“All done,” he said. “You ready, kid?”
“Yeah,” she said. “G’bye, golden boy. G’bye, Bells.”
In the silence that followed, the room seemed blessedly devoid of menace.
“How does she do that!” said Arabella. She sounded envious. “Time, too! No wonder Time Corp are all over them!”
There was a quick slither in the air.
“Bells, you forgot!” said Kez. “Quick, givus it!”
Was Mikkel mistaken, or was that a wedding band that Arabella was tugging off her ring finger? She shoved it at Kez too quickly for him to be sure, but Mikkel’s mind was already buzzing. The last four digits of the core code had been his, he was absolutely certain. And Kez travelled in time, not just space. Mikkel began to grin.
Then there was a brief jolt that shook them all. Overhead, an alarm wailed.
“Ooops, that’s me cue!” said Kez, and vanished once again. This time, she didn’t return.
“Now what?” demanded Mikkel, brushing past Arabella to let himself out of the room. Curiously enough, she didn’t try to stop him.
“Um, sir?” she said, almost trotting to keep up. “Sir, you’re still not dressed.”
“Someone just fired on my ship, ensign! Try to keep up.”
“Yes, sir!”
They entered the bridge together, at a run. Mikkel’s Commander was sitting in the Captain’s chair, white-faced and sick, while two of the security staff held him at gun-point, their weapons set on the highest stun setting. Time Corp Headquarters was displayed on the hailer, Commodore Cook’s craggy face displayed in disturbingly large proportion.
“Good to see you, Captain,” he said. His grim tone suggested that Mikkel was to be considered fully clothed until they were otherwise notified, and Mikkel’s officers made way for him without the faintest hint of a snicker.
Mikkel, his voice as grim as the Commodore’s, said: “Did Time Corp just fire upon the T.C.S. Slider?”
“We did,” said Commodore Cook. “T.C.S. Slider left Control Orbit a little less than thirty RMUs ago by Control time, in order to meet with person or persons unknown. A little careful digging in the Core brought to light certain er, discrepancies in Commander Tucker’s communications log. Suffice it to say, Captain, that we’ve just cleared up a bothersome little drug smuggling ring that has been evading us for some time now. Not to mention the spurious allegations made against you by the Commander. You’re back in command. Commander Tucker will be removed to Control for questioning.”
His face disappeared as suddenly as Kez was wont to do, but left behind it considerably more agreeable feelings. Mikkel dropped down into the recently vacated Captain’s chair, grandly ignoring such mundane details as a bare chest and towel-clad waist, and barked out: “Systems, report! What’s the damage?”
The damage wasn’t so bad after all: a glancing hit down the port side, more to warn than to damage, and one of the three large port cannons was floating in their wake. Mikkel, listening to the run-down, half expected Arabella to disappear as thoroughly as Kez and Marx had done. He kept her in the corner of his eye, but she stayed where she was, plump and calm, and when he could at last turn to face her again, she was holding a neat pile of clothes.
“Yours, sir,” she said helpfully. “One of the swabbers fetched them.”
“What’s the matter, ensign? Doesn’t my uniform meet your exacting standards?”
“Are you going to turn me in?” she asked, pleasingly to the point. She didn’t look concerned, Mikkel noticed. He was a little rueful at the thought that she had no need to be. He wasn’t going to turn her in.
“Well, ensign, I wasn’t witness to any misbehavior. I can’t even confirm that the code the pirates used was mine, so I can’t report it stolen. My hands are tied.”
“Thank-you, sir. I wouldn’t like to think that there’s bad blood between us.”
“Oh no,” said Mikkel, leaning in close enough to fluster her. He took his time lifting the clothes from her hands, enjoying the moment. “I think we’re going to be very good friends, ensign.”
***
Clipping from The Margaree Moocher, Community Column.
Law Enforcement in the community
Robbery at Margaree Downtown Drive-through Grocer.
