Wings of Retribution (53 page)

And they wonder why I don’t find her mature enough to captain a ship,
Athenais thought, watching the girl’s face screw up, her tongue in the corner of her mouth.  Athenais continued to stand there as Fairy finished with the warts and started drawing horns.

“Rabbit’s pissing me off,” Athenais eventually interrupted.  “You don’t need to make him a meal tonight.”

Fairy squeaked and hastily wiped out the image in the flour.

“I’m gonna be checking the maps with Howlen,” Athenais said.  “Finish up in here and go monitor the helm.  We’re off the trade routes already, so autopilot’s struggling.  Probably gonna fall apart in two minutes or so.”

For once, Fairy did not complain.  Athenais knew that the little wench would do anything to get her hands back on the controls.  Hell, she might even believe she could somehow regain command of the ship, though Athenais had already made that impossible.  Squirrel, maybe, but not some airheaded twit like Fairy.  Too predictable.

Athenais left Fairy in the kitchen and went to the navroom to meet the Colonel.  Inside, the lamps were off, the only source of light the luminescent planets and rotating rocks surrounding him on the six huge screens.  Howlen was squinting at a grid on the console in front of him displaying the mass calculations of every object in the system.

Athenais flipped on the lights.  “You’re gonna strain your eyes and I don’t feel like buying you new ones.”  She stepped inside and glanced around at the images of Clover and its seventeen orbiting masses and their moons.  “So what’s the consensus?”

“It shouldn’t be a difficult entry,” Howlen said.  “There are plenty of weak points, places where surveillance wouldn’t pick us up unless they were right on top of us.  Considering the sheer amount of territory they’d have to cover, I’d say they don’t have the resources.  This isn’t Millennium—it’s a forgotten colony that somehow survived.”

“Then you don’t know Juno,” Athenais said.  “Assume she’s got every high-tech gadget out there, and they’re all aimed at her weak spots.  She’s as paranoid as a space-rat on crystal meth.”

Howlen gave her an odd look—probably too young to know what meth was, Athenais thought impatiently—and glanced back at his maps.  “If that’s the case, there’s probably only one route.”

“Spill it.”

“On the ZY side of the system there’s a debris band.  High-density, iron-rich rocks, one hundred tons plus, about nine minutes out.  Matches
Retribution’s
mass composition.  If we insert there, we can hop the three planets between it and Xenith and stay under her radar.  Xenith has three large moons, so we could jump behind one to get closer.”

“Let me see that.”  Athenais sat down and brought up the information on a separate console.  “There’s gotta be another way.”

The Colonel got up, scowling.  “Why’d you even send me in here if you weren’t going to listen to my advice?”

“You were an officer in the Utopian Space Corps.  You should be used to it by now.”

Fuming, the Colonel left.

Athenais bent over the information, concentrating.  Rabbit could get screwed.  There had to be another way.

A little stunned that the pirate hadn’t docked her pay, Dallas dusted off her hands and hurried to the helm.  Her heart-rate cranked up a few beats when she saw the autopilot timer flashing.  She sat down and barely had enough time to strap herself in before the ship’s computer reset and she had to haul on the controls to avoid a red giant.  Once the ship’s grav system settled down, she heard Athenais cuss at her from the navroom.

Remind you of anyone?
Stuart said.

“Give me a break,” Dallas said.  “I knew what I was doing. 
She’s
just being irresponsible.”

Of course.

“Please.”  Dallas settled into the chair and started fidgeting with the ship’s database.  “Did you see what she did back there?  I think she got into the recovery records, but I can’t figure out how.”

Don’t worry about it.  She removed the ability, I’m sure.

“But this is
my
ship,” Dallas muttered.

Stuart was silent.

“It’s
mine,”
she insisted.

Cluster.

“Huh?”

Cluster!

Seeing the rapidly-approaching group of dots, Dallas started and jerked the stick backwards, throwing the ship’s gravity off again.

Down the hall, Athenais shouted, “Goddamn it, Fairy, you keep us flying straight or I’ll wring your scrawny neck, you got me?!”

Dallas shut the doors to the helm.

