, trying to suppress a spine wracking shiver. His feet pounded the floor, and he realized he was dripping with sweat.
“No one's planning to execute you. They might even bring you back to Freeground. Captain Valance is taking me home.”
“Ha! You really think any of you are in control, that anyone on this ship actually does anything the all mighty Gods of this universe don't see coming or even force into being? Regent Galactic's got me wired, boy. My body's getting ready to fall to pieces because I wasn't able to drag your double in. They really take themselves seriously. Bargain like bankers and foreclose with force.”
Jonas was difficult to read then as he looked Wheeler up and down. “Medical, we have an emergency in the brig.”
“We're on our way,” someone from the infirmary replied.
“Hurry, Wheeler's suffering from some kind of time released poison.”
Lucius laughed, his eyes wide. “You're really going to try and save me? I mean, come on, I betrayed you to Vindyne, got your ship all shot to hell, ended your mission early and you're going to try to save me? I almost want to speed this thing up so I can watch you cry over my corpse as they drag my soul through the gates of hell.”
“What do you mean you ended my mission early?”
“I was the one who brought you in on that last mission! It never occurred to you that it was supposed to be a stealth operation? I wanted to drag that antique hull through the ringer, hand it over to Vindyne then watch your crew, especially Ayan Rice, the sacred daughter of Admiral Rice, twist and burn while they ripped her open looking for genetic secrets. God, what I would give to see them pull her apart for everything they did right with her.”
“What?”
“She's a God damned experiment! Her and about three hundred others. For a thousand years, more maybe, we've been tweaking genetics, making this one a little blonder, most of us immune to diseases we just couldn't cure any other way, and so on and so on. Her generation was made from scratch! She's the product of the first materializer capable of producing living matter from energy, the core of this framework crap that's about to change the galaxy. It failed for most, but the advancements they made regardless are beyond what anyone imagined. By the time I turned you in, Vindyne already had that intel somehow, and all they wanted was you and Alice, the next big things because she had managed to make the jump between machine to man. God damned software making history, who the hell cares right?”
The medical team, led by Grace, entered in a rush.
Wheeler coughed suddenly, spraying his hand and the transparesteel in front of him with blood. He stared at it and started to laugh. “Hang on to something folks, I think I'm about to blow!”
Grace started to scan him as a security officer rushed in and opened his cell. She immediately stepped back. “He reads like he's made of Rexmet, pure explosive and he's heating up.”
“No shit! I'm taking my ship with me?” Wheeler said as he laughed and wiped blood from his nose. “I couldn't think of a better way-” Blood started running from his eyes and he collapsed into violent convulsions.
“Open the door! Open it!” Jonas shouted. He ran in once there was enough room for him to squeeze inside and pick
ed up Wheeler's twitching body. He was out of the cell and running for the door the next second. “Get me to the nearest airlock!” He yelled at the guard nearest to the door. “Bridge, get us out of hyperspace. I have to throw live explosives out the nearest airlock.” Jonas said through his communicator.
The guard and Jonas ran as fast as they could down one hall and around a corner. Four escape shuttles flanking an airlock came into sight and he could see that the ship was just decelerating out of hyperspace. The guard rushed so hard towards the inner door that she collided with it and unlocked it as fast as she could.
Jonas dropped Wheeler inside and slammed the hatch door. Luscious' pores were seeping with fluid that no longer resembled anything human. He pressed the button to open the outer lock door and the decompression cycle started. “How do you skip it? We need him away from the ship and the air rushing out with him might do it.”
The guard looked at the electronic door panel then back at him helplessly.
Taking a guess he accessed the environment control sub-menu and found what he was looking for. He deactivated the safety system and opened the outer door. Wheeler's body was flushed out of the airlock by the rush of the remaining air. He turned and ran away from the hatch. “I don't know how much time was left. He didn't come with a counter,” he shouted over his shoulder.
The guard was right beside him, running wild eyed as they rounded the corner. The Triton rocked slightly, and they slowed to a stop. Grace and her medical team caught up to them. “Good work sir. That was close,” she congratulated.
Jonas struggled to catch his breath, leaning down with his hands on his knees. “Just lucky you scanned him,” he wiped some of Wheeler's residue from his neck and jaw with his hand, still trying to catch his breath. “Guess I should take up jogging again.”
“Looks like. You really moved though,” Grace said with a smile, patting him on the shoulder. “I think you just scored a few points with the crew.”
“I'm not your Captain, just his slower brother,” Jonas said, looking up with a smile. The hallway spun, and he lost his footing and fell to the deck.
“Whoa there,” Grace said as she and another medical technician knelt down. “Just rest here while-” She stopped as she started scanning him. Her fingers worked on her wrist unit quickly as she scanned through the readings.
“What, what is it?”
“You have implants in both your femurs. I'm seeing the same chemical process that started with Wheeler in you.”
Jonas shivered and his eyes went wide. “Oh that can't be good.”
“Come on, let's get you into stasis,” Grace instructed, helping him up.
“How far is it?” he asked.
“Four decks down.”
“Too far, besides, even in stasis, if this is a chemical reaction there's no telling for sure that you could slow it down enough.” He felt his heart beating so hard it felt like it was about to burst out of his chest.
Jonas tried to stand but Grace caught his elbow. “Come with us sir. In deep stasis there's no movement.”
He twitched his sidearm out of it's holster and levelled it at her. “I'll pull the trigger to save the crew,” Jonas said hurriedly.
She let him go.
He got to his feet and with all his strength he ran around the corner and down the hall, dropping his sidearm, taking off his gun belt and long coat. “Bridge, Jonas here.” He said as he opened the inner airlock door.
