by Dan Thompson
“Are you going to kill me?”
Nick pulled a screwdriver from his belt and pushed the blunt handle into the small of Dieter’s back. “I said keep quiet.”
Dieter nodded.
“And I told you to kneel.”
He complied, lowering himself cautiously to the deck, all the while keeping his hands behind his head.
Nick stepped past Perry and into the room. Kneeling down on the floor, he ran his hands along the carpet looking for a seam. Ultimately, he found that the edge by the wall was held in place by a magnetic strip. It peeled off, and he was able to roll the carpet up across the deck. About half a meter from the wall lay the access panel. He put the screwdriver against the first screw and gave it a turn.
There was no resistance.
He shook his head and spun it out with his fingers. The next one was the same, and the door opened on hinges. There were the data lines, coded by color but not labeled, and there were the routing boxes. Or at least, there was where they were supposed to be. He saw brackets for three of them, but only one remained. The others were simply missing, their connecting cables pointing randomly across the panel.
“Well, shit,” he said. “I was right.”
“Damaged?” Perry asked.
“No,” Nick replied. “Missing.” He hit the headset. “Stefan, it’s sabotage all right. We’re missing a couple of routing boxes, and it’s clear the panel has been recently accessed.”
“You’re sure? Dieter?”
“As sure as I can be without questioning him. If I had to guess, I’d say you knocked some resistance into him with that weird guitar of his.”
“Well, shit. You’re probably right.”
“What now?”
“Well don’t leave him in there. Who knows what else he might try. Toss him down in engineering with the girl, then see what you two can do to fix what he did.”
“You sure you want to keep moving? Even at quarter-sail, with this weather ...”
“Okay. You’re right. One of you climb up on that generator again and shut us down.”
“Will do.”
“And make sure that little shit is secure, and don’t leave him alone, not for a second.”
“Absolutely.”
Winner heard more footsteps coming, three of them. By now she had figured out where she was and remembered why she was down here. So far, she had only seen the two surviving passengers with no sign of Richard, but they kept talking on their headsets to someone named Stefan. She thought she was about to meet him, but when she finally heard the third voice, it was not who she expected.
“What’s she doing here?” Dieter asked.
“I said no questions.” It was the one called Nick. “Against the cage, arms up.”
Through lidded eyes, Winner saw a pair of boots step up against the cage. The legs above it were in crew uniform. She saw the boots twist briefly, but then a black club swung into view, striking Dieter in the back of the knee.
“Okay, okay,” he said.
More boots stepped into view, and she heard the clank of metal on metal from somewhere above. Then she heard the tearing sound of cloth being cut.
“What the hell?” Dieter protested.
“Shut your trap,” said the other one, Perry.
Finally, she saw that his uniform was being cut away, just as hers must have been. They yanked his boots and socks off last, leaving him to stand barefoot on the metal deck.
“It’s not on him,” Nick said after a moment.
Boots stepped away, and she heard quiet voices speaking into radios, the details lost in the background hum of engineering.
“Are you injured?” she asked in a whisper.
She saw the jolt of surprise in his calf muscles, but he made no sound of alarm. “Only my dignity. You?”
“Fair enough. My legs keep falling asleep.”
The silence stretched for a moment, but Dieter broke it with another whisper. “So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
She allowed herself a tiny smile. Dieter always had been the cheerful one, from cracks on station to the music of their Christmas dinner. “I killed one of them, a navigator I think. And you? Do you come here often?”
“Only on days I sabotage the engine controls.”
Her smile grew, but she repressed the urge to laugh. “Then welcome to our little club,” she whispered back, glancing up at him. He had been stripped as bare as she had. “The service is crap, but at least they’re casual about the dress code.”
He did chuckle in response. “Still, nice to run into friends.”
“Nice indeed.”
“Dieter is gone, and we’ve stopped again.”
Michael shook his head. He had started to doze off as Carlos’s little lockpicker ran through the latest probes. “What?”
“He’s gone, and it sounds like someone else is searching his cabin.”
“Damn. That means they know about the sabotage.”
“Yeah, and if they fix it, they’ll be able to see the tachyon capture rates again. And if they know we did one sabotage …” Carlos let it trail off.
“Yeah, they’ll be looking for others.”
“It looks like our little game is up.”
“Not if we can still knock them into the wind.”
Carlos sighed. “Not at the kind of speeds we’ve been doing. Even before we stopped, we’d been at a quarter-sail for an hour, and I haven’t even been throwing much at them. If they hold the sails in that configuration when we get going again, there’s nothing in the real winds strong enough to foil them. It was a good idea, but I think we’ve missed the window.”
Michael turned aside, his eyes racing around the cabin in hope of a solution that was not there. “How long until we get there at that speed?”
“Eighteen hours, maybe twenty if I can push them around a little, but it’s harder to make a believable threat at quarter-sail.”
“Then we have to get them moving again, and moving fast.”
“How?”
Michael smiled. “By convincing them we should stay here.”
