8


Neither of us stood around as I smoked my cigar. Images of Dreadmax coming apart filled my imagination. I vividly remembered Bug eating cheese crackers and encouraging me to stay ahead of Marley Callus and the other Union assholes as the prison station came apart.
“You do realize that getting Slipdriver and his people to safety is only the start of your problems?” X-37 asked. “I should also remind you to include an ignition source for your cigars in your kit.”
“Not super helpful, X,” I said, heading for the door. “Except for the part about bringing a lighter. That’s solid advice.”
Elise waved away the smoke from my stubby Gronic as we marched through the door, one rogue assassin and one escaped experiment from the Union. We headed for the shuttle bay as though we had ten minutes left to save the Bold Freedom rather than ten hours. For all I knew, it could be seconds. That was the way Reaper luck worked lately.
When we arrived, I saw Locke had a new volunteer. A Wallach woman stepped forward and presented her hand. “Name’s Carrie Decker. Specialist, 4th level.”
“Specialist of what?” I asked.
Elise interjected. “Rude.”
“We don’t have time for pleasantries,” I insisted, keeping my eyes on the newest member of my team.
She was middle-aged and fit. Her short-cropped hair was mostly blonde—okay, there was gray in it, a lot of gray—but I had no doubt she could do whatever a level four specialist did in the Wallach military.
Some steel color shot through her light blue eyes. I sensed a generally happy person who enjoyed hard work, protected those she cared about, and spoke her mind regardless of the consequences. By those standards, we should be natural allies, but I wasn’t sure which way our first encounter was going.
She studied me intensely. I doubted that she knew what a Reaper was, and whatever her assumptions of my character were, they were based on different information than anyone familiar with the Union.
“It’s fine,” Carrie said without submitting to my abruptness. “If the CSL trusts you, I trust you. But the chick is right. Your manners need work.”
I raised an eyebrow, wondering if this woman understood what kind of a mess she was getting into with a comment like that. It was a good time to remember the Wallach language wasn’t a flawless analog of my own dialect. “Perfect. What do you do? It might be important.”
“Specialist is a rank in the Wallach military. In my case, it means that I can get into small places to do dangerous jobs,” she said. “I’ve had advanced combat training, but it isn’t my normal assignment.”
“Welcome to the team,” I said. “Horvath, good to see you.”
The stocky man nodded.
He looked better than the last time I had seen him, but still not perfectly composed. The man was grimly resigned to the loss of his friend. It was obvious he was serious about preventing anyone else from meeting a similar fate as his friend Gunner.
“Locke, this shuttle is already ten minutes late. What are we waiting for?” I demanded.
“We are ready when you are,” Locke replied, his manner professional.
“Thanks,” I said, then exhaled my cigar smoke away from him and the others. “Carrie’s a specialist, 4th level, and you’re General Karn’s CSL. Are we using ranks now? Do you miss being called by your rank?”
“I’ll get plenty of that when I’m back with the rest of my people from Wallach,” Locke said.
Specialist 4th level Carrie Decker approached Elise and shook her hand firmly. “Good to meet you. Elise, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” Elise kept one hand back from the grip. It was one of the paranoid mannerisms that I suspected had helped her escape from many people in the past.
Carrie didn’t release her grip. “Why so skittish?”
“I’m a kid,” Elise answered, twisting her hand free with one of Path’s more basic grip-defense techniques.
“You’re not a kid,” Carrie said, appearing to be impressed by the subtle sparring match Elise had just won.
I interrupted. “We need to get Henshaw on board and set up before we can leave the Nightmare.”
“That’ll put us significantly behind schedule,” Locke said. He updated his mission log on a handheld device that he then stuck back into his gear. It wasn’t as slick as anything I recognized from the Union, but the technology seemed reliable.
Elise softened toward our new teammate, although she didn’t get too close. “You haven’t experienced enough Union bullshit to really appreciate what a bunch of ass-faces they are. After they’ve screwed you over a few times and killed people you care about, you’ll know why I don’t trust anyone.”
“I believe you, Elise,” Carrie assured the girl. “I probably remind you of them. All business.”
“Sure, whatever. I trust Horvath,” Elise said, pointing at him. “And for the record, it’s not really cool to call me a chick.”
“Stop antagonizing our new friends. Let’s use the next few minutes wisely. What am I missing?” I asked.
“You don’t have a lighter or a heat tab,” Elise said, not missing a beat.
“Balls,” I muttered.
“Piss poor planning leads to…” Elise started.
“I get it, kid,” I said, not even hoping anyone else had a lighter or a creative way to fire up a cigar. None of them looked like smokers. Open flame could be a safety hazard in spaceships. It was an act of purest optimism to hope one of my people would toss me one.
