My Other Car is a Spaceship (32 page)

“What do you mean, probably two? Did the guards injure one?”

“Yes sir, shot in the abdomen and bleeding heavily, but the prisoners took him with them. As far as I can tell, that leaves them with approximately fifteen fighters. Even losing seven or eight to their one each time, we can absorb those losses far longer than they can.”

“Yes, and the only reason they
have
fifteen fighters instead of ten or less is because of your ill-advised plan to plant moles in the prisoners’ cells. If we’d simply disposed of the prisoners as I’d suggested, there’d be even
fewer
of them for us to be fighting now. And
maybe
they wouldn’t have been so bold in this last attack. And just how long do you think your guards will continue to put up with eight-to-one losses before they quit or rebel?”

Ishtawahl bristled at the comments.
“Just what is it you want of me,
sir
? You complain when conventional means do not get results, and then you complain when I try
un
conventional means.”

“What I want, Jern, is
results
. I don’t care how conventional or unconventional the approach is. I only care that you kill every last one of these damn prisoners so we can all get back to robbing and pillaging. When you can tell me that all the escaped prisoners are dead,
then
I’ll be happy. But until such time, I expect I’ll continue to be pissed off at you. Just. Get. It.
Done
!

“
Look, if the prisoner is bleeding profusely, just follow the blood trail. It should lead you right to the rest of them.”

He terminated the call and dropped into his chair
with a sigh, trying to massage the tension from his temples.

Kalen’s Kadre rushed back to the chamber where Nude and Merry awaited. Team Three guarded one end of the tunnel and Team Four guarded the other, in case someone had managed to track one of the teams back to their lair. Two members of Team Two guarded the door to the chamber. The remaining four people carried Vanderwaal inside and laid him down on some bedding.

Dr. Chalmis’Noud’Ourien hurried to his side.
“Someone please take the child outside.”

Merry left, silent and wide-eyed, holding the hand of one of the Kadre.

“He’s been shot,” Kalen said.

“Yes, I guessed that from the injury,” the doctor replied dryly. “Now step back and let me examine the patient.”

“Right. Don’t worry, Steve. Nude’ll fix you up—right Doc?”

“Hush. Hand me my bag.” His medical bag consisted of a tuber sack containing pilfered medical supplies: bandages, antiseptic gel, pneumodermic shots of various analgesics and
sedatives, and other small and easily portable potions, instruments, and medical devices.

He worked quickly and with an economy of motion. Within minutes he had stopped the worst of the bleeding.
It took him the better part of an hour to patch the damage as much as possible.

At last he was done. He washed up using a container of drinking water. As he dried his hands, Kalen approached.

The captain looked over at Vanderwaal, who slept, shallow breaths revealing that life still coursed through his veins. “Good job, Nude. Is he going to make it?”

Nude sighed before shaking his head. “I have done all I can, but there is too much damage. He
lost too much blood—”

“But
—” Kalen interrupted before being silenced by a raise of Nude’s hand.

“Even if I had the right type of blood,
which I do not, the injuries to his internal organs are too severe. Even now his body is going into shock. There is nothing more I can do for him.”

Kalen nodded. “I know you did everything within your power. How much longer does he have?”

Nude shrugged. “Not long. Hours.”

Kalen nodded again, this time slowly. “Thanks.”

He squeezed the arm of the taller Chan’Yi and went back to Vanderwaal’s side.

“Hang in there, Steve. You’re a fighter. Keep on fighting.”

He sat beside the unconscious man and held his hand, waiting for the end.

“Arriving in three…two…one…
now
!”

Sefsen Glo’s final word issued simultaneously with the colorful patterns of null-space being replaced by the shadowy view of
realspace from within the Oort Cloud of the Bohrtar system. At this distance, the sun cast little more light on the billions upon billions of chunks of ice and frozen gasses that formed the objects that surrounded
Fair Trade
than did the surrounding stars.

“Good work, Sefsen,” Hal acknowledged. “Jump as soon as you get a fix on our target. We don’t want to hang around here long enough for the pirates to detect us and take
countermeasures.”

