Starship Fairfax: Books 1-3 Omnibus - The Kuiper Chronicles: The Lunar Gambit, The Hidden Prophet, The Neptune Contingency

by Benjamin Douglas

  Lucas pulled himself up on the wall.

  “I think this is it,” Jan said. “I never would have imagined I’d die in an elevator on Mars. Horrific mechanical accident, ok, that maybe was a bit of a given, considering my chosen field, but I always thought it would be on the ship, where gravity isn’t such an issue. Why do they have to mimic Earth’s gravity here in the first place? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Makes situations like this needlessly dangerous. Ok, there might be a little danger in the planet’s native gravity, but not anything like this, nothing nearly as deadly, I mean if this cart goes they will need to run dental records to identify our remains, you know what I mean? It won’t even be a question of—”

  “Shut up!” Caspar slapped him in the face.

  Darren leapt, caught the edge of the opening he’d made, and pulled himself up and out of the car. There was a stark moment after he’d disappeared when Lucas was convinced he’d seen the last of him—he would slither away and survive, while the rest of them plummeted to their deaths. But no, his head reappeared. “Angie,” he said, hanging an arm over the edge. Mulligan grabbed on, and he pulled her up.

  Of course.

  Lucas and Adams lifted her from below. They sent Jan up next, then Caspar. Under any other circumstances, Lucas might have blushed at crouching down and grabbing ahold of her thigh.

  “Don’t get fresh, Adams,” she muttered.

  “Wouldn’t dream it.” He grunted a bit more than necessary as they lifted her.

  “Please,” she said sardonically.

  “Your turn,” Lucas said to him after she was through. He bent down on all fours and let the engineer step onto his back. Caspar peered over from atop the lift.

  “Aw, you’re sending him first, Sir? I thought maybe you’d come out and we’d just leave him here.”

  It took a little more time and effort pulling Adams up, both because he was a bit heavier than the others, and because Lucas was alone beneath him. But eventually they succeeded, and Lucas was left alone in the lift. Darren reappeared, hanging an arm down. Lucas frowned. He’d hoped Caspar would be the one to pull him up. But he supposed Darren was the more logical choice, per pound.

  “Watch the lip as you come over, Sir,” Caspar called. “She’s a bit sharp.”

  “Will do.” He rose to his feet and crouched, preparing to jump.

  Another roar from outside, and the building began to shake. This time it didn’t stop. Lucas struggled to stay on his feet and to keep from panicking as the car seemed to be moving in four directions. Then there was a sickening sound like a metal can being torn open, and suddenly the car was only moving in one direction.

  Down.

  Chapter 20

  “Get on if you’re coming, we’re leaving!” Ada turned back to the ship. “Moses, get her going.”

  “I’ve kept her warm for you.”

  “Can you locate Bone Crusher?”

  “Scanning…” Ada raced through the hatch, Joyce and the pretty boys on her heels. She’d made it to the cockpit before Moses spoke again. “He appears to have run to the roof.”

  “What?” She sat and strapped herself in. Joyce did the same.

  “He seems to have pursued two lifeforms on foot. He also seems… to be doing violence to them.”

  Ada chuffed. “Can you take us there?”

  “Confirmed.” The hatch closed, the hangar door opened, and Cupid whipped out of the dock, Ada flying back against her seat. From the cargo hold, she heard cursing.

  “A little warning next time?” someone yelled.

  “Sorry!” Ada called over her shoulder. “Too busy saving our lives!”

  The atmosphere around the embassy had changed. There was fewer civ traffic, but small ships were making flybys in tight formations, and the distant hulls of battleships were just visible far above. Joyce blew out a breath. “Is the whole system going crazy?”

  “Seems that way. Moses, can you show a tactical readout on my console?”

  “Confirmed.”

  A cloud of ships appeared in orbit over Mars, far more than had been present when they had come down. “That can’t be good,” she muttered. She also saw what she had assumed to be bomber formations passing by, but there were more of them here than had been on Ceres. She squinted at the screen. Bigger planet, more bombs? Or maybe they weren’t all bombers.

