Alexander Outland: Space Pirate

by G. J. Koch

  “Worth a shot.”

  “Wonderful. One of you will have to hit the airborne button. I’m a little busy controlling the metal beast.”

  “Choice turn of phrase, Outland.” Lionside leaned through and slammed his fist onto the button.

  The tankfloater did its cough and sort of raise up thing. The positives of being airborne, if you could call it that, were immediate. No more fighting for control, no more squishy feel. No speeding up, however. And there wasn’t a lot of room in the pipe. Now I was having to make sure we remained in the air and away from the sides of the pipe. It sounded a lot easier than it was in reality.

  “Alexander! Stop drifting to the right!” The Governor didn’t sound peevish, just freaked out. Not really an improvement.

  “Outland, I don’t think it’s a good idea to bang the roof against the pipe!”

  “Nap, you’re hitting the left side again!”

  Only Tanner was quiet. I had the feeling he was getting airsick. Either that or he’d looked out the windows, because I heard gagging.

  I had to ignore them—the gate was coming up. The wisdom of slamming the front of the tank into what looked like a very sturdy bit of iron escaped me. Going back down was the least of our worries. Stranding in this river of waste was a much more realistic possibility.

  The tank wasn’t happy, either. It was coughing and complaining. I decided to go for broke. I didn’t see a lot of other options.

  I shifted and spun the tankfloater—it was slightly less cumbersome in the air—while I took my foot off the accelerator. I was in luck, the pipe was big enough that I could stand the tank up on its end. The tires or traction tread or whatever was active down below hit the gate. I slammed my foot back on acceleration while I turned the flying mechanism off at the same time. This meant only one hand on the wheel, but I could handle it for a short time.

  Because of how ’floaters worked, the weight of the tankfloater hit the gate like I’d hoped it would. The metal groaned but didn’t budge. For a moment I wondered if we were going to tumble down and land on the roof, which, all things considered, would both define and illustrate the term “very bad.” But The Outland Luck held. The metal shrieked, the barrier slammed down, and we rolled over and onward.

  It was still sludgy and difficult, but we were back to flat, which was a relief.

  “Nicely done, Outland.” Lionside sounded like he’d never doubted me. I was impressed—because I knew point-blank he’d doubted. Frankly, so had I.

  “Thanks. Now where? Are we going to have to go up again?”

  “In a way.” Lionside sounded evasive.

  “Explain that. In detail.”

  He sighed. “We’re going to come out in the main pool for the spaceport. We’ll have to fly out.”

  I let this one sit while we trundled along. The amount of yuck in the pipe was increasing, meaning our progress was impeded.

  Slinkie wasn’t as willing to let this one slide. “So, you’re saying that you sent us into the sewage pipe in an ancient and touchy vehicle and now, in order to get out of this river of crap, we’re going to have to swim up through an entire pool of space-droppings?”

  “Succinctly put. And, yes, accurate.”

  “Nap, can I kill him?”

  “Not yet. In case someone has to get out to go for help, wouldn’t you rather that be the man who knows all about these pipes?”

  “I’m wondering if Bryant’s here to help, hinder or harm.”

  Lionside made a sound of disgust. “Why would I be in here with you if I had ulterior motives? I sent us in here because we’re safer in here than on the streets.”

  I could hear snatches of conversation from his communicator. “Speaking of the streets, what’s the latest?”

  The Governor handed the communicator back to Lionside, who fiddled with it while we moved along, to use the term loosely. “Rioting in the streets. Donkeys everywhere. Dogs, too, it seems. More problems at the sewage plant.”

  Tanner groaned. “How soon can we get to the ship?”

  “Kid, are you feeling alright?”

  “No. Not at all.” He sounded faint.

  The Governor pulled out his cell phone, hit a couple of buttons, and handed it to Tanner. “Sit down, close your eyes, and listen to this. Miss Slinkie, please assist young Tanner. His distress is more important than you pointing a gun at the Major.”

  Slinkie grumbled, but I heard her move around. She muttered about being forced to be a mother hen, but she seemed to be taking care of the kid.