At 3.57pm local time, officers were called to the scene of a robbery at the Margaree Downtown Drive-through Grocer. The offenders broke into the secure back room via the bolted back door, using a welding laser to cut through the 3-inch steel, and kicked free the safebox in the back room.
Fellow staff say that when a female staff member went to investigate the noise, the robbers held an industrial saw to her throat and threatened to decapitate her if she did not produce the key to the grocer’s strongbox.
According to witness statements, it was at this point that a small girl wriggled out the window of the next vehicle in line and through the drive-through window. Her co-passenger, described as a small, angry man, fell out the vehicle’s window while attempting to restrain her, and entered the grocer by kicking in the drive-through window.
The level of noise at this point became so great that surrounding houses as well as waiting customers pinged the Margaree Law Enforcement Office on their emergency frequency. Officers arrived on the scene to find a female staff member in hysterics on the floor, two bloodied and battered offenders handcuffed to the cool-room door, and several other staff members in the process of emptying a bottle of scotch between them.
The female employee was transferred to Margaree Medical Centre without comment, but other staff members were heard to comment: “She hit him in the head with a spanner. She hit him in the ******* head with a ******* spanner.”
Margaree Law Enforcement has taken custody of the offenders, though the rescuers were not found in the vicinity. Anyone with information regarding these two persons of interest should comment on the Law Enforcement community board or ping the Office directly. The individuals are described as a short, sandy-haired male in his early forties, and a young, dark-haired female of ten to twelve years old.
Incident at the Margaree Local Library.
An incident at the Margaree Local Library has resulted in the re-appearance of several ancient book-form readers once catalogued as lost in the fire of 3069. The book-form readers have since been burned for safety reasons. Residents are reminded that travelling to points in time before the advent of time-travel is strictly prohibited and will be investigated by the Time Corp as a serious crime. Any information welcomed by the Margaree Law Enforcement Office and Time Corp.
Community Interest
*The Margaree Dramatic Society’s production of The Fall of Fourth World will be playing in Donovan’s Dimensions Playhouse all week. Attendees are reminded that outside snacks and drinks are not permitted, and that any devices interfering with the stage effects will be promptly confiscated.
*Enquiring minds wish to know if the overflow of stage effects in last night’s performance of the above was an attempt to make the performance more real to the audience, or if there was a malfunction with stage equipment. Complaints are already flowing in from Margaree’s leading ladies, who complain of ruined frocks and soggy shoes in the wake of an unexpected flood that deluged the audience.
***
13th World
“This is a boring planet.”
“What’s the problem? Not enough people shooting at us?”
Kez scowled. “Wot’s all that?”
“Those are trees, Kez.”
“Who put ’em all there? S’flamin’ messy.”
“I’m sure they’ll be sorry to know they’ve offended you.”
“Where we gonna land, then?” demanded Kez. She had no very high opinion of trees.
“We don’t,” said Marx, his eyes flicking between the console display and the curved front window. “They’ve jerry-rigged an anchoring system to the underside of the branches. Old-fashioned but effective.”
“Wot, we gotta hover?”
“Just like we’re in port, only using a bit more power. Stop bouncing around the cabin, kid; I have to bring her in under cover.”
Kez’s eyes brightened. “I can do it.”
Marx threw her a brief, sardonic look. “That’s what you said in Margaree. I still haven’t been able to get those scratches out of the stern.”
Kez huffed and dropped into her seat.
“S’not that bad.”
Marx, who was doing something fiddly with the footbar, didn’t reply. Kez didn’t really expect him to. She sat clasping her knees and watching Marx with sharp black eyes, intent on catching his every gesture and button-press. It was true that she’d scraped the stern on a pig-pen that was closer than she’d thought: but it wasn’t as though she’d actually crashed, and it could have been a lot worse. The pig-pen could still be attached, for starters. It wasn’t, because Kez had been able to reprogram the chronomatrix and give the pauli driver a virtual kick in the pants before the pig-pen and the Upsydaisy were properly merged. She’d been very pleased with herself at the time.
It should count for something, anyway: she couldn’t reach the footbar properly yet, so she couldn’t do the amazingly quick kick-and-abouts that Marx managed.
