“Yes sir.”
“Follow me, friend,” Dothin said, and led Gan into the workshop. Gan dropped Nix a confused look, then followed. The door to the workshop slid shut and Nix was now alone with the girl.
Ashla Vares sat at the table, her hands clasped together, head bowed, eyes darting here and there without seeing anything. This was a different person than the one on the feeds, always dressed to the nines with a self-important smirk that told the universe she owned it.
She looked small in Dothin’s coat. And hopeless.
Nix grabbed a pair of drinks from the fridge and sat down next to her. He slid one of the drinks over to her and opened and sipped from the other one himself.
“Thank you.” She opened the can but didn’t yet drink.
“You, you’re welcome.”
Silence.
Nix took another sip of his soda, cleared his throat. “He isn’t a bad guy.”
Ashla took a sip but didn’t respond in any other way.
“Ganyasu I mean. I guess he was...” Nix thought better of using the word. “One of those people, but not anymore.”
The air recyclers kicked in, gently humming.
“In fact, he kind of saved me.”
Did she offer the slightest change in expression?
“Yeah. You see I let my dumb friend Vin talk me into hosting a big party here. Uh, you can’t tell Dothin, by the way. And it was great until all the guests started going nuts. And some guys had broken into Dothin’s workshop there, dicing the lock that is, not actually breaking in. And I got mad and broke some guy’s link and it turned out the link belonged to a different guy, some huge, hulking brainvac named Gallo, and he was mad.”
Ashla smiled. It lasted half a second, and then she hid it away, but Nix caught it.
“Yeah, so a friend of mine who works in station administration came in and broke up the party right as Gallo was about to dent my brain pan. So, Gallo left swearing unholy vengeance on me. The next day the doorbell rang, and I opened the door without checking the security camera, like an idiot, and the next thing I know Gallo comes in and knocks me to the floor. But while he starts waxing poetic about how I insulted his honor by breaking his link, Gan sneaks in and scares him and his thugs off.”
Ashla laughed. It was a single breath of laughter, but it sounded good. Nix laughed too.
“Hey,” Nix said, and she look at him when he said it. “I’m sorry I was so rude. You know, when you first came in.”
“It’s okay.”
“What was it like? You know, at the palace?”
Ashla took a drink of her soda, sighed, then looked at him again. “Scary. I mean, I was on my way to have dinner with...” she swallowed, cleared her throat. “With my father. All of a sudden there was a big boom and the lift seized and Lita and I ran up to my bedroom. My room is in a fortified tower. And Lita fought off Alliance soldiers. Then, when it seemed we were both going to die, Cel came up from behind them, ambushed the men attacking us.
“You see, Cel is my bodyguard, but she was badly hurt when some assassins tried to kill me and so Lita took over. But during the fight, Cel broke out of the hospital and fought her way to us.
“Wow.” Nix found his throat dry and took another sip. “I guess being the governor’s daughter is dangerous.”
Ashla shook her head. “Not usually. I go to lots of events and they always have security with me, but nothing ever happens besides the occasional bogus bomb threat. Then I had this ribbon cutting for a new hospital and it turned into a huge battle, bombs exploding and people shooting. That’s when the Shaumri attacked us. Well, he attacked me. Cel rescued me.”
“So, who brought you here?”
“I did.”
Nix smiled. “Really?”
Ashla nodded. “Yeah. I’m a pilot. And I also built my own ship.”
“Wow.”
Ashla nodded. A bit of her confidence was returning. “You see, under Antarii law a governor rules for life unless impeached but he can never be succeeded by his relatives for seven generations.”
“That’s weird.”
Ashla opened her mouth to continue, paused, then said, “Well, not if you understand the background. You see, a long time ago Eltar was ruined by a long-standing dynastic family. After the citizens rebelled and created their own constitution, they made it law that no family could do what had been done before.”
“Oh, okay.”
