Slab City Blues - The Collected Stories: All Five Stories in One Volume (18 page)

“How’s that for gratitude? Where’s Uhlstan?”

Jack nodded at a bulky form floating a few feet in front of his position, body armour hanging in shreds, blood globules trailing from multiple impacts.
Shielded his captain from the burst. Loyal to the
end.

A fresh bout of carbine fire from opposite ends of the tubeway told me the commander had ordered another assault. “We need to move.”

I provided a shield as we propelled to a side tunnel. Jack had retrieved Uhlstan’s Ithaca and vented his frustration with a rapid salvo of double-aught blasts at the pursuing commandos. Completely pointless but I guess it made him feel better. Once clear of the main tubeway, I accessed the door controls and brought down airtight bulkheads on both sides of our position.

“You really should head for the lifeboats,” I told the commander. I could see her on the internal vid-feed, a slim woman in her late thirties, handsome ebony features stern and resolute behind her visor. She was moving towards our position flanked by a squad of commandos. Not the type to stay on the bridge when combat beckoned.

“I have my orders,” she stated.

“Yeah. Lot of that going around. For the record, I’m sorry.”

A slight pause then the soft androgynous tones of an automated warning began to sound throughout the ship. “Emergency venting sequence initiated. Decompression of hab and work compartments will occur within ten seconds. All crew please report to your allotted evacuation point. Emergency decompression sequence initiated…”

I watched the commander’s last moments, seeing the spasm of fury and frustration before the final few seconds of rigid self-control. “McLeod?” she said.

“Yes ma’am?”

“This won’t be forgiven.”

“I know.”

“Then fuck y-”

A vast clunk as over a hundred air-seals opened at once, a blizzard of debris and venting gas filling the vidscreen, then she was gone. I called up the tactical and watched the red dots blink out. I stopped counting at fifty.

“By the way,” I told Jack. “You’re under arrest.”

Chapter 5

Mina and Markov
were both pointing hand-guns at me as I cracked open the Pendragon back in the Dead Reckoning’s airlock.

“Do not move!” Mina ordered, double-grip tight on an old Colt .45. Her voice was coloured by a slight quaver, but her aim was rock solid. Lucy floated in the background, face a mixture of bafflement and joyful curiosity.

I ignored Mina and turned to Jack. “Check your hull sensors.”

“For what?”

“Elevated rad levels on the port thruster.” I undid the straps and floated free of the suit, arching my back and working the ache from my limbs.

“I said don’t move!” Mina’s aim shifted to my forehead, sweat beading her skin.

“She needs to calm down,” I advised Jack.

“It’s OK,” he told Mina quietly, placing a hand on her forearm, easing it down. “We’ll play this out for now.”

Mina gave an explosive sigh of frustration and lowered her gun. She twisted and propelled towards the core followed by Jack. Markov waited a moment, regarding me with an inscrutable stare, then bounded after with his effortless grace, limbs folding and expanding like a squid boosting itself through the water.

“After you,” I told Lucy who was still displaying the same odd mix of puzzled delight.

“Finally,” she said in a small voice. “Something new.”

*

“So what is it?” Jack demanded. We were in the core, watching the scanning console display a graphic of the cylinder I’d attached to the port thruster, a red warning icon revolving alongside.

“A one kiloton nuclear device,” I replied. “It was intended for the Malthus II. CAOS Intelligence suspected she was processing helium 3 off the books in defiance of the treaty with the UN. If she went boom, it could be blamed on an ill-advised raid by the system’s most notorious pirate, at least publicly. Privately, the Downside governments would get the message that breaking our monopoly doesn’t pay. Turns out she was up to something a tad more serious, so I was obliged to improvise.”

Jack’s gaze was steady, free of fear but the anger was plain in the bulging vein on his forehead. “And if we kill you, it goes bang, right?”

“It goes bang in seventy-two hours whether you kill me or not. But I do have a deactivation code.”

“I’ve broken men in a lot less than seventy-two hours.”

I tapped the slender band secured across my forehead. “Neural interface, accessible only via the Pendragon’s controls which are bio-locked to my brain-wave signature.” I smiled. “Sorry folks, but you are all hereby deputised as operatives of the Coalition Intelligence Service. The pay’s lousy and the perks are non-existent, but you do earn the warm glow that comes from serving your nation.”

“Your nation, Demon guy,” Jack growled. “I said goodbye to all that flag-waving shit years ago.”

“How progressive of you.” I turned to Lucy. “Calculate the journey time to Ceres for the Malthus II.”

“What’s at Ceres?” Mina asked.

“Our new mission objective.”