Chapter 27
“Things always go from bad to worse. Always. It’s only a question of who it’s getting worse for.” – Malcolm Fletcher
MICHAEL PUNCHED RICHARD’S CODE into the intercom for the twentieth time, but instead of an error beep, he was rewarded by the voice of his first officer. “Hey, Captain, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here. It’s been a while. Are you all right?”
There was a long delay. “I’m tired, not sleeping well.” He did sound ragged.
“Can you see out your porthole?”
“Um, sure. What am I looking for?”
“Three stars: Noril, Polaris, and Cavendar’s Clutch. From our current position, they should be clustered below our bowline but above a dark red nebula. Noril will be on the bottom, a little more blue than the others.”
There was another long pause. “Yeah, I think I see them. Is Cavendar’s the orange one?”
“Maybe more yellow than orange, but that sounds about right. Now, tell me, is Cavendar to the right or left of the line formed by Polaris and Noril?”
“A little to the right, but not much.”
“Excellent,” Michael replied. “Combine that with my view of the Pleiades, and that puts us pretty much dead center of the range.”
“Range? What the hell are you talking about?”
“The Longwash range. It’s a nice open spot about a light-year across. The Navy uses this area for fleet combat exercises.”
“Combat exercises! Are we going to get shot?”
“I doubt it, but at least they’ll know we’re here.”
“How could they?”
“They have the whole area fitted with some advanced tachyon detectors. It helps them record the exercises as well as keep the range clear of any onlookers. With any luck, they’ll have a couple of frigates patrolling it.”
Richard was silent for
a long time. Michael smiled to himself in his quarters. Assuming Richard was Stefan or at least one of the hijackers, he would be looking it up in the computer right now. Of course, it would not be there. Michael had made up the whole thing.
“You’re sure about this? I’ve never seen it on the charts.”
“Positive,” Michael replied with a private snarl. This little exercise was going doing double duty. “Remember how I said my dad was doing off-the-books work for the Navy?” he asked.
Richard paused. “Yeah, Naval Intelligence, you said.”
Michael’s snarl turned into a menacing frown in the privacy of his quarters. He had never told Richard any such thing. If he knew, he must have learned it from Elsa Watkins or already known it himself. In his head, Richard Mosley ceased to exist. Only Stefan Carillo remained. “Well, we used to come here when he needed to check in without being seen at one of the in-system bases. There’s a small intelligence station at the coreward side of the range. I’m a little fuzzy on where we are north-south, but I’m damn sure we’ve already crossed their detection line.”
“Umm, okay, so what do we do?”
“Well, hopefully we simply wait for the cavalry to arrive, but if you’ve got any ideas on how to keep us here another two or three hours, I’m all ears.”
“No” came the quick reply. “No idea on that. Sorry, I’ve got to go. I hear something.”
Michael grinned. What he heard was panic.
Stefan glared at Nick from the navigation console, a slight twitch showing near his eye. “What do you think, Nick? Do you believe him?”
Nick shrugged and turned away from operations. “Well, there’s nothing in the computer, but who knows what hidden files are tucked away in there. I could check it if I had access to some of my navy contacts, but that would have to wait.”
“But do you believe him?”
Nick frowned. The star patterns the kid mentioned were enough to accurately gauge their position, and they were in a pretty open spot. There were no stars nearby, not even the little brown dwarfs that littered the galaxy. They were off all the major shipping lines by over two light-years in any direction, but they were still within a few days’ travel of the navy base at Arvin. If he were going to establish a combat exercise field, this is exactly the kind of place he would put it. On the other hand, he could probably find a dozen such spots within easy range of Arvin.
Finally he gave a small nod and said, “I can’t be sure, but it’s a believable risk. I don’t know how well they would see us in this weather, but they might be that much more likely to be out doing search and rescue operations as a result of it.”
Stefan looked back to the wind charts before him. “Crap. There’s no point in waiting around to find out. At half-sail, we could clear this space in three or four hours.”
“Yeah, and then another five should get us to the rendezvous.”
“Seven with this weather.” Stefan shook his head. “Whatever, get down to engineering and you two fire up the sails, preferably half-sail. With luck, this will be done by the end of the day.”
Nick headed aft but shook his head. Luck had not been their strong suit this trip.
Elsa arrived on the bridge with twenty minutes left. Gallows was not there, but one look from Celeste Davies was enough to tell her that the Sophie’s Grace had not arrived. At this point, Stefan was thirty-six hours overdue. She could not imagine that the actual takeover had failed, but she had no idea what would have slowed them down so much since then. She would get her answers later, out of Stefan’s hide if necessary, but for now it only made her next actions inevitable.
“Cargo status?” Gallows asked as he lumbered onto the bridge.
Davies checked the operations display. “Cargo secure, but Logan is still locking down the loaders. Ten minutes.”
Gallows stepped up beside Elsa and gave a subtle growl. “Time’s up, Lady.”
She graced him with a false smile. “I believe she said ten minutes.”
