by Alex Stewart
“Good, you’re ahead of me.” Ertica nodded, in a brisk and businesslike fashion. “Start yelling for help to the Guild, and hope they’re listening.”
“Even if they are, they won’t hear anything for twenty minutes,” Clio reminded her. “We’ll probably be dead by then.”
“Then at least we won’t be forgotten. Hiro, I want full power to the emitters, I’ll route it from here.” Her fingers danced rapidly across the board, slaving the conn to her station, and I began to feel a little more confident in my choice of allies. “You, cloak-and-dagger boy, sit down before I have to scrape you off a bulkhead.”
Not needing to be told twice, I dived for the nearest chair, and found myself at the conn station Ertica had just remotely taken over. Which was probably just as well, as I’d no idea what any of the physical controls around me actually did, and would probably have precipitated a disaster if I’d tried poking any. There were a couple of screens there, though, relaying images from outside the ship, so at least I’d be able to get some idea of what was just about to kill us.
“Is this going to take long?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level. “Because the Leaguers outside don’t seem to be giving up.” One of the images I could see was the inside of the hangar bay, and the number of soldiers out there had increased by an order of magnitude, rather too many of them setting up heavy weapons on tripods for my liking.
“They've overridden the docking clamps,” Ertica said tightly. “I’m still trying to disengage.”
“Allow me,” I said, relieved to finally find something I could do to help, and meshing directly into the ship’s node as I spoke, my sneakware at the ready. The override signal stood out like the proverbial sore thumb, bristling with security protocols, most of which I’d already circumvented while cracking the node back in the infirmary. After several nanos of swapping datanomes I managed to get round the rest, and overrode the override. “Done.”
"Thanks." Ertica nodded curtly. “Green across the board.”
“Well I guess you'd know.” Rollo looked up from the gunnery station, and grinned, in a manner I didn’t find entirely reassuring.
“Do you know how to use those things?” I asked.
“Not a clue,” he said cheerfully. “But I’m sure I can figure it out as we go along.”
“Lifting,” Ertica said, without any of the reporting between stations I’d heard aboard the Stacked Deck. Nevertheless, I remembered enough of our departure from Avalon to be able to follow what was happening around me. The ship was detaching itself from the docking port, rather more rapidly than the Stacked Deck had separated from Skyhaven, but still painfully slowly from where I was sitting. The base’s feeble gravity didn’t give us much to push against, but even so, I’d expected the gap to widen a little more quickly than it was doing. I was just about to remark on the fact when Ertica did something to the controls which sent us spinning wildly across the surface of the rock, what seemed like no more than a few yards above it, then off into space.
“What the hell?” I asked, as the image in my screen tumbled wildly, stars, gas giant and bleak grey rock alternating in a nausea-inducing blur.
“We’ve just blown out an emitter,” she said calmly, and smiled at my expression of shock. “Or we look as if we have.” She glanced at Clio. “If you wouldn’t mind?”
Clio nodded. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, this is the Guild prize vessel Simon Says.” She glanced across at me, and grinned. “Got to call it something.”
“Anything but that,” I said.
“Disabled and under attack. Requesting immediate assistance.” She concentrated, meshing with the ship’s node for a moment, then shook her head. “I’m trying to send our contract to the Guildhall, but the Leaguers are jamming us. Big surprise there.”
“Why aren’t they shooting?” I asked, and Rollo shrugged.
“Why bother? We’re already crippled. And oh look, we’re just about to die.” Another of the uncountable pieces of orbital debris was looming up ahead of us, a dirty chunk of ice about a quarter of a mile across. I found myself wondering if this was what a bug felt like, watching a windshield approach. Even though I was sure Ertica had something up her sleeve, or would have had if she wore any, I couldn’t help tensing.
At what seemed to me to be the very last possible second she manipulated the controls again, and we skipped sideways, clipping the top off an outcrop of ice in a spray of crystalline shrapnel. Realizing too late that we were able to maneuver after all, the graviton batteries on the base opened up, but by that time we were safely behind a megaton of dirty snow; which flickered for a moment as it vanished into a rift, before bouncing back as an expanding nebula of fist-sized chunks, neatly shielding us from a follow-up barrage.
“Neat trick,” I said, with genuine admiration.
“Missiles launching,” Rollo said from the tactical board. “And ships. You think we pissed them off?”
“With impeccable manners like yours?” Ertica asked. “Of course we did.”
“Can’t take him anywhere,” Baines put in from the power plant, his voice attenuated by the speaker, “Unless it’s back to apologize. We’re running at about eighty-five per cent, by the way. Trying to squeeze a little more out of it.”
“That should be enough,” Ertica assured him.
“Enough for what?” I asked. I was pretty sure we could outrun the pursuing ships, given the start we’d had, but the missiles were something else again. They were propelled by fusion torches, didn’t need a mass to kick against, and were closing like piranha birds scenting blood.
“This, for a start.” Rollo called up a targeting display, and sent a burst of gravitons from three of our weapon blisters at once, concentrating the fire on the leading warhead. It tumbled into a rift, bounced, and reemerged, the warhead detonating as its outer casing disintegrated. The rest of the spread exploded too, as their proximity fuses registered the sudden presence of the metallic debris all around them.
