Traket could see the AT-5 lift off again. His heart skipped a beat and his bluster faltered as the AT-5 started to fly away, punishing them for what might have seemed like the unfriendly snub that it was, rather than the friendly inter-service competitiveness that he would claim it was. Later. If he got that chance. His heart started beating steadily again when he saw the aircraft adjust its trajectory and float the short distance to where they stood.
Chapter 53
Snow and Freenan were in the AT-4 Street Hopper, headed downtown once more. Snow had never seen this ship before. The little craft was basically a cube with a dome on top, and with four little jet engines, one on each edge, whose business-ends pointed straight down. Freenan had borrowed it to fill the usual place of the AT-5. And though it was slower, and less cushy than the AT-5, that was A-Okay with Snow since the AT-5 was being used to find Max.
They’d spent many days working hard and Snow’s to-do list was nearly complete. There was nothing more she could do right now, so she focused on the view through the aircraft’s clear dome. The Town that the Tawnee were named for was a huge city. It sprawled as far as her eyes could see from the low altitude vantage point of the odd and awkward aircraft.
She’d become spoiled by the AT-5, the same aircraft used to rescue-kidnap her from the forest. Flown by the handsome and skillful pilot who had flown her from said forest and delivered her to Freenan. As the regular pilot on duty, Snow had seen him often at the Core. He was aware of his good looks and so were the women who worked there. Some of them had a special smile they reserved, just for Draven. Snow kept her own special Draven smile hidden.
Draven had all the attributes Max lacked. Arrogance, selfishness, and a narcissistic streak six feet ten inches high, Draven’s height, which Snow knew thanks to Draven’s regular boasting.
Though he certainly had admirers, he seemed completely unable to differentiate between them, and those who thought of him as vile. Which worked fine for Snow, since she wanted him to do his job and find Max. And since Draven seemed to think finding Max was optional, a kindness rather than an order, it was best he not know how she really felt about him. Which was Barf. Obviously.
The pilot of the AT-4, Captain Liza, by comparison seemed every bit as skillful as Draven, but less lecherous, and more professional. As much as Snow preferred Captain Liza though, she would have liked a chance to question Draven on his progress, which despite days and days on the job she’d so far heard nothing.
The city below was filled mostly with one- or two-story buildings, though a few were much higher. Those tall buildings were clustered near the large lake that separated the Town from the edge of a vast swamp. The aircraft approached a small cluster of tall buildings and circled around them to a vertical landing in a courtyard formed in the center of the cluster of buildings. The courtyard was filled by a large gathering of people that poured out onto several side streets.
“They are, of course, quite excited to meet you. Overexcited you might say,” Freenan said, he looked concerned. “So please consider that and do try to avoid… striking them… too vigorously.” He smiled a hopeful smile.
Snow agreed that she would try. But as it turned out, the public had learned from fellow citizens who’d witnessed the previous altercations, and they now seemed to know better how to behave. Very few of them needed their fingers slapped.
Though she enjoyed meeting the crowds of happy people, it was draining to be the sole focus of attention to so many smiling faces. Her favorite part was the smiling young school children. She could tell from the look in their eyes that they were younger than their height suggested. The children of Grailliyn knew seriously how to grow!
The big event for today was shopping. The MTM shopping mall was, according to Freenan, the greatest market on the face of Grailliyn. Snow thought the market in SoChar had plenty of variety and excitement, so she was surprised at just how much more variety there was in the MTM. The building itself was bright and beautiful, and the people were as spotlessly impeccable as the halls and walls. The energy of the place though, was more subdued, less warm than the SoChar market.
She spent most of the time shaking hands and saying the word wonderful, for the delight of all the children that asked. There were worse words to repeat over and over.
The mall was packed with clothing and all manner of gadgets and toys for sale. The food was similar to what she’d eaten before, although the tricks they used to give the bacteria flavor varied from what she’d experienced in SoChar. Though Snow mostly browsed, she did purchase several items for herself and a few practical items for Max. Or rather Freenan purchased them. Snow as yet had zero hard currency. Or soft currency if that was a thing.
“The situation is that I have good news and I have bad news,” Freenan said, returning to the small room they’d ducked into for some privacy. He’d left for a short conversation with one of his away team people. “The bad news is that we shall be forced to find some way of entertaining ourselves for just a little bit longer. Our borrowed ride has returned to its regular duties and we shall have to wait for the AT-5 to pick us up.”
Snow frowned and stuffed yet another cube of candy covered bac-mat into her face. Didn’t they know Snow had a to-do list to do? She knew of course that they did not know, not if by they one meant those powers in control of their borrowed ride. Which was good. Because they would not like Snow’s to-do list all that much. Suddenly her eyes widened as she considered the implications of the AT-5 returning.
“The good news is, amazingly enough, that Max has emerged from the forest, alive,” Freenan said, “It is truly miraculous that either of you managed to survive, to be quite frank.”
Snow swallowed hard, forcing the unyielding, still-too-large candy cube painfully down her throat. So, when tears began to well in her eyes she couldn’t say for sure if it was the good news, or the sharp half-chewed candy chunks, that had caused them.
