Death Drop (26 page)

“Long way down, luv,” Simon said in his usual, carefree tone.

“Yup,” Dezmara said curtly.

“What’s a matter now, luv? I swear you’ve got more moods than Galsus 5 has rings. Did you see that gate? Nuthin’s gettin’ through that piece of work ‘less they want it through, an’ considerin’ the Durax put this place in shambles an’ all, I don’t think they’ll be invited to dinner anytime soon.” Simon paused and looked over at her stern features and waited to see if he had made even the slightest dent in her sour mood.

“That was a pretty good speech, Sy. But you geeky engineer types always get distracted when you see something techie and cool. You don’t ever look past the cool thing’s purpose and think of what else it could be used for—you don’t consider the other side of the blade. I’m sure that gate is just as good at keeping ships in as it is at keeping the Durax out, and I don’t think they’re gonna give us a remote control to use whenever we want to blow outta here.” She glanced over at Simon with a concerned look, and she could tell he was considering what she said quite intensely—his tail was flicking from side to side.

“I see your point, luv,” he said with the slightest quiver in his voice. “I hadn’t quite thought about it that way.”

Dezmara flipped off the nav lights again and this time, the blue lights from the control console weren’t as bright; they were muted by a faint glow that floated up the tunnel from below them. The end was near.

“Now that the wheels are turning in that head of yours, listen up. I want the ramp down and the load-bot on the dock before the skids touch.” She paused to make sure he was getting every word. “And then, as soon as the cargo is stowed and secure, I want you on the computer calculating an escape plan that doesn’t involve getting permission to leave from our pal the portmaster, got it?” Dezmara raised both her eyebrows and set her jaw in the hardest ‘I’m the captain’ look in her repertoire.

“Psssshh,” Simon exhaled as he threw up both paws in a helpless gesture. “I’m never goin’ to get that pint, am I?” he asked rhetorically as he turned for the engine room and his assigned duties.

“I’ll bring one back for you with the rest of the supplies. It’s not like I have to worry about it getting warm!” she teased, trying to lighten the mood and ease Simon’s disappointment, but he disappeared down the main deck without another word.

The
Ghost
dropped from the bore like a tiny insect into the belly of a great beast. Dezmara raised her hand to shield her eyes from the harsh shine of the yellow, unnatural lights lining the cavern. The bulbs’ rays cast a fiery, orange glow on the red rock of the port and the sudden rush of color into her pupils brought tears with it. As her vision adjusted, she could see the ship was facing an enormous stone outcropping. She followed the alternating shades of red and tan as they descended further until her eyes met a clearly unnatural form cut into the face of the underground mountain. Huge buttresses with elaborate spires ran down the frontage of stone and flared in sweeping arcs around an archway containing a formidable alloy door. The base of the buttresses, two on each side of the arch, curved onto an alloy dock that jutted from the doorway for several hundred feet before flaring into a rectangular landing pad at its end.

The dock hung above the cavern floor, which was somewhere in the darkness far below, by means of a great tower that straddled its center. Massive cables like the tendrils of a mechanical monster streamed from its top and sides and spanned the distance of the dock, increasing in length as they stretched to the sides of the landing pad and back toward the doorway. Bolts larger than the machine gun barrels on
the
Ghost
ran the length of the dock rail from the landing pad onto the stone buttresses and secured the dock to the mountain.

As she flew closer, Dezmara could tell the dock had seen better days. Its alloy slats were buckled and bent, and several of the cables that issued from its tower lay frayed and broken across its width. The left upright girder of the tower was twisted slightly outward and the dock was listing to the left. She also noticed the outline of a large symbol scrawled on the door, but its center had been obscured by an irregularly shaped patch of shiny, exposed alloy.

“Take a lotta force to snap one of those cables,” she said skeptically as she punched the keys on the control console to zoom the display.
The
Ghost’s
cameras hummed as they worked to enhance the details. When the focusing stopped, the picture showed thousands of pocked holes on the face of the stone that spilled down onto the door like a swarm of angry insects—big insects. The alien symbol on the door, she realized, had once been the number ten. The burnished dents had cut sporadic swaths through the writing and transformed the figure into an illegible but clear warning. She grabbed the stick for manual control and aimed the camera where the right buttress and the face of the mountain met just a few feet above the archway. “That’s what I thought. Gunfire.”

