by Jason Letts
Or more accurately, he never let himself feel taken by her, because he knew it would never work, but it was getting harder to resist.
“Can you help me? I need to put this panel back in place,” she said, gesturing to a section out of reach above her head.
“Sure, I’ll get a ladder or a crate to stand on from the barn,” he said.
“No, just come here and lift me up. It’ll only take a second.”
Blinking, Rion nodded and approached her. While he thought she’d be stepping on his interlaced hands, it turned out what she wanted was to sit on his shoulders. The first time he attempted it, he lost his balance, sending her tipping over and laughing on the ground. He wasn’t going to fail again, and with more sustained effort he hoisted her up and held her thighs against his ears.
Even though endearing moments like these had happened from time to time, he knew better than to let himself get carried away because of his one fundamental flaw. He was a person, and she hated people.
Sometimes he wondered if anything had happened to set him apart in her eyes, like way back when even getting her name felt like a big personal connection. After a couple of bangs she set the panel in place and hopped down from his shoulders.
“If you could have it your way, do you sometimes wish you could take the ship and be off on your own again?” he asked.
She turned her head and gave him a scrutinizing look.
“It sounds like you’re trying to guilt me for something. Is it because I didn’t pick all of the little white hairs off the corn?”
Oftentimes it was difficult to tell if she was being serious or not, but either way she wasn’t inclined to talk about whether there was room for anyone else in her personal life. Rion thought about saying something more direct about how he felt, even though he’d probably get the equivalent of a pat on the head in response.
“There must be someone out there you’ve admired who didn’t remind you of everything you hate about everyone else,” he said.
“The only parts of other people that I hate are the parts that still remind me of myself. Don’t you ever wish you could break free of the similarities and stand head and shoulders above the rest in some way? Humanity is a trap that keeps me shackled,” she said.
Rion nodded in an absent sort of way. Somehow her interest in being unique and extraordinary always made Rion think she still saw him as that young boy in the spaceport.
Weeks passed and their time became filled with putting the ship back together instead of taking it apart. Fitting the fuel cells with new nodes to optimize output was one of the first tasks that they completed. Then they had to weld the missile ducts to allow for the slightly larger missiles. Heath took over the task of rewiring and programming the cockpit’s console for himself, and by the end of it one could’ve even called it user friendly for a change. Armored plates now covered most of the exterior.
“I think I’ve locked down all of the weapons supply routes feeding into the front lines around Uranus,” Bailor reported cheerfully. “All that’s left is to keep tabs on traffic and then pick a target to go after.”
Rion took a fresh glance at the ship from the farmhouse’s porch and wondered how soon they would be ready to leave. Parts were still all over the ground. He also felt a tinge of regret about saying goodbye to his life here.
“That’s great,” he said. “The sooner we get out there, the sooner we can make sure that places like this are protected from getting swept up in the war. Is there anything else you’ve learned?”
Bailor rubbed his eyes. Over time, he appeared to be less complacent with their current circumstances. He wasn’t sleeping well and had started taking walks in the fields at night that left him drained during the day.
“I’ve read a lot from Alliance officers. There’s no doubt that some are indeed forced into positions against their will, but a great majority have come to fully internalize the Alliance’s more domineering positions. The tone they take when they’re talking about civilians has become savage, like they’re animals.”
Rion cringed, taking this as the latest sign that things were getting worse.
“Someone is teaching them to think that, whether it’s the commanders or the chancellor. Those low level officers need us as much as the people outside the Alliance do,” he said.
“Sometimes I take it personally, like I’m responsible for the bad things that happen because we’re stuck here. Other times I don’t believe we’ll actually be able to make any sort of difference. A few people and one ship? There just isn’t any historical precedent for an instrument like we want to be appearing out of nowhere and making any sort of difference.”
Rion put his hand on Bailor’s shoulder. It wasn’t hard to sympathize.
“What have we got to lose? We spent most of our lives robbing ships and scraping to get by. The way I look at it is it’s no big loss if it doesn’t work out. At least I’ll have tried to get out of the hole they put me in.”
Bailor cracked a grin.
“You always know what to say,” he said. While Rion was glad to have helped, it made him sad that taking such a bleak view of their lives actually came across as encouragement.
The air filter, navigation systems, and the satellites were the next to get tuned up. It was a surprise when their list of projects started to get thin. Rion couldn’t help but feel suspicious about the parts of the ship they hadn’t touched.
“What about this valve to the auxiliary engine?” he asked from inside the cabin.
“Don’t touch it,” Heath said. “It’s still in perfect working order.”
“When are we going to need that, or the switches below deck in the crawlspace?”
“Those are for when you need a last resort,” he said. “The way the ship is set up it should accommodate every possible outcome. Don’t forget to get out of the pilot’s seat before it’s too late, like Reznik.”