“One hundred twenty-two hours, standard burn,” Lucy reported from the nav console. “Sixty-eight at maximum, but she’ll be down to five percent fuel reserves when we arrive.”

“Not a concern. Get this tub parked in her cargo bay and report to the bridge. Life support should be fully restored in an hour.” I pitched towards the exit. “I’ll be taking a nap.”

“What’s in this for us?” Markov enquired.

I paused. “The opportunity not to become cosmic dust.”

“I want immunity,” he said. “A full pardon.”

I sighed around a laugh. “You’re all guilty of more crimes than can be easily counted. Should’ve been on the Morningstar job, right Lucy? Five security guards were killed when you blasted into that cruise liner. Not Fed Sec commandos, just working stiffs, men and women with families.” I met Markov’s gaze. “Any cooperation you provide will be taken into account at your trial and the judge will pass sentence accordingly. Should spare you the death penalty, maybe even a chance at parole in a few decades.”

“That’s not much of an incentive,” Mina pointed out. “And I have a daughter to consider.”

“She’s a big girl and this is not a game.”

“The nuke’s on the Dead Reckoning,” Jack pointed out. “What’s to stop us just taking the Malthus?”

I tapped the neural interface again. “I’ve got sole access to her control system. No-one gets to throw a single switch without my say so and with me dead she’s not taking anyone anywhere.” I pushed towards the exit. “Call me when you’re ready to start for Ceres.”

*

“There’s nothing there, y’know?” Lucy said. She was strapped into the nav console on the bridge of the Malthus II, cocooned in a shell of holo-screens each displaying a bewildering array of shifting data. She seemed to have no difficulty reading it all at a glance. A semi-transparent projection of Ceres revolved in the centre of the bridge, a pale yellow and grey ball of dusty ice.

“Largest asteroid in the solar system,” Lucy went on. “A dwarf planet really. It’s a protected site on account of that complex hydro-carbon gloop they found in the ice a few years ago. Off limits to mining operations and tourists aren’t permitted closer than a hundred thousand klicks.”

I skipped through the security feeds to check on my other crewmates. Jack and Mina had elected to busy themselves clearing out the few corpses still floating around the ship’s interior. So far our passage to Ceres had been marked by a trail of ejected bodies. I took some comfort from the fact that none had turned out to be genuine Exocore employees, Fed Sec operatives all.

I had to flick through quite a few cam-feeds before locating Markov foraging through the tech stores, a large hold-all bulging with liberated doodads trailing from his shoulder as he made his way along the shelves.
Stocking up. Not planning on incarceration any time
soon.

“How long before your dad tries to kill me, d’you think?” I asked Lucy.

“He’ll probably wait till we’re at Ceres. He’s a surprisingly patient man. This snare of yours might have trapped him for the moment, but he’ll be constantly looking for a way to gnaw his leg off. And when he does…”

I gave a vague nod and called up the schematic for the Malthus II’s power system.
Dynamic Industries fourth gen fusion core with a depressingly impressive list of fail-safes, the back-up
however…

“What did you look like before?” Lucy asked as I ran sims. “I mean, that’s not your real face, right?”

“Ugly with plenty of scars.”
Not enough fissionable material in the mix,
I mused as the sim concluded. I checked the storage manifests, scrolling through lists of various metals until I found it.
Only fifty grams, but it should be enough
.

“It was my screw-up,” Lucy said.

“Huh?” I ran another sim with the new ingredient, grunting in satisfaction at the spectacular outcome.

“The Morningstar. I miscalculated the approach velocity. Those guards died because of me.”

“Be sure to play up the contrition for the judge, might shave off a few years.”

“Jack says prison’s not so bad. Said he did a five-year stretch when he was about my age. They plug you into accelerated immersion, right? Ten years in the dream is only one in reality.”

“Don’t have any illusions. Ten years is ten years, whether you live it or dream it. And it’s not Alice in Wonderland. You’re fed a series of scenarios designed to make you confront your guilt, develop a social conscience so when you get out you’re a tax-paying citizen with a phobia for violence and deceit.”

“Doesn’t seem to have worked on Jack.”

“Sociopaths tend to be immune.” I ordered a cargo bot to fetch the chosen material. “I’ll be in the power core.”

