by Dan Thompson
“It was the scar, Stefan. I didn’t recognize it at first. You did a good job getting rid of the pictures in the records, but I still found a description of you after the fight you and the Reilly’s captain had with my father.” He took two steps forward. “Tell me, did he give you that scar?”
“No, he didn’t. It was his first officer. I suppose it’s fitting, me being your first officer and all.”
“Not any more, Stefan. You’re fired.”
He laughed. “I kind of figured that went with the hijacking, kid.”
“It’s mutiny, actually, but beyond that, you’re a crappy navigator.” He took another step. “You went starboard when you should have gone to port and trimmed the sail. You slammed right into a shock front at half-sail. It’s a rookie mistake.”
The gun shifted to track him. “What the hell are you talking about? There was no shock front. I was dodging an eddy.”
Michael took a step to the side, moving around the engineering console. Carlos should be down the stairs by now, but he needed time. “That’s what I wanted you to think, Stefan.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’ve been feeding you fake navigation data for two days now, that’s what.”
“Bullshit.”
Michael could see him better now. His arm was sticking out around the corner now, even though his head remained hidden. “Did you like my storm? I patterned it after the great storm of Denalti.”
“Impossible. You were locked in your cabin with no access.”
“I had my pad.”
Stefan stood, shaking his head behind the long line of his outstretched arm and pistol. “Nice story, but I locked them out as well.”
Michael stepped around the engineering console and stepped out into the open. He was now past the back of the cargo cage. He could see Winner better now. She was breathing at least, but she was limp and quiet. Despite that, he forced a soft chuckle. “I’m sure you did, but you only blocked them at the login. You didn’t kick anyone off, and my little pad was slaved to your navigation console.”
Stefan’s eyes went wide, and he took a half-step out of the cage, advancing on Michael. “No, I’d have seen it.”
Michael shrugged. “A background monitor program? I doubt it, and all I needed was a distraction to switch over to the simulation mode. How did you like my little battery grenade?”
Stefan took another full step out. In the maze of equipment behind him, Michael caught sight of Carlos moving past the air scrubbers in environmental. “But they shot you. You were out cold before I ever left the bridge.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “So, not only are you a crappy navigator, but now you’re too stupid to know about timers?”
The look of realization dawned slowly on Stefan’s face. “Then all those inversions and vortex cast-offs …”
“Courtesy of yours truly,” Michael replied. “I figured if you were going to play me over the intercom, I should return the favor.” In the distance, a shadow flicked briefly against the side of the reactor. Michael took a step forward, raising his gun toward Stefan’s feet.
Stefan took another step forward, the barrel of his pistol never wavering from Michael’s head. “You realize that thing is useless to you.”
Michael made a point of looking down to examine it briefly. “Then why does it worry you so much?”
It was Stefan’s turn to smile. “Because I’m not as stupid as you think, kid.”
He could see his face clearly now. The teenager with the red hair was gone, but the eyes were the same. He had not fired the shot that had killed Peter and Sophia, but he had been on the Reilly when it happened. Malcolm had gotten most of them, but this piece of filth remained. Michael shook his head with resolve. “You might not be stupid, but you’re alone. The rest of your team is dead, and I still have my crew.”
Stefan laughed. “So it’s your crew?”
“Yes, my crew. I fight for them, and they’ll fight for me.”
“Then where are they?”
“They … well …” Michael stammered. In the distance, he caught a glance of Carlos coming around the reactor, but he dared not look. “They …” he shook his head and let his gaze drop to the deck.
“That’s right. They’re either safe in their beds or tied up beside me. You know how I know that?”
Michael desperately wanted to look up, but he merely shrugged. “Because you hired them.”
“That’s right, you little shit. I hired them.”
“Not all of them,” Carlos said.
Michael looked up just in time to see Carlos, kneeling on the deck beyond the cage, fire the Jansky into Stefan’s back. The blow caught Stefan as he had begun to turn and spun his body through the air past Michael.
Carlos closed the gap immediately and stood with Michael over Stefan’s limp form. He raised the pistol one more time, but saw that he was not moving. He lowered it and spat on him instead. “That’s right, you miserable fuck. You didn’t hire me.”
Michael glanced at him. “Nice shooting, Carlos.”
He shrugged. “He’s not my first.”
Michael nodded and turned back toward the cage. “Secure him. Then get Hector to the medical bay, at gunpoint if necessary. He’s our backup medic, and he’s going to do his job.” With that, he stepped back to the cargo cage, drew out Malcolm’s old utility knife, and started cutting through the straps that held Winner, careful not to jar her beaten body. “And send Vivian down here with a couple of blankets,” he said. “My crew deserves more dignity than this.”
“Aye, sir,” Carlos said.
Michael glanced up briefly to see Dieter looking down at him. Michael frowned and advanced to the next strap. “I’m sorry I let this happen, Dieter.”
“No, sir. You did good.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a ragged sigh. “I’m the one who failed her.”
Chapter 30
“Sometimes, victory is merely the act of surviving.” — Peter Schneider
THE PILOT TURNED BACK to face Elsa. “I have something, ma’am.”
