Living in Freefall (Living on the Run Book 1) (4 page)

As Rachel Kori, the ship’s engineer, prepared
Freefall
for the trip back to Providence Prime, the day rolled by fast for her. To study
the Talons firsthand she was eager to tear them apart, and uncover the
advancements the Confederation had made in their weapons of warfare. As soon as
she was free to do so, she enlisted Joshua’s help.

Beside their regular jobs, whenever needed Joshua and his
brother Nate took on other duties such as this.

Once she and he went to work, it wasn’t long before Josh
lifted the last panel from the second Talon. “So how does it look?”

Rachel completed her inspection of one Confed fighter craft,
and was just finishing up with the second. She peered into this last
compartment and once again tugged at a few components. “Well, these new Talons
have clean lines and a nice color scheme,” she told him shaking her head, “but
then so do the John Deer cargo lifters you and Nate pilot.”

“Not impressed?”

“I would rather have the lifter. It’s more suited to the
task it was designed for. These new
Cougar
class Talons,
so called
,
look as if they were designed by a committee instead of by a real weapons
engineer.”

Josh patted her shoulder and said, “All the better for the
good guys, isn’t it?”

Rachel shrugged. “Providence builds its ships to provide for
the needs of those who use them. I pity the man who pilots this thing. This sad
ship may look fierce, but to use this to win a war? It’d be last on my list. I
place it right behind pitchforks and torches.” With a look of pity, she shook
her head again.

“Well, at least we know why Providence had the advantage in
every conflict for the last hundred and fifty years.”

“I got to tell you, these new Talons can’t add diddly-squat
to Providence intelligentsia – other than to demonstrate how much more advanced
they are to these jokers.”

Josh shook his head no. “Nah. There’s more to these than you
think, Rachel.”

“Will you
pleeease
call me Race, already? How many
times do I have to ask?”

“Mm, yeah. Rachel, you’re obviously missing something. To be
safe you should go over these ships again.”

“Thanks for your help, Chisel. We’re done here. You can go
back to shoving boxes around or whatever it is you do.”

“Don’t be crass. I’m here to help you.”

She did a double take of the fifteen-year-old. He was smart
for his age—he and his brother both were. And regarding these ships, she knew
he was right. Yet she couldn’t help feeling irritated. She felt there was
something different about these ships, something small and easily overlooked.
Clearly Josh had sensed it too. Looking for every feasible reason for their existence,
she had carefully searched every inch of both ships on the first go over but
she found nothing. Not one thing. And that, in itself, made no sense. Could the
Confeds have purposefully sacrificed ability for looks? All in all, the new
Talons,
so-called
, were lighter, a bit more maneuverable, but they
neither packed a punch nor could they take one. She sighed and scratched her
head.

That evening, just as she had for every meal, Mara prepared
supper with all the care she could show her kids and crew. With gritted teeth,
and a vegetable cleaver held with an angry hand, she took her frustrations out
on carrots, celery, and other assorted victims,
er
, vegetables. At
forty-seven, she wasn’t old, but she was the oldest of the crew. Except for Ericca
and Riley, everyone called her ‘Mom.’ She was Mrs. Kori to Riley. What Ericca
called her under her breath she couldn’t repeat.

Mara pulled another carrot onto her cut board. Whack! A
tenth of the force used would have done the job, but at this point she didn’t
care.

The twenty-year-old female paradox disconcerted her. Mara
tried to think of other things, but her main source of aggravation drew her mind
like a magnet. Whack! Whack! The stupid carrot didn’t fight back. It was
irritating. Come dinnertime, Ericca would behave like a perfect young lady, saying:
‘Please pass the . . .’ and ‘Thank you.’ What a farce. That wasn’t who
Ericca was the rest of the time. Away from the table, Ericca was mean-street
rough, blunt as a hammer, and when provoked had a mouth as crude as a longshoreman.

One more carrot. Whack! Whack! Whack!

