This Starry Deep (9 page)

I floated there while Bushfield drove past me at speed, not concerned yet, or, frankly, noticing. I had at least ten seconds before the system rebooted enough to get me somewhere. Another enemy ship came in and fired a missile at me.

At least there were no useless warnings, with the controls dead. Eight seconds and the missile was only about seven seconds out. Ten if I were lucky. Turned out to be around nine. I hit a quick lock on the largest thing around, Trasker Four itself, and tried to drag myself out of the way. The missile was too close and went up near me. Too near.

Systems went critical, but caught as they were coming up, somehow managed to not go down fully a second time. Sheer luck. I was stuck, however, in Trasker Four’s gravity well. I went down toward the planet, flames and bits of debris following me, fast.

Nothing for it but to ride it down and land, hoping I could get back off planet quick. If the GravPack was fine, it wouldn’t be too big a problem, but if it was toasted…I tried to remember everything I knew about Trasker Four and not worry about landing.

If nothing else, the GravPack should have been functional enough to save me from hitting the planet hard. That was the plan, anyway.

Chapter 1
4
– Shae

I SCANNED THE FLOOR again and caught it. A bolt. That was all. A simple bolt with a perfectly ordinary hex-shaped head. The bolt sat on top of the plate that held the plank I was tied to. And that clicked in my head loudly, like a gunshot.

The clawed hands of the bird aliens wouldn’t work with hex bolts. I’d met more than my share of aliens, overall, and everyone used slightly different shapes for their fasteners. But hex bolts, those were human in design. The bird-aliens’ hands wouldn’t stand a chance working them. Oh, sure, they could have tools that made the bolts work fine, but why would they have built a bolt like that in first place?

Following that chain of logic took me to a place where the aliens weren’t real. Which meant I was being held in a human ship. Suddenly, far less made sense. The “waiting around and collecting data” phase ended right there.

Instead I focused on getting myself free before they came back. I tensed my right shoulder and started to raise it, inch by inch, pressing it against my side. I may have been strapped down at the wrist and across the upper arm, but there was still enough slack if I shifted myself right. It hurt along my arm and ribcage, but freedom was worth some pain.

The wrist shackle would be the worst part. My thumb popped as I dislocated it and I bit my own lip hard enough to draw blood. Once I got my right arm free, the rest proved simple enough. My thumb clicked back into place with no more pain than the dislocation itself.

I wanted to throw up. More than that, I wanted to use a few grenades on people. I held that desire close. I let it blot out the pain, but also allowed myself a ten count to lean against the platform and wait for my legs to get steady again. Freed, I did a quick scan for cameras again, knowing I wouldn’t find any. They couldn’t afford to tape me being imprisoned, not if it got out. No, then they’d have to deny everything.

The door stood between me and getting out of the cell. I studied the palm scanner, but made sure not to touch it. The last thing I wanted was to find out that the system logged and alarmed unknown prints trying to access the system. I had no tools, nothing to break the panel open with or to access the system once I had. The door sat locked and I considered my options.

Option one: Wait for them to come back, try and surprise them and make a break for it. I loved it, except I didn’t know where I was or what I was up against yet. So that made it a fool’s move.

Option two: Get the door open. Much better for stealth, except the lack of tools, a key, or explosives. All right, the explosives wouldn’t help with stealth anyway.

I studied the door and its access panel again. Assuming these were humans after all, then the tech could only go so far up the ladder. All I had to do was find the right way to outsmart the higher-end, military-grade stuff and work my way down.

I kicked the wall twice out of frustration but, strangely, it didn’t result in the door opening. There was, however a seam. There was always a seam, even if it sat recessed into the wall. That would be a weak point. Wait, I was an idiot. The door slid open from my right to my left. Which meant the wall to the left would be hollow for the door to slide into.

I went back to the plank they had tied me down to and tore one of the straps free. Bending the buckle back was work but I managed it after I braced it against the floor with a foot. Five minutes counted off in my head as I worked the edge of the bent metal buckle into the seam to the left of the door. Bending back bits of the edge of the door frame let me see the retraction mechanism for the door itself.

The fact was that there should have been a safety release on the inside of the door, but they were easy enough to “forget” installing to make rooms secure. A little-known addition to that fact, though - the interior mechanism always had a security retract, just in case. Almost never used and generally impossible to access, they weren’t worth a damn until they suddenly were.

