The Mechaneer is an epic space opera, rich with mecha action and romance.
The Mechaneer
- Thread starter MoogleEmpMog
- Start date
- Original
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 3
- Recent readers
- 16
- Threadmarks
- 7
-
Statistics (7 threadmarks, 14k words)
User Total MoogleEmpMog 7
Introduction
New
"Trust your machines, trust your family, trust yourself."
Chloe Hughes lives on the edges of interstellar society where these principles define her life – until the day her family are kidnapped and her machines stolen. Pursued by psychics, oligarchs and government agents, Chloe has only herself to rely on. The people after her seem to fear powers she doesn't know she has, but Chloe feels all too powerless.
Enter Rudy Algreil. Tournament mechaneer, oligarch's son, smart mouthed and sexy, Rudy is everything Chloe's parents warned her about. If she goes against her spacer instincts and extends her trust to Rudy, she could lose herself all too easily. But if she tries to go it alone, she'll never see her parents again.
For Chloe, it's no choice at all.
With Rudy's help, she must confront the power-brokers who took her parents and discover the secret of her powers. Together, they'll have to face scheming oligarchs, fearless officers, exiled nobles, magisterial bureaucrats, cunning criminals, and even the sinister psychic secret police of the Federal Senate: the Animus Hunters.
The greatest danger to Chloe might be losing herself, though... either to her feelings for Rudy, or to the terrifying, addictive rush of her own powers.
The Mechaneer is a new space opera from Joshua Cole, author of Eye Opener and The Fox Who Stole Hong Kong. Within, you'll find:
A compelling and characterful love story.
A complex web of deep space politics.
A bevy of world-shaking psychic powers.
A heroine with lots of room to grow.
And of course –
A whole lot of mecha!
Chloe Hughes lives on the edges of interstellar society where these principles define her life – until the day her family are kidnapped and her machines stolen. Pursued by psychics, oligarchs and government agents, Chloe has only herself to rely on. The people after her seem to fear powers she doesn't know she has, but Chloe feels all too powerless.
Enter Rudy Algreil. Tournament mechaneer, oligarch's son, smart mouthed and sexy, Rudy is everything Chloe's parents warned her about. If she goes against her spacer instincts and extends her trust to Rudy, she could lose herself all too easily. But if she tries to go it alone, she'll never see her parents again.
For Chloe, it's no choice at all.
With Rudy's help, she must confront the power-brokers who took her parents and discover the secret of her powers. Together, they'll have to face scheming oligarchs, fearless officers, exiled nobles, magisterial bureaucrats, cunning criminals, and even the sinister psychic secret police of the Federal Senate: the Animus Hunters.
The greatest danger to Chloe might be losing herself, though... either to her feelings for Rudy, or to the terrifying, addictive rush of her own powers.
The Mechaneer is a new space opera from Joshua Cole, author of Eye Opener and The Fox Who Stole Hong Kong. Within, you'll find:
A compelling and characterful love story.
A complex web of deep space politics.
A bevy of world-shaking psychic powers.
A heroine with lots of room to grow.
And of course –
A whole lot of mecha!
I'll be posting new chapters every weekday for as long as the Rising Stars period lasts on Royal Road. In the early going, chapters will appear there first, but Sufficient Velocity will eventually catch up. If you're a fan of my work, please consider supporting the story there, or if you're really eager for early access, on my Patreon.
Chapter 1: The Animus Hunter
New
Chapter 1: The Animus Hunter
The image on the screen, an almost imperceptible frown on a heart-shaped face, oversized almond eyes tight at the corners, and, most telling, triangular ears pressed flat, told Chloe Rina Hughes all she needed to know. She needed to go home.
As she'd expected.
"What's wrong, Mom?" Chloe asked.
"I picked up a gravitic distortion," her mother, Ellie, said. "Small, but close. You need to come back to Mother Goose."
Ellie's voice remained calm. To most people, her expression would have looked it, too, but Chloe knew better. Ellie was a felid, a hybrid of human and feline DNA. Her ears were as expressive as anyone's else's face, and Chloe had grown up reading them. Right now, they told her Ellie was worried.
Only a ship tunneling into the system would distort its gravity so far from the stars and planets at its heart. It might just mean passerbys.
It might mean pirates.
Chloe glanced at the pile of memorabilia she'd dug from a locker aboard the abandoned space station. Posters for idol-orchestras decades before her time, discs with recordings of their concerts, statues and knick-knacks, an actual, physical book commemorating a tour decades ago. She'd found the stash by searching the same nooks and crannies she kept her own memorabilia in. She could find more. She knew how much her family needed the money.
She knew she didn't have time.
She exchanged nods with Ellie. "I'll be right home."
Ellie's transmission hadn't come at an odd time or over emergency channels. It could have been a routine check-in. Until she saw Ellie's expression, Chloe had no logical reason to expect trouble. Why had she prelit the thrusters of her mecha, Gosling Two, before Ellie's face appeared on her screen? Why had she begun to back out of the residential block she'd wedged it into?
She'd had a hunch.
Now she had an excuse to act on it.
At a thought, the hand of Gosling Two scooped the pile she'd assembled into a repossessed cargo container. Gently, since her machine could crush a far more resilient haul, but fast as she dared.
Another thought and Gosling Two crawled backwards into the station's promenade. Unlike the residential block, it offered her space to stand her nine-meter-tall mecha upright and even use her maneuvering thrusters. An agile former scout machine, it fit Chloe's skills and the cramped quarters she often had to move through. She jetted over a broken railing, down two floors, and into a docking tunnel built to accommodate mecha.
If the station had remained operational, she would have had to wait for one of its industrial airlocks to cycle her out. Of course, if it had been operational, the crew of the salvage ship Mother Goose would have had no reason to visit, much less to bring their mecha inside. Derelicts like this, rarer every year as the Civil War receded further into memory, were their workplaces.
Chloe would have liked to visit thriving space stations, but at least empty ones offered a quicker exit. She jetted out of the cavity where the airlock would have been. A shell from a capital ship had blown it, and much of the surrounding hull, away. Similar holes and craters pockmarked the torus of the station, except where its superstructure caved in entirely. The central spire that would have housed station management listed at the edge of Chloe's sensor range, torn away during the attack.
Most days, she gave little thought to where the ruins her family scavenged came from. They were as much a part of the backdrop of her life as the light of the stars or the soft hum of the Mother Goose's engines.
Today, she couldn't help but think of the people who'd lived on the station. She kept posters of idol-orchestras and listened to recordings of their music, just like whoever's abandoned room she'd been raiding. Had they left their memorabilia behind when the battle lines of the Civil War drew near? Chloe had seen no bodies, but the station must have been visited by other salvagers to have lacked its complement of mecha and its valuable electronics. They might have laid the human remains to rest.
When she salvaged scrap electronics and mecha parts, it was easy to forget they'd belonged to someone who was probably dead now. Personal effects made her wonder whose home she'd been picking through, who had attacked it, why.
Chloe's parents didn't like to talk about the war, probably because they'd been on opposite sides. Her dad, Jack, had signed on with the Oligarchial fleets to fight the mechaneer-aristocracy, who he saw as using their resources and psychic powers to oppress ordinary people. Ellie had grown up on an aristocratic world and saw the nobles as heroes, fighting not just to retain their rule but for hybrids like her to be treated as people rather than property. They'd agreed on that last point, which was probably why Jack resigned and left the war behind.
They seemed to agree both sides kept their battles far from inhabited planets and civilian stations, too, so what happened to this one? Maybe it had been dragooned into a command center or refueling station, or maybe it was hit by pirates who took advantage of the chaos.
Or maybe Chloe's parents tried to keep the worst of the war from her.
Regardless, she wouldn't have minded leaving the station behind, except she couldn't shake the feeling whatever waited for her would be worse.
She guided Gosling Two to the open mecha bay of the Mother Goose. She set her cargo down in the nearest of six open berths, then backed her mecha into another.
At least they had plenty of cargo space. When Chloe was a little girl, all but one of the berths held a mecha. They'd had pilots, too, and a ship's engineer and doctor. As the salvage pickings thinned out, the Mother Goose's crew found other employment. Two of the pilots owned their own mecha and took them to their new homes. The last was sold for scrap.
Chloe had grown up with that crew, learned to fly and maintain those mecha. Seeing the empty mecha bay still ached. Now only she, Jack and Ellie remained. She wondered how much longer they could hold on to the Mother Goose itself. The boxy, long-necked Baldur-class transport had been home for as long as Chloe could remember. Without it, what would they do? Could they even remain Spacers, or would they have to settle on a planet?
Chloe shivered at the thought. Jack accepting someone else's captaincy would turn their world upside down, but at least they'd keep living on a world that could turn upside down. A planet, with its constant gravity, its unmoving scenery, and its groundling customs? Unimaginable.
The doors of the mecha bay closed and atmosphere hissed back. Chloe sent a transmission to her still-absent father. "Aren't you coming home, Dad?"
Jack Hughes's broad face appeared on one of her mecha's screens. He offered up a smile she only knew was forced because she'd seen his expressions for so long. "Not yet, Clo. I'm staying in Gosling One to keep an eye on whoever's paying us a visit."
"Should I redeploy?" Chloe asked. She piloted the family's scout mecha. Her father's was a surplus line mecha, bigger, stronger, built to fight and capable of hauling heavier cargo. "Two has better eyes."
Jack shook his head. "You check in with your mom."
"You're gearing up to fight," Chloe said.
"I won't start anything. If it turns out I have to finish it..." He shrugged. "Better them than us."
If it turned out they needed to run, they could, in theory, create a compression tunnel here at the edge of the system's gravity well. It might not be safe, but it might be safer than whatever Chloe feared was coming. No running if one of them was outside the ship, though.
She told herself she had to trust her father.
Telling herself so didn't make it easy to pop Gosling Two's cockpit and descend its access ladder. She sprinted to the Mother Goose's bridge as much to keep her mind off her worries as to see what was happening.
When the door opened and she got a look at the main screen, she wished she'd taken her time.
She'd expected to see a ship rounding the curve of the station. The equipment to generate a compression tunnel between stars took up too much space to be mounted on any smaller chassis, and prepping mecha for launch right after a compression jump guaranteed churning stomachs and bad piloting. Any crew disciplined enough to pull it off wouldn't need to against a ship the size of the Mother Goose.
The figure facing off with her dad's mecha was undoubtedly humanoid, though. A mecha, but like none Chloe had ever seen. The technical specifications hovering next to it on the screen told her it stood twenty meters tall, twice the height of Gosling One, but she needed no numbers to see how it loomed over her dad's machine. Its glossy beetle-brown and matte black paint made it blend with the space at its back and drew her attention to its one point of brightness: the faceplate, bone white and strangely smooth, shaped halfway between a bird's beak and a mosquito's proboscis. It looked as much like a titanic creature as a machine.
Chloe wiped her brow when the Mother Goose's computer offered the familiar chirp of an incoming transmission. Whatever the strange mecha was, at least it was a mecha, not some monster pulled from her nightmares.
Ellie tapped the panel before her and cut the camera feed from the bridge. "You better take the call, Jack."
"Already got it, hon." Jack did most of the negotiating with anyone whose opinion on hybrids they weren't sure of. In the last year, Chloe had even taken turns talking up customs agents and port authorities, though only when they hadn't had anything to bluff about.
She resented that her mother couldn't speak for their family, more than Ellie herself seemed to.
Today, Chloe just wished none of them had to take a call from whoever was piloting the mecha looming in front of the Mother Goose. She didn't even want to watch, but she owed her parents that much and more.
When the communications window popped up before her, it took her a moment to realize it. The pilot's flight suit was the same black and brown as his mecha, his helmet capped by the same beaked, bone-white mask.
He looked the part of a monster, so when he spoke, his voice startled Chloe. Though deep, it sounded bland, almost monotone, with the precise intonations of an actor from the capital-world Etemenos. "You are Captain Jack Hughes, of the salvage vessel Mother Goose?"
"Free Spacer and licensed salvager, in the flesh. On the screen, anyway. What can I do for you, Mister...?"
"Zelph."
"Mr. Zelph –"
"Animus Hunter Zelph."
Chloe had already known what he had to be, but hearing the words spoken still made her glad she wasn't broadcasting her shudder to his screen. Only telekinesis could open a compression tunnel between the stars without a machine even bigger than Zelph's mecha. Only members of the Animus Hunter Corps would use that power so openly within the bounds of the Federated Stars, because anyone else would fear a visit from them. They pursued renegade nobles and out-of-control errants. What happened when they caught their prey, nobody seemed to know, but Chloe knew it couldn't be good.
Even people the Animus Hunters had no business with feared them.
So it impressed Chloe all the more when her father just laughed.
Zelph's expression remained hidden, but she thought his mask drew back in what might have been surprise.
Jack said, "I guess I don't have to report you to the Animus Hunters on account of how you dropped in, then."
"Your civic mindedness is appreciated, Captain."
"Least I can do. I fought for the Federated Stars, you know. I'll be damned I'm gonna let a bunch of nobs go around stepping on people after we just got done kicking them out."
