Pirate
by Michael P Calligaro
An explosion jolted the ship. Ignoring the disconcerted cries from the younger crewmembers, Anniston launched herself over to the diagnostics station. She grabbed the entry ball and chorded in her authorization code while her momentum carried her into the wall. Her eyes fixed on the screen and her fingers rapidly pressing combinations of the ball's six buttons, she rebounded from the wall and drifted back until the ball's cord went taut. She finished her code and the terminal froze for a second. Then the screen blinked and returned to the request for authorization.
She could feel the ship listing to port with a slight spin. This was no time for the computer to go crazy. Her fingers immediately rechorded her auth while something in the back of her mind wondered why it hadn't given her some sort of error for mischording the code.
This time the terminal unlocked and turned into a status screen full of blinking red icons. "Holy shit!" She hurriedly chorded in commands.
Captain Jared said, "If there's an emergency, Ms. Reyes, we'd all like to know about it today." Though Anniston's fingers didn't slow their hurried chording, her brow furrowed in surprise. After years in space together, Jared and she were on a first name basis. He always treated her with respect, not like some puker.
Feeling her face become warm, she frowned and replied curtly. "Sir, we've had an explosion in engine four and we're now venting plasma into space."
"Shut the engine down!"
"I've already tried. It's flooded and won't shut down until it drains."
"Then disconnect the plasma tank."
She shook her head. "Tried that too. Twice. The valve's stuck."
"Try it again."
Come on, Jared, she thought. Move on. This isn't going to work. "Yes, sir." She chorded in the command again and again the terminal blinked failure. "No luck." She glanced around the cramped and spartan bridge of their cargo ship, checking the three young faces of the crew. Lexre, at the redundant multipurpose console, had frozen. His face was pale and his hands twitched nervously. Fenner was staring at Jared with her entry ball ready in her hand. Presumably she thought she was ready to send a distress call, but Anniston could see she'd forgotten to activate the long-range transmitters. Balik, in control of their meager weapons systems, looked to be running diagnostics on them. Anniston shook her head. Jared and she had just picked up this sorry excuse for a crew on the last run. Hell, on a bad day they still got space sick. None were going to have any useful ideas.
Jared pulled at his beard, as he always did when he got nervous. "So, what can we do?"
Anniston sighed. "Everything runs off the one tank. But despite three failsafes between it and engine four, we can't separate them. We're fucked."
"Thank you for the concise assessment of our situation, Ms. Reyes. But what can we do?"
Great, she thought. He no longer feels the need to treat me with common courtesy, yet he expects me to do his job. Grinding her teeth, she tried to focus on the problem. Unfortunately, if there were any good solutions, they eluded her.
Balik looked up. "I've still got control of the turret laser. Maybe I can cut through the line and disconnect the engine."
Jared frowned disapprovingly, but before he could say anything Anniston spoke up. "Hey, the idea has merit. At least we'd die quickly when the main engines exploded." Properly chastised, Balik looked down at his displays. Anniston continued, "As far as I can see, our only option is to burn it hard and use what fuel we've got left to get through the pirate zone."
Jared eyebrows shot up. "And after we've incurred all that velocity and burned all of our fuel, how do you propose we stop?"
"We start screaming for a ramship now and hope one can get to us in time."
Lexre blinked and looked at her in confusion. Fenner spun around, ready to do as ordered, and Balik, in a shaky voice, asked, "In time for what?"
The captain frowned, "Mr. Balik, if our friends in Corporate didn't get to us in time, we'd blast through the system, fly out of range, and never be heard from again."
The crew turned wide eyes to Anniston, who shook her head, saying, "Our other option is to pull an all stop, let the fuel leak out, and drift slowly through pirate space, where we'll definitely be picked up. If we're really lucky, it'll be by one of the few clans that don't slaughter the crews of the ships they hit. Your call, Captain."
Jared sneered. "You seem to think Corporate cares enough about our lives to attempt a risky maneuver with a ramship. If they care so much, why'd they order us to fly valuable material through a pirate zone in a rickety old ship like this?"