“A wake detection?”
“No, ma’am. It’s too weak to tell for sure, but it might be a tach-pulse signal.”
“Can you get a bearing?”
“With this weather it’s fluctuating, but it averages out to approximately 25 degrees to port and 10 degrees down.”
Celeste Davies stood by the navigator. “Do you wish to change course to pursue it, ma’am?”
Elsa shook her head. “No, let’s stay on the search pattern for now, but keep an eye on it. If the bearing shifts, we should be able to triangulate its location.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
Michael walked into the gym and locked the door behind him. Stefan was on his knees with his arms held above him. Carlos had taken down the punching bag and hung him there from the ceiling hook. With his knees and ankles bound fast, Stefan could not even stand. Michael pulled a padded bench over and sat a couple of meters in front of him.
“So, Stefan Carrillo.”
He nodded.
“Formerly of the Reilly.”
“So?”
“The Reilly killed a lot of people during the war.” He reached into his pocket and took hold of Malcolm’s utility knife. “You killed a lot of people.”
Stefan looked away. “Whatever. It was war.”
“Do you remember a ship called the Kaiser’s Folly?”
“It rings a bell, but I don’t think we ever boarded it. Its reactor blew, no survivors.”
Michael took a deep breath. “Not quite.”
“Oh?”
“I was on that ship.”
“That was before your time, kid. You couldn’t have been more than …”
“A baby?”
Stefan glanced back at him but said nothing.
“My parents were on that ship, too. They died.”
“Bullshit. Everyone knows Malcolm Fletcher survived the war.”
Michael pulled Malcolm’s old knife
out of his pocket and held it in his hands. “Yes he did, but Sophia and Peter Schneider did not.”
“So?”
“So they were my parents.”
Stefan’s brow creased as he shot him a glance, but it was short-lived. He looked away again and muttered, “Whatever.”
“I told you that, you see, because I’m going to ask you some questions, and I wanted you to know that I don’t particularly care if you live or die.” He opened the blade and showed it to Stefan, edge first.
Stefan glanced at the blade but shook his head. “Forget it, kid. Don’t make threats you won’t carry out.”
“You don’t believe I’ll do it?”
“No offense, kid, but if you had the balls to do that, you’d have killed me down in engineering.”
Michael thought of trying some threatening move with the blade, but at some level, he knew Stefan was probably right. He sighed and set the blade down beside him on the bench.
Stefan snorted. “See, kid. You’re not ready for this kind of shit.”
Michael nodded. “You may be right. I can’t just cut you up in cold blood, even after all you did.”
Stefan gave him a crooked grin.
“But,” Michael said, standing, “Winner is waiting outside that door, and even with one arm in a sling, I don’t think she’ll have the slightest problem with it.”
Stefan looked up sharply. “You can’t do that!”
It was Michael’s turn to smile. “I don’t have to do anything, Stefan. If you don’t want to answer my questions, all I have to do is walk out that door.” He glanced down at the blade resting on the bench. “It’s your choice.”
Celeste Davies peered over the pilot’s shoulder at the scan. “It’s definitely stronger now, and we have a much firmer bearing.”
Elsa stayed in the command chair. “Can you triangulate with the earlier readings?”
“Yes, it looks like it’s no more than seventy light-days. Three hours at present speed.”
“All right, change course, and prepare the ship for combat.”
Michael stepped out of the gym, leaving the door open. Carlos and Dieter were waiting for him. Dieter was in a fresh uniform, but his right eye was swollen shut, and his left hand was wrapped in a bandage with only his thumb and two fingers sticking out. “What’s our status?”
“We turned off that damn tach distress call, and it looks like we’ve got the generator back online,” Carlos answered. “One of the struts is braced with a temporary weld, but it should hold until we can replace the mount.”
“And the calibration?” he asked Dieter.
Dieter did not answer. He glared with one eye through the door at Stefan and growled.
“Vivian’s doing it now,” Carlos answered. “Honestly I’m surprised at how close we were. That filter is more rugged than I would have expected. We should be tach-ready in an hour or two. It might only be a quarter-sail at first, but it’ll be enough to get underway.”
“Good, because we may have company soon, a Yoshido ship called the Fat Grizzly, very likely under the command of someone I would rather not meet again under these circumstances.”
Carlos raised an eyebrow. “You owe him money?”
Michael shook his head. “More like I owe her my hide. If she’s looking for us, she’ll already be within half a light-year by now.”
Carlos nodded. “We’ll be ready.”
“And Winner?”
Carlos looked past him at Stefan.
Michael glanced back and saw their prisoner watching. “Answer my question, Mr. Rodriguez.”
Carlos let out a slow growl. “She’s stable. The autodoc recommended a hemolanic for the internal bleeding, and that’s helping with all the other wounds. Hector has her sedated for now. The broken rib is no longer threatening the lung, but it’s still too risky to let her up for now.”
“Ha!” came Stefan’s retort from inside the gym. “I knew you were bluffing! You’re too innocent to do it.”