“Aye,
Captain.”

“On the other hand, take as much time as you need to get it right. We only get
one shot at this.”

Glo chuckled. “
Aye
, Captain.”

Three minutes later, he announced, “Jumping in three
…two…one…
now
!”

“Have you found the prisoner’s lair yet?” Penrod asked, frowning. “Were you able to follow the blood trail?”

Ishtawahl grimaced in frustration. “No. The trail disappeared after a few turns. There should have been a lot more blood than that, but
it just stopped.”

Penrod’s frown deepened. “That doesn’t make sense. Blasters tend to cauterize a wound to some extent, but gut shots bleed. How did they stop the bleeding so quickly?”

Ishtawahl growled softly. “Sanibots. By the time I arrived at the hangar, they had already cleaned up most of the pool of blood at the site of the shooting. The scattered drops along the corridors would have taken no time to clean up.”

Penrod’s eyes bugged out “Are you freakin’
kiddin’
me? Our own
sanibots
are working against us now? Turn ‘em off. Turn ‘em
all
off, damn it, until we finish off the prisoners.”

Ishtawahl nodded. “Already done.
”

Penrod shook his head in disbelief. “Freakin’ sanibots. What’s next:
are the
grav-lifters
gonna go berserk and chase us down the corridors?”

His voice grew cold.
“This has gone on way too long. I’m telling you for the last time, Jern. No more warnings: either the
prisoners
die, or you do.”

Sir,” Mekfensel called to Jern Ishtawahl on his implant, “we picked up an anomaly on the sensors.”

Ishtawahl peered around the corner
of the passageway before crossing the intersection. Those thrice-damned prisoners seemed to be everywhere lately.

“What sort of anomaly?”

“We picked up what seemed to be the hyper wave of an arriving ship, out in the Oort Cloud. But it was weak, so it might simply be a sensor glitch.”

“Any other readings?”

“No sir. Just the one.”

“Keep monitoring
in case someone is up to something. Let me know if you pick up anything suspicious.”

“Yes sir.”

“Arriving in three
…two…one…
now
!” Sefsen Glo whispered into the audio pickup. The transmitter was set to the lowest possible strength. No telling what kind of sensors the pirates had in the area.

He
waited just long enough to be sure they were at the right coordinates before detaching the magnetic grapples that held the skiff tightly to the hull. Then he waited a few seconds for it to drift far enough away.

“
Good luck!”

He initiated the hyper
flight drive at bare minimum power—just enough to jump beyond the largest gas giant in the system while creating a minimal hyper disturbance, like that of a far smaller vessel. With luck, it wouldn’t be enough to arouse the pirates’ suspicions.

As soon as he arrived at his interim target, he initiated another, similar jump
at right angles, several more in various directions, followed by one back to the Oort Cloud. Then he jumped out of the system altogether.

Left behind, the
maintenance skiff—designed to hold a work crew of three and their equipment—was stuffed end-to-end with nine people and as many air tanks as they could cram inside.

As soon as
Fair Trade
jumped, the skiff fired up its low-power chemical engines and headed for the nearest asteroid. It would be a lengthy trip from there to the fortress, made to feel even longer by the cramped conditions inside the skiff. But that was the only possible destination. There was no going back.

“Sir,” Mekfensel called again, “We picked up half a dozen more signals, even weaker, seemingly at random at various places in the system, including one west of us, just beyond the asteroid belt, and then several more out beyond the seventh planet. Any of those could be a spurious signal, and in fact all could. But it seems suspicious that we would have that many in such a short span. I ran diagnostics on the sensor net and the hardware and software check out. The signals
could
indicate a ship arriving in-system and then leaving, and most of the signals are mere camouflage. On the other hand, even if those signals represent a ship, it would seem to be that of a very small ship, too small to be a problem for us.”

Jern Ishtawahl frowned.
“Hmm. You are probably right, Mek. Still, just to be safe, send out a patrol to check the area near the Belt where you picked up the signal.”

“Yes, sir. That was going to be my recommendation.”

