by A. K. DuBoff
“What should I do?” Jack questioned.
“You can carry the gear once we have it,” Alyssa replied. “In the meantime, try to stay out of trouble.”
He frowned at her. “What have I done in the past month to possibly warrant that statement?”
“There was the time when you got your hand stuck in the peanut butter jar,” Finn supplied.
“Or when you decided that the air ducts looked funny in the corner of the common room and you redo everything so the cooking hood vented directly into my cabin,” Triss added.
“Which, incidentally, is also my cabin,” Alyssa grumbled.
“And yet you resist our request for a new ship. This one needs a total remodel,” Jack insisted.
Alyssa glared at him. “We didn’t need a remodel until you decided to paint the common room lime green right after you knocked down the partition wall.”
“I thought it would make it more airy—like we were lying in a meadow.”
“Then why did you paint the ceiling?” Alyssa pressed.
“I just really like green, okay?” Jack’s cheeks burned.
Triss smiled. “Needless to say, we will not be relying on Jack to pick out the good art from the estate.”
“I may surprise you.” Jack waited for Triss to continue her explanation.
“Okay, so with Jack staying out of the way, the rest of us will get everything prepped. We can be at the supply cache in about two hours, right Alyssa?”
The captain nodded. “An easy jump from here.”
“Great. We’ll grab what we need and then bust into the estate before they know what hit them,” Triss concluded. “Any questions?”
Jack tentatively raised his hand.
Triss swore under her breath. “Yes?”
“Do I get a stealth suit, too?”
Alyssa massaged the bridge of her nose. “Yes, you’ll get a stealth suit.”
“Okay, just checking, because the last time we went on a job, you stuck me in that awful pink hazmat onesie.”
“Don’t try to deny that you loved that suit,” Triss said.
“I—”
“Any questions from someone other than Jack?” Alyssa asked. No one spoke up. “All right, get to work.”
Jack let out an exaggerated sigh and walked back to his spot on the couch in the lounge room. He waited for everyone to be busy with their tasks before he kicked back to relax. It was so much easier for the others to think he was incompetent so they’d do all the work and he could just go along for the ride.
While Finn was busy making video calls to potential fences, Jack took the opportunity to level up his rival character in a game they’d had going for the past month. All in all, it wasn’t a bad deal to be the manual labor punching bag on the team when there was no hard work to be done—certainly better than having genuine responsibility. He didn’t know how Alyssa could keep her sanity.
True to the estimation, the Little Princess II arrived at the destination planet in just under two hours. Jack gazed out the window as the ship made the final approach and settled into a geosynchronous orbit.
“What is this place?” he asked Triss when she came to retrieve him.
“Doesn’t have a colloquial name,” she replied. “We just know it as RT-317.”
He took in the brown ground and minimal cloud cover. “Is it habitable?”
“Oh, no. Not even remotely. The gravity is just about the only thing that falls within tolerable limits for us frail humans.”
“So… EVA suit?” Jack asked.
“Yep. We’ll take the landing shuttle down and bring back what we need.”
“We’re not landing the Little Princess II?”
“Too big to fit where we’re going. Come on.” Triss led the way to the hold in the belly of the ship.
It was the place where Jack had spent the least time over the past month, since they’d mostly just hung around in the common room playing video games and drinking too much of Alyssa’s delicious coffee. So, it came as a particularly great surprise to Jack when he entered the hold and was confronted by a two-meter-tall column of white feathers.
“Hello, Jack,” the feathers greeted.
“Um, Triss…?” Jack jumped backward.
“Oh, you haven’t met Morey?” she asked. “He’s our mechanic.”
“Th—the feathers?” Jack stammered.
“Right, sorry!” The feathers rustled. “I was in buffing mode.” White feathers cascaded to the floor a moment later, revealing a bipedal metallic robot.
Jack’s heart rate returned to normal. “Oh. I thought you were an alien.”
Triss snickered. “Nope. Just our mechanic droid.”
“And the feathers?” Jack asked.
“Easiest way to polish the chrome accents on the crawler,” Morey replied.
“The crawler?”
Triss shook her head. “Stars, Jack! You know nothing about what we have on this ship, do you?”
“Apparently not.”
“The crawler is our all-terrain vehicle for when we can’t land right by the destination and need to travel over rough ground. We’ll use it to get to the estate, since we can’t bring the whole ship right up to the entrance. I had Morey get it looking all extra shiny and fancy for us so we can blend in with the high rollers.”
“I don’t think an all-terrain vehicle is going to pass as a luxury town car,” Jack pointed out.
“No, but we can look like some very sophisticated groundskeepers.” Triss took a deep breath. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, the equipment.”
“Right.”
Jack eyed Morey cautiously as he stepped around the robot and its feather suit so he could get to the landing shuttle.
“Have a safe flight!” Morey waved goodbye to them with his claw-like mechanical hand.
“We’ve really had a robot worker down here all this time?” Jack asked Triss once they were inside the shuttle with the door sealed.
“Yeah. Like, every ship in this size class has a robo mechanic.”
