Wings of Retribution (10 page)

Dallas was so stunned by this revelation that the memory hit her like a wrecking ball.  She jerked, remembering overhearing the captain’s conversation with Ragnar.

“Yeah,” Goat said, mistaking her reaction, “Was hard on me, too.  Hard on everybody.  Squirrel ‘n Dune don’t want it no more, neither, not after hearin that.”

“What about Smallfoot?”  Dallas asked.

“Same, I guess.  Kept to ‘imself all day.  He’s still cranky from when Capt’in woke ‘im to patch her up after ‘nother fight with Ragnar.”

“I’ll bet,” Dallas said.  “He was lookin forward to the day off.”  She grimaced.  “Thanks.  Tell the captain I’ll take over in a few hours.”

“Yeah,” Goat said, standing.  “Seeya then.”  At that, he left her chamber, his heavy, booted steps reverberating down the hall as he went.

Dallas got up a couple hours later and stumbled to the helm.  The command room was quiet, with only Ragnar and Athenais at their posts.  Ragnar gave Dallas a passing glance as she walked in, but Athenais swung around to face her.

“So,” the Captain said, “Finally up?”

Dallas swallowed and nodded.

“I’ve deducted two days’ worth of pay from your salary,” Athenais said.  “While you were puking and feeling sorry for yourself, I was having to do your job and mine.”

Dallas refrained from saying that Athenais’s job seemed to be nothing more than walking around and cursing at people and instead tried to put on her best ‘subdued and sorry’ look.  It wasn’t difficult.  She didn’t think she could handle eating again, ever, and she was seeing two Captains where there should have been one.

“So,” the two Athenaises continued, “You’re feeling up to this?  You won’t smash us into any debris-belts if my First Mate and I go off and take a nap?”

“I’m feeling fine,” Dallas lied.  The old broad certainly didn’t need to know about her body-double.  And besides, Dallas always felt good enough to drive.  Driving was easy.  It was standing that was killing her.

Athenais got up and gave Dallas her seat.  She hovered nearby as Dallas went through the routine of checking gauges and engine output.  When Dallas looked up, the Captain was giving her a hard look.  “Still hungover?  Still
drunk
?  You need more time?”  The look in Athenais’s eyes added,
And another day’s worth of pay?

“I learned my lesson, Captain,” Dallas said, as meekly as she could manage.

Athenais snorted.  “You feel like vomiting, you come get me.  I don’t want you ruining my floor.  I worked hard to steal that floor.”

“Yes, Captain,” Dallas said, in that submissive whine she had learned from fifteen years of kowtowing to Utopian admirals.  “I won’t vomit on your Biamachis, Captain.”

“You do, you’ll be licking it up.”  Athenais gestured brusquely at Ragnar, then turned on heel and strode from the command room.

Pompous bitch,
Dallas thought, as the First Mate got up and followed the Captain out. 
She doesn’t
deserve
Biamachis. 
For the thousandth time, Dallas considered the varied and tantalizing ways the rugs could disappear or spontaneously combust while the Captain was sleeping.  Not for the first time, Dallas decided she didn’t want to end up space debris.  Instead, once she was sure Athenais was gone, she ducked down, snagged a thread from underneath Ragnar’s chair with her pen, and pulled it free of the rug.  Glancing over her shoulder, she added it to the cluster of such snagged and torn threads that had slowly been building under the captain’s console over the last two years.  Dallas took a warm-and-fuzzy moment to gaze down at the palm-sized wad of magnificently shredded rug fibers that she had accumulated, then nudged the wad back under the captain’s console with her toe and began scanning the digital horizon for space-rock or other debris.  This was a well-used trade path, so the space in between was relatively clear.  Dallas fell into a familiar trance, shutting down her brain to everything except the controls.  She could pass whole days in a trance like this, with time passing just as quickly as the space outside.

She was jolted alert when the bright red PROXIMITY warning suddenly blared.  Seconds later, Beetle lurched and started to slow.  The roar that followed reminded her of ripping through atmosphere with a porthole open.  Even as she began evasive maneuvers, Dallas wondered who was shooting.

Behind her, the security doors flew open and someone came running inside.

“I don’t know who it is!”  Dallas cried, pulling
Beetle
out of the trade lane.  “They were following us!”

A hairy hand slipped past her and locked the helm doors.  Even as Dallas was trying to comprehend that, something cold and hard pushed against the back of her skull.

“Drop the stick, Fairy.”

Dallas’s hands tightened stubbornly around the controls.  She was gaining ground.  In minutes, she would have so confused her pursuers that they would have to spend the next three hours trying to figure out where they were.  She looped a few more times, backtracked, and did a ninety-degree turn that threatened her stomach despite the
Beetle’s
artificial gravity.

“Come on, now.  Don’t make me use this.”  The cold metal tapped her skull insistently. 

Dallas released the controls and turned to look at Smallfoot, pointedly ignoring the weapon resting between her eyes.  “You’re an
agent
?”

He grinned, displaying perfect teeth.  “I’m a pirate, just like you.  Now stop the ship and let ‘em board.”

Someone started pounding on the other side of the security door.

Keeping his eyes on her, Smallfoot walked over to the emergency control panel and brought out the small key that Athenais kept with her at all times.  With it, he unlocked the glass panel and flipped the switch that would fill the outside living compartments with sleeping gas. 

Outside, the pounding stopped, followed by a thud as something hit the ground.

“I said, let ‘em board.”