“Nice save, we didn't take any damage, but if Wheeler had gone off in the brig it would have killed everyone in the upper berthing,” Stephanie congratulated.
“Oh, we're not out of the woods yet,” Jonas said as he sealed his vacsuit and closed the hatch behind him. “Is Alice there?”
“She's just going over the bridge systems with me. This girl's a natural.”
“Hi Jonas,” she chimed in, he could hear her smile.
Grace and her medical team caught up to him and stopped to watch him hit the quick release on the outer door. He was thrust out into space along with the air filling the freshly pressurized airlock. Jonas took a breath and let himself tumble away. “Ignore everything else and listen to me, okay?”
“Okaaay.” she said slowly, warily.
He was relieved that no one on the bridge realized he had ejected himself in nothing but his vacsuit. “I need to know that no matter what happens you understand that you've been my best friend. I couldn't have dreamt of anyone else I would want to share all the little details with.”
“Jonas? They say you're outside the ship, that-” there was panic in her voice.
“Never mind that. If you need anything, someone to trust, someone to walk you through this, just look to Jake. He doesn't care what you are, where you come from, I can tell, just from the time I spent with him, I can tell that he's as much me as he needs to be and is capable of so much more. I told him how you were born and he didn't so much as flinch.”
“Jonas, tell me this isn't happening, please?” she said through tears.
“It's okay, just tell Ayan she kept me warm while I was all bottled up. She was there, the whole time. They couldn't get their way because she was there.” His body began to twitch as he rotated slowly. The Triton came into view. “Make sure she knows, Alice.”
“I will,” she promised.
He could feel his heart beating spastically, his arms and legs curled inwards. “That's a beautiful ship, if I had just a bit more time I'd make the galaxy free again.” A massive twitch sent his body into a painful spasm. It subsided after a moment and he tried to catch his breath. “Do everything I couldn't Jake.” Pressure built in his head, he squeezed his eyes shut and saw red. “I'm so proud of you both,” he managed as he forced himself to exhale. When he opened his eyes it was to complete blackness. Then he was gone.
Solace and Icons
The bottle was half empty. The amber liquid wet the sides as he leaned it one way then the other and back in the dim light. I didn't know him for an hour but I feel like I've lost the only friend I've ever had. Jake thought to himself. The only lights on were the muted white and yellow spots in the middle of the tables and the ones running behind the bar and where the floor met the wall. Just enough to see your way around the tables and chairs.
He had reviewed the footage from the brig after leading Alice to the bed in his ready room. She insisted he just leave her alone to rest. He left her alone for a few minutes and when he quietly checked on her she was asleep. The strangest reaction to grief he'd seen, but he would be there for her, regardless of how she grieved.
He went downstairs to his ready room office and listened to Wheeler's dying testimony, about his betrayal of Jonas, the manufacture of Ayan and everything else had given him the deepest desire to be alone. We're all on strings. If we weren't manufactured we're attached to some company or government that can just pull on a line and force us into doing God knows what. Even all the way out here, I bet one transmission could send the whole crew into hysterics.
He drank the last of the scotch in his glass and poured another belt. “Make the galaxy free again,” he said to himself. “What an idea. At full officer mercenary wages this ship would run me dry in a year. If only we weren't all tied down by cash.”
“We don't have to be,” Stephanie said from behind.
She had been uncharacteristically quiet, or he wasn't paying enough attention. Stephanie sat down beside him and set down Jonas' long coat and his sidearm with gun belt down beside the white scarf he had left on the bar before. “Of course we do. A crew works, they get paid, they keep working.”
“You offered them peanuts before and not many of them left. We have half the military and they're sending requests to the bridge to have more picked up. The word's out that the Triton is taking trained people on, and I wouldn't be surprised if we had more applicants than we could handle when we reach port.”
“Every single one of them will want to be paid, and frankly, I don't want to see what happens when the money runs out.
I can't back that kind of crew if privateering stops paying or if I can't find us someone else willing to legitimize us.”
“Why would we need to be legitimized? What's the point of having a letter of marque when we can process or sell most anything we capture? I shouldn't have to tell you, especially not you this but when a ship like the Triton drifts into harbour everyone notices. This ship gives us the clout to capture, salvage and sell whatever the hell we want and even if half the tech on this ship is junk we have more than enough equipment to do everything ourselves. So if you're worried about paying the crew, all you have to do is put them to work and just being active out here will provide.”
“She's right Captain, an' a lot of us won't be after much in way of pay while livin' here. Pay 'em half then dock materializer fees. Should keep usage under control an' anyone from materializin' heavy metals, sucking up power like it's free,” Frost added from the doorway. He walked across the room and got behind the bar, immediately rooting around for loose bottles. “Watch is all set. Tracked down a few of Wheeler's bridge crew and told them you wanted 'em on. Most of them were hidin' in their racks, tryin' ta get some sleep after weeks of bein' over worked, they didn't mind takin' a quiet bridge shift. Grace helped, nice girl, that one.”
“Thank you Shamus,” Captain Valance said, raising his glass.
“Ship's in mournin'. People are settlin' in where they're told. Most of the people aboard lost someone on Enreega.” Frost produced two big two litre bottles and put them down on the bar. He reached for the second glass beside Jake's and the Captain put his hand on it.
“That one's taken,” He said, putting it beside the pile of Jonas' possessions.
“Ah, so it is.”
The lift door opened to admit Ashley, who had her arm around Alice's shoulders. “Someone needed to see you Captain,” She said as she guided Alice to sit beside Jake.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 3 Page 12
