Abruptly, the auction automaton barked a command, and the technicians and scientists reluctantly scattered back to their masters. Above the box, a holographic array appeared, displaying the integer zero in red.
It turned orange, then yellow, then green.
Nothing happened, and after a few moments, Angel hissed.
“Patience,” said Charlotte.
“She’s not here. She could be trying to break into our ship.”
Charlotte said nothing for a few seconds, then, “The ship is secure. There have been no unwarranted entry attempts.”
Angel tilted her glass and swallowed the rest of her violet scotch.
“She’ll be here,” affirmed Charlotte.
The holo-display flickered, and the number changed to seven million.
“Whoo,” Angel said. That was enough to set her up for life. In fact, she’d probably be able to live like a spendthrift playboy in a private ship, cruising from one planet to the next, extending her life with the best gene therapy credits could buy. If only she placed a value on money.
The figure jumped to eight, then nine million. Angel ordered another drink.
Soon, it reached thirteen million.
Angel couldn’t see how the bids were being communicated. Possibly a twitch here, an eye movement there. Each one was confirmed through the bidder’s implants to the auction master, but the initial bid was conducted old style: physically. Part of the game, she assumed.
At thirteen, the display paused. A number of suited buyers were arguing loudly with their entourage. One woman turned and walked out, hangers-on trailing after her. Another of the bidders, a haughty thin woman, was beaming. A scientist standing next to her patted another on the back. A timer appeared beside the thirteen, counting down from ten.
At one, it paused. A bell chimed, and the holo-display clicked over to fifteen million.
The bidders looked around them angrily, and one of them shouted in disgust.
“What’s happening?” Charlotte asked Angel.
“Someone bid after the auction was officially over. I don’t know how.” It had to have been Summer.
The auction master automaton moved to a central position close to the box. It raised spindly arms high in an effort to calm the crowd. It didn’t seem to be working. The woman Angel thought had the winning bid was red-faced. She screamed at the auction automaton, words unintelligible through the glass.
“Sercan Orbital Governance has the final winning bid,” announced the auctioneer. “My condolences to all who lost on this item. We rarely have the opportunity to offer such merchandise for competitive sale.”
“Shit, shit,” hissed Angel. “We have to get out of here!”
“Why? She isn’t here—oh.”
“Yes. The only way this could have happened is if the Genevolves have their hooks into the Sercan Governance. Come on!”
Angel leapt to her feet, the chair clattering over behind her. She grabbed Charlotte’s hand, and together they raced out of the restaurant. As Angel flew past the exit, she squirted credits to cover their bill. It wouldn’t do for the local law enforcement to come after them, assuming they hadn’t already been notified to detain them. They had to leave the orbital as quickly as they could.
Angel ran past the elevator and into the emergency stairwell. Together, she and Charlotte practically tumbled down the stairs and out onto the main concourse. She looked around frantically, drawing curious stares.
“Service corridors,” said Charlotte quietly. “There’s one over there.” She pointed across the street.
“Good idea.”
They hurried between foot and loader traffic, and shoved open swinging doors into a waste treatment plant. Charlotte pinched her nose once they were through the negative-pressure atmospheric seal.
“Phew. That’s bad.”
Angel breathed through her mouth. “I know. Here. This way.”
She tugged Charlotte along behind her, and they commandeered a service cleaning machine. Angel sat in one of the seats and punched in the docking bay coordinates of the Endurance. With a whirr, the machine rolled along a corridor and headed toward their ship as fast as it could, which wasn’t fast at all.
“Damn it, we should have realized,” Angel cursed.
“You couldn’t have known. The Genevolves are supposed to have been broken, their power scattered.”
“Yeah.” Angel chewed a thumbnail. “But this means they’re regaining a foothold. Where else do they wield influence? The Inquisitors?”
“That’s… unlikely.”
“But not impossible.”
“No.”
“Fuck.”
Angel sat in silence, fuming. The erroneous assumption they would only have to deal with the one Genevolve had landed them in a dangerous situation. They maneuvered along narrow corridors and intersections that remained hidden behind the shops and warehouses in the traders’ section of the orbital. Angel spent the time checking and rechecking her hand-cannon.
When the machine jerked to a halt, she leapt out. Another waste treatment plant, the foul air of this overlaid with the metallic and sharp chemical odors of spaceship waste. She hastened to the entrance of the plant, making sure Charlotte followed. There was a small grubby window, which Angel peered through.
“Shit.”
Sercan Orbital Law Enforcement were outside in numbers, along with black, sharp-edged proxies. They formed a ring around the Endurance, preventing anyone coming within fifty meters. The usual spaceport traffic of engineers and supply loaders that typically passed through that area was being diverted in a wide arc.
“There’s no way through them,” Angel said. “And they’ll scan and search any loader approaching our ship. That’s if they don’t fire on it first. We need a plan. We can’t sit this one out and hope they’ll lose interest and go away. We need to get on board without being noticed. Maybe we can order and hide inside some regular supplies.”
“They’ll search them.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
Charlotte grinned at her. “Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”
•
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Angel.