Dallas turned back to the controls and considered punching the security-door lock and letting the sleeping gas pour into the helm.

“Don’t even think about it,” Smallfoot said.

Frustrated, Dallas launched the sequence to initiate in-space boarding.

“Good girl.  Now go stand over there while I chat wi’ my friends.”  Smallfoot gestured towards the corner of the cockpit with the muzzle of his—or, rather, Athenais’s—gun.

Bristling, Dallas stood and walked over to the side wall, where she waited.  Her hangover was gone, replaced with adrenaline and fury.

Smallfoot sat down and opened a frequency between the Beetle and its attacker.  He put the earphone against his head and laughed.  “Why hello, fellahs.  Yeah, they’re here.  I recommen’ bio-suits for boardin, though.  Might be a lil’ gas left over.  What?  No, that wasn’t me.  A copilot.  Naw, I din’ kill her.”

Smallfoot frowned at the console, then glanced at Dallas.  “They wanna hire ya.”

“Tell ‘em they already fired me once.”  She crossed her arms and scowled at the emergency airlock.

Smallfoot relayed her message and laughed at the reply.  “We’re taking the energy charge from the main engine block,” he said, turning to her.  “Ya can either come with us or die on
Beetle
.”

The little hairs on Dallas’s neck lifted.  “You’re gonna scuttle her?  What about the others?”

Smallfoot scoffed.  “Goat’s a weeder, Squirrel is a uppity bitch, Dune would screw his machines if he could, and the Cap’in is dead.  Not much left here to save, way I see things.”

Dallas’s heart spasmed.  “You killed her?” 

“Couldn’t very well leave
that
one alive, now could I?”  Smallfoot laughed.  “After all, I’m selling her precious shifter for three million credits.  She wouldn’t take that very well, and we know how our Cap’in liked to hold a grudge.”  He frowned at her.  “So?  Ya wanna come or stay?”

Dallas flinched at the way he said ‘liked.’  If Athenais was dead, there was no one to fly the ship other than Dallas.  Goat knew
where
to fly the ship, but not the how of it.  If they were stranded, Squirrel could radio the Devil and get a response, but she didn’t know the first thing about flying.  Dune could keep the engine running if the core itself failed, but he’d never touched any controls other than the steering-wheel of a dunebuggy.

That left Dallas.

But without the energy charge, Beetle wasn’t going anywhere.  Ever.  Squirrel had a better chance of radioing Hell to alert them that they were on their way.

Dallas bit her lip.  She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t want to leave her friends, either. 

Well, as close to friends as she had, considering the lot of them had abducted her to work for Beetle when the Space Force had fired her.  She’d always gotten the idea they all hated her. 

Outside, the Beetle jolted as the Utopian ship joined with it and closed the seal.

“Come on,” Smallfoot said.  “It’s not a tough decision.”

“I’m staying.”

Smallfoot stared at her.  “You’re as crazy as that bitch Cap’in.”  He opened an emergency cubby and took out two flashlights.  He tossed one at her.  “Come on, then.  Maybe yule change yer mind.”

“I won’t,” Dallas said.

“Maybe,” Smallfoot said, releasing the security-lock.  “Butcha helped me earn six million credits, so I owe ya somethin.

Dallas’s jaw fell open as she suddenly realized what she had done.  “You’re here for the shifters.”

“Yer a bright one,” Smallfoot snorted.  “Bring yer light.  We’re going ta engineering.”

“Go yourself,” Dallas retorted.

Smallfoot waved the gun in front of him.  “See this?  This says yer comin.  If ya don’t, I’m shootin off a foot.  Maybe a hand, too, ta keep ya busy.  I’m sure as hell not leavin’ you ‘lone at the controls.”

Dallas scowled and opened her mouth to tell him to take her foot.  Then, at his raised eyebrow, she closed her mouth, snatched the proffered flashlight with a glare, and followed him.

Dune was crumpled on the floor immediately outside the entry.  They had to step over him to enter the hall.  It didn’t appear to Dallas that he was breathing.

“He gonna be okay?” she asked, pausing over the mechanic.

“He’s fine,” Smallfoot told her, glancing down as he passed.  “For now.”

Dallas bit her lip, but a sound from the air-lock caught her attention.  Blue-uniformed Utopian agents were pouring onto the ship, tasers in hand.  They stopped and ordered Smallfoot to drop his weapon, but he laughed at them and pointed down the hall at the sleeping chambers with the muzzle of his pistol.  “They’re in there,” he said, and motioned for Dallas to follow him down the stairs toward the mechanic’s haven.

Despite its super-efficient drive system, the engine-room was warmer than the rest of the ship.  Most people thought it was cozy, but Dallas always had that nagging feeling that maybe the extra heat was actually radiation that was wreaking havoc on her body’s cells as she sat there enjoying the warmth. 

Because of this, she hated going to visit Dune.  She only did so now because she was pretty sure Smallfoot wouldn’t hesitate to blow off that foot, to keep her occupied.

Dune had set up a new buggy in the center of the room, surrounded by tables filled with odds and ends that looked like junk to Dallas.  Dune’s chair sat empty in one corner, the cushion worn and mashed flat with repeated applications of a grease-stained butt.  An instruction manual of some sort was laying open on the seat, no doubt on some fancy new engine part.

“In here,” Smallfoot said, walking past Dune’s personal alcove and into the main engine area.  It was even warmer in here, with huge black pistons and rotors churning in the center of the room, powering everything from life-support to the kitchen oven.  A bone-deep hum made her ear-drums hurt.