“And even though the governor rules for life, this is only if he isn’t impeached, and because Antarii laws make impeachment easy to do, most governors work hard to keep the favor of the people.
“Okay.” Nix had no idea as to how they got off on law, but he was glad she was talking.
“One of the perks that offsets the whole no-relatives-can-rule law, is that the governor’s offspring are offered the best education and training, so they can pursue prosperous lives that benefit the whole of the system.
“And you chose piloting.”
“And engineering. Piloting is kind of easy compared to designing, building and maintaining a ship.”
“Okay.” Nix chuckled. “I don’t know how to do either.”
Ashla smiled, nodded as if content with her lecture and took another sip of her soda. The room grew quiet again. The sound of air blowing kept them from total silence.
“How did you hook up with Dothin, anyway?”
“He’s a friend of my father’s.”
Nix nodded. “Yeah, I guess he makes stuff for your dad’s palace.”
Ashla nodded. “Well, I guess Cel met up with him after the battle and they hatched the plan to get us out. I had to leave because Cel thought the Alliance wouldn’t let me live. He had to get out...because he was worried about you.”
Nix tipped his head in question.
“He seems like a great father.”
“Oh, Dothin’s not my dad.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” Nix was about to expound, but decided otherwise. “Yeah.”
“Oh.” Ashla dropped her gaze. Her fingers drummed her soda can.
“What...” Some internal voice stopped him. Don’t do it! it said. Don’t ask, idiot. Don’t! “Do you know what happened to your dad?”
Then Nix knew the voice was right. He was an idiot.
Ashla put a hand over her eyes and started crying.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Nix raised his hands, drew them close to her, wanting to comfort, but to do so was terrifying. So instead he tried one hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” She sniffed and rubbed her eyes with Dothin’s coat sleeve. “I just. I just hope he’s alright. I don’t understand why they did this!”
“Well,” Nix said, stepping carefully, “all the feeds say it’s because he invited that girl to his palace. The girl called Remnant. The Alliance say she’s a criminal and your dad was trying to harbor her.”
Nix’s link chimed. Ashla jumped.
“Sorry,” Nix said. “I’ll ignore it.”
“I hope he’s okay. And Lita too, and Cel.”
Nix nodded. His link chimed again. He sighed.
The door to the workshop slid open and out came Dothin and Gan.
“Alright,” Dothin said. “Mr. Naboris here seems to share a common goal with us. He needs to leave the system and so do we.”
“We?” Nix asked. His link chimed again. He growled and pulled it out of his pocket and swiped to look at whoever was bugging him at such a bad time.
As he looked at Vinny’s message and the accompanying video his mind drowned out Dothin’s words. Something about finding a ship that’s leaving soon so they could get away before the Alliance Navy shows up.
“Oh no,” Nix said and looked up at the rest of them.
“What is it, Niko?”
Nix switched his link to holographic mode and played the video Vin had sent. It showed a huge starship flying into view. As it did, dozens of fighters poured out of its bays. The view zoomed in to show words on the
side of the ship. They read: ANCS Thanator.
“Too late.”
Chapter Twenty-Four:
Destruction Comes Suddenly
Cel slid down the maintenance ladder, then stuck her feet out to stop her descent once the big “S-11” was visible on the wall. She stepped onto the landing in front of the heavy metal door, then drew her pistol from its holster.
She had no admonitions about how silly she looked with her belt, holster and scabbard over her weekend clothes. She would have loved to have at least her uniform and, at best, a proper smartskin under a good layer of armor. Add a decent weapon to that, maybe a good assault repeater, and she would feel great.
But Anatheret had forethought enough to deny her access to the armory and the only weapons she had managed to steal from the ADF during the assault she had given to Lita, who had the job of protecting Dothin and, more importantly, Ashla.
Cel tapped the door console with her link and was obliged by a green screen and dull, distant click. She smiled. Thankfully, Tanno hadn’t considered taking her clearance credentials. He would come to regret that. She pressed her ear against the door and waited.
