“Sorry. Bella would go apeshit.”
Meg exclaimed, “Oh, wow. Colm, Sully, quick, look at this.”
On the wall screen, a spaceship blasted off from Gna Spaceport. So what? Happened a hundred times a day ... The picture switched to a reporter standing in a VIP departure lounge. Meg cranked the volume up. “Ambassador Nulth has left Gna, claiming urgent business on Juradis. He did not say when he plans to return.” The reporter’s smirk conveyed dubiety.
Best looked around at Colm. “So that’s why he didn’t take your call. He was busy packing his bags.”
“Looks that way,” Colm said flatly.
He’d been hanging onto crumbs of doubt, preferring uncertainty to the truth. But Gil’s precipitous departure from Gna proved it. The queazel had fled because his betrayal was about to be exposed. The Crasibo Lovelace esthesia implant was a time-bomb.
The Ghosts zeroed in on YOU.
Colm stared blindly at the screen. He’d told Gil about Sprite, for fuck’s sake. And the queazel had patted his shoulder with little clawed fingers when he wept for Zhanna ...
And all the time, Gil must have known that the queazel technology in Colm’s head had killed her.
“All right, what exactly is going on here?” Tan said.
Colm rubbed the side of his head, wishing he could claw the implant out with his bare hands. “Zhanna and Fitch are dead. Because of me.” Tan and Bella both started talking: it’s not your fault, don’t blame yourself ... “Because of this crapware in my brain. Fuck it, fuck it.”
“Colm!” Bella exclaimed, covering her elder daughter’s ears.
“When I catch up with that mangy wee wankstain, I’m going to turn him into a carpet.”
Meg said, “How are you going to catch up with him? He’s gone to Juradis.”
Colm suddenly knew what to do. He smiled at Best. Not really a smile. “That’s where you come in, Axel. Call your people.”
“Oh?” Best said. “So you’ve changed your mind about shooting me?”
Everyone burst out talking at once. Bella grabbed her daughters and dragged them into the kitchen. Colm’s face burned. “I won’t shoot you if you do exactly as I say. Got it? Call your people at the spaceport. And tell them ...”
CHAPTER 27
TELL THEM YOU NEED a long-range FTL-capable ship.
That’s all Colm had said.
He’d been expecting something industrial. A cargo hauler. One of those tubs that used to ply the Star Road, which were now being refitted as Hail Mary ships. Best Industries had plenty of those; they wouldn’t miss one.
He hadn’t expected a Corvette, the Porsche of private spaceships, based on a military fighter design which the Fleet had cancelled nine zeroes into the hole. The Corvette lacked the fighter’s planned anti-radar suite, the stealth shielding, and of course the weapons platforms. It looked, however, like a futuristic space fighter, and that was the point for the rich guys who owned them. Who apparently included Axel Best.
Colm looked up from the specs Best had sent to his computer. He spoke over the noise of the spaceport’s public departure lounge. “It’s doable.”
“I know,” Best said. “I planned to take a trip out that way someday myself.”
Colm would’ve felt more comfortable with a bigger ship, which could carry more reaction mass and life-support essentials. But how much ship did one guy really need? And on the plus side, the Corvette was fast. It had near-military drive specs and a best-in-class thrust to mass ratio. Also, it looked cool.
Better yet, Best’s Shady Lady was sitting on the tarmac with full reaction mass tanks and an impressive stock of provisions. It was as if Best had expected to have to run at any minute. Well, knowing what he did about the queazels’ treachery, maybe he had expected it.
Colm re-crunched the numbers, just to be sure. The oxygen, nitrogen, H2O, and comestibles in stores would sustain one adult for five years. It would only take the Corvette 18 months to reach Juradis, with that drive.
“Request a launch slot,” he told Best.
He felt lightheaded. Couldn’t believe he was doing this. But what choice did he have? Couldn’t remove the implant. Couldn’t stay here. He had to catch up with Gil and squeeze the truth out of him.
Best called Traffic Control, speaking out loud this time. Colm listened in, to make sure he wasn’t trying anything sneaky, while keeping an eye out for the fake cops. He was hoping there was safety in numbers. You could stand a spoon up in this crowd. Marines heading home on rotation. Civilians waiting to board Hail Mary ships. What kind of welcome would they find when they reached the Betelgeuse system? Would the sentrienza take them in? Or turn them around and send them straight back? Or something worse?