Typically, when Ericca wasn’t focused on work, the younger
woman in her dark-died, well-worn leather duds had a rowdy story to tell. Her
ability to spin a yarn—talking about pirates and rogues and ruffians—typically
held everyone spellbound. And therein lie the problem. Riley insisted
everything she said was true, but that wasn’t the point. Ericca’s stories of
whores and thugs and drunkenness, had no place on this ship—no place at all. The
young woman was a bad influence on the younger crew members.

She pulled a turnip out of the bin. Whack! It fell in two.

“But somehow,” Mara muttered to herself, “come dinnertime . . .”

. . . Ericca became someone else entirely. She morphed
into a fine young lady with the manners of an aristocrat—polite, napkin-in-the-lap,
clean language, and all. Mara found this behavior the most irritating thing of
all. During meals, Ericca demonstrated she knew how to behave. Even in heated
arguments, at this table Ericca’s language remained clean.

Whack! Whack! Whack! “Why does she chooses
not
to keep
a civil tongue in her mouth the rest of the time. Was doing so really so
difficult?”

Mara had tried on occasion to get Ericca to bring her table
manners and attitude out into the rest of the ship. Was that really so hard?
Did Mara ask in the wrong way? What? But those conversations always vaulted the
women into headlong clashes. They had so little in common to start with, and Mara
saw the gap between them growing wider each day. She felt helpless to stop it,
not that she really wanted to; she wanted Ericca off the ship. Whack! Whack!
Whack! Diced carrots began to pile up.

Riley though was a different matter entirely. Mara could talk
to him. Always polite, he was so much more approachable than his sister. He
dressed somewhat like Ericca, though his leathers were more soft browns than
blacks. For him, he looked good , rugged, handsome. Ericca looked like a thug—
a
very pretty thug, sure
—but a thug nonetheless. Riley was also far more
forthcoming about their past, their upbringing. Often he and Mara would find
some quiet corner of the ship to talk about his life with his sister. There was
no denying Riley loved Ericca. He had good reason. He told Mara about their
growing up as orphans in the mean streets of Praxis, a city on Gimpling.

“Although we had to scrape for every morsel of food,” he had
said, “Ericca always made sure I got everything I needed—clothes, shelter,
something to eat, the occasional bath—even if Ericca had to skip a meal or two
herself. It’s funny,” he added, “Ericca sees nothing she’s done as heroic. But
she kept me alive, and so she’s my hero all the same.” As far as getting Ericca
to change her behavior, Riley laughed out loud at the mere notion. “Like it or
not, Ericca is who she is,” he had said. “Get used to it.”

Mara Scooped up the chopped vegetables and dropped them into
the pot of boiling water. She didn’t want to admire the young woman. So Ericca
cared for Riley when times were tough. Dogs provide for their young as well.
Nothing civilized about that. Ericca’s duel personality though? Obviously the
girl had some exposure to culture. Mara wondered why the rest of it didn’t
take. Archer had let it slip once, that to put food on the table, Ericca had
worked in a whorehouse. He insisted she only bussed tables, but Mara didn’t buy
it, not by how Ericca acted anyway. Archer said that after that job, he and Ericca
worked together mucking out stables.
That
Mara believed.

Mara dragged a fatty cut of pork onto the butcher block, and
hit it probably with more force that was needed. Whack! Whack! Whack!

Her daughter, Rachel, was starting to pick up some of Ericca’s
mannerisms and her way of saying certain things, but what irked Mara most was
the way her son Jordon looked at Ericca, how he watched her when she wasn’t
looking. Clearly
that girl
, as uncivilized as she was, wasn’t good
enough for Mara’s son. Jordon seemed blind to that fact. She didn’t want her
son
or
her daughter led astray, not by
that whore
at any rate. She
had doubts she could do anything about any of this no matter what she did.

