The Thirteenth Man

by J. L. Doty

  “How dare you?” Lucius cried, rising.

  “Shut up,” Goutain growled.

  “And you,” Charlie continued. “You know it’s a farce, especially since I got the best of you.” And though it hurt terribly, Charlie grinned at him.

  The sergeant clubbed him again and he went down. Then the four of them clubbed and kicked him into unconsciousness.

  He thought of Del the whole time.

  CHAPTER 10

  ESCAPE

  “Wake up, Commander.”

  Charlie opened his eyes and looked at Carallo. It took him a moment to remember he was on a Syndonese ship somewhere in space. Carallo was a soft-­spoken young man, and Charlie actually pitied the poor fellow his task. The guards, always with Goutain present, would beat Charlie for a while, then they’d call Carallo in to fix him up, just enough to keep him alive. And all poor Carallo could do was apologize.

  “I’m sorry, Commander. I have to take you to sick bay again. This is much too serious to handle with just my kit.”

  “Just let me die, damn it.”

  “I can’t do that, Commander. My wife and children, he’ll kill them.”

  Given Carallo’s choices, Charlie would do the same.

  Carallo pulled Charlie to his feet, and at some point Charlie made the mistake of putting weight on his broken, crudely splinted left leg. The pain almost sent him into blessed unconsciousness.

  “Put your arm around me, Commander. I’ll help you keep weight off that leg.”

  They adjusted themselves into an odd sort of tripodal state, Charlie with his left arm about Carallo’s shoulders, Carallo supporting most of Charlie’s weight. Carallo had to shout at the guards to get them to open the door to his cell. “No. I have to take him to sick bay. The shape they’ve left him in, there’s little I can do without the facilities there. His Excellency wants him kept alive. Shall I tell His Excellency he died because you wouldn’t let me take him to sick bay?”

  Charlie drifted off into a semi-­comatose state of awareness as Carallo led him down one corridor then another. The hardest part was squeezing his damaged limbs through a small personnel hatch. “Commander, listen to me. Listen carefully. We’re about to down-­transit into Tachaann nearspace.”

  Charlie struggled to grasp reality, managed to hang on to just a thread, but that was enough to tell him that they weren’t in any sick bay, and that fact produced a moment of lucidity. “You’re in one of the lifeboats.”

  With that simple statement his surroundings came into focus. Carallo had strapped him into an acceleration couch, one of about a dozen such in the confined space of the lifeboat. “We’re about to down-­transit into the Tachaann system. I’ve programmed the lifeboat to launch an instant after down-­transition. That may buy you enough time to get away. That’s all I can do for you.”

  Charlie managed to gurgle out, “Why Tachaann?”

  “It’s the first chance I’ve had, and it may be the only chance you’ll get, so I’m taking it.”

  “Your family. What about your family?”

  “He doesn’t know that I know, but he’s already had my wife and children tortured to death.”

  For the first time Charlie truly looked at Carallo, saw a young man about his own age. Carallo had the look of a man going through the motions of life without actually living. Carallo said, “He’s afraid of you, you know, in an almost superstitious way, though not so much now that you’re in his hands. But if you weren’t, if you were free, then he’d fear you more than any other being in this universe. Even if you die, as long as he doesn’t have proof you’re dead, you’ll haunt him for the rest of his life. And if that’s the only revenge I can have, then so be it.”

  That wasn’t good enough for Charlie. He didn’t want to be a ghost haunting Goutain’s dreams. And even through the haze of pain he knew that Carallo’s plan would only get them both killed. “I have to leave you now. After down-­transition I’m going to try to kill Goutain, though I don’t hold much hope that I’ll succeed.”

  Carallo climbed through the small hatch and dogged it shut. Charlie waited only long enough to hear the hatch’s lock ratchet into place. Then he popped the restraints holding him to the couch. He staggered to the medical cabinet, rifled through it desperately, and found a combat kikker, a cocktail of painkillers and strong stimulants. He slapped the patch against the side of his neck and shivered as drug-­induced lucidity washed through his mind. He stuffed a ­couple more kikkers into his pockets, some antibiotics and painkillers as well. Then he staggered to the pilot’s console.

