Days Twenty and Twenty-one

Once he had the promise he needed from Nils, Van Hoek was all business. He quickly commed the launchpad for progress, and yelled at whoever was on the line (Rory had a feeling it was the short, peel-faced man called Smeaton from the tone of utter withering contempt that he used when chastising him).

 

“Time is tight now, you rotund waste of resource!” he spat. “Copernicus will be launching search parties soon for the Foxfire, and the last thing we want is for any interested parties to be spaceborne when we fire up. That would finish our little surprise pretty quickly, don’t you think?”

 

“Ten minutes, boss. That’s all we need,” Smeaton pleaded.

 

“That’s all you’re getting, backwash,” Van Hoek sneered. He snapped off the line, and then swiftly moved to unlash Nils. “No fast moves, Armstrong. A word from me and your boy finds a new way to open drinks cans.” But Nils was silent, adrift in his damnation.

 

He pulled Nils to his feet, and pointed him at the door. “Let’s go. Destiny awaits. BOS-N, wait here. I will issue instructions regarding the boy.”

 

“+++YARR+++”

 

BOS-N took up position behind Dash, one quick move away from his hands. Dash curled them into fists, an act designed not as an offensive move, but simply so he could tuck his fingers out of sight.

 

Van Hoek typically misread the gesture. “Still some fight in you Armstrongs yet, eh? Very well then. Boy, I admire your tenacity. BOS-N, update to program. If the boy makes any attempt to get out of that chair, take his left hand.”

 

“+++HE BE LIKE BOS-N THEN. MAYBE I MAKE HIM A HOOK+++”

 

“Maybe you do. Come on, Armstrong. Don’t say goodbye to your boy. You’ll see him again soon. Who knows, maybe even in one piece.” The sharpened smile glinted again, and then he was gone, tugging the unprotesting Nils behind him.

 

He marched past Rory and Arty without noticing them, and Nils certainly gave no sign. His head was bowed, his eyes hooded. He was a man without hope, and the very sight of him made Rory have to bite down hard on her lower lip. She wanted nothing more than to call his name, to rush into his arms.

 

Not yet. A plan popped into her head, a wild, half-formed thing that had more holes than thread. But it had the advantage of being the only thing that she could think to do.

 

She motioned to Arty, who silked to her side. She took the doggiecat’s head in her hand, and raised a finger to her ear. Listen. She didn’t know if this sign language was going to work, but she had a feeling that she and Arty communicated mostly through unspoken, empathic means anyway. Up to now, they had found no problems in making each other understood.

 

She held up one hand, palm flat and facing Arty. Wait. Then she made a V with two fingers, and spiralled them upwards, making the faintest impression of atomotor noise that she could. Two ship taking off. Then both hands, all fingers and thumbs up. Ten minutes.

 

Arty rolled every one of her twenty eyes. Yes, yes, I get the idea. When did you decide I was an idiot again?

 

Rory ignored the rebuke. She put up one finger, and mugged an anticipatory face. THEN…

 

And she slowly moved the finger, making sure Arty followed it all the way, until she was pointing at Dash.

 

FETCH.

 

Every angle of Arty’s slim body echoed the response that was made by a very careful and deliberate nod of her head.

 

It will be my absolute pleasure.

 

It was time to move. Rory wasted at least thirty seconds on one last, hard hug with Arty. Arty responded with delight, laying her small head on Rory’s shoulder, and taking the time to generate one last healing pulse to take the edge of the ache that was rubbing away at the girl’s bones. The two passed a wordless “good luck” to each other, then Rory was away, running lightly in the direction the pirate and her dad had gone.

 

Van Hoek was about to get his wish. There was one place she needed to be now, and that was on the flight deck of the Foxfire Five. The problem would be getting there undetected. She couldn’t very well just waltz up to the main ramp.

 

It was just as well, then, that she had grown up in and around the Foxfire Five. She knew every nook and cranny, every secret place. She may not have known where the bodies were stashed, but she certainly knew where the secret barrel of biscuits were tucked.