Beyond the door was the S-11 central hub. It was shaped the same way all the other sublevel hubs were, a square room with a low, vaulted ceiling, where the lift and the main north-south corridor intersected. There would be carts charging, vending machines, side doors similar to the one she stood behind, but with closets full of spare parts, equipment and machinery behind them. The door to the lift access ladder was anonymous beside the others, and that was what Cel hoped for.
A distant electronic bell chimed, and a woman’s voice gave a wordless sound of surprise. Cel waited.
At the sound of the first footstep, hollow and shrill, Cel moved. She tapped the door control and the door slid open. She entered the foyer as the female MP was stepping into the lift.
With a thought of scolding for her fellow female soldier, Cel jogged up behind her. The MP spun in time to see the butt of Cel’s pistol crashing down on her temple. Modern helmets designed to keep a soldier alive against shrapnel and grazing shots still couldn’t keep your brain from jangling against plain-old blunt force trauma.
The MP cried out and staggered back, slamming against the corner of the lift cage Cel had sent down before rushing to slide down the ladder. Her eyes were glazed over, she blinked wildly. She grabbed the handholds and started struggling back to her feet.
Cel bashed her again and the MP’s eyes rolled back into her head and her struggling ceased. Cel holstered her pistol and got to work. She pulled the MP’s helmet off and ripped the communication’s lace out of it. The lace sparked as it came and Cel muttered an expletive. She had hoped to use the lace to listen in on enemy comms. She dropped the helmet and the ruined lace then turned to the control console. Her link offered her administrative controls to the elevator, so she tapped the “out of order” button and slid between the closing lift doors. That done, she peaked down the southbound corridor and, when she saw no one was there, she jogged down the concrete northbound passage.
Their whole plan depended on her speed, so she kept up the pace. She had considered taking one of the carts but decided against it. It wasn’t faster than running and it would also alert enemy forces much earlier than she would have wanted.
She was starting to feel her old strength back and, since she couldn’t get access to her strength-augmenting armor, she was thankful to feel right again. She was also thankful for the soft soles of her running shoes. Even against the echoey confines of the passage she didn’t have to work to keep her footfalls quiet.
Cel was sure the Peace Corps was unlikely to station more than a few MPs on this level, as there wasn’t a whole lot going on down here. The landing bays on this level were for repairs only, so no one wanting to escape would come this far, they would go to the few levels above where the working ships were, like Ashla’s Lunar Seed. But that also meant that’s where most of the MPs would be, a problem Cel needed to tackle.
She counted the ascending numbers on each junction as she ran, stopping at each one to make sure there were no MPs patrolling them, before picking up her pace again. At last she came to junction S11-13 and slowed to a stop there.
Weapon drawn, she cleared the corridors then headed westward. The passage was quiet besides the hvac system blowing air and distant talking and clatter ahead. She hugged the left side of the corridor, ready to dive into a doorway if trouble should show itself.
Cel came to the door she was looking for and tapped the control. The door slid open. Behind it was a large hangar with a tall ceiling. At the doorway the building materials shifted from concrete to metal and nano-carbonite. The floor and walls were bare, and the ceiling was lined with support frames and big light strips shining white light down. The far wall was covered with equipment: nano-facs, assemblers and industrial recyclers. The near side of the hangar was turned into an ad-hoc room, divided by the rest of the bay by rows of shelves lined with parts and equipment, as well as worktables and tool racks. The center of the room was dominated by a sleek-looking shuttle, white trimmed in Meritine cyan and crimson.
When they were planning their escape, Cel looked through the registry of ships docked under the palace. The majority of them were orbital and aerosol fighters and shuttles.
“Those won’t work,” Ashla said. “We need something classed for luminal travel at least.”
So Cel found a shuttle fitting Ashla’s specifications. It was in for routine maintenance and the service logs stated it was in the middle of a major service haul out and likely being ignored by all parties.