  “Moses, can you get a read on IDs from any of the small spacecraft zipping around down here?”

  “All craft within range are tagged for Rome Inc. Two squadrons of heavy bombers, a comet-hopper on the roof, and three small squadrons of Gatling-class fighters.”

  Ada cursed. The bombers might make trouble, but the Gatlings definitely would. No sooner had she had the thought than a fighter appeared from their flank, strafing the docking tower as it passed. Moses whipped Cupid into a tight rotation and took them around the tower, belly-up, to evade.

  “OW!” a male voice yelled.

  “Sorry!” Ada called. “You might want to strap yourselves in back there—I don’t think things are going to calm down for a bit!”

  “Easy to say when you have straps,” one of the pretty boys mumbled. Ada glanced back through the door, and saw Doctor Saran kneeling on the floor, helping the other man sit up. It looked like they had both been thrown from their bunks.

  “Did you say a comet-hopper on the roof?” Ada subvocalized.

  “Affirmative. Unmanned.”

  “Huh.” She rubbed the back of her head where she had slammed into the seat. “Bone Crusher still up there?”

  “Yes. He is—no. He has exited the roof.”

  “He’s back down inside the tower?” she said out loud. A note of panic touched her voice, as another fighter made a close pass of the tower, this time dropping off a light missile. There was a violent explosion, and a small ocean of siding fell away from the building to the ground.

  “Affirmative. He has entered the elevator shaft.”

  “Great.” She shook her head. “What’s he thinking?”

  “Not many options, with Crush,” Joyce said.

  Ada considered. “Moses, is he chasing more, ah, life-forms?”

  “Affirmative. There are six in the elevator car, which has stalled partway down. He is descending toward them.”

  “He’s not in an elevator car?” Ada smacked her forehead. “Oh, Crush.”

  They were peeling up the side of the tower now, but it was difficult to climb while fighters kept passing by, guns blazing. Moses rocked them left and right, flying defensively. Ada’s sore body protested. In the back, the pretty boys were laying on the lowest bunks, stomach down, gripping the sides with white knuckles.

  “Look out!” Joyce yelled. A fighter came out of nowhere and took them head-on, as if to play chicken. Moses spun them away from the tower just as the fighter lobbed a missile their way. The missile shot to the ground and exploded, but the fighter jetted out and stayed on their tail.

  “Moses, we don’t have any guns?”

  “That is correct. There are no munitions mounted to Cupid’s hull.”

  Ada clenched her teeth, swallowed a scream of frustration. A lot of good their shopping spree back in the belt had done them. What they should have sprung for were a couple of decent ship guns, instead of filling the cargo bay with food and drink. What good did that do if you were too dead to enjoy it? She thought for a moment of donning her suit and standing in the airlock, firing back at the fighter with the small-arms blaster on her multitool. But that wouldn’t do a thing against the hull of a Gatling.

  The lightbulb flickered in her mind.

  “Moses, do we have alcohol on board”

  “Yes, Ada.”

  She unstrapped and stood, wobbling and almost falling into Joyce as Cupid pitched again. “Take care of the cockpit,” she said, then passed back through the living area and into the cargo hold.

  “You’re going to drink in the middle of all of this?” Joyce hollered after her. “Without me?”

  Ada grabbed her spacesuit
on the way and struggled into it, slamming against the wall more than once. She was going to need to sleep for a month after all of this just to get the bruising down, she was sure.

  “Alright,” she subvocalized, standing in front of the dispenser. “I’ll take the highest proof you have. Hit me.” A ding, a compartment opened, and Ada took out a shot glass full of clear liquid. “Oh, Moses, no. No, no no. I’ll need much more than this.”

  Another ding, and this time four bottles of high-proof inner-world liqueur appeared. Joyce joined her, gaping at the bottles. “Not wasting time, are you?”

  “These aren’t for me,” Ada said.

  “No?”

  “Nope. Party favors. For our aerial guests. Wanna help?”

  Cupid bucked, and Joyce fell to the floor. Ada fell forward onto the dispenser, reaching in to keep the bottles from falling out.

