Gunship (7 page)

“Captain, we’ve been had!” she heard Duv say as she cautiously peered out the window.

“Duv, yeah, we know. Welch is dead and we have some body snatchers here outside the house. What’s your status?”

“We have tracking ships, two of them, entered the area about five minutes ago. I screwed up. There was a burst transmission on the detonator that tripped when we defused it.”

Reilly swore. “Forget it. Did you get the tracker off the ship?”

“I’m doing it now, but I had to cut through the hull. I’m only going to have time for a hasty patch. Not sure what that’s going to mean if we need to be turning and burning to get off-world or how well it’s going to hold up once we do.”

Reilly could see movement just beyond the tree line, something brown and white…cows! Welch had been going on about these stupid cows he had gone and bought to raise for his mother or some such. The things roamed freely around the property since there were no real predators. She could hear the bell on the lead cow as it moved slowly through the woods towards the back field, towards her ship.

“Duv, get it done and then get ready. We may be coming in hot, but we’re coming.” She clicked off the mic and motioned for Ty and Chang to join her by the far windows. The men outside were holding position and remained motionless, probably waiting for them to exit the main doors. The porch was a full wraparound with views of the woods and one of the field heading down to a small brook. She slowly raised the window and then carefully climbed out onto the porch. Chang and Ty followed quietly. Once they were all there, she pointed to the cows, and they quickly caught on and moved into the herd as it passed through the woods, staying on the side farthest away from the snatchers. Reilly grabbed the lead cow’s bell collar and, walking stooped behind it, pulled it slightly towards the ship. The cow eyeballed her thoughtfully and then obeyed. Chang walked in step with another cow almost as if he were stuck to its side. Ty crouched in the middle of a small clump of cows towards the back of the herd. They moved into the field, and suddenly the lead cow decided to jog. Reilly hung onto the bell collar as tight as she dared, still pointing the lead cow towards the ship and trying to slow it down, too. The cow had other ideas. Annoyed by the extra weight pulling on its collar, it suddenly stopped, tossing its head and trying to pull out of Reilly’s grasp.

“Damn cow! Move!” she hissed at it.

Behind them, a sudden crack was heard. Desensitizers, AKA idiot grenades, had been tossed through the window. The team had tired of waiting them out and decided to go in. At the crack and pop, the cows panicked. Reilly’s cow took off so fast her arm got caught on its bell collar, so she was forced to run with it a few steps. Chang was still stuck to his cow and out in front, pushing it to keep veering towards the ship and the cow pushing back to go the way the rest of the herd was turning. Ty’s cows took off at the exact moment the team exited the house, leaving him briefly in the open.

Within seconds, three high-explosive rounds all landed where Ty had been. They’d been spotted. The cows, confronted with deadly force, stampeded in the direction of ship once again. Lasers flew overhead and began picking off the cows towards the back as the team ran, returning fire while dodging livestock. Chang made it to the rear doors first and began providing cover fire for Reilly and Ty. Reilly came charging up the ramp, firing over her shoulder. She hit the doors and her comms mic at the same time. Three confused bovines followed her in and took shelter at the back of the bay, quivering and rolling their eyes.

“Duv, get ready. As soon as Ty’s on board, we fly.” The engines revved in response.

Ty was dodging and running. He hit the ground, returned fire, and then ducked behind the next cow, but each time there were fewer and fewer of the animals to mask his position. With only a small group remaining, Ty gave up and began sprinting the last hundred yards towards the ship. The cows that were left immediately adopted him as their new leader and ran with him. Chang and Reilly were providing a steady stream of covering fire and had taken out two of the men when the next enemy stepped into view with a loaded rail gun. Reilly shifted her fire towards the new threat just as he unleashed a purple bolt of energy towards the ship. It was enough to cause him to pull the shot. Instead of a direct hit, the rail gun blasted a crater directly in front of the ramp to the ship’s cargo bay, pushing Reilly and Chang back. Ty and his cows caught the full brunt of the blast. The rear two cows were incinerated on the spot, while Ty and another cow were physically propelled into the bay. Chang jammed the emergency closure button with his rifle butt, snapping the blast doors shut behind them as the ramp was coming up.

Reilly hollered into her mic. “Go now! Take off!”

The ship’s engines roared to life as it jumped off the deck quick as a cat. They could feel the increased gravity as the ship shot straight up towards the sky then twisted and turned, trying to break atmosphere as fast as possible. Two dull thuds pushed it sideways, and the engine whined then pushed forward again. The whoosh of air against the hull was replaced with the silence of space. Another whine and the ship leaped forward as Duv jumped it away from danger.

