“One BPM guaranteed. She’ll be fine; the readings will suggest she’s dead. Ready to bust the door?”
Adira grunted an affirmative and bent over the nondescript door’s control panel, a small gray blister the size of a human thumb. Adira easily removed the casing with the tip of her knife and got to work on the wiring while Mach stood guard.
The orbital must be reaching its evening, he thought, given the lack of traffic in and around the boulevard. That suited them just fine.
“We’re in,” Adira said. A wire sparked and the sound of a servo whirring inside the door’s mechanism told Mach she’d done a fine job, but then given the age of the orbital, it wasn’t especially difficult; most of the security devices and protocols had long since been cracked, the data shared across the various Sphere networks so any two-bit crook would know how to bypass most of the things here.
“Ready?” Mach said.
“Let’s do it,” Adira replied, opening the door to expose a narrow and short hallway leading into the boutique. The scent of soaps and other fragrant gifts wafted out, making Mach choke on the cloying air.
Wasting no time, he and Adira entered, closing the door quietly behind them. They passed a number of racks filled with stock until they came to an office that resembled a prison cell due to its stark whiteness and utilitarian furniture—a plastic table and a tall, gray locker with its door hanging open.
The soft beats of some ambient electronic music were coming from the shop front. Mach returned his attention and caught up with Adira. She stood by an entrance that led into the shop. A glass-beaded curtain stood in their way.
Peering between the strands, Mach watched Stessoa’s shadow move across the shop, replacing stock on the shelves. The front doors had since closed, giving the place a deserted feel.
When he made sure her back was turned, Mach entered the shop. The glass beads clicked and clacked together. Stessoa spun round; her eyes grew wide. The human woman brought her hand up to her mouth then to her chest. She cocked her head like an inquisitive dog.
A red silk wrap clung to her body and shimmered beneath the light of the boutique. Her eyes picked up the sparkle, making her shock and panic all the more visceral. For a brief heartbeat Mach stopped, wondering if all this would be a mistake; not that they had an option.
Shaking himself out of it, Mach stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Adira sprinted out from behind Mach and grabbed the woman’s arm, pulling it behind her back and forcing her to the carpeted floor. Mach winced when her face struck the surface and she let out a sharp scream.
“I’m sorry,” Mach said, leaning a knee onto her back.
One quick jab to the back of the neck was all it took. Her body went limp when the stim entered her bloodstream. Mach read her pulse with two fingers against her neck. “It’s slowing already,” he said.
“Take the readings, then.”
The scan took just over thirty seconds, but it would be enough biometric data to ‘prove’ to the Black Swan they had killed her if the orbital owner had them intercepted before they headed off to retrieve Tulula, the vestan engineer.
With Adira’s help, Mach dragged Stessoa back through the narrow corridor and placed her into the locker. “We should get going,” Adira said as she closed the locker door behind her. “Quicker we get the vestan, the quicker we can get out.”
Back in the hallway to the rear of the shop, Mach and Adira stepped inside a pair of EVA suits that they had stolen off some guards on their way to the boutique. These two were from a couple of human engineers who had come in via an airlock after presumably carrying out some maintenance.
Mach assumed the station had suffered some damage from the Atlantis ship if the horan destroyer debris was anything to go by. The EVA suits were of the latest CW design, no doubt smuggled out by people like Sanchez. The black form-fitting material fit snugly around Mach’s joints and muscles, the nanotechnology embedded into the fabric would keep the effects of space at bay, while the small helmet would provide comms and breathing.
The thin backpack tanks, attached to a pair of micro-reactor motors, would provide enough air for at least an hour of space-walking; that would be plenty of time to reach Tulula’s pod.
Mach and Adira set their comms to a rarely used frequency.
“Can you hear me?” Adira said.
Mach confirmed he could and added, “We go in, grab the vestan and get back to the hangar ASAP. Understand?”