Colm was soon going to find out.
“Transfer the Shady Lady’s authorization to me,” he told Best.
“Done,” Best said grudgingly.
Notifications cascaded into the HUD area of Colm’s infocals. Despite everything, he felt a rush of excitement. He walked away to record his voiceprint and a password phrase. When he returned, Meg had come back from the vending machines. She was eating a candy bar. She threw another one at Colm, quite hard. Colm raised his hands defensively. The candy bar fell to the grotty floor. “You need to eat,” Meg snapped.
Yup, she was still pissed. Colm hated that they were going to part like this. Knowing he might never see her again, he noticed details of her appearance which he was usually blind to. That coverall suited her, ambiguously recalling the Navy uniform in which she’d always seemed most comfortable. Her nails were bitten down to the quick. A silvery necklace glinted in the hollow of her throat. Huh? Meg never wore jewellery, did she? That tosser had probably given it to her ...
‘That tosser’ finished his call and picked up the candy bar which lay forgotten on the floor, as Colm and Meg stared daggers at each other.
“Oh, don’t eat that,” Meg said, noticing Best. “The vending machines are right over there.”
Best looked from one of them to the other. “OK.” He mooched off, shoulders bowed. Colm turned his head to watch him go. He couldn’t let him out of his sight. What if Best scarpered before Colm actually got his hands on the Corvette’s controls?
Meg said in a funny, choked voice, “Colm, I need to tell you something.”
“OK ...” He was about to lose sight of Best in the crowd.
“This is what I mean. You’re not even looking at me. You’re not listening. I’m trying to help, but it’s like you don’t completely trust me. Seriously, why not? I’m always here for you, aren’t I? It’s not like I expect gratitude, but ...”
Colm didn’t trust anyone 100%. He was like his father in that. Well, he’d trusted Zhanna. And she had died because of him. Had Meg forgotten about her already? Anger threaded through his mind. Nevertheless, he accepted that he had been acting like a dick. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m an ungrateful bastard. But even if I don’t say thank you, I mean it, all right? In here—” He thumped his chest. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Best disappear in the crowd. “Ah, Jesus. Meg, I’m sorry. I’ll be right back.”
He plunged after Best. For a terrifying instant he thought he’d lost him. Then he saw Best coming back, side by side with Suleiman Tan.
“Hey,” Tan said, lifting a hand. He wore his leathers, and carried his rucksack over one shoulder. “So Axel’s been telling me about this ship he’s loaning you. What gives? You weren’t even going to say goodbye?”
Colm stared at him. “I hope you don’t think you’re coming.”
“I don’t think it, I know it.”
“You’ve got a wife and family!”
“Exactly,” Tan said. “And no one knows if the Ghosts are going to turn up here next week or next month. Gna isn’t safe anymore, is it?”
Colm bit his knuckles. It was true: no fewer than 150 Crasibo Lovelace pilots had implants identical to his.
Axel said, “So Bella and the kids will be boarding a Hail Mary ship bound for Jur
adis next week.” He spoke as if it was no big deal. As if those tickets didn’t cost close to seven figures each. “Those girls are the cutest little things. They deserve a chance at a better life.”
“Bella and I agreed this is the right decision for us,” Tan said. The glint in his eyes dared Colm to judge him for taking Best’s money. Colm sighed. He wouldn’t have taken it. But he didn’t have children.
He tried once more. “I’ve got to do this, Sully. You don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” Tan said. “Hey, Meg. You came to see him off?”
Whatever else Meg had been going to say, Tan’s arrival changed her mind. They all set off in the direction of the ground cars.
Gna spaceport was one of the biggest in the Human Republic, with launch zones scattered across 200 square kilometers. Private spaceships were parked way out, tens of klicks around the shore of the Regnarosa Sea. The four of them transferred to a ground car—basically a self-driving taxi. Automated, it took the long way around the orbital transfer shuttle launch zones. Colm spent the time ending his relationship with the Crasibo Lovelace crewship. He’d known that ship intimately for two years, shared its pain and cared for its hurts. He couldn’t blame it for the crimes of its owners. Saying goodbye felt like leaving a beloved pet at the shelter. Steeling himself, he deleted its specs from his implant and overwrote them with the Corvette’s details.
