Timberwolf

by Tom Julian

  “So you really can know their intentions?”

  “I listen for them. Kizik listens for us.”

  Salla finally took a sip of the wine. “This is probably the best wine I have ever tasted.”

  “Why did you help me back on The Outpost?” Timberwolf asked.

  “I saw what was happening and I grabbed Achilles.”

  “You’re forgetting I’m a D.P.E. spook. I offered you a dark hole to sit in for life and you helped me in return. You grew up on Nova, didn’t you?” Timberwolf asked.

  He nodded to the ornate NT tattoo on her knuckle. He reached for her hand and Salla pulled away. “Miner’s daughter? That tattoo, everyone on Nova Turin got those. That made you proud until Gray took over as governor.”

  “My dad was a hauler. There was a strike. Gray said he’d negotiate if we turned in our arms. He just killed everybody. Three hundred people. I was eighteen. So I figured whatever Emmanuel Gray was trying to do would be bad for anyone breathing.”

  Timberwolf laughed. She was his kind of crazy, but was doing a poor job of covering it up. “That’s bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?” she threw back.

  “I don’t doubt your story, but you didn’t grab Achilles for the greater good. You’re here because this is personal.”

  “Look, I understand what I am getting into.”

  “I would argue with you on that, but I doubt you’d see my point of view,” Timberwolf said.

  “Getting Kizik out of your head isn’t personal? I think we’re both in this for ourselves. I want a shot at Gray. In exchange you’ve got my help. I can fly in and rescue you if you manage to destroy half of Highland or something, as is your standard operating procedure.”

  “You stay with Achilles until I call for you. I can’t have you used against me again.”

  “You make a girl feel special.” She handed him back the wine and he smiled. She hadn’t seen him give a genuine smile before and she liked it. It was natural and crooked and it made his eyes squint up.

  Just then, his smart-device gave the triple vibration that only indicated a message from one person.

  TheaTier965: Please acknowledge

  “I have to take this,” he said to Salla.

  UNBURNED

  Timberwolf stepped into the hall. He checked the security scanner on his device and his direct connection to Dr. Tier seemed to be reinstalled. He had no idea how this was possible, but he entered the question that only Dr. Tier would know the answer to.

  Timberwolf4545: How is your sweet C?

  TheaTier965: Studying dead kings in the land of Camelot.

  Satisfied it was her, he continued. His signal bounced across the sub-light spectrum. The message relayed securely off the hulls of transports, space stations, and bent itself around stars and pulsars to arrive in Dr. Tier’s hand just a few seconds later.

  Timberwolf4545: What’s your position, doc?

  TheaTier965: At Outpost. You must hold for us. Where are you?

  Timberwolf4545: Half a day out from Golgotha. Gray’s got a jump on us to Highland. I can’t hold.

  She wrote several messages that she erased before sending.

  TheaTier965: You were dark for a week before you were hacked by an unexpected player in The Clergy. Why did you stop communicating?

  Timberwolf4545: No reason.

  TheaTier965: I can’t have lies today.

  Timberwolf4545: Kizik is here. He’s tracking us. He’s been knocking on my door.

  TheaTier965: You’re compromised! Goddamn! You cannot continue this. You’re going to lead the Arnock straight to Highland.

  Timberwolf didn’t respond for a long time. Finally Dr. Tier sent another message.

  TheaTier965: This is a very, very expensive conversation. You don’t even know.

  Timberwolf4545: I have to have Kizik gone. I have to continue.

  TheaTier965: You’re about to be placed into my black file. Gray’s not even in my black file.

  Timberwolf4545: I already thought I was there.

  TheaTier965: If you do not confirm you are holding, it’s going to be done.

  Timberwolf4545: Doc, I’m sorry to say we’ve reached an impasse. Best to you and your family. Tell Conrad I said fuck off.

  TheaTier965: Back at you, I’m sure.

  She paused, considering if she should supply this next part.

  TheaTier965: There’s a man on Gray’s crew named Jude Izabeck. He’s Cardinal Jacob’s man. He could be a game-changer. I don’t know how. That’s the last you’ll get from me.