"I'm familiar with your military record, Captain." Zelph must have called it up on another of his mecha's screens, because he began to quote it. "Voluntary enlistment. Four years with corporate security, during which your successes earned you decorations for both valor and skill. Three more with the Devil Ray unit."
Jack shrugged. "I just did my best."
"What you did was very impressive. I fought beside the Devil Rays at the Battle of Etemenos. They acquitted themselves well even against the Imperial Guard."
Chloe bit her lip.
Jack stretched his neck.
"Ah, yes," Zelph said. "You did not fight at Etemenos, did you, Captain Hughes?"
"No, sir, I did not," Jack said. "My boss and I had a... disagreement."
"It must have been a very serious one."
"Was."
"And yet your resignation was accepted and granted with honor, immediately before the last and bloodiest year of the Civil War. I am not used to such magnanimity from oligarchs."
"Well – and keep in mind I'm saying this with all the respect in the galaxy, on account of I've got it for you and what you do – it was a private disagreement. I'm not real clear how it's relevant to you finding whoever it is you're after."
Zelph inclined his masked head. "Merely personal curiosity, Captain."
"It's a personal matter," Jack said.
Chloe only knew the broad outlines herself. If her parents didn't like to talk about the Civil War, they liked to talk about how they left it behind even less. The Oligarchy had considered hybrids like Ellie property. Jack's old boss did something that put that belief front and center. Considering how protective Jack was of Ellie and how their crew had been almost all hybrids in Chloe's youth, she imagined his 'resignation' had looked one step removed from armed rebellion.
Still, she didn't understand why an Animus Hunter would care. They pursued renegade nobles, not hybrids. Even if Zelph considered what Jack had done treason against the Federated Stars, it wasn't his remit to pursue traitors.
By the same token, though, why did Jack refuse to answer? Chloe supposed the circumstances of his resignation might be controversial, but hiding them from the Animus Hunter seemed more likely to make him suspicious.
Suspicious or not, Zelph let it drop. "Then it can remain private, as well."
"Thanks." Jack exhaled. "What can the Mother Goose do for you, Animus Hunter Zelph?"
"I am pursuing a fugitive," Zelph said.
"This poor bastard got a name? Better yet, a face? If any of us have seen him, you can bet we'll do whatever we can –"
"She," Zelph said.
Chloe closed her eyes.
"A lady rather than a lord, huh? All of 'em were in it together, so it's all the same to me. Can't imagine we've met someone like that, but, hey, stranger things, you know?"
"Captain Hughes." Zelph's voice rose in volume, though it didn't change in tone.
"Sir?"
"That will do."
Jack stopped talking.
"Better." Zelph drifted toward the Mother Goose. Chloe saw no thrusters flare or limbs move, so she assumed he moved his huge mecha by telekinesis alone. "As for 'doing whatever you can,' I want you to assemble your crew in your ship's mecha bay."
Jack sighed. "You heard the man, Ellie?"
"Of course. I'll be right down." Ellie's ears perked up, belying her tight smile.
Of course. Chloe knew her parents would talk to Zelph alone if they could. Ellie's place in the social order of the Federated Stars might be uncertain, but it didn't justify an Animus Hunter's attentions.
Chloe smiled back and took a step toward the pilot's chair as Ellie vacated it.
Her smile vanished when Zelph's voice broke the silence. "All of your crew, if you please, Captain."
Jack frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Your ship's manifest indicates a crew of three. When I arrived, two of your mecha left that station. I trust you would neither lie on your manifest nor be so reckless as to trust your transport to autopilot so near a derelict."
If Zelph thought he was going to catch Jack Hughes in a bluff, prophecy obviously wasn't one of his psychic gifts.
"Of course not," Jack said. "Chloe is on the bridge, too. Ellie'll bring her along."
Chloe couldn't, quite, recover her smile. Not when she had a face-to-face, or at least face-to-mask, meeting with the Animus Hunter waiting for her. She had to admire how smoothly her dad bluffed, though.
She could only guess at Zelph's reaction, because he severed the connection.
Chloe stared at the screen where his image had been. The nearly identical figure of his mecha loomed larger as it approached the Mother Goose.
Ellie's arms encircled her. "It will be okay, Chloe."
Chloe turned and hugged her back. "I know, Mom. You and Dad wouldn't let something happen to me."
It felt better to pretend they could prevent it.
Chloe would have stayed in the false security of her mother's arms forever, but, haltingly, Ellie pulled back. "We'd better not make the Animus Hunter wait."
Chloe nodded and followed Ellie to the mecha bay. This time, they had to wait in the inner airlock. The bay doors must have already opened to admit Gosling One and the Animus Hunter's mecha.
Chloe and Ellie's flight suits rippled over their heads to shield them from vacuum. Like their mecha, the suits responded to thought, conscious or otherwise. If only they'd offered as much protection – not, Chloe supposed, that a mecha's armor could stand up to an Animus Hunter.
She feared Jack might put it to the test. He'd returned Gosling One to its berth and popped its cockpit, but stayed atop its access ladder.
The Animus Hunter's mecha couldn't fit in one of the berths. It hunched in front of the bay doors, a slumbering giant. Up close, Chloe could at least see mechanical joints and clusters of synthetic polymer muscle through the gaps in its armor. Its open cockpit, situated beneath the weird beaked mask, flickered with displays much like those on Gosling Two. For all it seemed to fill the bay with darkness, it was just a mecha, not a monster.
She reserved judgment about its pilot.
He descended through the air, arms folded. Like his mask, his flight suit seemed patterned on his mecha, or perhaps the other way around, and didn't maneuver with thrusters. Pure telekinesis, the kind only an Animus Hunter dared to use in the Federated Stars.
Air flooded back into the mecha bay. Chloe, Jack and Ellie swayed with it, in tune with the rhythm of their ship's systems. Zelph seemed not to feel it. When the rush of air stopped, he touched down on the bay floor and strode forward.
Ellie slid between him and Chloe. She inclined her head and said, "Welcome to the Mother Goose, sir." like he came as an honored guest.
"You're Ellie Hughes?"
"I am."
Zelph stepped forward. He stood a head and a half taller than Ellie and looked right over her. "Which makes this young woman your daughter, and the final member of your crew."
"That's right," Ellie said. "Chloe."
Chloe gave a little wave. She couldn't find her voice.
"You're very fortunate," Zelph said. He waved toward Ellie's ears. "I'm told genetic compatibility between humans and hybrids is a rare gift."
"People are told a lot of things about hybrids." Ellie's voice sounded ragged, as angry as scared.
Jack's boots clanged on the mecha bay floor. He'd abandoned Gosling One and strode to stand behind Zelph. "We're lucky, like you said, Animus Hunter. What's any of that got to do with why you're here?"
Zelph continued as if neither of Chloe's parents had spoken. "And you look so young, for people with an adult daughter. The Spacer life is apparently quite healthful."
"I'm adopted," Chloe said.
Jack and Ellie both turned to her. Their flight suits spared her a clear view of their expressions, not that she needed to see them to know how horrified they'd look. They would keep bluffing to protect her for as long as Zelph let them. When he stopped letting them, they'd fight to protect her.
When he stopped letting them, they'd die to protect her.
"I was orphaned during the war," Chloe said. She stepped around Ellie and faced Zelph. "My parents took me in and raised me."
"How generous of them," Zelph said.
The hint of sarcasm in his voice infuriated Chloe almost enough to make her forget how afraid of him she was. "They're good people. They haven't done anything wrong!"
"Have you?"
"No!"
"If you've done nothing wrong, then, by law, I cannot touch any of you." Zelph reached out and cupped Chloe's chin.
Some system in his flight suit overrode hers. The suit flowed away from her face without her willing it to. She squeezed her eyes shut and thanked the Almighty Principle she wore her hair bottle-blonde and straightened.
"Hey!" Jack reached for Zelph's arm.
"It's okay, Dad," Chloe whispered. From the way her voice trembled, she didn't think she sounded all that persuasive.
Zelph didn't seem to care. He didn't seem to notice Jack and Ellie at all. "You protest your innocence, Miss Hughes. Yet you're afraid of me."
"Of course I'm afraid of you!" Chloe balled her fists. "You throw around powers we couldn't possibly resist, you barge onto our ship without even accusing us of anything. You even wear that creepy mask. You expect me to believe you don't want to be feared?"
"You're right," Zelph said. "I do. Do you know why?"
Chloe shook her head as much as his grip allowed.
"For centuries, the aristocracy used not power, but the fear of power to enslave human space," Zelph said.
"So you think you need to use it, too?"
"Need?" Zelph chuckled. "No, Miss Hughes. I do not want the people who oppressed the galaxy to fear me because it is necessary. I want them to fear me because it is deserved. What they inflicted on others must now be visited upon them."
"If only the deserving should fear you, then we have nothing to be afraid of." Chloe opened her eyes. She heard the intake of breath from her parents, but her gaze locked on Zelph's mask.
Chloe's eyes were as dark as blue got before turning black, the color of the stratosphere on a habitable world. Like her natural hair, dark and curly, her eyes were a symbol of the old aristocracy. Lots of people who weren't aristocrats had them, and not every aristocrat did. All the same, people whispered "mind's eyes" when they saw hers. Animus Hunters sought them.
This one found a pair.
She dared him to condemn her for them.
For a moment that seemed to stretch to an eternity, he said nothing.
Chloe felt a bead of sweat roll down her forehead, a mote of dust settle into her eye. She refused to blink, even though she knew she couldn't win a staring contest with a featureless mask.
She didn't have to.
The ivory beak split down the middle and slid to either side. Zelph's face made Chloe start, not because he was terrifying, but because he wasn't. He looked like he sounded. A pinch-faced Etemenos bureaucrat, thin-lipped, hollow-cheeked. His only distinguishing features were his eyes. Stratosphere blue, just like Chloe's. So dark she thought she could see space in them, but no scarier than what she saw in the mirror every day.
"You're wrong," he said. Coming from his thoroughly ordinary face, spoken in his thoroughly ordinary voice, ominous words almost sounded laughable.
Maybe they would have been if his fingers hadn't gripped Chloe's jaw. She tried to pull away. As well try to escape a mecha's grasp.
"You may have nothing to fear from me, Miss Hughes." His hand dropped from Chloe. She stumbled backwards. "All the same, you – all of you – should be afraid."
He turned his back on her and took a step toward the shadow that was his mecha. His mask slid back into place.
Chloe swallowed. "Why?"
"Because the person I hunt is immeasurably dangerous." Zelph lifted into the air as casually as Chloe might walk across a room. He glanced over his shoulder. Though she couldn't see his eyes, she felt them on her. "Even to herself."
The image on the screen, an almost imperceptible frown on a heart-shaped face, oversized almond eyes tight at the corners, and, most telling, triangular ears pressed flat, told Chloe Rina Hughes all she needed to know. She needed to go home.
As she'd expected.
"What's wrong, Mom?" Chloe asked.
"I picked up a gravitic distortion," her mother, Ellie, said. "Small, but close. You need to come back to Mother Goose."
Ellie's voice remained calm. To most people, her expression would have looked it, too, but Chloe knew better. Ellie was a felid, a hybrid of human and feline DNA. Her ears were as expressive as anyone's else's face, and Chloe had grown up reading them. Right now, they told her Ellie was worried.
Only a ship tunneling into the system would distort its gravity so far from the stars and planets at its heart. It might just mean passerbys.
It might mean pirates.
Chloe glanced at the pile of memorabilia she'd dug from a locker aboard the abandoned space station. Posters for idol-orchestras decades before her time, discs with recordings of their concerts, statues and knick-knacks, an actual, physical book commemorating a tour decades ago. She'd found the stash by searching the same nooks and crannies she kept her own memorabilia in. She could find more. She knew how much her family needed the money.
She knew she didn't have time.
She exchanged nods with Ellie. "I'll be right home."
Ellie's transmission hadn't come at an odd time or over emergency channels. It could have been a routine check-in. Until she saw Ellie's expression, Chloe had no logical reason to expect trouble. Why had she prelit the thrusters of her mecha, Gosling Two, before Ellie's face appeared on her screen? Why had she begun to back out of the residential block she'd wedged it into?
She'd had a hunch.
Now she had an excuse to act on it.
At a thought, the hand of Gosling Two scooped the pile she'd assembled into a repossessed cargo container. Gently, since her machine could crush a far more resilient haul, but fast as she dared.
Another thought and Gosling Two crawled backwards into the station's promenade. Unlike the residential block, it offered her space to stand her nine-meter-tall mecha upright and even use her maneuvering thrusters. An agile former scout machine, it fit Chloe's skills and the cramped quarters she often had to move through. She jetted over a broken railing, down two floors, and into a docking tunnel built to accommodate mecha.
If the station had remained operational, she would have had to wait for one of its industrial airlocks to cycle her out. Of course, if it had been operational, the crew of the salvage ship Mother Goose would have had no reason to visit, much less to bring their mecha inside. Derelicts like this, rarer every year as the Civil War receded further into memory, were their workplaces.
