She was running out of time and she needed this door open.
Sometimes you have to pull, sometimes you have to push.
Tila swiftly pulled herself up and over the bar and braced her feet against the ceiling. She grunted with the effort, arms and legs straining against the corrosion of the years.
This time she felt something give. It was only a few more inches, but it was enough.
She dropped to the floor, tossed her staff through the doorway and pulled herself up by her fingertips. She wriggled through the opening which was now big enough, just, to admit her.
She crossed the threshold and fell. Not down, but sideways.
The intensity and sudden shift in where down was supposed to be caught her by surprise. Her shoulder crashed into the floor that a moment before had been a wall.
She picked up the staff and climbed to her feet. Looking back through the door which was now oriented correctly, she realised she should have expected this shift in the gravity shelf. Bulkhead doors don't open top to bottom. That should have been a clue.
Still, at least the floor wasn't the ceiling this time.
Tila looked away from the vertical slit in the bulkhead. The sight of the corridor outside at right angles to her floor was disorientating.
She rubbed her sore shoulder where it had taken the brunt of the impact and she squeezed the staff again in just the right place. It snapped back to its former length with a metallic sigh and a satisfying click.
The weak light from the corridor behind her was the only illumination Tila had. The first thing she noticed in was the low, dark shapes scattered throughout the dim room. The light knifed its way through the dusty air, barely enough to show her the storage lockers built into the far wall.
Shadows suddenly flashed through the light beam. Tila turned and saw the hands of her pursuers tugging at the bulkhead door in an effort open it wide enough for them to climb in. She heard one of them pick something up from the hallway and together they tried to force the opening wider.
They strained against the old door mechanism until their improvised tool snapped. Like the rest of the Juggernaut it was too old and worn to be of any real use. They resorted to brute strength instead, and little by little the opening grew wider.
Unhurried and unconcerned while they tired themselves out, Tila scanned the room. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom, and the room was growing brighter by the second as the door behind her yielded inch by inch.
She saw now that the dim shapes scattered around the room were bed frames, now more rust than metal. If this was a bunk room then the bulkhead couldn't have been an airlock door after all, she thought.
At one time, something had breached the wall to her left. Messy repair work had made no effort to conceal the gaping hole in the wall. Something, maybe another ship, had ripped through the wall like a fist through a paper bag.
Micro-foam sealant decorated the wall in splashes of pink and blue. The bright pastel colours were too cheerful for this dingy apartment.
As Tila moved through the room she noticed something glinting on the wall to her right. A brass plaque. Years of grime had long since hidden the surface of the polished metal but a recent scratch had uncovered a sharp, bright line which winked at her in the darkness.
Tila stepped though the light beam and wiped away the worst of the dirt with her sleeve. It read in bold letters 'Eclipse'. Underneath, in smaller text, it said 'Registered and licenced by Mirador Port Authority'.
Jackpot.
The bulkhead door finally crashed open and the room suddenly brightened. The men's shadows leered into the room like dusky ghosts.
One of them moved too quickly and in the darkness and his haste made the same mistake as Tila. He fell awkwardly, caught of balance by the shifting gravity plane and landed on his back.
The other cautiously rolled into the room, his feet aligned with the wall to his left. He cleared the lip of the door and neatly turned his feet to meet the oncoming wall.
The first man struggled to his feet, swearing and blaming the other for his mishap.
Tila considered her options. They had been following her for some time now, so it was unlikely she was escaping this without a fight. She could just give them what they wanted, but even that had its risks. In her experience men always wanted more than what was on offer.
She quickly tried to prise the brass plate from the wall but it was too firmly attached.
Typical, she thought. Everything else in this city falls apart if you so much as look at it wrong but this plaque had to be well-made.
Tila turned to face the two men. They had stopped bickering and were advancing, separating to approach her from the sides.
She stared them down, and held her ground. Defiant, yet ready to move.
"Que pasa?" she said cautiously. They didn't reply. "You can't have it," she told them.
"You don't even know what we want," said the one on the left. He was the handsome one, she decided, but it was a close call either way. He had fewer scars and most of his teeth.
"You know this isn't my first day, right?" said Tila.
"Maybe we want to give you something instead," said the other. He gestured obscenely with the only three fingers of his right hand.
Tila rolled her eyes. Amateurs.
Handsome pulled a knife. A short, broad blade with a hooked point. "Just give us the staff, and we'll let you go."
"Promise," lied the second man. His fingers still twitched.
Tila looked at the knife. Handsome held it properly, like a weapon and not a toy.
These men were more serious than she thought. Fine. Better to play it safe and live again another day. She held up a hand.
"Okay, okay." She reached over her shoulder with her other hand and pulled out the compact staff. "Here." She made as if to pass it to them, then dropped it. It clanged on the metal floor with an unusual sound and rolled forward to stop by their feet.
She held their gaze. "Oops," she said.
Handsome snapped his fingers at his companion and pointed at the staff, "Get it."
