Pursuit

by Val St. Crowe

  “It’s behind us, isn’t it?” said Eve suddenly. She was looking at the instrument panel in front of her.

  He licked his lips.

  “We didn’t make it,” she said.

  “We’re going to run for it,” he said. “While we’re traveling, we’ll have time to think of a better plan.”

  “But he’s going to have our coordinates!”

  Boom! The ship was rocked as it took fire from the Fabis.

  “No time to waste, princess,” said Gunner, and he punched it, quickly doing the necessary preparations to go faster than light.

  Eve covered her face with her hands.

  Gunner’s fingers flew over the screen in the cockpit, locking the rescav thrusters into place, putting in the coordinates for their destination, and preparing for warp field creation. “Ten seconds,” he said, counting under his breath.

  The ship made a rattling noise, shuddered, and then burst forward at top speed. They had made it to faster than light speed.

  Gunner let his head lie back against the headrest, taking long breaths. They were alive. For now, anyway.

  Then Eve started to make a fuss over how much he was bleeding. He had tuned out the pain until she said something. Now, it hurt.

  “Supplies?” said Eve, heading out of the cockpit to go rummage through the rest of the ship.

  He wasn’t too hopeful. Synth skin wasn’t the kind of thing people who weren’t doctors generally carried around. On the other hand, this ship had been commandeered by Atticus to take him to Rama in the first place, so maybe there would be something.

  It seemed luck was on their side. Eve came back in with a couple packages synth skin and some bandages. “We can’t get hurt again,” she said. “We won’t have anything to tend our wounds with.”

  “Well,” he said as she patched him up, “it’s probably not going to matter, because it’s waiting for us at our coordinates,” he said.

  “And what?” she said. “We’re just going to die when it catches us?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Oh, by the visions,” she muttered. She handed him the rest of the bandages. “Bandage yourself.” She headed out of the cockpit.

  “Hey,” he called after her. “We don’t give up, okay? We spend this time thinking of a plan.”

  “Like what?” her voice floated back.

  “I don’t know yet. But something.”

  “They’ll probably have the whole Xerkabah fleet waiting for us. You think we can win against that? There’s no way. We’re dead.”

  He leaned around the chair. “Look, it’ll probably just be the vidya.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking about it, and he’s not going to alert the fleet or something. They like to track and kill on their own.”

  “He’s not a real vidya,” she said.

  He got up out of his chair and went out of the cockpit.

  Eve was perched on the ratty couch out there. “He’s a Xerkabah wearing a vidya suit.”

  “I don’t think it works like that,” he said. “They have some of the instincts of the things they shift into. Because in the war, we went up against a vidya squadron once, and they divided and conquered, each of them chasing down one of us. They didn’t work together. They didn’t fight as a team, you know. They’re not like that.”

  “Still, we’ll come out, and he’ll have a ship with weapons, and we won’t.”

  “Okay, well, here’s what I’m thinking. We play wounded, like we’re crashing, and he’ll follow us, because he’ll want to kill on the ground. He’ll want a real kill, and a space kill isn’t the same.”

  “This isn’t a plan, captain. It’s just prolonging our death.”

  “So, we’ll think of a better plan. We’ve got six hours until we reach our destination. We have all that time to think of something.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything. I’m not good at this sort of thing. Why the universe thinks that I would make a good mother for the champion of the human race, I don’t even know. I can’t even keep him alive long enough to be a proper fetus.”

  His jaw worked. Why’d she bring that up? Did any of that even matter at this moment? Of course, it was the reason they were being chased.

  “You,” she said, “you make sense. You know things, and you’re brave, and you can fight, and—”

  “So, fine,” he said. “Stop arguing with me and help me figure out how we’re going to keep this kid alive.” He let out a breath. Saying it aloud made it even stranger.

  She bit down on her lip.

  He narrowed in on her lip, and he thought about watching her do that when they were… He got up. “I’m going back to the cockpit. Maybe we should brainstorm separately for a while.” He left her there.

  He sat in the pilot’s chair and tried to think of a plan. But instead, all he thought about was her body against his, her eyes shut, the way she bit down on her lip and the noises she made…

  He shut his eyes.

  Hell.

  And then, with his eyes closed, he realized that he was dead tired. He hadn’t slept the night before, and he’d been running all over with that Thun-7, and…

  But that was his last coherent thought as he slipped off to sleep.

  * * *

  Gunner awoke to a beeping noise.

  “What is that?” Eve was standing over him.

  He blinked hard, rubbing his face.

  “Were you asleep?” she said.

  He sat up. “Sorry.” He looked around the cockpit of the small ship. “I didn’t sleep well last night.” He spied the screen that was flashing red, and touched it. Oh, crap. “We’ve been pulled out of light speed.”

  “What? That can happen?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not something that happens often, and if I had a decent communications officer, she would have been able to block anything like that from happening, but—as we’ve established—Saffron stole my ship and ran off, so here we are.”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic.” She sat down in the seat next to him. “So, another ship did this to us?”

