Prodigal (Tales of the Acheron Book 1)

by Rick Partlow

  She felt the gun dragging down her hand, and wondered if she should try to get a shot off at him before he killed her. Then she looked at the small shoes again, and tossed it to the floor. It landed with a solid thump of metal on wood.

  “Then do it,” she told him. “I’m dead anyway if I go out there.”

  “Like I should give a shit?” He demanded.

  He moved closer and she could see his face in the light reflected back off the white-painted walls of the mud room. He was spare and gaunt and undoubtedly younger than he looked on a place like this. Grey flecked the sandy brown hair pulled back into a pony tail, and streaked the short beard he wore; and pain drew down the corners of his grey eyes. He did have a weapon, a crudely-fabricated shotgun, and he held the flashlight against its stock.

  “Did any of you cartel fucks care when my little boy got caught in one of your goddamned gunfights? Did any of you worry about him, or any of us?”

  “I’m just a shuttle pilot,” she pleaded. “I’m just doing my job…”

  “Bringing guns for your fucking gang battle?” He growled, shoving the muzzle of the shotgun closer to her face. “So you can kill each other and us?”

  “James.” It was a woman’s voice this time, a step back from the man.

  Sandi couldn’t see her at first, but then a light switched on in the room the man had emerged from and suddenly everything was illuminated. She was as haggard and prematurely aged as her husband, but where his eyes were filled with fury, hers were wells of sadness. She was dressed in a simple, hand-made night-dress and clinging to the skirts of it was a girl of maybe eight or nine, her face a café-aux-lait mix of her father’s pallor and her mother’s ebon. Her dark eyes were wide and filled with fear.

  “Get back in the bedroom, Charlotte,” the man growled.

  “You’re scaring Therese,” the woman admonished James, stepping forward and scooping up Sandi’s discarded pistol and handing it to her husband. “And we are not sending this poor woman out into the middle of a battle. Can’t you see she’s not one of the cartel thugs? Now stop pointing that gun at her.”

  A struggle passed across James’ face, but finally he lowered the muzzle of the shotgun.

  “I’m going to go get some tools and fix the door,” he said with a grunt of displeasure, stalking into the next room.

  “Therese,” Charlotte said softly to her daughter, “go with your father and help him.”

  The little girl nodded and scurried off quickly, her bare feet padding softly against the wooden floor.

  “Thank you,” Sandi tried to say, but the older woman cut her off.

  “Save it,” Charlotte snapped, her friendly tone abruptly shifting to something much colder and harder. “I don’t want my husband to be a murderer or my child to see him kill you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t agree with him. If you fly in the guns for La Sombra to use in their little territorial battle against the Rif, then you’re just as guilty as the thugs that shoot them.”

  The older woman bared her teeth, and for a moment Sandi thought Charlotte was going to hit her, but she visibly restrained herself. She waved a hand at the door.

  “You can stay until the fighting’s stopped, but then you have to get out of here. We can’t be found hiding you.” Her expression softened. “If you still have a soul, then save it and get out of this business while you still can.”

  Chapter Two

  Ash worked the bonder down the seam of the navigation console with the exaggerated care of someone not used to doing hands-on engineering work. The tool flared slightly at its emitter end and the narrow, dark line that had been the gap between the bulkhead of the cockpit and the surplus quantum computer disappeared in an unbroken grey sameness, like they’d been built as one piece. He felt his grip shaking slightly as he guided the device around the edge of the polymer casing, and he had to reach up and brace his right hand with his left.

  This was purely structural work, yet it seemed insanely complicated compared to actually hooking the computer into the rest of the ship’s systems, which had taken all of five minutes and involved plugging a few simple, superconductive cables into ready receptacles and then powering up the boards.

  “Shouldn’t there be a robot that does this kind of grunt work?” He wondered aloud, speaking softly, as if his own voice might disturb his concentration.

  The answer to that, of course, was that there were indeed robots that could do it, but they were expensive to rent while his own time came free.