Tila fixed her eyes on Handsome. She had learned the hard way to never take her eyes off the man with the weapon. Fingers obviously thought the same, because his eyes were locked on Tila while his crippled hand scrabbled around on the floor. He found something, and with a triumphant smirk closed his hand over his companions foot.
Handsome glanced down.
Tila exploded.
In the half-second it took the men to react Tila slammed her knee into Fingers' face, then stamped on Handsome's foot, jabbed him in the face with her left to knock him off balance, and finished with a swift right-hook. Handsome hopped backward with yelp. On the back swing Tila brought her elbow down as hard as she could onto Finger's head.
Handsome shook his head and rushed back in, swinging wide with brute force and unthinking rage. Tila turned her shoulder to meet him, grabbed his knife-hand and forced his arm painfully over her shoulder. She twisted his wrist the wrong way until she felt something give. Handsome yelped in pain and dropped the knife fell from limp fingers and skittered away.
Now Tila was facing the plaque again. Keeping her tight grip on Handsome's wrist she lunged toward the wall and dropped to one knee, pulling Handsome with her. His head bounced off the brass plaque and he dropped.
Tila turned, ready for Fingers. He was on his feet again. He ignored the knife and instead held Tila's compact staff over one shoulder like a baton.
He charged, swinging high.
Tila went low. She dived between his legs and rolled, then kicked to her feet, knife in hand. Fingers yelled and swung again. Tila ducked and stabbed him in the foot, plunging the knife home. She felt the blade scrape on the metal floor. Fingers screamed, and dropped the staff.
He collapsed to the floor and struggled to pull the knife out, whimpering in pain.
Tila crouched, yanked the knife from his foot, and grabbed a fistful of hair to pull back his head.
"Don
't...don't..," he pleaded.
"You'll live," she said, and slammed his head into the floor.
Tila wiped the blood from the knife on his filthy clothes and turned her attention back to the brass nameplate. There was a dent where she had introduced it to Handsome's skull. Not so handsome now.
Tila used her sleeve to wipe the dent clean and ran the knife around the edges of the seal. She took her time to cut it away, being careful not to nick the metal with the blade. It was the work of a few moments to loosen the plaque enough so that she could lever it free with the flat of the blade. It finally, reluctantly, came free from the wall with a satisfying pop. She secured the plaque in her bag and threw the knife into a dark corner of the room.
She saw Handsome was waking from his stupor. He saw the staff on the floor and chanced it, reaching for it with unsteady fingers. Tila stepped forward, putting her full weight on his hand. Fingers splayed beneath her boot and he gave up a pitiful cry as he tried to tug his hand free.
Without taking her eyes off him Tila nudged the staff out of his reach, then stamped down. Her toes clipped the staff and it skidded away. Backspin and momentum fought for the upper hand. Backspin won. The staff slowed, hesitated and rolled back to her. Tila bounced it onto her foot and flicked her leg sideways. The staff hooked between her ankle and knee and spun up to eye level. She caught it with one hand and slotted it home under her backpack.
The she stepped over Handsome and headed for the door.
Handsome pulled himself to his knees, clutched his broken fingers and spat at her. "Next time we see you we'll kill you."
"I hear that a lot," said Tila as she adjusted her pack for comfort and started toward the doorway, "But next time I'll still let you live."
Confusion overcame anger. "Why?"
"Because life hurts more," she said.
Three
Ellie huffed on the visor of her helmet and gave it one last vigorous rub with her sleeve. After a final critical examination, she was satisfied.
She pulled it on, tucked blond hair behind her ears, and heard the magnetic latches click into place. She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed to stave off the discomfort caused by the change in air pressure. It never worked. Her ears still popped, but Ellie was ever the optimist.
She wiggled into her seat and tapped a button on the reconditioned control panel to open the channel to Malachi, but he was already speaking.
"...Easy on the bend."
"Huh? Say again?" Ellie's muscle memory took over and ran through the pre-flight sequence on autopilot. Fingers flicked switches and pressed buttons while her mind concentrated on what Malachi was saying.
"I said, you can go for it on the straight but take it easy on the bend. Your ship can't handle those tight turns."
Ellie's little racer hummed around her as the flight systems sprang to life. Pre-igniters rumbled behind her, firing up the engine core. The vibrations made her seat shudder.
"It has before."
"When?"
"Last week. Anything else I should know?"
"You should be able to beat him off the line but his engine is going to give him a greater top speed. And we didn't have a race last week."
"Maybe we did?"
"We did not, Ellie. You know you shouldn't race without me."
"Oh Malachi, you sound just like your dad when you worry."
Ellie felt a change in the vibrations rumbling through her seat, and the pitch of the engine whine increased. The pre-ignition sequence was over.
She entered the next command without looking. Full power was moments away.
Malachi said nothing. Ellie knew he would be trying to work out if she had just insulted him. In her opinion he needed to relax more. He over-analysed everything. It was a quality which made him a wonderful engineer and valuable race technician, but it made for lousy conversation if she ever compared him to his father.
The computer chirped once to tell Ellie the ship was ready to launch. It was her favourite sound.
