Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (21 page)

Kal looked around carefully, unable to tell—in the stacks of crates—whether or not any of the privateers could see her. She girded herself, and dared to stand up and look into the nearest crate.

Damn, it was empty.

The next nearest was empty too.

Was she too late? Had they evacuated the crates and moved all of the Archangel armor to a different, more secure location within the ship?

Footsteps on metal.

Kal ducked down behind a stack of crates that was three high, and waited until the footsteps had diminished.

With her heart pounding in her throat, Kal turned around and examined the stack which was providing her cover. Like most commercial crates of similar design, these were roughly two meters on a side, and all sides had small access panels that could be detached if you had the right tools. In the case of the crate that was directly in front of Kal, the side hatch appeared to have been recently opened, and re-sealed—the paint around the edges had flaked, revealing bright metal.

Kal teased at the latches with her thumb and forefinger. One of the latches came loose.

Elated—and scared to death of being heard or seen—Kal popped another latch, and then another. When the last latch came free, she eased the side panel away and laid it on the ground. Inside, the crate was pitch black. So Kal reached in and felt around. Something very hard, smooth, and heavy was in the way. Grasping it as best as she could, Kal pulled the thing out and looked at it.

It was a helmet. A brand new, very fancy looking helmet. With an expensive and intricate-looking interface at the neck, where data feeds and motor networking would engage. Not a lot different from the conventional armor suits Kal had trained on.

Footsteps again. Coming towards her. Kal momentarily considered fleeing back into the ductwork.

No good. She wouldn’t make it in time.

Instead, she crawled
into
the crate, and pulled the access panel up behind her. Unable to seal the latches from the inside, she held the panel in place with the tips of her fingers and waited in desperate silence while the footsteps approach her crate, and then stopped in front of it.

Kal all but fainted.

But then, a voice spoke.

“If you tell ‘em once you tell ‘em a thousand times, don’t half-ass it when you’re doing a job. Now look at this container here, someone’s replaced the panel without dogging the latches. If I knew which one of these lazy sons-of-bitches was slacking around here, I’d break his nose.”

One by one, the latches were all snapped tight.

And Kal was locked inside.

Safe? For the moment? She felt around until she once again found the object that felt like the helmet. She slid it onto her head and allowed herself a tiny hint of a smile.

Chapter 18: uncharted territory

Tim Osterhaudt sat slumped in his confined seat on the bridge of the
Goshawk.
His head hung low and blood oozed from several large gashes on his face and upper torso. Pitman, and Pitman’s commander, Karl Berd, sat on the edge of a console a few meters away, each staring unblinkingly at their captive.

“Who is your partner?” Berd said with an icy tone to his voice. “I really don’t want to have to unleash my first officer again.”

Tim clenched up inside for a second, as he contemplated the pain. Would it do any good to talk? He’d almost cracked during the first beating. Would he be able to withstand the second? Ordinarily Tim would have stuck to his principles, and not wished harm on anyone. But after the way Pitman had laid into him, Tim was beginning to have second thoughts about his philosophy. For the first time since he’d been a teenager in school, Tim genuinely wanted to retaliate. Hit back. No, not just hit back. Cave Pitman’s skull in with a wrench. Knock him down and beat him senseless.

It was embarrassing, to be having such barbaric thoughts. But Tim realized he could not help it. Not after the way Pitman had savaged him, and for no reason other than that Tim was powerless to do anything about it. Talk or no talk, the Ambit League people were going to beat him again. Perhaps even to death. Regardless of what came out of his mouth. Of this Tim was certain. So, he kept his mouth shut, and waited dismally for the renewal of blows.

• • •

Pitman noticed Osterhaudt flinch, and then remain silent.

“He needs more motivation, boss,” Pitman said. His fists were sore from the first series of blows, but he’d relished the exercise. Every hit was another piece of revenge for what had been done to Gabriella.

Berd sighed, and nodded.

Pitman lunged, cracking a fist across Osterhaudt’s cheek.

There was a loud
smack
and Osterhaudt’s head snapped to the side, blood pouring from a new gash in Osterhaudt’s face.

