Summer's End, page 14
The rear lock could be opened from the outside. In fact, you couldn’t lock it! That was against the law, in case someone got trapped outside.
We were being boarded.
My tablet pinged again, but I was too busy trying to get down the damn passageway with a panicking woman flailing and crying, which was made even worse now that we were in gravity again.
My tablet pinged yet again, but I couldn’t get to it and keep moving forward.
Just as I got to the access hatch to get into the front of the ship I felt the entire ship shudder.
“Oh fuck, they didn’t!”
I pulled out the tablet there were several messages from Dot.
Hurry!
They’re boarding! Hurry!
Parks is losing it! He’s convinced you’re dead and they’re raping Pam!
The last one was short and sweet.
Parks hit the emergency release, I’m sorry!
I’ll deal. I hit SEND and hoped they were close enough to get it.
Pam started to scream and I grabbed her by the throat, cutting her off, then I undogged the hatch with my free hand and pushed us both through it, falling onto the floor in the lower gravity.
Straddling Pam, I got right into her face and growled. Her eyes went wide and she froze.
“Okay, now get this straight. You belong to me now, got that? I own you. Because I own you I am not going to let any man, pirate or otherwise, rape you. You’re mine. I don’t share. Not now, not ever.
“Do. You. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Now, I need you to run to your cabin and put your pressure suit on and meet me on the bridge. Do not grab a gun or any weapon. I have to get mine. I will meet you there shortly.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She nodded, then asked in a soft voice, “You won’t let them hurt me?”
“They’ll have to kill me, and I don’t intend on dying. Now, go!” I said and, rolling off her, I flew down to my quarters as fast as I could, grabbed my pressure suit, and ran back up to the bridge.
Pam was climbing into hers, which of course meant she was naked and I honestly wished I could have taken the time to appreciate the view, but I was too busy stripping down and getting into mine.
I checked my pockets and moved my tablet, wallet, and pick to the pockets of my pressure suit. I didn’t know what, if any, of my stuff I’d be able to grab, but right now my first concern was not dying.
After that, it was taking care of Pam.
Walking over to the radio, I grabbed the mike and keyed it.
“You scared them off too quickly, two crew members got stranded.”
“Who is this?” came back immediately.
“Dave Walker, third engineer. The second mate’s here too. We were trapped in the back when the cargo hold lost pressure and, well, they thought we were dead, I guess. We’re on the bridge, and no, we’re not armed.”
There was a long silence then.
“Do you want me to unlock and open the cargo bay doors?” I asked next.
“Yes, unlock them and then shut down all gravity in the cargo bay.”
“Will do.” I looked over at Pam. “You heard the man.”
“You’re going to help them?” she asked, looking at me, still in shock.
“Pam, what did I tell you?” I warned.
She blushed and did as I told her.
“Anything else you need us to do from up here?”
“Bring up all the loading lights.”
“You got it,” I said and nodded toward Pam, who this time did what I asked without questioning me.
“Why are you being so helpful?” another voice asked.
“Because I’m hoping you’ll take us with you,” I radioed back. “I’ve got no desire to be a Flying Dutchman for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be rescued.”
“I’m not. The rest of the crew thinks we’re dead and this ship has got a hell of a lot of delta-V. Also . . . ” I took a deep breath and played my first card. “I don’t think I want to be talking to the police all close and personal-like when it’s obvious that we’ve been sabotaged.”
“You think they’ll pin you for it, don’t you?”
Actually I was afraid that if word got back to my bio-mom’s husband, he’d float a big fat bribe to the police and have me killed. Or maybe he’d just tell them I was a wanted killer and it would be better if I didn’t make it into port.
I just didn’t want to take that chance. Ben’s last email to me had said that they hadn’t yet discovered my ruse. However, the information that Jeff’s “friend” had gleaned from that tablet had made it very clear that the guy had been trying to grab me for Eileen’s husband’s political rival. I guess he thought he could use me as some sort of leverage or something.
But in either case I now had two groups interested in me, and their interests didn’t coincide with any of my personal plans for long-term survival.
“Let’s just say that I’m not a fan of the police,” I said over the radio, “and they’re not a fan of me. Sure, they might come out and get us. But right now they’re not the kind of people I want to meet, okay?”
“What, you kill a cop or something?”
“Let’s just say that there are moneyed interests out there that hate me just about as much as they’re gonna hate you when this gear doesn’t arrive.”
“Someone’s coming through the mid-deck lock,” Pam whispered.
“Come here and stand behind me,” I told her.
She scurried over and hid behind me. She couldn’t press in too close, as I had my helmet hanging open on my back, same as her.
I waited and heard them as they approached. We still had gravity in the front quarter of the ship —not a lot but more than enough, if things turned ugly.
Four men entered the bridge; they had their helmets off and folded back. All four of them had sidearms that they were currently holding in their hands.
“Move out from behind him and show us your hands!” one of them, the biggest, said.
“Do it, Pam,” I told her.
