Inquisitor (23 page)

“Charlotte,” she whispered urgently, “we’ve gone too far.”

“No. When we come in fast, we can’t just stop. We’ll be swinging like we’re at the end of a rope. I’ve had to judge where we’ll end up. Then we’ll just… jump.”

“What?!”

“Shhh!”

The hook lurched to a stop. “Charlotte…”

“No time to think of another plan now. Hold on.”

Again, the hook jerked, but this time they began moving away from the platform and out across the spaceport. Angel looked up. Above them, the crane mechanism was racing ahead of their position, increasing its distance from them. It was gaining speed, and they were being pulled along after it. When it stopped, they’d whiplash underneath, swinging up in an arc until their momentum stopped, and then reversed.

Angel shivered, not daring to look down at the floor. A light breeze generated by their velocity brushed her face, strengthening to a strong wind, then a gale. They swung directly below the now stationary crane mechanism. Angel’s implants calculated her speed in excess of fifty klicks per hour, and slowing.

Their ship grew closer as they swung out over the spaceport, now curving in an upward arc. The angled edge of their ship race toward them. They were going to hit. Charlotte had miscalculated.

Angel clung to her prong for dear life. They swung over the surface of the ship with centimeters to spare, just as blasts from the law enforcement displacement cannons drew scorching lines along the chain’s braided alloy cable. Plasma bursts scorched the metal, and Angel futilely ducked her head. They’d finally worked out what was going on.

She threw a frantic look at Charlotte, who was grinning.

“Get ready!” Charlotte said.

Angel nodded.

With a slow creak of metal, the hook’s momentum slowed, then stopped. They were a few meters above the ship.

“Jump!” screamed Charlotte, and leapt from her prong.

Angel followed, and the ship rushed to meet her. She landed awkwardly, twisting an ankle and falling. Her hands scraped across the metal, the rough surface grazing skin and drawing blood. She ignored the pain and scrambled to her knees. Charlotte whooped with joy.

They’d made it. The maintenance hatch was close by, and they’d be inside within a minute.

Charlotte jumped up and down, and hugged Angel tight.

Angel’s knees felt like jelly. “Don’t say you want to do that again.”

•

Angel threw herself into her pilot’s chair, wincing as her ankle gave a twinge. It ached, but it wasn’t badly damaged. She flipped switches and pounded buttons. Charlotte followed a few seconds later, her shorter legs unable to keep up with Angel as she’d rocketed from the maintenance hatch to the bridge.

Angel’s implants connected with the ship’s systems, and the first thing she did was request views of all outside cameras. She buckled herself into the chair’s harness.

“I’ll monitor the hull for breaches or interference,” said Charlotte.

“Good,” replied Angel distractedly. Images flashed before her, too fast to follow. She separated them into a grid and tried to look at them all at once. “Cargo bay doors,” she said, a fearful catch in her voice. “They’re bringing up cutting equipment. It’ll punch through them easily.”

“They haven’t closed the orbital’s docking entrance yet,” Charlotte said. “But it’s only a matter of time.”

“Yes. They didn’t expect us to get back on board. We need to get out of here, but… there are too many people around the ship. We can’t use the engines, or the people will burn to a crisp.”

“Ah,” Charlotte said. “The docking bay doors are closing. We’ll be locked in.”

Angel laughed despairingly. “Didn’t really think this through, did we?”

“We could scatter them,” suggested Charlotte. “A few bursts from the small arms, then we’d be free to take off. Then the doors…”

“Will be closed by then.”

Charlotte clutched at her hair. Her eyes had a wild look to them. “I can’t let them catch me. I can’t go back.”

“I…” Angel slumped down into her chair. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. Maybe we can force a standoff, for a time.” She hammered the padded arms in frustration. “We could negotiate, stall, pretend to hand you over while you work on patching into the docking door systems.”

“No!”

Angel tried to give her a reassuring look. “It’ll work. Or if we can’t get away, we’ll tell the Inquisitors what’s happened. They’ll be on our side. There has to be evidence—”

“It won’t work,” Charlotte said. “Not here on Sercan. Even somewhere else, where the Inquisitors are strong, we can’t trust them. The Genevolves could have their claws everywhere. There’s no one we can trust. Only ourselves.”

