“What’s the danger, here, Walter? Who’s after us?”
“That guy outsside. And Sstanley.”
“Our Stanley?”
Walter paused. “All of them,” he said quietly.
Molly cursed under her breath. The thrusters finally went green, and she saw through the carboglass above that the hangar doors were open. The ceiling of the parking chamber, which held up the underside of the moon’s crust, loomed beyond.
“Going up!” she yelled over her shoulder. She directed the rear thrusters down and routed some of their energy through maneuvering channels to the nose jets. The ship lifted slowly and evenly off the ground.
Walter pressed his head to the glass on his side. “That skinny guy issn’t sso happy,” he said, laughing.
“I bet not.”
Cole ran up into the cockpit. “Bad news. Only one suit on the ship. I checked the staterooms and the airlock.”
“Is it an extra-tall?”
“You got it.”
“Okay,” Molly said. “You’ll have to go over to Parsona through the airlock and bring our suits over.”
The cockpit of the GU-500 rose up into the parking cavern where a sea of gleaming hulls spread out in all directions. In the distance, a crane could be seen moving one of the ships further away from them, a new arrival. Several other parking cranes stood idle, but one approached them with a ship in its clutches.
“I don’t think we’re gonna have time for that,” Cole said, pointing toward the crane. It clutched a military hull, the words “LIFE SECURITY” emblazoned across the side. Missile pods could be seen under the wing as the crane lowered the ship into the hangar next to theirs.
Molly heard Cole swallow.
“I think that’s meant for us,” he said.
••••
The roof of the parking bay had several square openings in it from the lowered landing pads above. Molly spotted stars and the promise of open space through them—they should have more than enough time to fly out and make it to a safe jump point before the security ship warmed up. The Stanleys would have to pressurize the hangar in order to board. Just because they were androids, that didn’t mean they could vacuum the entire hallway beyond. Without airlocks, their clients would be killed.
She considered the easy and quick escape, but only for a moment. Whatever was inside her father’s old ship, it felt more like a mother than the one she’d just spent time with. And the ship itself was the only place that felt like home, where the nightmares of being left behind never tormented her sleep. Then there was the Wadi to consider, some sort of national treasure that had become another companion, another part of her family. She gave the stars another wistful glance, then turned to follow Walter’s directions, who was pointing in the direction of Parsona.
Cole gripped the arm of her flight seat and turned as the ship did, watching the menacing security ship dip into the hangar bay.
“What’s the plan?” he asked.
Molly estimated how long it would take to land near Parsona, airlock Cole out of this ship, have him airlock into Parsona, retrieve their flightsuits, then repeat the steps to get back. She and Walter would then need to get suited up before all three of them airlocked over one final time. There simply wasn’t enough time for that many depressurizations.
“How strong are airlock collars?” she asked Cole.
“I dunno. Why? What’re you thinking?”
“You probably don’t want to know.” Regardless, Molly thought she knew the answer: most ships were designed to airlock with the old-fashioned stations that spun up for gravity, rather than manufacture it with expensive grav plates. If ships could hang from their own weight at the outermost ring of those spinning stations, it meant her idea just might work.
“How far to our ship?” she asked Walter.
He checked his computer. “Half a mile.”
“I’m not good with Imperial—”
“Less than a klick,” Cole said.
“Alright. Cole, get in that suit. You might not need it, but just in case.”
He plopped down in the cockpit hallway and started worming into the oversized suit. “What exactly am I gonna be doing?”
“Warming up Parsona’s thrusters as fast as you can.”
Molly slid the accelerator forward, moving off in the direction Walter indicated.
Below them, the hangar doors snapped shut on a furious Mr. Byrne.
••••
Cole stationed himself in the airlock as Molly began her crazy maneuver. He couldn’t believe what she was trying. Through the small porthole, he watched the world slowly turn on its side as Molly rolled the ship over, the gravity panels keeping his boots firmly planted on the deck. Below, he could see Parsona’s hull slide into view.
“Ten meters,” he said into his mic.
“Copy.”
They were nearly inverted now. The airlocks on both ships were arranged three quarters of the way up their hulls, out of the way of the wings. Molly was attempting to do something in the gravity of a large moon that most pilots have a hard time learning to do in zero Gs.
“Three meters,” he said, calling out numbers like this was an ordinary docking maneuver.
“Copy,” she said.
“Go one meter aft.” In the reflection of Parsona’s hull, Cole could see the wash of the 500’s thrusters licking out as Molly fought to hold them in an unnatural angle. “Two meters. Just a touch aft,” he cautioned.
“Copy.”
Damn. Her voice sounded so calm. As if she’d done this a million times. Cole had seen her work plenty of miracles in the simulators, but watching them in real life, like the rescue from the Palan canyons, it filled him with awe. And made him love her even more.
“You need to rotate a few degrees flatter, honey, and a few more centimeters aft. One meter.” He already had the inner airlock door closed and the room vacuumed. One hand squeezed a grip by the porthole, the other hovered over the airlock controls.
“Copy. And don’t call me ‘honey.’”The two hulls banged together, spot on. Cole engaged the collar locks and listened for them to snap into place.
“Secured,” he said.
As the outer airlock doors slid open, he wondered if he’d ever be allowed to call her any pet names.
“Going up,” Molly radioed. Cole felt the hull vibrate as the thrusters strained with the added weight. Parsona would get a few new burn marks to go with the old, but both birds lifted off the ground, struggling against the moon’s gravity. Adding to the insanity: Molly’s plan required Cole to transfer in flight, as Parsona’s landing gear would never withstand the weight and imbalance of a ship attached to one side.