• • •

Tim ran a tongue along the wounded flesh inside his mouth—to compliment the wounds outside—and grimaced. A few teeth were loose. He’d have to have that taken care of, if he survived to get off this mud ball.

Another blow cracked Tim’s head in the opposite direction, and a second cut joined the first in dribbling warm redness all over Osterhaudt’s muscled chest.

“Who is your partner?” Berd asked again, remaining calm as Pitman’s chest inhaled and exhaled rapidly.

Osterhaudt closed his eyes and tried to remove himself from the current situation. He refused to betray a woman whom he had learned to call a friend. He was also a CAF Reserve officer. They hadn’t spent much time discussing prisoner of war scenarios, but Tim knew the stories from history. He would resist them as long as he could. Until whatever he babbled out of his mouth was so nonsensical it wouldn’t matter how much he spoke.

Osterhaudt lifted his head slowly and stared at them both through swollen eyes—just for a moment. They waited as he opened his mouth to speak, looks of anticipation on their faces.

“Ambit League? Go fuck yourselves,” Tim whispered.

• • •

Pitman screamed, and was on Osterhaudt in an instant, raining curse after curse and punch after punch.

Suddenly Pitman found himself grabbed by the shirt collar and hurled against the opposite bulkhead by an impossibly strong arm.

“You
fool!
” Berd hissed at a startled Pitman. “We need him
alive
for now. I told you to rough him up, not to
kill
him. Put your anger about Gabriella on hold until we can get both he and that damned woman out in the open. Together. After that, you can tear them both apart for all I care, but as long as she’s loose in the ship, we need him as live bait. Understood?”

Pitman nodded his head, his lungs sucking in and expelling air at a very rapid, adrenalized pace.

• • •

Berd watched for a few more seconds, to be sure his executive wouldn’t renew the rage-filled beating, then he turned away and picked up a communications headset from the nearby bridge console. He placed it on his graying head of hair and tossed a second unit to Pitman.

“Untie him from the seat,” Berd said, “and carry him down a few decks to the cargo bay. If he won’t give us what we need, then maybe we can use him to force her out of the air ducts.”

Berd walked past Pitman towards the bridge lift tube.

• • •

Pitman spat once on the deck, and began to unstrap the tape from Osterhaudt’s bindings—tape which had held him to the chair long after losing consciousness. Tim toppled to the floor, unable to stop himself. Pitman felt the urge to rain a series of savage kicks on the pilot, but didn’t dare cross his boss’s order to keep the young CAF troop alive.

Chapter 19: uncharted territory

Kal slowly assembled the Archangel armor by feel.

First the interface body suit—which felt terrible, being pulled on over the top of Kal’s sweaty, filthy, and in some places bloody skin. Then, the secondary coolant suit. After that, the boots, and the legs, the lower torso, the upper torso, the shoulders, the upper arms, the gauntlets, and finally, sealing the collar to the helmet.

By the time Kal was done she was sweating so profusely in the cramped, unventilated interior of the crate, that she felt literally like she might suffocate. Unless she got some clean air.

The moment she got the neck ring to the suit’s helmet sealed, the microcomputer interface came to life and a pleasantly female voice announced in Kal’s ears that the Archangel armor was activated and would she please select a mode of operation before continuing. A projection appeared in Kal’s field of view—made bright by the fact that the interior of the crate was pitch black—and Kal scanned the menu options:

DIAGNOSTIC TYPE A.

DIAGNOSTIC TYPE B.

DEMONSTRATION MODE.

NEW PILOT MODE.

DEPLOYMENT MODE.

Unsure of how to make her selection, Kal muttered something about being a new pilot.

The selection illuminated happily, then Kal felt a burst of air against her damp cheeks from the suit’s own internal atmospheric pressurizer. Her eardrums felt the sudden shift, and she worked her jaw to pop them while the menu display showed a swirling circle—the near universal sign that the computer was booting its assigned program.