“Looks like you figured it out after all,” I said.
“Okay, so I lied a bit for dramatic effect.” Rollo shrugged. “Five years on an Outworlds convoy escort.” I’d never heard of the Outworlds, but I don’t suppose many of its citizens would have heard of the Rimward Commonwealth either, so I guess that made us even. “Till I fell in love with a pirate and switched sides.” He sighed. “It was very romantic.”
“Especially the bit where he ran for it, and left you for dead,” Ertica said acidly.
“I never said he was perfect,” Rollo said. “Oh look, another salvo. Persistent, aren’t they?”
“A bit too much for my liking,” I agreed. “Can you do that again?”
“Can a Guilder bend a contract?” He glanced at Clio. “No offence.”
“None taken,” she assured him, through gritted teeth, and he triggered the weapons again, with the same result as before. The pursuing missiles vanished in a hail of detonating munitions, leaving the sky around us clear, unless you counted enough pieces of cosmic flotsam to form a respectable ring system. And a trio of warships dogging our heels. “Can you do anything about those ships?”
“Too much stuff in the way,” Rollo said. “But on the bright side, they can’t shoot at us either.”
“Until we’re out of the rings,” I said. We had a good lead on them, but we’d still be well within range on the long fall in towards Freedom. We were already more than halfway out of the debris belt, on the most direct course for the system’s capital world, and the Guildhall in orbit around it, and by my estimation our pursuers would have a clear shot at us in less than two minutes.
“That depends on how we leave them,” Ertica said, poking the controls again, and sending us soaring up and out of the plane of the rings, in a long parabola back towards the gas giant. The pursuing warships continued on their old course for a moment, then began to follow, but by that time we’d opened up an impressive lead. “And how quickly we can get you to the Guildhall.” She adjusted our course again, sending
us diving towards the huge ball of roiling gas, on what was clearly the approach to a slingshot maneuver. She smiled tightly at the sensor echoes of the warships, which were curving back to follow us. “Which rather depends on how badly these fellows want us.”
“I’d say pretty badly,” Rollo said. “I forgot to tip room service before we left.”
“Are we still being jammed?” I asked, and Clio shook her head.
“They're trying, but I’ve got a clear Guild channel. Transmitting my contracts with you now.” A second later she nodded in satisfaction. “Done. When they pick it up, they’ll consider this ship the legitimate prize of a privateering contract, and we’ll be protected.” Then she shrugged. “Not that it’ll do us much good if we get blown out of the sky in the next twenty minutes.”
“We won’t,” Ertica said confidently, as the gas giant loomed larger in the screen in front of me, blotting out the rest of the sky. I’d found my first slingshot around Avalon unnerving enough, but this was far worse; I was beginning to feel confident enough in Ertica’s piloting skill, but the slightest miscalculation now, or the minutest fluctuation in the internal gravity field, and we’d be crushed like an egg by the huge world’s vast gravity well and dense atmosphere. “We’ll be too far ahead for that.”
“The warships are slingshotting too,” I warned her, spotting their sensor echoes following our course, and Ertica snorted in derision.
“Let them. They’ll go wide.”
“They don’t look like they’re going to,” I said, after a moment. So far as I could tell they were in our wake as though nailed to it.
“Then we’ll go narrow.” Ertica worked the controls again, and the ship shuddered, beginning to dive through the outer reaches of the atmosphere. A few red lights appeared on the control panels, but I didn’t know what they meant, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. The external screens were no help at all now, showing nothing but shifting murk, in various shades of unpleasant.
“They’re still with us,” I said after a moment, as the pursuing echoes adjusted their courses to follow.
“Not for long,” Ertica said, making another adjustment. More red lights came on, the booming groan of overstressed metal began to resonate through the hull, and I wondered if I was looking as worried as Clio did. Even more so, probably. “This’ll work. One way or the other.”
“One way or the other?” I asked, and she nodded grimly.
“We’ll lose them, or die. Probably.”
“Probably lose them, or probably die?” Rollo enquired. “Just asking.”
“Flip a coin,” Ertica said.
“Getting a lot of stress on the hull,” Baines put in from the power plant. “I’m compensating, as best I can, but it’s not easy. Too much fluctuation to keep up with.”
“Not long now,” Ertica assured him, looking a slightly paler shade of green than usual.
“They’re breaking off,” I said, with a sudden surge of relief. “Maintaining their course.”
“Good.” Ertica nodded, with quiet satisfaction.
Then all of a sudden we were free of the atmosphere again, hurtling out of the gas giant’s pull like a slug from my old competition gun, with a hefty kick from our emitters against its mass to boost our velocity still further. The image in the external screens cleared, showing a bright, clean starfield, and the sullen mass of the gas giant, bisected by its glowing ring, receding rapidly into the distance.
An instant later the pursuing ships broke clear of the atmosphere too, dropping further and further behind with every passing second.
“We made it,” I said, in stunned disbelief.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
In which many matters are resolved.