*

The war had left me well educated in finding inventive ways to blow stuff up and the colonel’s refresher course had added some new wrinkles, but the destructive potential offered by the Malthus II’s back-up power source was of a different order. This was no home-made plastique or hyrdogen-peroxide taped to a Fed Sec guard post, this was a fission reactor with a potential yield of five kilotons. Fusion had supplanted fission in the vast majority of orbitals and interplanetary ships well over a decade ago, but some deep-belt vessels still retained uranium reactors for back-up and auxiliary power in the event deuterium stocks ran low. It was aged but near-perfect technology, the flaws of the old twentieth century reactors designed out long ago and augmented by an extensive array of state-of-the-art safety protocols. Even with my unrestricted access to the ship’s systems, I was obliged to spend several hours circumventing or deactivating a myriad of software and hardware designed to prevent me doing this very thing.

“Why don’t you just use the nuke you attached to the Dead Reckoning?” Markov was framed in the doorway, limbs spread to clutch at the edges, a pale four-legged spider regarding me with a cocked head.

“Not enough bang,” I replied, guiding the bot with the new ingredient inside the spherical reactor core and uploading a command to its memory. When the time came, it would simply open the container.

“Then our target must be sizable,” Markov said.

“Quite.” I closed up the core and put the reactor in stand-by mode, ready for a rapid power-up.

“And well defended,” he persisted.

“I expect so.”

“We’re not going to survive this mission, are we?”

“I thought Belters were all about accepting the destiny offered by the void.”

“My exile was not accidental. I have issues with blind acceptance of fate.”

“Well, now you have a chance to reconnect with your faith. Good luck with that.”

He tensed in the doorway, muscles knotting on his spindly limbs, face flushed red with anger. “I’ll have no part in this. Whatever kamikaze mission you’re on, count me out.”

“Then find a corner to hide in and stay out of my way.”

“There are working lifeboats aboard. I request permission to leave.”

“No. You’re a wanted felon with a trial and a prison term waiting. Anyway, a Fed Sec security sweep might pick up your beacon.”

“The chances of that are minimal…”

“Not minimal enough. And don’t forget what remains of the defensive net is now under my control, so any unauthorised excursions are going to be very short.”

His tension went up a notch making my hands itch for a weapon. I had no confidence in the outcome of a straight-up fight with a Belter in his native environment, the control I had over this ship was my only real protection. I just had to hope his rationality outweighed his fear.

Markov’s long face twitched and he gave a final impotent snarl before twisting about and propelling along the tubeway with his usual fluency. I sighed, watching him go and knowing I’d grown too soft for this kind of work. If this scenario had played out during the war I’d have followed him, improvised a weapon from the tool racks and killed him when his adrenal levels had subsided. But it wasn’t in me anymore, the sight of Maddux’s disembodied head was taking way too long to fade. The commander and crew had been different, enemy soldiers in the heat of battle, but it seemed my capacity for outright murder had shrunk in civilian life.
Too many years a
Demon.

I contented myself with commanding the Malthus II to jettison all the lifeboats, uploading instructions to crash themselves into the first asteroid to happen along. It pays to be thorough.

*

Despite the comparatively plush accommodation offered by the Malthus II, Jack, Mina and Lucy still slept aboard the Dead Reckoning, now nestling in the Malthus II’s cargo bay. I suppose familiarity breeds a false sense of security.

Since my target was occupied I was obliged to use a small conduit maintenance bot to gain access, little bigger than a mouse and resembling a hummingbird with grab-arms. I guided it in through the fuel lines, void of plasma now the tanks were full, steering it along the internal maze of valves and vents until it emerged in the central tubeway. I let it hover for a while as its audio-feed relayed the muted sound of Mina’s whimpers. I’d noticed she never slept very well, prone to nightmares and unconscious rambling. I listened as she came awake with a shout, cries subsiding amid Jack’s soothing whispers. I waited until silence returned then guided the bot to Markov’s workshop.

The safe sat in the Belter’s jerry-rigged sonic array unmarked and undamaged, Jack no doubt deciding other matters were more pressing at the moment. I had some notion of how to operate Markov’s contraption, but since I knew the combination, it didn’t really matter. The lock was an eye-scan, hand-print combo but, like all security systems, had a back-door in the form of a twelve-digit code known only to the captain of the Malthus II and senior Exocore executives. Securing it had been expensive and it was fortunate Fed Sec hadn’t bothered to change it when they took over the ship, it was also quite possible they hadn’t even opened the safe since what it held had no value to them. To Jack however…

The safe door swung open, the hinges creaking a little. There was a spike in the audio-feed as Mina’s whimpering resumed momentarily before settling back into fitful slumber. I didn’t push my luck, ordering the bot to retrieve the contents and close the door. The safe held only one item, a thin seven-inch square wrapped in cellophane, delicately clutched in the bot’s pincers as it made its way back to me.

Leverage,
the Colonel had said, more than once.
You can never have enough
leverage.