This Starry Deep (3 page)

Chapter
3
– Mud

THE SONIC BLAST SHIMMERED the air near my head. It missed me, but the problem with sonic weapons boils down to the wave spread. They didn’t have to hit you directly. The left side of my head felt squishy as I fell against a nearby wall. Sonics wreck your sense of balance, they feel like someone scraped your skin with a palm full of tiny needles, and they have a tendency, for me at least, to leave you feeling ... soft. 

Luckily, none of the effects last long without a direct hit. Unluckily, even a short duration was longer than I had to recover. All four of the Reclaimers moved toward me at once, fencing me in, my back quite literally to the wall.

“Guys,” I said, my voice deep and lumpy, “can’t we discuss this? I know a good bar a few levels down.”

Their leader shook his wide, flat head and croaked a laugh. “Exile-traitor, there is nothing to discuss.”

I wondered if he practiced that kind of line in the mirror at night when his men weren’t looking. Probably. Hurkz who worked for their Off-world Reclamation Project tended to be deficient in humor and oration skill. They lacked wit, but made up for it in perseverance.

This group, or ones like it, had been after me for a while now. Ever since I hit the Hurkz age of adulthood. Twenty-seven Earth years, roughly, but Hurkz had its own rotational speed and solar orbits to worry about. Me, I counted Earth years. I was raised there, mostly. And that was the crux of the issue.

I stopped thinking of the past and considered how I could end up with a future instead. I leapt, arms outstretched, and grabbed the sonic shooter’s shoulders. We went down together, but I made sure he was on the bottom, taking all the force we managed to sum up between us on the way down. I rolled, catching a glimpse of the other three, and took the shooter with me as I did. He made good cover - they didn’t want to harm their own man, after all.

I tucked up, my feet planting solidly against the shooter’s chest, and shoved. He described a pretty arc as he flew right into one of his teammates. I took the second or two worth of confusion to get my own feet under me and run.

I had to get off the station, that much I knew. As long as I remained aboard I was too easy a target. One place - even a large one, if contained - is too easy to deal with. Open space – that’s another matter.

I ran down a hallway, knowing it led ... somewhere. Well, somewhere I wasn’t, and certainly somewhere my pursuers weren’t, so that made it a better bet than anything else I had.

The corridor was well lit and brightly marked; the station’s designers didn’t want anyone getting lost. That was fantastic unless you were trying to get lost. I kept running, keeping an eye out for any decent-sized pool of shadow. Nothing caught my eye. I kept moving, my legs pistoning.

The hallway cut a sharp right turn. I took it, of course, and noticed the glowing sign cut into the wall as I moved past it. I was six levels up from the space dock, and on the wrong spiral arm of the station for my own ship to boot. Right then, running the whole way and avoiding the Hurkz stopped being viable.

I dropped and rolled to a halt, shedding momentum and changing direction as I did. Popping up, I slapped at a door panel, trying for access. The door opened and I slipped inside, knowing that the Hurkz team would be close enough to hear the door seal shut after me.

The room stood dark. I adjusted my goggles, resettling them over my large eyes, and took the few seconds I had to think. What I needed was a plan of some sort. Something beyond getting to my ship and getting off the station. If they caught me, it would be a long, painful trip to Hurkz followed by a short, painful execution.

Hurkz can camo themselves, to a degree. Their - well, our - skin may be a solid, unreflective midnight black, but there are markings along our skin that secrete light-activated chemicals. Those markings stand out in neon colors, but they’re also what gives us the ability to camouflage ourselves. Each family has their own set of markings, given to them by evolution to help avoid predators in the distant past.

They run along our chests, backs, limbs, and faces. They stand out and declare to all other Hurkz who we are, what family, tribe, and country we come from. Unless, like me, you had been stolen as a child, slaved, and ended up with the markings tattooed over in the same black as your skin.