Of course it wasn’t quite as clear cut as that. We had an inordinate amount of velocity to kill when we got to Freedom, which took some tricky maneuvering around the planet and both its moons to dissipate, to the eloquently expressed displeasure of the local traffic control. Fortunately, Clio’s message had preceded us, and the flotilla of League Navy vessels awaiting our arrival had to sit on their hands and watch us dock at the Guildhall without interfering, however much they may have wished to blow us out of the sky.
At least the docking bay was reassuringly familiar, though smaller than any I’d seen so far, with only six cradles set into the station arm, three each on the floor and ceiling; although, like the one I’d embarked from on Skyhaven, which of them was which depended entirely on where you happened to be standing at the time.
To everyone’s surprise, our welcoming committee of half a dozen Guilders included Rennau, who was waiting outside the hatch for us to disembark, and promptly embarrassed Clio by enveloping her in a hug as soon as our boots hit the deck plates.
“What were you thinking?” He demanded as they broke apart. “You could have been killed!”
“But I wasn’t.” She was fizzing with excitement. “I got a contract, Dad. Two, actually. And I need to get to the riftcom right away.”
“What for?” Rennau’s attention switched suddenly to me, becoming a glare that would have reduced me to a scorch mark on the floor if my ability to be intimidated hadn't been pretty much burned out by the events of the last few hours. “What's he got you mixed up in this time?”
“He’s got some intelligence to sell to the Commonwealth. Worth a fortune. And the fee’s all mine.” She hesitated. “Enough to pay John off, and get you the Sleepy Jean back.”
“If it’s the plan to invade Rockhall with Q ships, you’re a bit late.” Remington appeared from behind a couple of men who looked like stevedores, if you ignored the pistols holstered at their hips, and the woman they were escorting, who was middle aged, quite striking, and looked vaguely familiar.Her clothing was as utilitarian as most Guilders favored, but seemed of noticeably higher quality. Given her obvious status I merely clenched my fists at the sight of my former captain, and fought down the urge to deck him on the spot. There’d be plenty of time for that later. “Your aunt contracted me to find out what the Leaguers were up to before we left Avalon, and I reported back to her as soon as we docked.”
“You set me up.” Despite my best efforts to fight it down, the anger was swelling inside me, growing exponentially as it became clear just how comprehensively I’d been played. “The pair of you.”
“Not really.” He shook his head. “She didn’t tell me she’d recruited you, but I suspected it. I wasn’t really sure until you gave me that file you’d filched, though. Then I just did whatever was necessary to fulfill the contract.” He smiled, in what he probably thought was an ingratiating manner. “You’ll get a good percentage. You were the one who found the information for me, after all.”
“So you were the spy the Leaguers were looking for all along,” I said, my voice tight.
“Sort of. I knew I needed to get on to Kincora to find out what the League was up to, so I made it look as if Ellie was a Commonwealth asset, knowing they’d impound all the ships she’d been dealing with. I was pretty sure you’d be able to ferret out whatever they were hiding once we were there, and I was right.”
“And as soon as I did, you cut me loose and hung me out to dry,” I said bitterly.
“You had Clio to look after you.” He nodded to the woman he’d arrived with. “And I knew the Grand Mistress would grant your appeal if she was the one to present it.”
“Not entirely true,” the woman said dryly, “but I’d certainly have listened.” She smiled at Clio, stepped forward, and embraced her with even more enthusiasm than Rennau had done. “Hello, sweetie.”
Clio returned the hug, with equal warmth, and an even wider smile. “Hi, mom.”
“So all you had to do was sit tight for a while,” Remington concluded, with an admiring glance at the ship behind us. “and everything would have been fine. I never expected you to be quite so . . . enterprising.”
“I’m full of surprises,” I said.
After that, of course my appeal was just a formality. Clio’s mom rescin
ded the cancellation of my apprenticeship without even bothering to convene a formal hearing, and smiled at me across the polished wooden table of the conference room she’d requisitioned to interview me in. Beyond the wide viewport behind her, Freedom rotated, looking uncannily like Avalon, if someone had dropped it and scrambled the continents a bit.
“I imagine you’ll want to consider your future,” she said, relaxing back into her chair now the formal part of our talk had been concluded. “Captain Remington’s more than willing to have you back in his crew, but I’m not entirely sure you’d be so happy with that.”
“Neither am I,” I said, forcing down the flare of resentment before it could seep into my voice. I'd certainly never feel able to trust him again, however many assurances he gave. “But will he even have one now? If Mik’s paying off his debt with the money I gave to Clio, he’ll get the ship back, won’t he?”
“He would.” She nodded. “But we’ve been talking since he arrived. There’s a job going here, in the Guildhall, and we’d like to see a bit more of each other. At least until one of us gets itchy feet again. So John gets to keep the Stacked Deck for a while, with the Rennau family as equal partners.”
“At least you’ll have Clio to keep an eye on him,” I said sourly.
“Ah, yes, Clio. I think she’s rather hoping for a berth on your ship, to be honest.”
“My ship?” I frowned in perplexity. “I haven’t found a skipper to take me on yet.”