  He breathed out a sigh of relief and hit the switch to cut off the bonder, running a sleeve across his forehead to wipe at the sweat before he looked at his work in satisfaction.

  “And Al didn’t think I could handle a bonder by myself,” he muttered, grinning.

  He affixed the bonder’s emitter wand to the frame that held the tank and power pack, then pulled himself to his feet and grabbed the device by its carry handle and carried it back out of the cockpit. The ship still had a bare, unfinished look to it, the walls too white, the deck too rough, and the doors to the two cabins and the head were cheap, plastic make-do’s because he hadn’t wanted to throw good money at military-class fittings. But with the navigation computer installed, she could fly to the stars, and she was his.

  The thought had him smiling as he walked down the open belly ramp and into the late afternoon glare of 40 Eridani A, looming low in the sky and looking unnaturally large at only two-thirds of the distance between Earth and the Sun. The locals called it Eshu, because when you lived somewhere, you didn’t want some scientific notation for your star, you wanted it to have a name. Anansi was a fairly new colony, established since the invention of the Transition drive and not reachable via the wormhole jumpgates that had been humanity’s first route to the stars, and without the instant communications of a gate the colonists felt more of a separation from Earth and the Commonwealth government.

  Which is probably why, Ash reflected, we have a Fleet base here in the first place.

  He could see the base from here at the civilian port; neither was much to write home about, the spare, fusion-form pavement landing fields mirror images of each other, with just a hundred-meter strip of grass to separate them. There wasn’t much on the civilian field at the moment beyond a few heavy-lift cargo shuttles down from freighters in orbit, while the military port held three squadrons of missile cutters not too dissimilar to the one on which he was working.

  Like his boat, the military craft were silvery deltas, rounded at the nose, a hundred meters long and half that wide. The military cutters were a newer model than the one he and Al had been assembling, built near the end of the War with the Tahni, but they were still obsolete, found only on out-of-the-way bases like this one. The sight of his squadron and the crude, ugly buildfoam domes of the base behind it threatened his mood, so he took a long look at the hazy mountains in the distance instead and tried to stay positive.

  “Don’t tell me you’re done already!” Al exclaimed, emerging from beneath the port landing gear well. His coveralls were grey beneath the same coating of sweat and grease and carbon that turned his tanned face the color of charcoal, and his white teeth shone through the grime like a spotlight.

  “Yes, Master Chief Ciampino,” Ash shot back, grinning crookedly as he set the bonder down with a cluster of other tools gathered at the nose of the cutter, “we pilots are actually good for something besides breaking the ships for you mechanics to repair.”

  “That’s ‘Master Chief retired’ to you, Commander Carpenter, sir,” Al reminded him, tucking a spanner into a loop of his tool belt and wiping his hands off on the front of his pants. “Nowadays if officers like you want to order me around, you have to pay me.”

  “Am I paying you?” Ash demanded, miming shock and putting a hand to his chest. “I thought you were doing this for the challenge.”

  “Challenge?” The older man sputtered in protest. “The biggest challenge has been you trying to borrow enough money to piece this thing together. Ever
ything else has been about as complicated as putting together a jigsaw puzzle.” His mouth twisted in a wry grin. “And I guess if you consider lunch and a cheap beer every other day payment, then yeah.”

  “Well, she’s in flying shape now, isn’t she?” Ash reflected, looking the boat over with an affection that he hadn’t felt for too many people in his life. Her name was spelled out in red stencil near the nose: Acheron.

  “Ready for your test flight tomorrow,” Al confirmed. “Your CO doesn’t have a problem with you taking the time off?”

  “Why would he?” Ash countered morosely. “It’s not as if we really have anything to do out here, and he hates my guts anyway. He’d probably rather I took off and didn’t come back.”

  “So why don’t you?” The older man made a dismissive gesture with the hammer he’d taken off his belt to store in a tool chest. “You obviously hate your job here, and there ain’t been a war on for a few years now, so there’s nothing holding you in the military anymore.”

