Unclear Skies

by Jason LaPier

  “So how are we supposed to find this transport?” Dava said. “Assuming we don’t want to go anywhere near a ModPol outpost, especially one we know nothing about.”

  “Great question,” Moses said. “The Garathol will be coming from an outpost here in Barnard. It will Xarp into Epsilon space.”

  “We can’t track it through Xarp,” she said.

  “And it’s too big a gap,” 2-Bit added. “What chance do we have of getting to it before it gets home?”

  Jansen smiled. “I should introduce Basil,” he said, approaching the Sirius-fiver who’d been sitting silent so far. “Moses Down, Captain 2-Bit, Capo Dava, this is Basil Roy.”

  “At your service,” the man said, partially standing and giving them a slight bow before sitting back down. He was short and stout, with blank white skin and the tight, defined muscles of an athlete.

  “Basil is a systems architect,” Jansen said.

  “What the hell is that?” 2-Bit blurted.

  “I specialize in all manner of technological systems,” Roy said. “My skills range from network architecture to programming to general troubleshooting.”

  “I already found us a new hacker,” Dava said, willing herself to remain calm. She wanted to jump out of her chair and slap both Jensen and his tagalong. “Psycho Jack. Someone we know already, and we know we can trust because we know him to be a fugitive of ModPol. Who the hell is this guy?” she asked, looking at Moses.

  Jansen leaned over the table. “I can assure you that Basil is trustworthy—”

  “Moses,” Dava said, ignoring the underboss. “We should be using Jack on this job.”

  “Alright,” Moses said, quieting them both with his low but strong voice. “We’ve got room for two hackers. Probably more.” He turned to her. “It was quick thinking to grab Psycho Jack on Terroneous. We know he’s resourceful, and to rescue him from ModPol is a nice guarantee of loyalty. I can assure you we’re going to need him on this job. This is an all-hands job. Understood?”

  His question was for all, but Dava felt his eyes bearing down on her. “Yes.”

  “RJ, I understand you want to explain how your hacker, Roy, comes into play.”

  “Actually, sir,” Roy interjected. “I don’t really like that term. I’m an architect.”

  The room stared at him in silence for a moment, broken finally by Jansen. “Yes. Right. So … you all remember the detection equipment we acquired at Vulca.”

  “I remember finding out it didn’t work,” Dava muttered.

  “Correct,” Jansen said, then bobbed his head side to side. “In a manner of speaking. It does in fact work, however no software was installed on it. Evidently, the engineers at the research facility had not had a chance to do much with it before we showed up. Basil?”

  “I acquired the necessary detection software,” Roy said. “It needed heavy modifications, of course, to work with the new equipment. But now we’re confident that we can find the ModPol outpost at a safe distance. We can also pinpoint the location of the Garathol as soon as it comes out of Xarp, based on its metallurgical structure and emitted radiation.”

  “So you’re saying, we go to Epsilon,” 2-Bit said, “hang out and wait, and as soon as it pops in, we can chase it down before it gets home?”

  “Precisely,” Jansen said. He swiped the screen a few times until a schematic of a ship appeared. “This is the transport itself. It has several large holds for general storage and about six bays for carrying smaller vessels.”

  “What about escorts?” Dava said.

  “My intelligence suggests they won’t use any. Xarp is impossible to track, and no one really knows much about Epsilon. An observer would assume any transport leaving Barnard would be heading for Sirius, not Epsilon.”

  She cringed at that phrase, my intelligence, but she decided to keep comments to herself. “So the assault plan?”

  He waved at the schematic. “There’s the data. I’ll leave the assault plan to Captain Tubennetal.”

  “Well, let’s see—” 2-Bit started.

  “We’re taking the Longhorn,” Moses interrupted. He stood and walked to the screen.

