by Jake Elwood
The bullet had taken the man in the right hip. He couldn't stand, but he kept trying. He glanced once at Tom with wide, terrified eyes, then turned away and dragged himself along the ground, using both hands and one leg.
Tom stood over him, watching the man struggle. Then he straddled him from behind and slipped his left arm around the man's neck. He grabbed his right bicep and planted his right hand against the back of the man's head.
“I'm sorry,” he told the engineer. “We can't take a prisoner. We just can't. And we need as much of a head start as we can get.” Then he pulled back and squeezed with his eft arm, pushing forward on the man's head with his right hand.
The engineer's frantic struggles didn't last long. He went limp, and Tom continued to squeeze. At last he let go, breathing heavily, and fumbled at the man's throat, checking for a pulse.
There was nothing.
By the time he got back to the hut the guard who'd been pinned to the floor was dead and Barnard was cleaning the machete. Petersen emerged from a back room, his cheeks bulging as he chewed, half a dozen plastic packets cradled in his arm. He passed the packets around, tossing one to Tom. The package was labelled “Pineapple Rice”, and Tom tore it open, wincing as his saliva glands went into overdrive. He didn't think about much of anything else until the packet was empty. His stomach churned, unused to so much food.
They did a quick search of the hut, finding a couple of crates of medical supplies in the front room. Tom pocketed a couple of cases of Quadrazine, a case of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and an injector. Petersen grabbed another half-dozen food packets and they headed back to the compound. No one had found a key to the gate, so Barnard pried the hinges off with the machete and they trouped inside.
In the prisoners' hut Tom went from bed to bed, injecting each man with a vial of Quadrazine. Then Petersen distributed the food. Even Santiago managed to sit up when he smelled cold roast chicken and corn. Tom left them eating and went outside in search of O'Reilly.
He found O'Reilly sitting on the ground, his back against the wall of the hut, his legs stretched out in front of him. He gave Tom a weak grin. “How's the escape going?”
“So far, so good. Stick out your arm.” Tom injected him with antibiotics. “Can you stand?”
“I guess. If I really have to.”
“Stay there. I'll bring you a snack.” Tom stood, saw O'Reilly trying to rise, and hauled him to his feet. They went inside, where O'Reilly joined the feast in progress.
“What now, Sir?” Barnard said quietly.
“Now we do our best to get a good night's sleep,” Tom said. “As soon as the sun is up, we run.”
No one slept much. Tom and a couple of others performed a thorough search of the guards' hut, finding among other things a proper first-aid kit. Kabir revealed he'd had some training as a medical corpsman, though he'd never fully qualified. That made him much more qualified than Tom, who assisted him as he reopened the cut in O'Reilly's arm, squeezed out more pus, cut away a bit of necrotic tissue, and sprayed everything with a foam that he said would disinfect things and promote healing.
They spent the night eating and napping. When the sun rose they unscrewed the access panels on every piece of electronic equipment in the cargo box, smashed everything that would break, and scooped mud into the places they couldn't reach. Barnard found the pliers he'd used to shorten the staples, hidden away by the guards once the fence was complete. He cut the fence into scraps and destroyed a couple spools of wire they hadn't used. Petersen took the fuser and turned the sections of the tower into a solid lump of steel. Then he tossed the fuser into the muddy water in the bottom of the pit.
When the destruction was complete the men lined up outside the remains of the stockade. The sickest men were pale and trembling, but all of them were on their feet. Several men wore packs improvised from supply cases with polymer shoulder straps added. These were full of food and water and medical supplies.
None of the guns could be fired. The group's only weapon was Barnard's machete. It was not the most promising beginning to an escape, but Tom shrugged to himself, setting his worry aside. Today, they were free. Today they had a chance, no matter how slim.
“All present and accounted for,” O'Reilly said. He was pale and drawn, but food and hope had given him back much of his strength. “Which way?”
