“Not really,” he admitted.
“No lady friend has caught your eye?”
“No.”
“A shame. You seem like the nice sort.”
“My ex-girlfriend said I was too nice.”
“Was she young?”
“Yes. Younger than me at least.”
“Young girls don’t appreciate nice. A woman with experience might. Don’t be afraid to date older gals.”
“Is that a proposition?” Tim said with a raised eyebrow and a grin.
Kal slugged him in the left shoulder as hard as she could. He almost fell over laughing, then grimaced and rubbed the spot where a fresh bruise was no doubt forming.
“Sorry,” Kal said. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”
“No shit,” Tim said.
Suddenly, the feeling of gravity began to vanish.
“Uh oh,” Kal said. “I think maybe we’ve arrived.”
“What now?” Tim asked.
“Head back the way we came in. Suit up. Take a look outside and see what happens next.”
Kal and Tim never made it that far.
Chapter 14: in orbit, uncharted territory
Arbai watched her former husband as he stared intently at the gangway hatch. The receiving ship had been waiting for them as soon as the Broadbill had entered orbit, following a gradual downthrust through the outer portion of this uncharted star system. They were well beyond the boundaries of either the Occupied Zone or the Conflux, and the greenish blue-and-white world beneath them was uncharted as well.
A virgin paradise. Or a tropical death trap.
A lot depended on whether the fauna down below had evolved to the point of having sharp teeth, and thought off-world visitors might be tasty. Perhaps when the job was done, and after enough time had elapsed, Arbai and Yangis could come back here? Have a little fun on the beach? Nothing romantic, per se. Because sex with Yangis had never been like that. But relaxing fun just the same. Lord knew they’d have enough money to take a break from their cares for a while.
Doubtless it was the money that had Yangis so tense. Meeting strangers to make the exchange of goods was always a high-wire act. You couldn’t trust them to be straight, they couldn’t trust you to be straight, and Arbai had seen several such exchanges go badly before. Which was why everyone was carrying for this particular action. Pistols and submachine guns visible, without being brandished. It was also why she knew Yangis kept a small remote in his spacer’s jacket. It was tied wirelessly to the control computer that operated their cradle ship’s fusion reactor. If Yangis pressed a select sequence of buttons …
No sense letting potential double-crossers have the last laugh.
The gangway hatch’s indicator light blinked from red, to orange, to yellow, then to green.
Then it unsealed, and half a dozen men floated in.
Unlike Yangis’s crew, these strangers were more or less uniform in appearance. Hair cut to military standard. Faces serious and eyes alert. The kind of expressions Arbai and Yangis both remembered well, from their time in the CAF. Though these were not CAF. They were the men Arbai and Yangis had been killing right up until Arbai and Yangis both decided that the war was a sham, the Conflux was as bloody culpable as the Ambit League, and that the only side worth choosing, was their own side.
An older man with some kind of insignia on his collar stepped forward.
“Berd,” the man said, nodding his head slightly. “Commander of the Goshawk.”
“Yangis Terizian,” Yangis said, returning the slight nod. “You’d better be careful with that rusty bucket you’ve got out there. It’s a miracle it’s even spaceworthy.”
“It suffices,” Berd said, ignoring the jab at his spacer’s pride. “She may not look impressive, but the drives are good and she gets the job done. Besides, she’s just a delivery vehicle. Now, show us the cargo, then we’ll discuss your payment.”
“You read my mind,” Yangis said. He snapped a finger.
A single pallet was floated forward. On it, secured by bungee tethers, were the major pieces of a single suit of Archangel-type armor. Arbai noticed Berd’s eyes take in the sight of the armor the way other men might take in the sight of a nude woman. So Berd was a believer, eh? Ambit League to the core. That would either be very good, or very bad, depending on what happened next.
“How many of these did you get?” Berd asked Yangis.
“All of them aboard.”
“Which is how many?”
“We’ve not opened every single crate, but there are probably thirty total.”