  “Uh huh.” His fingers were moving over the screen, trying to see what he could. Ships like this weren’t designed to allow a person to plan tactical maneuvers. They were designed to go on auto-pilot and be navigated on preset courses determined by a central location. But that central location wasn’t there anymore, not since the war, so this hunk of junk—

  He swallowed,

  “What?” said Eve. “And where are we?”

  “It’s a leon.” He pointed at the little ship icon on the screen.

  “Oh, no,” said Eve. “They found us. That vidya reported us after all.”

  “Yeah, I guess I was wrong,” Gunner muttered. “Well…” He sucked in a shaky breath. There was nothing he could do against a leon. The Star Swallow had been no match for a ship like this, and now here he was stuck in a boat with no weapons. He reached over and grabbed Eve’s hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t do better by you. In general. Everything I did, including the shitty sex, and not discounting the fact I got us both killed.”

  Eve pulled her hand away from his. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re dead, princess. I don’t know why they haven’t blown us out of the sky already. We’re no match for them, and they want us gone so—”

  Another beeping sound joined the other one.

  “Can you make that stop?” she said. “If we’re going to die, can we die in silence, please?”

  He touched the screen again. “Okay, hold on. They’re hailing us.”

  “Like, they want to talk?”

  “Yeah,” said Gunner. “Doesn’t sound much like the Xerkabah.” He turned off the beeping and opened a channel. Little chit chat before a fiery death? Why not?

  It was a human face that filled the screen in front of him, but that didn’t mean anything, because the Xerkabah were nearly always in human form. However, this human face had a winding blue tattoo arou
nd his eye and over his cheekbone and chin.

  Gunner recognized the pattern. “Pirates,” he breathed.

  “Now, now, mate,” said the man on the screen. “That’s such an ugly word. We prefer to think of ourselves as redistributors of wealth.”

  “That’s a bit of a mouthful,” said Gunner.

  The man chuckled. “Well, might as well introduce myself. I’m Chote. Nice to meet you, and thank you very kindly for what we’re about to take from you. This can go down easy or it can go down hard. Best thing for you to do is be waiting with your hands up when we come on board—”

  “You don’t want this ship,” said Gunner. “We’re on the run from the Xerkabah, and they know we’re on it. You take it anywhere, and the aliens find you, they’ll destroy it.”

  “Well, now, who isn’t on the run from the Xerkabah these days, mate? Aren’t we all? Now, as I was saying, you just wait there at the door, hands up, and surrender easy-like and nobody’s going to get hurt.”

  Gunner sighed and snapped off the communication.

  Eve looked at him with wide eyes. “Let’s just run.”

  “When they took us out of light speed, they took control of all our navigation devices,” said Gunner. “They’re pulling us to them, and we can’t do anything about it.”

  “So, then, what? We surrender?”

  He snorted. “You ever been in a gun fight?”

  Eve shook her head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Eve crouched behind the couch in the living area, gripping her plaspistol so tightly that her palms were sweating. The pirates were at work on the door, which was tightly latched up. They were doing something out there, and Eve could smell the smoke as they burned their way inside. She cringed.

  She couldn’t see Gunner across the room from her, also taking cover behind a counter in the kitchen but she knew he was there. He’d told her to follow his lead and not to fire unless she had a clear shot.

  Thing was, there was nothing relaxing about this situation.

  The door burst open, and three men with tattoos on their faces burst inside.

  Gunner opened fire on them.

  He hit one in the head, and the man went down. Another in the shoulder. That man yelled and kept shooting. The third man, unharmed, sent beams of plasma in Gunner’s general direction, his teeth clenched in a sneer.

  Three more men came in behind the other two.

  Eve raised her pistol and squeezed off a shot.

  She hit one of the men in the leg. He cried out and turned in her direction, firing off a return shot of his own.

  It hit Eve’s wrist. She screamed, mostly out of shock. It wasn’t a particularly bad hit.

  But Gunner stood up. “Eve?” he said. “You okay?”

  There were four pistols in Gunner’s face now. “Eve, answer me.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Damn it,” he said. He glared at the pistols. “You know what? Fine. We surrender. Just don’t hurt her.”

  “Captain?” said Eve. “Do I stop shooting?”

  “Yes,” Gunner said through gritted teeth.

  She stood up too. “Sorry,” she said to him.

  One of the men yelled at her to drop her gun.

  She dropped it.

  * * *

  Eve stumbled into the barred enclosure. She’d been shoved by one of the pirates, who was now shutting the door on them and locking it. It was the man from the transmission, and he looked pissed off. He glared at Eve and Gunner through the bars.

  The bars were made of plasma, and they buzzed and glowed blue. The blue reflected on the pirate’s face.

  “I told you not to make trouble, mate, but you killed one of my men,” said Chote.

  Gunner got to his feet. “Sorry about that. Really.” He was sarcastic.

  Chote shook his head. “You know, I don’t like to kill other humans, because there’s enough of that going on with the aliens and all. But you didn’t play by the rules, and now I don’t know what to do with you.”

  “Where’d you get a leon?” said Gunner. “You can’t tell me you stole it away from the Xerkabah.”

  Chote scratched his chin. “You might want to be making nice with me, you know, trying to save your lives. If not for you, then for the little woman here.” He smiled sympathetically at Eve.