Locked in the center of her screen was the black form of a large caliber, revolving machine gun. It hung from its mount, barrel down, so its shape disappeared into the shadows.

“I bet
that’s
in perfect working order and I bet there’s a twin on the other side of the door,” she mumbled as she manipulated the controller and trained the camera on the left buttress. “Bingo!”

“Sy,” she said after connecting with the engine room, “be a doll and chamber a round in all the guns, would ya?”

“Don’t like the sound of that, luv. Don’t let your paranoia get us into one of them self-fulfillin’ prophecies!”

“Simon, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean people
aren’t
after me.”

“Right. S’pose your little voice told you somethin’ was gonna happen at Luxon, did it?”

“No, the voice has been strangely quiet lately, but my gut says there could be trouble.”

“Great! Voices, guts, woman’s intuition. I could
really
use that pint right about now!”

Dezmara didn’t have time to laugh at Simon. The portmaster was on a schedule and no one, not even the mighty Ghost, was going to interfere.

“Get a move on—dock six!”

Dezmara stopped fidgeting with the camera and looked left and right down the row of identical suspension docks. She yanked the controls to the left and hoped she was headed the right way. She didn’t want to push the portmaster too much—not when she was almost positive it was his hands at the controls of the great gate and the arsenal of machine guns that lined the walls. Luckily, she guessed correctly and the big numbers on the doors decreased. Docks nine, eight and seven drifted by and she noticed they were all in varied states of disrepair. She could only hope that number six was stable enough to support the weight of
the
Ghost.

Soon platform six loomed up ahead, and she couldn’t help but search either side of the heavy door for the two big guns that guarded the entrance to Luxon proper. Instead of blending into the seam between the mountain and the buttresses, like all the other gates they had passed, the barrels of the guns at dock six were live on their turrets and moved to track
the
Ghost
as Dezmara guided her toward the landing pad. Eerie red bulbs sputtered to life around the dock rail, and she killed the nav lights so they wouldn’t drown out the relief of the dock as she prepared to set down. Dezmara eased back the throttles and twisted the control stick. The ship turned ninety degrees while decreasing altitude and floated toward the platform in an elegant, sweeping arc.

Simon busied himself with dropping the cargo bay door, booting up the load-bot, and readying the guns as ordered. His left and right paws danced across separate keyboards and an elaborate, multi-tiered array of flashing buttons, glowing screens, and bundled wire. To anyone witnessing him at work for the first time, he might have appeared flustered and panicked. His head whipped from one display to the next, and his furry fingers shot in every direction, relentlessly punching keys and flipping switches in an orchestra of loud clicks, raucous snaps, and noisy beeps. But Simon Latranis was in his element. He was a master mechanic, engineer, and a technical wizard, and he certainly wasn’t flustered or panicked. His skills just allowed him to do the work of three or four engineers in half the time.

“Done,” he said with a flourish as he pushed the final command key with his index finger in a theatrical display. “All right, my luv’ly, time to work so Uncle Simon can find a fermented beverage.” He gripped the two control sticks at either side of his seat as the screen in front of him flashed a hazy green picture of the open cargo door and the dock beyond. Set against the backdrop of the suspension tower and the stone-arch doorway were several stacks of rusty, corrugated shipping containers.

“You’ve got thirty minutes before the next scheduled gate opening and zero atmosphere,” the portmaster grunted over the com.

“Thank you, very much, Mr. Grouch,” Simon said without pushing the key to respond, “but I’ll be restin’ my furry underside in your dodgiest pub, samplin’ the local flavor in twenty. All right, my luv’ly, off you go!”

Simon pushed the two sticks forward and the picture on the display screen jostled as it grew closer to the containers. He flipped a switch on each stick with his thumbs and two mechanical arms appeared from the bottom corners of the screen. The arms were made of two expanses of round tube, one larger in diameter than the other, that extended from a spherical elbow joint and ended at a smaller, spherical wrist joint with two long, flat attachments.