“Not as many as we’d hoped,” said a younger man behind Berd. Tougher-looking. Also with an insignia on his collar. Berd’s executive officer?
“But enough,” Berd said.
He pushed off from the deck and floated over to the pallet, running his hands along the polished surfaces of the various armor components.
“When the crates have been moved to the Goshawk, you will be compensated,” Berd said to Yangis.
“No,” Yangis said, his businessman’s smile dropping to a frown. “The arrangement I made with your people was, I show you proof of the goods, you pay me for my time, then you can have the units. Not before.”
“The Ambit League is not in the habit of paying for goods which it has not yet taken possession of,” Berd said, his eyes suddenly hardening.
Arbai immediately noticed that some of Berd’s men had pushed their spacer’s jackets open, revealing the gleam of guns in holsters. Yangis’s people had subtly made their own weaponry more visible, too, and Arbai realized that things could get very unfortunate very fast if someone didn’t pour a little oil on the roiled waters.
“I don’t think it has to be an all or nothing proposition,” Arbai said, using her best, most soothing feminine voice. She pushed over to where Berd and Yangis now both floated less than a meter apart, their jaws thrust out at one another.
“A deal is a deal,” Yangis said. “No money, no top-secret armor.”
“Gentlemen,” Arbai said, inserting herself into the tense air between the two men. “Since there appears to be a small misunderstanding about what’s supposed to take place here, why don’t we agree to meet in the middle? We’ll provide the first ten suits, you carry them across, and you provide one third of the payment. Then we provide the next ten suits, you provide the second third, and so on and so forth. That way we get what we want, you can verify that you’re getting what you want, and then we can each go on our separate ways.”
Yangis and Berd glared at each other, then Yangis laughed: artificial, and harsh.
“Damn, Arbai, you always were so smooth. Can you believe this lady? And I had the stupidity to divorce her!”
“I divorced you, dear,” Arbai said gently.
More hard laughter.
“Fine, fine, we’ll do it according to the lady’s preference.”
Berd simply kept staring, then he blinked once, exhaled slowly, and nodded his head.
“That’s a reasonable compromise. Let me inform my men.”
Berd floated back to where his people were. With his back turned, he raised a hand and chopped it once, downward through the air.
Arbai’s smile dropped, and she screamed a warning.
Too late. The Ambit League men were faster on the draw.
Firearms chattered and banged like Thor’s hammer on an iron sky. Arbai felt something hot tear into her stomach and then she was flipped end-over-end back against the far bulkhead, where she curled in on the wound and gagged, unable to speak.
Looking out of the corner of her eye should could see the Ambit League men all poised on the balls of their feet—grip soles holding them tightly against the recoil of their weapons. Only three of them had been hit, and they were being rushed back down the gangway by their comrades, leaving Berd and his executive .
“Sorry,” Berd said as the moans of Yangis’s wounded filled the compartment. “This Archangel armor is too important to the League. We can
’t afford to have anyone—much less scum like yourselves—left alive to speak of its whereabouts. We’ll be taking all the suits now, and this ship as well. I should tell you that you ought to get used to my ‘rusty bucket’ because once we’ve moved our flag to the Broadbill, your bodies will be in the Goshawk when she reenters.”
Berd turned and motioned for his executive to follow him back down the gangway.
Arbai would have shed tears if the pain in her gut had not been so intense. She couldn’t speak, and could barely move. Heavy fluid leaked between her fingers and began to form hot blobs of dark redness that floated away into the air—to mix with that of the others, who’d all been shot to pieces.
Stupid, Arbai thought. Should have left a few of us elsewhere, to come in as a second wave, if the first wave went down.
Then she saw Yangis. Her ex-husband was slowly revolving in the air, three holes in his chest. But his eyes were blinking.
Arbai mouthed his name.
Yangis appeared to mouth something to Arbai too. She tried to muster a smile. Was he saying her name?