“Sometimes I think she knew it was her time to go,” Lena said. “In her logs she always talked about how the mission would have to be carried out by someone other than herself. She felt the inevitability of getting killed and it caught up to her, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Lena’s comment seemed to make old Heath get misty eyed for a moment. He put his hand on the doorway between the cabin and the cockpit and leaned his forehead against it.
“I’ve never had any children, couldn’t settle down. She was the closest thing I had to a child. Here, let’s head inside. I’ve got something special for you.”
They followed Heath outside and back to the farmhouse, where steam and interesting smells were wafting from the kitchen. The sounds of something boiling made old Diff high-tail it in, but in just a few minutes they were served something unlike anything they’d yet had while they were here.
“Home grown and home cooked,” Heath said, dishing out a hot plate of pasta and spaghetti sauce. “That’s a Diff family recipe. You’ve never had better in your life.”
Rion wondered if it would be anything like the lemonade, but after one bite of the fresh, basil-seasoned sauce he wished he had two mouths to eat it faster and savor it more.
“This is extraordinary,” Rion said, moved that the old man had spent so much time putting this together. Heath had an extremely small amount of wheat and hated the task of pounding it into flour. To do that and then to make pasta out of it must’ve been grating for him.
Heath spent more time watching them eat his food than eating himself, even when his plate began to cool.
“I wish we’d known to come right here after losing Reznik instead of waiting ten years,” Rion added. This was the closest thing to a feeling of home he could remember. But Heath shook his head.
“I couldn’t have dealt with you brats back then. That’s something for you to keep in mind. Things work out how they will. Even if things go bad, it doesn’t mean you can’t find a way back on track.”
A mouthful of pasta left Rion only able to hum in response. He was so focused on the fo
od that at first he didn’t notice the light coming onto the communications display. Bailor dropped his fork and went right over to it, hunching over the screen.
“What is it?” Lena asked.
Rion already had a hunch. His heart rate picked up.
“There’s an envoy towing ammunition and supplies leaving Venus for Uranus right now. If we hurry, we can get in place to intercept it, but we have to leave now,” Bailor said.
“You mean right now?” Lena asked.
“These shipments have been irregular and infrequent,” Bailor went on. “We could be waiting weeks for another one.”
His words seemed to fill the air with heaviness and a sense of foreboding. Half the pasta remained on Rion’s plate.
“It’s time for you to go,” Heath said.
“But we’re not done putting the ship back together,” Rion said, torn between wanting to go and not believing they were ready.
“All the important parts are finished. Plus I added a little something extra without telling you. Another one of my homemade creations. It’s a flux transistor that’ll change the engine’s heat signature over time, making you tougher to track. You’ll be all right out there,” Heath said with a slow nod.
“We never got a chance to fix the landing gear.”
“There’s an easy solution for that. Don’t land.”
Rion took one more bite and dropped his fork. He got up from the table and looked at the door and the ship beyond. They had so little in their bunkroom that there wasn’t anything they couldn’t live without. The disc, as always, was in his pocket.
He signaled to Lena and Bailor that it was time to go with a look. They joined him at the door, leading Heath outside. Saturn was large in the sky again, ready to fall on them if they didn’t up and go.
They didn’t say anything as they made their way to the ship. Heath’s limp held him back, and he stopped well short of the spacecraft.
“Make her proud,” he said as they started to climb aboard. Rion took one last look at him before pulling himself into the cabin. The Assailing Face had been fearsome before and would be again because of Heath Diff’s genius, if they managed to use it correctly.
Lena pulled the hatch shut and joined them in the cockpit, where the pilot’s seat had been modified into more of a stool to allow them all to fit comfortably. Before them was a shiny new console with a more intuitive interface.
“There’s no going back after this,” Bailor said.
“There was never any going back,” Rion said.
Lena activated the engines and began to power up the thrusters for liftoff. The ship bucked and shook against the damaged pad but eventually broke free.
“What idiot botched a landing in this thing? She’d better watch out or she’s going to get herself killed.”
CHAPTER 8
If it weren’t for the improved engines on the Assailing Face and the sluggish pace of the weapons caravan, they never would’ve made it in time.
In time, specifically, meant being about eight hundred million kilometers from Uranus a mere forty-two hours after departure. That transit window gave Rion time to finish some of the things he’d meant to do before leaving, like installing foldable bunks in the cabin. Sleeping on suspended fiber sheets was a far cry from the beds they had at Heath’s farmhouse, but it would beat the floor.
Even with those tasks finished, there was still plenty of traveling time to kill. Revisiting their plan of attack more times than they needed to filled up part of it, and there weren’t any questions when it came time to set their trap and get in position.
They estimated that they had about twenty minutes to spare by the time they brought the ship to a halt in order to reel in their catch.
A beep from the scanners signaled that their estimate contained a large degree of error.
“They’re already here? That can’t be,” Rion said, surprised.
“Their velocity hasn’t changed at all,” Bailor said, giving him a pained look.
