“Dad?” Cara said.
He glanced down at her. “Yes?”
“Can I have a gun?”
Andy studied her face, so full of her mother’s seriousness and worry. He hoped she would never have cause to develop the bitter set to the jaw that had marked Brit’s face when he had first met her—but there it was.
Andy took the old service pistol from its holster and held it in front of him. There wasn’t enough time to give her any sort of real lesson. But he had the rifle and didn’t technically need the weapon anymore. She might.
He quickly pointed out the action, safety, trigger, and a proper grip.
“Come here, close to me,” he said.
Holding the pistol in front of him but low enough so Cara could look down the sights, he said, “Line up the white square with the middle of the black post. That’s center mass.”
He activated the safety and put the pistol in her hands, pointing it toward the window. She had a hard time holding it upright against the rocking of the transport car. She squinted and tilted her head to look down the sights.
“I want to do it!” Tim said.
“Keep your voice down, Tim. This is only for right now. Put the meat of your finger on the trigger, Cara.” He checked her finger and corrected her placement. “Like that. Do you feel it in the middle of your fingerpad like that? That way you squeeze straight back.”
Cara nodded, still looking down the sights.
“When do you point a gun at someone?” he said.
“When I’m going to shoot them.”
“Do you ever point it as a joke, or to play?”
They had been through this before.
“Never!” Tim shouted. “Can I hold it now?”
“Not now, Tim. This is for Cara. What’s the answer?”
“Never,” she said.
“Good,” Andy said. “Look, if this wasn’t the only pistol I’ve got, I’d give it to you. For now, I’ll hang onto it. If you—” He paused, unable to find the right words. “If you need to use it, you take it, all right?”
Cara blinked, looking up at him with round eyes. She understood.
Andy nodded. “Let me have it back, Cara.”
She took another look down the sights and handed the pistol back.
“When we have time, we’ll do a real lesson. For now, you leave the shooting up to Petral and me. Like I said, all you do is what we tell you, no thinking about it, understand?”
“I still understand,” Tim complained.
“Andy,” Petral said. “We’re almost there.”
He checked the action on the pistol, set the safety and holstered it. A glow grew in the tunnel ahead and then they were slowing as the car entered another terminal. At the far end of the station, another tunnel branched off.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s another hundred meters down that branch. There’s a blast door in the tunnel line we can activate from inside. Once we’re in there, no one’s following us.
The terminal was like the others: white tile with evenly spaced pillars. Its lights were still functioning normally. The car began to slow, vibrating ever so slightly on the magnetic rail.
Andy nearly allowed himself to breathe when he caught movement behind one of the pillars. A soldier in a black uniform had seen the car and was sprinting toward something. Andy recognized a firing position made from the same white tile of the walls. The black muzzle of a heavy gun swung toward them.
Before the weapon fired, an explosion in the right corner of the front of the car tossed it nearly on end. The floor heaved beneath them, windows shattering on both sides of the car.
Ears ringing, Andy grabbed at the kids but could only hang onto Tim. Andy slid backward, his head bouncing off the edges of plastic seats.
The car fell toward the side of the terminal where the gun emplacement was positioned. Andy found himself with his back against the rear wall, staring up through the leaning car, light at his back from the smashed rear doorway. Petral was crouched on the back of a seat at the car’s midpoint, rifle at her shoulder. He couldn’t tell through the smoke and dust what she was aiming at but she started squeezing off three-round bursts, then dropped to a lower seat and took aim again. Rifle fire answered, peppering the wall of the car with pockmarks and a few burst holes.
“Cara!” Andy hissed. “Where are you?”
“Here,” she said. He followed the sound of her voice and found her lying on her stomach on the back of a seat just above him, hair full of dust.
She didn’t answer. Firing another burst, she shook her head disgustedly.
As soon as Petral started firing, Andy rolled to push Tim through the broken door. Grabbing for Cara, he pulled her down and made her crawl out ahead of him. He had to clamp a hand on Tim’s ankle before his son could crawl the rest of the way out of the car onto the open track, the leaning rail car hiding them from the gun emplacement.
“After me,” Andy said. “You follow me, okay? You don’t move until I move.”
Tim’s eyes were round and terrified as though Andy’s brusque tone scared him more than bullets.
The space between the magnetic rail and the side of the trench was about as wide as Andy’s shoulders, with carbon scoring and scuffs from where the emergency clamps holding the car down in zero-g areas had scraped the rail. The magnetic field was still active and Andy made sure to hold his weapon clear as he crawled around the broken door with his rifle across his inner elbows. Checking quickly for any sign of movement near the edge of the platform, he crawled the rest of the way out, then motioned for Tim and Cara to follow him.
Once they were out, he led a short dash so they were off the track and flattened against the platform wall, the smoking car leaning above them. Petral was still firing from inside the car.
