by J. S. Morin
Roddy made another comm, this time to Parker. “Hey, you got a wizard there with you?”
Parker’s voice came back almost immediately. “He’s yours for the price of a ham sandwich. Wanna talk to him?”
“No, actually. I don’t. Just get him back to base, pronto. I’m taking off for a few days, and I’m putting him back in charge. If he gives you any shit—and I know he will—tell him it’s his own fault for putting me in command. And if he doesn’t get his ass back here, I’m giving Kwon his quarters. I’m sending the supply shuttle to pick you up.”
“Copy that … he says you’re going to regret this, but we’re on our way.”
Roddy grinned and switched off the datapad. He had to pack. If Carl was too stupid to save himself, Roddy was going to go out there and do it for him.
# # #
Amy held a hand to cover her ear. In the din of the crowded nightclub, Esper couldn’t make out what she was hearing through the comm earpiece. She could barely make out Amy’s replies.
“They what? … You’re screwing with me … No, you’re right, that sounds just like him … Yeah, she’s right here … Roger that.”
The two women shared their placemat-sized table with a pair of local goons of the enforcement variety. There was barely enough room for each of them to place their drinks. With their large frames and muscles bulging beneath their suit coats, they looked slightly ridiculous perched on stools.
Amy removed her hand from her ear. “Sorry. Work. Gotta make ions.”
As she stood, one of the goons grabbed her by the wrist. “Hey, you just get here. We not done. Stay. Have drink.” Amy winced at the brute’s grip.
Kicking the table out from between them, Esper grabbed the rough customer by his wrist. It was his turn to wince in pain. With a twist, Esper forced the man off his stool and to his knees. Before his companion could intervene, Amy had her blaster out of its holster and aimed at his head.
Throwing her victim to the floor, Esper fixed him with her best fire-and-brimstone glare. “Thank you for the drinks.”
“You little bitches! You have no idea who you deal with. I have powerful friends. You won’t get off this planet.” The thug braced a hand on his stool as he struggled to his feet.
Esper held her fingers apart, and an illusory image appeared: the thunderstruck ‘C’ of the Convocation. “So do I. And if we have any trouble leaving…” She left the threat hanging, unsure quite how to phrase it any better than their imaginations could conjure.
Amy backed away, blaster still trained on their would-be dates for the evening. The crowd was decidedly nonplussed. Once she’d put a few bodies between her and the threat, she holstered the weapon and strode out of the bar. Esper followed close behind.
Exiting into the acrid twilight air of Landing Zone, Amy put a forearm over her mouth, using the cloth of her suit as a makeshift filter. She coughed once. “Who the hell lives on a planet like this?”
Ground traffic rumbled by on metallic treads that seemed more popular than hover technology. There was probably some technical reason, but for the life of her Esper couldn’t figure out why. Maybe the metal had a closer connection to the earth element. Maybe hover cruisers didn’t like the smell in the air. Tucking her hands into opposing sleeves, Esper chose to ignore the quandary. She sighed, choosing not to inhale the nastier gasses. “People who are best off away from everything and everyone civilized.”
“It’s not often someone gets the jump on me. Stupid, impulsive schmucks react without even thinking. Hey… you OK?”
Esper blinked. “What?”
“Your mind’s offworld somewhere.”
Was it? Maybe. Esper had learned to send her mind all manner of places, some of which didn’t even exist in the traditional sense. But Amy hadn’t meant it that way. “Looks aside, those two could have been my brothers.”
“Huh? You have brothers? You never mentioned that.”
“Tanny knew. Who knows, maybe she actually knew them. I told you my family on Mars had money. They came into it when I was eleven or twelve.”
Amy shrugged. “Yeah. But that doesn’t bother me. I’ve got nothing against rich people.”
“Well, ‘came into’ was a polite little euphemism for my two older brothers finding work with the Rucker Syndicate. My father flew a transport shuttle. My mom worked in holovid programming. Neither of them was going to make it big. My brothers sent money home—lots of it. Enough for my parents to retire. For bad boys, they were good sons. Of course, I didn’t figure out where the money had come from for years. By the time I had, I’d spent too much of it to turn them in. But the job changed them. Neither of them ever laid a finger on me, but whenever they came home to visit, there was this menace surrounding them. Short tempers. Tweaker’s gleam in the eye. Looked through people instead of at them. Sound familiar?”