Chloe would have liked to visit thriving space stations, but at least empty ones offered a quicker exit. She jetted out of the cavity where the airlock would have been. A shell from a capital ship had blown it, and much of the surrounding hull, away. Similar holes and craters pockmarked the torus of the station, except where its superstructure caved in entirely. The central spire that would have housed station management listed at the edge of Chloe's sensor range, torn away during the attack.
Most days, she gave little thought to where the ruins her family scavenged came from. They were as much a part of the backdrop of her life as the light of the stars or the soft hum of the Mother Goose's engines.
Today, she couldn't help but think of the people who'd lived on the station. She kept posters of idol-orchestras and listened to recordings of their music, just like whoever's abandoned room she'd been raiding. Had they left their memorabilia behind when the battle lines of the Civil War drew near? Chloe had seen no bodies, but the station must have been visited by other salvagers to have lacked its complement of mecha and its valuable electronics. They might have laid the human remains to rest.
When she salvaged scrap electronics and mecha parts, it was easy to forget they'd belonged to someone who was probably dead now. Personal effects made her wonder whose home she'd been picking through, who had attacked it, why.
Chloe's parents didn't like to talk about the war, probably because they'd been on opposite sides. Her dad, Jack, had signed on with the Oligarchial fleets to fight the mechaneer-aristocracy, who he saw as using their resources and psychic powers to oppress ordinary people. Ellie had grown up on an aristocratic world and saw the nobles as heroes, fighting not just to retain their rule but for hybrids like her to be treated as people rather than property. They'd agreed on that last point, which was probably why Jack resigned and left the war behind.
They seemed to agree both sides kept their battles far from inhabited planets and civilian stations, too, so what happened to this one? Maybe it had been dragooned into a command center or refueling station, or maybe it was hit by pirates who took advantage of the chaos.
Or maybe Chloe's parents tried to keep the worst of the war from her.
Regardless, she wouldn't have minded leaving the station behind, except she couldn't shake the feeling whatever waited for her would be worse.
She guided Gosling Two to the open mecha bay of the Mother Goose. She set her cargo down in the nearest of six open berths, then backed her mecha into another.
At least they had plenty of cargo space. When Chloe was a little girl, all but one of the berths held a mecha. They'd had pilots, too, and a ship's engineer and doctor. As the salvage pickings thinned out, the Mother Goose's crew found other employment. Two of the pilots owned their own mecha and took them to their new homes. The last was sold for scrap.
Chloe had grown up with that crew, learned to fly and maintain those mecha. Seeing the empty mecha bay still ached. Now only she, Jack and Ellie remained. She wondered how much longer they could hold on to the Mother Goose itself. The boxy, long-necked Baldur-class transport had been home for as long as Chloe could remember. Without it, what would they do? Could they even remain Spacers, or would they have to settle on a planet?
Chloe shivered at the thought. Jack accepting someone else's captaincy would turn their world upside down, but at least they'd keep living on a world that could turn upside down. A planet, with its constant gravity, its unmoving scenery, and its groundling customs? Unimaginable.
The doors of the mecha bay closed and atmosphere hissed back. Chloe sent a transmission to her still-absent father. "Aren't you coming home, Dad?"
Jack Hughes's broad face appeared on one of her mecha's screens. He offered up a smile she only knew was forced because she'd seen his expressions for so long. "Not yet, Clo. I'm staying in Gosling One to keep an eye on whoever's paying us a visit."
"Should I redeploy?" Chloe asked. She piloted the family's scout mecha. Her father's was a surplus line mecha, bigger, stronger, built to fight and capable of hauling heavier cargo. "Two has better eyes."
Jack shook his head. "You check in with your mom."
"You're gearing up to fight," Chloe said.
"I won't start anything. If it turns out I have to finish it..." He shrugged. "Better them than us."
If it turned out they needed to run, they could, in theory, create a compression tunnel here at the edge of the system's gravity well. It might not be safe, but it might be safer than whatever Chloe feared was coming. No running if one of them was outside the ship, though.
She told herself she had to trust her father.
Telling herself so didn't make it easy to pop Gosling Two's cockpit and descend its access ladder. She sprinted to the Mother Goose's bridge as much to keep her mind off her worries as to see what was happening.
When the door opened and she got a look at the main screen, she wished she'd taken her time.
She'd expected to see a ship rounding the curve of the station. The equipment to generate a compression tunnel between stars took up too much space to be mounted on any smaller chassis, and prepping mecha for launch right after a compression jump guaranteed churning stomachs and bad piloting. Any crew disciplined enough to pull it off wouldn't need to against a ship the size of the Mother Goose.
The figure facing off with her dad's mecha was undoubtedly humanoid, though. A mecha, but like none Chloe had ever seen. The technical specifications hovering next to it on the screen told her it stood twenty meters tall, twice the height of Gosling One, but she needed no numbers to see how it loomed over her dad's machine. Its glossy beetle-brown and matte black paint made it blend with the space at its back and drew her attention to its one point of brightness: the faceplate, bone white and strangely smooth, shaped halfway between a bird's beak and a mosquito's proboscis. It looked as much like a titanic creature as a machine.
Chloe wiped her brow when the Mother Goose's computer offered the familiar chirp of an incoming transmission. Whatever the strange mecha was, at least it was a mecha, not some monster pulled from her nightmares.
Ellie tapped the panel before her and cut the camera feed from the bridge. "You better take the call, Jack."
"Already got it, hon." Jack did most of the negotiating with anyone whose opinion on hybrids they weren't sure of. In the last year, Chloe had even taken turns talking up customs agents and port authorities, though only when they hadn't had anything to bluff about.
She resented that her mother couldn't speak for their family, more than Ellie herself seemed to.
Today, Chloe just wished none of them had to take a call from whoever was piloting the mecha looming in front of the Mother Goose. She didn't even want to watch, but she owed her parents that much and more.
When the communications window popped up before her, it took her a moment to realize it. The pilot's flight suit was the same black and brown as his mecha, his helmet capped by the same beaked, bone-white mask.
He looked the part of a monster, so when he spoke, his voice startled Chloe. Though deep, it sounded bland, almost monotone, with the precise intonations of an actor from the capital-world Etemenos. "You are Captain Jack Hughes, of the salvage vessel Mother Goose?"
"Free Spacer and licensed salvager, in the flesh. On the screen, anyway. What can I do for you, Mister...?"
"Zelph."
"Mr. Zelph –"
"Animus Hunter Zelph."
Chloe had already known what he had to be, but hearing the words spoken still made her glad she wasn't broadcasting her shudder to his screen. Only telekinesis could open a compression tunnel between the stars without a machine even bigger than Zelph's mecha. Only members of the Animus Hunter Corps would use that power so openly within the bounds of the Federated Stars, because anyone else would fear a visit from them. They pursued renegade nobles and out-of-control errants. What happened when they caught their prey, nobody seemed to know, but Chloe knew it couldn't be good.
Even people the Animus Hunters had no business with feared them.
So it impressed Chloe all the more when her father just laughed.
Zelph's expression remained hidden, but she thought his mask drew back in what might have been surprise.
Jack said, "I guess I don't have to report you to the Animus Hunters on account of how you dropped in, then."
"Your civic mindedness is appreciated, Captain."
"Least I can do. I fought for the Federated Stars, you know. I'll be damned I'm gonna let a bunch of nobs go around stepping on people after we just got done kicking them out."
"I'm familiar with your military record, Captain." Zelph must have called it up on another of his mecha's screens, because he began to quote it. "Voluntary enlistment. Four years with corporate security, during which your successes earned you decorations for both valor and skill. Three more with the Devil Ray unit."
Jack shrugged. "I just did my best."
"What you did was very impressive. I fought beside the Devil Rays at the Battle of Etemenos. They acquitted themselves well even against the Imperial Guard."
Chloe bit her lip.
Jack stretched his neck.
"Ah, yes," Zelph said. "You did not fight at Etemenos, did you, Captain Hughes?"
"No, sir, I did not," Jack said. "My boss and I had a... disagreement."
"It must have been a very serious one."
"Was."
"And yet your resignation was accepted and granted with honor, immediately before the last and bloodiest year of the Civil War. I am not used to such magnanimity from oligarchs."
"Well – and keep in mind I'm saying this with all the respect in the galaxy, on account of I've got it for you and what you do – it was a private disagreement. I'm not real clear how it's relevant to you finding whoever it is you're after."
Zelph inclined his masked head. "Merely personal curiosity, Captain."
"It's a personal matter," Jack said.
Chloe only knew the broad outlines herself. If her parents didn't like to talk about the Civil War, they liked to talk about how they left it behind even less. The Oligarchy had considered hybrids like Ellie property. Jack's old boss did something that put that belief front and center. Considering how protective Jack was of Ellie and how their crew had been almost all hybrids in Chloe's youth, she imagined his 'resignation' had looked one step removed from armed rebellion.
Still, she didn't understand why an Animus Hunter would care. They pursued renegade nobles, not hybrids. Even if Zelph considered what Jack had done treason against the Federated Stars, it wasn't his remit to pursue traitors.
By the same token, though, why did Jack refuse to answer? Chloe supposed the circumstances of his resignation might be controversial, but hiding them from the Animus Hunter seemed more likely to make him suspicious.
Suspicious or not, Zelph let it drop. "Then it can remain private, as well."
"Thanks." Jack exhaled. "What can the Mother Goose do for you, Animus Hunter Zelph?"
"I am pursuing a fugitive," Zelph said.
"This poor bastard got a name? Better yet, a face? If any of us have seen him, you can bet we'll do whatever we can –"
"She," Zelph said.
Chloe closed her eyes.
"A lady rather than a lord, huh? All of 'em were in it together, so it's all the same to me. Can't imagine we've met someone like that, but, hey, stranger things, you know?"
"Captain Hughes." Zelph's voice rose in volume, though it didn't change in tone.
"Sir?"
"That will do."
Jack stopped talking.
"Better." Zelph drifted toward the Mother Goose. Chloe saw no thrusters flare or limbs move, so she assumed he moved his huge mecha by telekinesis alone. "As for 'doing whatever you can,' I want you to assemble your crew in your ship's mecha bay."
Jack sighed. "You heard the man, Ellie?"
"Of course. I'll be right down." Ellie's ears perked up, belying her tight smile.
Of course. Chloe knew her parents would talk to Zelph alone if they could. Ellie's place in the social order of the Federated Stars might be uncertain, but it didn't justify an Animus Hunter's attentions.
Chloe smiled back and took a step toward the pilot's chair as Ellie vacated it.
Her smile vanished when Zelph's voice broke the silence. "All of your crew, if you please, Captain."
Jack frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Your ship's manifest indicates a crew of three. When I arrived, two of your mecha left that station. I trust you would neither lie on your manifest nor be so reckless as to trust your transport to autopilot so near a derelict."
If Zelph thought he was going to catch Jack Hughes in a bluff, prophecy obviously wasn't one of his psychic gifts.
"Of course not," Jack said. "Chloe is on the bridge, too. Ellie'll bring her along."
Chloe couldn't, quite, recover her smile. Not when she had a face-to-face, or at least face-to-mask, meeting with the Animus Hunter waiting for her. She had to admire how smoothly her dad bluffed, though.
She could only guess at Zelph's reaction, because he severed the connection.
Chloe stared at the screen where his image had been. The nearly identical figure of his mecha loomed larger as it approached the Mother Goose.
Ellie's arms encircled her. "It will be okay, Chloe."
Chloe turned and hugged her back. "I know, Mom. You and Dad wouldn't let something happen to me."
It felt better to pretend they could prevent it.
Chloe would have stayed in the false security of her mother's arms forever, but, haltingly, Ellie pulled back. "We'd better not make the Animus Hunter wait."
Chloe nodded and followed Ellie to the mecha bay. This time, they had to wait in the inner airlock. The bay doors must have already opened to admit Gosling One and the Animus Hunter's mecha.
Chloe and Ellie's flight suits rippled over their heads to shield them from vacuum. Like their mecha, the suits responded to thought, conscious or otherwise. If only they'd offered as much protection – not, Chloe supposed, that a mecha's armor could stand up to an Animus Hunter.
She feared Jack might put it to the test. He'd returned Gosling One to its berth and popped its cockpit, but stayed atop its access ladder.
The Animus Hunter's mecha couldn't fit in one of the berths. It hunched in front of the bay doors, a slumbering giant. Up close, Chloe could at least see mechanical joints and clusters of synthetic polymer muscle through the gaps in its armor. Its open cockpit, situated beneath the weird beaked mask, flickered with displays much like those on Gosling Two. For all it seemed to fill the bay with darkness, it was just a mecha, not a monster.
She reserved judgment about its pilot.
He descended through the air, arms folded. Like his mask, his flight suit seemed patterned on his mecha, or perhaps the other way around, and didn't maneuver with thrusters. Pure telekinesis, the kind only an Animus Hunter dared to use in the Federated Stars.