After everyone sat down to enjoy Mara’s labors of ‘love’ and
unalleviated frustration; the initial conversations—normally jovial—quickly
turned to shop-talk which Mara heard as only so much white noise. To keep her
eyes from glazing over, she considered each person in turn to study how the
crew related to each other. Whenever laughter broke out, Mara seldom understood
why. When arguments arose, she focused more on tone than content. Opinions
could get heated, but she’d only intervene if it got mean.

When she drew out of her daydream, she noticed Ericca
staring at her. That was understandable. Lost in thought, Mara had, after all,
been staring at Ericca. Resolute, Mara pushed her doubts away, and turned her
attention from the whore to Josh. He was being unusually quiet, so she used
that as an excuse to divert attention paid her, to the boy. Up to that point, the
fifteen-year-old did little more than prod his food and stare at nothing at
all.

Mara leaned closer to ask softly “Joshua, this is your
favorite meal; aren’t you hungry?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am. I was just thinking.” He looked at
his plate—it
was
his favorite meal. To him, Mara’s stews were never a
chore, and normally he would savor every bite. But he looked uneasy—
apprehensive
.
The cast in his eyes said he felt something was out of place. Whatever it was
seemed to be nagging at him.

Mara looked at Jordon who was mindlessly slurping away. Mara
cleared her throat and when Jordon looked up, she shot her eyes toward Josh.

Jordon wiped his mouth, leaned back, and cupped his chin
with a hand as he studied the boy his mother had drawn his attention to. His
eyes stopped and stayed on Joshua which seemed only to add to the boy’s unease.
“What’s bothering you, son?” Jordon said after a moment. Jordon’s ‘captain
persona’ fit worse than his grandfather’s old suit. It wasn’t much, but it was
all he had. Moving his half-empty plate away, he dropped his hand from his
face, and lean on the table.

“Jordy, I think he’s troubled by these captured ships.”
Rachel said before Josh could answer. She matched her brother’s concerned gaze
with her own.

Josh looked up at Rachel, shifted in his seat and, although
he didn’t take his eyes off her, he spoke to Captain Kori. “After talking to
your sister—”

“Race!” she snapped.

“Yes. Anyway. I believe those ships are far more than they
appear, that’s all.” He dropped his eyes to his plate and took a small bite of
food, then shifted in his seat still ill at ease.

“Really, Chisel?” Race interjected. “I didn’t think they
were much of anything at all.”

Josh glanced at the captain, then at her. “Exactly, Rachel.
But shouldn’t they be?”

“Race,” she muttered to correct him. “Well, yes, Chisel. I
thought they’d be better than what they are.”

Now clearly irritated, probably with her, Josh glanced
around the table. “If they were captured by someone else, where would they be
heading right now,
Rachel
?”

“Race!”

“Uh huh. Where would they be heading?”

“Right where we’re going,” said Riley. “To Providence.”

“Rachel looked over both of these ships, Riley,” Josh told
him. “She neither amounted to much. You heard her. Even the security code was
some old Binary Fortran segment with a Quadratic underlayment. It took her
longer to break it because she didn’t expect it to be so out of date.”

Riley shrugged. “So? These days the Confederacy isn’t making
very many advancements. Is that FrontPage news?”

With a plea in his eyes for help, Josh looked to Captain Kori,
but the man just leaned back in his seat and listened to the crew discuss the
matter without his input.

Josh turned back to Riley. “If it were anyone else, wouldn’t
they be laughing all the way back to Providence?”

“That’s what
I’m
doing,” Riley said with a toothy
grin.

“And therein lies the problem. Right now we’re being way too
predictable.”

Mara set her fork aside. She understood Joshua’s tone and
his misgivings. “Josh, you suspect a trap?”

He nodded. “Yes ma’am. Consider this. If Rachel—”

Race slammed a fist on the table and glowered at him.