Then all you ended up with was a series of incredibly painful memories, bad ink, and the subtle glow of what you had lost. That tattooing ruined the glands, ruined the ability to hide. Which is why it was done in the first place. Which is part of why I needed to be put down, according to Hurkz law. I was tribeless. I was nothing.

And sure, a case could be made for that. I was a cripple. I couldn’t camouflage myself, I couldn’t belong to any family on Hurkz, I couldn’t be a part of what I came from anymore, and that embarrassed them. It scared them.

Of course, I thought with a grim smile creasing my wide face, what nature gives technology can replicate. I hit the wrist controls on my thinsuit. The suit was as black as my skin, and specially coated. Where my markings were ruined, the suit would serve. The shadows in the room were dark, but not black enough to hide me. The suit helped. It quickly changed to match the bulkhead behind me as best it could. It only took a few needles to do. I felt them prick my skin and snarled briefly. The jolts of pain remind me of tattoo needles, every time.

I pressed back against the wall and stayed as still as possible. The suit was one of a kind, and it worked by taking the minimal secretions of my marking glands (what was left of them), enhancing the effects, and acting much like my skin would have.

The bulkhead door was cracked open, leaving where I was obvious to anyone who’d seen me running down the hall. I stood there, as hidden as possible, and waited. I saw their shadows before I saw them, and I tried to press myself closer to the wall. My back itched. I fought down the urge to rub it against the molding.

One of them entered the room and glanced around quickly. He didn’t see me. My luck was holding. He waved the others in and they started to search the room, closer. Much closer and I would be spotted. Instead of waiting around, I ducked back out the door and started to run, turning off the suit’s camo effect. Drained the batteries, anyway.

I padded down the corridor, trying to be as quiet as possible. I hit the emergency ladder hatch and yanked it open, but the damn panel stuck, and it clanged as it tore free. I shoved myself into the ladder area and started down, knowing the chase was back on.

This was getting me nowhere. I exited two levels down and started to move off along a corridor, but knew I was wasting time. Look, if I ran and kept running maybe I could reach my ship first. But the space dock I’d parked in was probably the same one they had used, so that wouldn’t buy me much time. No matter how much more trapped I felt in a station, I wouldn’t really be freer in my ship.

No, running only prolonged dealing, as my father liked to remind me. Not that he knew about this - Mom either. I didn’t want to bother them with it, and I didn’t want them to step in and deal with it for me. I was an adult. So the running had to stop.

I stood near the ladder and waited. Sure enough, they were coming down after me. I grabbed the ankles of the Hurkz Reclaimer furthest down and dragged him out of the ladder well. His face hit the floor, my boot hit his head. When he didn’t raise it I kicked him aside, hoping the other three would be just as easy.

Nope. The next guy had thought to look down before he came into grabbing range. Must’ve looked down before that, even, smart one. He dropped, free-falling, into sight and grabbed at the ladder to stop himself, already firing. Sonics flashed out into the hall. I dove for some sort of cover, finding the unconscious Hurkz on the floor adequate. His body quivered as the sonics hit. I grabbed his blaster and fired back.

Somehow, possibly since I hadn’t done anything but run until this point, they weren’t expecting that. He went down hard, catching the waveform full in the chest. Too bad he hadn’t gotten out of the ladder well first. I heard him bump into things on his way down. It was only another four or so levels until the bottom. I’m sure he landed fine.

I fired again, this time into the metal tube that held the ladder. I wasn’t trying to hit anyone, I just thought it might rattle them. Sadly, station rules worked against me. They could carry limited weapons as agents of their government. I was a no one and so I was unarmed, also held to station standards. Hardly fair.

I thought it through. Right about now, Dad would be going in after them, bringing the fight right to their faces. Mom would sneak around them and blow them back to where they came from. Neither option suited me.

The only way to truly stop them was to kill them. I didn’t want to kill them, truth be told. Killing them would only make it harder to get off the station, and would also manage to ensure that the next Reclaimer team sent after me would have more guys with bigger guns. It seemed that running might be my only good call in this. After I disabled them, of course.

