gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap (2 page)

Escape? No, that didn’t sound right. It was impossible to escape the MaxSec, let alone cross Titan’s frigid landscape in order to get to the one place that would allow a prisoner to get off-planet.

“I-I didn’t hear anything — Dale…that is, Sergeant Givens…would have contacted me.”

“We went into immediate lockdown, ma’am. That means no comms contact as well, in case the fugitive somehow managed to monitor our transmissions.” The stranger had made no attempt to remove his helmet, and Cassidy could see only shadowy glimpses of the features beneath the gold-filmed duraplast. “I came in through your cargo hold, inspected it, and then sealed it, but I also need to search the interior.”

“Go ahead,” she told him, since she knew there wasn’t anything she could do to stop him. At the same time she hoped she’d remembered to make up her bunk this morning, and that she hadn’t left any panties or other unmentionables lying around. After all, she certainly hadn’t expected to have any visitors today.

After giving her a perfunctory nod, he went back out into the corridor. She could hear him moving around her cabin, and then the other, smaller one that used to be hers before she inherited the ship. Other than that, there was only the galley and the tiny alcove with its two built-in benches and small round table that functioned as the eating area. A Sirocco-class luxury transport the
Avalon
was not.

The guard’s inspection barely took two minutes. Really, you couldn’t hide a mouse in the crew compartments in this boat, let alone an escaped prisoner. Cassidy waited in the pilot’s seat, nerves jangling, although she told herself she had nothing to worry about, that the officer had already checked the cargo hold, so of course there couldn’t be some murderous fugitive lurking anywhere on board.

The man returned. “All clear,” he told her, which was what she’d been expecting to hear. Even so, she sucked in a relieved little breath and waited for him to go so she could let the unloading continue and then get on her way.

But he didn’t. Instead, she could practically feel his gaze sweep over her from behind the helmet’s visor, and he said, “I need you to take off. Now.”

“What?” she blurted, sure she hadn’t heard him clearly.

“The prisoner isn’t here, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still come aboard. As long as this ship is docked, it represents a possible escape route.”

“The unloading isn’t even half done — ”

“That doesn’t matter. Take off…immediately.”

“I’m going to need to get clearance to take off — ”

“I’m giving you the clearance. Do it.”

Something in his stance told her that she’d better do as she was directed. Muttering a curse under her breath, she turned back to the console, checked the security camera feed in the cargo hold to make sure she wasn’t going to crush an automated cargo cart when she buttoned everything up, then flipped the switch. The cargo bay doors began to close slowly.

“You’ll have to go out through the hatch,” she said, pointing with her free hand in the direction of the corridor. “It’s the door between the smaller cabin and the sanitary facilities.”

In response, he widened his stance, effectively blocking the hallway. “I’m staying onboard.”

“Excuse me?”

“Corrections Statute 197A, Paragraph 102 states that in the case of an escape, it’s a corrections officer’s duty to make sure any ships get off the planet’s surface safely. You can drop me at Hyperion on your way out of the system.”

This was insane. Completely insane. More arguments rose to Cassidy’s lips, but she saw the way the officer’s hand rested on the pulse pistol at his hip and decided discretion was definitely the better part of valor here. Yes, jogging over to Hyperion would slow her down, as she’d have to recalculate her route, but she could file a claim for the extra fuel expenditure. That didn’t mean it would actually ever be paid, since Corrections was slow as hell to pay anything that was actually in her contract, let alone something so far outside it. Even so, she’d feel better for making the attempt.

The calculations for liftoff had already been entered in the computer, so she only had to make a few hurried adjustments for leaving several hours earlier than she had planned. The
Avalon
’s atmospheric engines rumbled on, and she engaged the thrusters, the ship lifting from the hangar floor and moving slowly out into the thick air, yellow and toxic as the Cloud that had swept across half of Gaia’s surface and killed so many billions.

At the same time, the comm squawked to life, Dale’s face strained and pale. “
Avalon
, report. Explain your early departure!”