“We might as well load up and get ready,” Elise suggested. “When Henshaw arrives, you can deal with him. Maybe he has a lighter and whatever else you forgot, Reaper.”
“I didn’t forget anything else,” I insisted. “X, help me out.”
“You failed to make me aware of what you intended to carry on this mission. Therefore, I can’t tell you what is or isn’t missing from your kit.”
“I’m dying here,” I groaned. “You people are killing me. I’m dead.”
“I’m not sure my grasp of their language is as good as I assumed,” Carrie said to Locke. “Is that sarcasm or part of a ritual phrase?”
“Just ignore the nonsense,” he advised. “And most of the profanity.”
“When you say it that way, it sounds ugly.” I moved to the landing area to await the arrival of the Lady Bird. I knew the yacht would fit. It had been parked here for a time after Nebs captured it.
The ocular engineer and former Union scientist wasn’t my favorite person. However, he was a brilliant scientist, difficult, and the only person who could keep Necron in check.
“Are you sure you trust Henshaw?” X-37 addressed me privately.
“There isn’t a choice,” I said. “We’ve been back-and-forth on this point, but I think he’s on our side now. If nothing else, Nebs is pissed off enough at him that he’s safer with us.”
“That wasn’t my exact analysis, but it is similar,” X-37 said.
“Have you heard from Jelly?” I asked.
“I have, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said. “She advises me that she will maintain her stealth cloak until we are ready to land our shuttle from the Nightmare in cargo bay four. It’s the only space left after converting other available space for hauling fuel. She also says it will be good to have you on the ship and she looks forward to offloading her cargo and saving your friends from prison.”
“She has jokes now?” I asked. “My friends from prison? Really? Maybe she means the innocent political prisoners we liberated from the Union?”
“Whatever you say, Reaper Cain,” X-37 responded. “There were no humor algorithms activated during Jelly’s communication. My analysis suggests she was only providing you information and reassurance.”
“In that case, I love it when a plan comes together,” I said.
“It would be inaccurate to say that we have even started to execute the plan,” X-37 said. “It may reassure you, however, that this mission is less likely to fail than seventy-three percent of the schemes you’ve hatched since leaving the Bluesphere Maximum Security Prison.”
“I’m so glad you’re back, X. What would I do without some voice in my head constantly busting my balls,” I mock complained.
Time dragged, grating on my nerves. The enormous distances we had to deal with in space made everything take forever until we got close—then it would all go sideways.
I longed to light up another cigar but didn’t think borrowing a cutting torch from one of the landing bay emergency lockers would put my team at ease.
It was a pretty freaking good idea, though. Nothing wrong with filing it for later.
The Lady Faith drifted perfectly into the landing bay and set down. The wait for Henshaw to exit was another fingernail-biting thirty seconds, not that I had ever chewed my nails. That was for losers who thought they were going to be able to quit smoking.
I’m not a quitter.
Henshaw eventually sauntered down the ramp, oblivious of our impatience. He was a scientist, not a special operations soldier on a mission. What was the man trying to prove?
“This guy,” I muttered.
He didn’t notice, and if he did, he ignored my impatience.
I couldn’t expect him to understand the urgency of our rapidly dwindling time window.
He stopped at the bottom of the ramp, brushing his gray hair back with a stylish flip. I didn’t think he was trying to remind me that he had two cybernetic eyes—but maybe he was. A casual observer who wasn’t looking closely might not see them until Henshaw came closer, but I noticed the differences immediately.
The coloring of his eyes was more uniform than a regular eye, as though the differences between the pupils and the sclera had been an afterthought. From time to time, a thin line of light circumvented his pupils in opposite directions.
I’d seen him dress in all manner of civilian clothing, including his most common style, which Elise called casual chic.
Today, he wore a perfectly tailored jumpsuit that somehow didn’t look like a jumpsuit. The fabric was better quality than anything I’d ever seen on a military vessel. The lines complemented his not terribly athletic physique. He was lean because he forgot to eat, not because he exercised or managed his nutritional intake.
“Did X brief the Lady Faith on what we need?” I asked.
“We’ve been discussing the issue,” Henshaw said. “I’ve actually been working on this exact problem for quite some time. As soon as I was certain we were going to come into conflict with Nebs, I began to work up countermeasures to deal with his artificial intelligence. The other two ships, interestingly, will have stronger AIs than his own flagship. The man doesn’t trust anyone or anything and has an ego that even you can’t match.”
I put both hands to my chest in mock surprise. “Me? An ego? You wound me.”
