Wings of Retribution (36 page)

“You want to trade?” Rabbit said.  “I’ll sign the paperwork right—”

Angus snorted.  “Just get out.  She’s mine.  She owes me a couple years, at least.  I’ll send someone to come get you when I’m ready.  Until then, you try anything, I
will
shoot you down, Rabbit, and then you’ll be joining her.”  He grinned, and his golden teeth glinted.  “Figure there’s at least a few things you’re owing me for, as well.  Maybe seventy mil worth?  They tried to pin it on me at first, you know.  Spent a few months in jail while you hightailed it across the galaxy.”

“Gods be merciful, Angus, that was
millennia
ago.”

The big man reached up and tapped a bejeweled finger against his skull, his eyes filled with malice.  “Long memory, thanks to our friend.”  He smiled, settling his cup on the table in front of him so he could stretch out his silk-covered arms along the top of the couch back.  “Tell ya what, brother.  You figure out a way to make me forget, I’ll call it even.  Will forget we even had this discussion, and Marceau can keep on looking for you in all the wrong places.”

Rabbit scowled at Angus, visibly ruffled for the first time Stuart had seen him.  “Come on,” he said, bitterly, to Stuart.  “Let’s get out of here.”

Marceau is
looking
for him?
Stuart thought, stunned.  Since when could Marceau not find anyone he wanted, simply by snapping his fingers? 
How long has he been running?
Stuart wondered. 
Rabbit had said millennia…
  Realizing that, Stuart gained a whole new respect for the wiry little criminal.

Angus clapped his hands together.  “Well, now that that’s settled, get out.  I’ll still lend you a pilot if you want, but only for old-time’s sake.  This is one too many times you’ve stabbed me in the back, Rabbit.  Like I said, I don’t forget.  Next time you set foot on Erriat without invitation, you’re staying here until I get a shuttle from Millennium.”

The three men came back with glum looks on their faces.

“So how’d it go?” Dallas asked cheerfully, tossing the rag aside and once more taking up the controls.  She hadn’t had so much fun in the air in ages.  She’d even managed to clean up most of the vomit in their absence, leaving the cockpit smelling like green apples.

“It went bad.”  Rabbit slumped into the chair beside her.  “Really bad.  He was waiting for us.”

“Knew about Stuart, too,” Tommy muttered.

Dallas glanced at the former colonel, a bit shocked.  It was the first time he had used Stuart’s name that she could remember.  Turning back to the others, she asked, “What about me?  He know I was fakin’ it?”

“Probably the only thing he
didn’t
know,” Rabbit muttered. 

“Rabbit throwing up in the airlock prolly had something to do with that,” Stuart said.  “He offered to give us a better pilot for the ride back.”

Rabbit sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.  “Now we’ve gotta wonder if all that stuff he said about Athenais being in Orplex was a lie.”

“Even if she is there, we’ve got no chance of getting her out without a free pass through the gates,” Darley said.  “The place is a fortress.”

“What bugs me is how he could have known about Stuart,” Rabbit said.  “He said Athenais told him, but only Stuart and I knew about Stuart until we launched.  Pete knew, but Governor Black killed him when he destroyed
Beetle.”

“Maybe Pete told Athenais,” Dallas suggested.  “They spent a lot of time together at the commands.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Rabbit said.  “She treated Stuart same as always when she came to visit The Shop.  Shook his hand, even.”

“So?” Dallas asked.

Both Rabbit and the colonel frowned at her.  “They
shock
you through the hands,” Tommy reminded her.

“No,” Dallas said sweetly, “He only shocked
you
through the hands.  And you deserved it.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes.  He looked like he wanted to say more, but, muttering, turned to his controls.  “Doesn’t really matter,” Thomas said.  “That rich prick told us to leave, and he’ll have every ship within range watching us to make sure we leave.  We’re not rescuing anybody today.”  He started plotting out the course back home.

Rabbit’s cleared the colonel’s screen, stopping him.  “Dallas, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but it’s gonna be your show from here on in.”  When he turned to Dallas, there was soberness in his eyes.  “The rest of us are going planetside, else we’ll be too sick to move.”

Dallas squinted at Rabbit.  “What exactly do you want me to do?”

“I paid top dollar for the finest gunship I could get my hands on,” Rabbit said.  “It’s faster than anything Angus’s got here, with more stopping power.  I want you to wipe out his fleet.”

The command room went silent.

“You’re…serious?”  Dallas peered at him, looking for the catch.  Her heart was beginning to pound like a piston against her ribcage.

“Plan A was to sneak in, rescue her, and sneak out.  This is Plan B.”

“Is there a plan C?” Howlen demanded.  “This runt clearly isn’t capable of—”

“This is the plan,” Rabbit said, his eyes on Dallas.  “Think you can handle that?”

“So if she doesn’t wipe out the whole Planetary Guard, Athenais, you, me, and everybody else is stuck on Erriat?” Howlen snapped.

“Correct.”

Colonel Howlen stared at Rabbit, looking completely at a loss for words.  Finally, he managed, “You’ve gone mad.”