Can’t do that with buttons, thought Kez, with a mixture of grim approval and deep regret. Buttons, though– buttons were good for guns.
“I’d rather you didn’t point that feral grin in my direction,” said Marx. “And keep away from the firing controls, you bloodthirsty little megalomaniac.”
They were under the canopy as he spoke, in a duck-tail flip of motion. Kez, looking up at the branches from the underside, thought momentarily that they were fake. Then she heard the scrape-and-rustle of real foliage against the Upsydaisy’s hull, and took a closer look.
“They’re flamin’ bonsais!”
“Welcome to Thirteenth World, kid.”
Kez threw him a suspicious look. “There ain’t no Thirteenth World.”
“Don’t tell them that,” Marx advised. To Kez’s surprise he toggled open the hawser hatch: the real hawser and not the mag-force one.
“Who’s them?” she demanded, asking the most pressing question. The little lump of space-rock that she and Marx had anchored to was scarcely big enough to hold the Upsydaisy in orbit, and despite the fact that it was heavily forested, their scanners hadn’t picked up any signs of animal life.
“Them,” said Marx, pointing. A rangy humanoid male was clinging to the hawser line and quickly making his way toward the Upsydaisy.
Kez thumped at the maxi-plex of the front view-panel. “Oi! Get orf our hawser!”
“He’s making sure we’re not Time Corp or World Allied Order Force.”
“How do we know he’s not?”
There was a derisive gleam in Marx’s eye. “Look at him climb. No Corp boy or WAOFy is that limber: too many days in flight and not enough on the march.”
Kez watched the climbing man until he disappeared beneath the hull. “Does he want to come in?”
“Probably. Open the lower hatch will you, kid?”
“He better not bring in fleas with him,” muttered Kez, but she went below to manually open the lower hatch anyway.
The clinging man darted in as quickly as a snake the moment she pulled the hatch open, and Kez fell back onto her backside, glaring at him. She didn’t like being startled on her own ground. The man grinned at her and headed for the cabin of the Upsydaisy with a loping lack of hesitation that made Kez wonder, suddenly and darkly, if he’d done this before. It was always disconcerting to meet people for the first time when they’d already met you. It was one of the more unpleasant things about travelling in a time-craft. Of course, the payoff came when the shoe was on the other foot.
The cockpit didn’t immediately burst with the sound of violent fighting, so Kez laid on her stomach and stuck her head out of the hatch to see what there was to see. Marx had brought them in terrifyingly close to the huge, twisted boughs that seemed now to crouch around the Upsydaisy, and Kez could see the cables that wound around each branch, then circled the trunk and plunged into the ground far below. Some of the trees had grown around their cables, making heavy ridges and bulges, but the cables had carried the day in the branches, twisting foliage into what Kez’s sharp, fascinated eyes realised to be deliberated shapes. For example, the branches around them seemed to curl around the Upsydaisy for the very good reason that this was a bay. Their hawser stretched in a gently curving line to a gargantuan anchoring hook, and it seemed to Kez that she could vaguely see people moving between the leaves.
She shut the hatch and sat where she was for a thoughtful moment. When she returned to the cabin Marx was arguing with the stranger in an amiably rude way that suggested they knew each other reasonably well.
“There’s people in the trees,” she said, interrupting the stranger without apology; and added as an afterthought: “Watchin’ us.”
“This is Perrin,” said Marx. He didn’t acknowledge her interruption, which Kez was beginning to suspect might be his way of telling her that she was being rude. “Perrin, Kez. Kez, Perrin.”
“So sorry if was startling you,” said Perrin, in a thick accent she didn’t recognise.
It reminded Kez of a certain huge, bearded friend who had been dead either for hundreds of years or just a year, depending on your stance on time.
Her eyes grew hard and shiny. “Didn’t startle me,” she said resentfully. “Why can’t you talk proper?”
To her surprise this made Perrin grin again, white teeth flashing against what she saw, with sudden surprise, was actually green-tinted skin. “Why are not you speaking correctly?”
