by John Barnes
“You can do that?” Pikia tried to sound amazed; she didn’t think much of her act, but the guard seemed to be less of a critic.
“Toktru masen. That’s how it works. Now, there’s a Pertrans station right over there—”
“Over where?” She turned her back to him, staring wildly everywhere except where he had pointed, clasping her hands in front of herself like a medieval movie actor portraying confusion and helplessness.
“See that low building? That’s the bunker for Cradle One. Now, next to it—” He pointed over her shoulder. She tensed her clasped hands against each other.
“Next to the big curvy thing?”
He took a half step and extended his arm more emphatically. “Right, toktru, right there where—”
She let her tensed hands fly apart and dropped into a deep knee bend. Her right fist flew away, curving low and back, to hammer the guard’s scrotum against his pubic bone; she kept contact as she opened her hand and turned her wrist, taking a deep forceful grip. As the guard pitched forward with a gasp of pain, his jaw met the fast-rising heel of Pikia’s left hand, and his head flew back, putting him into an awkward position—bending over while standing on his toes with his head up. She caught his extended wrist in front of her, stood on one leg while thrusting back with the other, and whipped her hands in a big forward circle. He went whirling over her hip, led by the wrist and pulled by the balls, sailing high into the air in the light Martian gravity, then falling to the base of the ramp in disorderly thrashing agony.
Pikia did not see that rough landing; she had already slipped in through the open door and pushed the emergency close. She checked the guard’s display; it showed that there was no one else aboard tonight. She had the flagship of Red Amber Magenta Green’s Spatial entirely to herself. Taking a few good guesses, and using the skills that were the reason her school records held high scores in several courses she had never taken, she made a few changes, locking out the rest of the world and opening the cockpit.
By the time that muffled thuds and shouted threats and insults were coming through the sealed door, Pikia was comfortably seated in the captain’s chair in the worryball, gobbling a ration pack and a bulb of coffee, watching Fuel Tank One through the monitors.
Not bad for my first time in action, she thought, and I’m starting even younger than Jak did. Now if Jak does his part soon, and Sib is as ready as I am, there will have been some point to it besides beating up one poor guard. She plugged her purse into the console through the universal jack. Her up-to-date purse cut through the centuries-old security system like a red-hot wire through snow; in a few seconds she would be able to do anything she wanted. She found Red Amber Magenta Green’s standard Spatial terminology guide, and the voiceprints for the crew, and knew that now she had struck pure gold.
The guard was bored stiff; if it weren’t for the honor of being here, he’d rather have been home, getting drunk and working through what he thought was the finest collection of viv pornography, certainly in Magnificiti, probably in the Harmless Zone, possibly in the solar system. (He was wrong; it was in fact a mediocre collection, though perfectly aimed at his peculiar and limited tastes.) As a second son of minor noblesse de robe, he had to hang about the court of the Splendor, which meant he had to have this job. If his father or either of his aunts had been just slightly higher in rank, he would at least not have to have a night shift, or could be excused the next day from morning court functions, but there was no such luck in his life.
Many of the nobility, faced with performing minor jobs as guards, ceremonial unit officers, factotums, ministers for nonexistent affairs, and so forth, made a show of making the job as real as possible, behaving as if it mattered and could only be done by a well-qualified live human being.
This guard was not one of those people. He was eighty years old but looked like a badly preserved 140, not having kept up with enough exercise for his doctors to be able to give him the stronger rejuvenation drugs, which were dangerous to the sedentary. His kitchen automatically supplemented his diet with the usual array of necessary trace chemicals, but nothing could overcome his love of sweet and gooey food, or his tendency, once he started a bottle, to finish three more. He did not greatly care; he was bored with life, but having nothing to do with the life he had been given, he had donated it, grudgingly, to family affairs, and though he would rather not have been here standing about uselessly while robots did his job, there was also nowhere else he had any real desire to be.