Amy nodded. Esper had just described their disgruntled underworld contacts. “We gotta head back for the ships. That comm was Yomin. Hatchet’s getting us kicked offworld. They might not trace the circuits and figure out the Mobius is with him, but we’re scrambling anyway.”
“You knew something like this would happen, didn’t you?”
“I warned Carl, but he said Hatchet had mellowed… that we could work with him. Carl’s always handed out extra helpings of second chances. Some people change. Some never do.”
# # #
Amy and Esper arrived at the Mobius as Juggler and Vixen pulled up in their rented hover-cruiser. The Hatchet Job was no longer parked on the adjacent landing pad. With the cargo bay door closed, they squeezed into the airlock two at a time. The air inside the ship still had a lingering odor from the planet’s atmosphere, but it wasn’t as bad as if the cargo bay had been left open all along.
The ship-wide comm blared as soon as they were all aboard. “Find someplace to strap in. I won’t guarantee the gravity stone will keep your feet on the floor.” To emphasize Carl’s point, the ship lurched sending the four of them stumbling as they stomped up the stairs toward the common room.
At the door, Amy pushed her way through and sprinted for the cockpit. Their comms weren’t the most secure in the galaxy, and her attempts to get details while en route to the ship had been met with vague reassurances mixed with prodding to hurry back.
Carl glanced over his shoulder as she approached. Locking the steering, he unbuckled from the pilot’s seat and let her take the controls. The cushions were still warm from his body heat.
Alternating hands on the flight yoke, Amy strapped herself in. “Status?”
“Hatchet shot a big-time local player. That’s the bad news. Good news, he stole the guy’s computer and hit orbit without getting dusted.”
“Know when to walk away, know when to run, right?” She spared a glance at Carl to shoot him a grin. This wasn’t the time for I-told-you-sos.
“Ideally running is done after taking the money. I’m just hoping to hell he’s got something worthwhile on that computer core.”
Amy’s hand jerked on the yoke before even realizing why. A massive blat of plasma lanced past the Mobius. “What’ve we got?”
Carl punched at the short-range radar. “Looks like ground fire from at least two emplacements, plus we’ve got five light fighters—Akula-class—coming in hot.”
“What in hell’s hangar is an Akula?”
Carl squinted at the radar and its associated tactical displays. The Mobius was hard down the road to P-tech, but it still brought up basic tactical data on anything in range. “Near as I can tell, it’s a flying gun. Weapon output is actually masking the engine signature, but they’re closing on us.”
“Remind me to lock Hatchet in a cold shower when this is over. If we can’t outrun these locals, I guess we have to dust them.”
Carl was already reaching for the comm.
# # #
The common room thundered with the sound of holographic race ships tearing around an atmospheric track. Jaxon Jr. and Lisa were playing Omnithrust Racer as if nothi
ng were going on outside the ship. As if they weren’t fleeing a lawless planet. As if they weren’t watching plasma blasts whiz past the glassteel dome overhead.
Niang was down in the engine room, ready in case anything went wrong. Yomin was holed up in her quarters with the ship’s data warfare equipment. That left Reebo, Jaxon, and Rachel in the common room with Esper.
“Heyo, we’ve got five ducks. Anyone up for some hunting?”
Reebo moved for the turret controls and brought the gunner’s seat down from overhead.
“…and by anyone, I mean Vixen.”
Rachel flashed Reebo a tight smile and slipped by him. Hopping into the seat of the turret, she began strapping herself in.
Lisa pulled her attention away from the racing game for just a moment. “Mom, can you get us an ice cream before you go?”
“Not now, sweetie. Mommy’s gotta shoot people.”
Jaxon Sr. bumped Jr. over on the couch and retrieved one of the game controllers. “How ‘bout this, kids? Beat your old man, and you can have ice cream.”
Reebo looked from one Schultz to another and back again. “What’s with you people? You’re all nuts.”