“Probably,” Rabbit agreed.  “It was years ago, though.”  Rabbit pulled out his sunglasses and slipped them on with a smile.  “I’ve had time to adjust.”

“You are not paying me to die on Erriat!” Howlen snarled.

“Of course not,” Rabbit said.  “If I were, I would’ve paid you at least twice, and given you time to spend it before we left.”

Dallas thought it was almost comical the way the colonel looked like he was going to explode.  Very evenly, he said, “And what will the four of us be doing while our ‘
captain
’ is spinning cartwheels over our heads?”

“We’re going to infiltrate Orplex,” Rabbit said.  He went over to a depression in the wall and hit a button that Dallas hadn’t noticed.  Immediately, an alcove popped out, opening up into four racks of desert-colored weaponry.  Grabbing one seemingly at random, Rabbit hit the charger, filling the room with that unmistakable hum of energized death, and said, “Who here knows anything about guns?”

They stared at him.  Dallas found herself wondering why she hadn’t pushed that button yet, and what the rest of the buttons scattered all over the ship were hiding.  Then, considering the way Rabbit had pinned Rob’s hand to the table in the restaurant with the ease of someone spearing a steak, she decided she probably didn’t want to find out.

“Guns?” Howlen asked.  His outrage had faded a bit, replaced with what looked like interest.

“Or explosives.”  Rabbit shrugged.  “The cargo hold is filled with both.  I even packed some land-skimming ATVs because I didn’t feel like walking.  They’re each fitted with body armor and flesh-seeking machine guns, as well as cargo compartments with two laser rifles, two laser pistols, and an array of grenades and gas canisters.  Plus whatever you can take with you.”  He nodded at the shelves and grabbed another pistol to heft it.

Utter silence descended upon the cockpit as the crew stared at their benefactor.

At that moment, the com crackled. 
Rabbit, why hasn’t your ship lifted off yet?  Your pilot can’t find the controls?
  Broken from her stupor, Dallas hastily reached for the com.

“Ignore him,” Rabbit said.  To the others, he said, “Orplex is twenty miles from here as the crow flies.  I pre-calibrated the piloting systems on the ATVs.  All we need to do is sit back and shoot anyone who comes after us.  Dallas will be keeping the Home Guard busy overhead, so we won’t require our anti-aircraft missiles, but each ATV comes with two, just in case.  Your body-armor is straight from the Space Corps personal stock.  Don’t ask me how I got it.  Anyway, we will keep in radio contact at all times.  I had a private line installed on
Retribution
that the ATVs share.  Visibility’s gonna be shitty, but if one of us gets into trouble, the others will know about it.”

Rabbit looked at each of them in turn, stopping on Dallas.  “Any questions?”

Darley’s hand went up.

“Yes?”

“Do I get to keep the ATV when I’m done with it?”

“We’ll discuss that after you get it back to the ship in one piece,” Rabbit said.  “Any other questions?”

Darley’s hand went up again.  “Does this mean I get a bonus in addition to what you’re already paying me?”

“You get to shoot up Erriat.  That’s bonus enough.”

“I…guess.”

“No other questions?  Good.  Dallas, stall for time until we can get off the ship.”

At that, Rabbit turned and left the control room, the open rack of guns behind him.  The others cast each other nervous glances before each grabbing something dangerous-looking and following him, leaving Dallas alone.

Alone…and about to fly against the Erriat Home Guard.  How
cool
.  They’d never let her do anything like this in the Corps.  Even with her off-the-charts flight ratings from the Academy, she’d always been stuck with routine stuff like freight or patrols.  So
boring
.  There wasn’t an official rating of ‘stick-fairy’ in the Corps, so they’d given her jobs based solely on her rank, and none of her superiors had ever actually given her anything fun to do.  Well, until they had her fly against Athenais Owlbourne because she had an ASP, which had prematurely ended Dallas’s career.  She’d gone full-manual and had been
winning
and then they cheated.  Stupid Squirrel and her stupid hacking bullshit.  Totally unfair.  Dallas had made sure to get some good pictures for that one.

You listening, Rabbit?  I told you to get off my planet.

Dallas picked up the com set with fingers that were shaking from sheer adrenaline.  “Sorry, sir, but we’re having engine troubles.  The landing jarred loose an energy coil.  It’ll be awhile.”

Who the hell are you?

“I’m the pilot.”

The com set crackled with laughter. 
I should have known. 

“Should have known what, sir?”

Such a shoddy landing job could only have been done by a woman.  Tell Rabbit to take his time.  He’s gonna need all the luck he can get to get back to T-9 alive.

Dallas narrowed her eyes, but did not respond.  She waited long minutes, trying not to think about what was going to happen if she mis-corrected or accidentally took a bit too much of a corner, gripping the controls to keep her nerves under control.  As the minutes ticked into hours, she began to wonder how long it was going to take Rabbit to open up the cargo bay.  She was considering going down to the cargo bay to check when the com crackled again.