“This is
my
ship, Stuart,” Dallas informed him.  “You don’t like that, you can find someone else’s brain to live in.”

Sorry.  You’re right.  It is your ship, absolutely.  It’s just had the misfortune of being commandeered by a pirate.

“That’s right.”  Dallas made a disgruntled noise and scowled at the grid.  She glanced to her right and saw the camera to Rabbit’s room was dark.  She tapped the screen, wondering what was going on.

Probably more toothpaste,
Stuart said dryly.

Grunting, Dallas returned her attention to the debris grid.  She yawned and checked her watch.  She had another thirty minutes until the computer could reset itself and she could turn on autopilot.  She settled into the routine, making minor adjustments as objects appeared on the screen, light-years in front of her.

Behind her, the doors opened.

Dallas’s hands grasped the controls reflexively.  “I’ve got another five minutes!” she cried, taking hold of the stick in a death-grip.  “Go take a crap or something, you bitter old leprechaun.”

“You mind moving a moment, Dallas?”

Dallas’s jaw dropped and she turned.  “
Rabbit?”
 

The wiry little man was cut and bleeding in multiple places, and generally looked like he’d squeezed through a meat-grinder.  Holding his head, he said, “Quicker would be better, in this case.”

Her mouth still open in shock, Dallas hopped up.  “She let you
out
?  She said she was gonna keep you in there for another couple weeks.” 

“Attie just officially pissed me off,” Rabbit said.  “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like a few minutes to concentrate.”

“Uh, sure,” Dallas said, stepping back.

Rabbit made minor adjustments to the trajectory to avoid the tail end of a storm system and opened up the ship’s files.  His fingers darted across the keys, rattling through the directories, entering access codes, overriding controls, changing passwords.  In three minutes, he leaned back and looked up at her.  “Would you mind placing your thumb on the screen, Dallas?  First the left, then the right.”

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Part of the new master code.”

Dallas recoiled.  “She’ll cut off my hands.”

“No.  I’ve removed her from the equation.  The master codes cannot be accepted while she is in the room.”

Nice,
Stuart commented.

“So claim your new ship, Dallas,” Rabbit said, motioning to the console.  “You earned it.”

A wave of euphoria enveloped her as she leaned forward and pressed her thumbs to the screen.  The computer read them, accepted them, and then Rabbit turned away as she entered her ten-digit password.  When she straightened, Dallas was in shock.

“It’s really mine?  You can’t go do whatever you did to take it back?”

“I’m wiping that option from the computer system.  You now have absolute control, Dallas.”  He stood up, gesturing for her to take the helm.

Dallas stared at the pilot’s seat, suddenly feeling like she was floating.

“Of course, if you die, we’re all screwed.”  Rabbit laughed as she sat back down.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, so overwhelmed she couldn’t really come up with anything else.

“No problem,” Rabbit said.  “Enjoy.”  He glanced at the door behind him.  “So where’s Attie?”

“Navroom.”

“Good.”  He patted her shoulder.  “Have fun.”  At that, he strode from the helm and left her alone.

“I like him,” Dallas whispered, blushing.  “He’s really nice.”

He was just one-upping Athenais,
Stuart said. 
It’s a game they’ve been playing since he rescued her.

“He gave me a ship!  A
war
ship.”

To prove a point,
Stuart insisted.

“You’re jealous!”

Stuart was silent.

“That’s it!  You’re jealous!  Of
Rabbit
!”

That’s ridiculous.  Your kind and mine are utterly incompatible.  I have nothing to be jealous of.  He’s just a wiry little human with freckles and a stupid grin.  Go fornicate with him if you want to.  Why should I care?

Dallas burst out laughing.  “We’ve gotta get you a body.”

What?
Stuart said, sounding alarmed. 
Why?

“So we can get it on, doofus.”

Oh.
  Dallas felt herself blush, but it was not her own doing.  She laughed some more.

Aliens on the Loose

“Hey.”  Ragnar stepped from the shadows, catching a lone Stranger by the arm.  The upper levels of the complex were not well-lit, so he had been able to stand there unseen for most of the night.