by TR Cameron
When he finished, he donned his stolen clothes and hid his pistol at the small of his back under his shirt. The rest of the equipment could stay locked up until he returned for it or he escaped and sent a message to Stephenson to collect it.
“Gene Pryor” walked confidently through the halls toward officer country. His security level allowed Athena access to the ship’s cameras, which were everywhere, and she routed him carefully to avoid crossing paths with anyone. When they did run into an unavoidable encounter, he kept his head up, pretended like he belonged, and gave junior crew members a frown and a condescending nod. Senior officers received a smile appropriate to their rank.
“Major Stephenson is waiting for you in her quarters, Jax.”
Thank you, Athena. And, you know, thanks for keeping me alive and safe, too.
Her response had what he thought of as a smile in it. “Of course. As you’ve so often threatened, if you die, I die. Although, technically, it’s entirely possible that I could live on if extracted properly.”
He coughed to cover a laugh. Even now, here, you can’t resist busting my chops, huh? She didn’t reply but somehow managed to communicate a smug satisfaction through her silence. Stephenson’s door slid open as he arrived.
She called, loudly enough that someone in the hall could hear it, “Pryor, finally, you took your damn time. Get in here.” He obeyed, and the door swished closed behind him. She let out a loud exhalation. “Jackson, I thought I was going to have to start breaking down the doors of the Intelligence Division’s secret gulags to find you. The galley sent up a couple of pots of coffee and some sandwiches. They’re over in the corner. Get yourself some and sit.”
His stomach growled at the thought, and he grabbed three mugs of the divine beverage and three sandwiches, then handed one of each to Stephenson as he joined her at the table. “Thanks for looking out for me. I might have twigged to the ghost, but I wouldn’t have known he was after me. Speaking of which, how the hell do you know he was?”
The Major shook her head and finished chewing her mouthful of bread, meat, and cheese. “I couldn’t be sure. But Maarsen had prompted me to be on the lookout for Arlox’s people, which is why I passed that word to the others. The questions he asked confirmed it, though. He was pretty good and snuck stuff about the SF captains and your team into a bunch of other innocent conversations, but he was definitely circling in toward you.”
He finished off his first cup of coffee with a deep drink and thought about that information. “Okay, so they’re after me. And it has to be because of Athena. There’s nothing else particularly special about me.”
The AI and Stephenson replied, “Agreed,” at the same moment, and he suppressed a laugh. His superior officer continued, “There’s no doubt he’ll be on his way up here next, once he realizes you’ve slipped the net. Our shuttles are temporarily staying on the ship for some ‘unexpected maintenance’ caused by the planet’s dust or some other excuse that Captain Jensen came up with, but it won’t last long. He’ll requisition one, and she’ll have to comply.”
“Throw me in a lover’s coffin and fire me back to Earth?” The jump-capable escape pods, built for two, were strictly for emergency use. The way this situation is going, it might qualify as an emergency before too long.
Stephenson chuckled darkly. “I thought of that, too. It’s too essential for the ship, so we can’t give it to you. However, I do have a solution in two parts. Fair warning, both parts suck.”
He snorted and almost inhaled his coffee. “Well, if you say something sucks, it’s probably absolute hell for us mere mortals. Do tell. Wait, hold on, my cups are empty.” She handed hers over, and he refilled all three, then grabbed another sandwich for each of them while he was there. He took his seat and nodded. “Okay. Hit me.”
“We kill you.”
Athena said, “I like this idea already.”
Jax shook his head. You, shut up. “Care to explain that a little?”
Stephenson leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee. “As long as you’re part of the military, there will be a way to keep tabs on you. If you go AWOL, then the ghosts have an excuse to put military police on your trail, which won’t help at all. So, we need to get you out of the system. But a retirement or resignation takes time to process, and that paperwork would likely get lost along the way if the Intelligence Division is paying attention. Listing you as a casualty will cut right through all that nonsense.”