“What are we going to do about the Swan’s people guarding the Intrepid?” Adira asked.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead; I’m sure something will present itself. In the meantime, let’s just go grab that vestan before the Swan’s goons realize what’s happened.”
“Are you sending the biometrics first?”
“Already done. Come on, let’s go.”
***
It took Mach and Adira longer to get to the orbiting pod than he had first realized. It didn’t help that one of Swan’s goons had tried to accost them at the airlock. If it weren’t for Mach’s quick thinking, Adira would have killed the man.
Mach had managed to convince him that they were the maintenance crew going back to finalize some repairs. With that little obstacle successfully hurdled, Mach and Adira entered the airlock and shut the bulkhead behind them.
Mach hit the red depressurizing button, and with a loud, protracted hiss, the airlock equalized its pressure with the vacuum of space. The anti-g switched off. Mach and Adira floated toward the external hatch.
“Give me a hand,” Mach said, gripping one side of the metal ring.
Adira grabbed the other and nodded.
It took an initial heave, but soon the ring was spinning and the hatch door opened, allowing them to float out into the great expanse. The suit around Mach’s body reacted instantly, expanding a few millimeters away from his skin to create a warm pocket of air. Controls for the thrusters were embedded into a small panel on his hip.
“I see the pod,” Adira said as her lithe body floated away from the orbital, the station’s lights illuminating her in a stop-frame motion, its great bulk spinning behind them.
Mach maneuvered his thrusters so he caught up with Adira. Together they headed for the pod that stayed within approximately two hundred meters of the orbital. It was only as they neared that Mach noticed the pod was tethered with a thin nanosteel cable.
“Here,” he said, grabbing hold of it. “Use this to guide you to the pod.”
“I’m quite capable,” Adira snorted back at him as she fired her thrusters. She flew away, head up and arms by her side as she sped toward the pod.
“Show off,” Mach said. He continued to use the cable as a guide, preferring to preserve the suit’s reactor fuel as much as possible. It took a few minutes, but eventually Mach joined Adira by the pod’s airlock. The pod was much larger up close than he had initially realized. It was at least ten meters in diameter. The dulled silver surface of its titanium shell glinted under the larger orbital’s light.
“Are you expecting to just knock?” Mach said.
“I never knock,” Adira said, reaching into a tool pouch around her thigh. She pulled out a long thin rod with a hexagonal-shaped socket at the end. “I’ve studied more airlock mechanisms than you’ve had hookers,” she said, pressing her body flat against the pod as she searched her hands across its surface.
Mach pulled himself around the pod’s outer shell until he found a small porthole. He peered inside and saw no movement. There was a light on, though, casting angular shadows among the console desk and flight chair.
“It’s a ship,” Mach said to Adira. “Not just a pod after all.”
“Huh, clever disguise,” she said. “Ah, found it. Give me a hand here.”
Adira had fitted the tool into a narrow slit.
“Just keep turning,” Adira said. “It’s the manual airlock control.”
“This isn’t exactly stealthy,” Mach said. “Whoever is in there is going to know
what’s going on.”
A burst of static exploded over their comm channel, making Mach wince with the unexpected blare of white noise. Adira yelled out but continued to turn the airlock release bolt. Mach stared back to the orbital, convinced the Black Swan or one of her many goons suspected what they were doing, but a small, almost digital voice spoke over the comm channel.
“Who’s out there? I’m armed and not afraid to blast you into space.”
“Is that you, Tulula?” Adira asked as both she and Mach continued to wind the airlock bolt. The hatch was starting to open, a few millimeters at a time.
“Who’s asking? I’ve paid the Swan this week; I was promised I’d be left alone.”
“We mean you no harm,” Mach said. “Look, I’ll come to the porthole; you can see me. We’re nothing to do with the Black Swan. We’ve come to help you.”
“I don’t need helping,” the small voice said. Mach detected a considerable tremble of fear.
“Tulula, you’re a vestan engineer, aren’t you? Well, we’ve come to hire you.”
“No, can’t be hired. I stay here.”