For the first time, the big gun at the emplacement fired into the car, blowing a hole out its roof. It was a tank buster and the round went through the thin steel like tissue paper.
The grenades blew debris back across the tracks.
Andy grabbed the kids and sprinted along the wall. The mouth of the tunnel ahead yawned before them. Once they passed back over the rail, they’d be in plain sight of anyone up on the platform. He could barely make out the second opening down the tunnel.
Catching up with him, Petral fired two more grenades at the emplacement. They landed badly, hitting the far wall too high to do any real damage. Dust and tile rained on the emplacement. The big gun rotated toward them, lifting its barrel.
She turned without waiting for an answer and fired from her hip.
“We need to run,” Andy told the kids. “Along the wall. This way!”
Glancing back, he caught sight of Petral paused just inside the tunnel, firing from her shoulder now. She crouched and aimed carefully.
When they reached the branch tunnel, the big gun boomed again. They hadn’t bothered to aim into the tunnel. The round struck the midpoint of the arch above Petral, collapsing the concrete over her head.
/> There was no answer for a second, then she said,
“Get down the tunnel,” Andy told Tim and Cara. Spotting the emergency panel, a yellow square with an oversize red switch in its center, Andy said, “That closes the doors on this tunnel. Cara, you be ready to hit it when I tell you.”
“Dad?”
“Do it, Cara.”
Running a function check on his rifle as he sprinted, Andy navigated the debris that had fallen inside the branch line. The opening was still full of dust, concealing his movement for a few seconds, at least.
If the soldiers followed any sort of doctrine, they’d be lobbing grenades down the track soon enough. Staying low, he crept along the wall, looking for any sign of Petral.
A table-shaped piece of the ceiling had fallen straight down, bringing a cascade of smaller bits of rock and vine-like cabling with it. Andy found Petral on the inside edge of the collapsed tunnel, one leg caught under the pile, her knee bent unnaturally.
She was unconscious. Wrapping his sling around his arm to hold his rifle steady, Andy grabbed her by the collar and heaved. The leg didn’t want to move.
The shouts of coordinating fire teams floated through the dissipating dust cloud.
Grunting, he pulled again but was only able to drag her a few inches. Something was caught.
“Let me help, Dad,” Cara said from behind him.
Andy turned to her, wanting to shout for her to run. But she was already moving to grab Petral’s caught leg. Andy tried to look through the cloud again, worried the tunnel opening was going to fill with bullets at any moment.
Cara set her grip and nodded. Together they pulled. Grunting, Cara readjusted her hands, nearly wrapping her arms around Petral’s knee. The leg came free at last.
Heart pounding, Andy grabbed Petral around the waist and heaved her over his shoulder. Her head bounced against his back.
Cara was already running for the secondary tunnel. Andy followed her. When they were through, it was Tim who hit the square button. More dust blew from the ceiling as the heavy alloy door slid down and met reinforced locks in the floor, blocking the branch line from the main track.
They found themselves in complete darkness.
Andy leaned against the wall, adjusting his hold on Petral, and waited for his vision to acclimate to the dark.
“Are we going to go, Dad?” Cara said.
“Follow me,” he said. He was ready to probe his way forward in the dark when a line of lights flickered to life along the ceiling, showing them the dock entry just fifty meters ahead.
PART 4: TRAFFIC
Chapter Twenty-Four
STELLAR DATE: 08.27.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony
“I named her Worry’s End,” Fran said with an unapologetic shrug. “I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it.”
Floating through the air lock, Andy considered the news. “I thought you were going to use a random name generator? That doesn’t sound random.”
“It’s better than Sucking Rainbow.”
“There had to be more than that.”
“That’s what you get for taking so long.”
“About that. Petral’s hurt. I got her stabilized with what we had in the shuttle but I need to get her into the med bay. I’ve got her lashed to a splint board for now.”
“Worry’s End?” Cara said. “That’s a terrible name.”
“How’s it different than Sunny Skies?” Tim said.
“Sunny Skies are a thing you can see,” Cara said. “Worry’s End is something that will never come.”
“It could come,” Tim said, still hugging his bag.
“Never,” Cara asserted.
“Dad?” Tim said. “Is Petral going to be all right?”
Andy pulled him in for a quick hug, holding onto the wall with his other hand. “She’s going to be fine. She’s sleeping so her leg won’t hurt. We’re going to take her up to the med bay.”
“Karcher’s dead,” Cara said. Her voice was flat, stating a fact.
Andy looked at her, unable to tell how she felt about what she had just said. She might have been testing those kinds of words for the first time, really getting a sense of someone she had just met being dead, or matching it up with her feelings about her mother being gone.
He wasn’t sure what he’d projected on her and what was really there behind her eyes. He was torn between wanting to hold her and allowing her to work through this, to stand on her own. It wasn’t going to get any easier. Everything Starl had said about the possibility of a war was still banging around in his head—the strength of those words manifested by the blood and bodies in the corridors and sweeps of Cruithne. They weren’t out of this mess yet.