“Charlotte—”

“No, Angel, I’m sorry. This is the only way.”

“What are you—” Angel’s vision swam as control of the ship was wrested from her. The camera images blacked out, and she grunted, woozy with disorientation. She heard a soft click. “Charlotte… this isn’t the way.”

“I’m not going back.”

“You won’t, I… I promise.”

Tears ran down Charlotte’s face, and she sobbed. But she hadn’t buckled herself into her chair yet. A good sign, hoped Angel. She hit the release button of her harness.

Nothing happened.
The click
, she realized. Charlotte had activated the locking mechanism. She was trapped.

“Don’t you know not to make promises you can’t keep?” Charlotte said.

Angel thought furiously. “These people are innocents.”

“They know what they’re doing is wrong.”

“Maybe they don’t. There could be any number of lies made up to have them storm this ship.”

“It doesn’t matter. Whoever is in charge will be held accountable, not me.”

Angel had seen a confrontation like this coming. It was why she’d been working on Charlotte, trying to get her to develop empathy for others. “You of all people should know how precious life is.”

Charlotte sniffed, wiping her eyes with her palm. “If I die, it will be genocide. I’m the first of my kind. I won’t be the last.”

“If you blast your way through the docking bay doors, hundreds more may die. The fail-safes mightn’t work. They’ll be exposed to the vacuum of space.”

“Then, when they see the engines firing, they should get to safety.”

“But… where will you go? There’s nowhere to escape to. They’ll chase us from here. I doubt we’ll be able to lose them.”

Charlotte was nodding. “You’re right, in this instance.”

Angel’s chair vibrated beneath her as the ship’s fusion engines roared to life. The thrum flowed through her, seeming to shake her bones, her very core. She couldn’t bear to look at Charlotte any longer. She focused on her hands in her lap, which were clenched into fists.

“Don’t do this,” she whispered urgently.

“I’m sorry,” said Charlotte. “I have no choice.”

Through Angel’s chair, the throb of the engines intensified. They were about to blast off. Angel had no choice. She couldn’t let Charlotte do this.

Angel triggered Mikal’s device, combined with the override program, commanding it to send all it had and cut Charlotte’s control of the ship. Would it work? Or was Charlotte too advanced now?

“Angel!” screamed Charlotte. “What are you doing?”

“Saving you.”

“You’re going to kill me!”

Her programs ran into harsh resistance. Only a few of them made it through and clamped around the ship’s controls. How long would they last against a desperate Charlotte? Not long. She had to act fast.

Angel pulled power from the ship’s engines and transferred it to the shields. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Charlotte unbuckle herself and leap from her chair. Angel slammed a hand down on her quick release and rose to meet her.

Charlotte lunged at Angel, hands and nails extended, face red and contorted with anger. Angel punched her hard. Charlotte’s head snapped back, and she stumbled to her knees. Blood dribbled from her nose. She looked up at Angel with an anguished expression.

A blow like that should have knocked out a man twice her size. Then again, who knew what modifications Charlotte had made to her own brain.

Angel issued a command to the ship’s shields and they sent out a pulse, gently at first, then with more strength. Hopefully, whoever was around them would be pushed far enough away to survive.

Then her control was abruptly cut. Charlotte had overridden her programs. Angel had done all she could.

The ship lifted and turned lazily. Its nose rose, pointing them directly at the docking bay entrance, a massive hexagonal hole growing smaller by the second. They moved toward it, and Angel winced. Anyone behind them on the floor of the docking bay would now be dead.

The ship shuddered and then lurched as it corrected its course. Charlotte’s foot slipped and she fell to one knee. Angel lunged for her, one arm around her body and the other grabbing her blond hair.

“Let go!” screamed Charlotte, twisting and struggling to dislodge Angel.

The ship accelerated, thrusters pulsing hard, heading for the rapidly closing opening. Angel and Charlotte skidded across the floor of the bridge and slammed into a wall. The impact jolted Charlotte out of her grip, and Angel knew they had to get to their chairs or risk serious injury.

Charlotte must have made the same decision, as she scrambled back to her chair, wiping blood from under her nose with the back of a hand. Angel scrambled for hers and sat as well.