  “Well, sure,” 2-Bit said haltingly. “The Longhorn can carry two dozen fighters. But she’s our biggest warship. We’d be stretching thin—”

  “That’s right,” Moses said, causing 2-Bit to lean back in his chair and hear the boss out. “We’re going all in on this. We load the Longhorn with a dozen dogfighters, six raiders, and four loot-mules. The Longhorn’s missiles take out these guns here and here,” he said, pointing to sections of the transport’s schematic. “The dogfighters engage any aircraft the transport might launch and clean up any short-range turrets. The raiders move in for breach and board at these corners of the hull. We get boots in the corridors and take out anyone inside who puts up a fight. Once the bridge of the Garathol is secure, the loot-mules move in and carve open these holds in the back.”

  He stared at the diagram in silence, his lines and marks showing red where he’d drawn them. Dava didn’t like how he looked at it. There was a pride there that he normally kept in check. “Who’s where?” she said.

  He continued to admire his work for another moment before turning to answer. “RJ and 2-Bit are on the Longhorn, in the command center.”

  “Along with Basil,” Jansen added quickly. “To run the detectors.”

  “Yes,” Moses said.

  “So you want me to lead the raiders force to breach and board,” Dava said.

  “You’re second in command of the B-n-B.”

  Her breath caught in her throat, not understanding what he’d meant. Johnny Eyeball wasn’t there, so who else would lead an assault on foot? Then it hit her: he was going. The damned fool was going to lead the charge. She stood, willed herself not to quiver, or even make fists. She looked at each of them, but 2-Bit, Jansen, Roy, none would return her gaze.

  “Moses,” she said quietly.

  “Go prep the raiders, Dava,” he said coolly. “2-Bit, get your flyboys ready. Jansen, do what needs to be done to get the detector installed into the Longhorn. Dismissed!”

  * * *

  She caught Moses ducking into the lounge that evening. She followed him in, watched him from a distance. He was making rounds, getting in more face time with the gang than was usual, shaking hands, patting backs, raising glasses. She drifted through his wake of brightened faces, men and women invigorated, recharged for battle.

  For a moment she lost him, distracted for only a second when someone greeted her and offered her a drink. When she turned back, he was gone, vanishing into the cigar smoke and darkness.

  Then she sensed him again, not by his presence exactly but by the energy in the room, the way it pointed, swirled and vectored like air currents. She saw him sitting at one of the booths along the side of the lounge that had a curtain. He looked right at her, waved her over.

  “I’m sorry, Moses,” she said as she slid into the seat across from him. She would later punish herself for starting the conversation with an apology, for such weakness. But she couldn’t help it; she always showed him her weakest side.

  “For coming to my table without a drink?” He had a bottle to himself and a pair of glasses, one empty, one full. He filled the other and slid it to her.

  She cracked a grin at his unrelenting, full-faced smile and took a sip. It was bourbon, and it made her think of Johnny Eyeball and Freezer, locked in some cell somewhere, and immediately she lost her mood. “What I meant was, for disagreeing with you in the war room.”

  “Shit,” he said with a wave of his hand. “That’s why I brought you in there, Dava.”

  “Well then,” she said with a deep breath. “I left something out.”

  “More disagreement.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to lead the breach and board.”

  She took another swallow of the sweet, burning amber. “Yes.”

  “Why?” He was quick with his words and yet the deepness of his voice s
eemed to draw them into a timeless space.

  “Why?” She turned away from him, then back to face those giant eyes. “Because I don’t want you to go,” she blurted.

  He sighed and refilled his glass. “Wrong answer.”

  “Moses, it’s too dangerous. We need you, what if something …” Her voice trailed off as she searched his face for understanding.

  “Now if you had come here and said to me, ‘Dammit, Moses, I’m ready. Let me lead them,’ then I would consider it.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” she breathed. “Forget about me. We need you.”

  He reached out and slid the curtain across, enclosing them in candlelit darkness. “Dava, they don’t need me. They need leadership.”

  “But that’s what you are—”

  “You gotta get it out of your head that I’m irreplaceable.” He leaned back in his seat. “I’m not going to be around forever.”