Kalen awoke with a start. As exhausted as he’d been, he
’d fallen asleep sitting upright, holding Vanderwaal’s hand. Now, the pressure of fingers squeezing his hand had jarred him from sleep.

“Steve?”

The other man tried to speak, but couldn’t. He cleared his throat and tried again. No go. Instead, slowly, so painfully slowly, he lifted his other arm and slid it haltingly over to the breast pocket of what was left of the bloody coveralls piled near his bedding. He made a pitifully weak effort to open the clasp.

“You want something from your pocket?” Kalen asked.

Vanderwaal appeared to nod his head a fraction.

Kalen opened the pocket and found a folded piece of torn cloth inside, with a hastily scribbled note on it. “Do you want me to read it?”

Another nod.

Kalen had a hard time making out the words in the dim light. “My dearest Jess-Jessica. I tried my best to reach you and
…protect you from the pirates. If you are reading this, it means…I failed.”

He interrupted his reading to object, but Vanderwaal frowned and squeezed Kalen’s hand with all his remaining strength,
meager as it was.

Kalen swallowed and resumed reading. “I love you and
Davie with…with all my heart, and I entrust your safety to this man, Captain Jeffries. Do what he tells you, and he will get you to safety. I—” Kalen fought to control his voice. “I’ll see you both in the next world. Love, Steve.”

Kalen
turned to make a promise. He stared into the eyes of the other man, but no one stared back. Vanderwaal was gone.

Kalen took a deep steadying breath.
I’ll get us out of here somehow, Steve. And then I’ll find your family, no matter where they are. I promise.

He squeezed the dead man’s hand to seal the bargain, and then laid
it gently on his chest.

The skiff hugged the asteroids it passed, seeking invisibility. At less than twenty meters in length, and wearing a brand new quick-and-dirty matte black paint job, it vanished among the shadows of kilometers-long boulders. As low-speed, short-distance-only maintenance vessel, it produced relatively little heat and no warping of space-time. Given its diminutive size and its nearness to the surface of iron-bearing asteroids, it was virtually impossible to pick up with sensors.

Still, the
people inside couldn’t afford to be overconfident. One slip and it was all over for them. The ship was unarmed and unshielded. A single blaster shot would be enough to nullify them as a threat.

At their rate of speed
it would take hours to reach their destination, assuming they got that far. But reaching the fortress was the easy part. Getting
inside
, alive, was going to be the tricky part.

Captain Kalen Jeffries looked over the small band of fighters before him. They sat in a chamber, deep in the bowels of the maze. In the wake of Vanderwaal’s death, some of them had begun to have doubts about their chances against the superior might of the pirates.

“We dealt the
pirates a severe blow with our last raid. We seriously damaged two of their ships and disrupted a large part of their internal communications grid. But if we stop now, it’s all for nothing. They can fix everything we broke, given time. And
then
Steve’s death will have been pointless. The only way to make his death count is to keep hitting the pirates and keep hurting them. As long as we keep them off-balance, keep them looking for us and preparing for attacks, they don’t have the time or the manpower for much rebuilding.”

He caught the eye of each person in turn. “That’s why we have to attack again, soon, and in strength. Four or five or seven of us can’t do what fifteen can do. We can’t afford to have anyone sitting on the sidelines. Besides, what do you think the pirates will do with you if they catch you? Do you think they’ll accept a plea of ‘oh, I wasn’t involved in that last raid—only the two
or three before that’? Face it, we’re all in this for the long haul. It’s them or us. Our best chance of staying alive is to keep fighting and hope we can destroy enough infrastructure that the pirates have to fight us in disjointed groups, without central coordination.”

Most of the group nodded, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. A couple still looked doubtful.

“And there’s one more thing. Many of you may not know this yet, but the pirates have in their possession a number of nuclear warheads.” That got the attention of the newcomers.

“I’m sorry to say they got them from the Unity ships sent to destroy this fortress—the ships I
commanded.” Kalen’s mouth tightened in bitter memory. “They’ve used at least two of the nukes so far on defenseless colony planets, killing thousands.”

