Alexander Outland: Space Pirate (25 page)

“Almost there,” Lionside said. He sounded tense.

“Please get ready, Captain.” Audrey sounded calm and cheerful. I couldn’t wait to put Lionside fully in charge of communications.

All pilots can and do talk to their ships. Sometimes out loud, usually telepathically. Not like Tanner’s telepathy—maybe it was empathy or natural affinity or something. All I knew was that the
Sixty-Nine
and I had an understanding. She was my ship, I was her pilot, we were a team. One was useless without the other.

You had to tell your ship the truth. Maybe you
only
told your ship the truth, maybe no human ever knew the truth, but your ship had to know. It had to know your strengths and weaknesses, so it could compliment them. Just like you had to make allowances for the capabilities your ship didn’t have while taking advantage of what your ship did well.

I communed with the tankfloater. It hadn’t been with me long,
but after all we’d been through together, it was long enough. It was old, considered inferior, and, when it wasn’t in the sewage pipes, it was surrounded by models that were supposedly far more desirable. Just like my crew. Just like, I had to admit, me.

Everyone wanted to count us out. I’d been told I’d never get off Zyzzx. I went all over the galaxy. I’d been told I’d fail the Academy. I passed with honors. I’d been told I’d never amount to anything. I was considered the best pilot in the galaxy. Because I believed. I believed in me and my ship, and, as they joined me, my crew.

Now, anyone with half a brain would tell me that we were going to die. That my vehicle wasn’t good enough to do what had to be done. That I wasn’t good enough.

But I knew better. Because I believed.

“Ready?” I wasn’t asking the crew—I was asking the tank.

It shuddered, and everyone else gasped, though I could tell Lionside was still counting. But I didn’t worry. That wasn’t a shudder of defeat or collapse. That was the tank’s way of saying that, for its kind, it was da tomcat, too.

“Now!” Lionside and Audrey both shouted, his voice booming, hers perky. Didn’t matter. I’d had the accelerator to the floor, but I applied more pressure anyway. The tank jerked forward, a tiny bit faster. But the tiny bit was all we needed. I hoped.

We went over some kind of bump that jostled everyone. I kept my foot pressed against the floorboard. My leg felt like it wanted to fall off, but I didn’t let up.

“Six seconds until the flaps close,” Audrey said. Cheerfully.

“Five,” Lionside countered. Not cheerfully.

“Four.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“Everyone, shut up.”

No sooner were those words out of my mouth than the tank shuddered like it had been hit by an entire building. The flaps had closed on us.

T
he sound of the metal flap slamming into our metal vehicle was still reverberating. I couldn’t hear anything and

I doubted anyone other than Audrey could, either. For all I knew, Sexbots couldn’t hear through the din of crashing metal. That was fine. I had to figure at least some of them were screaming. Not me. It’s hard to scream through gritted teeth.

We were through. At least I didn’t smell anything horrible, so I assumed we were through and not cut in half. I slammed my fist onto the floater button. The tank complained but I could feel the difference. We weren’t driving through a river of crap. Now we were swimming in a lake of it. And we were at the bottom. I hoped Tanner wasn’t looking out the windows.

“Any idea of where we’ll surface?” I shouted in the hopes someone would hear me.

“None yet,” Lionside shouted back. I assumed he was shouting, anyway. His voice sounded faint and far away.

I decided verbal communications could wait. I took my foot off the accelerator and started maneuvering the tankfloater like we were in a thick cloudbank instead of the yuck stew of nightmare and legend.

It didn’t like flying, but apparently that was because it didn’t like
having to hold itself up in the air. Amazingly enough, the tank seemed happy in the sea of crap. We were certainly moving with more buoyancy than we’d had in the air. I chose not to comment. If it functioned better under these circumstances, who was I to argue?

The biggest issue was going to be rising both to the top and under an opening. Since visibility was nil, couldn’t rely on that. Buoyancy and air rising through liquid would help, but the tank was pretty damned heavy. Plus, if I used
Mission Aqueesis: Depth Charge
as my guide—and I had nothing else
to
use—there was no guarantee we’d luck into rising up to the top in the first place.