  “Only one more year until I can retire with half-pay,” Ash reminded him, shaking his head. “This ship don’t fly for free, and she don’t fly for beer and lunches either.”

  Al shook his head, like they’d already had this conversation once too often, and closed the chest on his collection of tools.

  “Okay, boy,” he said, “I got paying customers to see, so I’ll be back here tomorrow morning for your maiden voyage.”

  “Thanks, Al,” he waved as the man headed back off for one of the repair hangars he leased at the edge of the field, the motorized tool cart rattling along behind him like a faithful hound.

  “You named her the Acheron,” a woman’s voice said from behind him. “Isn’t that bad luck?”

  Hairs stood on the back of his neck and the late-afternoon haze seemed to take on an air of unreality. He turned slowly and carefully, as if he expected to find nothing, as if he’d imagined the voice.

  The woman standing behind him was tall and would have been statuesque if she didn’t compulsively slump her shoulders, her cheekbones high and sharp, her eyes dark and unreadable. Her hair was longer than he remembered it, styled and wavy in the front and braided in the back, but still cut away from the interface jacks in her temples. It was red now, too, which seemed like an affectation he wouldn’t have expected from her, but it matched her new look. The clothes were rough and vaguely piratical, a cross between the colorful flash of the lower class and the useful pragmatism of the professional spacer.

  The handgun holstered at her hip was also a new look. It was legal here, out in the sticks, but it wasn’t something he’d expected to see. But then, he hadn’t expected to see her ever again.

  “Sandi,” he said, trying not to stare at her. “Holy shit...”

  “Hello, Ash.” Her hands were stuffed into the pockets of her black vest, and her stance was guarded and cautious. “I didn’t want to come, but…” She shrugged, reticent and grudging. “I need help, and I don’t have anyone else.”

  Something twisted in his gut at the thought that the only reason she came to him was that there wasn’t anyone else, but he shrugged it off. It couldn’t have been easy for her, either.

  “What is it?” He asked her. “What do you need?”

  “Let’s go somewhere we can sit down and have a drink,” she suggested, shaking her head. “It’s a long story.”

  ***

  Ash leaned back against the cheap plastic of the booth and watched Sandi drink. It felt like old times.

  “I need to get to the Periphery,” she told him without preamble, setting the cheap plastic shot glass down on the cheap plastic table. This wasn’t exactly a five-star joint, but she was paying and she’d asked for somewhere that didn’t cost much. “I need to borrow enough for passage, and a little to get set up at a colony out there.”

  He blinked. She’d barely said a word on the drive from the field to the bar, and it had taken two shots of no-name tequila to get her to say anything at all.

  “What happened to the long story?” He wondered, taking a careful sip of the whiskey he’d ordered.

  She shrugged, the look on her face guarded and wary, like a dog waiting for the next kick. If he hadn’t convinced her to leave her gun in his car, he expected she would have been resting a hand on the butt.

  “That’s the short version.” She put her glass under the table’s spigot, swiped her ‘link over the reader to pay, and touched the control to refill it. “I’m sorry to have to do it, but I don’t really have any choice. I owe a lot of people, and you’re the only one who owes me.”

  “I owe you my life, Sandi,” Ash admitted freely. “But I don’t have any money to give you. I’m in hock up to my eyeballs for the Acheron.” He shook his head. “I took out loans against my military retirement to buy her surplus, and I had to call in a lot of favors to get one in this kind of shape. Everything I’ve made the last few months has been put into getting her flight-ready.”

  “Why the hell did you name her after the ship you crashed in?” She demanded, downing another shot in the space between words, as easy and natural as breathing. “You almost died.”

  “I know.” He paused, staring into the past. “It sounds bad when I say it out loud, so I don’t even usually think it. But the war, Sandi…” He trailed off, chewing on his lip. “Ever since it ended, things haven’t been the same.”

  “You miss it,” she said. It didn’t sound like an accusation.