Michael spared Stefan one more glance before he turned to Dieter. He pulled the cable shears from his pocket and held them out to the engineer. “Remember what I said. One hand only, and leave the thumb. Understood?”
Dieter took the shears in his right hand, but he never took his eye off Stefan. “Understood, sir. One hand only. He gets to keep his thumb.”
“Wait!” Stefan cried out. “You can’t do that. I told you everything!”
Dieter limped through door. “And now we believe you.”
Michael closed the door. He was eight steps away before the screaming started.
“We’ve lost the signal,” the pilot reported.
Elsa stood this time. “You’re sure it’s not just interference from the crosswind?”
“Yes, ma’am. It was strong and had been getting stronger. Now there’s nothing. I think it was cut off at the source.”
Elsa frowned. If that was the Sophie and her team had run into enough trouble to send a distress signal, the sudden demise of that signal could not be good news. Father Chessman’s final orders to her weighed heavy. “Time to destination?”
“Eighty-four minutes,” the navigator replied.
“Press on,” she ordered. “Best possible speed.”
Michael stepped onto the bridge for the first time since the mutiny.
Carlos was there, peering over the advanced tachyon sensor readings. “You were right about company, sir.”
Michael looked over his shoulder. “That’s the Fat Grizzly all right.”
“At this rate, she’ll be here in twenty-two minutes. What’s the word from engineering?”
“Dieter is helping with the final calibration. We should have half-sail in about ten minutes.”
Carlos raised an eyebrow. “Dieter?”
Michael shrugged. “He’s quiet, but he’s at least paying attention now.”
“And our guest?”
“Hector is tending to him.”
Carlos sighed. “That’s awfully kind of you.”
“You’d have done more?”
He shrugged. “You’re the captain, sir.”
Michael nodded. “I suppose I am.”
Carlos gave a short laugh. “Well, if you weren’t before, you sure as hell are now, Skipper. What course do you want? Straight away or off at an angle?”
Michael looked at the plot again. The Grizzly was closing at 370 lights. It was slow, even for a ship that size, but it was faster than the Sophie could make at half-sail. If his time on board the Blue Jaguar was any guide, they would be able to pick up his tachyon wake and close in before the hour was up. A feint to the side at a quarter-sail might avoid their detection, but he was not willing to bet their lives on it, not with Elsa Watkins on his trail.
He sat at the pilot’s console and brought up the controls for the maneuvering drive. “Vivian,” he called down to engineering, “is the gravity pulse drive functioning?”
There was a pause at the other end. “What?”
“The grav-pulser… is it working?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “We’re still calibrating—”
“Bringing it online now, sir,” Dieter interrupted. “You should have full power in two minutes.”
Carlos looked at him. “What are you getting at? There’s no way we can get away at sublight speeds.”
“I know, but any direction we go is going to leave a tachyon wake, and the Grizzly will track us with it.”
Carlos nodded slowly. “You’re sure they’ve got that capability?”
“They wouldn’t have come looking for us without it.”
“Then where are we going to go?”
Michael smiled. “The one direction they won’t see our wake.”
Elsa stood behind the navigator. She hated herself for doing it, because she had always felt it to be the mark of a bad officer, but she could not help herself.
“Five light-hours and closing,” he said.
“All right,” she said. “Take us down to half-sail
in thirty seconds.”
Celeste Davies nodded from her post next to the operations console. “Aye, ma’am. Down-tach to half-sail in thirty seconds.”
Michael watched the closing gap on the plot. The Fat Grizzly was tearing down on them at hundreds of times the speed of light, while they accelerated as fast as they could with the grav-pulse, right into the Grizzly’s maw.
“Looks like they’re dropping to half-sail,” Carlos said. “It’s going to be close.”
Michael looked down at his own pilot controls, willing the Sophie to push that much faster. He was already past the redline on the grav-pulse. There was no more juice to squeeze.
“We’re almost there, ma’am,” Davies reported. “Preparing for final stage down-tach in thirty seconds.”
Elsa nodded. She hated to think of losing the data in that computer core, but if she found that kid and his ship, she was not going to take any chances. “Weapons hot. I want to be ready to shoot at the first thing we see.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
She cursed silently at the thought of killing Stefan Carrillo, but if he had only delivered on schedule, none of this would have been necessary.
“Here she comes,” Carlos said. “Fifteen seconds and closing, still at quarter-sail.”
“Dieter,” Michael called out. “Stand by to engage sail.”
“Standing by!”
“Down-tach!”
“Engine room confirms,” Davies reported. “Sails are down.”
Elsa stood in the center of the bridge, fists clenched. “Weapons radar, report!”
“Up-tach,” Michael ordered.
“Sails are up,” Dieter replied. “Quarter-sail and holding steady.”
Carlos watched his plot. “They’ve dropped out.”
“How close?”
He shook his head. “Too close to tell, sir, but if traffic control existed out here, we’d be looking at one hell of a fine.”
Michael sighed and leaned back in the pilot seat. “Well, if the Grizzly wants to report us, I’ll gladly pay it.”