Air flooded back into the mecha bay. Chloe, Jack and Ellie swayed with it, in tune with the rhythm of their ship's systems. Zelph seemed not to feel it. When the rush of air stopped, he touched down on the bay floor and strode forward.
Ellie slid between him and Chloe. She inclined her head and said, "Welcome to the Mother Goose, sir." like he came as an honored guest.
"You're Ellie Hughes?"
"I am."
Zelph stepped forward. He stood a head and a half taller than Ellie and looked right over her. "Which makes this young woman your daughter, and the final member of your crew."
"That's right," Ellie said. "Chloe."
Chloe gave a little wave. She couldn't find her voice.
"You're very fortunate," Zelph said. He waved toward Ellie's ears. "I'm told genetic compatibility between humans and hybrids is a rare gift."
"People are told a lot of things about hybrids." Ellie's voice sounded ragged, as angry as scared.
Jack's boots clanged on the mecha bay floor. He'd abandoned Gosling One and strode to stand behind Zelph. "We're lucky, like you said, Animus Hunter. What's any of that got to do with why you're here?"
Zelph continued as if neither of Chloe's parents had spoken. "And you look so young, for people with an adult daughter. The Spacer life is apparently quite healthful."
"I'm adopted," Chloe said.
Jack and Ellie both turned to her. Their flight suits spared her a clear view of their expressions, not that she needed to see them to know how horrified they'd look. They would keep bluffing to protect her for as long as Zelph let them. When he stopped letting them, they'd fight to protect her.
When he stopped letting them, they'd die to protect her.
"I was orphaned during the war," Chloe said. She stepped around Ellie and faced Zelph. "My parents took me in and raised me."
"How generous of them," Zelph said.
The hint of sarcasm in his voice infuriated Chloe almost enough to make her forget how afraid of him she was. "They're good people. They haven't done anything wrong!"
"Have you?"
"No!"
"If you've done nothing wrong, then, by law, I cannot touch any of you." Zelph reached out and cupped Chloe's chin.
Some system in his flight suit overrode hers. The suit flowed away from her face without her willing it to. She squeezed her eyes shut and thanked the Almighty Principle she wore her hair bottle-blonde and straightened.
"Hey!" Jack reached for Zelph's arm.
"It's okay, Dad," Chloe whispered. From the way her voice trembled, she didn't think she sounded all that persuasive.
Zelph didn't seem to care. He didn't seem to notice Jack and Ellie at all. "You protest your innocence, Miss Hughes. Yet you're afraid of me."
"Of course I'm afraid of you!" Chloe balled her fists. "You throw around powers we couldn't possibly resist, you barge onto our ship without even accusing us of anything. You even wear that creepy mask. You expect me to believe you don't want to be feared?"
"You're right," Zelph said. "I do. Do you know why?"
Chloe shook her head as much as his grip allowed.
"For centuries, the aristocracy used not power, but the fear of power to enslave human space," Zelph said.
"So you think you need to use it, too?"
"Need?" Zelph chuckled. "No, Miss Hughes. I do not want the people who oppressed the galaxy to fear me because it is necessary. I want them to fear me because it is deserved. What they inflicted on others must now be visited upon them."
"If only the deserving should fear you, then we have nothing to be afraid of." Chloe opened her eyes. She heard the intake of breath from her parents, but her gaze locked on Zelph's mask.
Chloe's eyes were as dark as blue got before turning black, the color of the stratosphere on a habitable world. Like her natural hair, dark and curly, her eyes were a symbol of the old aristocracy. Lots of people who weren't aristocrats had them, and not every aristocrat did. All the same, people whispered "mind's eyes" when they saw hers. Animus Hunters sought them.
This one found a pair.
She dared him to condemn her for them.
For a moment that seemed to stretch to an eternity, he said nothing.
Chloe felt a bead of sweat roll down her forehead, a mote of dust settle into her eye. She refused to blink, even though she knew she couldn't win a staring contest with a featureless mask.
She didn't have to.
The ivory beak split down the middle and slid to either side. Zelph's face made Chloe start, not because he was terrifying, but because he wasn't. He looked like he sounded. A pinch-faced Etemenos bureaucrat, thin-lipped, hollow-cheeked. His only distinguishing features were his eyes. Stratosphere blue, just like Chloe's. So dark she thought she could see space in them, but no scarier than what she saw in the mirror every day.
"You're wrong," he said. Coming from his thoroughly ordinary face, spoken in his thoroughly ordinary voice, ominous words almost sounded laughable.
Maybe they would have been if his fingers hadn't gripped Chloe's jaw. She tried to pull away. As well try to escape a mecha's grasp.
"You may have nothing to fear from me, Miss Hughes." His hand dropped from Chloe. She stumbled backwards. "All the same, you – all of you – should be afraid."
He turned his back on her and took a step toward the shadow that was his mecha. His mask slid back into place.
Chloe swallowed. "Why?"
"Because the person I hunt is immeasurably dangerous." Zelph lifted into the air as casually as Chloe might walk across a room. He glanced over his shoulder. Though she couldn't see his eyes, she felt them on her. "Even to herself."
Chapter 2: Desperate Times
New
Chapter 2: Desperate Times
Ellie held Chloe as they watched Zelph's departure. Neither they nor Jack spoke, and their flight suits muffled the evacuating atmosphere and the stirring of the Animus Hunter's huge mecha, so his words hung in the air. Uncontested.
Ellie wanted to challenge them.
She couldn't.
She remembered how she and Jack had found Chloe. How she'd picked up the gravitic signature of a Civil War era battlecruiser far from the battlefields of the conflict. How they'd approached the hulk, a metal pyramid as ominous as any tomb. How, against all reason, a distress signal had emerged from one of its cratered and cavernous mecha bays.
She remembered the mecha they found inside, huge and silver, unnaturally smooth, far more terrible than the Animus Hunter machine that must have been a crude copy or inversion of it.
She remembered the two figures curled within its cockpit. One had been Chloe, a tiny angel, delivered sleeping into Ellie's arms. The other, the woman who must have been her mother, with her almost divinely beautiful face and her last smile, who lived just long enough to extract a promise to protect Chloe.
But Ellie refused to remember Chloe's mother's death, or what was left of the body beneath that beautiful face, or anything else she'd seen on that battlecruiser.
Like the Valuable Confiscated Livestock camp she'd been interred in before Jack rescued her, the battlecruiser had shaped Ellie into the person she was now. She refused to allow the past's horrors any other hold on her. Life was too good to let memory taint it.
She couldn't deny, though, that Animus Hunter Zelph was right. Chloe had grown up a Hughes but she had been born something else, and her birth mother proved that a psychic could do herself at least as much harm as anyone else.
So Ellie said nothing while Zelph's mecha shrank from sight, the bay doors closed at last, and air rushed back in. She might have stayed silent, trying not to think about the past, if Chloe hadn't almost collapsed in her arms.
In an instant, Jack was beside them. His arms wrapped around them both, holding them close, propping them up.
"That was damn fine work, ladies," he said. His flight suit peeled back and Ellie willed hers to do the same. "It's not every day you stand up to an Animus Hunter, eh?"
Chloe shrank deeper into her parents' arms. Her suit's hood peeled away and her short hair, dyed the same blonde as Ellie's, splayed out at all angles.
"You were so brave when he got in your face, Clo," Jack said. He grinned, but Ellie could hear the almost hysterical relief in his voice. She hoped she noticed only because of felid senses, but knew Chloe would, too. "No need to be scared now that he's gone. It's gonna be okay."
"No," Chloe said. Her voice was muffled against Ellie's shoulder, but Ellie could feel her body shaking.
Ellie kissed the top of her head. She hadn't been able to for years when Chloe stood up straight. "Chloe..."
"It's not going to be okay." Chloe looked up. Her eyes wavered with tears, like space at the edge of a compression tunnel.
Abruptly, she tugged free of her parents' embrace. She stood with her back to them, facing the bay doors Zelph's mecha had knelt in front of.
"Of course it will, honey," Ellie said.
"How?" Chloe's voice sounded very small.
"Because we'll keep you safe." Ellie touched her daughter's arm.
"You can't," Chloe said.
"Don't count us out just yet," Jack said.
Ellie felt her daughter's muscles tense.
Chloe drew in a deep breath. Her hand settled over Ellie's, and she turned to offer a shaky smile. "You're right."
Her voice shook. She smelled of cold sweat and her hands trembled, but her smile grew stronger and she met Ellie's eyes and Jack's in turn.
Ellie's ears flattened. She already knew what Chloe was about to say:
"I have to leave the Mother Goose."
Jack stepped forward. "What!"
"You've both done so much for me," Chloe said. "If I stay, sooner or later, that Animus Hunter or someone like him is going to find me. When he does, you'll try to stop him. When you fail, you'll get hurt. I won't let you get hurt. Not because of me."
"Who said anything about failing?" Jack asked.
"An Animus Hunter, Dad! You can't handle someone like that. What're you going to do, climb in Gosling One and use the welding torch on his mecha?" Chloe shook her head. She ended looking plaintively at Ellie.
Ellie wanted to assure her Jack would do exactly that, and that he'd win.
She knew only one of those was true, the same as her daughter.
"There's always running away, Clo," Jack said. "We've kept you safe this long. Just 'cause some hot shot Animus Hunter's sniffing around in the right star system doesn't mean we don't have what it takes."
"You kept me safe while the Federal Senate consolidated its power over what used to be the Empire. It's just like salvage, Dad. The further we get from the war, the fewer cracks for people like us to slip through." Chloe took Ellie's hand in one of hers and reached the other out to Jack. After a moment's hesitation, he took it.
"If you try to hide," Chloe said, "you won't be able to take jobs in the big star systems. We've got enough problems just surviving, getting fuel, paying off the Goose. If you won't take jobs because you're worried about me getting caught, you could lose everything."
What would everything mean? Their mecha. Their ship. Their Spacer way of life, the only truly happy one Ellie had known. For her, it might mean her freedom. She'd married Jack under the transitional laws between the Empire and the Federated Stars, but she didn't doubt that a debt collector would regard her as her husband's property, not his partner. And the law? She refused to remember the VCL camp; that she had to refuse told her everything about the law's view of her.
She would not tell Chloe that, though.
"If you think," Ellie said, "this ship is more important than you to your father and I –"
"Of course not!" Chloe's shoulders slumped. "Maybe I'm not a good enough person to care about just anybody. It's because you care, because you've done so much for me, that I can't let you get hurt."
There was an alternative, Ellie knew. A place they could be safe, at least from Animus Hunters. The Astroykos Emperor died and the mechaneer-aristocracy lost their planetary seats to the Federated Stars, but there were other planets. Distant estate-worlds on the Periphery, where, at least according to rumor, they held court over the few followers they had left.
Jack wouldn't want to go there. In truth, Ellie didn't, either. If the nobles she remembered from childhood recognized Chloe as one of their own, they wouldn't let her stay with her adoptive parents, any more than an Animus Hunter would.
If it came down to them or Zelph, though, Ellie had to believe in the nobles. Jack would need persuading. Maybe arguing. Later, when Chloe was calmer or when she wasn't listening, Ellie and Jack could have that argument.
For now, they needed to keep Chloe on the Mother Goose. Keep her safe.
Ellie forced a smile easily. She had to consciously mimic baseline human expressions to begin with. The perk of her ears and the unwrinkling of her nose, those took effort. She made it, and was rewarded with a brief smile from her daughter.
"We've still got a few tricks up our sleeves, Chloe," Ellie said.
"And I've got a hunch," Chloe said, so quietly even Ellie had to cock her ear to hear.
Jack either heard, too, or knew what Chloe had intended to say. He gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him. "I don't care if you've got a signed, sealed and certified prophecy from St. Sophie Astroykos herself, you're not leaving this ship. That goes double for when you're in trouble."
Chloe opened her mouth, but didn't speak.
"You're gonna stay right here," Jack said, "and your mom and I are gonna take care of you, and nobody's gonna get hurt except whoever thinks they can come around and take you away. You got that, Chloe?"
She said, "Yes, Dad."
Ellie held Chloe as they watched Zelph's departure. Neither they nor Jack spoke, and their flight suits muffled the evacuating atmosphere and the stirring of the Animus Hunter's huge mecha, so his words hung in the air. Uncontested.
Ellie wanted to challenge them.
She couldn't.
She remembered how she and Jack had found Chloe. How she'd picked up the gravitic signature of a Civil War era battlecruiser far from the battlefields of the conflict. How they'd approached the hulk, a metal pyramid as ominous as any tomb. How, against all reason, a distress signal had emerged from one of its cratered and cavernous mecha bays.
She remembered the mecha they found inside, huge and silver, unnaturally smooth, far more terrible than the Animus Hunter machine that must have been a crude copy or inversion of it.
She remembered the two figures curled within its cockpit. One had been Chloe, a tiny angel, delivered sleeping into Ellie's arms. The other, the woman who must have been her mother, with her almost divinely beautiful face and her last smile, who lived just long enough to extract a promise to protect Chloe.
But Ellie refused to remember Chloe's mother's death, or what was left of the body beneath that beautiful face, or anything else she'd seen on that battlecruiser.