  “I miss how everything seemed important back then.” He took a long sip, feeling the drink burning its way down his throat. “Everything now is about inspections and personnel files and expense reports.” He heard the bitterness in his voice and was surprised at it. “I invested every dollar I have into the Acheron. I’m going to lease her out to an independent spacer until I pay off my loans, then I’m going to retire early and use her to go wherever the hell I want.”

  “Wow,” Sandi breathed. “I figured you’d wind up in the military for the long haul, be a Captain by now.”

  “Promotions have been frozen in the Attack Command for the last two years,” he said, his words half a growl. “We’re not at war, so no one needs missile cutters or missile cutter Wing Commanders. Things have swung back to the big cruisers now, patrolling the Periphery and keeping a lid on raiders and smugglers.” He shrugged. “I’ve applied for a transfer three times, but I don’t have any experience as anything but a pilot so I’m low on the list. Things are different now than they were in the war. Back then, we got kicked up the chain because we were hotshot pilots, because we knew what we were doing. Now, it’s who you know.” Another drink. “And I don’t know anybody important anymore.”

  “Shit.” Sandi looked suddenly older. “Ash, I have to get out of here. I have to get somewhere no one knows me. If I could do it any other way, I would. I worked as a netdiver on an independent freighter just to get here, and that was only because they were desperate for someone with ‘face jacks.”

  “You’re a pilot, not a netdiver.” He waved a hand demonstratively. “Couldn’t you find a job with someone heading out that way? As a pilot?”

  “My pilot’s certification was yanked by the military after I went against orders to haul you off that shithole moon,” she reminded him, heat flowing into her words and behind her eyes, so intense that Ash drew back involuntarily. “I can’t get a civilian certification. If I could, I wouldn’t have spent the last three years…”

  She bit off the rest of her words, and Ash frowned.

  “What?” He demanded. “Spent the last three years doing what?”

  Sandi took a deep breath and visibly controlled herself. Ash thought it looked like she was reminding herself that she needed his help and probably shouldn’t be yelling at him.

  “Ash, I need a way out to the Periphery,” she insisted quietly, eyes down on the table. “Let me borrow your boat. I’ll take it out there, run a few cargoes to get the money I need, then I can get it back to you.”

  Ash felt his mouth dropp
ing open in shock and had to force it closed.

  “Not a chance in hell,” he said flatly. “Where that ship goes, I go.”

  He winced as he saw the frustration and then disappointment in her expression, and he felt a rush of guilt, remembering what she’d done for him. He tossed down the last of his drink, thinking hard.

  “But,” he went on, “there might still be a way I can help.” She looked up sharply. “It just so happens that I have leave coming up; I was going to use it to take the Acheron on a test run. I can drop you wherever you need to go, at least within a couple weeks’ flight, maybe spot you a few hundred. That’s the best I can do right now.”

  She stared at her empty glass as if the answers to the questions of life and the universe were in the dregs of her tequila. Ash gently took it from her hand, then passed his ‘link over the spigot and refilled it for her, handing it back.

  “Thank you,” she finally said, the timbre of her voice sounding more resigned than grateful.

  “If you need a place to stay the night,” he offered hesitantly, “my apartment is just a couple kilometers from here.” He shrugged. “I could find you a room at the port hostel, maybe, if you’d rather.”

  Her eyes were slits as she stared at him over the top of the glass.

  “No, that’s okay,” she said, finally. “I’ll stay with you.”

  Chapter Three

  Sandi blinked awake, startled for just a moment by the comfort and softness of the bed, and even more by the unfamiliar feel of warm skin against hers. She rolled over slowly and carefully, and felt an unexpected rush of emotion at the sight of Ash sleeping beside her in the muted light of the small bedroom.

  He hadn’t changed a bit, she thought. Even in sleep, his face was stern and square-jawed and honest. If she hadn’t known him, she would have guessed he was a colonist from some backwoods colony where everyone lived on a farm and fished in the creek out back of the homestead. She did know him, though, and she knew he’d grown up in one of the roughest and poorest sections of Trans-Angeles, with brothers who ran drugs and guns and a mother who was little better than a crime-boss herself.