  It was minimal at best, but while docked he had access to the larger ship’s navigation data. Twenty minutes to down-­transition, with the lifeboat programmed to launch one minute later, its autopilot set up to drive at maximum thrust for Tachaann. But the launch of the lifeboat would raise alarms on the bridge, and a warship could easily overtake the lifeboat.

  Carallo had opened the pilot’s console to command access, and for that Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. He plunged into the boat’s autopilot, overrode all its safety protocols, all its fail-­safe restraints, especially those concerned with operation of the lifeboat’s drive. That done, and praying he hadn’t missed anything, he headed for the engine compartment at the rear of the small craft.

  Lifeboats were designed to be simple, under the assumption they might be operated by badly injured personnel. Charlie grabbed a wrench and a knife from a nearby toolkit, disengaged a ­couple of latches, and slid the engine’s heat shield out of the way. Cooling lines, that’s what he was after. He badly crimped those that were metal or plast tubing in several places, while he cut those that were flexible. He closed the heat shield and limped back to the pilot’s console. Two minutes to transition.

  He pulled off his tunic to use as a sack, stuffed it full of ration packs and medical supplies, then turned to the hatch. The only way of determining if chance had put someone in the corridor on the other side of the hatch was to open the damn thing. He did so, and luck was with him, or more likely, this close to transition everyone had a required duty station. He sealed the lifeboat’s hatch. One minute to go.

  There were five more lifeboat hatches in the same corridor, all open for ready access in an emergency. The one he’d just exited was conspicuous in that it was sealed. He chose one of the others at random, climbed through it, and didn’t dare be so obvious as to seal the hatch. His one chance was the lifeboat’s emergency medical unit, though it felt more like a coffin as he climbed into it and lay down.

  He felt the ship down-­transit, then its hull thrummed several times as it launched its navigational drones. A short delay, then nearby the hull echoed with the launch of the lifeboat. He manually pulled the med unit’s lid down, leaving it open just a crack for air.

  The engines on lifeboats were simple rocket motors, fueled by a ­couple of highly explosive liquid chemicals. If all went well, Charlie’s sabotage of the cooling lines would cause the engine to rapidly overheat, and if he hadn’t missed any critical fail-­safes it would continue to pump fuel at maximum capacity. The resultant explosion would be dramatic enough that no one would expect to find anything left of its one unfortunate passenger.

  If all went well.

  Charlie didn’t dare use the med unit, or activate any of the lifeboat’s systems; the pilot’s console was always active, but any activity beyond that would trigger alarms in the ship’s maintenance systems. And with the lifeboat’s hatch open he could leave the med unit only when certain the corridor outside was empty.

  After the lifeboat launch, there was an initial flurry of activity. Charlie heard crewmen in the corridor beyond the lifeboat hatch, some discussion, a little shouting, and a few harshly barked commands. At one point a crewman stuck his head through the open lifeboat hatch and glanced about quickly, but didn’t stay. Charlie waited until the corridor had been silent for several hours before ventur
ing forth, and then only long enough to check the ship’s navigational reports on the pilot’s console. No up-­transition scheduled yet.

  He kept himself conscious with the kikkers he’d pocketed from the other boat, but didn’t dare allow himself any painkillers or sleep, nibbling instead on some emergency rations and waiting for the time to pass. At one point he did lose consciousness and slept for a few hours. But once each hour, as long as the corridor outside was quiet, he’d leave the med unit briefly and check the navigational reports. It took a day before they scheduled an up-­transition, and that was still another day away.

  The wait for up-­transition was agonizing. He thought an hour had gone by, but when he checked the pilot’s console only a few minutes had elapsed. On the one hand he needed to calm down, but on the other it was even more critical that he not sleep and miss up-­transition, so he kept himself loaded to the hilt on kikkers. His heart was racing at this point, had been pumping overtime for a while now, and he knew he was close to his limit, but what choice did he have?