  Timberwolf4545: Thanks, doc.

  Timberwolf signed off and put his device away. Back near The Outpost, Dr. Tier did the same. Maybe he could handle Kizik, but she doubted it. Deep inside of her, she trusted Timberwolf’s judgment after all of this; or at least she felt she owed him her trust. She’d put Kizik in his mind in the first place.

  She called Conrad and he answered. “Timberwolf’s got a message for you,” she said to him. “He says to fuck off.”

  ROAD TO HIGHLAND

  “Highland’s not a destination. It’s more of a journey.” Achilles still had Timberwolf’s Sabatin rig spread out in his workshop like a puzzle. He soldered a component in the knee together, his face protected by a welding mask.

  “You write greeting cards?” Timberwolf quipped.

  “You asked how to get there. I told you!” Achilles snapped back, flipping up his welding mask. “You have to travel through a series of destinations, picking up the right stellar signatures on your hull. But it’s never the same order. I tell her we’re coming and Penny sends me the destinations and the sequence.”

  “You think Gray knows that?” Salla asked.

  “I am sure he does, but he doesn’t know exactly how long it should take. Nemesis is a lot faster than Nina, but I am sure Penny gave us a more direct route.” He got back to his work and carefully replaced a small visor in the heads-up display. “So when we get to Highland, we might be right behind Gray or right in front of him, but we’ll be a lot closer than he thinks.”

  “Tell me about Penny. What is she?” Salla asked.

  “What’s Penny? Well…” Achilles looked to the ceiling, a copy of Penny was here, but she’d have been embarrassed if he’d told them. “We took all of human literature, history, the Bible, Koran, Vedas, etcetera and kept only the good parts. The parts about forgiveness, modesty, kindness, compassion. That’s Penny.”

  “She’s the boss of Highland?” Salla asked.

  “She’s management,” Achilles responded. “Makes decisions of who to sell product to, who needs protection, who needs to be taken down a peg.”

  “She’s an artificial intelligence,” Timberwolf said.

  “That’s rude!” Achilles protested. He stood in the midst of all the parts of the Sabatin rig. “She’s got more personality than you,” he snorted at Timberwolf.

  “And she’s nothing but rainbows and baby lambs. These weapons you sell kill millions.”

  “Who made her?” Salla asked.

  “I made her,” Achilles responded. “Well, we started her. She made herself after we started.”

  “Have you met Penny?” Salla asked Timberwolf. “Can I meet Penny?”

  “He’ll get to meet her. She likes him for some reason.” Achilles indicated Timberwolf. “She calls you a ‘unique soul.’ I’d rather she took a liking to you though, Salla.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Timberwolf agreed.

  A chime came over the intercom. “Oh, we’re here!” Achilles exclaimed. “Just in time. I’m almost done with your rig. Meet me up in the bridge.”

  Achilles began to assemble the repaired components of the Sabatin rig. His hands flashed almost quicker than they could see. Curved parts and visors became the helmet. The leg gauntlet came together. It seemed haphazard, but he moved like a machine, instinctively placing each piece.

  “I can’t watch you put that together,” Timberwolf said. “I’m going to atmo-dive in that.”

  SECURITY
RINGS

  “That’s unbelievable,” Salla said, looking out the view screen on the bridge, her face almost up to the glass. Before Nina, a thick golden ring almost a thousand yards wide hung in space. Crowning it, a red signal blinked lazily. The gentle puff of the retro engines slowed the ship. Maneuvering thrusters automatically positioned Nina on a glide path through the exact center of the ring.

  Achilles appeared at the back of the bridge. “Welcome to Highland. Those are security rings. You need the right speed, right codes. Too fast or you go around…sorry. Your engines get fried and you’ll end up in the bone yard.”

  Timberwolf wasn’t impressed. “It’s also a great ambush. Check the scope. Where’s Gray?”

  “Nothing,” Salla responded.

  “Achilles! You didn’t say we’d be coasting at a waypoint when we got here. We’ve got our pants down,” Timberwolf said.

  Achilles waved his hand, blowing him off and inputting a code into the console. The blinking red signal atop the first security ring turned green. The ship glided through, an angular sliver. “You know how we made them look like gold?”