“He emerged from the wilderness over the Expansion Zone wall. It’s quite some distance,” Freenan said, “But as you know, the AT-5 is rather fast, so they should be here to collect us quite soon.”
Snow, standing now, grabbed Freenan and hugged him fiercely. Not trusting her voice, she stayed silent. The door to the room opened again, it was another of the away team security personnel that Snow recognized but didn’t know the name of. He motioned for Freenan, and when he didn’t react quickly enough Snow practically dragged him over to the man, eager for more news.
“Your ride has arrived,” the man said.
“That was fast…” Freenan said.
Chapter 54
Draven was smiling as he lifted off in the AT-5 and sped away from the Expansion Zone with two passengers on board, the man Max, who’d apparently been shot in the shoulder at some point, and another man who’d been tied up and was in even worse shape than Max.
Draven hadn’t asked too many questions. With a rifle in their faces, the two idiots in the patrol car were, for the moment, eager for Draven to take the intruders and leave. Draven wanted to be gone before they changed their minds since, technically, they had priority in the situation.
And he had more to be happy about. The presence of the security patrol solved another substantial problem for Draven. Their official attendance left him wiggle room in regard to the unofficial request he’d received from the soon-to-be Coordinator Prime Mortran. Mortran couldn’t expect Draven to return Max to the forest to die, quietly or otherwise. Not now, when Max’s emergence from said forest had been recorded in an official report by a border guard security patrol. There were laws after all. Laws that applied to anyone and everyone within the borders of Tawnee, which now included the foreigner Max. That it also included the man that had arrived along with Max barely registered to Draven.
Draven looked back at the pair. The AT-5, in its current configuration, had room to comfortably seat twenty-four passengers, with an aisle separating a total of four rows of six seats. Max sat in a window seat, one row back from the front
on the right-hand side of the ship, while his prisoner sat one seat ahead in the front row. Both were gazing, transfixed by the view from the small windows beside them as the terrain flashed past below.
Draven finished locking the AT-5 onto his chosen course. With a smile, he then spun his chair to face the passengers. He stood up and approached Max, leaning into his seat with an arm outstretched.
“Max,” Draven said as they shook hands, “You my friend have beaten some very long odds. Well done, sir. Well done indeed. I’m Captain Draven.”
“Pleased to meet you Captain Draven. I’m Max… but obviously, you already know that…” Max said.
“I’ve been looking for you for days. But you’ve not made it easy have you?” Draven said, pointing an accusatory finger.
Max shrugged sheepishly. “I assumed you were also trying to kill me.” His eyes flicked momentarily towards his silent prisoner.
Draven placed his hand over his heart.
“We have no interest in killing you here. As I told you on the ground, your friend Snow has recovered from her injury and is doing well,” Draven said. With his thumb pointing over his shoulder he added, “We're on the way there now. Coordinator Freenan will be very happy to see you. We should be there in about ten minutes.”
Max looked impressed at that, and looked out the window again, as if he might check Draven’s math with a mere glance at the ground.
“It’s more than I could have hoped for,” Max said, turning back to Draven and giving him a respectful bow of the head.
This Max guy was alright. Certainly, he’d had help from Draven in extracting himself from the forest, but it would have required a certain inner strength to have even made it to the defensive wall of gorgers. Max didn’t seem like a bad-looking fellow either. It was a little strange that he and his friend Snow weren’t more than friends. But only a little.
Draven gave Max a friendly punch on the shoulder and excused himself to get back to the pilot’s seat.
The otherwise silent prisoner quietly began speaking to Max. Draven couldn’t hear all that he was saying but a few words stood out over the noise of the engines, “Good news,” and “Your woman.”
Chapter 55
Max had been more than a little surprised to find himself a passenger of the very aircraft that had been caused him so much trouble, the one that had kidnapped Snow from the forest. He was even more surprised by the pilot, clearly from an elite class of professionals, but who had nevertheless taken the effort to talk to Max and keep him updated on the situation.
At one point, after communicating with HQ over the ‘radio’, the ship had changed course. Captain Draven had explained that such course changes were normal, designed to keep the air space clear for other craft. The idea was intriguing to Max, but rather than ask more questions, taking more time from the busy pilot, Max scoured the skies eager to see other Tawnee aircraft, excited to see if they were much different than the ship he was on.
Sadly, Max saw no other aircraft at all. Aware that his view of the world was limited, through the small seat-side window, he bottled his disappointment and instead looked forward to his coming reunion with Snow.
Soon after their course change Max saw a building through their forward windscreen. It was obviously a tall building, taller than anything Max had seen in New York. How tall became clear to Max only when the ship approached for landing and slipped gracefully past a spindly set of rooftop antenna to land on the very building in question. Max wondered if this might be the location of Icarus Core. Draven had said nothing about their destination, but it did seem like the place to store the world’s most valuable treasure.
Max scanned the vast roof top for any sign of Snow, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Time to go, Max,” Captain Draven said, motioning towards the ship’s exit ramp that opened in the rear.