Like the Valuable Confiscated Livestock camp she'd been interred in before Jack rescued her, the battlecruiser had shaped Ellie into the person she was now. She refused to allow the past's horrors any other hold on her. Life was too good to let memory taint it.
She couldn't deny, though, that Animus Hunter Zelph was right. Chloe had grown up a Hughes but she had been born something else, and her birth mother proved that a psychic could do herself at least as much harm as anyone else.
So Ellie said nothing while Zelph's mecha shrank from sight, the bay doors closed at last, and air rushed back in. She might have stayed silent, trying not to think about the past, if Chloe hadn't almost collapsed in her arms.
In an instant, Jack was beside them. His arms wrapped around them both, holding them close, propping them up.
"That was damn fine work, ladies," he said. His flight suit peeled back and Ellie willed hers to do the same. "It's not every day you stand up to an Animus Hunter, eh?"
Chloe shrank deeper into her parents' arms. Her suit's hood peeled away and her short hair, dyed the same blonde as Ellie's, splayed out at all angles.
"You were so brave when he got in your face, Clo," Jack said. He grinned, but Ellie could hear the almost hysterical relief in his voice. She hoped she noticed only because of felid senses, but knew Chloe would, too. "No need to be scared now that he's gone. It's gonna be okay."
"No," Chloe said. Her voice was muffled against Ellie's shoulder, but Ellie could feel her body shaking.
Ellie kissed the top of her head. She hadn't been able to for years when Chloe stood up straight. "Chloe..."
"It's not going to be okay." Chloe looked up. Her eyes wavered with tears, like space at the edge of a compression tunnel.
Abruptly, she tugged free of her parents' embrace. She stood with her back to them, facing the bay doors Zelph's mecha had knelt in front of.
"Of course it will, honey," Ellie said.
"How?" Chloe's voice sounded very small.
"Because we'll keep you safe." Ellie touched her daughter's arm.
"You can't," Chloe said.
"Don't count us out just yet," Jack said.
Ellie felt her daughter's muscles tense.
Chloe drew in a deep breath. Her hand settled over Ellie's, and she turned to offer a shaky smile. "You're right."
Her voice shook. She smelled of cold sweat and her hands trembled, but her smile grew stronger and she met Ellie's eyes and Jack's in turn.
Ellie's ears flattened. She already knew what Chloe was about to say:
"I have to leave the Mother Goose."
Jack stepped forward. "What!"
"You've both done so much for me," Chloe said. "If I stay, sooner or later, that Animus Hunter or someone like him is going to find me. When he does, you'll try to stop him. When you fail, you'll get hurt. I won't let you get hurt. Not because of me."
"Who said anything about failing?" Jack asked.
"An Animus Hunter, Dad! You can't handle someone like that. What're you going to do, climb in Gosling One and use the welding torch on his mecha?" Chloe shook her head. She ended looking plaintively at Ellie.
Ellie wanted to assure her Jack would do exactly that, and that he'd win.
She knew only one of those was true, the same as her daughter.
"There's always running away, Clo," Jack said. "We've kept you safe this long. Just 'cause some hot shot Animus Hunter's sniffing around in the right star system doesn't mean we don't have what it takes."
"You kept me safe while the Federal Senate consolidated its power over what used to be the Empire. It's just like salvage, Dad. The further we get from the war, the fewer cracks for people like us to slip through." Chloe took Ellie's hand in one of hers and reached the other out to Jack. After a moment's hesitation, he took it.
"If you try to hide," Chloe said, "you won't be able to take jobs in the big star systems. We've got enough problems just surviving, getting fuel, paying off the Goose. If you won't take jobs because you're worried about me getting caught, you could lose everything."
What would everything mean? Their mecha. Their ship. Their Spacer way of life, the only truly happy one Ellie had known. For her, it might mean her freedom. She'd married Jack under the transitional laws between the Empire and the Federated Stars, but she didn't doubt that a debt collector would regard her as her husband's property, not his partner. And the law? She refused to remember the VCL camp; that she had to refuse told her everything about the law's view of her.
She would not tell Chloe that, though.
"If you think," Ellie said, "this ship is more important than you to your father and I –"
"Of course not!" Chloe's shoulders slumped. "Maybe I'm not a good enough person to care about just anybody. It's because you care, because you've done so much for me, that I can't let you get hurt."
There was an alternative, Ellie knew. A place they could be safe, at least from Animus Hunters. The Astroykos Emperor died and the mechaneer-aristocracy lost their planetary seats to the Federated Stars, but there were other planets. Distant estate-worlds on the Periphery, where, at least according to rumor, they held court over the few followers they had left.
Jack wouldn't want to go there. In truth, Ellie didn't, either. If the nobles she remembered from childhood recognized Chloe as one of their own, they wouldn't let her stay with her adoptive parents, any more than an Animus Hunter would.
If it came down to them or Zelph, though, Ellie had to believe in the nobles. Jack would need persuading. Maybe arguing. Later, when Chloe was calmer or when she wasn't listening, Ellie and Jack could have that argument.
For now, they needed to keep Chloe on the Mother Goose. Keep her safe.
Ellie forced a smile easily. She had to consciously mimic baseline human expressions to begin with. The perk of her ears and the unwrinkling of her nose, those took effort. She made it, and was rewarded with a brief smile from her daughter.
"We've still got a few tricks up our sleeves, Chloe," Ellie said.
"And I've got a hunch," Chloe said, so quietly even Ellie had to cock her ear to hear.
Jack either heard, too, or knew what Chloe had intended to say. He gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him. "I don't care if you've got a signed, sealed and certified prophecy from St. Sophie Astroykos herself, you're not leaving this ship. That goes double for when you're in trouble."
Chloe opened her mouth, but didn't speak.
"You're gonna stay right here," Jack said, "and your mom and I are gonna take care of you, and nobody's gonna get hurt except whoever thinks they can come around and take you away. You got that, Chloe?"
She said, "Yes, Dad."
Chapter 3: Rudy
New
Chapter 3: Rudy
Chloe surveyed the landing bay. Her father stomped past in Gosling One, unloading the crates she'd filled, but she didn't see her mother.
All she saw was the underbelly of the Mother Goose, fifty meters of once-gleaming composite, worn and battered with two decades of dust and heavy use. She recognized a long dark stretch where a pirate mecha's laser had scoured the hull two years before. Further on, the indentation where a hulk's engines had flared to life during a salvage, ramming it into the Goose. Near the tip, numberless pockmarks from such asteroids and space junk as punched through the ship's gravitic shields.
Chloe remembered every single one – at least of those scoured in the surface since she'd joined the ship.
She realized she was crying.
Stupid, she thought. It's just a machine.
Trust your machines, trust your family, trust yourself. Chloe had grown up with those principles drummed into her head. She did her best to live by them.
If she trusted herself now, though, she'd leave machines and family behind. If she didn't, she would lose both.
And if her mother found her like this…
"Chloe?"
She froze.
"Hi, Mom," she said, trying, and failing to keep her voice even.
Ellie had emerged from behind the ramp while Chloe's eyes searched the ship. She had to have seen the tears.
All she said was, "Are you going out, dear?"
"Um," said Chloe. Get control of yourself, she thought. She had to act casual, just like her parents when they ran a bluff. She'd seen them in action often enough. When she spoke again, her voice sounded strong and clear. "I wanted to get a look around the port village. Maybe I'll find a shop we can sell that haul to."
"I hope you do," Ellie said.
Chloe was as used to reading hybrid expressions as human, but she couldn't begin to guess what thoughts ran through her mother's mind. Did Ellie know? She had to. Chloe was doing a bang-up job of hiding her feelings now, or so she hoped, but she hadn't even been concentrating. Or was the light under the Goose so bad even felid eyes couldn't see the tears that had been rolling down her face?
She knew better.
Silently, she padded down the ramp and embraced her mother. "I'm coming back, Mom," she said.
"And when you do," Ellie said, "you'll stay."
Chloe didn't answer.
"You don't have to leave," Ellie said. "After Wellach, we're going to the Periphery."
Chloe's eyes widened. Visions of space station ballrooms filled with elegant noblewomen and even more elegant noblemen danced before her. Then she cocked her head. "Dad agreed to go?"
"Not in so many words."
Which, Chloe knew, meant he would agree… he just didn't know it yet.
At least, her mother thought so.
Chloe said, "I still want to look around town. If nothing else, maybe I can find a good shop, right?"
"I hope so. Evidence indicates you've got better eyes than most for that sort of thing."
Chloe managed a wan smile. Eyes had nothing to do with it.
Still, she felt almost cheerful as she drifted from the hangar. The Periphery was a legend to Chloe, as to most people, but unlike most people it was a legend she looked forward to visiting. Somewhere out there, she supposed, she had living relatives. Even if she didn't, they'd only have to take a sample of her genetic code and she'd be admitted to the houses of the mighty, or once-mighty. Most people figured the last of the old aristocracy wiled away their days in planet-sized estates. Dancing – romance – leisure –
Chloe shook her head. Look at yourself, you little hypocrite, she thought. You've won't even call the people who gave you life "parents," but give you a shot at living like a queen and suddenly you're all for laying course for the Periphery.
"It's just a silly dream is all," she muttered.
Silly, above all, because whatever Ellie might believe, Chloe didn't think even her mother could persuade her father to lay course for the Periphery.
Chloe shook her head as she walked from the hangar complex and into a street considerably busier than she'd expected. She eventually followed the placidly trundling people-movers to a pair of huge, tubular gravlev lines to Wellach City, the planetary capital. People in a mix of festively colored groundling clothes and nanomachine-laced flight suits like Chloe's packed both lines. The groundling clothes struck Chloe as vaguely scandalous – short shorts or skirts, loose tops. Wellach was muggy and hot, so she supposed she couldn't blame them. Shouldn't, anyway.
At the moment, she didn't care to wait for another gravlev train. She walked as much to clear her head as to get where she wanted to go. Besides, even a spaceport village might have a memorabilia shop.
She turned on her heel. Mechaneer's instincts compelled her to duck back before she slammed into the massive figure behind her.
"Watch where you're going, girl," he snarled. At first, Chloe took him for an ursid, but he lacked the shaggy, somewhat elongated face and thin fur of that hybrid breed. He glowered down on her with purely human eyes set into a broad, flat face.
Chloe glowered right back. After facing down an Animus Hunter, this guy didn't rate. "When a cruiser bowls into a transport," she said, "who's not paying enough attention?"
The guy narrowed his eyes. "You smarting off to me?"
"I'm not giving you the time of day, if that's what you thought." She sidestepped him.
He stepped right with her, graceful despite his bulk. He moved like a mechaneer. Like a mechaneer who wasn't afraid, or unwilling, to hit his 'salvage' until it stopped moving.
It occurred to her that a pirate might be a lot less dangerous than an Animus Hunter, but, by definition, he didn't pay even lip service to the law.
Chloe Rina Hughes, she thought, you really are an idiot.
Surely the guy wouldn't hurt her in the middle of a crowded plaza. A tourist planet had to enforce the Feds' laws and have plenty of its own if it wanted to get people to visit, right?
Her father had taught her the best defense was a good offense. From the way he carried himself around bullies and thugs, she'd often taken that to mean giving offense.
She wasn't half the talker Jack Hughes was.
She sure wasn't close to half the brawler.
For all he was a world-class fast-talker, about a third of the time her father smarted off to somebody tougher- or meaner-looking, he ended up proving the other guy wasn't either of those, fist first, on foot or in mecha.
"I don't like little girls who give me lip," the guy looming over her said. "Apologize."
Never back down, Jack Hughes taught.
Never let them see you sweat.
If all else fails, pray.
Merciful Principle, Chloe thought, grant a pacific pattern to my days.
"I'm not a little girl," she snapped. "And even if I were, I'm not going to apologize to somebody who goes around threatening those who are!"
His lip curled.
But he scowled and brushed past her without swinging one of his ham-sized fists. He didn't exactly vanish into the crowd around the gravlev, but with the way he shoved through, he made good time toward the platform.
Once he was out of earshot, Chloe released the breath she'd been holding.
She glanced at a trio of kids, two girls in yellow sundresses and a boy in similarly colored shorts. They stared at her with something between awe and horror.
Chloe cocked her head. "What's wrong?"
One of the girls shot a glance in the direction of the gravlev lines, then skipped over to Chloe. "Are you a mechaneer, Miss?"
"Me?" Chloe laughed. "No, little girl, I'm –"
She grinned. She knelt beside them and, whispering conspiratorially, added, "– I'm not just any mechaneer, I'm the Invincible Titanian Battle Princess!"
The girl's mouth opened in a perfect 'o,' her eyes almost as wide. Her friends joined her, forming a ring around Chloe. The first girl, who seemed to be the leader of her little band, said, "Are you here for the tournament, Titan'n… Ti… Your Highness? Are you gonna beat up Rocket God Gil?"
