Gunship (14 page)

The bar cheered and the band started up with the next song. Duv set his mug on their table as the redhead pulled him out onto the dance floor. A sober Duv would have been horrified by the prospect of dancing, but drunken Duv gladly followed her into the crowd with a grin and a wink at his crewmates. Ty gave him a thumbs-up while chomping on his cigar and muttering something that sounded like “what a sucker.” He looked over his cards and threw down his hand, letting Reilly and two others battle it out for the turn while he pushed his way over to the head.

The bathroom was empty, and Ty was able to empty his bladder in peace. He finished up and turned for the door to find an imposing figure blocking his way.

“Sergeant Ty. It’s good to see you again.” Commander Zain stepped into the light.

“Commander Zain. What a surprise to run into you…in the head…on Roen. Aren’t you supposed to be dead or retired or something?” Ty added cautiously as Zain leaned in towards him.

“There are plenty who wish I were dead. And who wish you and your Captain were right there in the grave with me. Keep your eyes open, Sergeant. Roen isn’t safe for you anymore, or Reilly. If I were you, I’d get your ship fixed quick and keep moving on.” He spat on the floor and looked around the lavatory.

Ty squared up on the Commander. “Is that a threat, sir?” he asked quietly, eyes narrowed.

Zain laughed. “I’m on your side, Sergeant, just sharing some friendly intelligence up front. Watch your back. Reilly’s, too. See you Thursday.” He stepped to the door.

“What’s Thursday?” Ty asked, but the Commander was already gone.

Ty looked around again and checked his blaster before stepping out into the room. He made his way back out to the table, his senses on alert to the crowd and everything around him. Halfway across the room, Reilly looked up towards him and immediately tensed. Chang, seeing the both of them react, set down his mug and moved towards the side door, also surveying the crowd. There was no apparent threat, but Reilly still loosened her sidearm in its holster. Something had happened to get Ty this riled up.

Ty reached the table. “Commander Zain is here. Said to keep an eye out and not plan on staying worldside long. What’s going on Thursday?”

Reilly had started scanning for Zain the moment Ty mentioned him and then looked back up at the mention of the meeting. “He wanted to meet with me. But I’m guessing if he mentioned it to you he wants to meet with both of us now. I don’t see anything.”

Reilly glanced over at Chang, who also shook his head.

“Even so, it’s getting late, so probably won’t hurt for us to turn in a bit early since we just got here, need to get rested up and such,” Reilly said casually with a nod towards Duv.

Ty nodded and wandered over to Shep at the bar to hand him Reilly’s mug. He whispered something and Shep nodded, loosed a laser slug shotgun from under the counter, then went back to work. Chang checked outside the side door for anybody lurking in the alleyway, but it was clear. Reilly stood up and stretched, feigning tiredness while apologizing to folks she hadn’t had a chance to catch up with yet and promising to do so in the next few nights. As they made their way to the door, Ty grabbed Duv and compelled him to walk with them while the giggling redhead continued to hang on his arm.

“Where we going, Ty?” Duv asked with a dopey smile, oblivious to the crew’s alertness. “Can Holly come?” Duv indicated the redhead, who giggled again and waved at Ty.

“We’re going to bed. And it’s up to you if Holly comes or not, but I’m not sure where she’s going to sleep, since Skeeter has the other bed in your room.”

“She can sleep with me!” Duv stated matter-of-factly, and Holly nodded agreement.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Ty held onto Duv’s arm while he scanned the buildings and the street as they moved.

Chang whispered from the other side of Reilly, “I’ll take his bed, he can have my room.”

Duv tried to slap Chang on the back as Ty yanked him back. “You are such a great friend! See, Holly? I told ya these guys are the best!” Holly giggled as she bumped into Duv and Ty again.

“All clear,” Reilly whispered as they rounded the corner to the guesthouse. She glanced back at Ty and motioned for him to hand Duv and Holly over to Chang. “See if you can get these two upstairs quietly and lock them in. Then go check on Seth and meet us downstairs.” Chang nodded, grabbed Duv, and was gone.

