Escape (13 page)

Kieran frowned heavily, his ears straining to hear through the static. Ordinarily the comm should have been clear as transpiranium, but Kieran had already observed the transmission-blocking characteristics of the asteroid. His mining buoy had barely been able to get a signal past the surface, even though it had only flown a few dozen milé-astroms into the tunnel.

“Please proceed to dock, prospector Hawker.”

“Acknowledged.”
Get help? Who said that?
Kieran was beginning to feel uneasy about helping these terrorists. It sounded like there were hostages aboard the station. Still frowning, Kieran fired the
Interloper's
braking thrusters, slowing to a stop in front of the station’s only free airlock. He used maneuvering jets to turn the ship on the spot until the transport's airlock was facing the station's counterpart. Once in position, he activated the magnetic docking clamps and the transport shuddered into place with a deep, reverberating
thud
.

Kieran keyed the intercom. “We've arrived.” He absently reached around the sides of his flight chair to undo his seat restraints, then remembered that he hadn't bothered to strap in. The inertial dampeners were dialed up to 100%. Having passengers walking around the ship necessitated that any and all g-forces be neutralized. Kieran stood up from his flight chair and started down the corridor from the cockpit to the cabin.

* * *

When Kieran entered the cabin, he found Brathus sitting on a couch, his arm around Dimmi
—
a lithe woman with a medium-length, pixie cut of auburn hair; a long, serious face; and wide, innocent red-brown eyes. But the impression of innocence stopped below the neck: she was wearing a seductively tight, black masser-hide bodysuit, which left depressingly little room for either imagination or concealed weaponry. Kieran didn't think she believed in concealing anything. She wore her weapons like her sexuality
—
in plain view. A pair of heavy-duty plasma pistols hung from her hips, and strewn along her gun belt were a handful of spare cartridges, and a few round cylinders that looked suspiciously like grenades.

“Did you hear me?” Kieran asked. “We've docked to the station. It's time to get to work.”

Brathus and Dimmi were watching the boy slicer (Mister X.) playing a holo-game with Garlan, the final member of their group. He at least gave the impression of intelligence, with a quiet manner, and an oddly neat appearance
—
from his short, neat black hair, to his shiny, black suit of tetrillium armor. Brathus looked up belatedly from the holo-game that Garlan was playing. He seemed about to say something when Dimmi stood up from the couch, causing his arm to fall limply from her shoulders.

“Let's go,” she said, her voice purring like a feline’s.

Mister X. made a move in the holo-game, grinned crookedly across the table at Garlan, and said: “Game over. Time to shivvy.”

“Next time, shakra-face,” Garlan said, standing up from the table.

Mister X. and Brathus stood up at the same time and turned to face Kieran. For a disconcertingly long moment, all eyes were on him. Kieran swallowed nervously and focused his attention on the kid slicer.

“You ready?”

Mister X. crossed to the other side of the cabin. He stopped beside the meal dispenser, reached down and picked up a heavy-looking backpack. Turning to Kieran as he slung the pack across his shoulders, the boy nodded.

“And your team?” Kieran asked, his eyes on Brathus. The leader of the team's three drifters was also armored, but his armor looked like it had seen more use than Garlan's. Faded blue paint was flecking off deeply-scratched, scoured, and dented armor plates. His armor didn't look like it would stop even the weakest plasma pistol, but here and there a layer of shiny black tetrillium shielding peeked out from a plasma crater. Appearances could be deceiving. Like his armor, Brathus's face looked well-worn. A long, white scar cut a line all the way from his short, spiky blond hair down through the stubble on his right cheek. He was scowling at the readout on his plasma rifle
—
it was a P11, a short, one or two handed rifle that was fully automatic, and easily modified through attachments. Kieran didn't know much about weaponry, but he knew that the P11 was a favorite among outlaws, drifters, and clan members for its reliability and versatility.

Garlan's choice of weaponry was more eclectic. Two handles, one on either hip, poked out the top of matching scabbards that couldn't have been more than half a micró-astrom long.
Daggers? Short swords?

“We're ready,” Brathus said, watching as Garlan slid a shiny, black helmet over his head, and spent a moment fiddling with the neck seals. Brathus didn't appear to have a helmet for his suit of armor
—
a fact which only served to reinforce Kieran's initial impression of the man. Brave to the point of stupidity. Subtlety was not a part of his arsenal
—
a fact which his stealthy girlfriend neatly made up for. Kieran hoped it would be enough to keep her alive in a firefight; she was the only unarmored one of the three.

Brathus gestured toward the rear of the ship, where the airlock was. “After you.”

Kieran smiled thinly and started down the corridor. On the way to the airlock he passed a handful of doors
—
crew quarters, utility rooms, access ways to the port and starboard gun turrets. He heard the others following him down the corridor in a mixture of quiet and clomping footsteps.

Near the back of the ship, the corridor branched into three. The left and right forks led to service rooms for the engines. The middle fork led to the cargo bay and airlock. Kieran kept dead ahead. The corridor emerged in the cargo area, a yawning space that took up fully half of the bulky back of the ship. The comparatively spindly forward section of the ship was for the crew quarters and external cargo containers, which could be slotted into the mounting racks along the top and bottom of the hull.

Kieran reached the double-wide airlock doors at the rear of the ship, and keyed in the code to open them. He turned briefly to make sure the rest of his party was with him. They were all standing right behind him. As the hissing of air compressors began to equalize pressure on both sides of the airlock, Garlan stepped forward.

Brathus spoke: “Let Garl take the lead. He's wearing armor
—
you're not.”