"Tournament? Rocket God Gil?" Chloe forced herself to shrug. She'd heard of Gil Bartlet, of course. He was a big fish in the comparatively small pond that was the Mother Goose's usual run of star systems, a tournament mechaneer and some-time salvager – and some-time pirate, depending on who you asked. Her parents didn't seem to care for the man, so Chloe adopted a similar attitude.
She tossed her hair. "They're hardly worth my time."
The trio answered with a chorus of giggles.
Chloe ruffled their hair again and got to her feet. She thought about sending them off with something pithy, but nothing leaped to mind. She waved, and they darted into the crowd.
Invincible Titanian Battle Princess, huh? Chloe chuckled. Too bad she wasn't really. Somebody like that would have no problems with a debt collector. Or an Animus Hunter, for that matter.
Neither scared her at the moment. Invincibility on the mind, she strolled back to the port village feeling better than she had in months. She didn't even mind when another guy brushed past her, close enough to make her almost lose her footing.
He said, "You should be more observant, Your Highness."
Chloe's eyes widened. She spun around.
He looked nothing like the last jerk. A head shorter and probably only half the weight, he nonetheless sported lean muscles beneath a garish crimson flight suit. His spiky hair was almost as red as his suit, setting off the olive skin of his slim face.
Aside from the flight suit, he wore only a cocky grin. He said, "I figured an 'Invincible Battle Princess' would have better reflexes."
"You heard that, huh?"
He nodded. "When you told off that ass Gil, I thought maybe you were for real."
"Gil?"
The redhead tossed a thumb toward the gravlev station. "Rocket God Gilbert Bartlet. Big guy, bad attitude, five Wellach Cups in six years? You did know that's who you were pissing off back there, right?"
"Oh." Chloe tried to hold her smile. Never let them see you sweat. "Well. Sure."
"You're lying."
"You think so?" Chloe turned her nose up at him. "I guess you'll just have to wait and see."
"I've already seen. You failed the test."
"Huh?"
The redhead's electric blue eyes twinkled with mischief. He pulled his left hand from behind his back and held up a wad of bills – mostly small change, Federal hectomarks.
At first, Chloe didn't understand. Then, her eyes widened and her hand flew to the pocket at the back of her flight suit. Its seal peeled open when the heat of her fingers passed over it, but when she felt inside, she didn't feel her cash.
The redhead tossed it to her.
For a wonder, she managed to get her hand out to grab the wad of bills before it hit the wet ground.
"You move like a mechaneer," he said, "but your situational awareness is crap. If you're here for the tournament, you better back out before you get hurt."
Chloe's shoulders slumped. So much for running a bluff. "I'm not really a mechaneer. Not a combat mechaneer, I mean. I just wanted to give those kids something to smile about."
"And Gil?"
"Didn't recognize him," Chloe said with a sigh. "Thanks for giving my money back, anyway."
"Keep it in your breast pocket when you're on a tourist world. Otherwise you're just asking somebody to rob you." He patted the line marking his. He shot her a glance out of the corner of his eye. "Unless you're so clueless you can't see someone grab you right in front of your face."
She fought back a blush and ignored his answering chuckle, turned her back to him and stuffed her marks into the recommended pocket. Over her shoulder, she called, "Who are you, anyway?"
"The Invincible Titanian Battle Prince, of course."
She could just imagine the mocking grin. "Give it a rest, would you?"
"Fine. Call me Rudy."
"That's better." She turned back to him and shook his offered hand. "I'm Chloe. Guess I should thank you for the tip, huh?"
"That's twice you've thanked me. Do I look like a nob to you?"
She cocked her head.
"This is the Federated Stars, Ms. Chloe. We expect to be paid for services rendered."
Chloe yanked her hand back and stepped away from him. "You want me to pay you for advice I didn't ask for? Or is this some kind of protection racket? I may not be a combat.mechaneer, but I'm not such a pushover as to go quietly – and my father is, and a Civil War vet."
Rudy spread his red-gloved palms. "Take it easy. I'm not asking for marks. If I'd wanted that, I could have kept your cash. Money doesn't have to change hands for us to have equivalence, though. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. Everybody wins."
Chloe took another step back. She didn't feel nervous around Rudy, but her hunches came and went. She thought about contacting the Mother Goose. Not yet, though. She didn't want to worry her parents if she didn't have to. Principle knew they were worried enough already! "What kind of favor?"
"Judging from the way you tensed up, I get the impression you're not interested in the personal kind," he said, winking. "Fortunately, I don't go for the leggy noble type."
"N-noble?" Chloe's free hand brushed at the base of her bleached blonde hair. Had she missed a spot? "What are you talking about?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I was kidding, actually, but now that you mention it, you've got a nice pair of stratosphere blues there."
Chloe fought the urge to close her offending eyes. Principle, what was wrong with her? If she'd played it cool, he never would have known his joke was anything but. Dark blue eyes, like the dark curls she kept fastidiously dyed, might be associated with the mechaneer-aristocracy, but they weren't exactly impossible outside it, either.
She wondered how big of a mess she'd made by all but admitting her heritage to Rudy.
She figured she could run if she had to. Might buy her parents a few more seconds to respond to her call for help, assuming she couldn't outrun him. She doubted she could. He looked fast, with an athlete's build and confidence.
"If you don't want people to think you're a nob, Ms. Chloe," he said, "maybe you should wear tinted contacts, too."
"What do you care," Chloe snapped. "Racking up more debt?"
"You bet. And I don't intend to let you get yourself killed until you've paid me back."
"I don't have anything to pay you with."
"No? You've got information, don't you? How about telling me what you're doing here on the wrong side of Etemenos? If you're concerned about hiding that you're a nob, I figure you must be off your Limiters. Aren't you worried about Animus Hunters catching your noble self?"
"Stop calling me a noble," Chloe said. "I'm in enough trouble as it is."
In trouble with everyone if they find out I spent the whole time talking to you, she thought. Even leaving aside this business of being pegged for a noble, she shouldn't do such a thing. Spacer families frowned on their children spending too much unchaperoned time with apparently eligible groundlings. Especially groundlings who winked and joked and implied things that just weren't polite in mixed company. Even if Rudy said she wasn't his type.
She wondered what he really wanted.
She wondered if he would sell her out.
She wondered how one even went about selling a noble out to the Animus Hunters. It wasn't like they posted their communications frequencies.
"You've got a point about calling you out," he said. "There's no reason to draw attention to you. Hell, I don't think the Animus Hunters will even cover your debts if they catch you. They're… touchy that way."
"You've met an Animus Hunter?"
A shadow crossed his face. For a minute, he seemed to look straight through her.
Then, his eyes widened.
A shadow crossed Chloe's face, too, and the rest of her as well. She looked up, expecting to see a cloud drifting by. Sure enough, something above and behind her had blocked out the afternoon sun.
But hadn't her father said he'd seen clear skies for a hundred kilometers?
She turned.
Her eyes got even wider than Rudy's.
Chloe surveyed the landing bay. Her father stomped past in Gosling One, unloading the crates she'd filled, but she didn't see her mother.
All she saw was the underbelly of the Mother Goose, fifty meters of once-gleaming composite, worn and battered with two decades of dust and heavy use. She recognized a long dark stretch where a pirate mecha's laser had scoured the hull two years before. Further on, the indentation where a hulk's engines had flared to life during a salvage, ramming it into the Goose. Near the tip, numberless pockmarks from such asteroids and space junk as punched through the ship's gravitic shields.
Chloe remembered every single one – at least of those scoured in the surface since she'd joined the ship.
She realized she was crying.
Stupid, she thought. It's just a machine.
Trust your machines, trust your family, trust yourself. Chloe had grown up with those principles drummed into her head. She did her best to live by them.
If she trusted herself now, though, she'd leave machines and family behind. If she didn't, she would lose both.
And if her mother found her like this…
"Chloe?"
She froze.
"Hi, Mom," she said, trying, and failing to keep her voice even.
Ellie had emerged from behind the ramp while Chloe's eyes searched the ship. She had to have seen the tears.
All she said was, "Are you going out, dear?"
"Um," said Chloe. Get control of yourself, she thought. She had to act casual, just like her parents when they ran a bluff. She'd seen them in action often enough. When she spoke again, her voice sounded strong and clear. "I wanted to get a look around the port village. Maybe I'll find a shop we can sell that haul to."
"I hope you do," Ellie said.
Chloe was as used to reading hybrid expressions as human, but she couldn't begin to guess what thoughts ran through her mother's mind. Did Ellie know? She had to. Chloe was doing a bang-up job of hiding her feelings now, or so she hoped, but she hadn't even been concentrating. Or was the light under the Goose so bad even felid eyes couldn't see the tears that had been rolling down her face?
She knew better.
Silently, she padded down the ramp and embraced her mother. "I'm coming back, Mom," she said.
"And when you do," Ellie said, "you'll stay."
Chloe didn't answer.
"You don't have to leave," Ellie said. "After Wellach, we're going to the Periphery."
Chloe's eyes widened. Visions of space station ballrooms filled with elegant noblewomen and even more elegant noblemen danced before her. Then she cocked her head. "Dad agreed to go?"
"Not in so many words."
Which, Chloe knew, meant he would agree… he just didn't know it yet.
At least, her mother thought so.
Chloe said, "I still want to look around town. If nothing else, maybe I can find a good shop, right?"
"I hope so. Evidence indicates you've got better eyes than most for that sort of thing."
Chloe managed a wan smile. Eyes had nothing to do with it.
Still, she felt almost cheerful as she drifted from the hangar. The Periphery was a legend to Chloe, as to most people, but unlike most people it was a legend she looked forward to visiting. Somewhere out there, she supposed, she had living relatives. Even if she didn't, they'd only have to take a sample of her genetic code and she'd be admitted to the houses of the mighty, or once-mighty. Most people figured the last of the old aristocracy wiled away their days in planet-sized estates. Dancing – romance – leisure –
Chloe shook her head. Look at yourself, you little hypocrite, she thought. You've won't even call the people who gave you life "parents," but give you a shot at living like a queen and suddenly you're all for laying course for the Periphery.
"It's just a silly dream is all," she muttered.
Silly, above all, because whatever Ellie might believe, Chloe didn't think even her mother could persuade her father to lay course for the Periphery.
Chloe shook her head as she walked from the hangar complex and into a street considerably busier than she'd expected. She eventually followed the placidly trundling people-movers to a pair of huge, tubular gravlev lines to Wellach City, the planetary capital. People in a mix of festively colored groundling clothes and nanomachine-laced flight suits like Chloe's packed both lines. The groundling clothes struck Chloe as vaguely scandalous – short shorts or skirts, loose tops. Wellach was muggy and hot, so she supposed she couldn't blame them. Shouldn't, anyway.
At the moment, she didn't care to wait for another gravlev train. She walked as much to clear her head as to get where she wanted to go. Besides, even a spaceport village might have a memorabilia shop.
She turned on her heel. Mechaneer's instincts compelled her to duck back before she slammed into the massive figure behind her.
"Watch where you're going, girl," he snarled. At first, Chloe took him for an ursid, but he lacked the shaggy, somewhat elongated face and thin fur of that hybrid breed. He glowered down on her with purely human eyes set into a broad, flat face.
Chloe glowered right back. After facing down an Animus Hunter, this guy didn't rate. "When a cruiser bowls into a transport," she said, "who's not paying enough attention?"
The guy narrowed his eyes. "You smarting off to me?"
"I'm not giving you the time of day, if that's what you thought." She sidestepped him.
He stepped right with her, graceful despite his bulk. He moved like a mechaneer. Like a mechaneer who wasn't afraid, or unwilling, to hit his 'salvage' until it stopped moving.
It occurred to her that a pirate might be a lot less dangerous than an Animus Hunter, but, by definition, he didn't pay even lip service to the law.
Chloe Rina Hughes, she thought, you really are an idiot.
Surely the guy wouldn't hurt her in the middle of a crowded plaza. A tourist planet had to enforce the Feds' laws and have plenty of its own if it wanted to get people to visit, right?
Her father had taught her the best defense was a good offense. From the way he carried himself around bullies and thugs, she'd often taken that to mean giving offense.
She wasn't half the talker Jack Hughes was.
She sure wasn't close to half the brawler.
For all he was a world-class fast-talker, about a third of the time her father smarted off to somebody tougher- or meaner-looking, he ended up proving the other guy wasn't either of those, fist first, on foot or in mecha.
"I don't like little girls who give me lip," the guy looming over her said. "Apologize."
Never back down, Jack Hughes taught.
Never let them see you sweat.
If all else fails, pray.
Merciful Principle, Chloe thought, grant a pacific pattern to my days.
"I'm not a little girl," she snapped. "And even if I were, I'm not going to apologize to somebody who goes around threatening those who are!"
His lip curled.
But he scowled and brushed past her without swinging one of his ham-sized fists. He didn't exactly vanish into the crowd around the gravlev, but with the way he shoved through, he made good time toward the platform.
Once he was out of earshot, Chloe released the breath she'd been holding.
She glanced at a trio of kids, two girls in yellow sundresses and a boy in similarly colored shorts. They stared at her with something between awe and horror.