“Aw, bugger!” Simon said as he zoomed the load-bot’s camera on the farthest edge of the container. “Damn box has GA98 attachments!” Simon pounded on the keyboard and jerked the controls, sending the machine rumbling back up the ramp into the cargo hold.

At the back wall of the training room, Dezmara swung wide the double doors on the armory cabinet. She plucked her favorite automatics from their mounts, spun them both two full revolutions in her hands and slipped them smoothly into the holsters on each of her thighs. Then she packed her belt with as many magazines as it could carry. When she was finished with the guns and their accompanying accessories, she reached up and pulled down two nasty-looking blades.

They were her own design and Simon had machined them from a rare metal forged on Zanzabane. The weapons were shaped like scythes on short six-inch handles that attached perpendicularly to the thickest part of the blade. Each instrument curved in a tapering arc, with razor sharp edges on both sides that came together in a vicious pointed tip.

She stepped back from the cabinet and spun the arched cleavers in her hands. She spiraled them across her body in figure eights, and they sliced through the air with soft, deadly whispers. Dezmara clamped down on the handles and they stopped revolving, instantly curving along the outside edge of her forearms. “Like riding a bike,” she said before whipping the blades forward and deftly sliding them into their custom sheaths on her back. The weapons followed the shape of her body perfectly and rested just inside of her scapulae with the handles hovering discreetly above the curve of her waist.

With her armaments taken care of, she moved on to the most crucial detail when getting ready to leave
the
Ghost
—disguising her appearance. Her blood red boots climbed to her knees. She wore a flight suit to match that clung tightly to her body, covering every inch of her arms, legs, torso, and neck. She wiggled the fingers on her left hand and then her right as she slipped on her gloves and then pulled her burgundy flight jacket from its hanger and swung it over her shoulders. She flipped the collar up on the coat before stretching out with both hands and delicately grasping the centerpiece of her ensemble on the armory wall—the kranos.

The kranos was Dezmara’s battle helmet, and it encased her entire head. It was much more than a disguise: the kranos served as a data processor and a communication link to Simon and
the
Ghost’s
mainframe computer, making it an indispensable tool for reconnaissance missions—and
every
trip to port was reconnaissance for Dezmara. She stared at the shiny black hood for a brief moment and a feeling of deep loathing came over her. It wasn’t dislike for the unit itself, which had proven to be useful on countless occasions; it was a loathing for the need to use it at all. She was tired of living in secret. She ran her hand over the chiseled features and imagined that it was roughly what her own skull would look like if her flesh fell away, except for two features: the dome came to a gradual point at the back, and the perfectly round eye ports looked far more mechanical than organic. “One step closer,” she whispered at the grim head clutched in her hands. She stared at the oval mouth and noticed, for the first time, how sad it looked. She took a steadying breath and then tossed the helmet in the air so it turned one hundred and eighty degrees, caught it between her fingers, and slipped it over her head.

“Simon,” she spoke into the com unit in the kranos, “bring up the visual from my helmet and record the transmission, would ya?”

“Why you dir’y little—“

“Hey, what’d you call me?!”

“Oh, not you, luv. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Having some trouble?”

“Rotten boxes have GA98s on ‘em! Have to change out Libby’s graspers
and
get the cargo loaded
and
get to the pub ‘fore we leave this rock—so I’m kinda busy, luv.”

“Aw, poor baby,” she goaded. “Don’t tell me Simon Latranis, the greatest mechanic and engineer in the universe, can’t get forty wileks of cargo loaded
and
have one pint in less than thirty minutes.
You
must be losing
your
touch.”

“You forgot ‘greatest hacker’ in that fine list of accolades, luv, an’ it’d be ship-shape by now if Libby’s wrist pins would cooperate! You know, they’ve made several new models—think for themselves, multiple arms an’ attachments, ample storage—believe the model after our antique girl here is called the BRT-I…”