Anniston cast a worried glance to the other crewmembers. After years of experience with their far-from-benevolent employer, she felt the same way Jared did. But she would never let that distrust show in front of a green crew. Hoping to quell an outbreak of outright panic, she said, "Come on, Captain. Corporate isn't that bad."
Jared exploded, "How'd you get to be so naïve? Our cargo would have to be worth far more than it is for them to possibly go out of their way to save us. I'd rather take my chances with the pirates."
What the hell had come over him? He never acted like this. When they got a second alone together, Jared was going to get a serious talking to. Anniston turned back to the diag screen and studied it. They were burning fuel too fast, but, other than the threat of running out, they weren't in any real danger. If they could just isolate the one engine, they'd be fine. She tried the command to close off the fuel line one more time, and again it beeped failure.
Suddenly the communications panel erupted in beeps and squeals. Fenner gasped. She then glanced back up to the Captain, who glared at her expectantly, and blushed. "Sorry, sir. Sensors show two ships approaching quickly."
Anniston's fingers tensed over the chord buttons of her auxiliary control panel. "I can fire the burn right now."
Jared frowned. "Fenner, what is the make of the ships?"
"Computer describes them as 'Deathgates.'"
Anniston dropped the entry ball and angrily punched the wall behind the diag screen. The force sent her floating back toward her normal seat. "What?" asked Balik.
The captain shook his head. "We can't outrun a Deathgate. Okay everyone, take your stations and keep your hands where the pirates can see them. Make no, I repeat, no gesture that could be construed as threatening. We've lost the cargo and possibly the ship, but we might still live through this."
Anniston grabbed her seat and pulled herself down into it. She studied the faces of each of the young crewmembers, and saw nothing but fear. Was one a good actor? The coincidence of a triple system fault as they passed a group of waiting pirates was just too great. She glanced to Jared for confirmation of her thoughts. But he just cast a suspicious glare at her. What the hell is he thinking? We've been together too long for me to do this to him.
Unsettled and angry, she leaned back into her seat and strapped in. Then she stared forward and waited for the boarding.
The Deathgates quickly pulled within range of the freighter's visual cameras, and their images appeared on the forward screen. One held back while the other moved in close to match speed. It had a good pilot, for the two ships touched with a minimum of jarring. The electromagnetic clamps sent a clank through the hull and the ships pulled together snugly, now moving as one. Judging from the sound, the pilot had placed his ship on the port side, safely out of the way of the venting plasma. Jared tapped a button below his armrest and Anniston heard a faint hissing followed by the quiet hum of the airlock cycling open.
It took Balik a second to recognize the sound. Then he turned to Jared, his voice bordering on panic. "You inviting them in, Captain?"
"Better they waltz in through the airlock than cut their way in through the hull."
Balik's eyes became large and he looked hastily to his pressure suit strapped to the ceiling. Jared shook his head. "Don't bother. If they cut through, their intent is to kill us. Those suits won't stop a pirate's shredder."
Balik looked to Anniston--possibly seeking a second opinion. Frowning wryly, she nodded and turned to the port wall, prickling her ears for the telltale sound of magnetic boots. One pair meant a torchman. Multiple meant they would enter through the airlock.
A pair of boots struck the hull and took two slow steps. She held her breath and waited. What seemed like a solar half-life passed before another pair joined the first. Two more soon joined them and the group made their way toward the airlock.
Anniston let her breath out slowly, without much jubilation. Even though the pirates had chosen not to hole the ship, they still might not let crew live. Besides, she preferred breathing vacuum to what some pirates did with women.
Jared spoke in a strong, stable voice. "Keep breathing, everyone. We'll get through this unharmed." His voice was so sure of itself, so believable, that many of the crewmembers relaxed visibly. Finally, he showed signs of the great leader Anniston knew. She almost forgave him for snapping at her earlier.