He nodded. “This all makes sense. I presume it doesn’t involve my actual death?”
Stephenson ran her hands through her short hair. “As much as several members of your team and I might like that, no, it doesn’t. It will require something much more difficult and painful than that.”
She wasn’t kidding about the difficult part, anyway. Jax finished sealing his backup jumpsuit.
Athena replied, “I believe Major Stephenson would say, ‘Quit whining, Jackson,’ if she were here.”
Is there a way to turn off your ability to be a jerk?
“Sadly not, Jax. It’s a feature, not a bug.”
He smiled against his will. Well, you better do your best to keep us alive, then, or that feature will be lost to the universe. He went through the pre-action checklist automatically, verifying his suit integrity, stored oxygen levels, and connection to the Cronus’s systems. Everything was operating perfectly, which meant he probably needed to quit stalling and do as ordered. You’re sure that you can interface properly with a Confederacy ship?
“I was designed by the Confederacy. I have better access to their systems than to yours.”
Unless they’ve changed something.
“Possible, but highly unlikely for an object this small. Capital ships and military installations, almost certainly. Those are updated regularly. But in this circumstance, I think we’re fine.”
Easy for you to say since you won’t feel the effects of suffocation if you’re wrong.
“I believe Major Stephenson would say, ‘Quit whining, Jackson, and get to it,’ if she were here.” The AI modulated her voice to sound almost like his superior officer as she repeated the comment, and it occurred to him that she could probably replicate most voices flawlessly once she’d heard them. That might be useful sometime.
He banged his helmet gently against the airlock’s wall, which had finished its purge cycle, and muttered, “I can’t believe I’m doing this. This is so stupid. Even for me.” Then he gave the command to open the outer door, lined himself up with his objective, ran to the edge, and jumped out into space.
Chapter Eight
Whenever Jax was in space, he was struck anew by how gorgeous it all was. The closest analogy he could think of was floating in a lake at night, with nothing in your field of view but the stars above, but that didn’t begin to capture it. At this moment, if not for the adrenaline raging through his veins caused by the stark terror of being out there without a ship or a tether, he might have enjoyed the experience. But probably not, given the likely chance of death.
Athena started in with her “I believe Major Stephenson” line, and he cut her off. Focus, please. Give me a target. He’d jumped with two pieces of specialty gear: a magnetic grapnel rifle that was currently securely attached by a cable to a hardpoint on the drop suit and a universal computer interface. Being alive to use the smaller device depended on his success with the larger one, however. A glowing yellow outline that appeared on his display showed the boundaries of the small ship he was drifting toward. A red dot pulsed where the grapnel would hit when he pulled the trigger. He drew a deep breath, adjusted slightly for his forward motion, and sent his only shot at survival flying toward his objective.
He couldn’t hear the clang of contact, but when the line started to reel him in, he knew he’d hit the mark. Okay. That’s one challenge down. Thirty thousand to go. Where’s the maintenance interface?
“Ahead of the canopy on the pilot’s right side.”
He allowed his mind to drift while the line
pulled him to the ship. His approach had delivered him to the side opposite the port, so he let a little of the cable loose without disconnecting the grapnel and climbed over to slot the proper end of the universal connection device into the opening. He’d never seen this version of the interface before although they carried separate ones for each type of vessel they expected to encounter in the field. In the thirty seconds he’d had to examine it, Jax hadn’t been able to determine how it worked and stored that concern in the mental file of “Don’t know, don’t care.” It’s not like I’m going to re-engineer the thing.
Athena replied, “We could, probably. I would need to analyze it more fully to know for certain.”