Chloe cocked her head. "What's wrong?"
One of the girls shot a glance in the direction of the gravlev lines, then skipped over to Chloe. "Are you a mechaneer, Miss?"
"Me?" Chloe laughed. "No, little girl, I'm –"
She grinned. She knelt beside them and, whispering conspiratorially, added, "– I'm not just any mechaneer, I'm the Invincible Titanian Battle Princess!"
The girl's mouth opened in a perfect 'o,' her eyes almost as wide. Her friends joined her, forming a ring around Chloe. The first girl, who seemed to be the leader of her little band, said, "Are you here for the tournament, Titan'n… Ti… Your Highness? Are you gonna beat up Rocket God Gil?"
"Tournament? Rocket God Gil?" Chloe forced herself to shrug. She'd heard of Gil Bartlet, of course. He was a big fish in the comparatively small pond that was the Mother Goose's usual run of star systems, a tournament mechaneer and some-time salvager – and some-time pirate, depending on who you asked. Her parents didn't seem to care for the man, so Chloe adopted a similar attitude.
She tossed her hair. "They're hardly worth my time."
The trio answered with a chorus of giggles.
Chloe ruffled their hair again and got to her feet. She thought about sending them off with something pithy, but nothing leaped to mind. She waved, and they darted into the crowd.
Invincible Titanian Battle Princess, huh? Chloe chuckled. Too bad she wasn't really. Somebody like that would have no problems with a debt collector. Or an Animus Hunter, for that matter.
Neither scared her at the moment. Invincibility on the mind, she strolled back to the port village feeling better than she had in months. She didn't even mind when another guy brushed past her, close enough to make her almost lose her footing.
He said, "You should be more observant, Your Highness."
Chloe's eyes widened. She spun around.
He looked nothing like the last jerk. A head shorter and probably only half the weight, he nonetheless sported lean muscles beneath a garish crimson flight suit. His spiky hair was almost as red as his suit, setting off the olive skin of his slim face.
Aside from the flight suit, he wore only a cocky grin. He said, "I figured an 'Invincible Battle Princess' would have better reflexes."
"You heard that, huh?"
He nodded. "When you told off that ass Gil, I thought maybe you were for real."
"Gil?"
The redhead tossed a thumb toward the gravlev station. "Rocket God Gilbert Bartlet. Big guy, bad attitude, five Wellach Cups in six years? You did know that's who you were pissing off back there, right?"
"Oh." Chloe tried to hold her smile. Never let them see you sweat. "Well. Sure."
"You're lying."
"You think so?" Chloe turned her nose up at him. "I guess you'll just have to wait and see."
"I've already seen. You failed the test."
"Huh?"
The redhead's electric blue eyes twinkled with mischief. He pulled his left hand from behind his back and held up a wad of bills – mostly small change, Federal hectomarks.
At first, Chloe didn't understand. Then, her eyes widened and her hand flew to the pocket at the back of her flight suit. Its seal peeled open when the heat of her fingers passed over it, but when she felt inside, she didn't feel her cash.
The redhead tossed it to her.
For a wonder, she managed to get her hand out to grab the wad of bills before it hit the wet ground.
"You move like a mechaneer," he said, "but your situational awareness is crap. If you're here for the tournament, you better back out before you get hurt."
Chloe's shoulders slumped. So much for running a bluff. "I'm not really a mechaneer. Not a combat mechaneer, I mean. I just wanted to give those kids something to smile about."
"And Gil?"
"Didn't recognize him," Chloe said with a sigh. "Thanks for giving my money back, anyway."
"Keep it in your breast pocket when you're on a tourist world. Otherwise you're just asking somebody to rob you." He patted the line marking his. He shot her a glance out of the corner of his eye. "Unless you're so clueless you can't see someone grab you right in front of your face."
She fought back a blush and ignored his answering chuckle, turned her back to him and stuffed her marks into the recommended pocket. Over her shoulder, she called, "Who are you, anyway?"
"The Invincible Titanian Battle Prince, of course."
She could just imagine the mocking grin. "Give it a rest, would you?"
"Fine. Call me Rudy."
"That's better." She turned back to him and shook his offered hand. "I'm Chloe. Guess I should thank you for the tip, huh?"
"That's twice you've thanked me. Do I look like a nob to you?"
She cocked her head.
"This is the Federated Stars, Ms. Chloe. We expect to be paid for services rendered."
Chloe yanked her hand back and stepped away from him. "You want me to pay you for advice I didn't ask for? Or is this some kind of protection racket? I may not be a combat.mechaneer, but I'm not such a pushover as to go quietly – and my father is, and a Civil War vet."
Rudy spread his red-gloved palms. "Take it easy. I'm not asking for marks. If I'd wanted that, I could have kept your cash. Money doesn't have to change hands for us to have equivalence, though. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. Everybody wins."
Chloe took another step back. She didn't feel nervous around Rudy, but her hunches came and went. She thought about contacting the Mother Goose. Not yet, though. She didn't want to worry her parents if she didn't have to. Principle knew they were worried enough already! "What kind of favor?"
"Judging from the way you tensed up, I get the impression you're not interested in the personal kind," he said, winking. "Fortunately, I don't go for the leggy noble type."
"N-noble?" Chloe's free hand brushed at the base of her bleached blonde hair. Had she missed a spot? "What are you talking about?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I was kidding, actually, but now that you mention it, you've got a nice pair of stratosphere blues there."
Chloe fought the urge to close her offending eyes. Principle, what was wrong with her? If she'd played it cool, he never would have known his joke was anything but. Dark blue eyes, like the dark curls she kept fastidiously dyed, might be associated with the mechaneer-aristocracy, but they weren't exactly impossible outside it, either.
She wondered how big of a mess she'd made by all but admitting her heritage to Rudy.
She figured she could run if she had to. Might buy her parents a few more seconds to respond to her call for help, assuming she couldn't outrun him. She doubted she could. He looked fast, with an athlete's build and confidence.
"If you don't want people to think you're a nob, Ms. Chloe," he said, "maybe you should wear tinted contacts, too."
"What do you care," Chloe snapped. "Racking up more debt?"
"You bet. And I don't intend to let you get yourself killed until you've paid me back."
"I don't have anything to pay you with."
"No? You've got information, don't you? How about telling me what you're doing here on the wrong side of Etemenos? If you're concerned about hiding that you're a nob, I figure you must be off your Limiters. Aren't you worried about Animus Hunters catching your noble self?"
"Stop calling me a noble," Chloe said. "I'm in enough trouble as it is."
In trouble with everyone if they find out I spent the whole time talking to you, she thought. Even leaving aside this business of being pegged for a noble, she shouldn't do such a thing. Spacer families frowned on their children spending too much unchaperoned time with apparently eligible groundlings. Especially groundlings who winked and joked and implied things that just weren't polite in mixed company. Even if Rudy said she wasn't his type.
She wondered what he really wanted.
She wondered if he would sell her out.
She wondered how one even went about selling a noble out to the Animus Hunters. It wasn't like they posted their communications frequencies.
"You've got a point about calling you out," he said. "There's no reason to draw attention to you. Hell, I don't think the Animus Hunters will even cover your debts if they catch you. They're… touchy that way."
"You've met an Animus Hunter?"
A shadow crossed his face. For a minute, he seemed to look straight through her.
Then, his eyes widened.
A shadow crossed Chloe's face, too, and the rest of her as well. She looked up, expecting to see a cloud drifting by. Sure enough, something above and behind her had blocked out the afternoon sun.
But hadn't her father said he'd seen clear skies for a hundred kilometers?
She turned.
Her eyes got even wider than Rudy's.
Chapter 4: Representative
New
Chapter 4: Representative
Rudy watched the Representative-class destroyer's shadow pass over Chloe, then him, then the entire alley in which they stood.
More than a kilometer of gleaming, perfectly polished composite plating and humming gravitic engines hung overhead, almost unimaginably huge in atmosphere. Some of its engines would be extras, replacing its usual load of ship to ship weapons so it could operate within a planet's gravity well. Air whistled around its surface, forming strange eddies in the unnaturally curved space.
"What's it doing here?" Chloe whispered.
"Apparently, somebody important decided to visit this rube planet," Rudy said. "They're probably here for the tournament."
He tried to keep his voice casual. He wasn't sure if he succeeded. Chloe acted like she hadn't even heard him speak.
Some Invincible Battle Princess, he thought.
He almost managed a grin.
Almost.
It wasn't that he thought the destroyer hovering over the port village threatened him. He just didn't care for the symbols of the Federal Senate's armed forces.
Too many bad memories.
"Why don't we step into a shop and wait out the storm?" He laid a hand on Chloe's arm and guided her toward a door, gently enough she wouldn't panic and start beaming her location to anyone who wanted to listen, firmly enough she didn't stay in plain sight of anyone who wanted to look.
She paid his touch no more mind than she had his voice. She kept staring at the destroyer.
Rudy figured being spotted with a possible noblewoman, however little she acted the part, could prove less than healthy under the circumstances.
He could have left her.
But where was the fun in that?
"Come on, Chloe," he hissed. His fingers tightened. Beneath her flight suit, her slender arm felt more muscular than he'd expected. 'Not a combat mechaneer,' she'd said. What kind was she? A cargo hauler? She didn't look that part any more than she acted the nob. She was obviously some kind of spacer; he knew that prim and proper act all too well.
When he pulled her into a doorway, she finally reacted. Her reaction didn't exactly make things simpler.
He grunted as her elbows dug into his kidneys. His hand spasmed.
Chloe sprang from his grasp.
"I was trying to help," Rudy said through clenched teeth. Girl packed quite a punch. He jerked a thumb at the destroyer descending on the port town. "Get you out of its sight."
"I don't need your help." Chloe straightened up, tested her ankle and nodded, apparently to herself. The mask of her flight suit rolled up to cover her face. "I've got to warn Mom and Dad!"
"If they don't know already, they've got to be blind and deaf," Rudy said. "And if you send a message to your parents, the Feds could pick up on it."
She hesitated.
She set her jaw.
She rolled the mask back.
She said, "I've still got to get to them and make sure they're okay."
She sprinted toward the hangars, following the destroyer's shadow.
Rudy bit back a sigh. Women.
Still, he had to wonder what kind of woman had to dye her hair to hide the black curls most people associated with the old nobility, but went running to the help of a ship in the civilian hangars on a tourist planet halfway across the galaxy from the nearest enclave of the old feudal order.
Curiosity killed the cat, he thought, but I'm no felid.
Besides, he'd could just imagine the look on the face of the Fed bureaucrat-soldier who tried to arrest him for his interference.
He ran after her.
The people in the port village thronged the streets to see the destroyer, but Rudy easily danced between confused civilians. Since he didn't gain any ground on Chloe, he assumed she managed the same.
He almost lost ground, almost lost her, when a familiar small transport roared overhead. Rudy didn't have to see its markings to know he knew the sleek little ship, a converted luxury twenty-seater shuttle with a magnetic clasp to hold a mecha.
He wondered, what's he doing out here?
Rudy supposed he should've played his subliminal briefing on the way to Wellach instead of scrapping it like he usually did. Too bad. Damn things gave him a headache.
He kept running.
Chloe's stride was at least as long as his, but he knew how to run. With the crowd too busy gawking at the destroyer to even get in the way, he put on an extra burst of speed.
He caught up with Chloe just in time to clap a hand over her open mouth and pull her back from the doors of the hangar over which the destroyer hung. Grappling lines stretched from an open bay on its bottom face, illuminated from within in contrast to the complete shadow of its exterior. Boxy Fed line mecha emerged from the bay and slid down the lines, their maneuvering thrusters firing to slow their descent.
Rudy couldn't see where they were going. He didn't hear any fighting, though.
Chloe struggled in his grip, but this time he didn't allow her the leverage to land a blow.
Abruptly, she went limp. A muffled cry escaped his hand.
Rudy looked back to the destroyer.
A transport ship hung from its lines. From the long, neck-like foredeck, he figured it for the Balder class. The military mecha boosted off it and back to their mother ship, half-flying, half-climbing in the unfamiliar one gee. Slowly, inexorably, the transport rose toward the yawning hangar. It fit easily, outlined for just a second by the lit interior. Then it, and the light, vanished.
The destroyer hovered for what felt like a long time to Rudy. He wondered if its external cameras had somehow identified Chloe despite the deep shadows it cast.
Then it rose into a crisp turn and blasted skyward.
When the dust settled, Rudy found his arms empty. He looked down.
Chloe knelt in the doorway, eyes raised to the empty sky. He couldn't see her face, but he could see her shoulders heave with sobs.
He started to reach out, to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder.
His hand halted in mid-air.
He scowled.
Saving a stranger's life was one thing. Showing sympathy, showing weakness? Not his style.
Chloe sobbed something, so quietly even Rudy's ears couldn't pick it up.
She rose.
She turned.
Tears streaked her face, her clenched fists shook, and her lips trembled. Nonetheless, she managed to look at least as determined as miserable.
Rudy fought the urge to nod his appreciation.