“If you have a better one, then now’s the time to speak up. We can’t go through the law enforcement; we have to go around. And in this case, around means over.”
Angel clamped her mouth shut before she could swear again. She looked up at the vaulted spaceport ceiling and then down at the Sercan Orbital Law Enforcement and their proxies, who at this height were as small as ants. Ants in combat armor, carrying displacement cannons. Never mind how it looked, the distance was no object to their effectiveness.
With a clunk, the massive hook of the loading crane bumped into the platform they were standing on. It wobbled around before eventually steadying. Strong enough and large enough to carry substantial pieces of machinery that made up the essential starship systems, the cranes traveled along giant girders that crisscrossed the spaceport ceiling. The plan was to ride the crane’s hook to the top of their ship and enter through a maintenance hatch.
Angel sidled up to Charlotte, who was examining the three-pronged hook. “We can’t hover above our ship and wait while it lowers us down. It’s suicide. They’ll spot us for sure.”
“You’re right,” Charlotte said. “Lowering the hook will be too slow. Which means we have to lower ourselves to the correct height here.”
“But the cranes are slow. We’ll be almost sitting targets while we cross between here and the top of the ship.”
“They’re only slow when they’re carrying a heavy load. Haven’t you seen them zip along when they’re not carrying anything heavy? No? Well, they do.”
Charlotte had taken over this particular crane’s operating system, shunting its regular jobs to other cranes and rescheduling them so as not to arouse suspicion.
The three-pronged hook—claw, really—was four times Angel’s height. She backed away as it rose to clear the edge of t
he platform.
Charlotte stepped blithely onto one of the prongs and wrapped her arms around it. “Hop on,” she said.
Angel followed Charlotte’s example and stepped onto a prong. Likewise, she hugged the cold steel alloy.
The claw jerked into motion, slowly lowering them. The ants grew slightly larger, but not alarmingly so. Spaceships were huge, and they only needed to descend so they were level with the top. Except by Angel’s judgment, they’d just passed that height and were still descending.
“Charlotte,” she whispered urgently, “we’ve gone too far.”
“No. When we come in fast, we can’t just stop. We’ll be swinging like we’re at the end of a rope. I’ve had to judge where we’ll end up. Then we’ll just… jump.”
“What?!”
“Shhh!”
The hook lurched to a stop. “Charlotte…”
“No time to think of another plan now. Hold on.”
Again, the hook jerked, but this time they began moving away from the platform and out across the spaceport. Angel looked up. Above them, the crane mechanism was racing ahead of their position, increasing its distance from them. It was gaining speed, and they were being pulled along after it. When it stopped, they’d whiplash underneath, swinging up in an arc until their momentum stopped, and then reversed.
Angel shivered, not daring to look down at the floor. A light breeze generated by their velocity brushed her face, strengthening to a strong wind, then a gale. They swung directly below the now stationary crane mechanism. Angel’s implants calculated her speed in excess of fifty klicks per hour, and slowing.
Their ship grew closer as they swung out over the spaceport, now curving in an upward arc. The angled edge of their ship race toward them. They were going to hit. Charlotte had miscalculated.
Angel clung to her prong for dear life. They swung over the surface of the ship with centimeters to spare, just as blasts from the law enforcement displacement cannons drew scorching lines along the chain’s braided alloy cable. Plasma bursts scorched the metal, and Angel futilely ducked her head. They’d finally worked out what was going on.
She threw a frantic look at Charlotte, who was grinning.
“Get ready!” Charlotte said.
Angel nodded.
With a slow creak of metal, the hook’s momentum slowed, then stopped. They were a few meters above the ship.
“Jump!” screamed Charlotte, and leapt from her prong.
Angel followed, and the ship rushed to meet her. She landed awkwardly, twisting an ankle and falling. Her hands scraped across the metal, the rough surface grazing skin and drawing blood. She ignored the pain and scrambled to her knees. Charlotte whooped with joy.
They’d made it. The maintenance hatch was close by, and they’d be inside within a minute.
Charlotte jumped up and down, and hugged Angel tight.
Angel’s knees felt like jelly. “Don’t say you want to do that again.”
•
Angel threw herself into her pilot’s chair, wincing as her ankle gave a twinge. It ached, but it wasn’t badly damaged. She flipped switches and pounded buttons. Charlotte followed a few seconds later, her shorter legs unable to keep up with Angel as she’d rocketed from the maintenance hatch to the bridge.
Angel’s implants connected with the ship’s systems, and the first thing she did was request views of all outside cameras. She buckled herself into the chair’s harness.
“I’ll monitor the hull for breaches or interference,” said Charlotte.
“Good,” replied Angel distractedly. Images flashed before her, too fast to follow. She separated them into a grid and tried to look at them all at once. “Cargo bay doors,” she said, a fearful catch in her voice. “They’re bringing up cutting equipment. It’ll punch through them easily.”
“They haven’t closed the orbital’s docking entrance yet,” Charlotte said. “But it’s only a matter of time.”
“Yes. They didn’t expect us to get back on board. We need to get out of here, but… there are too many people around the ship. We can’t use the engines, or the people will burn to a crisp.”