As she took them back toward one of the holes in the moon’s crust, Cole considered his long jump from one airlock to the other. The two ship’s ideas of “down” didn’t match, which meant he’d be jumping through the side of one and into the roof of another. And his suit had a lot of extra material around the legs, making him feel clumsy. He held himself by the lip of the 500’s hatch, swung out until the other grav plates grabbed him, dangled for a moment, then let himself fall to the metal plating inside Parsona. He rolled as he hit, trying to absorb the impact in all his joints instead of just a few.
Not bad, he thought, struggling to his feet. He looked up through the hatch into the 500, where the world that once seemed level now looked askew. Above Parsona’s inner hatch, the atmosphere and pressure lights were green; Cole thumbed the doors open.
“I’m in,” he radioed, stumbling toward the cockpit. Parsona said something through the speakers as he staggered through the cargo bay, the crotch of his outfit down around his knees. He couldn’t hear her clearly through the helmet, so he popped it off and tossed it aside.
“Fire up the thrusters!” he told the ship as he made his way forward.
“I’m sorry, Cole. I can’t do anything like that.”
He waddled into the cockpit and reached over the flight controls to start the procedure himself.
“Is everything okay?” the ship asked. “Where’s Mollie?”
“She’s in the ship airlocked to you,” Cole explained. “So, no. Everything is not okay.”
••••
Molly turned both ships around and headed back for one of the openings created by the lowered landing lift. She didn’t like the sight beyond the first hole: the security ship could be seen rising up through its hangar. She gave the 500 full thrust, filling the docking bay with a glow of harsh plasma and hoped Cole still had his suit on in case the locking collars broke loose, dispelling Parsona’s air into the vacuum.
“Thrusters are coming up now,” Cole radioed. “But they won’t be ready for a full burn for a bit longer.”
Molly thumbed the mic. “Roger. We’ve got company.”
“Already?”
“Yeah. Change of plans. Get the thrusters up and get ready to hold us steady.”
There was a pause. “Molly, I . . . I don’t think I can do that—”
“You’ll have plenty of room, just get ready.”
She turned to Walter. “Go get in the other ship,” she told him.
He holstered his computer and darted out of the cockpit.
“No looting!” Molly added.
Ahead, the Security ship rose clear of the hangar, spun around slowly, then began accelerating their way. The radio was turned way down, but she could still hear nonstop threats being broadcast their way. She reached forward and flicked the unit off, then reduced thrust as she began rolling the two ships over. Gradually, she positioned Parsona on top, spinning her own view of the parking deck from the 500.
“Get ready!” she commed to Cole. She pulled under the first exit through the deck—nothing more than a large, square hole of trussed-up regolith left open by a lowered landing pad—and diverted the thrusters to boost them up. Parsona popped above the moon’s crust, still attached to the 500, the Security craft bearing down on them both. The armed ship would be on top of them as soon as they cleared the parking deck. The Stanleys inside were probably waiting to capture them where their clients’ ships couldn’t be harmed; they must think a clean escape was going to be impossible.
As the SADAR beeped with a missile-lock warning, Molly began to suspect the same thing. She tried to level her thoughts, even as the world outside turned sideways. It helped to imagine herself on the bottom of the moon, falling down through the crust, rather than half inverted and rising up. The whine of the overworked thrusters made the illusion hard to maintain, however, and she watched, powerless, as the parking deck fell away with agonizing slowness.
She waited until they were clear of the crust, counted to five, then keyed the mic.
“Now!” she barked into the radio.
She reversed the thruster controls, but left the accelerator at full. Now, rather than forcing Parsona into the clear, the full power of the 500 was trying to drag them both back down into the opening in the moon. She jumped from her seat and sprinted down the center aisle of the ship, grabbing the airlock jam to swing herself through. She jumped up for the hatch, pulled herself over the lip, felt the switch in gravity fields, then crashed into a heap on the floor of her own airlock deck.
She groaned in pain, and could feel the vibration in the deck as her ship did likewise, trying to counter the more massive thrust from the 500. She forced herself up through sheer will and jumped across the airlock to close the outer hatch. As soon as the indicator went green, she released the locking collars.
The GU-500 popped free, its thrusters and the moon’s gravity, powering it back down through the landing pad shaft. Molly stood up and peered through the viewport, watching the ship race away as Parsona slowly rose. Just before it fell through the crust, she saw the blue hull of the Security ship come into view.
The two crafts slammed together, the wings of the inverted 500 snapping in half and wrapping themselves around the small craft beneath it. It looked like a fierce bird of prey snatching a blue robin out of the air, driving its meal deep into its lair—
A massive explosion ended the illusion, the ball of fire spreading out among the gleaming hulls before rising up through the regolith and toward Parsona’s belly. Molly turned away from the harsh scene and leaned out the airlock door, her hand on the jamb. She looked up the center of the ship and saw Cole gaping back at her from the pilot’s seat.
“What in the world?!” he yelled, his voice still raspy and weak.
Molly limped toward the cockpit, her ankle twisted from the fall through the airlock.
“Did you think we were keeping that ship?” she shouted back.
Cole shook his head, his shocked expression fading to a grim smile. He turned and increased thrust, leveled Parsona out, and headed away from the moon, careful to keep the Gs low and the vector straight.
None of them had flightsuits on, of course.
Which would pose all sorts of problems as a Navy fleet, led by Admiral Saunders, prepared for their jump into the Dakura system.
Part X - Caught!
“Judge thyself.”
~The Bern Seer~
29
Dani pulled the vehicle to a stop at the edge of the government district. Edison lumbered out of the back seat, and Anlyn followed. As she stepped to the sidewalk and approached the passenger door, the window slid open.
“Be careful in there,” Dani said, leaning over from his seat to catch her eye.
“I will be,” she said.
Dani glanced at Edison, then his lance. “Don’t use that unless you win the vote, and only outside. The spectacle will be just as important for our cause as the politics; otherwise, the vote won’t stick.”