 

And she also knew about the secret back door. The way in that no-one would ever think to look for, because technically speaking it wasn’t a door at all.

 

There was only one problem, and Rory cursed it as she started to shed layers and slip out of her pod suit. The back door was a tight squeeze at the best of times, and there was no way she was going to get in wearing the bulky, armoured suit. And the Foxfire was on an open pad, a long way from any pressurised shelter.

 

She felt in her hip pocket, where Quiddity’s parting gift rode solid and heavy. Ten minutes, he had said. She really hoped that would be enough.

 

“Nice place you have here, Anderson!” Van Hoek looked admiringly around the cramped confines of the flight deck of the Foxfire Five. The soft glow of the status lights and screens lent the area a serenity that none of the people crowded into it felt. Nils was lashed to the pilot’s chair, facing the manual control yoke. To the left of it, the pilot-daemon winked and blipped, ready to take over as soon as the irritating business of actually getting the ship off the pad had been accomplished.

 

Broderick had somehow folded himself into the tight spherical space, and satisfied himself as to the strength of his knots. Then he shoved the chair into place, bellying Nils up to the flight yoke.

 

Nils looked hopelessly at Van Hoek. All you could see of him was his head, poking comically up through the hatch. Realistically, there was nothing more that could have fitted into the tight space. “Well, go on then,” he chided.

 

Nils tapped a couple of keys, and the yoke controls came to life. Somewhere deep below them, the atomotors yawned and stretched, slowly waking with the thrum of a thousand contented cats.

 

“Pre-flight checklist running. Go/no go for count,” he said flatly.

 

“Go for count,” Van Hoek said, and Nils touched another switch. Klaxons began to sound, and the lighting in the flight deck red-shifted. Screens lit all around them, showing a five minute countdown.

 

“Right, I’m off to the Catchsorrow, Broderick,” Van Hoek said cheerily. “Watch him. He looks whipped, but I still don’t trust him. No cute stuff, Armstrong. If you’re thinking of being heric and crashing the ship before the pilot-daemon kicks in, just remember your boy. BOS-N will make him limbless before he lets him die.”

 

“I know,” Nils mouthed, head down, tapping in commands to the ship mechanically. “I know.”

 

“Well, cheero,” said Van Hoek. “See you on a new moon.” His head disappeared.

 

“It’s you and me, then, spaceman,” Broderick snarled after he had listened for Van Hoek’s bootsteps clang down the gangway. “Like the man said, don’t try to be smart. I’ll stop you myself. I could fly this thing easy. In fact,” he finished with his skull-like smile, “once the pilot-daemon’s on, I might just save everyone some trouble and throw you out of the garbage chute. You didn’t honestly think you were going to walk away from this, did you? There’ll be no room for you on a pirate moon.”

 

Nils stayed quiet, twisting actuators that sent howls of power drumming through the ship’s bones. “Two minutes,” the ship system said calmly, it’s tone belying the thunder of activity as the Foxfire Five made itself ready to launch.

 

“You know, I think that’s what I’m going to do,” said Broderick absently. “I think once you’ve done your job I’m going to take over, let the pilot-daemon do all the dull bits and take all the glory. All I have to say is that you went crazy just after launch and tried to turn the ship around. I had no choice. I had to save the mission.”

 

A shudder of life ran down the spine of the Foxfire Five from bow to stern as the primary launch thrusters came on line. The ship was up on her toes now, primed and ready to leap into the jewelled lunar sky. The pilot-daemon twittered quietly, and flung up a trajectory line. These were course corrections sent over from Van Hoek on his ship, the Catchsorrow.

 

“There you are, Armstrong.” His voice, dry and in control over the comms. “You have your course. Now just get your barge up in the air and let me worry about the rest. The pirate king of the moon has your best interests at heart.”

 

“Pirate king of nothing,” Broderick grumbled. “He’s not the boss of me. Thinks we’re all useless dirt miners with no taste for the meat and blood of the job. I’ll show him what I’m capable of. I’ll show him the kind of men he has under his command.”