“Ah,” Charlotte said. “The docking bay doors are closing. We’ll be locked in.”
Angel laughed despairingly. “Didn’t really think this through, did we?”
“We could scatter them,” suggested Charlotte. “A few bursts from the small arms, then we’d be free to take off. Then the doors…”
“Will be closed by then.”
Charlotte clutched at her hair. Her eyes had a wild look to them. “I can’t let them catch me. I can’t go back.”
“I…” Angel slumped down into her chair. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. Maybe we can force a standoff, for a time.” She hammered the padded arms in frustration. “We could negotiate, stall, pretend to hand you over while you work on patching into the docking door systems.”
“No!”
Angel tried to give her a reassuring look. “It’ll work. Or if we can’t get away, we’ll tell the Inquisitors what’s happened. They’ll be on our side. There has to be evidence—”
“It won’t work,” Charlotte said. “Not here on Sercan. Even somewhere else, where the Inquisitors are strong, we can’t trust them. The Genevolves could have their claws everywhere. There’s no one we can trust. Only ourselves.”
“Charlotte—”
“No, Angel, I’m sorry. This is the only way.”
“What are you—” Angel’s vision swam as control of the ship was wrested from her. The camera images blacked out, and she grunted, woozy with disorientation. She heard a soft click. “Charlotte… this isn’t the way.”
“I’m not going back.”
“You won’t, I… I promise.”
Tears ran down Charlotte’s face, and she sobbed. But she hadn’t buckled herself into her chair yet. A good sign, hoped Angel. She hit the release button of her harness.
Nothing happened. The click, she realized. Charlotte had activated the locking mechanism. She was trapped.
“Don’t you know not to make promises you can’t keep?” Charlotte said.
Angel thought furiously. “These people are innocents.”
“They know what they’re doing is wrong.”
“Maybe they don’t. There could be any number of lies made up to have them storm this ship.”
“It doesn’t matter. Whoever is in charge will be held accountable, not me.”
Angel had seen a confrontation like this coming. It was why she’d been working on Charlotte, trying to get her to develop empathy for others. “You of all people should know how precious life is.”
Charlotte sniffed, wiping her eyes with her palm. “If I die, it will be genocide. I’m the first of my kind. I won’t be the last.”
“If you blast your way through the docking bay doors, hundreds more may die. The fail-safes mightn’t work. They’ll be exposed to the vacuum of space.”
“Then, when they see the engines firing, they should get to safety.”
“But… where will you go? There’s nowhere to escape to. They’ll chase us from here. I doubt we’ll be able to lose them.”
Charlotte was nodding. “You’re right, in this instance.”
Angel’s chair vibrated beneath her as the ship’s fusion engines roared to life. The thrum flowed through her, seeming to shake her bones, her very core. She couldn’t bear to look at Charlotte any longer. She focused on her hands in her lap, which were clenched into fists.
“Don’t do this,” she whispered urgently.
“I’m sorry,” said Charlotte. “I have no choice.”
Through Angel’s chair, the throb of the engines intensified. They were about to blast off. Angel had no choice. She couldn’t let Charlotte do this.
Angel triggered Mikal’s device, combined with the override program, commanding it to send all it had and cut Charlotte’s control of the ship. Would it work? Or was Charlotte too advanced now?
“Angel!” screamed Charlotte. “What
are you doing?”
“Saving you.”
“You’re going to kill me!”
Her programs ran into harsh resistance. Only a few of them made it through and clamped around the ship’s controls. How long would they last against a desperate Charlotte? Not long. She had to act fast.
Angel pulled power from the ship’s engines and transferred it to the shields. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Charlotte unbuckle herself and leap from her chair. Angel slammed a hand down on her quick release and rose to meet her.
Charlotte lunged at Angel, hands and nails extended, face red and contorted with anger. Angel punched her hard. Charlotte’s head snapped back, and she stumbled to her knees. Blood dribbled from her nose. She looked up at Angel with an anguished expression.
A blow like that should have knocked out a man twice her size. Then again, who knew what modifications Charlotte had made to her own brain.
Angel issued a command to the ship’s shields and they sent out a pulse, gently at first, then with more strength. Hopefully, whoever was around them would be pushed far enough away to survive.
Then her control was abruptly cut. Charlotte had overridden her programs. Angel had done all she could.
The ship lifted and turned lazily. Its nose rose, pointing them directly at the docking bay entrance, a massive hexagonal hole growing smaller by the second. They moved toward it, and Angel winced. Anyone behind them on the floor of the docking bay would now be dead.
The ship shuddered and then lurched as it corrected its course. Charlotte’s foot slipped and she fell to one knee. Angel lunged for her, one arm around her body and the other grabbing her blond hair.
“Let go!” screamed Charlotte, twisting and struggling to dislodge Angel.
The ship accelerated, thrusters pulsing hard, heading for the rapidly closing opening. Angel and Charlotte skidded across the floor of the bridge and slammed into a wall. The impact jolted Charlotte out of her grip, and Angel knew they had to get to their chairs or risk serious injury.
Inquisitor Page 18