  One hour before transition it was time to take the biggest gamble of all: he had to hack into the lifeboat’s primary systems, and to do that he had to work at the pilot’s console. Hopefully, as transition approached, there would be fewer crew wandering the corridors, but to be safe he appropriated a heavy wrench from the lifeboat’s toolkit.

  Lifeboats were designed to operate reasonably well even with some damage, and their operating systems were not designed with a great deal of security in mind. Once launched, the pilot console defaulted to command access. But before that the boat’s systems would prevent launch in certain extreme circumstances, like while in transition, and somehow he had to override that. He couldn’t have hacked a major ship’s system in any amount of time, and a minor system would have taken several hours, but he created a back door by fooling the lifeboat into thinking it had already launched, and he got command access.

  “Five minutes to up-­transition and counting,” allship announced.

  “What are you doing?”

  Charlie managed to avoid jumping at the voice, turned away from the console slowly while furtively placing his hand on the wrench in his lap. A crewman stood over him, a common spacer. As Charlie faced him the man cringed at the condition of Charlie’s face. “The engine room,” Charlie said. “An explosion! Help me—­I’m trying to contact the bridge.”

  If the spacer had taken a moment to think it through, there were a dozen clues to tell him an engine room mechanic wouldn’t be sitting at a lifeboat console, trying to use it to contact the bridge about an engine room explosion. “Shit,” the spacer growled, and spun on his heel toward the nearest allship link. Charlie rose out of his seat and swung the wrench, catching the man on the back of the head. The spacer went down hard and didn’t get up. Charlie checked his pulse; he was alive.

  “Four minutes to up-­transition and counting,” allship announced.

  Charlie dragged the spacer out into the corridor, though it was an effort getting him through the small lifeboat hatch, and an agony with his own injuries, and he had to listen to allship counting down to transition. Charlie dumped him there.

  “Two minutes to up-­transition and counting,” allship announced.

  Back through the lifeboat hatch he sealed it: he had to count on luck that no one discovered the injured spacer or the closed lifeboat hatch.

  “One minute to up-­transition and counting,” allship announced.

  Charlie sat down at the console. Up-­transition was far more critical than down. A wrong vector, incorrect mass, nearby mass distorting the ship’s nearspace: too many things could go wrong. And he had only seconds to find that override.

  The ship’s hull echoed as the navigational drones clamped themselves into their docks.

  “Ten seconds to up-­transition and counting,” allship announced.

  There it was.

  “Nine . . .”

  He had it, now he had to override it.

  “Eight . . .”

  It refused.

  “Seven . . .”

  “Fuck you,” he shouted at the console.

  “Six . . .”

  “Command override,” he shouted.

  “Five . . .”

  He could only pray the necessary three commands would do the trick. “Override.”

  “Four . . .”

  “Override.”

  “Three . . .”

  “Override.”

  “Two . . .”

  The pilot’s console replied with, Command override access completed. You may now—­

  “One . . .”

  “Fuck you,” he screamed again as he lifted the safety cover on the launch key.

  “Up-­transition sequence initiated . . .”

  He could feel the ship transiting, that weird distortion of his senses. The timing for this was one big guess, one big gamble. The ship would, of course, detect the launch of the lifeboat, and if he launched too soon they’d have time to abort the transition sequence, leaving them both in Tachaann nearspace where Goutain would have no difficulty scooping him up. If he launched too late, the lifeboat would be swept into transition with the ship, a long, slow way to die.

  He slammed his fist onto the launch key and explosive bolts fired, violently ejecting the small lifeboat from the larger mass of the ship and hurling Charlie across its cabin. How stupid of him to have forgotten to strap down, he thought as he slammed into a bulkhead and lost consciousness.

  Charlie awoke floating in the middle of the lifeboat cabin, bits of debris floating about him. He tried to determine where he hurt most, and settled on “everywhere.” He struggled to the pilot’s console, strapped down, and brought up the boat’s navigational system. He was happy to learn that he hadn’t been sucked into transition and there was no sign of Goutain’s ship.