Then Yangis managed a ferocious, bloody grin. She noticed the remote was in his right hand.
Ah. Right.
Arbai closed her eyes, and hoped she’d be dead before the blast happened.
Chapter 14: uncharted territory
Back on the bridge, Pitman quickly cleaned his hands, and then linked himself into the intra-ship communications network through his headset. He began ordering his people to an even higher level of alert, with guards at all the entrances to the cargo bay, by the hatches to the engine room, and of course, watching the corridor to the bridge’s lone lift. Finally, Pitman called up six of his most trusted troops, who met him in the officers’ mess just off the bridge. In full armament.
Pitman looked at his team as they adjusted their gear.
“Does everyone understand? I want this little whore dead … I want her burned out of the ventilation system and gutted like a fish.”
Pitman’s people nodded and smiled. Like him, they were hungry for the hunt. There wasn’t an Ambit League partisan on the ship who didn’t hate the CAF.
Pitman slapped them on their shoulders and they trooped off towards the sole functional lift that serviced the bridge. Each carried a minimum of two weapons, various heat and motion sensing gear, plus full plate vests and helmets that could stop a rifle round.
Pitman used the AV unit in the wall—one of the few on the ship that still worked properly—to call up a diagram of the Goshawk’s internal architecture. They separated the ship up into sectors, then began mapping where the prey had most recently been sighted, versus where Gabriella’s body had been found. A strategy was devised to begin tackling the problem in a systematic fashion. No more random, bumbling search sweeps.
“Remember, she’s just one woman,” Garth said, his eyes jumping from face to stolid face. They all nodded solemnly.
“It will be done,” one of them said.
“See that it is,” Pitman said.
Pitman turned away from his men and walked through the adjoining passage back to the bridge proper. A guest had been brought to join the commander. The huge, dark-skinned young man was looking straight at Pitman—with eyes that only partially concealed the young man’s hostility. The prisoner never blinked as he stared at Pitman.
Pitman resisted the urge to strike the prisoner with a closed fist.
“I am afraid you don’t understand your predicament,” Berd was saying in a reasonable tone.
“How’s that?” the young man asked.
“Because, dear sir, it’s only a matter of time before my people catch up with your lady friend who is making such a mess of my ship down below. If you can convince her to come out of hiding and surrender peacefully, I can see to it that you’re both repatriated to a neutral site. In due time, of course.”
“And why should I believe you’ll do any such thing?” the prisoner asked.
“Son,” Berd said, his face assuming a somewhat pained, fatherly expression, “I am afraid that you’re in no position to doubt me. Because I can assure you, if that woman you came with is not brought to bear soon, for every one of my crew she hurts, I’m going to take it out on you. Or, rather, I will have my first officer take it out on you. And believe me, when I give him an order, he’s very good at what he does. Isn’t that right, Pitman?”
“Yessir,” was all Pitman said, eyeing the largish youth, who’d had his ankles and wrists shackled ever since he’d been dragged aboard.
The prisoner didn’t say a word. He simply stared at the floor.
“Son,” Berd said, “My people tell me your friend has managed to secure one of our headsets, so all I have to do is put you on the network in order for her to hear you. So, do we have an agreement?”
The prisoner remained silent.
“Hello?” Berd said, only this time a bit more sharply.
He glanced up at Pitman. Face red. Then pointed at the prisoner and mimed punching his fist into a palm.
Pitman smiled. He was going to get a little recreation, to ease the suffering of his recent loss.
Chapter 15: uncharted territory
Kal sat in the darkness, trying to let herself rest. But she couldn’t. The adrenaline in her veins was like amphetamine. She’d been wired up for hours, and remained wired. Unable to properly navigate the ship, and searching blindly from compartment to compartment, she was beginning to fear that she’d never locate Tim, until he was either dead, or they caught her. In which case she was as good as dead, and Tim right along with her.
Her headset crackled to life.
“This is Commander Berd to all crew members …”
Kal listened carefully.