It was thus particularly unfair that no robot had been provided to do the actual fighting, shouting, warning, or improvising that a real guard might have done, and that when a few seconds of real work turned up, the guard was bored, sleepy, and dyspeptic. The door covering the entrance to the control tower dilated with a grinding tchunk! indicating that repairs were in the hands of people every bit as concerned about their duties as this guard was about his.
Since there had been no alert or bell, the guard looked up in some surprise and irritation and said “Can I help—” before Sibroillo Jinnaka’s sharp rising punch knocked him out. He didn’t know it then, but aside from launching him backward off the floor and into a corner, it would launch him as a dinner guest for the next few months as well.
Meanwhile, Sibroillo helped himself to the guard’s slug-pistol and put his purse to the job of hacking the elevator to the top, silently if possible, but within three minutes no matter what. He was on schedule but only just.
* * *
As Jak dashed toward the landing field’s main marshaling loop, where John Carter was parked, he raised his purse to his mouth and said, “Please check purely local, no data access calls. Do we have copies of universal access codes that will get us onto John Carter?”
“We do; Hive Intel gave us a full set of universals. You can access nuclear weapons if Carter is carrying them.”
“Thank you. Please have all relevant codes available for instant use.” and Jak put his head down and ran harder; there was really nowhere to hide out here, especially since if anyone was watching, and Jak had no way of knowing from what direction or angle. Best to just get through the vulnerable zone as quickly as possible.
The purse supplied the right code at a rear access door. Though Red Amber Magenta Green had put a prize crew on board, they had not bothered to change the locks, and Jak’s purse had no trouble overriding the simple software-based alarm. In less than a minute more, the purse had cleared and recaptured the system, a tribute more to the ineptitude and low budget of a Harmless Zone army than to Jak’s special skill or the purse’s capability.
Now that John Carter was working for the Hive again, it took only a moment for Jak to determine that there were three guards on board—one in the cockpit and the other two sacked out on bunks in the VIP suite. He slipped down the corridor, silent and ready, his way shown by the glowing blue outlines in the goggles he had plugged into his purse, as he passed through the utterly dark corridors as confidently as if it had been in daylight. He waited outside the door until he was sure he knew what he would find on the other side; according to the only active computer in the worryball, the guard was playing with a flight simulator program, and if he or she was facing the screen, would be facing away from this door. Jak cued his purse to go in two seconds, and stepped close to the door.
It dilated abruptly. In one-third g, Jak reached the training pilot’s chair in a single leap and his left hand had locked on to the guard’s viv helmet before the guard reacted. He drove the guard’s head forward and to the side, then slammed three quick, brutal punches into the side of the neck.
Jak felt him spasm, choke, gasp, and go limp. He yanked the guard’s laser pistol free from its holster (a laser pistol in the Harmless Zone? Interesting … the man was a war criminal), and tore the guard’s slug-rifle from his shoulder, letting the limp guard fall to the floor in a barely struggling heap, well on his way to unconsciousness—no, her way, it’s a small woman, Jak realized.
Well, whatever.
He jerked her viv helmet off, probably guaranteeing the woman a sore neck, and kicked her once in the head to make certain. She fell over, hands and feet twitching, probably concussed. It probably hurt, but anyway the ambulance would be here in less than an hour, and Uncle Sib had always said the leading cause of injuries was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jak used the captain’s override to open the worryball’s small weapons locker. He got out three stunners; intended for riot control, and not much good for any other purpose, each stunner was a single-shot device and they had to be in contact with the skin above the neck to work as intended.
Jak killed lights all over the ship and turned on sound suppression. He waited till he was sure that the other two guards were still asleep. Then he slipped into the VIP suites, clapped the stunner to the forehead of each sleeping guard in turn, and sent them under with the maximum dose.
Back at the cockpit, when he turned on the lights, he found the first guard had rolled over and gotten her hands under her, and was trying to push up from the deck, without much success. He squatted down in front of her. Her eyes widened in fear. “Look,” Jak said quietly, “you’re hurt pretty bad and you can’t do a thing for yourself or your nation right now, masen?”