Gasps issuing from two of the Kadre interrupted him momentarily.

“There’s no telling how many more lives they’ll take with the others, all for the sake of extorting money. The best thing we can do for those potential victims, and the biggest hurt we could inflict on the pirates, is to find a way to destroy the nukes so they can’t be used.

“
After we knock out another piece of their infrastructure, our next target must be the lab where the nukes are being repaired. From our recent sorties, I’m fairly certain I know where the lab must be. A lightning strike to destroy the warheads should do the trick. Now, who’s with me?”

Twelve
hands went up, besides Kalen’s.

One of the Thoria
ns’ hands hovered, not quite up but not exactly down either.

“Fen? What’s your reservation?” Kalen asked.

“What happens to us if we trigger the warhead?”

Kalen shook his head firmly. “Can’t happen. The nukes are safed until someone initiates the detonation sequence
, and that requires an authorization code. Until the nuke is armed it
can’t
go critical. All that could happen is the explosion shatters the warhead, spraying plutonium all over the lab and rendering it dangerously contaminated. The pirates would be hard-pressed to clean up the radiation in any reasonable time. If we’re lucky, they’ll have to abandon the entire fortress. If not, it’ll take them months at least to make the lab usable again, and they may never be able to reclaim enough pure plutonium to replace the warhead.”

Fen Donue spoke again. “
Say everything goes as planned and we destroy the warheads and render the lab unusable for the next few years. Let’s say the pirates decide to abandon the fortress. Where does that leave
us
? The pirates are not about to take us with them.”

Kalen nodded. “You’ve raised an excellent point. The only way we’re getting off this rock, whether the plan succeeds or fails, is to steal a ship. And that’s why we need
all
of you. One team will blow the lab, a second will create some noisy diversions, and a third will hijack a ship.
Now
who’s with me?”

This time,
every hand shot up.

The skiff slipped easily between the chunks of shattered planet that formed the asteroid belt. The rocks granted those aboard a high degree of invisibility. The problem was the large gaps
between
the boulders. Despite the popular misconception that the rocks in an asteroid belt are spaced closely and fairly evenly together and travel in synch, in reality there can be gaps of hundreds or thousands of kilometers between sizable asteroids. And due to collisions between asteroids or with passing comets or meteoroids, some asteroids are always traveling at angles to others.

The
gaps presented the greatest vulnerability for the assault team. The primary danger was being detected by a pirate craft patrolling the area. Less likely, but no less fatal in consequence, was being struck by a rogue asteroid or meteoroid. Even a fist-sized rock traveling at sufficient speed would punch through the thin hull of the vessel and potentially kill everyone aboard.

The final, and perhaps most likely risk, was that of mechanical breakdown. The crew had limited fuel and
only so many oxygen tanks. If—for
any
reason—they didn’t get inside the pirate fortress before their forty-two hours of air ran out, they were just as dead as if the pirates found them and blew them out of the sky.

It would be a hungry forty-two hours as well. Because the skiff was unpressurized, no one could open their suits to eat. The
suits could provide sips of water and some food paste, but that was all. It would keep them alive, but wouldn’t do much to fill their bellies. The team’s utility belts contained protein bars, weapons, and replacement power packs. But that was for later, once they got inside
Smuggler’s Cove
.

If
they got that far.

“Mr. Ishtawahl, this is Dr. Felmendar.”

The
voice on the intercom sounded tired, weak—as if the doctor might not make it many more months. But that wasn’t Ishtawahl’s problem. As long as the scientist kept the nukes coming on schedule, Felmendar could drop dead the day after the last one was completed, for all the Alberian cared.

“Yes, doctor, what is it? I a
m very busy. Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem. You asked to be kept informed of the progress of the nuke. I just wanted to let you know that I am running diagnostics on it as we speak. I do not anticipate any problems; it should be ready for pickup in two hours.”

“Good. Thank you, doctor. I will have my people come for it then.”

“Thank you. I need to free up the space to start working on the next one.”

“Jern, have you figured out yet where those damn escapees are staging from?” Penrod sat behind his desk, while Ishtawahl stood before him.