I saw the trigger for the release and tried to reach it with the buckle, but even bent flat it would be too short. I’d have to resort to using my fingers. The metal of the door frame, now badly bent and worn, sliced my pinky open, but the blood lubricated my way and made flipping the emergency release easier.

The door hissed as the release caught and I pushed the thing open, staying behind it while I did. No way to know what was on the other side. As the hallway beyond came into view, I felt my jaw go slack.

This was military. This was
us
. What the holy hell was happening? I didn’t even want to guess. Instead, I slid out into the hallway. I kept to the walls, ducking into doorways when anyone came by. So far, so good.

Strange situation or not, there were two things I needed to do: let the family know I was all right and get out of here. The first proved fairly easy. I came across one of the many backup comm rooms any decent sized ship had. You never knew when sending a message would be important, and enemies targeted main communications hubs as a matter of course.

I closed the door behind me and took a deep breath. Time would be running short. Even if no one had come to check on me, someone would notice the open door and have trouble closing it. Security would find out quick and be looking for me. Hallways were decently monitored in general so I wouldn’t be hard to find.

Keeping that mind, I jotted out a quick message to Mud and Jonah and sent it. I didn’t bother to look up my location, just tagged the message with a normal location packet so they could find the source. That’s all they’d need. I wiped the message, thought again, and smashed in the comm deck. They definitely wouldn’t work out what I had sent who.

The door slid open and a sonic blast hummed through the air, catching me in the leg. Guess security had worked out where I was. They wouldn’t take me easy. No need to hurt any of them badly, not yet - I didn’t know the score and they might innocently think I should have been a prisoner.

I kicked one of the guys in the faceplate and grabbed his sonic rifle. Two quick shots took care of the second security thug. I dove for the ground as the third and fourth spilled into the room. They laid down suppressing sonic fire and I winced as the walls of the room rebounded the effects back at me, catching me square. The world started to go black but I fought it, getting off another shot.

Pretty sure I hit one of the security goons, but the blackness swam fully over my eyes and I gave in, passing out.

Chapter 1
5
– Mud

AN ALARM WOKE ME from a nap. I rolled off my bunk and slapped at the control panel on the hull nearby until it played back. It was from Mom, sent to me and Dad. The entirety of the message was “Held by Gov, no ws, n ext.” No location code or anything.

The fact the message itself was in plain, unencoded text, coupled with the hurried shorthand, worried me. Expanded out it told me she was being held by the Government, and with no other indication as to which Gov, she meant Earth’s. Tossed in for extra fun was the fact she didn’t know where she was, why she was being held, or anything else at all. That “need extraction” at the end didn’t create a thrilling cap to the message, either.

I send a few packets to Dad, figuring he would be on this already, and wondering why he wasn’t. For her to send to both of us meant one of two things - She thought they’d need help, the two of them, or she was out and alone, not knowing where he was. Chances were with the latter, but chances could get someone killed.

I grabbed up a cup of something warm and took a deep breath of the moist, hot air in the cabin. Time to get to work on this. On my way to the cockpit’s hot seat I kicked the metal slab again. Still don’t know what happened there. No time now. I tossed it into a storage locker and then sat down heavily in the pilot’s chair.

No location on the message. But the headers looked complete. That meant there would be standard codes embedded. I could translate them and backtrack from there. Shouldn’t prove too hard. I loaded the file into my system and took it apart. The message ID would be embedded at the top, the station info at the bottom. Strip out the coding for the body of the message itself and toss it. The message ID would prove useful if I could get another message from the same relay point. The IDs increment, and that’d give me a decent time lock. Margin of error, of course, based on how many messages they sent, but I could guess that once I knew what sent it in the first place. Which meant the station ident.

Easy enough to grab out, but a pain to decode. Gov equipment doesn’t like to tell you who it is unless you’re reading the message on authorized Gov equipment. My ship most certainly wasn’t that. Fine, enough of why this sucked, more doing it regardless.

Dad had shown me how a few years ago, just in case: one of his paranoid moments. What if, he reasoned, I worked for the Gov and my transmitter broke and I had to rely on non-spec stuff. How would I know where to go? Heh. Good old Dad.

I ran a few tools against the encryption, betting they’d upgraded. They had. Still, I knew what markings to look for in the code and was able to get enough of a match to run that against a database of known bases. I came up empty so I switched to larger ships. That got me a few matches. Which meant Mom was certainly on a ship somewhere.