The outer door closed and the inner one opened. Moments later, four figures in black armored suits with reaction mass packs on their backs and nasty looking rifles in their gloved hands strolled into the room. Anniston couldn't see through their darkened faceplates, but from the turning of their heads she could tell they checked all five members of the crew. The front two tapped buttons on their right forearms and kicked off. Their magboots released and they rolled over in the air. Their feet came in contact with the ceiling and their boots remagnetized. They stayed there upside down and fanned their weapons over the group. Though the ceiling gave them a good tactical position, Anniston suspected their maneuver's real intent was to make them seem more menacing.
One of the two pirates still on the ground tapped his helmet on the left temple and his faceplate slid up. He was a graying man with a long knife scar running down the left side of his jaw. His eyes were so black she couldn't tell his pupils from his irises. He grinned at her and nodded. Speaking in a voice made raspy by either years of inhaling narcotic smoke or a bad blow to the neck, he said, "Thank you, Anniston. I'm pleased to see you're good for your word."
Anniston's throat fell into her stomach.
He smiled again. "Unfortunately, I am not. I'm afraid that, after careful consideration, we've decided to do without your further services to us. I realize this puts you in somewhat of a bind, but I'm sure a woman of your talents will find a way out of it." He nodded perfunctorily to Jared and closed his faceplate. More boots landed on the hull outside and the pirates on the floor headed back toward the cargo holds, leaving the two on the ceiling to guard.
Anniston's heart beat erratically and her vision blurred. She glanced to Jared, but he stared back at her in anger and distrust. She opened her mouth to plead for sanity on his part. She'd never do this to him. He had to know that. But one of the guards on the ceiling slapped his rifle, silencing her before she could get a word out.
The hour the pirates spent unloading the ship was possibly the longest in her life. She wanted desperately to explain to Jared that she had nothing to do with this, to make things right with him. That the pirates weren't going to kill them--they would have done so already--was no longer a relief. Her career was sinking with her heart and she had to sit by and watch it. Worst of all, her intense friendship with Jared had just come to a fiery end. And that hurt more than anything else. She found herself wishing they'd tried Balik's plan. The quick death would have been easier than this.
Finally, the guards kicked down from the ceiling and walked out. When the airlock closed behind them, Anniston burst out, "Jared, you can't believe I had anything to do with that!"
He got up and, refusing to look at her, pushed himself to her diag terminal. He grabbed the entry ball and chorded in his auth code. The system validated him immediately and he chorded the command to isolate engine four. The metallic clang of the failsafe valve snapping shut hit Anniston like a nail though her heart. Jared turned to her, his face that neutral mask he forced it into when he tried to contain rage. Nodding to Fenner and Lexre, he said, "Please escort Ms. Reyes to her room and lock her in." Then he said, "Balik, please take Ms. Reyes' seat and plot us a course to the nearest Corporate port. With the leak closed off, and lacking valuable cargo, we shouldn't have any trouble getting back safely now."
"Jared, please!" Anniston pleaded. He just turned his back to her.
The second the door to her tiny room shut her in, she locked it physically from the inside and wrapped her hand around the entry ball for her terminal. The terminal refused to come alive. "Locked out? Yeah, right." She extracted some tools from a wall harness and pried a panel from below the terminal off the wall, revealing a rat's nest of wires.
She searched through the wires for ten minutes, meticulously tracing their sources and destinations as far as she could in the cramped access space. When she found the correct wire, she pulled it out as far as its slack would allow and shoved the rest of the wires back into the hatch. Then she extracted a special entry ball from another wall harness. This one was similar to the others on the ship, with six buttons (one for each finger and two for the thumb) spaced around the curve. This allowed her to wrap her hand around the ball and hit the buttons without pushing herself away from the terminal.
What made this ball nonstandard were the autosplicers at the other end of its chord. She carefully lined up the teeth with the exposed wire and pushed them together. She hit a test chord and the terminal came to life. Quickly chording in her auth code, she blinked in surprise when the terminal accepted it. "Pretty stupid to not disable my code, Jared," she said to the empty room. "That would have kept me out for a few more minutes."