But that just prompted a grin from Rachel as she retracted the chair into the turret well. Jaxon threw Reebo the final game controller. “Relax. There aren’t enough tactical positions on this ship for everyone. So just take a load off and leave the fighting to the womenfolk.”
“Yeah… but…”
“Listen, buddy. I made my peace with Rach being the better shot years ago. Ramsey knows his pilots. If he weren’t up front trying to fly from the co-pilot’s seat, he’d be up there himself.”
Reebo gave Jaxon a puzzled frown. “Ramsey? I heard he could fly like the devil himself but manning a turret?”
“It’s all down to reflexes, hand-eye coordination, and predicting your target’s behavior. Now pick a ship and a pilot, and load in.”
Esper waited until the brief row over the selection of a race course was settled and the game began. Then, as plasma blasts crossed the ship’s view in all directions, she slipped over to the fridge and made sure she got a chocolate almond chip ice cream bar before the Schultz kids ate them all.
# # #
There were days when Carl wondered why he’d gotten into this business. It rarely paid well. People often tried to kill him. The law was more of a threat than a promise of protection for smugglers and con men. But as he watched Amy handle the controls of his ship with utmost skill and not a hint of hesitation, he knew. They were in the midst of a fox hunt, and the Mobius was the fox. Below them, a sickly planet peopled by refugees from law and justice. Ahead of them, the Black Ocean and every other thing in the galaxy. That was the key. It was all out there to find. Carl loved the Black Ocean.
He also loved the woman flying his ship. Despite the firepower of the Akulas swarming to chase them down, Carl had no doubt that Amy would keep them alive to rendezvous with the Hatchet Job. She wasn’t gentle with the controls or shy with the maneuvering thrusters. At irregular intervals, she’d overstress the ship’s gravity stone, and Carl would feel the ship’s momentum forcing his body against the chair’s safety restraints. A thin sheen of sweat, a mix of concentration and adrenaline, beaded on her brow. Her breath was shallow and fast, her pupils wide, her face flush. When the threat was ended, his first thought was going to be to take her straight back to their quarters.
This was the life.
Someday, one underling or another was going to convince the syndicate that Carl was too vital to be allowed to fly in combat missions, even lopsided ones. He’d be trapped planetside or on a luxury-size ship captained by someone who worked for him. Sometime in the next ten years, maybe twenty if he was lucky, his reflexes and instincts would dull unless he sought genetic alteration or cybernetic upgrades. By then it would be a moot point if his flunkies let him fly—he’d be a sky-show pilot, fit for parades and low-risk supply runs, nothing more.
A blast shook the ship.
“Sorry,” Amy said without looking at him.
“It’s OK. There’s a lot of incoming fire. Shields will hold off a stray hit now and then.”
“It’s not that. I was just wondering what we were going to name our kids. You know, seeing Jax and Rach with theirs got me thinking. Then I realized we hadn’t talked about having kids at all. Then I was trying to decide how I should bring up the topic. Then we got shot.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I like kids. My family’s had a long tradition of having them, going back… oh, at least five or six generations.”
Amy didn’t pick up on the jest. The Mobius jerked with a nausea-inducing shift in gravity, and a bolt of plasma from the surface came within meters of hitting them. “The thing is, what if they turn out like me? I drove my parents nuts until I left for the navy. I mean, literally. My mom is still in a mental assistance facility. I can’t even visit her because it freaks her out seeing me. What if that’s me in twenty years? Can I do that to myself? Is evolutionary biology telling me ‘Scarecrow, this isn’t a good idea’? If it is, I should probably take a hint from Darwin and let the fittest procreate.”
Hades Breath had two moons, just a pair of uninhabited balls of rock that were little more than giant, misshapen asteroids. Once they reached the shadow of the larger moon, they’d be out of range of the planet’s surface-based weapons. Hopefully, then it would be easier to deal with the fighters that harassed them.
Carl paused as he reached for the comm. “I doubt Mother Nature refers to you by your call sign. Ahem… hey, Vixen. Any chance you can dust a few of those fighters? You’re not up there for the view.”