Frowning, she replied, “Under orders from one of your officers, Sergeant Givens.”

“No such orders have been relayed to me,
Avalon
. Abort takeoff immediately and await the arrival of a security team.”

Horror swept over her, even as the man in the environmental suit leaned forward and smashed the comm screen with the butt of his pistol. Then he leveled the gun at her and said softly, “Disregard that order and continue on your current course.”

Even though she wanted to protest, to do something to show he wasn’t in control here, Cassidy knew she didn’t have any other options. There was nothing she could do but comply.

So many things could have gone wrong. Even now, as Derek Tagawa watched the hazy surface of Titan drop away beneath them, he couldn’t quite believe that he’d managed to pull it off.

Well, mostly. He would have preferred to have an escape vehicle that wasn’t quite as old and poky as this freighter, but the one weakness of the MaxSec facility — the one he and his compatriots had managed to exploit — was that its defenses all depended on prisoners never getting out. It wasn’t like some GDF base, fully stocked with fighter craft, ready to go on the attack. A shuttle came in once a week to rotate out personnel to and from Hyperion Base, and the ships brought in prisoners at erratic intervals, when there were enough of them lined up to justify the expense of hauling them all the way out here.

So the chink in the armor was the supply vessels, which dropped off their supplies twice each month. His intelligence had told him there were two ships assigned the contract, the
Avalon
and the
Orestes
. He’d hoped it would be the
Orestes
that was delivering supplies when the opportunity came to make his escape, but no, it was the much slower and older
Avalon
. Unfortunately, beggars couldn’t be choosers…and neither could escaped convicts. At least he didn’t have to worry much about pursuit. Not yet, anyway. Of course the security personnel would be contacting the GDF station on Ganymede, and they’d be scrambling fighters to intercept the
Avalon
. But that would take some time, and he already had a plan in place to make sure this hijacked piece of junk was never found.

Since he’d known very little about the
Avalon
, save that it probably should have been scuttled years ago, he’d been shocked to see that the pilot was a woman. He hadn’t been expecting that. He also hadn’t expected her to be so young and attractive. All right, bordering on beautiful, with features too delicate to be paired with the beat-up coveralls she was wearing, and her dark hair pulled up in a messy twist on the back of her head, as if she’d allowed herself roughly two minutes to get ready at the start of her day.

He told himself that the pilot’s sex didn’t matter, that as long as she was competent and did as she was told, she’d escape this whole thing with the sort of story that would get her free drinks for the rest of her life. Not that she probably had any trouble getting free drinks now, actually. She’d turn heads pretty much anywhere she went, let alone in the far more limited pool of available women on the Moon or in the outer worlds.

For a second or two, he contemplated telling her that she had nothing to worry about, that he had no plans to harm her in any way, then realized that probably wasn’t a very good idea. He didn’t like the fear in her wide hazel eyes, but he’d use it to his advantage now. Anyway, he had a feeling she wouldn’t believe him if he told her the truth, that he’d never hurt anyone in his life and certainly wasn’t about to start now.

After all, if he wasn’t a murderer, a criminal of the very worst sort, what in the world was he doing in the MaxSec on Titan?

He knew she’d never believe
that
story.

CHAPTER TWO

Hands shaking, Cassidy maneuvered the
Avalon
through Titan’s turbulent upper atmosphere until at last they broke through to the cool black of space. “Where to now?” she asked, forcing her voice to sound calm, unconcerned. The whole time the pistol had remained trained on her, and she didn’t want to make any sudden movements, do anything that might set off this madman.

“Europa,” he replied.

All right, now she
knew
he was crazy. She’d guessed at his plan, that he was counting on there not being any real pursuit from the MaxSec. There wasn’t supposed to be any way out of the prison facility, let alone off the planet, and yet he’d managed to pull off that supposedly impossible feat. All right, fine…the cavalry wasn’t going to come bail her out. But on Ganymede, sister moon to Europa, there was a full GDF squadron, and she was sure they’d already been alerted to the hijacking of the
Avalon
and were scrambling fighters to intercept her ship. The Jovian system was the very last place they should be heading if this escaped convict wanted to stay escaped.