  “How?” Salla asked.

  “It’s because they’re gold! Well almost. We’re sloppy alchemists, but it’s not our core business.”

  Another ring appeared in the distance. “Look! You can wear it.” Achilles held out his finger and squinted. From his perspective it looked like the next security ring was on his finger. Salla did the same and laughed out loud. Achilles entered another code into the console. Timberwolf was like a hawk, hunting the screens and moving from window to window, the golden glow from the next looming ring showing on his face.

  As Nina glided through the second ring, the intercom crackled. A small and familiar voice came out of it. “Achilles, it’s your brother. It’s Sergey.”

  “Sergey, where are you? Is Ivan with you?” Achilles asked. Timberwolf froze, listening intently.

  “Achilles, you have to listen. It’s only me. Ivan is dead,” Sergey said.

  Achilles’s face faded to anguish. “What? That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “It was an accident,” Sergey replied, nearly choking on the word accident.

  “No, no. It’s not right. There’s a mistake! There’s got to be. We spoke the other day. God, he’s our little brother!”

  Rustling and static came through the connection. The noise continued, too long and too loud. Achilles called for his brother. “Sergey? Sergey?”

  The voice that came back didn’t belong to Sergey. It was Gray. “We can talk about your surrender. I will treat you fairly.”

  “Like you treated Ivan?” Achilles spit back. “How did he die?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to come with us to Highland and do what I ask. Timberwolf?” There was a long pause as Gray waited for Timberwolf to respond, but he didn’t answer. “There’s forgiveness for you.”

  The signal went dead and Achilles tried to reconnect it. “Come on! Come back!” He struggled with the console, practically tearing off the cover. “Come back,” he whimpered as he stared straight ahead. After a long moment a new beeping came from the console. It was the prompt for the third security ring. Achilles absentmindedly input the ring code.

  Salla leaned close to him. “I’m sorry.”

  He paused, not saying anything for a long moment. “Our dad showed us how to work with big cats. Leopards, tigers, lions. You couldn’t ever show fear. Ivan was the best at it. He had a black leopard cub he took everywhere with him. The thing gets to be 180 kilograms, and he’s nine years old, bringing it up to the dinner table.”

  “Your family’s circus?” Salla asked.

  “It was 160 years ago. Back on Earth. My father was a blue-collar criminal. He stole from good, hardworking people! But we gave them a good show. Especially the kid lion tamer! That was Ivan.”

  “Achilles, I know this is hard for you but…”

  “We traveled through all of Russia. The Dacha Brothers’ circus. It was named after the four of us.” Timberwolf hovered near, gripping the back of Achilles’s chair.

  “Achilles!” Salla said calmly, but firmly. “The next ring’s not green. Gray must have made Sergey change the codes.” Nina was almost on top of the third security ring.

  Achilles was still with his memories. He spoke with eyes closed. “We stole from everyone. That was our thing. Came into town and became the biggest gang around for a week. Our dad was a gangster at heart. He gave our mom a pistol with a ruby handle for their twentieth anniversary.”

  “Achilles! We’ll be dead in the water!” Timberwolf shook the little man by the shoulders, but he looked off, still not present. Timberwolf spun to Salla. “Get us through!” She leaped to the controls. In front of the ship, the red light atop the third security ring blinked faster and faster. Wispy clouds of plasma gathered on the inside of the ring and began to spin. In seconds, there was a gorgeous ring of fire tightening towards the center of the ring.

  Nina glided with painful slowness as Salla initiated the engine sequence. Timberwolf watched as she moved through the steps efficiently, screens coming to life. She skipped the diagnostics and gripped the ignition trigger on the maneuvering thrusters. Ahead, was just the tiniest circle of black in the middle of the plasma-fire. She punched the engines and they ignited, but it wasn’t enough.

  Orange and red plasma washed over Nina as it corkscrewed through the ring. The charged particles rippled down the length of the spindly vessel, all of its nooks and crevices glowing. Salla fought to stop the spiraling. She calmly went through all of the tricks she’d known since she was fifteen years old…vent the aft flaps…shift the H20 reserves like ballast…but neither of those things helped.