The canopy rose on its rear hinges and gave him access to the Confederacy fighter’s interior. He was acquainted with fighters, as he was with all combat vehicles, but he wouldn’t have been able to fly it on his own. Fortunately, Stephenson had correctly predicted that Athena had the skills to help with that. He pulled the connection device that had allowed her to talk to the ship out of its socket, detached the grapnel and threw the rifle aside since it wouldn’t fit in the cockpit, then took his killing rifle off his back and stowed it in the space beside the seat. It required some careful acrobatics to lodge himself in the pilot’s chair, and the experience was made all the more enjoyable by the genuine worry that he’d lose his grip and float away. Perhaps my least favorite way to die.
But his fears were baseless, and he strapped himself into the seat and inserted the connector into the slot in the display panel. After a moment, the ship came to life and his helmet filled with data and views from the forward and rear cameras, whose fisheye lenses showed most of the sides as well. He could throw a toggle to extend a control stick, which would probably operate the same as the ones he was used to, but he rejected the idea after a moment’s reflection.
“Athena, you can handle all the interfacing, right? So I’m able to use voice commands instead of manual ones?”
“Yes, Jax. I have full control over the ship now. Shields are up, weapons are in standby, and the engine is at seventy percent.” The fighter had been disabled rather than destroyed, and the UCCA had permitted the Confederacy to retrieve the pilot but not the hardware, which was more or less standard practice. At least, enough so that they won’t immediately notice that one of them is missing. “Where would you like to go?”
That was the question. Stephenson and Maarsen had offered the Academy as an option, but if he were the hunter, that’s the second place he’d look, right after the Cronus. Sure, the staff at the castle could and would hide him and play dumb if questioned, but that would unnecessarily put them at risk. Fortunately, he thought he had a better choice available. A luckier one, at least. “Let’s head for Ezora.”
On Jax’s last visit to the scorched, arid planet, he’d arrived in a ship called the Jigsaw, piloted by his teammate and friend Cia Rearden, and carrying his whole Academy crew. He’d been uncertain the entire time whether that cobbled-together vessel would make it through the landing without tearing apart.
As he looked down, or from his perspective in the inverted fighter, up at the planet, he could at least be thankful he wouldn’t have to worry about the ship breaking up on the way down. Athena, everything set?
“Yes, Jax. The fighter is programmed to engage the autopilot and fly into the system’s sun in four minutes and twenty-three seconds.”
He nodded. They were positioned more or less above the capital city, which was shrouded in darkness. The AI had judged that he could safely land a couple of miles away, on the opposite side from the spaceport. He would need to hire a vehicle when he got there, but either Stephenson or the Academy working through her had provided him with a new identity and all the associated items, including anonymous cash cards.
He gave his suit’s readouts a final check, as he always did before a jump. “Okay, Athena, take us low enough for the jump, and when it’s time, pop the canopy.”
She didn’t reply, but the ship surged forward in a large descending curve. When they reached a position similar to their previous one, but lower, the canopy exploded off its moorings and spun away. He gave it a moment to clear out of his path, then crouched on the seat and pushed himself toward the planet like a swimmer kicking off the pool wall. The familiar yellow wireframe appeared in his display, and as the atmosphere bit into his suit, he glided into the middle of it.
Jumping at night was always more enjoyable than doing so in the daylight, he’d learned by experience. Although the helmet would give him whatever level of illumination he wanted, there was something serene about floating through the darkness. It also served to hide the often-scary view of how fast the ground was rushing up to meet him. The tunnel bent to the left, and he steered into it, trusting Athena to put him in the right spot.
Her voice was a sudden surprise. “Deploying parachute in five seconds.” She counted down, and at the end, he felt the familiar jerk of the metal weave chute opening and orienting him for landing. His touch down was perfect, and he gathered in the fabric and quickly stripped out of his suit. The dry, cracked ground offered nowhere to hide his gear, so he set the suit’s self-destruct timer for an hour’s delay, figuring that would give him sufficient time to get clear. The explosion wouldn’t be huge, only large enough to consume the evidence of his arrival.
“All right. Part one down. Time to see if our luck holds.”
