Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (17 page)

The lamp went out.

Kal cursed, but managed to get a solid grip on the ladder.

The smell of old mildew, machine oil, and rusty steel was pungent in her nostrils. Kal tried to calm herself. She hated heights. And on top of that, she hated confined spaces. She stepped down a rung and then heard a
thunk
from the car.

No time left!

Kal worked quickly down the ladder, by feel. Suddenly she felt a gust of fresh air. Exploring with her fingers, she found the ventilation duct. There was no screen across it. Kal knocked her forearm around the edges of the opening, and realized the duct was just large enough for a person to crawl into. Swallowing hard, she maneuvered off the ladder and shimmied into the duct, feeling the pain in her abused elbows and knees as she worked her way forward.

Kal crawled a number of meters and then stopped. In total darkness, she had no idea where the shaft might lead. Only the occasional burst of fresh air told her that going forward was preferable to going back.

Outside, voices cursed as the privateers discovered the lift car to be empty. How long would it take them to figure out what had happened to her? Kal closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her wrist for a moment, then returned to worming her way forward. After a long, filthy period of claustrophobic effort, Kal came to the first of many grill plates that opened sideways into the interior of the ship. No light was evident, and Kal couldn’t see anything. But she could feel the air moving through the grills—the palm of her hand pressed against the gridwork.

Not wanting to be trapped in the duct any longer than she had to be, Kal curled herself into a ball and put her feet on one of the grills, then pushed. The grill snapped free, clattering to the deck in the darkness beyond. Kal led with her feet, then dangled by her hands, then let herself drop.

For a split second, her brain imagined a free-fall.

But her feet hit flooring almost instantly, and Kal allowed herself to crumple, staying still on the metal plate. Not moving. Not really thinking. She was just damned glad to be out of the ductwork.

At some point, Kal must have drifted off. She snapped awake when the grinding whine of motorized gears announced that a hatch was opening. A beam of light stabbed into the darkness, and Kal stayed quiet as she watched the light play about the room. Rectangular storage containers of various sizes filled the space. Kal had landed directly between two of them. Which put her out of the line of sight of whoever had entered.

A woman’s voice said, “Now in compartment 86-C.”

A tiny muttering of a different voice—as if through a transistor speaker—responded back.

“Negative,” said the female voice. “Not a goddamned sign of the intruder … Yeah, I’ll keep looking … Yeah, it would have been nice if we took care of this bitch in orbit, but that didn’t happen, did it? … You know, we should see if her friend can tell us something … how many of his fingers do you think we’d need to break, before he’ll talk?”

Kal slithered to the edge of the container that concealed her—waiting for the beam of the light to face the opposite direction—then lunged. The beam spun back around just in time to catch Kal square in the face. Kal aimed and fired her P3110 in the same reflexive instant. The light flew up and then clattered across the deck as the female privateer was tossed bodily backward, slumping loudly against one of the containers.

Kal snatched up the lantern and dimmed it by half, creeping slowly up to the body. The woman had a neat hole in her throat that bled thick, dark blood. Kal grimaced, electing not to search the body. But she did find the headset the woman had been using—laying on the deck three meters away. Putting it on her head, Kal immediately got an earful of voice chatter. Many people, all talking at once. They didn’t seem to realize what had happened, much to Kal’s relief. The woman she’d shot hadn’t been depressing the SEND switch on the side of the headset when Kal had fired.

Thank goodness for small miracles.

Kal waited, listening to the goings-on of the intra-ship network. All hands had been scrambled to look for Kal. It sounded like they wanted her alive. Many people seemed to agree with the dead privateer at Kal’s feet: the sole, living prisoner would be a good tool to use against Kal.

Tim.
Kal knew she had to find him before it was too late.

Checking her pistol to be sure it still had sufficient ammunition in the magazine, Kal then aimed the lantern back toward the hatch through which the female privateer had first entered. Best to not go back that way. There might be more people. Surveying the compartment more thoroughly, Kal discovered another hatch at the opposite end. Would its motors work?

Only one way to find out.