“As you know, a lone female survivor from the Broadbill has come aboard and is harassing us internally. I have reason to suspect this woman is a military operative from the CAF, not a smuggler. I realize it is galling to us all that we must suffer having this … person, running loose in the bowels of our vessel. With your help I hope to have the problem resolved quickly, so that we can finish the job we came here for, and return our precious cargo to our Ambit League comrades who can do the most good with it.
“Until then, though, I want total intra-ship communications silence. All relays and request will be made face-to-face. Our visitor has one of our headsets, so she will hear anything we say on the network. Cut her out of the network, and she stands much less of a chance of evading or ambushing us. Anyone breaking this order without direct permission from the bridge will suffer the consequences. Do not let me down. Commander Berd, for the Ambit League, out.”
Suddenly Kal’s headset went totally dead, and she smacked a fist onto the hull plating.
She needed a plan of action. And fast.
Chapter 16: in orbit, uncharted territory
Kal and Tim were barely halfway to the compartment in the communications module—where they’d stowed their space suits—when a loud concussion shook the Broadbill.
The ship’s automated emergency claxon began to sound.
“Decompression!” Tim yelled, noticing the color of the flashing lights that suddenly sprang to life at intervals along the ceiling.
“Or worse,” Kal said.
“What could have happened?” Tim asked, his head suddenly swiveling back and forth in panic.
The klaxon changed pitch, and the emergency light changed color.
“Radiological alarm too!” Tim shouted.
“Shit,” Kal cursed. “The reactor on the cradle ship. Either it blew itself, or someone blew it for us.
“But what can we—“
A terrible wind kicked up, drowning out Tim’s words.
“Move!” Kal yelled. “Now!”
They both grabbed what handholds they could, and fought their way up the corridor. Meter by painful meter. There was an emergency locker just ahead. There would be emergency environment suits in there. Perhaps Kal and Tim could reach them in time to avoid having the air sucke
d from their lungs?
Kal clawed her way past a black and yellow striped threshold.
Why hadn’t the internal emergency doors sealed?
As if to answer Kal’s mental question, a thick steel door suddenly descended from the ceiling. Since Tim had been two meters behind he could only watch helplessly as the door slammed shut between them.
Kal felt the rush of air lessen, but not abate entirely. Screaming Tim’s name, she turned back to the door and began to beat on it with her fists.
“Tim! Oh my God, no, no!”
Rumbles and groans throughout the ship told Kal that the Broadbill was in very deep trouble. When the ship itself began to jerk violently, and spin, it was all Kal could do to worm her way towards the nearest lifeboat hatch, which was rimmed by red and white caution striping. She passed through the hatch and had the good sense to hit the large red handle in the lifeboat’s roof. The hatch slammed shut, and suddenly the lifeboat itself was being hurled into the universe.
Chapter 17: uncharted territory
Kal sat in the dark. Her eyes and ears wide open, waiting for the slightest sound.
It was eerie.
Before, while the radios had been active, she had at least been able to gather a fly-on-the-wall picture of what was happening inside the ship. Now, however, she was isolated and out of information. The advantage—temporarily gained, right after she’d taken the headset—was gone, and the whole ship had a collective itchy trigger finger with Kal’s name on it. The longer she sat and stared into the darkness, the more she became paranoid.
Minutes ticked by, agonizingly, and finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to move. But where? Navigating the neglected, darkened compartments of the ship was like moving through a maze with a blindfold on. Without a layout of the structure to orientate with, and a big arrow indicating Kal Reardon, You Are Here, any guess she might make as to where she was, or where she was trying to go, was almost useless.
But she absolutely could not risk moving about in the main corridors. It would be a near certain death sentence.
What to do …
Kal couldn’t think straight. She was too tired. Too exhausted. And too amped up on her own fear, combined with desperation to reach Tim. Her head settled onto her knees—drawn up to her chest—and she fell asleep.
Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen Page 18