  “What did you give him?”

  “Music, so he can keep himself distracted.” I looked at the Governor out of the corner of my eye. He was giving me his usual look for when he thought I’d missed something key. “Our young man’s not repulsed by our current surroundings so much as being affected by everything going on right now, Alexander. As I believe I mentioned only a short while ago?”

  True, he had. Apparently telepathy had some major downsides apart from not having any friends or scoring the major happy time. As I thought about it, Tanner had scored a lot tonight, and seemed surrounded by people doing their best to be nice to him, so either he whined a lot or I was his personal savior. I gave it even odds for both.

  It was getting harder to drive. “Lionside, just out of curiosity, but if we’re going to drive into the bottom of a pool of waste, how is it we’re not drowning in said waste right now?”

  “We have to get through the filter.” He said it like it was obvious. I went back to hating him.

  “Filter?”

  As I asked this, I saw the filter. It had huge metal slats that opened briefly to allow waste through, and then slammed shut. I timed them. They slammed shut faster than we were able to move.

  “Okay, gang? It’s official. We are gonna die.”

  CHAPTER 55

  I slowed down, not that this made much of a difference. We were barely moving forward now as it was. Everyone was talking but no one was offering much in the way of help.

  The gunk was up over the tires. I checked—easily to the middle of the doors. Getting out wasn’t going to be an option. I didn’t want to get out in the first place, but liquid pressure is a heavy thing, and I doubted anyone other than Lionside would have a chance of getting one of the doors opened even if we were willing to go swimming in Crap Creek.

  “I want to talk to Randolph.” I didn’t shout, I said it quietly. But everyone else stopped speaking.

  Lionside fiddled with his communicator and then held it near me. “Randolph?”

  “Yeah, Nap. We’re still secure, and we’re almost done here. Where are you? I expected you a while ago.”

  “We have a problem.” I described where we were and what we were facing.

  Randolph was quiet for a few long seconds. “You’re sure on the timing? It’s consistent, not one longer, one shorter sort of thing?”

  “Give me a minute, Outland, I have a timer.” Lionside concentrated and the rest of us sat there. I couldn’t speak for the others, but I was wondering how I’d ended up in this situation. It wasn’t like I’d done anything to deserve it. Well, not to deserve this. “Aha,” Lionside said finally. “There is a differentiation in the pattern. Three times it opens for ten seconds. The fourth time it opens for twelve seconds. Then back to three for ten, one for twelve, and so on.”

  “Twelve seconds still isn’t enough.”

  “It might be, Nap.” I could tell Randolph was thinking. We were finally back to his area of expertise, which was good. But if he said it couldn’t be done, we were royally flushed, literally and figuratively.

  “This thing can’t move fast. At all. Particularly because of our, ah, terrain.”

  “Got that, Nap. You need to get up close, as close as you can without being hit by the opening flaps.”

  “Great plan. Only the gunk gushing out is going to push us back.”

  “Right. So, you need to start doing this on the start of the cycle. So, as soon as the last twelve second opening c
loses, you move up. You’ll get shoved back, move up again, and so on. You should be close enough by the start of the next twelve second cycle to move through. You don’t have to be all the way through—the closing of the flaps should hit the back of the tankfloater right and move you in the rest of the way.”

  “Should? The huge metal flaps should hit the back right? What if they don’t hit the back right?”

  “I hope you guys can swim without opening your eyes, noses or mouths.”

  “Thanks, Randolph. You’re a pal.”

  “We did things like this as drills,” Tanner gasped out. “On simulators, but still, it’s a doable thing.”

  “I didn’t do things like this.”

  “Sure you did,” Randolph said. “Same thing, simulation, but we did it.”

  “When and where?”

  He chuckled. Then again, he was safely in the Sixty-Nine. “Nap, think back to the Academy. The Leisure Center?”

  “Not coming through.”

  “This is just like Mission Aqueesis: Depth Charge.”