The big one frowned at me. I pegged him pretty quickly, he was the muscle, but he wasn’t the one in charge. That was the older-looking guy in the front of them who was already putting his gun away.
“Damn, she’s a pretty one, Marcus! I say we take her!”
Pam whimpered a little and I frowned and looked at him.
“That’s my woman and you will not be putting your hands on her.”
“Or?” he laughed.
“I’ll kill you.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, sonny, but I’ve got a pistol and you’ve got squat! All I have to do is shoot you.”
“You mean you’ll try, and you’ll fail. And then Marcus will have to hire me to replace you.”
I looked at the one I’d pegged as Marcus, and I broke the cardinal rule —I made eye contact.
“Put your gun away, Greg,” Marcus said as his eyes met mine. We looked at each other for a moment and I knew I could kill him before any of them could stop me. I’d probably get to kill Greg for good measure. I had my pick in my hand and they weren’t even fifteen feet away.
Marcus’s eyes widened a hair, and then narrowed as that thought went through my mind.
“I’m not in the habit of taking on freeloaders,” Marcus said.
“Pay for what you get, right? Nothing’s free. You get me and my woman here out of this mess and I’ll give you six months.”
“I don’t need another killer,” Marcus said and I noticed Greg flinch.
“What, him?” Greg said, sounding surprised.
“Greg, he’d kill you before you got your pistol back out. That thing in his left hand is an old assassin’s weapon.”
“What? No, he —”
“Quiet! I don’t want to have to tell my sister that you got yourself killed being an idiot.”
He turned back to me then.
“This really is quite a mess. Normally we run the crew off before we take the ship. What did you say your name was? David Walker?”
“Yes, and I’m a rated third engineer. Surely you could use another engineer?”
“I have more than enough engineers, David, for what we’re doing.”
“Oh? How many do you have that are certified to repair grav panels?”
I smiled then as I saw his eyebrows go up a hair.
“Are you now?” he asked.
“How do you think we keep an old ship like this running? Go check the spares, we’ve got two, and they’re not even the same size. We repair them in our machine shop in the back.”
I watched as Marcus pondered that a bit.
“What’s the story with your girl Pam there?”
“She’s just a regular second mate. She had a bit of a run-in with some unpleasant types. Elies.”
“Ah, and you dealt with it.” He paused a moment and looked Pam over. Pressure suits were skintight and even looking scared with red eyes from crying, Pam was still the kind of woman that a lot of men killed for.
“I have issues with rapists,” I told him. “So if there are any on your crew, let ’em know not to mess with Pam or to let me know what they are.”
Marcus smiled then, surprising me. “Yes, I’m not much of a fan of them myself. I’ll warn my men. So, you want to work for me?”
I nodded. “I figure six months of my repairing all of your panels will cover Pam’s and my room, board, and the price of a ride back to the main trade routes.”
“And just what will you tell everyone after you’ve been released?”
“That I made a deal to save our lives and I honored it. It’s not like I would go to the authorities. Even if I could, I doubt they’d believe me. Look, you tried to run the whole crew off, that tells me you’re not just some cold, hardened killer . . . ”
“Unlike you,” Marcus said with a frown.
“Cold, hardened killers don’t go rescuing damsels in distress, now do they?” I said, rolling my eyes.
Marcus laughed. “Ah, a romantic! Fine, six months, then you can leave. That includes your woman, Pam.”
He stuck out his hand and we shook.
“Welcome aboard.”
“What? You hired him? Marcus! You can’t trust him!”
“We have a lot of panels that need fixing, Gregory, and none of our people are certified or actually trained to do it. Besides, what’s he going to do? Sell us out? He works in a trust business. Or did, at least?” Marcus asked, turning back to me.
I nodded. “I don’t do it for money anymore. Just to protect me and mine. I made a promise to my grandfather and, well, family’s everything.”
Marcus smiled widely when he heard that. “Get your things together. We’ll take you with us when we transfer back to my ship.”
“My tools for repairing panels are in the rear of the ship. You won’t have a problem with me going back there and getting them, will you?”
“Take Miguel here with you. And don’t hurt him, please.”
“You’re the boss,” I said and, taking Pam’s hand, I led her off the bridge.
“That’s right, I am, aren’t I? So don’t kill anybody!” Marcus called after me as we left.
When we got to Pam’s room, the first thing she did was collapse against me, wrapping her arms around me and holding me tight.
“I’ll wait outside,” Miguel said and I nodded.
Pam put her head on my shoulder and cried softly for a little while as I put my arms around her and just held her.
“Thank you,” she said when she finally settled down.
“I promised you, didn’t I?” I said with a smile.
Looking up at me, she smiled back, a little shyly, then putting her hand behind my head, she pulled herself up to me and kissed me.
I was impressed, she tasted good and she really knew how to kiss. I held her against me and savored it. It felt good to be alive and, for all my bluster back there, I might have been able to kill one, maybe even two, of them. But there were four of them and lots more on the other ships that I was sure were out there. I would have been a dead man.