“Had she discovered a new and unusual component,
Rachel
would have pulled it out,” Josh continued as Race rolled her eyes, “. . .
and we would've ditched the ships. But she found nothing, so we bring the ships
back to our handlers intact just so Providence HQ can check them over
themselves.”

Now intrigued, Jordon focused on the boy. “Yes, Josh? Go
on.”

“At present, where are those two Talons?”

Ericca grabbed the casserole ladle as she spoke. “They’re
too big for the Cargo bay, Josh, so we have them in tow.” She added another
half-portion to her plate. Mara took note of her. Ericca’s tone was soft, gentle,
and pleasant, but it still set Mara’s nerves on edge. Ericca’s effort to join
the conversation was understandable, but Mara would just as soon she didn’t.

“Nobody would want those trucks in their bay,” Josh said,
responding to Ericca. He set his fork down and pointed to
Freefall
’s
stern. “But consider this. They’re right out there in the open.”

“What of it?” asked Riley.

“I think they were meant to be captured. But I also believe
they
are
more than just
disinformation
. I think they’re being
tracked right now, and I believe
Freefall
specifically is the Confed’s
true target.”

Ericca glowered at Capt. Kori.

“They think this ship is a myth,” Riley said soberly.
“Honestly. An old freighter with special powers? Who’d believe that? They have
to think those stories are just crazy talk.”

“Do they?” Josh asked. “Isn’t it wise to investigate a myth
to be certain it’s just that—a myth? Mr. Kori, if I’m overreacting, no harm, no
foul, but if I’m right, then we had better turn this situation around. If those
Talons are just disinformation, then fine, but if they’re Trojan horses, and we
make a beeline for home ...”

Jordon eased forward in his chair. “
Freefall?
” He
moved to scratch his chin, then caught himself.

“Yes, sir.”

“Between here and home, are there any places for ambush?”

“Yes, sir. Several areas put us at risk.”

“So, Josh, you really believe we’re their target?”

“Excuse me,” Ericca interrupted politely, “Mrs. Kori, you
always prepare such a lovely table, and provide a delicious meal. I thank you,
and I don’t mean to be rude, but there are things that require my attention.”
With that, she pushed to her feet.

“Thank you, Ericca,” Mara said, forcing a smile. “Please. By
all means. We understand.”

Ericca returned the smile, tossed her napkin onto her plate,
and walked out of the room.

Though her doing so caught everyone off guard, Joshua
continued anyway. “
Freefall
is most likely their target, her stealth
devise especially. I imagine they’ll prize her shield generators, weapons systems,
long-range scanner array, and A.I. computer mainframe as well. They’ll gut this
ship if they can, and set the rest adrift. And we’ll find ourselves plowing
some field on Parandi, or working some radium mine on some remote Confederate
moon.”

Distaste shadowed Jordon’s face. “
Freefall
, plot a
safe course through those places of ambush back to Providence, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Josh breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Captain.”

Bothered and sullen, Jordon nodded once. “Your intuition has
never been wrong, Josh. And you’re right—we can’t afford to be predictable to a
ruthless enemy. I see no harm in checking out your suspicions before we head
back to Providence.”

“Sir?” said
Freefall
.

“Go ahead.”

“The new course takes us away from Saigus.”

“No,
Freefall
. Include the asteroid field in the new
path, will you? Make that our first stop.”

“Yes, sir. This will bring us dangerously close to one
potential place of ambush, sir.”

“Which is?”

“Enri, sir.”

“Is there no other way?”

“Sorry, sir. Not without taking us fifty-three light years
out of our way.”

“Finally,” Riley muttered under his breath.

“Excuse me,” the captain said.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Go ahead, Riley. Spit it out.”

He took and released a heavy sigh before bringing hard eyes
up to his captain. “Sir, you always play it safe. Take a risk for once. Enri
isn’t all that bad. It’s certainly nothing Ericca and I can’t handle.”

“I don’t mind risk, Riley. I just don’t see a need to take
undue risk when it can be avoided.”

