“Her ident has already been updated with the right ownership, and the only formality left is the presence of a witness when she enters her override code into the computer,” Jason said. “You’re just along for the ride this time, Major. Your authority only matters if her code proves invalid.”
“Well, yes, but there are forms that she has to fill out,” the major said.
“No, that’s Carthan busy work. She’s made it perfectly clear that Sol Defence has no interest in your government, or with your procedures.”
“There’s the matter of identity, she seems young to have priority command over an exploration ship from Sol Defence. We also have her records, tracing her history back to her original point of sale.”
“Do you really think that woman is as young as those records say?” Oz asked. “Or that any cover identity Sol Defence put in place for her will have any indication that it’s a fake?”
They arrived at a split in the hallway and Jake sent Ashley a silent message to stop so the rest of their team could catch up. He only hoped that she could handle herself when the Carthan major caught up to her.
“You, what do you have to say about all this?” asked the major, finally pulling his helmet off. He was silver haired, but looked like he was still in his twenties.
Ashley turned towards him and deactivated her headgear. The horizontal metal strips of armour and faceplate slid up and over her head, letting her long black hair flow free. She smiled at him a little and said, “I’m here to get my ship back and put her in the right hands. After that I’ll be free, and I can go back under cover.”
“Back under cover?” asked the major.
Ashley stepped towards him so she was standing almost nose to nose, her hand caming to rest gently on his arm. “I found the right commander for this ship. When I give him the assignment, I’ll be free and there’s nothing that would make me happier. Please don’t get in the way of my happiness,” she said so intimately that Jake was taken aback.
“I want to be a pilot, to explore, spend some time on the beach when the sun finally comes up again, and have a life,” Ashley said.“I can’t do that if my name is in all your records, so you’re going to see someone take possession of this ship, and then I’ll tell you whose name to put down under ‘Captain’ for the Triton. ‘Kay?”
Jake thought everything went perfectly well, until she said; ‘kay?’
“My superiors will not be satisfied with a lot of unanswered questions,” the major replied. This time his tone was more apologetic than demanding.
“I’ll be happy to answer them for her,” Liam Grady said. The second half of their boarding team was catching up. “She’ll be too busy when we get to the Botanical Gallery.”
“Can I ask a few questions while we walk?” the major asked Ashley.
“Okay,” Ashley replied. “But before you start interrogating me, can you tell me your name?” Her dark eyes were locked on his, and Jake could see that Ashley was finally at ease, most likely thanks to the realization that she had charmed the major like any of a dozen freighter captains and who knew who else before. I should have known she’d find a way to turn this situation around. She’s been in plenty of tight spots on her own, Jacob thought.
When Ashley saw that the second group of soldiers and technicians had caught up, she looped her arm under the major’s and started walking him down the dark hallway. Charming people was as easy for her as breathing sometimes. It wasn’t something Jake saw often when they were aboard the Triton or the Samson, but she had an easy time in port cities.
Jake looked past her, down the darkened hallway and saw a red light in the distance. He placed a hand on the nearest bulkhead and, after a moment of feeling around, was close enough to circuitry to feel that it was live. “Chief Grady, there’s power under this panel.”
“What?” Liam said, turning around from where he walked beside the major. “Did your people try to activate any major systems?”
“I was given orders not to activate any systems without bypassing the ship’s power and using a portable unit, why?” asked the major.
“The ship is rigged so powering up any major system will do severe damage to the chemical medium in the advanced circuitry aboard,” replied Chief Grady.
The major didn’t reply, only stared back blankly.
“Main data and power transfer circuitry is burning out, some junctions could become volatile and explode,” Jake translated.
“What can we do?”
“This is bad. A third of the ship is powering up,” Ayan said. “And systems are failing.”
Jake’s own scans confirmed what Ayan was saying. “It’s your trap, Grady. How do we stop it?”
“I have to get to a major distribution node, then I can stop the chemical reaction. This won’t affect the Botanical Gallery or the main computer core, it’s on a separate system, but it could help with the situation,” Liam said.
“Take a squad with you,” Jake said.
“I shouldn’t need security.”
“It’s a precaution and extra hands if you need them,” Jake said, signaling Victor Davis, who wasted no time in moving his squad up to help Liam Grady.
“Just tell us where you’re going, and we’ll get you there,” Sergeant Davis said.
“All right, then I need some qualified engineers to help,” Liam said.
Laura, Ayan, several technicians, and Finn moved to join Liam.
“Finn, you’re staying with my group,” Jake said. “Pick two techs to stay back and keep the gear we’ll need to power the doors for the Botanical Gallery.”
After a minute of frantic sorting through equipment and more minor personnel decisions, Liam’s team was off at a dead run. Jake took Ashley’s arm and said, “I hope you’re in good shape, because we’re going in the opposite direction, and fast.”
“Who are you?” asked the Carthan major.
Jake retracted his headgear and smiled at him. “I’m the one taking charge. If you want more info than that, you’ll have to wait until we have time for conversation.” He looked to Ashley, who seemed amused at seeing the major caught by surprise, and nodded at her. “We’re running.” He closed his headgear, and she followed his example.
