“Maybe I will,” she said, standing up.
“It’s cold on this planet—the ship is cold,” he said.
“Cold?” she said, eyeing him mercilessly. Her face wore the expression she’d had in gym, when she’d dominated him upon the mat.
“Can you turn the heat up?”
She ignored his request, walking to him, grabbing his back and pulling him into her. She put the strength of her body into her mouth, sharing it with him, tugging him into the room. Mick’s hands groped down to her legs, lifting her silken cloak. His exploration angered her, and she grunted, throwing him down into the couch. Mick watched her transform, felt the beast above him overtake his body: he melted into her as a violet blends its odor with a rose. Harried breaths pushed steam as they offered up their warmth. A cold green frost thickened upon the porthole: it was the eye of the icy abyss surrounding them, single witness to their appetites.
22
“Get up, it’s time to go,” Sera said. Mick turned over, looked around, registered his reality. The feeling of Christmas morning leaped up in his soul:
I’m going home today. Real home, before Karen slipped away.
“Come on, do you want to get out of here or what?” Sera said indifferently.
“Hell yes.” He dressed himself and followed her out into the barren gloom of the green-frosted wasteland.
They entered Melbot’s lair to a shocking sight: On the ground was GR, lifeless.
“GR!”
“Woman, you don’t move,” came a voice from the corner. “Give me your keys.”
Out from an alcove of black stepped a thin man in a spacesuit. He pointed a death pistol at Mick and Sera.
“Do it now!” he shouted.
“I have money, I’ll give you money,” she replied calmly.
“I know you have money, I know everything,” he said, nervous and angry.
Damn XJ and GR. Shouldn’t have left them here. He tapped them for information.
“Where’s Melbot and XJ?” asked Sera.
“As dead as you’ll be if you don’t give me your light-class keys and plastic,” he said.
“Hey, relax,” Mick interjected. The robber fired his pistol at Sera, rocking her to the ground. Her right arm fizzed hot air, her spacesuit losing pressure fast.
“Would you rather die? I’ll get what I want just the same.”
Behind his helmglass, Mick saw giant sunken rings around empty eyes. He’s emaciated, the fire of death in him. He’s not bluffing.
“Give him the keys Sera,” Mick said, his heart sinking.
So close to home. I can taste her mouth. See Christopher and Mick’s bunk beds. Hear their whines as I shut out the light for bedtime.
And this punk is going to try to keep me here, stranded in fourteen. Forever away from my boys. Give me just one second with his back turned—please god, just one second.
“Here,” she said, sliding her keys and her UCD plastic across the floor.
“Good,” he said. “Alright, don’t freeze, ya hear?” He kept his gun trained on them from a distance, sidestepping to the exit. He turned and walked backwards up the ramp into the neon snow, disappearing from sight.
“What a god damned joke—a cosmic game of fuck with Mick,” Mick said. He sat down, rubbed his temples, watched Sera get to her feet. She grabbed a sticky patch from her belt and covered the hole in her suit.
“Three minutes from dead,” she said. “XJ!” She ran into the next room.
“Mick,” GR said, coming to life suddenly.
“You’re alive,” Mick said.
“I was saving my power until you and Sera returned.”
“What happened?”
“Melbot asked us all about the Magnadraw and Hoila we sold to Carner. The next thing we knew, he stopped talking altogether. Remotely paralyzed.”
“Stopped talking?”
“I think he was controlled by a virus. That awful man appeared, he’d been listening to everything. He shot his EMP at XJ. He missed me. He didn’t realize.”
“Did Melbot get the T-jump prepared?” Mick asked.
“He almost did,” GR answered. “It’s nearly ready for you.”
Can I leave? Two voices again: Of course you’re going to leave. Who cares about these pathetic fortune seekers? Someone will be along eventually, scoop them up. They can start saving again. Scrimp, save, and get to Utopia. Earn it, like I earned my jump.
23
“So no money, and no T-jump,” grumbled Mick, anger devouring his hope.
Melbot was fried, a direct hit. No parts for a resurrection. Sera, XJ, and GR, between all of them, couldn’t program a T-jump. It was too specialized a program. GR thought he could learn by mixing enough data from Melbot’s computer station. He guaranteed Mick a jump accuracy of eighty-five percent. What’s a bungled T-jump do? Mick had asked. Cells to smithereens.
“You’d think it’d be as easy as punching in the time and place, but the math is quite aggressive,” GR said. “But I promise to keep trying. I am confident I can figure it out. Once XJ’s processing power is joined with mine—oh, there you are! Thank goodness you are okay!”
“He’s lucky it wasn’t a direct hit. He’d be like Melbot over there—a scrap of junk,” Sera said, pulling her quarter-.hum-mounted father back into the room. GR travelled up the ramp to the icy surface.
Mick watched XJ stirring to life, his gears whining, sounding their antiquity. Who’s she kidding? He is a scrap of junk. Who keeps a thousand-something year old piece of hardware around? Put his .hum on a memory stick and shoot him into space. Months of strange friendship gave rise to a jolt of sympathy: He saved your life, cut him a break.