What she found in the logs surprised her. They showed a disconcerting amount of evidence against her. She found unauthorized communications offship to a character who went by the handle "Gray Wolf," strange commands to the engine failsafes, and low level logs that had been changed to hide accesses to the cargo holds. All of this evidence had been signed by her auth code. One of the new crewmembers was considerably smarter than he appeared to be.
"How did you get my auth code, you puker? The only place it exists in the clear is up here," she tapped her temple. Pushing softly on the bulkhead above the terminal, she drifted slowly to the door. When she bumped into it, she turned herself around, and pushed off again. Three or four paces later, she remembered the terminal's strange behavior during the initial seconds after the explosion. "Oh, God! They spoofed my code!"
Angrily, she grabbed her entry ball again. "You can not hide a breach that large from me."
What she found made her all the more angry. "Framing me is one thing, you spacesick bastard. But making it look like Jared did it--that's unforgivable." The harder she searched, however, the sicker she felt. She couldn't find any signs that someone had faked the evidence pointing to Jared.
Suddenly she ripped the autosplicer off and hurled the entry ball at the far wall. Lacking input, the terminal cleared and powered down. Good. She didn't want to see it anymore. She especially didn't want to see the earliest bogus entry in the master logs, the ones who's ordering, and thus their dates, could not be changed. That log had been recorded before they picked up any of the current crew.* * *
"Come on you stupid waves, we've got to be close enough by now." Anniston cradled her entry ball in her hands and stared at the red carrier light. To boost its range, she had illicitly wired its antenna into the ship's main. She'd get direct communication at the same time the bridge did. The carrier light switched over to green and she immediately hit the send button.
It sat quiet for a moment, and then a voice came from the speaker. "Corporate internal affairs, why are you voice-only?"
"Soho, it's Anniston. I'm on a low bandwidth link."
"Anniston! I hear you're a pirate now."
His voice had the right touch of bemusement, and Anniston knew she'd be okay. "Your information's faulty, and I need your help straightening it out."
"What can I do for you, my dear?"
"I need you to launch an investigation on what's going on here, starting with a remote dump of our system logs."
"Tisk, tisk, Anniston. You're not supposed to know we can do that."
"Soho, with you behind the terminal, you guys can do anything."
He laughed. "You're resorting to flattery? You must be in trouble."
"You know I am, Soho."
"Well what if I were to say we have strict orders to not do any covert dumps unless someone is suspected of treason against the company?"
"I'm suspected of piracy. That's close enough. Please, Soho. These files will clear me and I'm afraid we'll accidentally have a catastrophic system failure after we dock."
"Relax, dear. I started the transfer as soon as you asked. I've got three quarters of it already."
It felt as though a great weight lifted from her. "Soho, you're prescarg! Thanks."
"Don't mention it. If someone's stealing from the company, it's my job to catch him. So which of your new people is it? I've been keeping my eyes on that Balik character. He's kind of shifty."
Anniston frowned. "I don't want to cloud your investigation any more than I already have. You'll definitely figure it out though."
"Okay. Anything else I should know?"
She paused. She really didn't want to influence his investigation. She wanted to believe she was wrong about the suspect and that Soho would find the real pirate. Still she didn't want to make his job too difficult. If he found nothing Corporate would execute her at best, and torture her to death at worst. "Just make sure you look at log one one oh nine seven six. That's where the perp added code to spoof my auth and use it to overlay my sig on a bunch of bogus entries, including that one."
"Oh, so you added code to spoof your own authorization. That's pretty devious, Anniston. Hey, zero ball tomorrow?"
"You have my name cleared by then and I'd love to."
"Great, I'll reserve a court for fifteen hundred. Watch yourself."
"Will do, Soho. And thanks again." She cut the connection.* * *
Anniston paced back and forth across her cell. Why was this taking so long? Gravity always made her irritable, even this part of the station's 0.1g. The door on the other end of the room opened and Soho stepped through. He had an ashen look on face.