The ground car rolled around the head of Vilnius Bay, out onto a rocky headland dotted with small spaceships.
Connect, he commanded.
His consciousness doubled in the usual way. He saw the Shady Lady on the ground car’s screen, its needle nose poking out from the row of small ships, and he saw, from the Lady’s point of view, the ground car coming. And the black sea, reflecting the lights of Regnar. And the towers of the Uzzizellan embassy. And—
—a speedboat, zooming across the bay, its spotlight spearing ahead of it.
The ground car stopped. They were still half a klick away from the Shady Lady.
Smythe thumped on the screen, which was pointless. The ground car had no user-operated controls.
“Axel,” Colm said calmly. “You’ve not gone and called your security guys, have you?”
“There’s probably something launching ahead of here,” Best said. “Car won’t move until it’s out of the way. Give it a few minutes.”
A few minutes, while that speedboat was tearing across the bay, heading straight for them.
Colm should have known better than to think Best would simply give him his ship.
While he hesitated, Meg acted. “Put on your leathers,” she snapped, digging in her rucksack. She turned her back, stripped to her underwear, and climbed into her Kuiper Belt-rated EVA suit. She’d come prepared for anything, of course. That was Meg.
Tan put on his helmet. Colm tossed away his joke t-shirt and zipped up his own leathers. Meg focused on Best. “You don’t have a suit?”
“Nope,” Best said, staring at her.
She tapped the shuttle’s emergency compartment with the side of her hand. Oxygen masks tumbled out. “Put one of those on.”
“This is fucked up,” Best said.
“Do it,” Colm said, understanding what Meg had in mind. He’d seldom felt quite this bad about himself. But Meg looked cheerful behind her faceplate. When Best had the oxygen mask on, she took Colm’s gun and shot out the electronic lock of the door.
The ground car’s atmosphere boiled out in a white cloud. The air pressure on Gna was better than half of Earth’s at sea level, but of course it wasn’t air out there. They spilled out into a balmy 15° haze of hydrogen sulfide gas and water vapor rising off the surface of the lake.
Inside the transparent hood of the oxygen mask, Best looked terrified, as well he might. He was out on the surface of Gna with nothing but a plastic bag between him and the fate of Lagoudakis. He started frantically scratching his arms through his coverall. Hydrogen sulfide, better known as stink damp, caused severe itching and burning at these concentrations. However, it absorbed poorly through the skin. You could stand out here naked without dying, as long as you had oxygen.
For a while.
“Run,” Meg snapped at them.
If there had been another ship launching, their lives would have ended then and there. But there wasn’t. They pounded out along the headland. As they neared the Shady Lady, an earsplitting voice bellowed in Colm’s helmet, “Freeze! Hands up or I shoot!”
Colm looked back. Best was stumbling, Meg dragging him. Colm doubled back. Meg shoved Best into his arms and made a dash for the Shady lady.
“This is your last warning!”
Tan and Meg reached the Shady Lady at the same time. Colm mentally reached into the ship’s controls and lowered the stairs for them.
“Stop right there, assholes!”
The speedboat fishtailed to a halt, kicking waves up the rocky shore. People in chimp suits—the unflattering nickname for the civilian version of a battlesuit—piled out of the cabin and leapt ashore. Chimp suits might not be up to Marine specs, but they made you faster and stronger, just like the real thing. These thugs had rifles, too.
They advanced in a clump, pointing their rifles at Colm and Best. They might’ve looked professional to the average person, but not to a vet. Idiots, bunching up like that. Their firing stances needed work, too. Yet Colm had only his Void Eagle, and he needed both hands to hold Best upright. He was done for—
Shrapnel gouted from the lead thug’s chest. So much for the protective rating of chimp suits.
Another report bleated out, high-pitched in the thin, toxic atmosphere.
Another thug went down.
Blood pumped from their ruined torsos.
Disbelieving, Colm glanced around wildly for the shooter.