“You really think that will make a difference?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps if we spent them talking it would.”
He shook his head. “I doubt it, but go ahead and speak your piece.”
Elsa turned and took a step back toward the hatch. “I would prefer the privacy of your ready room,” she said and led the way without waiting for him.
She unfastened her jacket as she went, and after sweeping through the unlocked door, she tossed her jacket onto the spare chair. She kept her back to the door and began to unbutton her shirt.
“I don’t know what you think you …” Gallows said from the doorway, but he trailed off as she untucked her shirt and lowered it from her shoulders.
She turned her head to glance back at him, knowing full well what her pose looked like, her shirt halfway off with hints of her lacy bustier showing from beneath. “We got off on the wrong foot, Captain, and if it’s not too late, I’d like to correct that.”
He snorted, but he came into the room anyway. “You’ve got to be joking.”
She finished peeling off her shirt and with her back still turned tossed it onto her jacket. “There’s only one way to find out, Captain.” She unbuckled her belt and started pulling it out of the loops of her pants. “But if you don’t mind, a little privacy please … the door?”
He turned to close the door. “Look, Lady, it’s not that I’d mind bending you over the—”
But he never finished the sentence. As soon as the door had closed, Elsa dropped her looped belt over his head and pulled it tight around his neck. It choked off his air supply, but its real function was to cut off the blood to his brain. He grabbed at the belt with both hands, but that only made Elsa’s next target easier to reach. With her right hand, she pulled the shock stick out of its hidden sheath along her breastbone and brought it up under his jacket and pressed hard into his spine. That much compression triggered the charge.
He spasmed briefly against the wall before his knees buckled. She still held the belt tight around his neck, but that did nothing to stop him from slumping to the floor, limp.
Elsa pulled back and slid the shocker back into its sheath. Pulling him by the belt, she dragged him across the floor toward his desk chair. Once there she twisted around, pulling the belt in another loop around his neck, and tucked her head beneath his left arm. It was not easy given his girth, but with a quick push from her legs, she managed to hoist him up into his chair.
She released the belt and turned to his desk. She looked down next to the drawer stack and found what she was searching for: his gun, tucked nicely into a quick-draw holster. She yanked it out and turned back to face him.
The bright red of his face was fading, and he was coming to again. She grabbed the belt’s clasp and started pulling it free with her left hand while she held the pistol in her right. She could feel by the handle that it had a thumb scanner built in. Gallows might be an ass, but at least he was not an idiot.
She pulled the belt free and grabbed at Gallows’s right hand. “You’re paralyzed from the chest down,” she told him. “With enough physical therapy, you might walk again.”
He groaned in pain and tried to paw at her with his left hand.
“But that won’t actually kill you,” she said, putting the handle of the pistol into his right hand. “That was only meant to overload you with pain and nerve shock.”
He blinked twice, and his glassy eyes focused on her.
She raised the gun to neck, centered in the soft tissue beneath the jaw. “I don’t know how you ever got to your position, Captain, but I know how I got to mine.” She pressed his thumb over the scanner on the grip. “I never took no for an answer.”
She leaned her body back as far as she could and pulled the trigger.
Pain flared in Dieter’s right shoulder. He cried out as his knees buckled.
“Where are the routers?” his tormentor demanded.
“Fuck you!” he shouted back.
“Oh, so you want some more?”<
br />
The pain flared again, worse. He struggled to keep his eyes open, only to see Winner straining her neck to look up at him. She was laughing.
“What’s so funny, bitch?” The man released Dieter and kicked at the cage.
“You’re such an amateur. Perry, right? Pinching and twisting with a pair of pliers. You’re not even breaking the skin. You really think you’re causing pain with that?”
Dieter found his feet again, and breathed deep, grateful for the time Winner had bought.
“What do you know about it, you hog-tied little cunt?”
“Dieter and I know people who take a hell of a lot worse than that and call it a fun weekend.”
“You’re going to feel different when it’s your turn.”
She lowered her head and laughed, her whole body writhing with it. “Anytime you want, pal, just come on in. I’ll give you the slow version of what I did to your friend Alex.”
“Not bloody likely. You’ve been bound up in there for over a day. You can’t move an inch. We had to give you water through a tube, and from the smell of things, you’ve already pissed yourself. So no, I don’t think you’re much of a threat.”
She cranked her head around and snarled at him. “Well, Perry, I’m looking forward to you growing some balls and testing that theory. In the meantime, you can get back to scratching Dieter’s back. Can you get that spot in the middle, you know, that place that really itches between the shoulders?”
“Fuck you, bitch.”
Dieter caught himself smiling. “No, seriously man, she’s right.”
“What, this doesn’t hurt?”
“No, about the itch. You were close before, but like three centimeters to the left.”
This time the pain was lower on the left side of his back, a sudden hard punch to the ribs. “Is that the spot?”
His sight blurred, but he managed to gasp, “No, a little higher please.”
“And more of a side-to-side motion,” Winner added. “It helps release the tension in the deeper muscles.”