Reilly and Chang lay back on the floor a moment, catching their breath and checking themselves for any injuries. Their eyes met and they both began to laugh now that they were out of danger.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” Chang groaned. “I’m gonna hurt all over for a week after this!”

“Toughen up, Gunny. You need to get hardheaded like Ty over there. Right, Ty?”

When there was no answer, they both scrambled to their feet. Ty was jammed up against the wall with a dead cow on top of him. His head was bleeding and his eyes were closed. Chang started to pull the cow off of him while Reilly dropped down to check his pulse and look under his lids.

She breathed a sigh of relief. “He’s breathing, but looks like the blast tossed him in hard enough to knock him out. He’s going to be feeling this in the morning. I’ll get Duv to help us move him as soon as he’s done getting us out of harm’s way.”

Reilly walked stiffly over to the comms mic and hit it. “Duv, when we’re in the clear we need your help down here.” She turned and found herself face to face with one of the cows. The poor beast continued to wander until it wound up at the back of the bay by the blast doors and decided to lie down on the smooth metal floor, exhausted. The others joined it, and soon there was a miniature herd of space cows asleep in the corner.

“Huh,” said Chang, “who says you can’t be a space cowboy?”

They were sitting at the bottom of the catwalk, resting and checking for broken bones, when Duv stepped through the hatch up top. They both looked up at him, but before they could say anything, he caught sight of Ty.

“Oh no, no way. What happened?” Duv tore down the catwalk and pushed past them to kneel at Ty’s blood-soaked side. “He’s not breathing! What do we do? We gotta give him mouth-to-mouth!”

Chang and Reilly jumped up, alarmed, as Duv bent over Ty to start CPR on him. At the same time, Ty’s eyes rolled open just in time to see Duv about to make contact. Ty cranked his right arm over and cracked Duv upside the head, knocking him back.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing? Ow! Son of a bitch! What’s going on?”

Duv sat up, favoring his lower lip and checking that all his teeth were still in place. “I was trying to save your life, you idiot! I thought you weren’t breathing!”

Duv looked over at Chang and Reilly. They were both shaking with laughter.

“Oh, very funny. I suppose you knew he was okay?”

“You didn’t give us a chance to say otherwise,” Chang gasped. “You just ran over and said ‘He needs mouth-to-mouth’—and then you go and Ty knocks you ass over heels!” He laughed even harder and headed towards the catwalk to go upstairs. “I’ll get the litter.”

“What? No, I can walk…I think. Will someone help me move this damn cow?”

Reilly and Chang pulled the dead cow off to one side and then helped Ty up. He looked like hell, probably felt like it too, but he was still alive. He leaned on Reilly. “What’s that now? Fifty-two or fifty-three?”

“I think fifty-two, but you’d better slow down. At this rate, you’ll be out of them before you’re forty.”

Ty grinned and then grimaced as Chang helped him step up to the catwalk.

“Fifty-two what? I don’t think I’ve heard this one before. Do I want to know?” Duv inquired.

“Fifty-two lives. He got his fortune told and the teller said he would be the man to live a hundred lives before he died. So every time he dodges a bullet, he figures that’s a life he’s used up. He used up a lot in the Service and he was hoping to slow the count down now that he’s out. Don’t think that’s looking too likely.” Reilly sighed and looked at Duv. “You might want to get some ice on that, it’s starting to swell,” she said as she walked off.

He laughed. She was bruised and beat up and telling him to get some ice. He touched his lip again and winced. Maybe he would get that ice after all. He followed them slowly up the steps.

Chang examined Ty and found he had a couple broken ribs from where the cow had slammed into him, some contusions and cuts (a couple that needed stitches), and only a very fortunate minor concussion. Once they got him fixed up and settled in his bunk they returned to the mess and sprawled at the table. Reilly sat in an old leather chair in the corner, lost in thought.

Duv had his mug and was downing coffee again. “So what’s the plan? We still don’t know who killed Welch, who is trying to kill us, or why. And we’re still sitting on a ton of specialized technology that we don’t know what half of it does. It had started out to be such a nice day, too!”

“Like weather, one’s fortunes may change throughout the day,” Chang said stoically.

Reilly looked up. “The priority here is survival, which means offloading some of this merchandise. We need to lose the items that may get us killed, while getting some credits in the bank.”

“And what do we need?” Chang asked.

“A solid ship and a full crew, for starters. I made Duv a promise that we’d start looking once this job was done, and except for some selling, we’re finished with Arias and that whole solar system for a while. And we need to have some maintenance done at a minimum.”

Duv cleared his throat. “You’re going to need more than that. We took some hits from the trackers leaving out of there. I’m pretty sure we’re missing some hull, too, because I’m registering mild decomp and oxygen loss. Nothing serious enough for an emergency mooring, but it’s going to cost us.”