  Gunner stalked to the bars, eye to eye with Chote. “Don’t threaten her.”

  “Did I threaten her? I don’t think I did.” Chote laughed. “I think what I did was threaten you. I mean, we get rid of you, and we’ve just got her, and let me tell you, I imagine my men can think of lots of fun things to do with her.”

  Eve cringed.

  Gunner lifted his finger. “Listen to me—” And then broke off because he’d gotten too close to the plasma and burned himself. He popped his finger in his mouth and stepped back.

  Chote laughed again. “Like I said, we’ll decide what to do with you later. But maybe take this time to think about learning a bit of respect, eh?” He turned on his heel and walked out.

  Gunner looked at her and then away. He sat down on the floor on the cell and buried his head in his hands.

  Eve hugged herself. “You know, I was really fine. You didn’t have to give up.”

  “Yeah, I realized that about two seconds after I stood up,” said Gunner, his voice muffled.

  “It was nice that you did, though,” said Eve. “I mean, I appreciated it.”

  Gunner didn’t answer.

  “I didn’t know you really cared,” she said.

  He raised his face to glare at her. “I don’t.”

  “Oh,” she said, stung.

  He sighed. “I mean… of course I care. I’m not going to let you die. Especially after we…” He took a deep breath. “If you’re pregnant with my child, I’m not going to let you die. That’s not happening.”

  “Oh,” she said, and she nodded. It was about his wife, then, the one that had died. She understood that. He must feel guilty about it, even though it wasn’t his fault. She sat down on the floor of the cell too. “I don’t want you to die either.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, I need you to stay alive, because you have to protect me. Or something like that, you know?” Not because I have developed stupid feelings for you or anything. Nothing like that.

  “Fine,” he said. “We’ll both stay alive.”

  “Good,” she said. “Well, we need to escape. Get our ship and go.”

  He gestured at the bars. “How do you propose we do that, princess?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t this the same kind of ship you were a prisoner on before? You told that story about Breccan and the air ducts.”

  Gunner’s expression changed. “This is the same kind of ship.” He looked up at the ceiling.

  She did too.

  It was a low ceiling made of white interlocking tiles.

  “There’s no access here,” said Gunner. “We can’t get to the ducts.”

  Her heart sank.

  “But that’s good,” he said. “That’s good, thinking like that. We just need to keep thinking that way, and we’ll figure something out. We’ll get out of here.”

  * * *

  Chote and two other men came and got them in the morning. Gunner felt a spike of fear. This could be it. Pirates had no use for them—well, except to abuse Eve—and they might kill him without a second thought.

  But instead, they took them to the bathroom hub. The way that the leon ship was designed, all of the bathrooms were in the center of the ship. It was easier to have the water all go to one place. These bathrooms opened onto various quarters and other rooms, but Gunner and Eve were locked inside the hub.

  They were there to clean toilets.

  “Figured you might as well be useful while you’re here,” said Chote. “Do a good job, and maybe we’ll keep you alive.” And then he left them there.

  The first thing Gunner did was try to determine if any of the cleaning supplies the
y’d been left could be used for anything useful. Even using them to throw in the pirates’ faces might be something. But reading the fine print, they weren’t the least bit toxic or harmful. And he didn’t know how to mix them together and make a bomb or anything.

  Next thing he did was check for access to the air ducts. But the ceiling here was like the ceiling in the cell, impenetrable. You’d think there would be air ducts in a bathroom, for the smell, but…

  He realized he didn’t know too much about the Xerkabah’s toilet processes. These bathrooms looked as though they were designed with humans in mind, but maybe Xerkabah shifted into their true form to exert waste. And maybe that didn’t smell at all.

  Eve was already scrubbing the floors on her hands and knees. “Might as well try to appease them,” she said. “It buys us time.”

  He wasn’t keen on cleaning bathrooms, but he had to admit she was right. So he picked up a sponge and got to scrubbing.

  The bathrooms were not that big, and it didn’t take them too long to finish an entire room. Then they’d move through an adjoining door (all of which had been left open to them) to start on the next one. Most of the bathrooms were fairly clean, but a few of them were incredibly disgusting, covered in all kinds of stains and stray hairs and other things that Gunner didn’t want to think about too deeply. He didn’t know what it was, and he wanted to keep it that way.

  They’d cleaned four or five bathrooms, when Eve started talking. “You know, when we were in the ship, and you thought we were going to die, you didn’t need to apologize to me.”

  “What?” He rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead. He had been so busy scrubbing the inside of a sink that he barely remembered what she was talking about. “Well, fine. I’m not sorry, then. And if we do die, then I won’t apologize again.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, as if she’d expected a different answer.

  “Not what you wanted to hear, princess?” He was finding himself really annoyed with her lately, and he didn’t know why it was. Maybe because it had been her stupid idea for them to have sex in the first place, and he wished she hadn’t asked for something she couldn’t handle.

  “I, um…” She ran her sponge around the rim of a toilet. “I just wanted you to know that I was grateful to you. You said that you hadn’t done right by me, but that isn’t true. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you, so you don’t need to apologize.”