“Lionside, what part of Lake Disgusting are we aiming for?” I shouted this out. My ears were still ringing so I figured his were, too.

“Northeast corner.” He shouted, too, I could tell. Though it still sounded like he was far away, he wasn’t quite as far away as he’d been before. At this rate, we might have our hearing back in time for Lucky Pierre’s attack.

“Governor, any help with a compass of any kind?” I shouted this out on the top of my lungs. If Lionside and I could barely hear, the Governor was probably going to be worse.

“Stop shrieking, Alexander.” He didn’t sound far away. Annoyed, yes, but not far away. He fiddled with some knobs on the tank. The ringing in my ears went away. “How’s that, everyone?”

“What did you do?” I asked while the others shared their ears didn’t hurt any more. “And why didn’t you do it sooner?”

“I had hours to kill, Alexander. I read the operations manual. This model is equipped with a sound reduction capability. I activated it. And I activated it as soon as it was prudent to do so. It’s seating based. I did my seat first.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the senior partner.”

“Senior something, I’ll give you that. So, during leisure reading time, did you happen to see if this model is equipped with a compass? Or any other directional device that will get us out of Lake
Disgusting before we run out of air?”

“We won’t run out of air. The oxygen filtration system is internal to all Hulkinator models.”

“Hulkinwhat?”

“Hulkinator. That’s what this model’s called.”

I looked back at Lionside. “Hulkinator? What’s wrong with the people on this planet?”

“Nothing. Well, being economically destroyed by an evil conspiracy that could be pirate-related. But otherwise, nothing.”

“Forget I asked. So, Governor, how do we find our safe exit point? Because I know the charge won’t last forever, and I want to at least be under clean, flowing water when the batteries die.”

The Governor fiddled with some more knobs. A screen flickered to life. Green concentric circles radiating out from the center of the screen, intersecting lines creating quadrants, and a flashing green dot. That was it.

“We the green dot?”

“Yes, Alexander.” He sounded peeved. Shocker.

“Well, that’s nice. I can watch us move. I still have no idea where to move us to, of course. And this is two-dimensional, and we need three. Maybe four. And I don’t know what it considers north, since that’s not marked. But, otherwise, thanks.”

He gave a long-suffering sigh. “The driver has to engage the full function viewer, Alexander.”

“I didn’t read the manual. Sue me.”

Lionside reached through and pushed the button. A three dimensional grid sprang to life and beamed up from the screen to sit cube-like in front of me. Not bad. Not the Ultrasight but not too shabby, either. We were still the green dot, but now the concentric circles were spheres, and there were borders around the entire cube. Uneven borders.

“The borders our exit points?” I pointed to something behind and below our dot that looked familiar. “Is that the fan we just passed through, as an example?”

“Yes.” Lionside studied the grid. He pointed to the far, upper right, where there was some oddness in the border. It looked like stairs. “I believe that’s the exit point we want.”

“Those look like stairs.”

“They are indeed stairs.”

I tried to resist the question and couldn’t. “Why are there stairs leading in and out of Lake Disgusting? Who would willingly walk down into this?”

Lionside sighed. “The fan has to be cleaned out periodically to ensure it’s working at maximum. The spaceport sewage hold is drained and then the sanitation workers come down and check things over. We believe in keeping everything running and working at optimum at all times, Outland.”

I managed to refrain from comment. Besides, we’d been in the suits. I felt for the poor slobs who worked Herion sewage. I knew their pain. Or at least their smell.

We moved well through the muck. It wasn’t like flying a ’floater in the air, and it sure wasn’t like flying the
Sixty-Nine
, but it was a lot better than it had been in the pipe and the less said about the improvement over the fan the better. Still wasn’t fast, but slow and steady was winning this race so far. Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was hit something while we were immersed in Lake Disgusting, just in case. Damage to the tank would define the term “royally spaced.”

As I got the hang of moving us effectively, I noticed something. There were red dots. Moving red dots. Many moving red dots. And they were moving towards our green dot. Rapidly.