I fired into the ladder tube again, springing into the opening after my shot. The two Reclaimers were holding onto the ladder tightly, weathering the blasts and preparing some sort of answering shot.

They
really
didn’t expect me to come in after them. I fired twice, straight up, and wrapped my arms around the ladder tightly as the sonics reverberated back down the tube at me. Damn, I hate sonics.

I think, right then, they hated the sonics more than I did. At least that’s what the looks on their faces told me as they started to fall past me. I knew that the drop wouldn’t actually kill them. A leg broken, maybe. A concussion, bruising, and a general feeling of “that wasn’t pleasant” could all result, but death? Doubtful.

I jumped back out of the ladder well and took off again, toward the hanger area. I passed all sorts of people, being in a much more populated area of the station. They looked at me. Part of those looks was just annoyance at someone running past them, shoving them when needed. It wasn’t polite, and I resisted the urge to apologize as I went, saving my breath for the running.

The other looks, though, those I had gotten used to. Correction: I had tried to get used to them. The looks that spoke of an alien in their midst. The mistrust, the distaste, those looks of mild horror. We all hit space at some point, but we don’t get past a base us-versus-them mentality all too often.

I took the turns and level changes of the station as quickly as I could until, slapping the access plate hard, I entered the hanger area that held my ship. My ship hung there, held in place by a good-sized clamp, waiting. I saw the Hurkz Reclaimer transport a few docks down. Smart guys, they parked close to me. As I approached my ship, feeling home free, I sighed. Above my ship, the dock light flashed red. Which meant that my ship was in lockdown.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course they had contacted the station authorities and had my ship held. Why wouldn’t they? Pure amateur move on my part, but it wasn’t the first today. I was sloppy and I knew it. No time for berating myself, though. There would be time later, once I got my ship free.

Dock locking didn’t prevent me from entering the ship and I hurried aboard, scrambling down the thin hallway that made up the center of the ship, until I got to the cockpit. I turned the atmo cleaners up high and leaned back as the air grew warm and thick with humidity. My goggles came off, letting my eyes relax in the wet air. I sighed deeply and considered my options. Grinning, I thumbed the communications array.

“This is Reclaimer Squad Seventeen,” I said in my best Hurkz. I didn’t know too much of the language, but Mom insisted I learn it when I was kid. Wanted me to know where I came from and all that.

“Repeat, please,” came the Station’s reply.

Bingo. They didn’t speak Hurkz. Why would they, it was rare that a Hurkz ship would stop here and rarer still that they wouldn’t speak a more common tongue.

“Repeat, please,” they said again.

“Reclaimer Squad Seventeen, requesting dock freedom,” I said in Hurkz.

“Docked ship T194-MURT, please reply in a common field language.”

I laughed under my breath and let out a loud rumble. Directly into the mic. I followed it quickly, though. “Reclaimer Squad Seventeen, request this ship release, for compound,” I said in thick, halting English.

“T194-MURT, this is Dock Captain Byrne, your ship is being held by...”

“Know why! We are ones who did,” I shouted. “And now need ship. Let free. Authority Hurkz government.”

“Dock release in seventy seconds, sir,” they replied. This was perfect. They were just dumb enough to think we all sounded the same, and my scenario seemed reasonable enough that they could be lazy. These guys sat in a room all day just telling people how to back up; they aimed at lazy whenever they could reasonably get away with it. They didn’t even think to ask for a pass code.

The clamp holding my ship released and I eased out of the dock, slowly. No sudden moves and no one will notice what you’re doing. I backed the ship out and turned it, also slowly.

Once I was clear of the dock, I shifted my ship over to the side and aligned it with the Hurkz ship, tail to tail. I backed it up nice and close, looking exactly like what I said I was, before I fired the main thrusters and took off. The wash from my engine melted, bent and otherwise screwed up their propulsion system but good. The Dock Command would see it as some sort of stupid flight accident.