  “The Nina doesn’t know which way is up!” she said. Screens on the bridge started to go out, Nina was losing power quickly. Timberwolf hung on in the back of the cabin. Achilles looked at the floor, still not present. Salla had one more trick. She negatively charged the starboard side of the ship. That might cause the stabilizing thrusters to reorient in sync with the artificial gravity. Like the ship was suddenly on rails, it righted.

  Salla finally breathed, Nina seemingly intact and still powered, but she looked to Achilles. “Nice try but…”

  He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. In an instant, everything on the ship went dark, the ever-present whirring of the life support ceasing and the artificial gravity going off with an audible snap that came from somewhere decks below. A pair of cufflinks floated by Salla’s face. They were golden letters in the shape of an I and D. She looked over to see Achilles unfastening his cuffs. She grabbed them from the air and tried to hand them back to him. He looked at her with sorry eyes. “They were Ivan’s. They’re yours now,” he said.

  She looked back to Timberwolf, expecting him to be up and trying to restart the ship, but he was holding his head. He was muttering something silently and she couldn’t hear what. “Timberwolf!” she shouted. Suddenly he snapped to, looking right at her like he’d been caught napping.

  Achilles stirred. “You couldn’t have helped us. Nice try. Engines are gone. Power gone.”

  “What’s the restart sequence?” she asked.

  “Huh, there’s none that’ll work. I made it that way. I thought of everything!”

  “What’s that?” Timberwolf indicated a small point of light out the window.

  “Gray’s not wasting any time,” Salla said.

  A spherical vessel approached Nina. It was a wrecker used to take apart old spaceships. On the ends of a half dozen appendages were hooks, cutting saws, laser cutters and clamps.

  “Can I get in my rig?” Timberwolf asked Achilles.

  “I need still to snap it together.”

  “That thing is not friendly,” Timberwolf said. “What else have you got?”

  Achilles shook his head, nothing seeming to come to him. He swiveled in his chair as Timberwolf balled his fists and Salla waited for an answer. Finally Achilles’s eyes lit up. “Pinta! We can
manually start her. I kept the fuel cells away from the igniter on the shuttles.”

  Salla leaped from the command chair. She pushed herself through the weightless dark corridors, brushing past floating debris. Two decks below, she cranked Pinta’s cabin door manually and it opened with a creak. She pushed the all-start button above the pilot’s chair and to her relief, the shuttle came to life. She contacted Timberwolf peer-to-peer on her smart-device. “I’m here! It’s on.”

  The wrecker was almost on top of them now. From out the window on the bridge, Timberwolf could see the pilot inside, just a few yards away. The man made a gun with his finger and pointed it at Timberwolf. Then the wrecker descended out of view. Damn, they’re going for the shuttles first. He called back to Salla, “I want you to release the docking clamps.”

  “Why?” Salla asked.

  Timberwolf didn’t answer her question. “Then get out of there.”

  Releasing the docking clamps while Nina’s power was off meant that the shuttle was no longer connected to the ship. It would just be sitting there, static electricity creating a weak bond that could be broken by a puff of air. Salla released the docking clamps, but as she was pulling herself out of Pinta she caught a glimpse of the scanner. There was the wrecker, right under Nina now, but there was something else. Something huge and unknown.

  On the bridge, Timberwolf tore open panels, one after the other. “Where’s the shuttle release?” Achilles pointed to a panel on the ceiling and Timberwolf opened it. He reached in and pulled the release.

  On the aft-underside of Nina, the wrecker had its laser saw out and approached Pinta. The wrecker pilot maneuvered as close as he wanted. Nina had no guns and he thought there wasn’t anything they could do to stop him. With a grin the pilot spun up the saw—and that’s when he got punched in the face by a spaceship.

  With a burst of compressed air, Pinta hurtled at the wrecker, smashing it head-on. The wrecker spun off, thrusters panicking. When the pilot finally recovered, he was two thousand yards away. A long crack went down the length of the front windscreen and vapor leaked in the cockpit, condensing and obscuring the view.