Tom turned and pointed to the distant shape of a mesa jutting above the jungle. “There. We need to reach that chunk of rock, and we need to climb to the top of it.”
It didn't sound like much of a plan. In fact, it sounded hopeless. O'Reilly just nodded, though, turned toward the mesa, and started to walk. The rest of the prisoners – former prisoners – fell in behind him, single file. Tom brought up the rear, and they walked together into the unknown, toward a distant and fragile scrap of hope.
Chapter 18
The Evening Breeze slid through hyperspace, skirting the front of a bulbous red-orange energy storm. This was Alice's favorite way to fly. The storm was magnificent, and so close that any shift in the storm front would engulf them. It required constant attention, endless tiny course adjustments. You felt like you were really flying when you hugged the face of a good big storm. There was nothing like knowing that a mistake could kill you to make you feel really alive.
It wasn't adrenaline addiction that kept her so close to the storm. The Dawn Alliance ruled the Green Zone now, and they wouldn't react well to an armed freighter sneaking around near their prison planet. If a warship appeared, she intended to pop inside the storm. Not so deep the ship would be destroyed, just deep enough to hide.
For a moment she remembered the exhilaration and terror of standing at the mess hall windows while the Kestrel flew into battle. There was something glorious about standing and fighting when your instincts screamed at you to run away. It hadn't ended well for the Kestrel, but whatever else happened, at least there had been a time when she helped take the fight to the enemy.
She had the bridge of the Evening Breeze to herself, for the moment at least. She and Bridger had been trading helm duties, with Ham often sitting in to learn the controls. He was already a competent pilot, able to take over in an emergency if she and Bridger were disabled. Ham had never done a landing, though, so he'd better hope any emergencies were short-lived.
A cup of coffee rested in a holder on the console in front of her, the surface curved as if an invisible thumb pressed down on it. The sight of it made her smile. The Evening Breeze wasn't the Free Bird, but it was the same kind of ship, an ancient small freighter with cobbled-together repairs and upgrades that gave it a unique character. The nose of the ship was constantly too cold, while the aft section was uncomfortably warm. And the gravity field was ragged and variable, leading to things like the dimple in her coffee. She felt noticeably heavier on her left side than on her right, a sensation she found strangely comforting. It meant she was back in the absurd, kludgy, irrepressible Free Planets fleet, a place that for Alice had always meant home.
A chime sounded, the ship's computer telling her she was quite close to her destination. She thumbed an intercom button. “We're almost ready to come out of hyperspace.”
The position she'd plotted in advance was inside the storm that billowed beside the ship. That was fine. Her goal was not to reach a specific location, but to pop out of hyperspace on the fringe of the Gamor system, far enough out to avoid detection. One spot would do as well as another. She turned the Evening Breeze away from the storm front, giving herself enough space to avoid interference from the storm.
The bridge hatch slid open behind her, and she saw Bridger reflected in the window as he ducked through. Ham was on his heels. The two men took seats on either side of her.
“We're ready to open a portal,” she told Ham. “Think you can handle it?”
“I'll give it a shot,” he said cheerfully. “I can't do any worse than destroying the ship in a ball of fire, right?”
“That's the can-do attitude that made the Free Planets
the pan-galactic superpower they are today,” Bridger said approvingly. “Go for it, and let's see if we survive.”
Alice rolled her eyes, then sat back and watched as Ham verified their position. He brought up a chart of the system, double-checking there was no planet or other known hazard in the area, then ran a quick diagnostic check of the portal generator. He glanced at Alice, then took a deep breath, reached out a finger, hesitated a moment, and tapped an icon on his console.
“You've killed us all,” Bridger said, then guffawed as Ham shot him a worried glance.
“You did fine,” Alice said. “See?” She pointed, and a brilliant white rectangle appeared in front of the ship. “Now take us through.”