Chapter 8: the borderland

For two weeks, Kal and Tim laid low. Not venturing out into Viking Station for more than a few minutes at a time. The wafer drive Gulliver had given them said that a Blackmatter ship—the
Broadbill—
would be arriving with a discretely allotted shipment of Tremonton gear aboard. There was no indication as to who—if anyone—would try to seize such equipment. Only that the best way to get more information was to be aboard the ship when it happened.

Now, Kal eyed the
Broadbill
as the huge ship rested in its dock. Kal herself was lassoed tight to a small magnetic tractor that gripped the exterior hull of Viking Station, preventing her from floating off into deep space. She watched as the last of the ship’s personnel, departing for shore leave, moved through the big starship’s several gangways—just tiny little dots moving against the small lit windows of the gangway tubes.

Kal verbally commanded the tractor to move forward. It beeped acknowledgement and began to trundle slowly towards the
Broadbill’s
bow shield—a mighty dome of layered armor designed to catch or deflect debris while the ship was moving forward. The shield proper was locked into the grapples of Viking Station’s smaller docking ring.

As the tractor traversed the distance to the ship, Kal tried to avoid breathing through her nose. Her used space suit was mildly and unpleasantly aromatic inside—too many occupants and not enough sanitary detergent. Kal was well familiar with extra-vehicular activity. She’d done plenty in her time. Range of motion and vision were somewhat restricted, but if you could get a rhythm of movement going, you could cover ground fairly quickly. Assuming you were traveling under your own steam.

For this job, Kal was reliant on her technology. The tractor was a standard piece of Viking Station hardware. Hundreds of them were in constant motion across the hull, checking for hairline fractures and cracks, as well as hauling maintenance personnel to and fro. Connected as she was to her tractor, Kal looked no different from any of the other blue-collar engineers tasked with keep Viking Station operational.

It was all part of Gulliver’s suggested plan.

Unlike the
Freefall
, the
Broadbill
was a cradle ship: the main mass being an entirely separate sublight vessel. Which was locked into a series of mooring catches that ran along the barren spine of the starship. Most of the Blackmatter Drive ship’s functions were automated, and controlled remotely from the sublight ship’s bridge. Given the
Broadbill’s
design, she could potentially travel in-atmosphere. Or even land, when she arrived at her eventual destination.

The
Broadbill’s
exterior surfaces sparkled in the starlight: pristine, and without blemish.

When Kal’s tractor crossed over from the surface of the bow grapple to the surface of the ship, it beeped hesitantly until Kal gave it a series of verbal commands that ordered it to ignore the fact that it was leaving home.

The little robot went south.

Behind her, Kal could see Tim riding his own tractor—following her precisely.

For minutes, they moved in silence. Only the sound of the suit’s regulator filled Kal’s ears. Then, just above the communications module amidships, Kal spotted the kind of airlock she was looking for.

Taking a small computer tool from her suit belt—a restricted item that was CAF issue only—Kal plugged into the emergency airlock’s computer and gingerly negotiated an opening with the airlock’s tiny-minded control interface. It took minutes to convince the emergency lock’s control that it didn’t need to alert the command module as to what was going on, then the outer airlock doors slowly slid open.

Kal’s suit lamps illuminated the interior.

“Here goes nothing,” Kal said to herself, stepping into the orifice and standing on the wall of the airlock.

“A little help please?” said a voice in her suit’s helmet radio.

Kal reached down and—bracing her boots on the rim of the lock—heaved mightily until Tim was standing in the lock with her. Once inside the airlock—tractors secured—Kal ordered the outer doors sealed, and teased open the inner doors with the same lock-crack computer she’d used on the outside.

The inner doors opened into relative darkness. The air of the communications module was cold and smelled of ozone, with wires, tubes, and electronics running every which way. Kal and Tim floated gently, careful not to tweak anything that looked fragile. Eventually they found one of the smallish maintenance passageways that honeycombed the ship, and both she and Tim left their suits secured at the passageway entrance before penetrating more deeply into the
Broadbill’s
interior.