Anniston's heart fell. Hadn't he found the evidence? She rushed to the edge of her cell. "What is it?"
He walked slowly across the room. "I know why you did it." He reached into a pocket.
No. This couldn't be happening. "Soho, you've got to believe me. I'm innocent."
He drew his hand out, showing a ring of keys. He selected one and had started to insert it into the cell lock when he frowned and squinted his eyes at her. "What?"
"I didn't do it."
"Didn't do what?" Then his face cleared. "Oh, the piracy! No, of course you didn't." He turned the key and pulled the door open. "I know why you didn't tell me who the pirate was. I'd never have believed you."
She sighed in relief. "My God, Soho, you scared me." She stepped out and he locked the door behind her. "Where's Jared now?"
"Gone."
She stopped. "What? How?"
Soho shrugged. "We think he snuck aboard a ship that left just after yours arrived. We haven't heard from him since."
"He's gone?"
Soho nodded.
"I have to go after him."
Soho shook his head emphatically. "Look Anniston, I know you worked with him for a long time and you feel betrayed. We all do."
She fixed him with a perturbed stare.
"Okay, you were more than coworkers and feel more betrayed than the rest of us do. But that's hardly a reason to go suicidal."
She grinned and glanced around. There was only one other prisoner in the room, and he was asleep. "It wouldn't necessarily be suicide if you let me borrow one of those tiny, one man stealth craft I'm not supposed to know about."
Soho rolled his eyes, glanced back to the sleeping prisoner, and ushered Anniston out of the room. Whispering, he asked, "What ships?"
"You know, the ones that maneuver better than a banta in freefall and fly faster than a cat going for its food dish."
"Oh, those ships." He frowned. "Only corpintel has clearance to fly them."
"So? Deputize me."
He nodded. "You'll administer Corporate justice?"
Anniston paused. Could she really do that? It did annoy her that he'd tried to frame her. And it infuriated her that, despite everything she and Jared had been through together, he hadn't trusted her enough to bring her in on his plans. But could she kill him? She shrugged. "I wouldn't be requesting a one man ship if I was planning to bring him back, now would I?" What Soho believed she would do and what she actually did didn't necessarily have to coincide.
Soho whistled. "Hell hath no fury, eh? In that case, come on. I'll show you to your ship, Deputy."
He led her inward toward the decoupled zero g spaceport in the center of the station. But they didn't go in through the regular jumping off point. Instead, they turned left down a nondescript corridor and right down a further one. This corridor curved gently and they walked until Anniston could no longer see the entrance behind them. Shortly thereafter, the end came into view. Only a small communications panel with a keypad below it adorned the wall there. Soho positioned himself so Anniston couldn't see the keys and quickly typed in a number. Anniston counted twelve beeps.
With the last keypress, the panel beeped twice in quick succession and the screen came to life with the face of a security officer Anniston vaguely recognized. "What's the word, Soho?"
"Ecclesiastical."
The face nodded and the screen went dead. The panel then slid back and rotated, allowing them through. They transitioned to the zero g area and Soho led her to a room not much larger than twice a zero ball court. A small, teardrop-shaped craft floated in the center, held in place by humming electromagnets. Other similar craft were lashed to the walls. Anniston nodded to it. "Cute little thing, but why the fluiddynamic shape for a vacuum ship?"
"Though these ships don't have the lift thrust to escape planetary gravity, they do operate in gas and liquid environments." He turned to a readout screen and grabbed an entry ball. "Okay, she's ready to go."
Anniston frowned. "Already? Do you keep one prepped at all times?"
Soho smiled. "No, dear. I know you too well. Your reaction to Jared's disappearance was more predictable than which serve you'll make when you're down eleven three."
She nodded but frowned. Pushing herself off, she sailed over to the ship and easily caught the transparent dome. Inside, she saw a single seat with an array of controls in front of it. She was relieved to recognize most of them.
Soho also sailed over to the ship. "You know where you're going?"
"I know where we got picked up, and I know who received the illicit communications. I should be able to find our pirates."