“I do speak proper!” said Kez indignantly, at the same time that Marx said: “Don’t encourage her. She’s inclined to kick people in the shins.”
Perrin’s grin didn’t grow any less. “I am inclined to turn small girls over my knee and spank them when they are kicking me in the shins.”
Kez gave him a long, appraising look. “Decided we ain’t Time Corp yet?”
“Pft. I am knowing that as soon as I am seeing you, child.”
One of Marx’s brows rose. “Seen the kid before, have you?”
“Of course. I am having instructions not to speak to you unless Kez is with you.”
“What?”
Kez gave a sudden, dry chuckle. “They don’t like you, Marx. Wot’d you do to ’em?”
“Marx is angry little man,” said Perrin.
“Yah. An’ everyone loves me.”
“No. Marx is angry little man, but Marx with Kez is less angry. Come. There is bean and cake.”
Kez gazed after Perrin as he swung sinuously out of the cabin, and then scrambled after him. “Beans and cake?”
“Cornbread,” said Marx, pulling her back by her collar. “They don’t have a different word for cake. No. You’re not sliding down the hawser without a harness.”
“He is!”
“He’s got setae and spatulae on nearly every bodily surface.”
Kez scowled at him. “You’re making words up!”
“Whoop!” said Perrin, and leapt from the lower hatch.
Kez watched him fly down the hawser with sparkling eyes. “I’m goin’ next. Lemme go, Marx!”
Marx didn’t argue, but the fingers of one hand remained curled unrelentingly around her collar while the other hand just as unrelentingly fitted her with a harness. When it was fitted and attached to the hawser, he threw her out of the hatch. Kez shouted her joy, swinging from side to side until the hawser jerked wildly, and came to a gleefully abrupt stop at Perrin’s bare feet. She was still scrabbling for purchase on the twisted tree branch when Marx passed her, travelling hand over hand, and dropped to the branch besides Perrin. He hauled Kez up by the scruff of the neck while she was still chortling, and snapped her free from the harness.
“You didn’t wear a harness,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it. She could still feel the rush of wind through her hair.
“We’ve only got one,” Marx said shortly. “Hold onto my belt.”
Kez made a rude noise but curled her forefinger through the belt-loop at the back of Marx’s grubby trousers.
“’F’you fall I’m gonna let go,” she said.
Perrin was already striding assuredly along the branch as if it were a highway instead of a thin twist of tree-branch and cable hundreds of feet in the air. Marx moved more slowly but just as surely, Kez padding behind him and darting sharp looks from side to side at the surrounding foliage.
She said: “There’s still people watchin’ us.”
It wasn’t exactly cornbread, thought Kez, munching appreciatively through a large lunch. But then, it wasn’t exactly a house that they were sheltering in, either. It was more of a cable and branches affair, with leaves to stop people seeing too much of their neighbours between the cracks. Kez was almost certain that if she wriggled hard and long enough, she could squeeze herself through from Perrin’s spherical dining room into someone else’s kitchen.
“Wouldn’t do it,” said Marx. He was hunched over his own bowl and spooning in beans twice as fast as Kez, though until then she would have been prepared to swear that he hadn’t been paying attention. “Whole place is riddled with slipper-spiders: slippery muck on everything between the walls.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Bitter experience, kid,” said Marx, and went back to his beans without a noticeable pause.
Kez wondered if he’d seen the narrow look that Perrin shot him, and thought that yes, he probably had. She stuffed another wedge of cornbread into her mouth and gave Perrin a wide, yellow grin which he received with enough wariness to make her very happy.
“Wot we doin’ after lunch?”
“Perrin’s going to show us what they use for shielding here,” said Marx.
“I am not showing you anything,” Perrin said. His voice was perfectly cheerful, which made Kez suspect that he and Marx had argued the issue more than once, no matter how twisted the chronology. “Thirteenth World is hiding its technologies from mercenaries and criminals.”
A Time-Traveller's Best Friend: Volume One Page 6