  “Mission Aqueesis? Depth Charge? What are you guys talking about?” Slinkie sounded stressed. “I’ve never heard that either one of you did underwater work.”

  “We didn’t. It’s a game. A hard game.”

  “You were good at it,” Randolph said. I wasn’t sure if he was being loyal or truthful. Prayed it was truthful.

  “Fifteen years ago.”

  “Outland, if you don’t feel up to the challenge, as young Not-Really-Almondinger said, either one of us can do the job.”

  “Lionside, if you’re not careful, I’m going to shove you out an airlock.”

  “If only you were a man like Nitin, or if we were, in fact, in a spaceship at this point in time, I might be afraid. Look, Outland, stop sitting there. Drive forward or back all the way up, and maybe we’ll survive it and get to your ship before it’s destroyed.”

  “Gosh, when you put it that way….” I took a deep breath. “Slinkie, what are the odds?”

  “Of our survival? Slim to none, Nap.”

  “I meant of you sleeping with me if we survive.”

  “Oh.” I looked over my shoulder. She was still taking care of Tanner but looked embarrassed. Possibly because everyone else had turned to look at her, too. “Um, why are you asking me that, Nap?”

  I couldn’t figure out why she was confused. I asked her that all the time.

  “Chief Weapons and Security Officer Slinkie, the Captain tends to do better if he feels he has something positive to live for.”

  “Audrey, what are you doing on the line?”

  “Trying to get you to hurry up, Captain. We will not remain secure for too much longer. I’m monitoring communications and Herion Military has the spaceport surrounded. Some to stop Jabbob, who is creating much havoc, some to stop us from leaving.

  Also, there are the riots, which I estimate will reach the spaceport in less than fifteen minutes standard galactic time.”

  “Thanks for the pressure update, Audrey.” She lived to do this to me, apparently. I really needed to talk to Randolph about his programming choices. “So, Slink, what’s the word?” I made eye contact. I figured it might be the last time I got to look at her.

  She stared at me for a long few moments, then she smiled. While giving me the dove-look. “Nap, you da tomcat.”

  “I love you, Slink. Lionside? Don’t touch my girl. Everyone else? Let’s get ready for the most disgusting part of the most disgusting ride of our lives.”

  CHAPTER 56

  The great thing about games is that you can start over. Mess up the big mission and “die”? No problem, just hit the “start over” button. The problem with real life was that it didn’t like to give do-overs.

  The tankfloater didn’t like it, but we shoved closer to the filter. Then got shoved back. Drove forward. Shoved back. We were making progress, but it was awful. My Great-Aunt Clara used to call this taking three steps forward and two steps back. She wasn’t a fan of this kind of progress. Neither was I.

  We were close enough that I had to have the wiper blades going on high to have a prayer of seeing anything. Visibility being what it was, the counting became more and more important.

  “Lionside, you’re in charge of timing. We’re about to start getting so close that we won’t be able to see a thing.”

  “On it, Outland. Our progress, such as it is, has been steady. We move forward for ten seconds, are pushed back for five, hold steady for three, then move forward two more seconds before the next time the flaps open.”

  “So we have to time it to get right up there on the twelve second opening.”

  “Right.”

  “How many more advances do you figure?” He was quiet. I waited. He remained quiet. “Did Lionside just die on us?”

  “No, Outland.” He sounded testy. “I’m doing the mathematics.”

  “You will need three more cycles to complete at your current rate, Captain.” Audrey was still on the com it seemed. “Unless you did not press on during this conversation.”

  “No, I pressed on. So, who’s going to tell me when to, ha, floor it and hope for a helpful pat on the rear?”

  “I am.” Now Lionside and Audrey were doing the unison thing. I hated the unison thing. I was going to have to pass a crew rule against it, just as soon as we were out of this particular mess but hopefully before our next undoubtedly worse mess.

  “Whatever.” I had to figure the Outland Luck was either going to save us or fail. Spent the time inching forward and sliding back counting up the number of times I’d been lucky since the last time I hadn’t. Ran into trouble in deciding if getting to kiss Slinkie three times counted as luck, skill, karma, or my proof that hard work and perseverance did still pay off. Couldn’t reach a conclusion, chose to risk it and take kissing Slinkie out of the equation.