Not as ignored as she’d hoped, though. As Cel stepped into the huge bay, voices sounded from inside the shuttle’s lowered entry ramp. The door slid shut behind her, so she dove behind the cover of a workstation, and watched.
“So how much longer till it’s ready?”
“Another hour to finish patching the coolant hoses. Maybe a half hour to replace the timing fuses.”
“Oh and add an hour and a half to re-prime the ignition coils.”
“You guys don’t actually have any idea of when this bird’ll be flying again, do you?”
Down the shuttle ramp came four individuals, two were MPs in standard gear. The other two were mechanics, wearing coveralls and heavy belts laden with tools. Cel couldn’t tell if they were palace techs or Peace Corps.
“Not until we’ve had lunch,” one of the techs said. The other mechanic laughed. The quartet talked and laughed as they headed her way. Cel tucked herself under one of the workstations and watched as the four men left through the same door she had come through. Cel gave herself a slow count to ten, then emerged back from under the work table. She climbed over the table and padded over to the shuttle, listening for other voices, or any sound that might suggest someone was inside.
Nothing. Cel drew her pistol again, checked the ramp, and then climbed into the shuttle. The interior was simple but sparse. It was a small ship suited to a simple purpose: bringing officials to and from orbit. That it had an N-slip drive was testament to bloated government spending more than the shuttle’s regular function. To Cel it looked like a fancy gunship. The ramp led past a simple airlock door and into a passenger bay with rows of seats facing each other. Aft of that was a pair of lavatories. The doors to these were open and empty. Forward was a private communications office and then the bridge. Cel headed for the bridge. She cleared the little comm office, then the bridge. No one was aboard.
Cel worked fast, following Ashla’s instructions.
“First you have to disengage the safety countermeasures in the software,” Ashla said. “This is important because if you wait to the end to do this the whole system will shut down. So, disengage the software safeties first.”
Cel didn’t bother to sit in one of the chairs. Instead she hunched over the console as she dug down into the ship’s deeper systems. Frustration fooled her a few times, made her take the wrong path, but after a few minutes she
found her way. She tapped, and a window opened up with a red flashing button.
Are you sure you want to disengage this shuttle’s N-space safety countermeasures?
Cel mashed ‘yes,’ and then did so again when the screen asked if she was really, extra sure. She smiled. “If you didn’t want me to do this you shouldn’t have given me a big red button.”
“Next, you have to shut off the N-space engine’s primary emergency cut-off breaker. This will be a hard switch behind the pilot’s chair,” Ashla explained.
“Why the void do they give the option if it means certain doom if the drive is used incorrectly?” Cel wondered aloud.
“Mostly because you have to disengage these safeties before you access the drive or the second you open the containment field it’ll zap you with a lethal dose of x-rays.”
“Good to know.”
Cel turned to a bay of hard switches and buttons and read through the tiny text attached to each one. She flicked the toggle over the text “NSB1-On/Off” and flicked it off. The LED above it lit up red and she knew she was in trouble.
“Finally, you have to remove the back-up emergency breaker. To do this, you need to find the drive—which on a shuttle of this design should be against the back of the cabin between the lavatories.”
Cel left the cockpit, pistol in hand again, and headed to the back of the cabin. She cleared the ramp as she passed it, just in case. Luckily for her the hatch was unlocked and Cel pushed the unpowered door out of the way. She almost had to sidle through the thin corridor before coming to the N-space drive’s containment chamber.
“You’ll need a key to the containment chamber on your link to open it. You’ll have to see about that yourself.”
The benefit of being cleared for practically everything is that even if you don’t have the key to something, it’s not hard to get it, another way Anatheret underestimated her. Cel tapped the console with her link, waited for the key to unlock it and then stuck the link back in her pocket.
Then she tapped a few buttons on the console. The screen flashed another red warning with a reminder that “if the N-space breaker is not disengaged the drive core will release its charge upon containment opening and...” Cel tapped the button again and waited to see if she would fall dead.
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