The woman was probably only a year or so older than Pikia. Bruises were already coming up on her face and neck. Tears of pain ran down her cheeks to join the snot below her nose. “I guess I can’t,” she admitted.
“Well, I can’t parole you. I can tie you up, which will be uncomfortable, or give you a light stun, which wouldn’t be good for you with the concussion I already gave you. Or I guess I could kick you in the head again, but I’d hate it, and you’d hate it more.”
She seemed to be thinking as hard as she could, but it just wasn’t coming fast. After a second she asked, “Can you lock me in the brig? After you release the prisoner that’s in there?”
Jak checked his purse and discovered that there was a prisoner in the brig, right enough; probably some crewman left behind for one reason or another, or maybe it was the captain being held separately from his officers. In any case, an extra hand would be welcome, and locking the guard in the brig seemed much more reasonable than hurting her further, so Jak helped her to her feet and guided her down the corridor, supporting her with one arm while keeping his hand on the pistol in case all this was a trick.
He put her in brig cell number two and made sure she lay facedown so that she wouldn’t choke if she vomited; he hooked her to a medical monitor so that if anything went suddenly, seriously wrong, he and the ambulances would know at once. Then he locked her in and unlocked brig unit number one, where the prisoner was.
When the door dilated, Jak was looking into the mildly startled face of Clarbo Waynong. “This is odd. My purse told me that they had suppressed it, and it couldn’t call Hive Intel for help.”
“This is purely an accident,” Jak said grimly. “Follow me and try not to say or do anything else. I’ve got a mission to accomplish.” He turned and left Clarbo Waynong sputtering something about needing to use the lavatory and the difficulty of getting organized on such short notice.
“Is your short-range patch into the worryball good from outside the warshuttle?” Jak asked his purse.
“Probably. A test will be necessary to be sure.”
“Open the weapons locker nearest me.” Jak pulled out charge blocks, three slug rifles, and half a dozen hand weapons, plus a sling-bag. The equipment was truly primitive stuff—the firearms weren’t even equipped to identify the user and would work for the enemy as easily as for your own side—but it was a treaty violation to carry anything any better into the Harmless Zone. He packed them into the sling-bag and hung it over his shoulder. If he could rejoin his party, at least they would all be adequately armed.
He was two steps from the exit when he heard footsteps, and glanced back to see Clarbo Waynong catching up with him, that perfect hair still somehow not the least bit mussed, the resolute jaw still set, and to all appearances, not tired in the least. “So, whatever your plan is, it seems to be working, so just let me know what my part is and I’ll be happy to—”
Jak kept walking down the boarding ramp. “Still in contact over the short range?” he asked his purse.
“Perfectly.”
“All right, then, when I say ‘Mark,’ patch me through to the highest officer of the Red Amber Magenta Green military that you can find. Preferably one we can wake up on his home com. Override whatever his alert protocols are and sound a siren on maximum volume. Send in clear. Make sure there’s some echo noise coming out of John Carter so that anyone with any equipment at all can confirm the origin.
“When I say ‘Next message,’ switch over to any contact you can find on Splendor One, same procedures and protocol. When I say ‘Next message’ after that, call up the main room of the control tower, same procedures and protocol. Then when I say ‘Next message’ after that, get me the highest-ranking person you can on the Princess of Green-world’s personal launch. Is that coherent?”
“Got it.”
“Can you control any of the warshuttle’s guns or lasers?”
“Yes, but none of them is loaded and they’re all blocked from reload or recharge.”
“All right, then, When I say ‘Mark,’ we’ll start the procedure.”
Waynong looked as if he wanted to say something but could not quite imagine what.
Jak stared at him, hoping to make his gaze intimidating. “The plan needs you to stay absolutely silent for the next couple of minutes, while I make these calls and do some shooting. Then when I run, follow me.”
“All right.” Was it possible that the young patrician even sounded a tiny bit chastened?