  “Almost there,” Lionside said. He sounded tense.

  “Please get ready, Captain.” Audrey sounded calm and cheerful. I couldn’t wait to put Lionside fully in charge of communications.

  All pilots can and do talk to their ships. Sometimes out loud, usually telepathically. Not like Tanner’s telepathy—maybe it was empathy or natural affinity or something. All I knew was that the Sixty-Nine and I had an understanding. She was my ship, I was her pilot, we were a team. One was useless without the other.

  You had to tell your ship the truth. Maybe you only told your ship the truth, maybe no human ever knew the truth, but your ship had to know. It had to know your strengths and weaknesses, so it could compliment them. Just like you had to make allowances for the capabilities your ship didn’t have while taking advantage of what your ship did well.

  I communed with the tankfloater. It hadn’t been with me long, but after all we’d been through together, it was long enough. It was old, considered inferior, and, when it wasn’t in the sewage pipes, it was surrounded by models that were supposedly far more desirable. Just like my crew. Just like, I had to admit, me.

  Everyone wanted to count us out. I’d been told I’d never get off Zyzzx. I went all over the galaxy. I’d been told I’d fail the Academy. I passed with honors. I’d been told I’d never amount to anything. I was considered the best pilot in the galaxy. Because I believed. I believed in me and my ship, and, as they joined me, my crew.

  Now, anyone with half a brain would tell me that we were going to die. That my vehicle wasn’t good enough to do what had to be done. That I wasn’t good enough.

  But I knew better. Because I believed.

  “Ready?” I wasn’t asking the crew—I was asking the tank.

  It shuddered, and everyone else gasped, though I could tell Lionside was still counting. But I didn’t worry. That wasn’t a shudder of defeat or collapse. That was the tank’s way of saying that, for its kind, it was da tomcat, too.

  “Now!” Lionside and Audrey both shouted, his voice booming, hers perky. Didn’t matter. I’d had the accelerator to the floor, but I applied more pressure anyway. The tank jerke
d forward, a tiny bit faster. But the tiny bit was all we needed. I hoped.

  We went over some kind of bump that jostled everyone. I kept my foot pressed against the floorboard. My leg felt like it wanted to fall off, but I didn’t let up.

  “Six seconds until the flaps close,” Audrey said. Cheerfully.

  “Five,” Lionside countered. Not cheerfully.

  “Four.”

  “Three.”

  “Two.”

  “Everyone, shut up.”

  No sooner were those words out of my mouth than the tank shuddered like it had been hit by an entire building. The flaps had closed on us.

  CHAPTER 57

  The sound of the metal flap slamming into our metal vehicle was still reverberating. I couldn’t hear anything and

  I doubted anyone other than Audrey could, either. For all I knew, Sexbots couldn’t hear through the din of crashing metal. That was fine. I had to figure at least some of them were screaming. Not me. It’s hard to scream through gritted teeth.

  We were through. At least I didn’t smell anything horrible, so I assumed we were through and not cut in half. I slammed my fist onto the floater button. The tank complained but I could feel the difference. We weren’t driving through a river of crap. Now we were swimming in a lake of it. And we were at the bottom. I hoped Tanner wasn’t looking out the windows.

  “Any idea of where we’ll surface?” I shouted in the hopes someone would hear me.

  “None yet,” Lionside shouted back. I assumed he was shouting, anyway. His voice sounded faint and far away.

  I decided verbal communications could wait. I took my foot off the accelerator and started maneuvering the tankfloater like we were in a thick cloudbank instead of the yuck stew of nightmare and legend.

  It didn’t like flying, but apparently that was because it didn’t like having to hold itself up in the air. Amazingly enough, the tank seemed happy in the sea of crap. We were certainly moving with more buoyancy than we’d had in the air. I chose not to comment. If it functioned better under these circumstances, who was I to argue?