The only piece of identifiable gear he still possessed was his comm, which he couldn’t ditch until he secured a replacement. Athena used it to summon a car and take him to the Lady’s Luck in the central area of the city of Grefta. It was three seventeen in the morning local time when he stepped out of the car in front of the casino, and it was a frenzy of activity. People entering, people leaving, people loitering out in front hawking who knew what sort of legal, illegal, or immoral products and services.
He grinned. My kind of place. The marquee’s winking lights illuminated the faces on the street in flashes of momentary brilliance before vanishing and reappearing an instant later. The golden doors beckoned, and he passed through the one with the imprint of the kissing lips. Inside, the casino was twice as busy as the outside had been, with beings walking or stumbling in all directions and scantily clad servers weaving through them with dancers’ grace.
He ran his eyes around the room, hoping he might get lucky and spot the female security guard from his team’s previous visit. Unfortunately, all he saw were men and ones who seemed to tend toward muscle rather than brain, given the crowd’s excessive rowdiness. Athena, we’re looking for Lady Elle. Do you have a file on her?
“No, Jax. Do you have a last name for her?”
I don’t. Keep your virtual eyes peeled for a brunette who looks like a movie star. She’ll be wherever the most cash is. He stepped up onto an elevated area and peered over the mass of people, looking for a high-limit section. Of course, the true money wouldn’t be on the public floor at all, but in a hidden salon, probably high up in the tall building. But the rumor was that Lady Elle worked the floor.
He spotted a pair of crimson velvet curtains framing the entrance into a side area. Looks promising. He dodged several drunken carousers along the way and took a circuitous path to avoid several more. By the time he was near his destination, the two guards in business suits standing to the left and right of the gap between the drapes watched his approach carefully.
He nodded at them respectfully. “I’m looking for a Lady.”
The one on the right had a thick neck that continued to the top of his bald head. His face looked like someone had stepped on it and squashed it flatter than nature ever intended. The dark mustache failed to distract from his overall unpleasantness. He growled, “Maybe the Lady doesn’t want to see you.”
Jax shrugged. “Maybe that’s for the Lady to decide.”
The other guard offered, in a tone thick with condescension, “Maybe you could come back tomorrow. The Lady is probably busy right now.” He was more the standard
bodybuilder type and doubtless enjoyed looking at his handsome face and perfectly styled blonde hair in the mirror a little too much.
Jax flexed his hand, which suddenly itched with the desire to make him resemble his partner a little more. “Again, maybe the Lady, who has more brains in her little finger than the two of you combined have in your whole family trees, should make that decision.”
Athena snorted. “Nice one.”
He suppressed a smile at the unexpected compliment. Thank you. Not sure it’ll get the job done, though.
The pair leaned forward as if they would continue the discussion with force rather than witty banter, but a seductive, throaty voice purred, “The Lady is willing to talk to the gentleman.” Lady Elle stepped through the opening and bestowed a smile upon him that likely had turned many a man into her grateful servants in the past. “Captain, when I made the offer for a free tumble in the sheets, I assumed you would take me up on it with a little more alacrity.” She lifted a perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she slipped her arm through his. “So, what’ll it be? Blonde, brunette, or redhead?”
Chapter Nine
After he’d convinced Lady Elle that he wasn’t there to take advantage of her hospitality in that particular fashion, she led Jax to a secluded bar in the corner. The server had a pink drink in a martini glass ready in moments and slid it in front of the casino owner with a flourish. He received a smile in return. Jax ordered a beer since he needed to keep his wits about him in the face of the woman sitting next to him. He also hoped to recover some of the moisture the planet had sucked out of his body during his brief time outside.
She slipped on her teasing tone and asked, “So, Captain Reese, if it’s not one of my ladies that interests you, perhaps there’s something else I can offer?” Her fingers toyed with the necklace that she undoubtedly wore to draw the eye to her tightly wrapped chest, which pushed enticingly against the strapless dress’s confines.