“Just got the seat and controls adjusted. Someone—who’ll remain nameless—had everything set for gorilla. Outgoing fire commencing.”
“I mean, I know you and Tanny broke up over the kids thing. She needed to clean up and couldn’t. But what if it was just a bad idea? What if your kids would have turned out to be pharma addicts or psychopaths like her father? Plus, it’s not like either of us is a stable role model.”
A blip on the radar disappeared. Four Akulas remained.
The Mobius took two hits in rapid succession. The shield indicator fluttered. “Maybe now’s not the best time—”
Amy popped the release on her safety harness. “You’re right. I need to take a walk.”
The pilot’s chair sat empty for a long moment as Carl struggled to process. He’d always admired Amy’s ability to surprise him, but this was going below and beyond the call of duty. The Mobius took another shuddering blast as his straight-line trajectory made an easy target. Struggling out of his harness, Carl leapt across to the pilot’s chair and yanked on the flight yoke. Any maneuver right then was better than none at all.
A stray glance at the shield indicator showed an overload fault. Damn, those tiny fighters packed a punch. Carl swung the ship around to bring the forward shields into the line of fire. Their maneuverability was shot to hell with the main engines facing their direction of travel. He probably ruined Vixen’s aim, but there was no getting around the need to put fresh shields into their attacker’s gun sights.
Sparing a hand for the comm, Carl called down to the engine room. “Jean, we need those shields back online.”
“Already on it. Ten minutes, tops.”
“We might not have ten. Make it two.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Carl couldn’t tell if Niang was humoring or mocking him.
Carl backpedaled the Mobius as the four remaining fighters swarmed around, looking to exploit the vulnerable rear quadrant of the ship. He juked and twisted, slung low past the moon, and took a heading to ram one of the Akulas head on—it swerved. Unlike Amy, Carl had managed to keep his focus on the battle at hand and not on deep interpersonal questions. In fact, he split off a Carl Who’s Worried About Amy and a Carl Who Ponders His Girlfriend’s Emotional Baggage just to keep everything compartmentalized in his head.
Up in the gunnery station, Vixen finally took out another tar
get. It was a small miracle, considering the acrobatics Carl was performing.
A warning tone sounded on the radar as a ship dropped out of astral just ahead. After a quick shot of adrenaline, Carl realized it was the Hatchet Job, circling back to lend a hand.
“About time you puppies showed up,” Carl said, letting relief seep from his words. “I was afraid we were going to have to mop up these wastoids without you.”
“Can it, Blackjack. I saw the whole thing.”
The Hatchet Job opened fire, sending the three remaining fighters scattering. Three to two was a numerical advantage in name only when the two were both larger, more durable ships, even if the difference in armaments wasn’t pronounced.
“And you’re just coming out of astral to help now?”
“Quit yer bitchin’. Figured you could handle a few throw-aways from the surface.”
“Knocking a little rust off is all. Let’s dust these little pains in the ass and hit astral.”
With the two vessels working in tandem, it only took a few minutes to round up and finish off the remaining fighters from Hades Breath. One of the perks about disputed regions was the lack of a higher authority to swoop in and ruin a good victory. Slumping back in the pilot’s seat, Carl felt drained. He didn’t go find Amy.
# # #
Darts flew. Beer steins drained and refilled. Music blared from speakers scattered around the rec hall of the Hatchet Job, playing ancient rock music in tribute to the syndicate head. Those not engaged in active recreating were gathered around the holo-projector, where Yomin was holding court.
She stood with datapad in hand, pacing in front of the holographic image of the Dragovic family crest. A pair of crown-wearing eagles flanking a rearing horse seemed starkly out of character for a backwater crime family. Any eagle trying to live on Hades Breath would have died of a clogged air intake. “The computer that Hatchet procured from Radovan Dragovic was damaged in the extraction, but I was able to transplant the data core into the Hatchet Job’s computer. All the data is in there. We have his contacts, his business ledgers, his personnel files, correspondence, and holdings. I took the liberty of siphoning off his bank accounts, but they’re located in ARGO-controlled space and regulators shut me down pretty quick.”