"Good. Now, these ships try to bend waves around them. When not thrusting they're very hard to see on sensors. So, if you think you're in trouble, drop the controls and you might disappear off their scopes."
Nodding, she slid into the seat.
"Also, we don't like to broadcast the presence of these babies. So we'll launch you out of here on a railgun. Once you get a reasonable distance from the station I'll give you a go ahead on the encrypted channel."
"Fair enough. Thanks, Soho."
He took a deep breath. "There's one last thing you should know."
"What's that?"
"Not only didn't your ship have an accidental catastrophic memory failure, but Jared could have easily covered his tracks better." He looked at her once more, as if worried he'd never see her again, and said, "Goodbye, Anniston." He pushed off from the ship and sailed back to the wall."
Anniston closed the dome and strapped into the seat. She ran a system diagnostic and it came back with only one red zone. No autopilot, how strange. She turned to signal to Soho, but he was facing the other way. The ship, of its own accord, oriented itself on a long tube. At the end of the tube a hatch slid aside, showing space beyond. The ship kicked into the tube, forcing her back into the seat and snapping her head into the headrest. Well, they did give her the ship on short notice, and she generally preferred direct control anyway. Maybe Soho could only get this one for her but knew her well enough to realize she wouldn't mind.
The sensors showed the station receding quickly behind her and she held still, waiting for Soho's go ahead. After a few minutes, the screen in front of her came to life with Soho's face. "You're clear, Anniston. Now you be careful, okay? I don't want to have to train another zero ball opponent. Soho out." The screen went dead.
Anniston took the controls and tapped them. Unlike most of the freighters she'd flown, this little ship turned immediately and launched itself into the direction she'd indicated. Flying it should be fun, if the jerking around didn't make her sick. Now, to plot a course for the likely location of Gray Wolf and his new lackey, Jared.* * *
She positioned herself in the general vicinity of where her ship had been hit and waited. Checking the extensive logs available in the Corporate ship, she saw that a number of freighters were due through these parts in the next few hours. Soon she heard a distress call and moved in slowly to investigate. Sure enough, two Deathgates flanked the freighter. They acted much the same as the pirates who hit her ship--taking the cargo, but letting the ship go on its way.
"Well, Jared, at least you fell in with a decent breed of scumbag." The Deathgates pulled away and Anniston moved to follow, maneuvering in close and right on the tail of one of them. She'd read between Soho's lines correctly. All ships in the solar system moved by spitting reaction mass, usually a gas or liquid, out the back. If a ship couldn't get out of a gravity well, then the only reason for making it fluiddynamic was to allow it to fly in the wake of another ship. And, of course, flying there would make it undetectable.
The Deathgates navigated into the asteroid belt and up to a mammoth chunk of rock. A concealed door opened for them and they slid into a hangar. Anniston pulled her ship up and rested it on the top of the Deathgate, expertly thrusting down at the same time the pirate ship touched the rock below. On touching the ship, she engaged magnetic clamps to hold herself in place.
Instead of wearing uniforms, the pirates unloading the stolen cargo just wore standard spacer garb, much like Anniston's. She might be able to move about unnoticed here.
After waiting for them to clear the area, she opened her own ship and pulled herself out. She launched herself from the top of the Deathgate to the wall above the tunnel. Holding on there, she waited for a few minutes and then pulled herself down to the tunnel. Finding it empty, she pulled herself along it. At the first branch, she turned. Now she wouldn't look like she'd just come from the hangar.
A pirate came pulling himself along the tunnel, causing Anniston to nervously hold her breath. Would he recognize her as someone he hadn't seen before, or were there enough pirates here that people didn't know everyone? Depending on how much of the asteroid they'd cored out, either could be possible.
The pirate passed her without notice, and Anniston slowly let out her breath. Now, to hunt down Jared. She found a terminal and, with frequent glances over her shoulder, tried to access its public data. When it let her in, she quickly dug around and found the address of Jared's quarters. A little more digging revealed a schematic that mapped out her course.