“So you think we’re being watched?” Ty moved up onto the porch and they both sat down at opposite ends just out of the main lights, allowing their night vision to remain intact.

“Maybe. If Zain was concerned enough to find you to warn us, then that’s a warning I’m not going to ignore.”

The lights downstairs in the guesthouse went out, and Chang reappeared silent as a ghost on Reilly’s side of the porch. “Skeeter is asleep. I locked Duv and Holly in. I doubt they’ll be coming out anytime soon, the way they are getting on.”

Reilly smiled briefly. “Good for Duv. I just hope he doesn’t regret it in the morning.” She punched in a code on her handheld and set a perimeter around the guesthouse. Anything coming or going would be scanned, and anything or anyone not signed on at the house would send an alert to all three of them. Ty volunteered to sit up on the second-floor balcony for a while so he could smoke another cigar and invited the others to join him. Chang declined and, after another quick sweep, headed up to bed. Reilly accepted. She retrieved one of the ledgers and joined Ty. They sat in comfortable silence, taking turns scanning the area in between smoking or reading. Neither one was in the mood to sleep tonight. They both knew sleep wouldn’t bring comfort but more likely memories of battles in faraway places. Ty sat with his battle rifle across his lap and rocked in an old wooden chair, while Reilly sat by the small desk at the door and tried to work out the code Razam Welch had used on his ledgers. So far she had tried seven different ciphers, but none of them had worked. The ledgers had been taking up most of her evenings, allowing her to grab only a couple quick hours of sleep before getting up for her regular duties. Reilly tried to convince herself that this was just because she needed to know what Welch had been involved in. But since she had decided to come back to Roen, the dreams had been keeping her awake again. So she worked to break the code and she worked to keep the nightmares at bay. The few hours she did get were dreamless. She often awoke the next morning still in her chair or fully clothed on her bed. She was pretty sure that Chang had started to suspect something was up. But so far, she was certain that her daily act had kept the others from seeing anything was wrong. Once they got off Roen, things would go back to normal. Reilly glanced over to see Ty watching her and threw a quick grin his way. He chewed thoughtfully on his cigar, nodded, and looked back out at the night.

Reilly flipped open her handheld, entered in a new cipher program, and keyed it up. Then she began to do the math and work through the numbers, looking for a pattern, something that would make the code make sense. Time ticked by as she worked, occasionally standing up to stretch or check the perimeter.

The evening was trouble free, and by two in the morning, neither of them had spotted more than a stray cat. Reilly swapped out with Ty again and turned back to the ledgers. She found the rhythm of the numbers comforting. After a while, they seemed to dance across the page and fade into a soft gray blur that continued to defy her attempts to make sense of them. She felt like she was falling into the grayness of the numbers. Reilly decided she liked the peaceful silence that surrounded them, it reminded her of home. Everything faded to velvet blackness.

Ty caught her before she hit the floor. It wasn’t the first time she had done this. On the battlefield, Reilly would work herself for days on end until exhaustion caught up with her, that deep dreamless sleep that didn’t involve dead bodies, explosions, enemy soldiers, and strange alien creatures fighting you to the death over and over again. He watched her as she slowly succumbed to it and slid lower in the chair. He didn’t dare move until he was certain she was out. Once before, he had caught her in between solid sleep and wakefulness; she had almost killed him, thinking he was an enemy soldier and hell-bent on finishing him off before he could do the same to her. He came away with several large gashes along his arm before he could fully wake her, an incident he played down because he knew how much it tore her up to know that she could’ve killed him if she hadn’t come out of it sooner. When she started sliding towards the floor, he quickly got her under the arms and gently placed her on the bed, tossing a blanket over her before going back to his chair. He sat back down and put the stub of his cigar out in his near-empty glass. The Captain always thought she was fooling all of them, but they had been around each other too long. They were family, if not by blood then by fire, and they all looked out for each other. It only made sense that coming back here would cause the nightmares to come back again.