 

Nils said nothing. He let the tall crazy skull-grinning man rant. He stayed quiet, and he did not tell Broderick that maybe he should get below, that he should strap into a launch seat. He did not tell him that standing up unsupported and unsecured was bot smart when you were about to hurl a spacecraft off a launchpad.

 

“Ten seconds,” said the ship system. “Nine. Eight.”

 

“Wait,” said Broderick, too late. “Shouldn’t I be strapped in?”

 

“Five. Four. Three.”

 

Broderick realised what had happened. “You BAS…”

“Zero,” said the ship system. “Thrust cycle.”

 

The Foxfire Five gathered itself up on her haunches, and the primary thrusters lit, gouting blue fire. The bow tipped upwards, bringing upward momentum that the rest of the ship followed smoothly.

 

NOW. Nils yanked back on the control yoke, and the bow lifted and swung savagely to port. Broderick had no choice but to follow the move. He was swept off his feet, and slammed with bone-jarring force into the nearest bulkhead. Nils pulled the ship around and the stern end lifted to follow the spiralling curve that he had sketched out.

 

The floor tilted again, back the other way, and Broderick was sent rolling, clutching feebly for handholds in the small space, missing them all.

 

Nils put the nose of the ship up, and fired the atomotors. They readied with a teeth-scraping whine then caught with a throaty roar. White plumes of energy belched out, tearing up the surface of the pad. If the pirates were planning on using it again, it would need some major resurfacing work.

 

The stern end of the Foxfire shimmied, as the primary thrusters levelled out the power differential and held the fearsome energies blazing out of the atomotor pods in check for one vital second of course correction. Then they cut out, and the Foxfire five leapt into the sky like a pebble from a catapult.

 

Broderick was shaken around the flight deck, pinballing off surfaces in a series of sickening crunches. Then the inevitable happened. He went through the hatchway, falling twenty feet straight down, smacking into the floor of the access corridor with a crack. It was a sound like a bag full of dry sticks being swung at force into a brick wall. He gave out a gurgle, and was silent.

 

Nils couldn’t help but give out a little smile. Now that Broderick’s particular brand of distraction was out of the way, he could concentrate on trying to salvage something out of this dire situation. He never appreciated being bullied into a position, and he rally did not approve of his family being threatened.

 

He would find the Catchsorrow and ram it. The Foxfore was much bigger and tougher. It was built to cope with atmospheric re-entry. Bullying your way back into the thick coating of gas that shielded Earth took a solid layer of shielding. The Catchsorrow, by comparison, looked tough but was jury-rigged out of alloy and epoxy. It wasn’t designed for the kind of abuse that Nils could hand out.

 

He would show that preening monster that Nils Armstrong was not a man that could be bullied. He would…

 

The pilot-daemon chimed, and snatched the control yoke out of Nils’ hands. It’s status light clicked over from red to green, and transparent shielding slid over it’s keypad. He was locked out.

 

The Foxfire tilted, and slid gracefully onto the trajectory curve that Van Hoek had assigned for it. Nils had lost his chance. The Foxfire was on it’s way.

 

And there was nothing that Nils could do to stop it.

 

“Hot take off, Armstrong. Very impressive.” Van Hoek, crackling over the radio link with badly-disguised glee. “It sort of puts the lie to the fact that you’re incapable of piloting your own ship. I always had my doubts about that little story.”

 

“Yes, well, I hate to brag,” said Nils.

 

“Modest and talented. A dangerous combination. I respect you more and more. I hope you didn’t honestly believe that I was about to leave the triggering of the pilot-daemon to you. Not now you’ve exhibited this rebellious streak. I’ll let it go this once because to be perfectly frank, I expected it. You won’t get the opportunity to try and spring any other surprises on me, I’m delighted to say. Let me talk to Broderick.”

 

“He’s below. I don’t think he’s very good with takeoffs.”