He moved the ship at about half the speed she would have used. Normally she approved of caution when a newbie was at the controls of a ship, but portals didn't stay open indefinitely. She had to grab the arms of her chair to keep herself from reaching for the controls, but at last the ship moved through. The mundane glitter of normal-space stars surrounded them. The portal icon on Alice's console went dark as the portal closed behind them.
“We made it through, and with an almost two-percent safety margin, too,” Bridger said.
Ham stared at him, unsure if he was being teased. “Two percent?”
“It was a little more than that,” Alice said. “Still, you'll want to pick up the pace when you go through a portal. The portal's always dead ahead with zero relative velocity. That's how the generator works. So you can goose the engines as soon as it opens. You can't mess up unless you actively steer.”
Ham nodded. “All right. I'll remember.”
“We'll make a proper spacer out of you yet,” Bridger said. “The next step is to forget all that engineering stuff you learned in your old life. Good spacers don’t have marketable skills. You'll have to lose yours if you want to fit in.”
“Enough chatter,” Alice said. “I want to know if we're alone out here.”
Both men turned their attention to their consoles, checking scanner data. The computer would have warned them of a ship or any potential threat at close range. The AI was no substitute for human judgment, though.
Close-range threats weren't the issue. It would take astonishingly bad luck for the ship to pop out of hyperspace within a million kilometers of a source of danger. No, the real risk was ships at a greater distance that might detect the portal and come to investigate. Portals were much easier to spot than ships. The moment of arrival in normal space was always the time of highest risk.
“I think I see Gamor,” Bridger said. “We'll never see anything from this range.”
“We'll watch for a bit,” Alice said. “Then we can-”
“Portal!” Ham shouted. He wasn't looking at his console, either. He was staring straight ahead, pointing through the bridge windows. Alice looked up, saw nothing but stars for a moment, then spotted a little glowing rectangle in the distance. A buzzer sounded as the Evening Breeze's AI finally noticed.
A single ship showed on Alice's console, a light cruiser by the look of it, at a range of five or six thousand kilometers. It must have been close, relatively speaking, when the Evening Breeze emerged. It had spotted their portal, slipped into hyperspace before they detected it, and emerged from this second portal quite possibly before the light from the first portal reached the Evening Breeze.
“What do we do?”
Ham's voice was shrill, and Alice couldn't quite hide an amused smile. “We get back into hyperspace, first. Open the portal, would you?”
He'd opened a portal not quite five minutes earlier, but now he spent a moment staring helplessly at his console. Then he shook his head, took a breath, and tapped at a screen. The stars ahead vanished as a white rectangle of pure energy appeared dead ahead.
“I'm taking helm controls,” Alice said, and took the ship through. The seventh-dimensional void looked quiet, some yellow-gold storms bulging like cauliflower in the distance. That was because she'd been heading directly away from the closest storm when they'd left hyperspace. Now she swung the nose of the ship around.
The storm she'd been skirting for the last several hours loomed dead ahead. For a moment she stared at it, her heart in her throat. Am I really going to fly us into that?
Not necessarily, she reminded herself. The cruiser might not follow. But if they do …
She fed power to the engines, taking the Evening Breeze toward the storm. The front hadn't seemed too bad while she'd been skirting it. Then, the idea of running into the storm had been an abstract one. Something she might do in a desperate emergency, not something to seriously contemplate.
Now …
When a white rectangle appeared between the Evening Breeze and the storm front she looked at Ham, wondering if he'd generated a portal. His fingers were laced across his stomach, though. When a dark shape appeared in the rectangle she realized the truth.
The cruiser was entering hyperspace directly ahead of them.
“Shit!” She gave the engines full power, and jerked the nose of the ship to the left. The portal was at a bit of an angle. If she could get behind the portal itself, she'd be hidden from the cruiser, at least until the portal closed.
“They're firing,” Bridger barked, his voice almost drowned out by an alarm as a laser beam touched the hull. Alice worked the helm controls, putting the ship into a corkscrew, and winced as a metallic bang echoed through the bridge. A shell had struck them a glancing blow and bounced away.