  “I think you’ve finally cracked,” Joyce said.

  “Maybe.” She grabbed two of the bottles. “Hand me those other two in a second, will you?” She stepped into the airlock, set the bottles down, and took the other two from Joyce. Then she shut the airlock, locked her arm through a bit of cargo netting beside the hatch, and told Moses to open the door.

  Mars’ atmosphere whipped into the airlock and pushed her against the wall. It was far thinner than air in a terraformed hab, but at the speed they were moving, it was enough to make it difficult to stand. She gritted her teeth and found her balance, still holding two of the liqueur bottles. “Moses, I want you to let him onto our tail.”

  “He will fire on us.”

  She pursed her lips. Her plan wouldn’t help anything if they were flying to the ground in a fiery ball of death. “Can you get us above him?”

  “That may be possible. Hang on, Ada.”

  Her knees buckled as Moses fired liftoff thrusters and cut the main thrust, sending them hopping up about five meters. The fighter, which had been zeroing in on them from behind, passed beneath them.

  Ada threw the two bottles into the front end, and immediately shot her mini-blaster from the multitool. The hull of the fighter erupted in a sea of flames. “Ha!” The fighter shook his wings, trying to douse, but the liqueur has spread over cams and sensors, and wasn’t going anywhere. The end of the Gatling’s wing clipped the tower, and it spiraled out of control, shooting away from Cupid.

  “One down,” she muttered, picking up another bottle. “Come at me.”

  “They are obliging,” Moses announced. Another fighter zoomed in behind them, and proceeded to fire kinetics. Cupid dodged to the side, and the loose bottle on the ground rolled out.

  “No!” Ada tried to stop it with her foot, but was knocked down with another lurch. Her left hand gripped the netting, and pain erupted in her wrist. “Ahh!” She let go, slid onto her butt, and locked her elbow through the netting instead. She would need that looked at again.

  The fighter swung side to side behind them, strafing. Ada ducked against the wall, as bullets dinged against Cupid’s stern. Few found their way inside. One ricocheted against the top of the hatch and came down, burying itself in the floor mere inches from her leg. Ada swallowed.

  “Moses, we need the altitude advantage here.”

  “Working on it.” Cupid bobbed up, but the fighter followed. They tried the same thrust maneuver as before, but the fighter wised up, peeling off to the side instead, then circling around for more shots.

  An explosion from beneath them send Cupid flying up, tail over nose, and Ada was slammed into the floor, which was now the stern. She lost control of the last bottle, which sailed down into the path of the fighter. It shattered against the hull, and she followed it with another quick blast from her multitool. Again, the Gatling was wreathed in tiny flames. Again, it lost control, this time veering away from the battle. Cupid righted herself and kept working her way up toward the top of the tower.

  “What was that?” Ada asked.

  “Another fighter crashed into the docking structure,” Moses said. “A stray bottle of fine liqueur had somehow found its way all over his exterior sensors.”

  The bottle that had rolled out. Ada laughed, leaning back. Cupid popped up over the lip of the roof and circled down. “Shut the hatch, Moses, and set us down.”

  Back inside the cargo bay, Ada removed her suit. “Thanks for this,” she said to Joyce, holding up the multitool. “Don’t know how I ever lived before this thing.”

  “I wouldn’t have given it to you if I’d known you would just use it to blow up all the booze.”

  Chapter 21

  Lucas’ heart leapt into his throat. The elevator was plummeting down with some hundred and seventy floors to go, and he was stuck inside it. He was about to die. And all he could think about was that he hadn’t thanked Caspar enough for everything she had done for him and the crew.

  “Jump!” Darren barked at him. He was still hanging over the edge, one arm extended toward Lucas, the other gripping the edge now.

  Lucas bent his knees again and kicked off as hard as he could. If it had been anyone other than Darren, he might not have made it, because they had entered freefall, and it was almost impossible to get enough momentum to reach the ceiling. But Darren dropped halfway back into the car, grabbing Lucas by the shirt, and tugging him up. Something felt like ice slapping him in the face on the way over. He popped out onto the car roof and saw that he and Darren were alone. Good, he thought, fleetingly; the others will live.