Reilly leaned forward and closed her eyes. Hull replacement could take a few weeks to a month depending on how extensive the damage was. She also wanted to get those new turrets mounted and upgrade the power core, some of the life support, and some of the combat systems. They were going to need to make some serious credits quick from a buyer with good connections, someone who could move the merchandise for them and pay them the same day or within hours. This meant an added challenge of getting in and out of an illicit market hub without being caught by the law or poached by other scavengers, or killed by a buyer. There was only one buyer Reilly could think of who would work for this level of goods. She had done business with him before and all went well, but that didn’t mean the pattern would hold. He was very eccentric, ruthless, paranoid, and unpredictable—and that was on his best days. Right now, though, her options were limited. At least with this guy, she knew all trading was private, a point he took very seriously because it reflected on him as a businessman. Without confidentiality, he couldn’t get the hard-to-find items that some of his more lucrative bidders wanted, and they couldn’t own them without the privacy he guaranteed. So on this point he would not equivocate—it was part of his belief system, carved in stone and sometimes the blood of those who decided to talk outside of the hub about sales they had made or seen. They needed that privacy to get clear, find out who was after them and why, and get the ship fixed up. They had no other choice.

Duv took another swallow. “So, who is our buyer? Brander, Chow, Timmuz? They can probably move the firearms and some of the smaller stuff without too much issue, especially if we spread it out between them…”

“No…I want to offload as much as possible in one place, someplace where we can drop it, sell it fast, and our credits flow in fast too,” Reilly said.

“Only a couple of places like that will touch what we have, only a couple that have the buyers with that kind of money and connections.” Duv gave her a scrutinizing look, as if he already knew she was going to say something he wouldn’t like.

“Set a course for Crazy Ray’s. I got a plan and a cover story that should work to get us in and out in one piece, including the credits. Ty stays here and hidden so he doesn’t get killed. I’m pretty certain if Crazy Ray knew he was with us we’d all be dead, after Ty’s last visit to the hub. Duv, you and Chang can come with and help me out during negotiations. Seth can man the bridge in case we need to move out quick…” Reilly paused, looking around. “Where is Seth?”

The room got quieter. Duv spoke up. “He did better, got up to the bridge and lit her up. But then he disappeared once we got through the first plotted jump okay.”

Chang confirmed it. “He’s down there again. Looks like maybe a few days or a week on this one. Not talking again, I tried. Duv did too.”

Duv nodded in agreement.

Reilly bit her lip. “Duv, you stay on the bridge then. Chang and I will do the sales on the hub. We can’t risk it in case things go fraggin’ bawoon on us and we need to blast off. Get it set. I want to be there tomorrow, early.”

She stood and walked out the hatch towards the bay. No one asked where she was headed; they already knew.

When she and Duv had brought Skeeter back to the ship, it had been bad. He would disappear for hours at a time until they had finally figured out what was going on. The forward holding area had several compartments for various supplies. The smallest one was only five feet high and four feet wide and had empty ammo bins and some spare items in it. Reilly had found him there, holed up with blankets and a pillow, a stash of food he had stolen from the mess, a small lantern, and some knives. They had all seen this before in the ISUs, but this was especially hard because this was a kid, and not just any kid, but Duv’s kid. Traumatic stress on the battlefield had turned one of Reilly’s commanders into a cave dweller too. He showed a booked-up calendar on the tasking wall and would appear every morning in his battle gear to check in. They had all just assumed he was running his regular command duties, which kept most of the leadership busy nonstop. That was until the day one of the sergeants went looking for cleaning supplies in the wrong closet. They found the major in there with a blanket, food, a gun, and his body armor, rocking himself back and forth. Apparently it was all he could do to force himself to leave the closet on a daily basis to make a quick appearance in the command post. Empty drink bottles held urine if he didn’t make it to the regular facilities. The medics carried him out on a stretcher and he cried the whole way. They sent him back to one of the central planet military facilities for treatment. Reilly never saw him again. When Skeeter started vanishing, Reilly knew it was the same thing. She found his hiding place but made a point to not force him out of it right away. At first she just talked to him as she passed by, like it was no big deal he was hanging out in the hold. Then she would find things for him to do, little things at first that he could do at the edge of the hold, and then bigger things that required him to come out into the bay and lend a hand. If he got reluctant, she would push, and on occasion she would order. Sometimes it worked and he would do it, yet other times he couldn’t overcome whatever fears haunted his memories and would sit shaking or rocking until she let him be. With time, it had improved. But then something would happen, and he would disappear again for a week or a few days. These episodes were hardest on Duv, who still blamed himself for being two solar systems too far to get back in time to save his family.