The class was full-compliment battle cruiser, and only six of those were active currently. Narrowed it down more for me. I grabbed the registry numbers for all six and crossed them against the code snips I had. Narrowed the field down to two ships: the
Kingsburg
and the
Dozier
.
Kingsburg
was a bigger ship, but
Dozier
sat closer to Earth, normally.

I tried to find some information on where either ship sat currently and got nowhere fast. Well, they didn’t tend to publicize that sort of thing. Fine. But even military class ships are required to post trajectories and flight plans, they just don’t have to give a public ident. Troublesome, but not if you knew where a ship launched from.

I ran a simulation for all flight plans that matched both the
Kingsburg
and
Dozier
launch points for the previous month. With us not at war with anyone, the chances grew small that either of them wouldn’t have hit a home berth in that time. I pegged the
Dozier
easily, actually. They weren’t trying to hide, and why should they?

The
Dozier
fit. It fit good enough that I felt confident they were holding Mom. So I sent them a routine ping to grab a message ID. The number of the message I got back fell right in line with my theory.

Now I knew where she was. I checked the console for any other incoming messages, but Dad hadn’t replied. Bad on bad. I was a bit farspun from where the
Dozier
should be. I set two courses, one submitted and the other real, just in case, and took off at a full burn toward a large rock that the
Dozier
would be approaching at around the time I could get to it.

After that? All I’d have to do is break into a Gov battle cruiser, find one person, and escape again. It took my mind off being hunted myself, at least. I left the ship to fly itself for a while and went to count my ammo stores.

Chapter 1
6
– Jonah

I GAINED CONTROL of my rapid descent with about thirty feet to spare. As the ground rushed up to greet me, my HUD came up and I quickly selected a stop and hang, equalizing my own mass against all the large fields near me. With a planet under me, the GravPack switched itself automatically to planetary views. At least I wouldn’t have the planet itself being the only attractor.

I floated down to a soft landing, coming to rest in the middle of a street. It wasn’t subtle. With an invasion on my heels, I didn’t see the point of subtle. People stared and they stared hard. A guy no more than half my age, with a shoulder-length shock of purple hair, walked right up to me, trailed by some friends.

“Hey, you for real, hombre?” he asked, turning to his friends and laughing. They all laughed after half a beat. If they hadn’t looked quite so hung out to dry I would’ve considered them a gang.

“Pretty much,” I said, ignoring his tone, “wanna tell me where to find the local enforcement around here?”

That got me another laugh. “You want
us
to ring up the Badges?”

“That gonna be a problem?” I asked. I didn’t have time for a pissing match. I knew it. He just annoyed me.

“Is it gonna be a…oh
man
,” another laugh, followed by his right hand sliding into his pocket. “Walk away, man, just walk away.”

I shook my head at him and his friends. I really didn’t have time, but then, I didn’t think they’d take much of my dwindling supply anyway. We locked eyes, me and the laughing fool. Then his hand whipped out of his pocket. The snap of a wrist and a knife blossomed there, in his fist. I grinned but didn’t make a move.

He took a swipe at me, which I dodged just by leaning back a bit. As I leaned, I brought both my arms up fast. I grabbed his knife arm at the wrist with my own right hand, pulling him in and yanking his arm across his body. My left hand came up, palm out, and smashed into his elbow, bending it the wrong way hard enough to pop it out of joint.

He howled in pain, dropping the knife even as his knees gave out from under him. I still stood there, shifting my gaze from him to his friends. “I’ll ask again. One of you know where to find anyone who works for the Government, maybe? Some, uhh, Badges?”

They looked at me blankly, like they weren’t sure what to do. No. Time. I pulled my gun and let it hang heavy in my hand, pointed at the ground. I didn’t speak, just let the menace of the gun say everything for me. I could see they wanted to try attacking, all at once, but were thinking better of it.

Turned out I didn’t need their help after all. Sirens rang out instead. Above me. I glanced up and saw the cruisers circling, ready to descend. I went up to them instead. The mini-gang watched me rise and ran in to grab their fallen leader.

“REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE.” I winced a bit at the volume but stopped my ascent and looked at the police cruisers. There were three of them, each one venting smoke as they hovered there, their lights flashing. At least they cut out the sirens. “RETURN TO THE GROUND,” they told me, at the same ear-splitting volume.