Meg knelt at the top of the Shady Lady’s steps. Her AK’s bipod rested on the guardrail. The madwoman had been wandering around Regnar with a fucking assault rifle in her rucksack. She squeezed the trigger again. The third thug went down.
“Meg, no,” Colm cried breathlessly.
The last thug hauled ass back to the speedboat.
Meg put a burst in the boat’s engine compartment. Smoke issued forth. The boat began to list.
Colm hauled Best up the steps. “Nice shooting,” he said bitterly to Meg.
“One shot, one kill, baby. Want me to nail the last guy?”
“No.”
“OK. I’ll just neutralize his comms.” She drilled the speedboat’s cabin full of rounds.
Colm thought the airlock open, tossed Best in, grabbed Meg— “Hey, I wasn’t done—”
“Yes, you were.”
He threw her into the airlock, fell in on top of her, pulled the steps up.
Tan dragged them out of the other end of the chamber. “I heard shooting.”
“Yup,” Colm said. He was too sickened to explain. Meg had just committed murder. No matter how bad their situation had been before, she’d made it ten times worse. He watched her taking her helmet off. She didn’t look upset at all.
Best crawled out of the airlock, tearing off his oxygen mask. Profanities streamed from his mouth.
“Shit,” Tan said. “What are we going to do with him?”
“Give him a proper EVA suit and chuck him off.”
“No,” Best shouted. “You can’t do that.”
Paying no attention to him, Colm hurried forward, followed by Meg. The cockpit was absurdly high-tech, a Fabergé egg lying on its side, encrusted with instruments. Colm would have been lost without his implant. He exhaled heat from his reactor, initializing the plasma drive, and moved towards the pilot’s couch.
“Colm!”
From the cabin came the crashing and grunting of a brawl. Colm spun around as Tan bounded into the cockpit. “Look at the external feed.”
Best plunged in, bleeding from a cut lip. Meg came behind him with an EVA suit in her hands. There was scarcely room for them all in the cockpit. The smell of rotten eggs clung to Best, a reminder o
f the poisonous atmosphere outside. He panted, “They’re our guys.”
“I knew it,” Colm said, as he confirmed it through the ship’s eyes. Three thugs lay dead on the tarmac. When Colm zoomed all the way in, he saw the Best Security logos on the helmets of their chimp suits. “Bit sloppy, Axel; you should have told them to cover up the logos.”
“They planned for us all to be dead.” Best’s eyes were wild. “Including me.”
“And I’m the Grand Mufti of Mars,” Tan said. “Put the fucking suit on. We’ll give you time to get clear.”
Best fended him off, knocking him against Colm’s couch. “If you put me off the ship, you’ll be committing murder. I did not call them!”
Through the ship’s eyes, Colm saw more boats crossing the bay. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He had to launch before they got here. Even if he forcibly stuffed Axel into a suit and manhandled him off the ship, there wouldn’t be time for him to get clear of the blast zone.
“Fine,” he yelled. “Just go and strap in!” He ducted plasma to the auxiliaries for a vertical takeoff.
Axel blotted his bloody lip with the back of his hand. “They came for me,” he said. “Because I was getting too close to the truth.”
CHAPTER 28
HER THOUGHTS IN A whirl, Meg pushed Axel into a gel-cushioned acceleration couch and plopped down in the couch beside him. She snapped her harness on. The cabin had a blond wood floor, a cathedral ceiling, glass furniture—all of it fake, of course, made of the usual ultra-lightweight materials. Still, the high-end interior would make the next 18 months more tolerable.
She’d planned all along to accompany Colm, of course. She wasn’t letting him exile himself to Juradis alone.
But if Axel was coming, too ...? Everything had suddenly got more complicated.
“You seriously think those thugs were here for you?” said Tan, on Axel’s other side.
“It’s my ship.” Axel’s voice sounded faded, like an expensive garment that had been put through the wrong wash cycle. He no longer looked suave at all. Lesions dotted his hands and arms. Clear fluid wept from them, staining the silk cover of his couch. His bloody lip was starting to crust over. She had done that, trying to force him to put the damn EVA suit on. The detachment that had carried her through the firefight started to fade, letting dark emotions in.
The Chemical Mage: Supernatural Hard Science Fiction (The Tegression Trilogy Book 1) Page 17