A passer by slowed and looked at her with scrunched up eyes. Anniston's heart raced. Had she been discovered? Though her insides quivered, she looked directly at her scrutinizer and smiled. He blinked and flashed a self-conscious half smile before continuing on.
Anniston cleared the screen and set off in the opposite direction. She found Jared's door on a quiet corridor of roughly hewn rock. Before, she'd been able to force her raging emotions aside by concentrating on the hunt. But with her quarry now close at hand, her anger at Jared's betrayal threatened to consume her. She glanced up and down the corridor to verify that no one else was around. Then, with a deep breath, she rapped on the door and pushed back to the opposite side of the hallway. Jared opened the door and she launched herself at him, knocking him into the room.
They hit the rear wall and Anniston spun over and pushed herself back. On reaching the door, she sealed it shut behind her. "Hello, old friend," she said sarcastically.
Jared stared at her with eyes wide in shock. "Anniston! What are you doing here?"
She sneered and launched herself at him again, aiming for his gut. He pushed himself aside and she hit empty wall. Without pausing to reorient herself, she pushed off in his direction and hit him feet first. The two of them rammed into a wall and he gasped as her feet knocked his wind out. Her rage building, she grabbed his neck and squeezed. "I'm a pirate, remember? What are you doing here?"
His eyes bulged and he worked his mouth as he tried to suck in air. His arms flailed about, but without air in his lungs, there was no strength behind them. She stared at him and tried to let her anger drive her. But images of their good times together kept springing up into her mind. She remembered once when he got trapped in a holed ship and she had to scurry into a suit and fix the leak before he died. When she got back to him, he looked just like this. She'd been so worried . . .
Furious at herself, Jared, and the general unfairness of the universe, she released him and pushed off on the wall. "I can't believe you tried to frame me, Jared." She grabbed the opposite wall and pulled her legs up to put herself into a comfortable floating ball.
Jared gasped and wheezed and eventually took a deep breath. When he looked back to her, it was with a guilty frown. "I'm sorry Anniston. It killed me to do that to you, but I didn't have much of a choice."
"Didn't have much of a choice to set me up for execution?"
He fixed her with a perturbed look. "Oh, please. After all we've been through together I'm hurt that you think so little of my skills with a computer. All I did was buy myself enough time to get away."
She almost gave another retort, but clenched her teeth together instead. He was telling the truth. Even Soho had suspected as much. "Why, Jared?"
"Corporate. They needed a loss for a tax write-off, so they sold us out to one of their groups of pirates. The pirates were going to take our shipment and kill all of us."
This caught Anniston by surprise. "But we've worked faithfully for Corporate for ten years now!"
"Right. The auditors would never believe they purposely killed off such trusted employees for just some money."
The implications chilled Anniston. She had no great love for her employers, but she hadn't realized they were so cold blooded. "So you contacted Gray Wolf?"
Jared nodded. "His clan seemed a good choice. Everyone here has been screwed by Corporate in one way or another. And while they steal, they always leave the crews alive. Gray Wolf got us before Corporate's pirates did and, with our cargo legitimately stolen, we no longer had to be killed."
Anniston ground her teeth together and frowned. "Okay, you did the right thing, but I'm still angry at you."
"Why?"
"You should have told me, Jared. You should have trusted me to help you! I would have without hesitation."
His face stretched into a tight smile. "I know you would have, Anniston. But that's not why I kept it from you. Look at me. I'm a fugitive. The pay's fine, but I can't make a career change ever again. Telling you would have sentenced you to this same fate. I hoped by attempting to frame you I'd remove any doubt in Corporate's eyes that you were in on this."
She thought about it for a moment and then kicked off of from the wall. She grabbed him into a bear hug and squeezed tight enough to bruise his ribs. Whispering in his ear, she said, "You son of a whore. You planned this whole thing to make it impossible for me to stay mad at you."
He returned her embrace and they held each other for a minute. Then she broke away and said, "So, what do we do now? I promised Soho I'd administer Corporate justice."
Jared's eyes went wild. "You did what? How'd you get here?"