  She hung her head. “Moses, not this again.” She looked up. “I’m ready. I want to lead them.”

  He laughed, jarring her. “Dava, come on girl. You got to do better than that.”

  “Johnny should be going,” she said, grasping for threads. “We should be busting Johnny and Frank out. We got Jansen’s intel on where they’re at.”

  “We also got intel that it’s an impossible job.”

  According to Jansen, Eyeball and Freezer had been taken to a new zero-G facility in the outskirts of Barnard. The place was supposedly loaded up with state of the art defense systems. “We need them,” she said, trying to make her voice firm and failing.

  “And after we hit this Garathol, we’ll have the strength to go get them.” He took another sip of his whiskey and leaned back. “In the meantime, you’re going to have to settle for an old coot like me to lead the attack.”

  “Moses—”

  “Just stop worrying about me, okay?” he said, his voice turning from amused to forceful. “I’m going and that’s all there is to it. I can handle myself. I know I’m getting on in years, but you know I can still bang like the best of ’em. And we’re going to work together, you and I. I’m taking command of the B-n-B and you’re my second.” He took another swallow and pointed his empty glass at her. “And you pay attention and maybe you’ll learn something.”

  So this was his game. Put his fucking life on the line to force her to learn to lead. It was stupid, careless. What frustrated her most was that part of her did want to lead. She was trying. She just didn’t get it. She was trying to trust her team, but it wasn’t in her nature, it felt uncomfortable, made her anxious. When she got anxious, she made mistakes.

  She stared at his eyes in the flicker of the candle’s flame. Everything she had, she owed to this man. “I know you think they don’t need you. But I do.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but someday you won’t.”

  She closed her eyes and took a breath, trying not to let her imagination show her what that day would look like. What choice did she have but go along with his plan? At least she could be there to protect him. “Jansen’s info better be good,” she muttered and finished her drink.

  The curtain slid back then, Jansen appearing as if at the speaking of his name. He flinched when he saw her. “Oh, hello, Capo Dava. Moses.”

  “I was just having a chat with Dava here about the raider prep for the B-n-B,” Moses said.

  “Oh,” Jansen said. He weakly waved a handypad. “I uh, I have the personnel data you wanted to go over …”

  She got out of the booth, ceding the seat to him. “We’re finished. I was just leaving.”

  “Uh, thank you. Oh, Dava,” he said, stopping her with a hand before she could walk away. “I noticed that this Psycho Jack fellow managed to beat Reezer’s door test. I mean Freezer. Whatever his name is.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Jack made pretty good time, and did it after coming out of secure tube sedation.”

  “Excellent,” Jansen said. He looked from Dava to Moses and back. “Well, you should definitely take him along. On one of the raiders, I mean. He’ll be very useful once you board the transport.”

  “Sure.”

  “As long as you’re sure you can trust him.”

  She stared at him, feeling a burn behind her eyes. She looked at Moses. “He’ll follow my lead.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Jax stumbled through the corridors of the massive carrier ship, desperately trying to keep up with his escort. Xarp-sickness didn’t seem to affect the rest of Space Waste. Maybe they’d gotten used to it, but this was Jax’s third trip between systems and he decided he would never get used to it.

  He ducked as the walls bobbed in his direction when he rounded another corner. The damn ship had to be the size of a small city. A wall shoved into his shoulder and he rebounded in the opposite direction with a tilt.

  “Come on, Psycho Jack,” Barndoor said, turning around and grabbing him by the arm. “Dava’s waitin’, and you don’t keep Dava waitin’.”

  Barndoor tugged him along, which didn’t really help Jax’s balance, but it did seem to improve their speed. He thought if he closed his eyes it might be easier going. Then the labyrinth of corridors came to an end and he was hit with the overstimulation of a large room with about a dozen people talking, a few hundred terminals blinking with data, and a massive viewport that showed more stars and space than he’d ever seen. Or at least that’s how it felt. He thought he might vomit, but then he got distracted by the smell of coffee.