“Listen to me, we haven’t come to cause any trouble, but if you stay here, the Black Swan is going to do something you really don’t want to happen.” Mach left the unwinding to Adira and floated around to the porthole. When he peered through, he saw the small vestan hunched over her console desk. He waved and smiled. “See, I’m just here to help you. The truth is we were hired to kill you, but we couldn’t do it. We just want to get away, get as far from this place as we can. We have transport; we can help you.”
He didn’t like lying to the vestan, but he didn’t see any other option with their time running out.
“You’re the people from the Jaguar Mk1, aren’t you?” the vestan said, standing up from her console and coming closer to the porthole. She was shorter than most vestans, probably no more than a meter and a half tall. She had bright yellow hair plaited into four ponytails. Two flopped down on either side of her head, reaching down to a small, pointed chin. Large yellow eyes looked out at him with a mix of wonder and fear.
Like most vestans she had altered her physical makeup to the most practical for her designated lifestyle. She had double-jointed elbows and fingers, allowing her to manipulate complicated tools with ease. Her short size meant she could probably fit into almost any ship’s maintenance hatches.
Her near-black skin was smooth, almost glossy where it showed around her neck and upper arms. A leather jerkin, stained dark with grease and oil, featured a multitude of pockets and loops, all of which seemed to carry one type of tool or another.
“The Jaguar, yes,” Mach said, smiling, trying to appear friendly and nonthreatening. “How did you know?”
She turned and pointed to a bank of computers lining the left side of the pod. It reminded Mach of Babcock’s place. She must have been listening in on flight control, but how did she know his ship was a Jaguar?
“How did you get that ship? They’re not even in general use yet,” the vestan asked.
“You know about that, how?” Mach asked. He looked back briefly to Adira; she was nearly done with the airlock, the hatch hanging open at a forty-five-degree angle.
“I was one of the principal designers, before I was shipped out here. How does she fly?”
“She doesn’t, not really, that’s why I need your help. I need an engineer to fix the fusion crystal array; something happened during an L-jump and we’ve lost almost all flight capacity apart from thirty percent on the Gamma Drive.”
Mach kept her talking while out of the side of his eye he spotted Adira climbing into the airlock. “Listen, Tulula, we really mean no harm, I promise. I’m not sure what else I can say for you to believe me.”
“There’s one thing,” she said, bringing her face closer to the porthole.
“Name it,” Mach replied, finding himself mesmerized by her huge eyes.
“Take me with you.”
“What?” Adira said.
Tulula spun round then back to Mach. “You want me to fix the array, right? Then you take me with you. The Black Swan… she uses me for vestan secrets, and… other things. I can’t take it anymore. And with what happened yesterday to the destroyers, I don’t think there’d be a better time.”
“Let us in and we’ll talk about this,” Mach said. “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”
The vestan hesitated for a moment, her eyes lingering on Mach. Then, as if a switch in her mind had gone off, she nodded. “Okay, come in.”
Mach smiled and pushed himself over to the open airlock. He gave Adira the thumbs-up as the hatch closed behind him and it started to pressurize. When it had equalized with the pod’s interior, the bulkhead opened.
Tulula stood there, holding a stun webber.
“Walk slowly,” Tulula said. “Don’t try anything stupid. I’m not afraid to shoot.”
Adira inclined her head to show her agreement and stepped into the pod. “It’s not loaded,” she said almost as an afterthought as she spun round, taking in the pod’s interior.
Tulula glared at her, lowering the weapon. “How did you know?”
“It’s her business to know these things, don’t worry,” Mach said. He placed a hand on the vestan’s shoulder to show her he meant no harm. “I’m Mach,” he said, “and this is my able colleague, Adira.”
“You already know my name,” Tulula said with a curt nod to both of them. “Now, we ought to get moving if you’re to get your ship away from the orbital.”
“Before we do that,” Adira said, taking off her helmet and shaking her hair out. “What do you know of the attack on the destroyers? Did you see what happened?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try us,” Mach said. “Perhaps it was the Atlantis ship per chance?”