Ty checked his rifle and then scanned the perimeter, but all was quiet. He sighed and glanced back at the Captain. She mumbled something, then rolled on her side, pulling the blanket with her. He still recalled the first time he had met her as a new lieutenant and the stubborn, quiet determination she had had. It was what got her through, made her a hero, and helped her make it back from looking death in the eye. Reilly Campbell had saved his ass more times than Ty could count. He owed her his life, as did so many others. In the process, she had given up a piece of herself she could never get back, a part that she fought over with the demons of her past, like they all did. It was something that a civilian could never understand, giving into the blackness and staring it right in the face without flinching so you could fight the evil things those you were protecting should never have to see. It changed a person, and once you did it, you could never go back.

A few gashes were nothing compared to what she had done for all of them in the service. He would take a few more if it meant the Captain could get a solid night of peaceful sleep. She had earned that at least. Ty swore loyalty to no one, but if he had to, it would be to Reilly. She was his platoon leader and had never let him down, even when everything had gone to hell; he knew she would be there fighting until they had won or they were dead. No one was more dedicated to her people or more willing to lay down her life for others than she was. She had already done it and continued to do it alongside of them every day. That was why they had left the ISUs when she did, and why they were still her crew now. And why they were willing to lay their lives down for her, if that was what it took. That was just what you did for family.

He looked back out at the night, watching for anything out of the ordinary, alert and ready.

—————

The pale man nervously licked his lips. “They’re all launched, Boss. We got them Tethered too, five apiece. Mainframe estimates about a week to search each system, so we can clear six per week, maybe a few more if there’s less than seven habitable planets. Anything pops, it will come in here and to your handheld from the Tether that’s got the hit.”

Crazy Ray mulled this over silently as he watched the cleanup crew removing the bodies from his doorway and mopping up the blood on the granite flooring. That meant that he could cover any systems within three journeys in the first two weeks and continue on from there to at least ten journeys before he’d need to get more Seekers for the job. It was still taking considerably longer than he had hoped, but he knew in the end his patience would be rewarded. He waved the pale man off and walked to his sky wall to look out at the void. He imagined Joby Ty on the rack, imagined Captain Campbell there too. Maybe he would have her join him in the gallery and they could watch the detainers work their magic together before it was her turn. He grinned with sociopathic glee and took another sip from his glass as he brought up the holo-display. The Seekers moved rapidly away from his station, followed at a distance by their respective Tethers. The hunt had begun. Crazy Ray activated a second screen to finish watching his latest video while the Seekers went to work.

Meanwhile, Razam Welch had returned to his ship. He remotely watched the activities of the space station as Crazy Ray’s minions went through their daily operations and cleaned up the mess from the rampage earlier that day. Soon it would be as if nothing had even happened. He could see Ray in his penthouse watching his latest torture flick and keeping an eye on the Seekers, fluctuating between continued fury at having to deal with an uninvited outsider and glee at the prospect of finally having Wanted Man #3 in his next torture video. He made Welch sick. Crazy Ray thought of himself as an aristocrat, an innovator, a businessman, but all Welch saw was a depraved, narcissistic degenerate with no imagination for the future beyond the floating kingdom he had made for himself in the depths of space. Outside of this niche, Crazy Ray was nothing, and when they were done with their agreement, Welch would ensure that that was all that was left.

At first, when he arrived, Welch had been dismayed by the loyalty of Crazy Ray’s personnel. They displayed nervousness, even fear, but none of them had backed down, even when confronted with death. Once the Enforcers had been disabled, though, Welch had been able to ascertain the reason for this. Every person on the station had been implanted, a condition of their work agreement no doubt. His scans revealed the chips, and after further study he realized that the implants prevented personnel from leaving the station and forced the individuals to also put up fierce resistance to any boarders or other threats by controlling specific portions of the brain. He already had his top hackers working on the chips and was confident that he could transfer that control of all of Crazy Ray’s staff over to himself at the appropriate time. He had also gained access to the remaining stash of implants on the station and brought them on board his ship, where his people were dissecting them. Once they were done, Welch planned to add the implants to his fabrication shop for production. In the meantime, his people had been able to re-program a substantial number of the unused implants and put them under his control, enough in fact to begin the next stage of his plan and guarantee its success.