Their goal was to find a specific, tiny cabin that the manifest on Gulliver’s wafer drive had said would be vacant for the duration of the voyage. If Gulliver was correct, Kal and Tim could hide there until the same people who had made off with previous Tremonton shipments, also came for the
Broadbill.
If Kal could identify the thieves, or even find a way to stow away aboard whatever ship the thieves were using, it would put Kal very close to the source of the trouble.

It would also put both herself and Tim in far more danger than she’d have preferred.

But Gulliver’s instructions had been quite specific. And since Kal was dependent on the man—as her only source of seemingly reliable information—she was obliged to go along. If Gulliver was wrong, and nothing happened during the
Broadbill’s
voyage, then there was no harm done, and Kal would have to figure out a secondary plan.

If Gulliver was right …

Kal considered her youthful companion who had not, so far as Kal knew, ever had to use a weapon in anger. She sighed. Would it cost them in a pinch?

They floated across an empty corridor.

It took moments of agony for the near-illegal device in Kal’s gloved hands to talk the door’s control mechanism into opening. Then, it only opened halfway, and began to close again almost immediately. The motors whined loudly as one fought against the other.

“Shit,” Kal said. “You first.”

“With the door half open I am not sure I can fit,” Tim said.

“Go!” Kal slapped Tim hard on his back, and he dove in—grunting as he had to worm past the narrowing opening.

Kal disconnected the lock-pick and darted through just before the door resumed normal operational mode, and slapped shut.

It was pitch black.

“Lights,” Tim said.

Overheads popped on. The single-bunk cabin was about the size of a modest walk-in closet.

Kal and Tim stared at each other.

It was going to be an interesting trip.

Chapter 9: uncharted territory

“How many dead, Pitman?” Karl Berd said to his first officer as Garth Pitman entered the bridge.

“One, plus some injuries.”

Berd grimaced and stood up, stretching his back. He detested having to deal with unexpected problems. And this particular trip had experienced more than its fair share. The
Broadbill
was supposed to have been an easy poach job.

So much for false promises.

“Who do you think is doing this?” Pitman asked, standing at parade rest. “A roughneck out for revenge, or somebody else?”

“No,” Berd said, “the deck rats we occasionally run into are far too self-preserving for direct action like this. It must be something else. I wonder …”

Berd sat down and continued to brood. Whoever was running around in his ship was definitely not a run-of-the-mill freebooter. It was possible that this was somebody with military experience. Maybe an ex-CAF soldier? Berd detested the idea. Just as he detested the Conflux itself. To him, the supposed freedom of the Conflux was just a patina of lies. The super-wealthy technocrats who controlled or sat on the Assembly permitted just enough upward mobility to keep the masses from revolting, but nothing more.

The Ambit League—though harsh in its methods—offered the best chance Berd could see of transforming human society into something he might call civilized. In the era of interstellar travel, it was obscene that people still had to dig like dogs in the trash for even the basic necessities. The only thing keeping the status quo from collapsing was ignorance, fear, and the mercenary hoard known as the Conflux Armed Forces.

That a CAF troop might be loose in Berd’s ship, killing off his crew …

Berd stopped and thumped a fist loudly into his chair’s headrest.

“The CAF pigs strangle us with the blockade,” Berd said, “and now we may face one of their own running around this ship. Continue to collect what salvage you can, Pitman. But put every available person we have on alert for this woman. Continue to search and re-search every compartment. Turn every closet inside out. She can’t hide forever.”

“We might use the one we already caught,” Pitman suggested.

“Yes, we might. But he’s refused to talk. And while I am willing to resort to extreme measures, I would like to be sure we haven’t exhausted our other options first. I am not a cruel man, Pitman.”

“I’m sorry if I implied that you were, sir,” Pitman said.

Berd looked at his first officer. They’d not known each other for a terribly long time. The Ambit League—in its current, fractured form—tended to move its personnel around a lot. So as to avoid attachments that might turn into vulnerabilities later. So far as Berd knew, Pitman was as dedicated to the League cause as any other man. But there was a flavor to Pitman that Berd couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something feral …