“I seem to recall you promising me something else?” Pam whispered, still looking up at me shyly. “Something about my being your property?”
I grinned down at her and kissed her on the nose. “Yup. And I ain’t going back on that one either, but I’m not going to rape you or even ask you to have sex with me, Pam. I know what you’ve been through and I don’t want to add to that.”
“Oh?” She looked surprised at that.
I sighed, smiling down at her. “I won’t kick you out of bed, but I won’t force myself on you. Now, pack your stuff, we got a bunch of things to do before we leave.”
“We do?”
“Yup. I want you to program a new course in the ship’s computer for after we leave. Have it flip and decelerate at fifteen percent thrust for a couple of weeks. Just make sure you give me a copy along with all the current course data.”
“Why?”
“So when we go back to Damascus Freight Lines we can tell them where to find their ship so they can salvage it and we get to keep our jobs, why else?”
“Are you going to tell Marcus?”
I nodded. “Yup. I suspect he won’t mind. Worst he can do is tell us not to do it. Now, pack, and keep it light. Leave the sex toys behind.”
She grinned at me and quickly packed her things. When she was done she had a single large duffel and her pressure suit carrier. She was wearing her parka, not that I blamed her. It would definitely keep the men’s eyes off her.
I didn’t have all that much to pack, so it didn’t take me very long either. I’d told Pam to pack her pistol in the bottom of her duffel and I did the same. Miguel’s only response when I told him was “As long as you’re not pointing them at me.”
Crossing the cargo deck, we had to be careful as there was a very large group of people transshipping the habitat equipment out of the Iowa Hill into another, larger cargo ship that had locked onto ours and warped in so close as to be touching.
When we got to the shop, I grabbed an airtight crate, put all the tools and other supplies I’d need into it, sealed it up, and wrote my name on the side as well as Marcus’s. When we went back out to the cargo deck, Miguel directed one of the men to take it over to the cargo ship and see to it that it was delivered to Marcus “once they got back.” Wherever “back” was.
I did manage to get a brief look through the catwalk at the fifteen hundred. Something had punched a ten-inch-wide hole straight through it and out the bottom of the ship. Which explained the loss of pressure as well as the loss of the generator.
“So, I guess we’re pirates now?” Pam said in a soft voice when we’d finally returned to the bridge.
“We’re not pirates, we’re buccaneers,” Marcus said as we turned to look at him.
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“Pirates pretty much just rape, murder, plunder, and not much else. We only take what we need, and, well, we need that habitation gear. We’re not going to sell it; we’re going to use it. For us, this is a matter of survival. We have ethics and morals and we’re not interested in slaughter, even on a small scale. Otherwise we would have just killed the crew and you two as well.”
“That reminds me. Would you mind if we put in a program to put the ship on a better orbit after we leave?”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“So when we go back to our employers we can tell them where to find it so they can salvage it —and hopefully they’ll give us our old jobs back.”
“Sure, knock yourselves out. If nothing else it’ll keep you out of trouble until they’ve finished off-loading.”
“Thanks,” I told him and then I set about writing my own little program for the reactors. I’d run them up to fifty percent when we left, so Pam’s nav program wouldn’t have any power issues. But after three weeks they’d run a gradual cooldown program until one was completely shut down and the other one maintained temperatures a few degrees above freezing.
* * *
It took them eighteen hours to off-load the gear. After we’d finished our programs, Pam and I went into the mess and made food for ourselves as well as anybody else who wanted some while they were working. Why let it go to waste, right? Besides which, I was starving.
When they finally pulled their cargo ship away, I closed the cargo doors and engaged the locks, then Pam and I downloaded our programs, and I shut down most of the ship’s systems, as they wouldn’t be needed anymore. Then we followed Marcus out of the front section, across the cargo bay, into the back, and then out through the rear lock into his ship, which was grappled on there.
It looked like a frigate to me, though I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know a lot about military ships. We were shown to a cabin that wasn’t much bigger than the six-by-four-foot bed in it.
“Okay,” Miguel said, “this is your cabin and where you’ll be staying. No one will enter without knocking. Marcus has told everyone you’re onboard and working for him. So no one should mess with you —either of you,” he added, giving Pam a glance.
“Stay in here, don’t come out except to use the head.” He pointed over to the sign on the wall flagging its location.
“What about food?”
“Someone will come and get you.”
“How long are we going to be in here, anyway?” I asked.
“Just a few days. When you hear the acceleration alarm, lay down on the bed. This thing can pull a lot of G when it has to.”
“Got it, and again, thanks. Dying out there would have really sucked.”
“You know, I gotta ask. Would you really have killed us?”
I frowned. “Marcus and Greg wouldn’t have stood a chance; they were way too close to me. You and the other guy . . . ”
“Walt.”
“Yeah, you and Walt might have survived, if you’d gotten to your guns fast enough.”
“So, why didn’t you?”
“Because I promised Pam I’d take care of her and protect her. Can’t really do that if I’m dead, can I?”
Miguel smiled then, surprising me. “You should join us, man, you’d fit right in.”