“Excuse me? Why in thunder are we here, Ericca and I? You
like paying top dollar for nothing?”

Now Ericca’s attitude of late was starting to make sense to Mara.

Jordon rubbed his face with both hands. “Mr. Riley, I see no
reason to look for trouble when it can be avoided. There are, however,
occasions like this one where we’ll truly require your services. When we pass
by Enri, we’ll need you and your sister in
Viper
flying cover. Just get
us through the straits safely and you’ll have earned your pay for the year.”

“Very well.”

“Look, I keep you and Ericca on retainer because this sort
of thing is bound to crop up from time to time. Your pay will double where
hazards truly exist and triple if you need to face hostile fire.”

“Sis and I just thought it would happen more often.”

“Honestly? Do you two really have an issue with my playing
it safe?”

“No. No. Play it safe. Avoid danger. Take no risks. Just
don’t expect Ericca and me to stick around if that’s all you’re going to do.”

“Are you saying what I pay you isn’t enough to keep you?”

“It isn’t the money. Saturn’s rings, the pay is fine, better
than fine actually. I don’t expect to get near as much working for someone
else. But this life, this always playing it safe, it’s too
poon
tarded
dull
for us. Pardon my language. I can’t speak for Ericca, but I’d like to see more
action even if it means less money.”

“I see I’m going to have to rethink everything.”

“No disrespect, sir, but loads of money isn’t going to keep
us here if all we’re doing is twiddling our thumbs.”

“I see.” Jordon considered the young mercenary for a moment.
“You’re right. I’ve been unfair to both of you. Stick around. Let’s complete
this mission, and, from here on out, I’ll see to it that your lives are more
interesting. Fair enough?”

“I’m willing to stick around and at least see what you have
in mind,” Riley said. “But I can’t promise Ericca will.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Jordon said.

“Let her go, Jordy,” Mara said.

“Mom, I’ll talk to her.”

“It might be best if she found work elsewhere.”

“She goes, I go,” Archer said.

“Enough!” Jordon’s face was red anger, his eyes flicking
from Riley to Mara and back again.

Mara favored him with the faintest of smiles, and he turned
his attention to Josh.

“Alright. Setting that aside, let’s get back to business.
Let’s assume the Talons are a trap—let’s try turning this situation to our
advantage.”

Josh cocked his head and raised a sheepish smile. “Since
we’re on the subject, I could stand a raise.”

“Me too,” Nate piped up.

“Nice try, boys. Can we talk about that later? Right now we
have a job to do.”

“Yes sir. Where do we start?”

“We have a shipment bound for Saigus.” Jordon said, patting his
mother’s hand. “And I’ll need help. It’s high time we paid a call on relatives,
don’t you think, Mom?”

Mara leaned closer to him and spoke softly, “I don’t like
believing this ship is on the Prias’s ‘
To find
’ list, but seeing that as
so would be prudent.” She turned to Riley. “But first things first. Shouldn’t
our recon team prepare to drop?”

Startled to wide-eyed readiness, Riley perked up. “Right
now? We’re not even close to Enri.”

With her motherly instincts fully engaged, Mara turned to
the young strategist. “I may be wrong, Josh, but shouldn’t we find out if those
two Talon pilots made it to Hawthorn?” In her mind, she saw the two inspectors
as boys their own mothers might miss should something bad have happened to
them.

The teen smiled. “Yes. I think it would be best if we
assumed nothing. We should tie down that loose end before anything else.
Tracking down those two pilots—knowing what really happened to them—would put
us ahead of the game.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jordon said. “Riley, grab your sister
and put that issue to bed, then catch up to us when you’re done. I want
Viper
beside us when we do Enri.”

“Yes sir,” Riley said enthusiastically.

“Before that,” Jordon added, “I’ll need to see you, Mom, and
Josh in my office alone. I have an idea that’ll require all your input.”