“Then why have I never seen one?”
“Have you ever been on another ship in this size class before?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go.” Triss powered up the shuttle. “Honestly, Jack, sometimes I forget that you’re a grown man.”
“You’ve never given me a proper chance, if we’re to be perfectly honest,” Jack told her.
“I guess you have proven yourself useful here and there.”
Jack buckled his flight harness. “I’ve come a long way. No more chewing straw, I put away the dishes…”
“Well, you try to put away the dishes.” Triss smiled as she directed the shuttle out of the docking bay. “It’s clear you don’t know where the bowls go.”
“There are too many sizes.”
“Uh huh…”
Jack crossed his arms over the restraints. “There are seven different types of bowl, Triss. That isn’t a remotely reasonable number for a ship with four humans and one robot.”
“Two robots.”
“Where’s the other?”
“In the waste processing tank.”
Jack stared straight ahead out the front window. “That one I never want to meet.”
“You and me both.”
The shuttle descended through the thin atmosphere and glided above the tops of rocky mountains towering twenty kilometers above seemingly bottomless canyons. There didn’t appear to be a flat landing area anywhere across the barren landscape, let alone a place where people could walk safely.
“You were crazy to hide anything down here,” Jack commented.
“Which is precisely what makes it such a good hiding place.” Triss dove the shuttle into one of the narrow canyons.
Jack fought the urge to grip the restraints with his hands and brace for impact as the shuttle passed dangerously close to the canyon walls. “Where is everything stored, anyway?” he asked, hoping for a distraction.
“A
cave,” was Triss’ only response.
He allowed her to focus on the flying.
Four minutes later, the canyon terminated at the maw of a mammoth cave. They passed into shadow, the shuttle’s onboard lights casting an eerie blue glow on the rough walls.
Triss landed the shuttle on a wide ledge a hundred meters inside the entrance. “And here we are.”
“How did you find this place?” Jack asked with wonder.
“Commandeered from an old associate of ours,” she replied. “Let’s get our EVA suits on.”
They climbed to the back of the shuttle to suit up in the airlock. The gold EVA suit was Jack’s least favorite attire, but he donned it like a pro. At least this time he’d only be facing extreme cold and unbreathable air rather than transporting a container of radioactive material. Small blessings.
Once they were geared up, Triss activated the airlock and they cycled out.
The cave seemed even larger and more ominous when Jack stepped out of the comparative protection of the shuttle. The roof was at least half a kilometer overhead, with the walls a quarter kilometer to either side. Nowhere in the massive space did Jack see a stash of equipment.
“This way.” Triss headed at an angle toward the right wall.
“Is it far? Maybe we should park clos—” Jack cut off when Triss extended her hand outward, causing the space in front of her to shimmer.
His face lit up. “You have it cloaked.”
“Sure do.” She grinned inside her suit.
With a flick of her wrist, the shield dropped, revealing a dozen crates and a transparent enclosure holding six sets of armor. At the center of the grouping was a decaying corpse.
“Hmm,” Jack snorted. “I’m gonna guess he’s not supposed to be here.”
Triss stood in silence for several seconds as she surveyed the corpse from afar. “No, that certainly should not be here.”
She took a tentative step forward with Jack at her heels.
“Who else knows about this place?” he asked her.
“Not enough people for me to feel remotely good about who that might be.” She knelt down next to the body and inspected what little remained of its clothing. “I don’t think this was a he, but a her.” She pointed to some feminine stud earrings and open hips. Her expression sank. “I think this was Kayla.”
“I’m sorry. Where did you know her from?”
“We weren’t close.” Triss rose to her feet. “She worked with a crew Alyssa and I used to be attached to while we were with Svetlana. Kayla was one of the associates.”
“So how would she end up here?”
“That is a very good question.” Triss approached one of the nearby cases and popped the seal. She looked inside. “Damn it.”
Jack jogged up next to her. “I imagine that’s supposed to be full.”
“Indeed it is.” She resealed the half-empty crate of weapons and restored the interior vacuum.
“Why wouldn’t whoever was here take everything?”
“Probably because they only took what they needed—assuming this was their stash to raid as they wished. That means that whoever was here doesn’t think Alyssa or I would be back for it.”
“And a person who might make such an assumption would be…?
“Trent,” Triss snarled.
“You’ve mentioned him before. I always thought he was a former colleague, but that time you said his name like he’s a bad ex-boyfriend.”
“Because he is.”
“That would explain it. Care to elaborate?” Jack asked.
“Not now. Let’s get this equipment loaded in the shuttle, and then we’ll talk with Alyssa.”
*
As it turned out, transferring four stealth suits and a small arsenal wasn’t near as straightforward as Jack had been led to believe. His first indication that he was in for a terrible afternoon came when Triss simply stood aside and pointed at one of the crates.
“That. Make it be on the shuttle,” she said.
“I thought I was here to help you, not just be the muscle,” Jack objected.
“Yeah, you’re here to help me in exactly that way. Do the thing.”
“It’s kind of awkwardly shaped for one person to move.”