Andy glanced at Fran. From her expression, she already knew about Karcher.
“We made it out,” Andy said. “That’s what he wanted. It’s still possible he’ll be all right. We just don’t know.”
Cara shook her head. “He’s dead. He said he wouldn’t leave us otherwise.”
“You talked to him?” Andy asked.
She nodded solemnly.
He let out a long breath. He didn’t know what to say and was too exhausted to come up with reassurance. The shuttle-ride hadn’t done much to drain his adrenaline. He’d been uncertain the whole time that they might take fire from somewhere, run into yet another obstacle. He was starting to crash now
“Can they head up to the habitat?” Andy asked Fran. “Everything okay up there?”
“No dangling wires,” she said. “Yeah, it’s fine for them to head that way. I guess if they can take care of themselves, we can get Petral to the med bay and I can give you the update on the ship.”
“She’s still holding air, apparently.”
“Better than that,” Fran said, a little pride in her voice.
“I really appreciate your help,” Andy said, grateful to be alive and for the assistance they’d received.
Fran gave him a crooked smile. “Don’t get too emotional on me. I’m getting paid.”
Andy laughed. He pointed at Cara. “You heard her. Can you get yourselves up to the habitat? How about some dinner? You think you’re up for it?”
Cara frowned. “Isn’t it morning time? What time is it?”
“Time to eat,” Andy said. “I’m starving.”
With the kids kicking off ahead of them, Fran and Andy maneuvered the unconscious Petral through the air lock. The splint board helped, but it meant she took up more space than would otherwise have been necessary.
“How much time do we have before the ships start launching?” Andy asked.
“They’re waiting on our notification that you made it. Everybody’s pulling back inside the station. I think most of them are moving to ships.”
“That’s what Petral said they were going to do. What if nobody makes it back?”
“You don’t know Lowspin. This is the best fight we’ve had in our history. Corporatists think they can just overrun our station like we’re a bunch of squatters?”
“I’m surprised the TSF isn’t involved.”
“Who are they going to fight for?” Fran asked.
“Stability?”
Fran snorted a laugh.
Ahead of them, the kids appeared overjoyed to find themselves back in zero-g. Tim kicked forward, spinning, while Cara slapped his sides, slowing his momentum then speeding him up again. It was one of their old games. Andy didn’t understand how one of them didn’t end up hurling vomit all over the walls.
“Would you believe they just ran through a firefight?” he asked.
“Kids are resilient,” Fran said.
“I hope so.”
He couldn’t help noticing all the new components along the bulkheads of the main passageway. Panels that had been dented since he and Brit bought Sunny Skies were now flat, though not repainted. There probabl
y hadn’t been time for that. He spotted new conduit runs, pipe fittings and hundreds of individual weld points all along their path. The air tasted clean, too, no longer the familiar mix of overheated mold and melting plastic.
They had to take Petral off the board to get into the smaller airlock leading to the habitat. Andy still wasn’t used to finding the air the same temperature in the living quarters as the rest of the ship.
Once they were through, Fran said, “Oh, I fixed your habitat’s exterior airlock. You could board directly into your wheel now if you want. That should make things easier.”
“That airlock wasn’t structurally sound,” Andy said. “At least that’s what we were told when we bought the ship.”
“It wasn’t,” Fran agreed. “If you’d let another ship dock and hadn’t carefully regulated your interior pressure properly, the whole wheel probably would have collapsed like a used condom.” Catching herself, she glanced at the kids. They didn’t appear to have noticed. “Which also tied into your environmental control system, which hasn’t been maintaining proper logs for at least a hundred and fifty years. They shouldn’t have been able to sell it without those records.”
Andy shrugged. “It wasn’t that kind of transaction.”
“Nobody ever needs a mechanic until shit’s falling apart around them.” She caught herself again, saying, “Oh, sorry.”
“Dad’s going to wash your mouth out with soap,” Tim shouted, laughing.
“Try me,” Fran said, smirking.
Unlike the main shaft, the habitat had received a fresh coat of paint, and new bulkhead panels in the most used areas. It was obvious other rooms hadn’t been touched, which was fine with Andy.
“All right,” Andy said. “It’s time for you two to head to the kitchen. We’ll be in the med bay helping Petral.”
When the kids were out of earshot, Andy asked, “Is the ship going to make it out of here?”
Fran’s expression turned sour. “We’ll be able to get out. You’ve got a new containment bottle and we updated the transition systems. It’s your onboard computer I’m worried about. I think most of your problems stem from years of poor calibration. That’s just not something you can do manually. If a ship’s NSAI isn’t monitoring the engines, they’re going to fail eventually. Like I said before, I’m in awe of how you kept this house of cards from collapsing on you. But it’s not sustainable.”
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