The young vestan narrowed her eyes in that scrutinizing way of her species. “You knew?”
“Of course we do. Why else do you think we have a Jaguar?” Adira said, crossing one leg over another as she sat back.
“You’re…. going after it?” Tulula said.
“We are if you can help us.”
The vestan engineer whooped with a surprising joy and dashed across to the console, sitting down in the swivel chair. “You’ll take me with you? You promise me?” she said over her shoulder.
“Sure,” Mach replied. “Fix our ship and you can stay onboard as long as you want. But we’re going to need to get to the hangar and beyond the Swan’s armed guard first.”
Tulula spun the chair to face Mach. “I have a plan. How adverse to risk are you?”
Adira laughed. She jabbed a thumb towards Mach. “This fool doesn’t know the meaning of risk.”
“What do you have in mind?” Mach asked.
“Take a seat next to me and we’ll get started,” Tulula said with a glee in her face that Mach couldn’t quite tell was from living like a hermit or genuine insanity. Either way, he sat in the copilot chair and held on as the vestan decoupled the pod from the tether and blasted up and away from the great spinning orbital. The hangar was on the other side, toward the end of a central hub that stretched out for at least a couple klicks from the main orbital structure.
When Mach got his breath back from the surprise thrust, he asked, “If this thing could move like this all the time, why hadn’t you left before?”
“Orbital defenses and the old destroyers…” she said, pointing to the field of slowly orbiting debris. “I’ve already disabled their main laser battery array after it took damage from the Atlantis ship, or whatever it was, but they could come online any time.”
“We better be quick, then,” Adira said from the couch, her fists gripping an overhead handle to prevent falling around the pod’s interior.
“Here,” Tulula said. “The hangar bay door.”
“Can you hack into the Intrepid’s comm system?” Mach asked.
Tulula brought the pod to a quarter klick away from the hangar and mat
ched its rotation so that it appeared they were stationary. She then brought up a holoscreen over the console and started to mess with the radio system.
“I’m not seeing any system to get into,” she said, “which is expected, but there is a live node in there. Something I’ve not seen before.”
“Must be Squid,” Adira said. “Can you get a message to it?”
Tulula manipulated the controls some more before saying she could.
“Tell the squad to make sure everyone’s inside the Intrepid,” Mach said, “if you’re planning on doing what I think you’re doing.”
The vestan smiled and nodded.
“The message is sent. They’re all inside. Now we go in.”
“Go in?” Adira asked. “What do you mean exactly?”
“Once we’re inside, make sure your helmets are on.”
“You’re not…” Adira gripped the overhead handle with both hands. “Oh shit, you are.”
Mach leaned forward as Tulula laughed and launched the pod toward the hangar bay door, her hands speeding across the ship’s controls. As they came closer, Mach could see the hangar doors opening. He could only imagine the surprise of the guards inside.
When the door had slid up into the station about halfway, the pod was just a few meters outside. Orange bursts of gunfire lit up the dark space. The pod boomed and rattled as half a dozen rounds struck against its shell. It was clear to Mach it wouldn’t stand too much of that.
Tulula raised the pod higher, following the rising hangar bay door.
Mach could see the half-dozen armed men and women struggling to open the door behind them.
“They won’t get out,” Tulula said, her voice flat. “I’ve overridden the controls. They’ll die of hypoxia in a few minutes. Now we wait.”
For those two solid minutes, Mach had to look away, unable to watch those guards die a horrible death, even if they did pass out after just fifteen seconds due to the pressure difference.
“Don’t pity them,” Tulula said. “They’re murderers and rapists. They deserve this fate.” She lowered the pod and navigated it inside the hangar, bringing it next to the Jaguar. It clattered to the landing deck, rocking back and forth until a landing magnet engaged. “We’ve got just a few minutes,” the vestan said, nodding her head to the airlock door already opening.
Galactic - Ten Book Space Opera Sci-Fi Boxset Page 17