  The launch of the lifeboat would’ve raised an alarm on the bridge, but it might not be reported to Goutain, and with or without Goutain they might or might not put two and two together and come up with Charlie. Even if they immediately decided to return and find him, it would take a good hour to set up and make an orderly down-­transition, then hours, perhaps even days, of deceleration and then acceleration to reverse course and up-­transit again. Charlie had at least a ­couple of days, maybe longer if his luck held.

  His first concern was to kill the automated emergency distress beacon. Since he’d already hacked into the boat’s systems, that only took a few seconds. Then he identified several other changes he needed to make to remain undetected once Goutain’s ship did return. And he had to assume it would. Then somehow he had to get down onto the surface of Tachaann, preferably alive.

  The lifeboat was equipped to keep a dozen ­people alive for twenty days, so Charlie alone could survive for a long time—­that wasn’t the issue. Fuel was the issue. He was at the edge of Tachaann nearspace, and his uncontrolled ejection from the up-­transition had left him with a strong vector at a sharp angle to the plane of the ecliptic. He’d have to do a slow burn now to put the boat into a highly eccentric orbit. Then, taking advantage of the system gravity well, in fifty-­seven days another burn would slow him enough for a controlled entry into Tachaann’s atmosphere, hopefully with a little fuel left over for a decent landing.

  He set up the first burn, fired the boat’s engines, confirmed his trajectory, then slept for several hours. When he awoke he stuffed himself into the med unit with instructions for its AI to fix him as well as it could. He had fifty-­seven days to wait.

  CHAPTER 11

  NEW FRIENDS

  The planet Tachaann could not boast of any serious strategic or commercial resources. It had a livable atmosphere and reasonable gravity with large landmasses, but the soil was not of sufficient quality to warrant the investment required for large commercial agricultural production, nor were there sufficient quantities of heavy
metals present to justify serious mining operations. Its only claim to fame was that it was a convenient supply and refitting point on a major shipping lane, though it wasn’t actually a necessary stop. Many ships merely used it as a convenient point to down-­transit for a navigational fix and realignment, without even stopping. It had a small orbital station that provided supplies for ships that did stop, and one reasonably large city on the planet’s surface. The city, named Ellitah, was an open port, with a reputation as a haven for pirates, smugglers, thieves, and cutthroats. It could be worse, Charlie thought. I could be de Lunis.

  Assuming Goutain’s ship did return for him, Charlie was banking on the fact that his highly eccentric, out-­of-­the-­ecliptic orbit would put him outside of their most likely search pattern. With the lifeboat’s systems running at bare minimum, he hoped they’d miss him in the vast volume of the solar system. They’d probably search the space between the lifeboat’s launch point and Tachaann, then sit in orbit for a while watching for a lifeboat reentry. Charlie hoped that long before the fifty-­seven days had elapsed, Goutain would grow bored, assume Charlie had made it to the planet’s surface, drop some troops down there to search for him, then go elsewhere with his warship.

  What he didn’t account for was how bored he grew, and by the end of the fifty-­seven days Charlie was going stir-­crazy. With almost maniacal fervor he set up the reentry burn, excited for something to do. His luck held and the entry into atmosphere and landing went well. The countryside surrounding Ellitah was quite arid with little vegetation. Charlie set the lifeboat down in a small canyon about twenty kilometers from the city. It would never lift again so he stripped it of everything useful. It provided clothing for almost any kind of climate, simple military fatigues without insignia, meaning he’d be reasonably anonymous. He made up a small pack, stuffed it with some ration packs and a careful selection of drugs from the medical cabinet. He no longer needed them, but he might pick up a little money by selling them on the street. They wouldn’t bring in much more than the price of a ­couple meals, but he was looking forward to something other than rations. The med unit had fixed him up reasonably well, but it had no cosmetic capability, and only limited facility for reconstructing the orbit of his eye. So while everything was once again functional, a field of nasty scars and distorted skin covered the right side of his face. As for weapons, all he came up with was a wrench and a knife.