Rion scrambled to figure out what had gone wrong.
“Did the mine not go off? They were supposed to hit the mine along their flight path and then spend the next ninety minutes decelerating until they limped into the palms of our hands,” he went on.
“The mine blew, but they’re not slowing down,” Bailor said.
“Maybe they decided to push on to the Alliance blockade despite the damage. Fix things up there,” Lena said, but Rion wasn’t sure.
“It’s also possible they knew they were under attack and were making a run for it.”
The red dot on the scanners continued on at a steady clip, threatening to pass by them and reach the rest of the Alliance fleet closer to the planet.
“What do you want to do?” Bailor asked, his hands on the console.
“I want to make them stop and steal the weaponry they’re towing in that large cargo hold. There’re enough explosives in there to take out half the forces the Alliance has present, if used efficiently. Looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way,” he said.
Lena hit the throttle to bring them along the flight path, which appeared in bright green across the brand-spanking-new connected windshield.
“How about instead of the hard way we call it the fun way? They’re the same thing, but it just sounds a little better,” she said.
Rion started bringing some of the weapons systems online.
“The fun way it is. Just make sure we’re able to match their pace and don’t lose sight of the goods. We can’t go chasing down these small fighters and forget what we came here for.”
“But then there might be survivors,” Bailor said. “That doesn’t fit with the paradigm we have going for us.”
Rion deposited a pair of mines along the flight path as they crossed over it. If the caravan didn’t feel the need to slow down before, they wouldn’t have a choice now.
“How about we take on a new paradigm? It’s called completing our missions without getting blown up. That shouldn’t be too hard, considering there’s only one carrier towing the weapons and a few fighters.”
Lena raced alongside the flight path and then cut the engines, letting momentum push them along while going dark and making it harder for them to be detected by the scanners.
“We’re about to find out,” she said.
Rion had time for three deep breaths before the Alliance carrier hit the mines. They watched the explosion on the display screen, which gave them an excellent view of the mayhem that ensued. The large carrier took heavy damage to its front end, breaking open the hull in several places. The fighters meanwhile swerved erratically, two of them nearly colliding with each other before taking a more steady course, right at the Assailing Face.
“We’ve been spotted,” Lena said, bringing the engines back on. The ship kicked hard enough for them to feel it.
“Bring us around. We’ll take them head on. If the missiles don’t take care of them on the front side, we can see if the tracers will be enough to knock them out from behind. And let’s give them the face so they know who they’re dealing with,” Rion said.
“Got it.”
Lena smiled and hit the front end lights, which had the added effect of scrambling communications. Even if word didn’t get out to the Alliance crews along the front lines, they’d figure out something was holding their delivery up and come sniffing around before too long. Better not to dawdle.
With limited missiles, they had to make every one count. Two rocketed off toward the incoming fighters, who were spraying fire in return. At first it looked like the projectiles would sail wide, but they shifted course and made a perfect arc to the Alliance fighters. One was a direct hit that shattered the t-shaped ship like glass. But the other fighter managed to roll away and avoid the same fate.
“This one’s not going down easy,” Rion said, watching the fighter sail overhead.
He tracked it on the scanners and activated the small, pinpointed bursts of the tracer fire to take care of it. A se
ries of pin pricks landed, hobbling the fighter.
“He’s attempting to flee,” Bailor noted.
“Let him go. Stick to the plan,” Rion said.
Ahead of them was the large Alliance carrier, which would’ve been dangerous to take on even if they were part of a squadron. Incoming plasma fire from three turrets filled their view, but the smart display was so good it perfectly calculated where it would go and what they needed to do to avoid it. The Assailing Face rolled right and climbed to keep out of reach.
“I feel like I’m the best pilot in the universe!” Lena said, smacking her lips in a way Rion hadn’t seen before. Perhaps a personal tick when she was excited.
“You’ve got Heath to thank for it,” Bailor said. “It’s like everything is in slow motion and we have all day to react.”
Rion feigned a yawn to play along.
“I’m going to stuff those turrets full of lead, then we can turn our attention to the cargo trailer behind.”
Taking aim with the ship’s compressed matter gun, Rion fired molten bits of metal at incredibly high speeds. It was impossible to see the projectiles in transit because of their size and speed, but one after another the turrets were studded with holes and fell silent. The carrier still had mounted cannons firing and missile launchers were preparing to come online, but the Assailing Face was already on top of the cruiser and flying circles around it, making any kind of aiming an impossible feat. Missiles at point blank range would be just as likely to damage the carrier itself.
“There it is. Do you see it?” Lena asked.
They were coming around the top of the carrier, finally catching a glimpse of the rear end, where a trio of tethers connected it to the long, rectangular shaped cargo container carrying the weaponry. The tethers looked like strands of silver hair stretching out for about fifty meters. They began to glow and appear more distinct as the windshield display picked them up.