He shrugged without laughing. “Forgive me for my imprecision. You don’t so much display an attitude as you display a really bad attitude. There’s a difference.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “How long do you need me to remain on the Nightmare for you to get started working against Necron?”
“I need very little from you, Reaper,” Henshaw said, reverting to what Elise called me. More and more often, I was just called Reaper—except for X-37 and other AI types. Even Tom slipped from time to time.
“Good,” I said. “It’d be a nice change not to be needed everywhere at once.”
Elise crossed her arms. My other companions seemed offended.
“What?” I demanded.
“It’s not all about you,” Elise said.
“Might be,” I fired back. We’d had this discussion more than a few times and I knew how to push her buttons.
In fact, there weren’t many people I couldn’t piss off in less time than it took me to light up a cigar—assuming I could locate a heating element or an old-fashioned lighter.
I was difficult that way.
“I will remain on the Lady Faith and hack into the Nightmare’s systems from there,” Henshaw said, unaffected by my attitude or Elise’s attempts to correct it. “We might need to leave abruptly if things go wrong.”
“See that they don’t,” I instructed with all the diplomatic finesse of a flight line boss. “Elise, Decker, Horvath—let’s go.”
Before long, we were in the shuttle making final equipment checks.
* * *
Specialist Carrie Decker steered the shuttle with smooth professionalism. She reminded me of a commercial pilot, bored with something she had done hundreds or thousands of times. We headed toward the Jellybird, a short distance away.
“You fly well,” I told her.
“I’ve always been a pilot, regardless of my specialization level,” she said. “Have you always been some sort of intergalactic do-gooder?”
Elise let out an explosive laugh. I was able to restrain my own mirth, but barely.
“What’s so funny?” Carrie asked.
“No one has ever accused me of being a do-gooder,” I explained.
“That doesn’t make much sense, judging from the work you did for us on Wallach. I wasn’t able to talk to anybody who went down after the beast in the power plant, but I heard stories,” she said.
“I’m good at killing things. The problem is, I worked for some bad people before I decided to break free,” I said.
“Well, that’s lucky for us, I suppose,” she said. “Will we be docking with your ship or is there a landing bay? Can you ask them to drop the stealth shield or guide us in?”
“X, can you work on that?” I asked.
“Jelly is taking control of the shuttle,” X-37 said. “She asked me to relay to our pilot that she apologizes for any inconvenience.”
Carrie pulled her hands back from the controls, surprised. “That wasn’t fun. Remote control of a ship is illegal on Wallach. Definitely a new experience for me.”
“Jelly wishes me to convey that she respects the policy of your people, but also says controlling remotely is sometimes necessary and can be done safely,” X-37 explained over the public communications speaker.
“I’ll survive,” Carrie said. “If that’s the biggest inconvenience we face during this trip, I’ll be delightable.”
“Delightable?” Elise asked.
Carrie furrowed her brow. “Happy? Is that the same word?”
“Close enough,” I said.
We waited as Jelly landed the shuttle then instructed us to wait for environmental controls to stabilize.
When it was safe, Elise, Locke, and I hurried toward the bridge of the Jellybird. Tom greeted us with a mixture of hugs and salutes.
The others were guided by the ship’s AI to their proper stations for the rest of the mission. Carrie and Horvath had key jobs, boring but very important in the transfer of fuel.
There wasn’t much time to reacquaint ourselves with the Jellybird, but the bridge felt like home. I smiled as I sat down in the pilot seat.
“Welcome back, Reaper Cain,” Jelly greeted. “I spoke with Lady. She is confident that with her and Henshaw aboard the Nightmare, they can keep the vindictive counterattacks of Necron to a very survivable minimum.”
“Thanks, Jelly. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about that scenario going badly.” Images of the stolen stealth carrier violently decompressing refused to leave my overactive imagination.
Elise was worried about the same thing. I saw it in her posture—the way she held her spine a little too straight. We had already lost Gunner during our attack on the AI’s first signal relay. Despite X-37’s constant assurances that the artificial intelligence of the stealth carrier was less robust than it should be, I respected the awesome power of any ship AI, especially one designed to run a capital warship of the union.
“Let’s get this fuel transfer done,” I said.
Jelly answered without hesitation. “Of course, Captain.”
“Are you ready, Tom?” I asked.
“Everything is set up, but I think you should be the one to run the controls. Your fine motor control is far superior to any of ours, with the only exception possibly being Elise.”
“Thanks, Tom,” she said. “It’s nice to be compared to a has-been cyborg assassin.”
“Watch it, kid,” I said. “If these remote controls are Union standard, they can be used by more than one person. Elise, let’s take adjoining workstations and team steer this one.”