“I thought you had skills and were setting out to surprise me with your prowess?”
Jack straightened. “You want a show? Fine. I’ll give you a show.”
He positioned himself behind the crate and gave it a good shove. Unfortunately, the crate seemed quite happy in its present position.
Undeterred, he jogged over to the shuttle to secure a length of cabling. He looped one end around the crate and clamped the other to the hydraulic winch in the airlock. With any luck, the winch would pull the load right into place.
“Jack, this seems like a terrible idea,” Triss cautioned.
“You want me to do this? I’m going to do it my way.” He activated the winch.
A whine of grinding metal rang out in the cave. Before Jack even had time to lower the volume on his external comm, the cable snapped with a sickening twang.
It lashed out like a whip from the shuttle, slicing off a back stabilizing fin on one end and the other embedding in an adjacent crate.
Triss stood with a stunned expression a mere meter from where the far end had cut through the four-centimeter-thick crate wall. “I told you so.”
“Really? That’s how you’re going to play this?” Jack groaned.
“You almost killed me!”
“And myself!”
“That doesn’t make it any better!”
Jack took a deep breath. “I hate these crates.”
“That we can agree on.” Triss placed her right hand on her hip. “We’ll have to unload them and transfer everything piece by piece.”
“The seal is already broken on that crate.” Jack pointed to the container with the embedded cable. “May as well start there.”
CHAPTER 3: Getting Down to Business
— — —
Groundskeeper attire was only slightly more comfortable than an EVA suit.
Jack tugged at the overly constrictive collar of his beige jumper, amazed how the suit could simultaneously be too tight and yet baggy. “You couldn’t think of any other disguise?” he asked Triss.
“The interior of the manor is complete. The last project is to prune the shrubbery,” she replied.
“I’ll prune your shrubbery,” Jack muttered.
Triss stuck out her tongue at him, but quickly composed her face when Alyssa entered the cargo bay.
“Everyone ready?” the captain asked.
The four crew members were all dressed in their unflattering jumpsuits, which concealed the stealth suits underneath. Once they got inside the main gate, they’d go from undercover to invisible.
Jack itched above his cybernetic eye. “So… what do we do if we run into the actual groundskeepers?”
“We wing it, of course,” Alyssa replied.
“What happened to us needing a plan for everything?” Jack cocked his head.
Alyssa smoothed the coveralls bulging around her stomach. “Went out the airlock along with my dignity.”
Jack grinned. “Just like old times!”
Triss sighed. “Jack, we did one op together, and that was only a month ago.”
“It left a strong impression.”
“You need to get out more,” Alyssa said with an eye-roll.
“You never let me leave my room.”
Alyssa switched into mom-voice. “That’s because you get into trouble whenever you do. We’ve already talked about the ducting.”
Jack looked at his feet. “Yeah…”
“Can we all agree that Jack requires constant supervision?” Alyssa questioned.
She and the two other members of the crew raised their hands. Reluctantly, Jack raised his, as well.
“We’ll figure out how to get Jack more supervised visits with the outside world after we’re finished with the op,” Alyssa con
tinued. “For now, the matter is closed. We all have our marching orders, so let’s go.”
“Go team!” Jack shouted in the ensuring silence.
His friends simply shook their heads and sighed.
“One of these days, I’ll figure out proper social cues,” he lamented quietly.
Triss patted his shoulder. “Just keep telling yourself that.”
They loaded onto the shuttle, along with the fancied-up crawler that would serve as their ground transportation.
Jack had to admit that the robot Morey did good work when it came to making a utilitarian vehicle look like something worthy of gracing the grounds of a snooty rich person’s estate. The chrome accents on the lower body frame and upper roll cage added a certain grace and elegance to the otherwise simple machine.
Jack strapped into the passenger seating near the rear of the shuttle while Alyssa and Triss assumed the two seats in the cockpit.
Finn, seated across from Jack, closed his eyes as if ready to take a nap.
“Nervous?” Jack asked him.
“Not in the slightest. Excited, more than anything. I’ve been wanting to go after this guy for some time.”
“How do you know him?”
“More know of him,” Finn corrected, opening his eyes. “I’m surprised that you hadn’t heard of him.”
“I mostly lived under a rock, when it comes to social media engagement,” Jack admitted.
“Well, Vincent Ordello was known only in certain circles rather than being someone in the public spotlight. He has a renowned ability to take over a small business and suck out every last bit of profit before tossing it aside in favor of his next venture. Lots of people have lost their livelihoods thanks to him, and his appetite for new conquests is insatiable.”
Jack scowled. “What kind of business was he in?”
“A little bit of everything these days, but he started out as a butterfly farmer.”
Jack gave that several seconds to sink in. “Did you say…?”
“I did.”
“So wait,” Jack leaned forward against the harnesses, “this notoriously evil business tycoon began as a butterfly farmer?”
“Well, yes,” Finn confirmed, “but that was before the incident.”
“Which was?”
“No one knows. The only rumors anyone has heard involve an old man and an oxygen tank.”