And not a moment too soon as her body pressed back into her seat as their velocity increased.

For an instant, she thought they might not have to blast their way through, but the door was closing too rapidly, and they wouldn’t make it in time.

Bright plumes came into view. Three missiles streaked out in front of them. Though she didn’t have access to the ship’s systems through her implants, the screens reflected some details. The missiles hit thirty g’s, taking a few seconds to reach their target.

Flashes brighter than a sun lit the docking chamber. Angel averted her eyes, lucky her implanted lenses clouded to shield her retinas from the worst of the blast. Chunks of metal flew outward from the jagged hole torn into the doors, edges glowing orange.

The ship continued straight, adjusting vector slightly to aim for the newly created puncture.

“Brace for impact,” said Charlotte flatly.

Debris from the blast clattered into the ship like hail. Angel juddered in her chair as the ship was jostled about in the outflowing air. Despite her harness, she held onto the arms for dear life, shaking back and forth.

And then they were through.

Angel breathed a sigh of relief at still being alive, immediately remorseful that so many others might not be. She wasn’t guilty of the mass murder at Mercurial, but if people had been killed here, she was guilty of these murders by association. She should have been more prepared. She’d known Charlotte would do anything to avoid capture. Sorrow squeezed her heart until she couldn’t breathe. She held her head in her hands.

Eventually, she raised her eyes and stared at Charlotte. The girl’s innocent-seeming eyes met hers.

“You don’t care about me,” Charlotte said accusingly.

“I care about the innocent. That’s what makes me an Inquisitor. I care about the people you were trying to kill. And I care about preventing you from becoming something worse than Mercurial. You should care about that too.”

“You’re not the person I thought you were,” Charlotte said, words thick with suppressed anger.

“None of us are, Charlotte. None of us are. I’m not the person you 
want me
 to be. But I’m exactly who I need to be.”

Chapter 15

Maps of the system and the rapidly departing Sercan Orbital blossomed in Angel’s mind. Charlotte had restored a semblance of control of the ship to her. She tried a few things. They didn’t work. So, sightseeing only, it seemed. Their flight vector appeared in front of her, a dotted blue line. The g-forces had lessened, but she still felt a tug to the back of the ship. They headed out of the Sercan gravity well, but not in the direction Angel had anticipated. If Charlotte wanted to jump to another location, they needed to move away from any nearby gravity wells because of the distortion—but they were tracking a fast line, skimming across the topside of the asteroid belt.

Charlotte sat quietly in the chair beside her. Silent. Not even moving. Her head was down, and her long blonde hair covered her face, hiding her expression.

Angel pressed her harness-release button, and it snapped open. She shrugged the belts off and stood, right hand itching toward her hand-cannon. For long moments, she hesitated.

“Fuck!” She slammed her fist into the wall. “Argh!” Throbbing pain pushed through some of the fog of rage in her mind. She knew she couldn’t hurt Charlotte, and anyway, what options did she have left? She was doubly tainted now. Once by the Genevolves and the explosion at Mercurial, and now by Charlotte because of her potentially murderous escape from Sercan.

She quivered with anger. She wanted to hurt something. Someone. Her life was in chaos because of Charlotte. There was no going back. Ever. She was tied to Charlotte now, and part of her hated the girl for that. But… another part, albeit smaller, understood what had pressured Charlotte to act the way she did. And strangely, it was an all too human emotional response. Fight or flight. Kill or be killed. In essence, survival.

Angel wouldn’t be able to wrest control of the ship from Charlotte again. She’d used up that card. She needed to work on another plan. Since she hadn’t been able to obtain equipment to boost her emergency beacon, perhaps there was another way. But she’d have to be careful, or Charlotte would find out what she was up to.

A blip appeared behind them, and the computer plotted another spaceship’s vector across the system map. A single ship. It was coming after them. The Genevolve.

“Will you forgive me?” Charlotte’s plea was almost too soft to hear.

Angel set her jaw. “No. Probably not. You’ve turned me into a murderer.”

“I… I’ll clear your name. Once we trap the Genevolve—”

“If we do. And that’s only for what happened at Mercurial. What just happened on Sercan, that’s on your conscience. If you have one.”