“Okay, Reaper. You and me,” Elise agreed, already focusing on the job we had to do. The speed at which she could focus on a problem was almost disturbing.
I took some time to familiarize myself with the controls, as did Elise. I would run the robot arm, and she would shadow me, calling out mistakes or stepping in when I became fatigued.
“Tom, take a seat,” I said. “You’re making me nervous.”
He wasn’t, but I didn’t want my friend to feel obligated to stand. Nervousness was a rare trait for any Reaper and I was confident Elise and I were going to own this fuel transfer.
Tom assumed the captain’s chair and interfaced with the Jellybird.
“Jelly, let’s do it,” Tom said.
“We are closing the final distance now,” Jelly advised.
The space between our ships was small, but the trip seemed like it took hours. We monitored our holo displays and made small adjustments, ready with the robot to connect our storage bay to the refueling arm of the Bold Freedom.
“This thing is a piece of junk.” Elise wrinkled her nose in annoyance, watching as we passed one mismatched section after another.
“That tends to happen when you build something out of stolen spare parts,” I pointed out, barely speaking the words loud enough to hear.
“I remember how serious the ship engineers were on Dreadmax. They were always trying things out, making one part do ten jobs,” Elise said, eyes still on her work. “Feels like a hundred years ago.”
“I wonder how Path is doing with the prisoners,” I muttered without thinking about it. Guiding the refueling arm was intense work, but it left part of my mind to wander.
“I imagine they’ll be bowing and practicing self-defense drills in no time,” Tom said.
“Proximity warning, Captain,” Jelly warned.
I aimed the robotic arm and the fuel tube the last few centimeters, feeling like it was approaching way too fast. When it thunked into place and the locking mechanisms grabbed hold, I breathed a sigh of relief. Elise and the others did the same.
“The ship is stabilized against the side of the Bold Freedom,” Jelly said. “Now it’s just a matter of time to transfer the fuel.”
“Is there anything else we should be doing?” I asked.
“Without all the proper safety redundant back-ups in place, we really should have an EVA crew out there to make sure nothing breaks free,” Jelly said.
Jelly’s suggestion made sense. That didn’t mean anyone liked it. I could tell that Elise was bracing herself for another mission. She did well on the last one but would never love them. My fear of heights was worse than my fear of the void, despite how sometimes they felt very similar in the way of anxiety-producing disasters waiting to happen. I didn’t want to ask Locke or Horvath either, but Locke was listening in on the conversation.
“I’ll go,” Locke offered.
Specialist Carrie Decker’s voice came on the line. “I’m the highest rated EVA technician you have right now. I’ll go. I can probably do it by myself.”
“Negative,” Locke said.
Horvath came on the line. “I’ll go with Decker.” His voice was full of determination.
There was a moment of silence.
Locke cursed uncharacteristically, and when he spoke loud enough to be heard, his words were rough. “Are you sure, Horvath? I need you at your best.”
“But we will,” Horvath said. “I know what Gunner would do in this situation.”
“He’d tell you to stay inside before you hurt someone,” Decker said.
Horvath grunted a short laugh. “Yeah, he most assuredly would say that. But I need to do this or I’ll never be able to go on another EVA mission again.”
“Very well,” Locke said. “Meet at the airlock and advise when you’re ready. I’ll monitor your progress from here.”
Elise and I exchanged a look.
“I bet you’re glad they’re going instead of us,” Elise whispered.
“I’m an assassin, not a liar, “ I said, making Elise chuckle.
Elise winked. “At least you’ll admit it. I’d rather get in a gun battle with Archangels than go out there again.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Before long, we were watching Horvath and Carrie Decker take positions. They connected several safety mechanisms manually and adjusted connection points we hadn’t been able to reach with the robot arm. Before long, even I felt more secure about the refueling operation.
I faced Locke. “Your soldiers are top notch.”
Locke raised his chin. “Thanks, Reaper.”
“We have an update from Henshaw and Lady,” X-37 advised me.
“Great. Any progress?” I asked.
“Not precisely, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said. “It seems that Necron is no longer attempting to quarantine our presence on the ship.”
“What’s the punchline, X?”
“The Nightmare’s AI wishes to destroy us completely. I have been particularly marked for annihilation,” my LAI explained.
“How do you feel about that, X?” I asked.
“I feel nothing,” X-37 replied.
“Dishonesty detected,” I shot back.
“That’s my line,” X-37 said.
If I didn’t know better, I would have almost thought my digital friend was pleased by the banter.
We continued to monitor the refueling of the Bold Freedom and communicate with Captain Slipdriver. Each time he opened the channel, I heard his excited crew in the background. Some of them had probably started to doubt they would ever escape the comet, but now it was happening.