Kieran hesitated. A heavy clank echoed ominously from the airlock doors behind him. It was the locking mechanism sliding out of the way so the doors could open.

“I'm not sure that's such a good idea,” Kieran said. “The
 
.
 
.
 
.
occupants of the station have already met me. If they see Garlan sauntering down the corridor toward them, like a sentinel ready for battle, they might feel threatened.”

Brathus shrugged. “It's your neck; risk it if you like.”

Kieran nodded and turned to the airlock. He waved his hand across the door sensor, and the doors began to slide open. Almost immediately, the distantly droning lockdown alarm filled the air:
blaat blaat blaat
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

Just as Kieran remembered, the docking tube was filled with dim, flashing red emergency lights. He stepped through the airlock and into the docking tube, striding confidently to the end of it, the rest of his team keeping single file behind him.

When he emerged in the corridor beyond the docking tube, Kieran found the same short, bald, and skinny UBER officer who had been there to greet him the last time, standing just a few micró-astroms to the right in his rumpled, dark blue captain’s uniform. The officer was smiling disconcertingly, just as he had been the last time.

“Welcome back, prospector Hawker. I see you have brought friends.” Those “friends” fanned out to either side of Kieran.

“Yes, I have. Let's skip the
—
”

“Introductions. I agree. Names are unimportant.”

Kieran frowned, and caught Mister X. exchanging a glance with Garlan. It was disconcerting to have one's sentences completed by a stranger.

“Follow me, please.” The UBER officer began walking down the corridor. Kieran hesitated, and gestured for Garlan to go first. Now that Garlan's presence wouldn't come as a surprise to the occupants of the station, there was no reason for Kieran to keep the dangerous point position.

As they followed the UBER officer, trailing at a cautious distance, Mister X. sidled up to Kieran and whispered: “I thought you didn't know these people?”

“I don't.”

“Then what's with the creepy I-already-know-what-you're-going-to-say routine?”

Kieran shook his head. “Lucky guess.”

The boy said nothing to that, but it was clear that he wanted to.

The group came to a sealed door at the end of the corridor, and the short officer waved his hand across the door sensor. The door slid aside, revealing another, narrower, darker corridor in which they would have no choice but to walk single file. The UBER officer turned to them from the now-open doorway. He was still smiling.

“This way, please.” Without waiting for them to catch up, the officer stepped into the corridor, and the quiet
clip, clap, clip, clap,
of his footsteps receded into the near distance ahead of them.

Garlan stopped at the entrance of the new corridor and turned to Brathus, as if waiting for orders.

Brathus turned to Kieran, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I don't like this. There's something very wrong about that officer.”

Kieran smirked sarcastically. “Yeah, he's not really an officer.”

From beside Brathus, Dimmi frowned. “No
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Her voice was sultry, husky
—
the perfect complement to her seductive attire. “That's not it. There's something not quite right about him.”

Kieran shook his head. “If you're having second thoughts, the kid and I can do this by ourselves.”

Mister X. sent Kieran a quick, anxious look, and then his gaze slid away to stare down the narrow corridor after the officer.

Brathus snorted. “We'll be fine, chief. I just wanted to warn you. Things here aren't what they seem to be.”

“Fine. Duly noted. Now can we get on with this?” Kieran asked, abruptly wondering why he was so impatient.

Garlan started down the corridor, taking long strides to catch up with the man in the UBER captain’s uniform. Kieran let Brathus and Dimmi go next, and trailed deliberately behind them so he could have a few words with the kid.

Kieran whispered over his shoulder to the boy as they walked down the narrow corridor: “Please tell me you have a plan to keep these friends of yours from stealing our ship out from under us when we're done here.”

The boy whispered back: “I've got it covered, man, don't worry.”

The corridor went on and on, almost endlessly. They passed dozens of doors to either side. Kieran frowned, wondering, as he had the last time, where everyone was. It was a big station, and so far he had only seen the short, skinny captain who wasn't a captain. According to that imposter, he was the only one aboard. But that couldn't be true, could it? He couldn't have taken over the entire station by himself.

Eventually, the corridor ended. There was a lift tube at the end. Kieran watched over Dimmi's shoulder as the doors slid open in response to a hand wave from the UBER captain.

One after another, they crowded into the lift. Elbows to elbows, hips to gun holsters, they barely managed to squeeze in. Kieran ended up standing next to the endlessly smiling imposter. He had stayed close to the front of the lift in order to operate the lift controls. Kieran noticed the glowing letters of the floor he had selected: CT
—
control tower. Also on the panel, below CT, were the numbers one through seven.
Seven floors!
The station was bigger than it looked from the outside. The lift doors slid quietly closed, mercifully shutting out the station’s droning alarms.

The lift ascended in relative silence, with no one talking. Only the now-muted alarms and the quiet humming of the lift broke the silence.

When the doors opened again, they opened into a large, circular room, surrounded by blue-tinted transpiranium viewports. The view from those viewports was spectacular. One side looked straight into the infinite darkness of the tunnel to the asteroid's surface; the other side looked down on the swirling rainbow of light that was the TLS gate. Behind the gate, barely visible through the diaphanous membrane of light, was a wall of solid rock
—
the end of the tunnel.

Kieran looked away from the viewports, his eyes scanning through the control room. A few dozen uniformed officers were scattered across the various control stations.
So that's where everyone else is
, Kieran thought.

The group emptied out of the lift, following the UBER captain. Kieran caught an unpleasantly sharp, metallic scent on the air, and wrinkled his nose.