Wanderer's Escape (6 page)

A while turned out to be a little over ten minutes.  The door hissed open to admit Sal and Robby, with Ali trailing behind carrying a mug.

“Jess.  How are things?” asked Sal smiling awkwardly.

“
Fine.  It's slow going but the Wanderer is replenishing its supplies.  We're in a better state than before already.”

“
Good.  Good.  Umm... it's been a really traumatic time for Robby.  And for me.  And, um, well... we thought we might go have a lie down.  Get some rest.  You know.  Everyone else is settling down and... well...” she trailed off.

“
You want some T.O.B. time?” asked Jess.

Sal flushed, then smiled gratefully at him.  T.O.B. was a prisoners term.  Privacy was near non-existent for them.  Men, women and children were all mixed together.  People still got together, the little privacy they could have came from T.O.B. time.  Turn Our Backs.  Jess knew the term, knew what it meant.  From the occasional stolen glance had a fair idea of the mechanics involved too.
”

“
Yes.  Exactly.  Please.”

“
No problem.”

Sal and Robby disappeared back towards the living quarters, leaving Jess alone with Ali.

“T.O.B. time?” she asked, walking forwards and leaning against the display board, uncomfortably close to Jess.

“
It's, well, it's hard to explain.” he spluttered, feeling his face turn bright red.

“
Oh.” she replied with a twinkle in her eye.  Thankfully she didn't push it.  “I brought you a drink.  A hot chocolate.  Sal said it was your favourite.”

“
Thanks.  It is.”

Jess took the drink, struggling to think of something, anything to say.  Ali made him feel uncomfortable, clumsy, tongue-tied... but he wanted her to stay.  Thankfully she showed no signs of wanting to leave, just leant there smiling down at him as he sipped his way through the chocolate.  It seemed to calm him down, he felt less nervous, more relaxed in her presence.  As he finished it he found his voice again. 

“You really are beautiful.”  He was shocked to realise he'd spoken aloud.

“
Kiss me,” she said, leaning forwards. So he did.

Chapter Five

Jess slouched happily in the pilot's chair, right leg thrown over the arm rest, foot kicking forwards and backwards.  He glanced back towards the seat behind where Ali sat.  She smiled lovingly at him and he felt sure his chest was going to explode.  He half wondered if he was dreaming.  In less than two days he'd gone from a prisoner with no hope to captain of the most advanced ship he'd ever heard of, then met the girl of his dreams and fallen in love with her.  Amazingly she had fallen for him too.  He was even starting to consider asking her Ali to come back to his cabin later.  He had a strong feeling she had similar ideas.  Now she leant forward, started to rub his shoulders, massage them.  It felt wonderful, relaxing and tingling at the same time.  He surrendered to the feeling.

A spike of alarm shot through his mind, jerking him back to full awareness.  Then another.  The scanners picked out two ships, the imperial frigates.  They must have arrived at their destination then when the Corvette failed to follow in a reasonable time returned to investigate.  He'd planned to be gone long before they returned.  The Wanderer had finished collecting all the debris hours ago.  Why were they still here?  Where had that time gone?

“What is it? What's that alert for?”  Ali's voice in his ear made his pulse pound.

“
The imperial frigates, they're back.  We need to leave.”

“
Go.  Get us out of here.” She rapped it out almost as a command.  Then continued in a soft tone.  “Keep me safe Jess.  Please.”

Of course.  How could he do anything else?  Jess reached for the ship's mind, felt the world around him slow.  Strangely his thoughts felt clearer too.  The ships were close, too close.  He threw the Wanderer into a tight turn, acceleration pushing throughout the ship, blasted the thrusters up to full power and shot between the two frigates.  Weapons on both gigantic ships swung to bear, but held off firing.  A miss and at this range and they'd be smashing through each others shields.  Neither captain had expected this move.  Of course for most ships it would only buy some time, they  would either have to make a run for it or be boarded.  Even making it to jump space would only delay the inevitable.  The Wanderer wasn't most ships.  Before they reached clear space again he stretched out, yanking the ship into jump space despite the masses of the two imperial ships to either side.  He'd chosen a path straight towards a blazing blue star, but kicked off onto a new heading almost immediately.  Let them follow that course, see where it got them.

The sharp manoeuvring he'd had the ship pull off worried him, someone could have gotten hurt.  He checked on Matt first.  He was fine, not awake yet but the procedure had completed.  The webbing was gone and he seemed to be sleeping well.

Jess paused.  How was that possible?  The last time he'd checked the procedure had only been a couple of hours in.  That must have been ten or twelve hours ago for Matt to now be sleeping off the operation.  And he hadn't checked on Matt in all that time?  Just what was going on.

He flicked his awareness to the main living quarters, worried that the baby might have been hurt.  She was fine, but what he saw chilled him.  Robby and the other two men sat at the table, their guns and ammunition in front of them together with several large kitchen knives.  He checked the ship protocols, weapon suppression had been turned off.  By him.  Why didn't he remember doing that?  Worse than that, every one of the passengers had been granted full access to the bridge, full control over the airlock.  Once again he had granted the access.  Something was terribly wrong.  Then it hit him.  Sal!  Where was Sal.

He flicked his attention to her quarters, knowing it might be a terrible invasion of privacy but even more scared of not finding her.  His relief at finding her was short-lived.  She lay sprawled awkwardly across her bed, still dressed.  Her eyes were open but unfocused.  Drugged.  She lay with a big, stupid looking grin on her face.  At least she was safe for the moment.  Her door was already closed, Jess locked it.  Revoked all access to the refugees.  Reactivated the weapons suppression.  Anyone attempting to fire a gun was going to get a nasty shock.