Chapter 29
Growth
The dark grow house reeked of livestock and the vats they grew the headless beasts in. Tens of thousands of mindless bodies exercised in the water, filling the place with the ceaseless sounds of sloshing liquid.
Alice stepped behind a four storey tall column of poultry vats, clutching her black market silver gun. “I wonder what people who ate this stuff would think if they saw how it was grown?” she muttered to herself. She was almost across the warehouse’s production floor. If she got to the other side, she could disappear into the crowds of the busy port.
The critical information she carried was complete, ready to be put to use, but Uro Security knew Alice had stolen it. They even knew it was stored in a data strip printed on her hip bone. They weren’t out to retrieve it, but to destroy her and the microscopic data storage device she thought she was so clever for having.
Somehow Alice heard someone shuffle their feet, despite the din of exercising meat. She leaned out to see the source of the sound. Her foolishness was rewarded with several shots in her direction. Small vats filled with jerking chicken exploded, covering her with foul liquid. Even as she ran she couldn’t help but gag momentarily; the smell was nothing compared to the viscous fluid that clung to her skin.
Her pursuers were closer than she thought, and they didn’t seem to care much about the value of the delicacies within the production building. They fired at any sign of her, sometimes missing by only centimetres. Fear and anger mingled as she could feel them closing in on her location. Some of them drifted at speed on skid boards, antigravity hover devices that took the fairness out of most chases.
She ducked under a row of larger mammals. They might be cattle, but it was difficult to tell in the dark. She only had a few s
econds. Her new hiding place made things inconvenient for them, but it didn’t make her invisible.
“I’m not going to get out of here without fireworks,” she said to herself. Her free hand dug in her jacket pocket and curled around an incendiary grenade. She didn’t want to use it, but it would set off alarms, get them on the run for a change. The chemicals in the vats might ignite if the grenade was hot enough, that would cost her.
She was wanted for stealing security information, but if she set a grow house the size of three city blocks on fire, she’d be wanted worldwide, and Uro had as many police officers as they had merchants. “Guess I’m leaving the planet,” Alice said. She pulled the grenade out of her pocket, set it for one minute and activated it.
“Get out!” shouted one officer, his voice amplified so it could be heard over the sloshing. “Abort and retreat!”
“Yes, Sir,” Alice said, pushing herself out from under the row of exercising mammals. She almost made it around the corner when a round caught her in the arm. Her bomber jacket stopped most of the damage from going through, but something still impacted her arm beneath, right below the shoulder.
It didn’t stop her from running, something she’d been doing almost constantly since she took the ambitious job. Holding her wound, she turned to the nearest wall of the grower building. Sunlight spilled in through a double door that was in the opposite direction of her pursuers. Small bits of the concrete were flung into the air as rounds impacted on the floor around her. The shots were coming from behind, and she couldn’t help but glance. The officer firing at her ducked behind a row of vats, as though she were about to turn and fire, but she found herself thinking: what a moron, he’s going to go up with the building because he just wouldn’t stop chasing me.
She returned her attention to the door ahead, trying to swerve and put something between her and the idiot firing at her. Alice was within ten metres of the exit when rounds tore through the backs of her thighs. She struck the concrete floor and slid. The pain was so intense it was hard to breathe, and she watched the counter for her grenade count down from twenty seven seconds as her command unit administered pain and coagulation medication.
The pain was gone, but she couldn’t get her feet under her; Alice’s legs simply wouldn’t obey. She had one hand to drag herself to the door. “I can’t go out like this,” she said.
A short man with long hair stepped into the doorway from outside with an assault rifle raised. He unleashed a barrage of cover fire as he walked to her with perfect confidence. “Bad girl, drawing so much attention,” he said as he leaned down and grabbed the back of her jacket. He ran backwards, dragging her and firing bursts from his assault rifle.
With nine seconds to spare, they were out of the warehouse, and he was dragging her into an awaiting shuttle that was so marked by time she wouldn’t be surprised if it dated back to the early colonial days. He dumped her onto the floor behind the pilot seat and hurriedly closed the door. A slight jostling told her that the grenade went off, and at a glance through one of the portholes, she could see the craft was rolling across the ground. The hull scraped and creaked until it came to rest and the pilot engaged the engines.
Alice pulled herself across the narrow bed of the shuttle and reached for an emergency medical box on the wall. Her savior released the controls of the shuttle and turned his attention back to her. “Here, let me get that,” he said, pulling the kit from the wall and opening it. “You’re lucky you’re wearing that jacket. Saved you from being shot through the back.” He pulled it off without much regard to her injuries and dropped it behind him. He was right, the thicker armour on the back side of the jacket had stopped at least seven rounds from passing through.
“Who are you?”
“I’ve been following you since you made land on Uro. Didn’t think you’d get those files,” he stretched the back of her vacsuit away from her body and used a surgical particle saw to get through it, stripping her lower half from there down.
“Hey! They got my legs!”