Jak looked out from the boarding ramp to the rest of the landscape. To the southwest, Cradle Two aimed up at the sky, and somewhere in it, presumably, was the Princess’s yacht. Next to the cradle sat the big sphere of the fuel tank; somewhere behind that, Dujuv and Shadow would be crouching right now. Far beyond that, almost a third of a kilometer, lay Cradle One and its fuel tank, with the low round bulk of Splendor One just showing on the small marshaling loop above; he hoped that Pikia was safely inside Splendor One. Then he shrugged and lifted his purse to his face. “Mark.”
Half a second later, a panicked voice, just yanked from sleep into blurry alertness, shouted “What?”
“This is Captain Tror Adlongongu of John Carter. Per your orders, we are proceeding to recapture the lifelog from the Greenworld delegation, and we have brought the Princess’s yacht under fire.” Jak pointed with his laser pistol and put several bright spots on Cradle Two. “We are proceeding as you ordered and we will also polish the sled dog with bathtub wax as soon as the wrenches have been cooked in baby oil. I’ve never liked you but I like having sex with your family. Sorry, you’re breaking up—Next message.”
“Was that siren necessary?” Pikia’s voice had all the fury of someone who had been startled into dropping a third of a milk shake onto her pants.
“Sorry. All right, this is the Sixth Hive Rangers. We’re preparing to storm that launch on Cradle Two. Please lay down covering fire.”
The side of Splendor One erupted with spattering sparks; it took Jak a moment to realize that those were the riot-protection guns, hurling heavy soft bean-bag rounds at moderate speeds but a very high rate of fire. As always, Pikia had tinkered a bit and improved things from the original plan; the bag rounds would probably not cause anyone any serious injury, but they would sound like cracks of doom on the fuselage of the Princess’s yacht.
“Use default ring on this next one,” Jak told his purse. “Next message.”
“Control tower,” Sib’s voice said.
“This is Splendor One. We are under attack by beanies from the Princess of Greenworld’s launch. We’re taking heavy casualties, and we’re completely unable to—never mind, just send over a clean shirt and six pizzas! Everything is on fire, do you hear me, everything is on fire! Naked! Complete
ly naked! Next message.”
“Identify yourself—” It was Shyf’s voice, and she didn’t sound happy. That siren effect must be impressive.
Jak felt his gut sink and roll over; deliberately annoying her was almost out of his emotional reach, as the conditioning was still very strong. “I saw that dress you wore tonight. It makes you look fat.” He hung up and stepped to the side. He sighted on the fuel tank for Cradle One and gave it a max-duration, max-power shot from his laser pistol.
Flames burst from the tank and soared upward. Hot-jet fuel was not explosive; its knotted and balled molecules required catalysis to unlock and expand them in the reaction that drove rockets. But though more inclined to smolder than to flare, it was combustible in high-oxygen Martian air, and at least as dangerous as burning salad oil.
“What was that for?” Waynong asked.
Jak held up a hand for silence and said to his purse, “All right, patch into general communications traffic via the cockpit center, and make sure anything you send or receive looks like it’s passing through there.”
“Done.”
“Scan for anything of interest, switch every ten seconds.”
Pikia’s voice came through, ordering nonexistent units of the Red Amber Magenta Green army to seize the Princess’s yacht, the control tower, the main marshaling loop, the Royal Palace in Magnificiti, and a party of thieves escaping to the west with the lifelog. Sib’s voice came on, clearing Splendor One for launch, ordering Cradle Two lowered, and announcing that five Hive warshuttles were landing on the field, in opposed-combat mode, and had opened fire on the fuel tanks. Then there was more of Pikia, screaming for the monitor tower to get water on Fuel Tank Three at once (it was One that was burning).
Jak clicked his communications on and hailed the nonexistent warshuttles, bounced over to demand of the monitor tower why they hadn’t put out the fire on Tank Three yet, and gave orders to a platoon of Hive beanies to seize Splendor One and then proceed to the Royal Palace. He switched his laser pistol to stutter-burst and swung it back and forth across the supports and operating machinery for Cradle Two, producing a gratifying burst of flares, sparks, and shrieks of breaking metal. The cradle slumped slightly to the side, and then the emergency systems cut in and lowered it. The Princess wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight.