  “We need to jump,” Darren yelled, his voice lost in the scream of the car as it ground down the shaft. “Now!”

  Lucas nodded and leapt into the air once more, this time into the void of the shaft. He imagined reaching out to grab the service ladder, but thought better of it. Stopping that quickly would likely tear his arms out of their sockets. More likely he would break a few bones and not be able to hold on anyway.

  They free-falled over the car. It was pointless. The car would hit the bottom, and they would hit the car, and it would be one big ugly pile of smoosh.

  One more explosion rocked the tower, this one bigger than those before it, and everything changed. They began to slow, even though they were still falling in midair. The car slowed with them. It was the strangest sensation Lucas had ever experienced. He knew, logically, that they were falling, had been falling, at the same rate, but it felt like they had slowed.

  No, they had slowed, and now they were slowing exponentially. Was his perception of time slowing down, because he was about to die? Or—he laughed nervously—were they already dead, and this was how he experienced the last few sparks of random neurons firing in his brain, like a surrealist dream?

  The elevator car hit the bottom. Darren reached out and grabbed him, and kicked the wall. They float-fell across to the other side of the shaft, where Darren kicked again. This slowed them even more, so that they zigzagged the last few meters and collapsed onto the elevator roof, hitting hard enough to leave a few bruises, but, shockingly, no more than that.

  Lucas sat up. “The gravity is off!”

  “Indeed.” Darren sat beside him.

  Native Martian gravity was weak enough to buffer the fall. The only problem was intertia, which Darren had counteracted before they hit, whittling it down to an acceptable risk. Lucas shook his head, laughing. “You saved my life. Again.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “No, I’m not sure I am. I want to know why.” He pulled himself to his feet. “What’s in this for you? We both know you don’t need this ship, this crew. Come on. Mulligan was here before you. She’ll be here after you’re gone. What’s really going on?”

  Darren stood, crossed to the ladder, and began climbing.

  “You going to answer me?”

  “Nope.”

  Lucas started after him. His comm crackled to life. “Sir? Are you there?”

  “Caspar!” he said with a big smile, his voice ringing up the shaft. She laughed at him. He’d never heard anything so wonderful.

  “Grav’s off, Sir; I guess tha
t’s why you’re alive?”

  “Seems to be the case. We’re climbing to you.”

  “That’s a long climb.”

  “Longer if you talk,” Darren said over his shoulder. He had gained a substantial gap. Lucas ignored his comment.

  “Are you on the roof? Is the hopper ok?”

  “The hopper’s been destroyed, Sir.”

  Lucas stopped climbing and cursed, thunking his head against a rung.

  “But we’ve got a new plan,” she said. “Prepare to be rescued. Sir.”

  What?

  He heard the wire coming down, slapping against the walls of the shaft, long before he saw it. It was a good, thick synthetic weave, the sort that might be used for top-of-the-line climbing rope. Darren grabbed it and rode it back down to his position, then told Caspar to hold over the comm. He secured it around Lucas and himself, fitting a number of tight knots before telling her to pull them up. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride Lucas had ever had, between sharing the space with Darren and occasionally having to deflect the wall, but it beat climbing, even in the low gravity.

  When they emerged on the roof, it was to a flurry of faces, and a different ship. Something like the comet-hopper, but a little bigger, sat on the pad, a few meters away from the smoldering remains of the ship they’d come down in.

  “You’re hurt!” Caspar reached out to him, wiping his forehead. He flinched, grimacing, at the sting. “Sorry, Sir.” She stepped back. Her hand was covered in blood. He reached up and felt it on him, hot and sticky. He must have cut his face on the lip of the car ceiling. No matter. He hadn’t died on the fall. That was going to be bouncing around in his head for a few days.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  The others were standing around him, joined by a hulking, muscle-bound man he’d never seen before.

  “Who are you?”

  “Bone Crusher,” the man said. “Ladies call me Crush.” Something about his smile was endearing, though Lucas felt wary about getting too close to anyone with that circumference of biceps.