So I did. They followed. When they landed and got out of their vehicles I remained standing, holding my hands out, palms up, my gun securely in its holster. “I need to talk to someone in charge,” I told them.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll see a judge eventually,” one of the four cops said to me. Great, these guys seemed as helpful as the gang did. Still, I had to try.

“My name is Jonah Madison. I’m with the Gov. There’s a battle raging in your planetary vicinity. Invasion is imminent.
Let me speak to someone who can deal with this
.”

All that little rant got me was guns drawn. I kept my own holstered. Zip ties came out and the cops approached me, warily. “I think we got a nutter, here,” one of them said. They were, to me, just nameless uniforms. I knew they had a job to do, but so did I. Mine would save their lives, theirs would help ensure they died. No choice.

I blinked to call up my HUD again and selected the tallest towers I could see. I knew there would be no way for these guys to keep up with me, so I took off as fast as I could manage, setting my personal field to a nice three feet. That’d be enough to keep me from hitting a building and also make sure no local flying wildlife made things too interesting for me.

Before I could firmly process it, I left the cops behind in a blur of motion. Not smart, though. I knew it to be a dumb move, even as buildings rushed by. Sirens sounded below me and I cut a hard turn, selecting buildings at random and trying to think. But I wound up just cursing myself out long and hard while I ran.

Ten seconds on a new planet and I’d managed to push for a fight and get on the wrong side of the local law. I wanted to think maybe I set a new record – that would at least have made me feel productive - but I knew that dumber had been done. By me.

More sirens sounded behind me. What they lacked in speed they tried to make up for with numbers. Great. Nowhere to run. So I went higher, shooting straight up. Clear of the buildings, squirting out from the overabundance of the city, I flipped over and pointed myself back at the street. Ten cruisers drove after me, climbing as best they could, sirens and flashers going. Gravity reclaimed me and I fell, letting myself go.

I tucked my arms against my side and dove straight as an arrow. The cops couldn’t react in time and I turned myself, like a spinning arrow, winding through their cruisers. Wind screamed past me and the ground promised me a deep kiss. I denied it, selecting a target at random and pushing off at the last second, my body flipping horizontal just inches above pavement.

Sirens squelched closer, and there was no need to look back and see that they were still giving chase. No need to check if they were being cautious or not as they followed, either. They were - nothing on this planet could turn like me, and they didn’t want to slam into anything. The chase stopped interesting me, however, once I realized what else I could see.

The gang members stood and watched, whooping with glee, unsure of who to root for but screaming their damn fool heads off regardless. No officials tried to stop them, fine they were busy with me, but the thing of it was that the gang members didn’t seem to have given running a thought, not seriously. They didn’t care if the cops hung around. No fear, no flinching, these gang kids looked immune.

Admittedly, they could’ve just been too dumb to think, but their posture suggested different to me. And that told me who really sat in charge around these parts. Oh, hooray. Still, you go where the power sits if you want to get things done.

Flying low to the ground, still able to reach out and trail a hand along pavement if I wished, a plan blossomed in my mind’s eye. A tight loop brought me back along the other way. Right back at the cops. More importantly, right back at the gang members who still watched, ducking as cop cruisers flew close over them. Their hair caught in the wind and wash from the cruisers, and the gang kids closed their eyes and laughed. They loved watching this.

As I went by them, I dropped my field for a second and grabbed the guy who’d been about to try and start a fight. Hooked him around his waist and started to climb. He loved watching this all - I wondered if he’d love being in the thick of it. His screams told me he did not. I bit back a laugh and poured on the speed for real, extending my personal field to ten feet. Too close to a building and the field forced a turn. We pinballed through the city at uncomfortable speeds.

“Stop screaming,” I told my new best friend as I gripped him tighter. “You won’t die unless I screw up, and I won’t screw up if you stop screaming in my damn ear.”

He managed to clamp his mouth closed. Good boy. We kept moving, the city a blur. I doubled back, flew around a few different blocks, and otherwise tried to make sure we couldn’t be followed. Somewhere about two minutes into it, he threw up. Luckily he was still facing down when he did. The last thing I needed was this kid’s vomit on my thinsuit.

“You’re gonna have to do me a favor, kid,” I told him. “I need to speak to the grand poobah, all right? Whoever signs your checks. You lead me to him and this joyride stops.”