“O
kay, I’m going to ask a question, and I want to stress that I don’t want any sarcastic replies or jokes or even questions. I want concrete answers and I want them right away. As of this moment, the only person allowed sarcasm or a witty comeback is me. Got it?”

“Alexander, what are you going on about?”

“Governor, I’m glad you asked. There are a variety of fast-moving red dots heading towards our slow-moving green dot. In
Mission Aqueesis: Depth Charge
they would be some sort of horrible crap-loving monsters that would attack my ship in order to prevent my escape from Lake Disgusting. I’d like to know what the red dots are, and, if they’re what I just know in my gut they are, how I kill them.”

“What do you know in your gut they are, Outland?”

“Some horrible crap-loving monsters trying to attack our ship and kill us.”

“Impressive.” Lionside didn’t say anything else. I got the impression he was impressed with my ability to guess right.

“Miss Slinkie, you and I need to trade places. Immediately.” The Governor’s tone was brisk and urgent. Clearly the Governor agreed with my assessment of Lionside’s brief reply. That meant things
were on the doomed side of bad.

Much shifting, cursing, knocking and whining ensued. I ignored it. The red dots were occupying all my attention. The Governor gave Slinkie some instructions as he was moved to the back and she was moved to the passenger’s seat.

The first red dot hit us as Slinkie was sliding into her seat. I managed to grab her and keep her head from slamming into the windshield. That she didn’t complain or even mention I’d stopped her by grabbing one of her impressively perfect breasts meant we were in deep, well, crap. I didn’t spend a lot of time enjoying the feel—unless we got out of this alive, I wasn’t going to get to feel the rest of Slinkie. Positive motivation still worked on me.

Slinkie activated what, on a Zyzzx ’floater would be the mapping compartment, that little box built in to let you store your hand-held navigation receiver and anything else you could cram in. On Herion, it was the weapons compartment. I was almost impressed. Until I took a look.

“Slink, are you holding a toy gun?”

“In a way.” She sounded guarded. She activated something else and a cube similar to the one I had in front of me came to life in front of her.

“Want to explain what way?”

“You said I couldn’t be sarcastic.”

The next red dot hit. “And you were obeying me?” I tried not to let the shock show in my voice as the tank shook.

“You sounded upset.” Slinkie pointed the toy gun at one of the red dots and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“I am upset. We’re in Lake Disgusting instead of on the
Sixty-Nine
. Every time I turn around someone’s trying to kill us. And Lionside got to cop a lot of the cheap feels when he helped you into your seat.”

“Like you didn’t cop a big one?” She sounded headed back to normal. She was also still pointing the toy gun and firing it.

“Is that actually doing anything?” I refused to acknowledge that
she’d noted the feel. Besides, other things to pay attention to, like red dots slamming into us and my Weapons Chief apparently playing pretend.

The Governor sighed. “Yes. It’s the External Attack Eliminator. Feature only found on Hulkinator models.”

“You’re in love with our tankfloater. How sweet.”

“It was only found on Hulkinators because it didn’t work well,” Lionside said.

“So, I’m just wasting my time?” Slinkie sounded like she was ready to point the toy gun at Lionside.

“No. If you notice, you’re hitting the attacking merderians. However, it takes several hits to destroy one.”

“Merderians?”

“Underwater, ah, crap eaters. Yes. Small but very territorial and quite strong for their size. Very useful for the larger wastes that come in from space.”

There was a thudding silence, followed quickly by a few thuds as more merderians hit the tank. “So, Lionside… tell me if I’m right. They can and will eat something solid. Say, solid like a tankfloater?”

“Yes. But it takes time.”

I counted. “There are fifty of them if there are two. How much time?”

“We might want to hurry up, Outland.”

Slinkie started firing her toy gun a lot. I was gratified to see a couple of the red dots disappear. Sadly, many more of them seemed just fine. And attached to our vehicle.

“Captain, must advise you that the riots and other problems will converge on our location within ten minutes.”