Then with trepidation he flicked his attention back to the bridge, not into his own body but using the ships sensors.  As he'd feared his eyes were wide, a stupid smile was plastered across his face.  He too was drugged.  But then, how was he thinking clearly now?

The answer came from the ship, nudging into his thoughts.  His brain was being accelerated many times over, supported by the new implants in his head.  The electrical activity in his brain could be stimulated and simulated to reach those speeds, the glandular, chemical based thinking couldn't.  The implants simulated that as best they could, but only within certain limits.  They wouldn't replicate the effects of the drug.  That meant if he dropped back to normal thought he'd be lost again.  Now that Sal was safe he needed to straighten himself out.  He had the ship run an analysis of his blood and brain chemistry, a task made much easier by his implants ability to take direct samples.  It quickly identified a number of substances that hadn't been present earlier, when the implants had been growing.  One, refined cocoa, was quickly discarded.  It came from the hot chocolate, was perfectly natural.  Seven others were present.  Three were confirmed as mild hallucinogenics, another had uses as a truth serum.  The remaining three were unknown.  The ship was still able to guide his implants to release counter agents.  Over the next few seconds in real time, what felt like long minutes to Jess in his accelerated state, he watched his body start to return to normal.  The dilated pupils returned to the merely slack, distracted look they had when he was linked with the ship.  The levels of the chemicals dropped away to zero and his implants kept pumping out counter agents in case of a renewed attack.  Finally he let his connection to the ship recede, dropped back into his own body.

“Holy shit!” he groaned, doubling over and holding his head.  While a prisoner he'd drunk moonshine a few times, had suffered the crippling hangovers it brought.  This was worse, far worse.  He groaned again, then felt cool fingers on the back of his neck.

“
What's wrong my darling?” asked Ali, concerned.  “What is it?  And what happened?  We were rushing between those two ships and then we were in jump space.  That's just not possible.”

Jess just groaned again, though his headache was receding a little.  His implants had started releasing painkillers, and other chemicals to sweep up the unpleasant residue of the drugs in his system.

“Darling, what is it?” asked Ali again.

Her fingers rubbed his neck, then she leant forward and kissed the back of his neck, leaned round and kissed his cheek.  Turned his head to kiss his lips.

Everywhere she touched with her lips smarted, almost burnt, as the counter agents kicked in.  Jess pulled away from her, pushed her back with a hand as she tried to lean after him.

“
Lipstick?  Nice touch.  I guess you must take a counter agent, so it doesn't affect you.”

“
What?  I don't know what you mean.”  She flashed him a huge smile, eyes staring into his.  Despite everything his heart skipped a beat.  She really was beautiful.

“
My darling, I really don't know what you mean?” she said leaning in closer again.  For the first time he looked at her properly, saw that her pupils were dilated.  Realised that she too was suffering the effects of whatever compounds had been fed to him.  Now he was able to think more clearly it made sense, explained her manic rush to hug him when first coming aboard and why she'd spent so much time with him.

“
Wait here for a moment, please.” he said, forcing a smile he didn't feel at all.

“
Of course my love.”  She sat back, face beaming with a loving smile. 

It made him feel sick, knowing it wasn't real, knowing it was forced on her.  He quickly left the cabin, closing the door behind him and locking it.  She couldn't do any harm and he didn't want the distraction of having her around while he faced the others.

Robby saw him first.  “What are you doing here?  Where's Ali?” he demanded.

“
She's safely on the bridge.  She can stay there until we've flushed whatever chemicals you've been dosing us with out of her.  I'm taking back control of the ship.  Put down the guns now.”

“
I don't think so!”

Robby stood, aiming and firing his pistol in one smooth movement.  The sound of the gun firing was incredibly loud in the enclosed space.  Almost as loud was the scream Robby let out, as he dropped the half melted remains of the gun, the palm of his hand blistered red from the heat.

“Consider yourself lucky.” Jess told him.  “I set the fields to keep your hand safe.  I could as easily have let the gun take your arm off when it exploded.”

He didn't know if that was true.  It felt like time to stretch the truth a little.  The other two men stood, grabbing long knives from the table.  Jess raised an energy barrier with a wave of his arm, sealing them off from the rest of the room, and from the table full of guns.  He made sure the barrier had a slightly red tinge so they were well aware it was in place.  After hammering ineffectively against the barrier a few times they stood still, sullenly glaring at Jess.  He glanced around the room the two trapped men to Robby nursing his hand and on to the woman and two children.

“I won't waste my time asking why.  We rescued you from certain death, gave you the run of the ship and would have found you somewhere safe to live.  We might even have let you stay on-board if you wanted.  You tried to enslave us.  You tried to kill me.  We will keep you fed, looked after.  And drop you at the nearest station with a decent sized population explaining exactly what you've done.”

“
What do you know?” spat the woman.  “You'd have dropped us off?  With no money, no belongings, nothing.  We'd have been beggars.  Charity cases.”

“
You'd have been alive.  Alive and free.  Trust me, those two things are priceless.  With those you can achieve anything.  And judging by the guns and the drugs you used on us you were hardly innocent travellers.”

Not wanting to hear any more from her he used the ships fields to push them all into an area near the airlock, well away from the weapons, and made the field soundproof.  With a heavy heart he made his way to Sal's room.  How was he going to explain this to her when she recovered?  And just what had happened to her whilst she had been drugged?

Chapter Six

Having already cured Jess the ship was able to generate a counter agent for Sal and Ali that quickly reversed the effects of the drugs.  Once Jess had revived Sal and explained the situation she was ready to flush the visitors out of the airlock.  After a few minutes arguing she agreed to Jess's plan to hand them over to the authorities somewhere.  There was still a dangerous glint in her eye though.  Jess added a confirmation subroutine to the outer airlock controls, to give him the chance to counter any orders to open them.  Just in case.