I looked at him, taking my eyes off our course and trusting my field to keep us alive without attention for a few. He shook with fear, and I saw he really was just a kid. A kid shaking with raw terror. I could’ve felt bad for him, if he hadn’t threatened me for asking a question earlier.

I gave him a hard rattle. “Come on, we don’t have all damn day. Where am I going?”

“Man,” he said weakly, “I don’t even know where we are.” Well, that posed a problem. I didn’t want to slow down enough for him to get his bearings yet, and I didn’t want to climb high enough for us to be easily seen by the cops, either. Well, maybe if I pulled off another climb and dive it would be all right.

I climbed again, pushing against the planet hard. The kid screamed, probably because he thought I was going to drop him, and didn’t stop until I rattled him again. We stopped once, high enough for a pretty view. As pretty as I bet things got around here, smoke and buildings and a general dank air about the entire city.

“Now, find a landmark and get your bearings. We’re going down, and fast, in about ten seconds,” I said. “Once we get back to street level you need to give me directions, good ones and fast ones, or,” I jangled him, “I’ll have no need for you. Got it?”

His body went stiff as a board, except for his head, which nodded like it sat attached to a spring. He got it. Good.

I turned off all connecting fields and let us drop with the force of gravity, turning myself and clutching him hard to my side. My arm ached. He was heavy. No, he wasn’t all that heavy, I was just old. You never think about how hard it can be to carry another human under one arm for an extended period of time until you have no option to drop them. Used to be no problem, I could lug guys like him around all day. Now my shoulder ached with the force of history and injury.

“Where are we going, kid?” I asked as I stopped us once more, only a few inches above the ground. “Come on!”

“L-left,” he said, and threw up again. Kids. But I listened and moved as quick as possible. Slower than I wanted, but he needed time to tell me my next turn. Not used to high-speed maneuvers, this one.

I doubled back a few times, looping whole blocks, warning him before I did so he wouldn’t lose his bearing again and force us to start over. He got better as we went, I admit, and pretty soon he started threatening me again.

“Why you wanna go and find the Boss, man?” he asked. “He just gonna kill you, like I shoulda done,” he said, adding, “left, then the first right.”

“Don’t make me give in and drop you.”

“Ha! You can’t, can you? Then you’ll never find the Boss! You need me, old man.” He laughed again and sighed. He was right, of course, but that didn’t do anything other than make me want to drop him more. But no, I hung on, arm burning with the stress of it, and kept flying. I picked up a bit more speed with every other turn, letting him get used to it.

Soon enough, and yet after what felt like years, he told me to pull up short - we were there. I stopped and set us down on the ground, feet first. “If you’re lying…”

“Why would I lie? You wanted in, you’ll get in. I want to see you die. This will be where you die. Get it?”

“Oh yeah, I get it,” I said. I didn’t bother to keep the contempt and boredom out of my voice. I worked my shoulder, carefully so he couldn’t see, trying to ease the pain some. No use in letting him know I hurt. “Then again,” I said, moving behind him and drawing my weapon, “I have a fast trigger on this. So let’s just go, all right?”

I let him lead the way, keeping far enough back that he couldn’t grab or slam into me quickly. Their security was - as expected, frankly - sad and small. But he treated it huge, which told me all sorts of things. The prospects for how great their leader was shrank by the second. Also, as a nagging voice in my head wouldn’t stop reminding me: I had no time. None. A fleet grew closer to the planet by the second and once they got here, nothing else would matter. We’d all be dead equally, and Shae would be alone, wherever she was.

We walked past guards who didn’t know any better than to laugh at the situation their friend had got himself into, happy to leave him being frog marched by me. So secure that nothing would ever take them on and win, they only took care to mock their friend being held hostage by an outsider. These guys seemed to be idiots. The fact that they were also the idiots in charge didn’t escape me. Something was keeping this place down and until I took that out, I couldn’t save the people.

Carefully and silently, I switched my gun to the lowest possible setting. Not often I did that, but I didn’t want to kill anyone and if my guess was right, a good hard stun from this baby would do as well as death for my purposes.

“All right, old man, we’re here,” my Sherpa told me. He shoved open a thick metal door and entered a room that, at best, could be described as
less
squalid. They’d done it up like what they imagined a throne room to be. Dank, greasy rugs hung along the walls and flickering lights set into long poles cast shadows around the room. A few guys stood around giving the air of being guards, but I could tell they had no formation and no training. They looked as though they had rushed to their places when the door started to open, not that they had been standing guard all day.