 

“I don’t think he’s very good with anything, but there you go. You work with what you have. Very well. Get him to call me once he’s finished rifling through your drinks cabinet or whatever else his feeble little mind comes up with in lieu of actual proper criminal activity.”

 

Van Hoek snapped off the comm link. Nils was alone with his thoughts again. Tied to a chair, and helpless to do anything other than watch the graphics of the ship in flight.

 

A shuffling scrape came up from below. A pain-drenched, dragging movement. It was followed by a groan, something bone-deep and jagged, and soggy with blood. A groan that had words in it.

 

“Thought you could get me. Thought you could bounce my round your ship and knock me over. Broderick’s tough, spaceman. Broderick’s tougher than you think and he’s coming to keep his promise.”

 

Another thump and a scrape, and the metallic thungg as a hand hit the rungs of the companionway. A shuffle and a heave as Broderick hauled his battered body to his feet. Propped up on the ladderway now, swaying slightly. The repair crew had got the gravity gyros working again, but not at ship-normal. Something less than half. It was the only way that Broderick could manage to stand. Even in moon-normal, the damage he had taken would have laid in out flat.

 

All he had to deal with was the pain, and his hate would be enough to help him to ignore that.

 

He took a breath, tightened his grip on the ladder and pulled. Bone scraped on broken bone, abrasions tore, bruises sang a chorus of agony. But he moved. In one swift pull and grab, he was halfway up the ladder.

 

“See. Not so hard. And Broderick’s got the drop on you. He’s busted up some, yes I shall grant you that. But you, spaceman, you’re tied to a chair. Can’t see you putting up much of a fight when Broderick comes at you with his knife.”

 

Another pull, and up he went again. Not quite at the hatch, but he could see inside now. He could see Armstrong, struggling at his bonds. He would never be free before he would feel the pirate’s hot breath on the back of his neck, the cool of his knife blade laid across his throat. Broderick could take his own sweet time.

 

“Take your eyes last, spaceman,” he said. “Let you see how ugly you’ll be before I dump you out of the nearest airlock.”

 

He reached up again.

 

A hand closed on his ankle. The move was perfectly timed. He was only half on the ladder, caught mid-pull. In the weak gravity, it didn’t take much to displace him. Whoever was under him was braced up properly, and knew how to move things in microgravity. He was swung off the ladder, and flung backwards. All the momentum that his assailant could muster was spent in smashing Broderick back into the catwalk from which he had so laboriously climbed.

 

He bounced once, and lay still on his front. The figure stepped up to him, put one bare-toed foot under him, and turned him over. He snarled weakly, the grimace melting into astonishment as he saw who had beaten him.

 

The figure knelt, grabbed his hands and pulled him away down the gangway. Towards one of the airlocks that ringed the bow end of the corridor. He struggled, but the battering the pirate had taken over the past few minutes were too much for him. His hate had softened and mutated into utter, abject terror at the sight of his attacker.

 

Quickly, the figure opened an airlock door. Then Broderick was unceremoniously stuffed inside. The door hissed smoothly closed behind him, and dropped into it’s seal with a firm thud.

 

The internal comm clicked on. The voice of his attacker was emotionless. The voice of a killer.

 

“I should just cycle you out. It would be the sensible thing to do. No-one would blame me, and I very much doubt that anyone would miss you. And I know for certain that if the roles were reversed, then that is exactly what you’d do to me.”

 

Silence, just to let that sink in.

 

“And that’s exactly why I’m not going to do it. The minute I start acting like you, I might as well swap places and flush myself away. You can stay there for a while and think about what you’ve done. Spend some time in her with no-one to talk to but yourself, and you may wish that I could change my mind.”

 

The comm clicked off. Alone in a ten by eight cell, with nothing to comfort him but agony and fear, Anthony Broderick, export manager for a small lunar manufacturing plant and estranged father to two eight year old girls back on Earth forgot all his fantasies of piracy in high orbit, and burst into tears.