"I borrowed a Corporate spy ship . . . oh shit!"
Jared punched a button on the wall and yelled, "Gray Wolf, we've got a major problem in the hangar. Get down there immediately." He grabbed two emergency jets from the wall and tossed one to Anniston. In the hallway they activated their jets, which let out piercing screams, flashed high intensity lights, and shot them through the mazelike hallways.
Anniston followed directly behind Jared and mentally berated herself. She should have trusted him. She should have seen through her pain at being betrayed and realized she hadn't been. Now, she might have done serious harm to him. They got to the hangar and disabled their jets. Pointing to the top of the Deathgate, Anniston said. "It's up there, but I'm sure it's already relayed our coordinates."
Jared thrust himself at the ship and she followed. "I'm afraid it's about to do much worse. Corporate is extremely sensitive about these spy ships. I hear each has a self-destruct mechanism."
They reached the ship. "Well, you wouldn't need much charge to destroy that little thing."
Jared shook his head emphatically. "The self-destruct mechanism is a fusion bomb."
They looked through the dome but found no indication of eminent explosion. "Looks safe," Anniston offered.
Jared shook his head. "What do you expect, numbers counting down? That only happens in bad entertainment pieces."
A graying man appeared next to them. Anniston recognized him as the lead pirate who robbed their craft. Jared said, "Gray Wolf, I think we've got a bomb here about to go off. You'll probably have to relocate too." Gray Wolf nodded. Jared opened the dome and pulled himself in. "Autopilot. Where's that autopilot?"
Anniston gasped.
Jared looked up at her. "What's wrong?"
"The autopilot's on the fritz."
Jared pulled on his beard and stared down at the controls. Then he looked up to Gray Wolf and pointed to Anniston. "You've met Anniston. You'll never find a more competent nor more trustworthy first officer." He hit a button and the dome started to descend.
"Jared, what are you doing?" Anniston asked.
"Once started, the destruct can't be turned off. I've got to get this away from here."
"But . . . I brought it. I should go."
He ignored her and instead said to Gray Wolf. "Take care of her, okay?" The dome sealed and he mouthed, "Goodbye" to Anniston.
"No!" she cried, but he disengaged the magnetic clamps. The rock face pulled away and he shot through the atmosphere force field. Anniston shook her head. "He's wrong about the bomb. He has to be." They watched his ship until they couldn't see it anymore. Anniston clenched and unclenched her fists. "He's coming back. He'll hang around out there feeling foolish and then come back." She turned to Gray Wolf and asked, her voice bordering on pleading, "Right?"
Gray Wolf shrugged, his face impassive, and continued to stare out into the void.
Anniston turned back to the opening and waited, telling herself that everything would turn out. So she had not properly prepared herself for the bright flash that lit up space before them. Her soul screaming, she grabbed Gray Wolf's arm and squeezed.
He winced but otherwise didn't comment on her grip. Instead he continued to stare out into the space. After a while, he spoke quietly. "He was a good man. I'll miss him."
Anniston stared back out to space and released Gray Wolf. Her hands immediately started twitching, so she clenched them together behind her back. Watching the rock face close again, she vowed, "I'm going to kill Soho."
"Is that the friend who gave you the spy ship?"
"He's not my friend anymore."
Gray Wolf gently grabbed her arm and kicked off, taking them back toward the tunnel. "You turn against your friends too quickly. Consider this. We have over a thousand people here and he could have easily disabled the controls of the spy ship. He was probably under strict orders to get Jared and managed to do so without killing you or the rest of us. I doubt he enjoyed it."
With Jared gone, that didn't very much matter to Anniston.
Gray Wolf patted her back. "Come on. We need to evacuate and could really use your help."
She fixed him with a forced smile. He was a smart man. Given a similar situation, Jared would have done the same thing--put her right to work and try to keep her mind off her loss. The tactic wouldn't actually succeed, but it was the right thing to do. She nodded.The End
Copyright Michael P. Calligaro
All Rights Reserved
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