“How’d this happen?” Mick asked XJ.
“He was here already, waiting for us. He must have known we were coming.”
“Sera—he took the Cozon!” GR said from atop the ramp.
“Of course he did, what do you think he took my keys for—the pantry? Let’s go, we’re wasting time on this ice cube,” she said.
“In what ship?” Mick replied.
“Melbot’s intersystem cruiser.”
“An intersystem cruiser?”
“I got it running. Let’s go. Or you can stay here and work on Melbot, and report to me if you get him awake and talking.”
The hell I’m staying on this cold waste. But an intersystem cruiser can only go a fraction of the Cozon’s speed—what’s she thinking? And if we don’t get him before he leaves the Bessel system, we’re screwed.
“You’re sure you can’t run the jump?” Mick asked GR. Sera stared incredulously at him and walked out of the room. XJ followed her.
“I am quite sure I could do it Mick, if only we had the right amount of time,” GR said.
“What kind of time do you need?”
“One to six weeks I suppose. Of course, that depends upon Melbot’s database.”
“No instant training for this program?”
“Not for a T-jump. Unless you are very desperate. Then we could give it a try. In fact, I rate our chances at fourteen percent right now, without accessing his databanks. But you know what happens when a jump goes awry.”
No—you didn’t give me the details: Is the skin turned inside out, the guts released in a fountain? Do I transcend time and space, and return to the hydrogen whence I came, so that stars can be fueled, and in their furnaces my carbon reformed, reincarnating me a billion years from now? What is lost at the time a man’s body fails him? Either something or nothing. What did the twentieth century doctor Duncan MacDougal measure in his six patients, on average—twenty-one grams that evaporate at death? That proved people have souls, didn’t it? No, that kind of testing was stopped before it proved anything; it was immoral to test for souls. That’s why the experiments had stopped. Is each human so audacious—pretentious—to call himself unique in the universe? A second voice spoke: Shut up asshole. Another interrupted, Christopher’s: Why don’t you stay home now, stay with us? Don’t you love mommy any
more, and us? A fourth: Get your head out of your ass. Troubleshoot. Keep moving.
“Stay here. Work on it. I’ll be back,” said Mick.
“But Sera—she will need me if she departs,” GR replied.
“She won’t. There’s no catching the Cozon in an intersystem ship. She needs to see it to believe it I guess. We’ll be back before you do your first calculation. Get to work.”
XJ appeared from the hangar corridor.
“Sera asks if you are coming?” XJ said.
“Yea, presently.”
“Come along GR,” XJ said and led Mick out of the room.
Mick turned and looked at GR.
“I’ll let her know you’re staying here.”
GR chirped in satisfaction, his desire to engage the puzzle of the T-jump fulfilled.
Sera stood on the bay rail of the cruiser. XJ and Mick boarded, but she didn’t follow them inside.
“Where’s GR?”
“He’s staying here to figure out the T-jump,” Mick said.
“The hell he is,” she said, jumping down from the ship rail. Mick turned, jumped after her. He grabbed her shoulder, stopping her.
“I bring you the M and H, your ticket to Utopia, and you think I’m going to let you stop that robot from getting me home?” Mick stared hard with ruthless eyes, slow violence boiling behind them.
“You think he’s safe here alone? He’s AM, maybe not like XJ, but he’ll be snatched up in a second when marauders land. And they’ll come, as soon as it gets out that Melbot’s dead. One com request goes unanswered, and they’ll be crawling all over this place.”
“No one will take him,” Mick said fiercely. He spun her around to face him.
“What do you know?” she said, peeling his fingers out of her shoulder, mirroring the ferocity of his stare.
“I know I’ve given you your god damned dream, killed your savior droid for you, done whatever the hell you wanted me to. Look—I’ll just as soon stay here with him if it means getting home. You go find that son-of-a-bitch before he gets out of the system. I’ll keep GR safe.”
“And then you jump, and I’m not back, and he’s gone—no, not happening.”
“Well back his fucking .hum up then. These droids are pieces of shit anyway. All you need is their—” Sera’s gloved fist smacked Mick’s head before he could finish, twisting his neck and creating a hairline fracture in his helmglass above his left eye.
Mick grabbed her shoulder again, digging his fingers deep into her suit, locking her in place.
“You don’t know anything. So you’re either going to have to wait longer to go home, or kill me right now,” she said. Her left hand slipped past her hip, brushed against her pistol.
“Then tell me! You say Utopia has everyone, but you keep them around. You say you’ll know the difference. What the hell aren’t you telling me?”
“You’re on your way out of here. I suggest you don’t prevent that,” she replied, her fingers caressing pistol plastisteel.
Maybe she is a cellbot. Can I beat her?
“Going to shoot me?” he said. One finger, then another, then his whole hand slid off her shoulder and glided slowly across the two rises of her chest.
“Whatever I have to do. It’s nothing personal.”
She’d be tough, but I could kill her. Twist her neck. Leave her in the backroom. Droids wouldn’t know the difference.