Through the cockpit she watched today's opponent, Santini, running through his own launch sequence. He glanced back at her. She waved and gave him a friendly thumbs-up. Santini ignored her, pulled on his own helmet, and launched.
"Rude," Ellie muttered to herself. She took the controls, released her ship from the deck, rose above it and followed him through the bay doors of the Juggernaut and out into space.
There were other ships already outside. Eager observers waited just beyond the bay doors, ready to chase the two ships around the course and get the best possible view of the action.
Eight hundred metres away four ships hovered over the surface of the city in a square. They hovered perpendicular to the Juggernaut's hull and marked the start and finish line of the race.
For the people who had become known as the dispossessed: the refugees, the criminals and the homeless, the Juggernaut was at worst a prison, and at best a bitter reminder that somewhere out there, somewhere else among the Commonwealth planets, was a world they had once called home. Ellie was too young to remember a life before the Juggernaut, and since being orphaned during a raid six years ago, she had no chance at another home.
Almost everyone dreamed of escape but few people ever left. Even if they were fortunate enough to have a ship capable of Jumping to another system they were unlikely to be able to afford the transit fees.
Most of the city operated on a barter system. Honest work that paid in hard currency was rare and was almost certainly not going to be lucrative enough to fund a new life elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
If someone had the money and a ship it had probably been obtained through illicit channels. That meant a bounty, and that meant they were going to be picked up within hours of arriving in one of the neighbouring, and law-abiding, systems.
Bounty hunters rarely followed their leads back to the Juggernaut. The Celato system was lawless and crawling with pirates, so only the highest value marks were chased into the city. Anything less wasn't good business.
And if they were that rare citizen with honest credit and the means to travel then something else was keeping them here. Something so terrible that it made life on the Juggernaut, far from the civilised worlds of the Commonwealth, their best option.
But none of these applied to Ellie. She had committed no crime, she simply had no desire to leave. The city was home.
It was also her playground.
If you dared to enter and could salvage, repair or build something space worthy, you could race.
Like anything dangerous, the youth had quickly made it their own. The teenagers of the disparate Juggernaut communities had organised themselves well enough to hold races whenever and wherever they liked.
With almost a million people on board there was always someone, somewhere, ready to race. The ever-changing surface of the Juggernaut made for an unpredictable course and the lack of any effective authority within the city or the star system meant that there was no one to stop them. Racing was almost a rite of passage in some communities but one truth of life aboard the Juggernaut was universal: There was nowhere else to go.
No matter how fast you went, you couldn't escape the city.
Malachi couldn't escape the crowd.
He elbowed his way to the window of the viewing platform and rechecked the video feed coming through to his data pad.
The viewing platform for this race was the grimy bridge of an old private yacht. In its day, it had been a valuable ship. Now its spacious bridge was filled with laughing teenagers. Its elegant lines were lost to ugly but serviceable welds. The beautiful ship was now just another part of the city.
The Mandalay had at least been attached right side up, relatively speaking, so the bridge windows commanded a perfect view of square that was to be the start and finish of the race. Malachi could see Ellie coasting into position.
Half the crowd were eager to see her win again, half of them were looking forward to seeing her lose, and all of them were in his way.
&nbs
p; This race was to be a single lap around the underside of the city so most of it would be out of the line of sight of the spectators.
Instead, video feeds transmitted by ships holding position along the course and by pursuit craft would ensure no detail of the action would be missed.
The video feeds were for the benefit of the audience but Malachi and Ellie found them invaluable. While Ellie gave her full attention to the next hundred metres of the course, Malachi studied her opponents and advised her on what to do.
It seemed an obvious solution to them and they didn't understand why no one else did what they did.
Tila tried explaining to them once that it was a matter of pride. That pilots lived the role of the hero, that they loved to fight off all challengers with nothing but their skill and their wits. Every other racer wanted the glory for themselves.
Tila said teamwork was just an excuse for someone to let you down but in their case she couldn't deny that it worked.
Malachi and Ellie had dismissed her opinion on the grounds that she was nothing special in the cockpit and certainly no racer. So how could she understand pilots? But Tila did understand pride. Most racers were too arrogant and too proud to work with anyone else.
Too arrogant until they met Ellie, anyway.
Her win record spoke for itself, and Ellie's growing reputation was a small, blond microcosm of the change in fortunes for the New Haven community.
When Malachi and his father Theodore arrived in New Haven no one wanted to build a racer. It was the furthest thing from anyone's mind. At the time, the community did not even have reliable air and water. Theo had repaired and reconditioned the life support systems and he had taken the time to train others. As he passed on his skills he was able to take on bigger challenges. Eventually Theo restored the New Haven space dock. It was the only real asset New Haven owned, and it was the one thing which had attracted him to this community in the first place.
Once the dock was operational New Haven was open for business. Malachi and his father began repairing and servicing ships. This brought them a valuable income, and a ready supply of spare parts, some of which were even now hovering over the starting line.
The Juggernaut (Tales from the Juggernaut: Act 1) Page 3