“Relax, your security scan was more revealing than this. And yes, they got your legs, but you’ve got a hole in your backside, too.”
He pulled a regenerative spray from the kit and shook it before beginning to spray it on. “You don’t have any cybernetics in your legs or backside that you managed to hide from the port scanners, do you?”
“No, all natural,” she replied, glad she was dosed with pain-killers. “And who gets implants in their ass?”
“Hey,” he said, holding his hands up defensively. “I’ve seen stranger things.”
“Why are you helping me?” Alice asked as he finished covering the wounds on her legs and bottom with the spray and moved on to her arm. Even through the painkillers she could feel the regeneration drugs going to work.
“Because you’re going to cut me in for half,” he said with a crooked grin. “You need an expert, or you’re going to get killed.”
“I’ve pulled off harder heists,” Alice replied.
“Not on Uro, you haven’t. You’re either going to cut me in for half, or I’ll drop you off at the nearest police station before your legs are all healed up. I figure I’ve got twenty three minutes to decide.”
“You’d be in trouble too,” Alice replied.
The long haired fellow pulled a cheap-looking computer pad from his pocket and showed her the screen. There was a detailed security scan of her – so detailed that she found herself blushing – with a reward of one point eight million Uro credits offered for her live capture. News agencies listed offers for footage of her beneath. “You’re famous here now,” he said with a chuckle. “They’re going to be watching for you everywhere in this solar system.”
“Dammit, Meunez is going to get into this,” Alice said, pounding the deck with her good hand.
“Who’s Meunez?”
“Never mind. I’ll cut you in for half, but all this has to happen quickly.”
“Love it,” the fellow with the long hair said, standing. “Girl with a complicated past looking to get the job done in a hurry. Where are we going?”
“What? You don’t know already?” Alice asked, teasing. He was an attractive man, a couple of centimetres shorter than her, with dark, straight hair. His features were so mixed that he could be from anywhere. His piercing dark eyes seemed to indicate a tendency towards mischief.
“I said I’ve been following you, not tapping into that wrist computer of yours. Even Uro cops couldn’t get in, or track you once you got out of scanning range. I would have ignored you if there wasn’t some recognizable skill.”
“Thank you,” Alice said.
“Wasn’t a compliment, just an observation. Where are we going?”
“First, what’s your name? Nothing comes up on my system,” Alice asked.
“Lewis, just call me Lewis.”
“Okay, Lewis, we’re going to Illihd Prime.”
“Where on Illihd Prime?” Lewis asked.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
* * *
Eve woke up on her stomach. The tingling sensation from the memory-dream in her legs was still fading. “They’re getting longer,” she said to herself. They were also falling into sequence constantly. There were no flashes of early life, or digital remnants from before she became human. Those were the most confusing experiences. They were half memories, with murky images that blurred together, not even worth paying attention to.
Everything was changing. She felt better, more like a whole person, but she looked forward to sleeping, eating was less a chore and more a pleasure. That made her situation even more difficult. Her nervousness at whatever Hampon was planning kept her up, and she didn’t eat anything since she discovered that there could be a nano-modification ready that would limit her forever. He could easily put it in her food, or dose her while she slept.
Eve had to get some distance from him somehow. The day of her great address had arrived, and she hoped it would be easier than she thought. “
It begins when I’m ready,” she muttered to herself. That was what the notes that came with her speech said. She could put the event off as long as she wanted.
There was little reason to hesitate. She wanted to get on with it and she didn’t take more time than she had to in the bathroom. Eve was never any good at putting on makeup, but she did a serviceable job of applying the basics using an auto-kit that was provided with her toiletries. She supposed it was something else she learned from Alice, who was taught by Bernice during a particularly long hyperspace trip. Eve was thankful the kit matched her colouring; it was something not even Alice had much of a knack for.
She put on the same dress she wore the day before, only putting the white and gold layer on the outside. Eve made sure the emergency environment patch was on her back underneath, as there was no telling where her day would take her.
The door chimed as she finished smoothing the dress down. “Come in,” she said, activating the door. It was either the Child Prophet or Gabriel Meunez, and she wasn’t eager to see either one of them.
Wheeler entered with the adolescent Child Prophet in tow. “Little Lister here told me you were getting ready to. . .” Wheeler trailed off, staring at her, astonished.
A lump rose in her throat, and she checked her dress to make sure it was in place, looked in a shiny wall fixture to make sure she hadn’t done something unusual or shocking with her makeup. Everything seemed fairly normal.
“Ahem,” the Child Prophet said, crossing the room and taking her hands. “I think Lucius is stunned to see how beautiful you look this morning.”
“Right, yeah,” he said. He wore an old thick black coat over what looked more like the clothing Eve had seen in her dreams. Thick pants over a vacsuit with a gun belt that had been robbed of its weaponry. “Sorry, your Excellency, I’m surprised to have an opportunity to see you in person.”
“You should brush your hair,” the Child Prophet said.
Eve nodded and returned to the bathroom, sliding the door most of the way closed.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework Page 24