Mick turned to the cruiser behind him: XJ stared apprehensively at them, confusion droid-mimicked on his face.
Would he come at me too? Defend her? Reason tried to claw its way back into his mind: This is way too risky for what’s at stake: Selby’s kisses. Christopher’s high fives. Little Mickey’s laugh. Karen’s smile. There’s no point Mick—let it go. Ride this out. Have a little patience. A little faith.
Anger paused, receded: the volcano in Mick’s chest withdrew from its channel and crushed expectations released upon his brow, steaming his helmglass. He closed his eyes, sighed.
“Hurry. This ship’s a piece of shit, we’ll never catch him,” he said.
Sera smirked, then walked back into Melbot’s chamber to retrieve her brother. Mick joined XJ at the bay door.
She returned with a befuddled GR. They started the cruiser engine. With a gentle whine it launched spaceward, leaving Mick’s frozen moon of hope and portal home.
“There’s a reason you pay good money for a T-jump operator,” muttered GR, filled with a robot-sense of personal failure.
“Don’t be sad GR. Come play chess. I have a new opening—it’s called the Accelerated Dragon. I need a victim.”
“You cheer me and seek to send me lower all in the same breath,” GR returned, showcasing the best smile a dock-loading droid can produce.
24
A blip appeared on the viewscreen in the cockpit. Another blip. Two, side by side, hovering near the edge of the Bessel solar system. Hardly moving.
“Radar detects two ships. He never left the system,” Sera said.
Two—but who else besides the Cozon thief? A rendezvous of some sort.
“Class?” Mick asked.
“Another light-class.”
“And we’re coming at them in an intersystem cruiser?”
“Damn right. Do you think I control Bessel 2 because of my strength alone?”
“Oh dear,” XJ joined. “Sera’s up to a scheme. GR, GR!”
XJ bolted from the cockpit as fast as his hydraulics allowed.
“What’s with him?” Mick asked.
“Let’s say I’m hit and miss. Most of the time my plans work, sometimes they don’t.”
“She makes entirely irrational decisions, incalculably inconsistent with probability,” XJ rattled as he motored away.
A gambler. I do like this woman.
Mick eyed the cords of Sera’s forearms as they tensed, vigorously punching command after command into her console. Her body worked as a limb of the ship, directed by the laws of physics and her gut.
“We’ll sweep them,” she said.
Sweeping: Flying below a ship and launching a targeted EMP at its main thrusters. Cruisers can sweep under anything bigger than a tugship—they can’t sweep under a light-class.
“You can’t,” Mick said. “They’re too small.” He eyed the radar blips, their signatures indicating two light-classes: the Cozon and one mystery vessel. “They’ve seen us too.”
“Sure they have. But you’ve never seen me fly.”
The urge to take over rose in him: rip the controls from her, throw her to the ground, fly the ship with some sense.
The cruiser dropped, turbulence shook Mick to his knees. Metal on metal issued from the back of the ship: XJ and GR had fallen. The cruiser’s plastisteel prow hurtled directly at the two light-classes. Mick stood up to behold the collision: On the viewscreen, four giant thrusters flared, the light-classes attempting maneuvers of their own to avoid the kamikaze strike of the cruiser.
Crashing us into the light-classes; she’s sweeping under them my ass. Suicide run.
“What the fuck are you doing!” Mick yelled.
Mick grabbed at the pilot’s stick. A swift elbow caught his temple. White light flashed; shock led to a delayed sensation of pain.
“Jesus Christ,” he moaned, rubbing his head.
The light-class ships roared away at a ninety degree angle from the cruiser.
“They’re priming plasma missiles,” XJ said, returning to the crammed cockpit with GR.
“They won’t hit,” Sera said.
The cruiser barrel rolled under the Cozon and fired upward. A targeted EMP struck its main thrusters. The unknown light-class fired two plasma missiles: condensed firecrackers of coiling light snaked toward them. Sera rocked back on her stick, pulling everyone to the floor.
“Hold onto something,” she said. Mick grabbed the nearest metal rod, XJ’s leg: together they slid out of the cockpit.
Bright orange plasma missiles exploded upon the starboard hull of the Cozon.
; “Shit!” Sera screamed. “Not supposed to hit my own ship.”
A band of grey smoke shrouded the crippled ship. She turned the stick and punched a button. The cruiser rolled on its side and shot into the cloud. Mick rushed back into the cockpit.
“There he is,” Mick said. On the viewscreen, the silhouette of a light-class, thrusterless, floated.
“He sees us,” she said.
“Get under him!” Mick yelled.
“Can’t—too late.”
“We can’t take a hit in a cruiser.”
“We won’t if we park on the Cozon,” she said. The cruiser shook, its landing claws hooking onto the Cozon’s deck. “We’re gambling that they won’t kill each other.”
Mick waited for the orange flash of plasma missiles; nothing came.
“What now?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Is she a robot, AM, just like the others? No—she’s too warm inside.
Sera smiled. Mick wondered at her sanity. XJ stared out a porthole at the light-class squared against them. GR crawled to his feet, testing his capacitors.
Black Hull Page 7