The Evening Breeze raced behind the portal, giving them a moment of cover. Alice changed course by several degrees.
Then they were past the portal and racing for the storm. The distance was mercifully short, made longer by the frantic zigzags she put the ship through.
The windows turned red as the ship plunged into the storm. Alarms sounded and lights flashed across every console on the bridge as the ship tore through energy fields she was never designed to withstand.
A bang sounded from aft, as loud as a hammer striking an anvil. The entire ship jerked, and a new alarm sounded, this one high and shrill. Loss of atmosphere.
“We've got a hull breach port side aft,” Ham said, peering at his console. “Good news. The tool room's still airtight.” The tool room was directly aft of the bridge. If it lost air, the hatch to the bridge wouldn't open. They would be trapped.
“They're still after us,” Bridger announced, peering into a screen on his console. “I can't tell the range.”
Alice changed course, veering thirty degrees to port and several degrees up. “How about now?”
“They're still going straight,” Bridger said, relief in his voice. “Hold it. Damn.” He looked up, his face bleak. “They're following.” He looked down as another buzzer sounded. “Laser strike. No damage, though.”
Hyperspace storms were hard on laser beams, and they made missiles almost useless, at least against a small, quick target. Projectile weapons still worked fine, though, and Alice continued to jink and dodge as she fled deeper into the storm.
“Uh-oh,” said Ham, staring forward through the bridge windows. Alice glanced up, just in time to see the red haze of energy outside deepen almost to black.
There was no sense of impact as the ship struck a layer of pure energy. The Evening Breeze trembled instead, vibrating like she was inside the rattle of an infant god. Every alarm on the ship screamed, and her console flared and then went black.
Beyond the barrier was a pocket of empty space, a gap in the storm a couple of kilometers across. The ship was racing forward, heading for the writhing bands of cloud that waited on the far side. Alice bellowed, “Brakes!”
Bridger's console was still alive. He brought his hands down and the braking thrusters in the nose of the ship fired. A great hand seemed to shove Alice forward, so that she sprawled across her dead console.
The ship slowed and stopped, the edge of the pocket perhaps a hundred meters ahead.
“Portal,” Alice said, regaining her seat. “Can we generate-�
�
“I'm on it,” Ham said. A moment later: “There it is.”
The storm disappeared, hidden by a wall of white, and Alice said, “Take us through.”
The storm vanished as they dropped back into normal space.
“What now?” said Ham, his voice hushed.
Alice's instincts told her to whisper, but she made herself use her normal voice. They were being stalked, but it wasn't as if the hunters could hear them. “Now we get out of the neighborhood.” She thought for a moment. “Point us at the planet. Hit the engines hard. Maximum burn for thirty seconds, and then cut power.”
A hum filled the cockpit, the seat pressed against Alice from behind as the ship accelerated, and the tiniest hint of a vibration came to her through the soles of her feet. A tremendous knot of tension between her shoulder blades let go all at once, and she gasped out loud. She realized she hadn't really expected the engines to work.
Ham said, “Will the cruiser stay in hyperspace?”
“For a bit, if we're lucky,” Alice said. “We’d be hard to see in that mess. With any luck they'll blunder around for a while in hyperspace looking for us, before they come out and look for us here.” She fumbled with the underside of her console, found the power switch, and did a hard restart. “That's why we're cutting the engines.”
As if on cue, the hum of the engines disappeared.
“So when they come back into normal space, they won't see us.”
A couple of minutes later a diamond-shaped white light appeared ahead of them and far off to starboard. “Don't touch anything,” said Alice, and they spent the next few minutes waiting in a tense silence. The portal was quite a ways off, but it was close enough to see. That meant there was at least a chance the Evening Breeze would be spotted.
“Look! I see another white light.” Ham pointed, and Alice turned to see a tiny line of white against the blackness of the sky. After thirty seconds or so, the line disappeared.