Draven was holding the killer’s rifle like a walking stick. Just for a moment, Max had the thought that maybe Captain Draven was not quite the true and honest avatar of virtue as he’d seemed. Max considered asking for the rifle back. But that, he thought, would be ridiculous. Either he’d been ushered here in good faith, to meet Snow on this giant building, or he was being set up for some sort of betrayal. Whatever the case, the killer’s long barrel rifle would do him little good at this point.
Max walked down the ramp onto the building’s rooftop landing pad. The landing pad itself was recessed from very top of the building. A tall mast filled with hemispherical dishes stretched up past the top of the building’s border wall and the wall itself had several very functional-looking doors that bore little embellishment of any kind. A pair of the doors facing the ramp opened, and several people emerged from the relative darkness within. All of them were armed with pistols, though all the pistols remained stowed in their holsters for now. The killer joined Max at the bottom of the ramp with Captain Draven close behind, as one of the armed security people approached Max directly. Though Max wouldn’t describe the smile on her face as warm or genuine, neither did it hold any malice.
“Come with me,” was all she said.
Although Max was about to be escorted into the depths of Icarus Core, he could summon no excitement about that fact. All his thoughts were consumed by his coming reunion with Snow White.
Chapter 56
“Do you hear voices?” Snow said to surly guard number one.
She was sitting between two guards, in a small unadorned white room. Light from a window high on the wall kept the room bright, but it also kept Snow from seeing outside.
Surly guard number one stared at Snow blankly. He had to have heard the voices, but he looked away, saying nothing.
“I hear voices,” Snow said to surly guard number two.
“Of course we hear the voices,” said surly guard number two, “Or we would anyway, if you weren’t yammering on so much.”
“What’s his problem?” Snow said to surly guard number one. “Does yammering mean something different in Tawnee than it does in the wider world? Or is it like a new word of the week thing? Are you just trying to jam it into conversation wherever possible?”
Surly guard number one continued to look away, seemingly bored, but number two was glaring. It was a new experience for her since awakening in the unsung land of the Tawnee. Up to this point, everyone here had been super nice to her. So, it was an altogether unnerving new experience to have this armed man menacing her with his pretty brown eyes.
It had started when ‘her ride showed up’ and she’d been separated from Freenan (who had not been at all happy about it) then she’d been brought here in the AT-4, rather than the AT-5 as expected. As it turned out, its sole purpose was to ferry passengers from the ground to the top of the building, which seemed like a poor use of resources, but whatever. Under other circumstances Snow would have thought the little craft was damn cool (possibly even badass.) But the current situation left her feeling a distinct bias against the little craft, as though it were part of some evil plot or plan to keep her from her own plots and plans.
She realized that she was being a teensy bit of a narcissist in assuming that this was all about her. But the timing… she was so close to success. And then, the final ingredient for her plan, Max, is dangled tantalizingly in front of her only to have all this… whatever it was… blocking her from completion.
Snow stood up from the gray upholstered bench that she and the surly twins had been sitting on in the aptly named waiting room.
Surly guard number one was still looking away, but number two followed her to his feet and placed his hand on her shoulder to force her back down.
“Sit down—ahhh!” he said.
Snow found that his hand was in hers and that she had given it a twist.
The other hand of surly guard number two was reaching for his sidearm when the door to the waiting room opened. Another pair of guards had arrived to escort Snow to her unscheduled and unwanted meeting with she-didn’t-know-who, thankfully leaving the first two guards
behind.
The intermittent voices Snow had been hearing became easier to discern as they passed through plain, lamp-lit hallways, and drew closer to the source. They rounded a corner and Snow found a door facing her at the end of another short stretch of hall. The thick wooden door continued to muffle the voice somewhat, but it was the thick accent that kept Snow from following the conversation at all. A thick accent that sent a chill up her spine. She knew it was wrong to think that all who spoke in that way would be killers, but Snow couldn’t shake the idea that the killer was behind that door. Then another cut in, one that Snow could understand.
“Yes, well that is certainly very interesting,” said the voice.
One of the guards knocked on the door.
“Snow White to see the coordinator,” said the guard.
The door opened and Snow was waved in. In contrast to the dim, lamp-lit hallway, the large room was very bright. The far wall was both long and tall, and made of glass through which shone daylight. A long white shell-formed table sat framed in the window. At one end of it sat a tall handsome man, with straight black hair and a full beard. A few seats away from him, one on each side of the table, were two scruffy-looking men. Behind each of them were a pair of guards. The scruffy man on the window side of the table wore a top hat that looked like a dirty version of the one the killer had been wearing when Snow had encountered him at the top of the canal. A thought then occurred to Snow. What if the hat did not merely resemble the killer’s hat? What if it was the killer’s hat? But if the killer was here then…
Snow turned her attention to the other scruffy man just as he got to his feet and turned to meet her gaze. For a moment, she almost didn’t recognize Max standing before her. His face was dirty, and his clothes were covered in dried blood, but then he was often dirty and had been known to be covered in blood, so that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the facial hair, though that had grown some in the forest. But that wasn’t it. It was his face. The open expression of relief and joy at seeing her. She had seen plenty of emotions on Max’s face. He was often silly, annoyed, or angry. But before now he had guarded any real feelings towards her.
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 24