  “She’s right over here,” Barndoor said with a yank of his arm.

  “Barney,” Jax said. It came out like a gasp. “Where’s the coffee?”

  “On the wall dispenser over there.” He pointed and then pointed in a different direction. “After you grab some head over there to the starboard side. That’s where Dava’s prep station is.”

  “Right, right.”

  Barndoor and everyone else melted away as he stumbled toward the dispenser. After a few desperate stabs at the machine, he had a hot cup of liquid in his hands. He drank greedily.

  After a moment, he was blinking. His vision had sharpened and the tilt was gone. He looked into the cup. Although it was hot and not cold like he preferred, it looked and smelled like coffee, and nothing else. Still, it was intensely effective.

  “What the hell’s in this stuff?” he wondered aloud.

  “Don’t ask,” three people answered in passing.

  When he found Dava, she was flipping through a touch screen that displayed diagnostics on various ships, which he presumed to be the raiders that were going to be used to board the transport. What he knew of their mission so far wasn’t much. He knew it involved a Xarp jump to Epsilon Eridani (which he could have done without) and some kind of ModPol Defense transport (which he’d really rather not go near) and several boarding parties (which he’d be a part of and really wished he could find a nice cold airlock to pop out of instead). They were supposed to be stealing something that was kept a secret from most of the gang, but rumors had been circulating that it was experimental weaponry.

  “Jack,” Dava said without turning away from her screen. “Glad you could join us.”

  “Yeah, of course,” he stammered. “Sorry about the lateness. It’s just the Xarp jump—”

  “Forget about that.” She turned to him and leaned close. “Something you need to look at for me.”

  “Um, okay.”

  She looked over her shoulders and pulled him closer to the wall. “You remember how I told you about how we had this new long-range sensor stuff? Brand-new detection equipment we got from a research complex?”

  “Right, yeah,” he said, lowering his voice to match hers. He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Underboss Rando Jansen the first day they’d met. “You said as your resident programming expert, you’d need me to take a look at it. But I don’t think that’s going to—”

  “That was my plan,” she said quickly. “But we got someone else.”

  “Ah. Basil Roy?” He�
��d met the other new technical recruit in the secret headquarters of Space Waste a few days earlier. A domer by his unpigmented skin, like Jax, but short and stout like those on Sirius-5. He’d been introduced as another hacker, which he’d been quick to clarify as a solutions architect. Beyond that, he was unwilling to share his background or experience. “Not a real friendly guy.”

  She smirked. “Yeah, well, anyway. He’s already re-programmed the equipment.”

  Jax breathed a little too easy, then coughed to cover up his relief. He’d still had a fear they would expect him to get some crazy cutting-edge research equipment to work. There was a bit of a gap between operator and engineer. Or solutions architect for that matter. “Well, that’s that then, eh?”

  “I want you to check it out,” she said. “We’re not going to be using it for about six hours, if Jansen’s information is real.”

  “Check it out?”

  She nodded back to the room and he glanced to see Roy at a console near the center, with Jansen standing nearby. “He’s got it loaded up on that console. I just want to know if you can see how it works.”

  “I can ask him.”

  She looked at Jax and seemed to consider that. “Yeah, ask him. Get him to tell you as much as he will. Then I’ll find a way to pull him away for a few minutes.”

  Jax took a deep breath. She was asking him to get in there and poke around in someone else’s console. He thought about asking her for a guarantee that he wouldn’t somehow end up falsely accused of murder, but swallowed those words and instead gave her a conspiratorial nod.

  A minute later he was standing over the programmer. “Hey, Basil. I heard you got the detection equipment all set up.”

  The Sirius-fiver looked over his shoulder at Jansen, but the underboss was engaged in conversation, so he looked back at Jax warily. “Yes. It just needed an interface layer installed and some simple scanning parameters.”

  “Cool,” Jax said. “Does it uh, use, like, COMPLEX or something?”