Not that she thought they had any real chance of evading pursuit, no matter what they did, but it seemed as if her hijacker wasn’t even bothering to put much effort into it.

Even though she knew she should keep her mouth shut and do what he said, she couldn’t helping asking, “Seriously? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to turn around and let them capture you here on Titan so we wouldn’t have to waste all that fuel?”

“Just head to Europa.”

Cassidy shrugged and began laying in the new course. Taking the planets’ current respective positions into account, it would take them approximately two standard days to reach Europa. What the hell she was supposed to do with this madman in her lap for two days, she had no idea.

Cheer up,
she told herself, as she fed the new data into the computer and let it churn away at setting their course.
Those GDF fighters travel way faster than the
Avalon.
They’ll catch up with us in a day, tops.

She heard a rustling behind her, and shifted in her seat so she could see what her kidnapper was up to. Not that she moved very much — she didn’t want to be too obvious — but if he was planning on shooting her in the back of the head once the course was set, she’d kind of like to have some advance warning.

That didn’t seem to be his current plan. The rustling sound was coming from the enviro suit as he was undoing its fastenings and climbing out of it. She couldn’t blame him for that; the suit was intended for Titan’s bitterly cold temperatures, and although it could be adjusted somewhat, it probably felt achingly hot in the
Avalon
’s cabin, which always seemed on the warm side of comfortable no matter what she did to calibrate the climate-control system.

Underneath the suit he wore dark gray prison garb — a pullover shirt and baggy pants. And when he reached up to remove the helmet, Cassidy had to bite her lip from letting out a shocked gasp.

Yes, he was an escaped convict, probably a mass murderer or a serial killer or something equally vile, and he’d hijacked her ship and pointed a gun at her head…but he was also gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that would have definitely intimidated her if she’d encountered him in a bar or a club, and somehow seemed even more impressive in close quarters like this. Regular features, full lips…and some Asian mixed in there, judging by the dark almond eyes and sharp cheekbones.

Then she realized she was staring, when she’d meant to only catch a quick glimpse out of the corner of her eye. She turned back to the controls and pretended to be absorbed in the schematics displayed on the console’s scratched screen.

He approached her then, taking a seat in the copilot’s chair. After transferring the pulse pistol to his other hand, he held out his right one to her. “Derek Tagawa.”

Since when did hijackers introduce themselves like they were attending some sort of meet-and-greet? Cassidy looked at him blankly, and did not extend her own hand. “Captain Evans.”

“Captain’s an interesting name for a woman.”

Oh, so now he was trying to be charming. It had probably worked for him in the past, with a face like that. Maybe that was how he seduced his victims, by letting them think he was some outrageously good-looking, funny, sweet guy who then turned out to be an axe murderer. Wait, did people even use axes anymore? Since she’d never actually set foot on Gaia, had spent her entire life on the Moon or shuttling around the Solar System’s colonized planets, she was a little fuzzy on some of the finer points of life on her “home” world.

Fine. She’d play along. It really didn’t matter if he knew her name or not. “Cassidy.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

She really didn’t get him at all. Were convicts generally this polite? And the way his gaze kept flicking toward her, then moving away, as if he wanted to stare at her but knew it would be rude. It wasn’t lascivious at all, which she’d halfway expect from someone who’d been locked up in MaxSec for years and hadn’t seen a woman in all that time. No, it was more…admiring? But that couldn’t be right. She didn’t have on a speck of makeup, and her hair probably looked like it had been combed by one of the atmospheric thrusters.

For a second or two she didn’t say anything, but only returned her attention to the readouts in front of her. Calculating exactly how long it was going to take to get to Europa was more difficult than she’d first thought, as she had data for how the ship handled when fully loaded and again when it was empty, and not so much for its current state, which was with a cargo hold a little less than half full.