There was a gentle mechanical noise in Kal’s ears, and she momentarily froze, wondering who—if anyone—outside the crate might be within listening distance. But then her fear abated as she realized that for the first time since she’d crash-landed, Kal was not in any immediate danger from the people around her. Small arms wouldn’t do much good against the Archangel. Tim had sworn it. So unless the privateers had something more powerful to throw against her, for the moment, Kal was essentially invulnerable. At least if she could figure out how to work the system.

Tim had warned her again and again to take it easy. Not overreact. Not push the suit in the way she’d been used to pushing older suits.

Kal waited while the mode finally came up—with menus not a lot different from what she’d seen on her displays in the conventional armor units—then she began navigating the selections by voice. Under ideal circumstances she’d have had plenty of time to go through all the choices and get things customized. Right now she merely needed the suit to respond to her as quickly and as powerfully as possible.

Would the suit really be as good as Tim said it was?

Kal would soon find out.

A chime alerted Kal to the fact that a wireless signal was active, where none had been active before. Kal ordered the signal to be piped to her speakers in her ears.

“Attention, this is Karl Berd, commander of the Ambit League ship
Goshawk
. I am speaking to the woman who has thus far stubbornly refused to cooperate with my requests that she cease and desist all harassment of my crew. Since you have elected to be hard-headed, I am now forced to be hard-headed as well. My first officer has been quite thorough in his dealings with your young friend here. Quite thorough. Albeit nothing permanent has transpired. Yet. This may be about to change. Listen carefully.”

Kal heard a sickening
crunch,
then a shuffling sound, followed by a barley contained yowl of pain. Tim.

They were now breaking bones.

Crunch.

Another, stronger scream from Tim’s throat, which sounded dry and ragged.

“Respond,” Berd’s voice said, “or we keep going. When his fingers are done, then we break his toes. Then his arms, and legs. After that, you force us to get creative. Reply to this signal please, and announce your intention to surrender to my crew at once.

“No!” Kal suddenly blurted out in a ragged cry over the Archangel’s wireless connection to the intra-ship network. Which to that point had merely been passive.

• • •

Tim Osterhaudt held back the tears as Pitman kept Tim’s hand pinned to the top of an empty cargo crate. Tim’s right index and middle fingers were grossly misshapen and had turned a horrible color of black, mixed with purple. They bled where crushed bone poked through the skin, and the pain was unimaginable.

Around the cargo bay, most of the crew of the ship stood armed and ready, guarding the access ducts and the hatches, waiting for Kal to surrender herself. So far Kal’s only response on the wireless had been a resounding and emphatic,
“No!”

• • •

Radar and Doppler navigation projected a virtual image of the crate walls around Kal, eliminating the need for lamp activation. The Archangel’s power meter showed that the twin fuel cells were pegged to the top, and that neural mapping was proceeding rapidly. Movement would now be possible. A voice asked Kal if she would like to try to stand up.

Kal did more than that. She went through the side of the crate. Tim hadn’t been kidding, the Archangel responded almost before Kal could think to move her body.

Kal kept going—from a walk, to a trot, to a run—and bulldozed her way through several more crates, until she stumbled out into a clear space in the middle of the cargo deck.

Mouths were agape and eyes were wide.

Kal looked around her, 360 degrees, until she saw Tim, and the man standing over Tim with a wrench ready to strike. Kal bodily swept the man aside like he was made of paper, and picked Tim up. He groaned at the pain this caused, but Kal spun and headed back the way she’d come, carting Tim like a sack of potatoes. Weapons finally began to pop off, sending wild rounds
pinging
and
panging
off of the deck.

Kal prayed that Tim wouldn’t be hit as she aimed for the hatch that opened to the outside world. Light was flooding up the ramp—sunshine, for the first time in several days!

Kal cradled Tim in her mechanized arms and protected him with her back as the whole of the cargo bay—dozens of crew, all firing—opened up on her. She skipped first left, then right, then stuttered left, then bowled over the three crew who were at the top of the ramp, and leapt out over the ramp entirely, her motor-assisted motion exaggerating the movement as if Kal were moving in barely a fraction of normal gravity.

It was a heady, exhilarating feeling, after being forced to skulk about the interior of the ship.

Finally, Kalliope Reardon had real power! And she intended to use it. But only after she got Tim a safe distance away from the ship.