Instead, he jerked a thumb after the rapidly retreating destroyer. "That was your ship the Feds took, huh?"
She nodded. "My parents' ship."
"They were on it?"
She nodded again.
He raised an eyebrow. "Wanna get it back?"
Rudy watched the Representative-class destroyer's shadow pass over Chloe, then him, then the entire alley in which they stood.
More than a kilometer of gleaming, perfectly polished composite plating and humming gravitic engines hung overhead, almost unimaginably huge in atmosphere. Some of its engines would be extras, replacing its usual load of ship to ship weapons so it could operate within a planet's gravity well. Air whistled around its surface, forming strange eddies in the unnaturally curved space.
"What's it doing here?" Chloe whispered.
"Apparently, somebody important decided to visit this rube planet," Rudy said. "They're probably here for the tournament."
He tried to keep his voice casual. He wasn't sure if he succeeded. Chloe acted like she hadn't even heard him speak.
Some Invincible Battle Princess, he thought.
He almost managed a grin.
Almost.
It wasn't that he thought the destroyer hovering over the port village threatened him. He just didn't care for the symbols of the Federal Senate's armed forces.
Too many bad memories.
"Why don't we step into a shop and wait out the storm?" He laid a hand on Chloe's arm and guided her toward a door, gently enough she wouldn't panic and start beaming her location to anyone who wanted to listen, firmly enough she didn't stay in plain sight of anyone who wanted to look.
She paid his touch no more mind than she had his voice. She kept staring at the destroyer.
Rudy figured being spotted with a possible noblewoman, however little she acted the part, could prove less than healthy under the circumstances.
He could have left her.
But where was the fun in that?
"Come on, Chloe," he hissed. His fingers tightened. Beneath her flight suit, her slender arm felt more muscular than he'd expected. 'Not a combat mechaneer,' she'd said. What kind was she? A cargo hauler? She didn't look that part any more than she acted the nob. She was obviously some kind of spacer; he knew that prim and proper act all too well.
When he pulled her into a doorway, she finally reacted. Her reaction didn't exactly make things simpler.
He grunted as her elbows dug into his kidneys. His hand spasmed.
Chloe sprang from his grasp.
"I was trying to help," Rudy said through clenched teeth. Girl packed quite a punch. He jerked a thumb at the destroyer descending on the port town. "Get you out of its sight."
"I don't need your help." Chloe straightened up, tested her ankle and nodded, apparently to herself. The mask of her flight suit rolled up to cover her face. "I've got to warn Mom and Dad!"
"If they don't know already, they've got to be blind and deaf," Rudy said. "And if you send a message to your parents, the Feds could pick up on it."
She hesitated.
She set her jaw.
She rolled the mask back.
She said, "I've still got to get to them and make sure they're okay."
She sprinted toward the hangars, following the destroyer's shadow.
Rudy bit back a sigh. Women.
Still, he had to wonder what kind of woman had to dye her hair to hide the black curls most people associated with the old nobility, but went running to the help of a ship in the civilian hangars on a tourist planet halfway across the galaxy from the nearest enclave of the old feudal order.
Curiosity killed the cat, he thought, but I'm no felid.
Besides, he'd could just imagine the look on the face of the Fed bureaucrat-soldier who tried to arrest him for his interference.
He ran after her.
The people in the port village thronged the streets to see the destroyer, but Rudy easily danced between confused civilians. Since he didn't gain any ground on Chloe, he assumed she managed the same.
He almost lost ground, almost lost her, when a familiar small transport roared overhead. Rudy didn't have to see its markings to know he knew the sleek little ship, a converted luxury twenty-seater shuttle with a magnetic clasp to hold a mecha.
He wondered, what's he doing out here?
Rudy supposed he should've played his subliminal briefing on the way to Wellach instead of scrapping it like he usually did. Too bad. Damn things gave him a headache.
He kept running.
Chloe's stride was at least as long as his, but he knew how to run. With the crowd too busy gawking at the destroyer to even get in the way, he put on an extra burst of speed.
He caught up with Chloe just in time to clap a hand over her open mouth and pull her back from the doors of the hangar over which the destroyer hung. Grappling lines stretched from an open bay on its bottom face, illuminated from within in contrast to the complete shadow of its exterior. Boxy Fed line mecha emerged from the bay and slid down the lines, their maneuvering thrusters firing to slow their descent.
Rudy couldn't see where they were going. He didn't hear any fighting, though.
Chloe struggled in his grip, but this time he didn't allow her the leverage to land a blow.
Abruptly, she went limp. A muffled cry escaped his hand.
Rudy looked back to the destroyer.
A transport ship hung from its lines. From the long, neck-like foredeck, he figured it for the Balder class. The military mecha boosted off it and back to their mother ship, half-flying, half-climbing in the unfamiliar one gee. Slowly, inexorably, the transport rose toward the yawning hangar. It fit easily, outlined for just a second by the lit interior. Then it, and the light, vanished.
The destroyer hovered for what felt like a long time to Rudy. He wondered if its external cameras had somehow identified Chloe despite the deep shadows it cast.
Then it rose into a crisp turn and blasted skyward.
When the dust settled, Rudy found his arms empty. He looked down.
Chloe knelt in the doorway, eyes raised to the empty sky. He couldn't see her face, but he could see her shoulders heave with sobs.
He started to reach out, to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder.
His hand halted in mid-air.
He scowled.
Saving a stranger's life was one thing. Showing sympathy, showing weakness? Not his style.
Chloe sobbed something, so quietly even Rudy's ears couldn't pick it up.
She rose.
She turned.
Tears streaked her face, her clenched fists shook, and her lips trembled. Nonetheless, she managed to look at least as determined as miserable.
Rudy fought the urge to nod his appreciation.
Instead, he jerked a thumb after the rapidly retreating destroyer. "That was your ship the Feds took, huh?"
She nodded. "My parents' ship."
"They were on it?"
She nodded again.
He raised an eyebrow. "Wanna get it back?"
Chapter 5: A Deal
New
Chapter 5: A Deal
Until the day she did it, Chloe never would've dreamed of letting a man she'd just met take her to his hotel suite.
Of course, until that day, she never would've dreamed of seeing her parents and the Mother Goose lifted into the sky by a Federal destroyer, stranding her on a tourist world, penniless and without the first idea of how to survive – much less how to rescue her family.
She'd allowed Rudy to lead her through the still-filling streets and alleys of the port village, to buy tickets for the gravlev train, to load her into a seat like a piece of human luggage. She'd felt reactive gel conform to her slumping frame and try to make her comfortable, and felt it fail. She'd stared out the window at the endless kilometers of glistening blue ocean and gleaming metallic highway tubes and seen none of it. She'd left the gravlev holding Rudy's hand and let him lead her through a series of almost a half dozen transfers, eventually ending outside a massive building of conch-shaped metal and mirrored windows. She'd been so indifferent, she didn't even offer a squeak of protest when the elevator they boarded within took them beneath the waves instead of up.
"Nice place, eh," Rudy called. He'd vanished into the rear of the suite.
Chloe blinked. For the first time, she mustered the energy to pay attention to her surroundings.
They were, as promised, nice. Cream colored walls curved from a thick dark carpet to meet at the arch-like peak of the ceiling, the painted-on screens of which glowed in a theoretically soothing abstract pattern. An archway promised a recreation room. The two interior doors, Chloe figured, closed on a restroom and bedroom.
The suite's expanse surprised her. Despite his garish flight suit, Rudy didn't strike her as a rich man. Because of his suit, she wouldn't have expected such tasteful decor. She said, "You can afford all this just on tournament winnings?"
He laughed. "Don't bet on it. I'm a test pilot. The tournament is technically company business 'cause I use a prototype. What you see around you falls under the category of 'business expense.'"
"Sounds like a sweet deal," Chloe said absently, her mind already wandering.
If only she'd insisted her parents touch down on Prentice Alpha and drop her off! No one would have bothered them, they could have used the last haul to ameliorate some of their bills – everything would have worked out fine.
Chloe didn't know what she would've done on Prentice Alpha.
She didn't much care.
Were they treating her parents right? Were they allowed to stay on the Goose? Imprisoned?
Tortured?
If I turn myself in, Chloe thought, maybe they'll let Mom and Dad go.
She spun to the door, commanded her flight suit to bare her hand, and pressed a palm to the lock.
It didn't open.
Of course. Rudy hadn't stopped at the front desk to have it attuned to her DNA. She was locked in.
He popped his head into the antechamber. "Where do you think you're going, Invincible Battle Princess? We just got here."
"I have to –"
"You have to sit down and grab something to drink," Rudy said. "Once you've got your head screwed on straight, we can talk about how to go forward."
Chloe hung her head.
"Drink first, talk second, mope never. I can't stand weepy women."
She didn't answer. With no better idea, she shuffled after him. The recreation room was open to the sky, or rather, the sea. It stretched above and below, showing off a riot of bright-colored fish and gently rolling blue waves. Chloe barely registered the view. She bumped into a couch formed from the same reactive gel as the gravlev seats. She collapsed into it. When an alcohol globe pressed against her fingers, she took it and dropped it into her mouth. Her saliva dissolved the globe and released a rush of cool liquid.
Her eyes shot open.
She wasn't sure whether to gag or pass out.
Rudy said, "Don't like the gin, huh?"
"Not straight," she gasped. In truth, she'd never had it before. Her parents went in for beer, wine on special occasions, and Chloe had only been allowed to drink at all for a couple of years. Her tastes ran more toward sodas.
Rudy motioned to the table between them. A depression in the center contained a colorful array of globes. Spacers still used them to make liquids easier to consume in zero gravity, but they'd become fashionable at least centuries before. "Pick your poison."
"I'm not thirsty," Chloe said.
He shrugged and grabbed a pair of clear globes, seemingly at random. He flicked them into his mouth, swished the impromptu cocktail and shrugged. "You don't know what you're missing."
Chloe closed her eyes. "What are you going to do with me?"
She didn't sound scared. She didn't feel scared. After the day's events, she didn't have it in her to care what Rudy did.
She figured she probably deserved it.
"Dunno," he said. "Nothing unpleasant, though, so lighten up, would you?"
She forced herself to smile, though she felt no more relief than she had concern.
"I am going to get paid, mind. You're racking up debt like it's going out of style."
"Oh," said Chloe. So whatever he might have said, he did want a – what had he called it? A "personal" favor. She'd expected nothing less from a groundling man.
Spacer upbringing crashed into despondency. She almost, almost rallied enough to resist.
Malaise trumped morals. She slumped forward and buried her face in her hands.
Rudy said, "You were a salvage mechaneer, right?"
"Huh?" She wondered why her previous work mattered to him. "Y, yeah."
"Who was your mechanic?"
Chloe's red-rimmed eyes opened. "What?"
Rudy remained sprawled on his own couch, safely across the table from her. "Did you have a dedicated mechanic, or did you work on your own mecha?"
"We couldn't afford a dedicated mechanic," she said, too confused to even consider lying. "Mom and Dad and I did the little stuff ourselves. I mean, sometimes. I didn't do it alone, you understand, but I was pretty good at it. Good enough to keep Gosling Two going, at least."
He flashed a thumbs-up. "Great. I want you to join my pit crew."
"I don't know how to repair a military mecha – a prototype, no less! Besides, how would I get clearance? It's –"
"Don't worry about it. I'll clear everything up tomorrow. They let test pilots get away with anything."
"I don't have time for this," Chloe said. She pushed herself from the couch. The gel sloshed back into its original, angular shape. "Back at the hangar, you told me you'd help me find my parents. That's the only reason I'm here. If you're gonna mess around with some stupid tournament, you can take your so-called help and shoot it out an airlock."
Rudy cocked his head. He seemed infuriatingly calm in the face of her tirade. "So where're you headed?"
"Um," said Chloe.
"Exactly." Rudy flicked an alcohol sphere toward her; she caught it instinctively. "See, the way I figure it, those bureaucrat-soldiers were after you, not your parents – right?"
Chloe nodded. She could buy somebody coming after her parents, but not with a Federal destroyer. The only member of her family who warranted such measures was the one with an Animus Hunter on her trail.
"So what's the rush? They won't leave this planet as long as they think you're here."
"What if they hurt Mom and Dad?"
"Unlikely. Their best bet is to make an exchange, or claim to set up an exchange and try to capture you. They could fake your parents' presence, but why bother when they have the real thing?" Rudy grinned. "Trust me, that bunch don't spend a dime more than they have to, and feeding prisoners is a pittance next to faking them."
"You're sure?"
"Positive. I went to six federally-sanctioned mechaneer academies, you know."
Chloe's eyes widened. She'd never heard of anyone going to more than one, especially not someone as young as Rudy appeared. If he was older than her, it couldn't be by much.
"Yep; you're looking at a pupil of the Etemenos Military Academy, the Imperial Institute for Space Tactics, the Algreil Devil Ray School of Martial Arts, the Federal Officer's Academy, the Federal Mechaneer Training Station, and the Fort Raypoint Academy." Though Rudy seemed to beam with pride, a trace of sarcasm glinted in his eyes.
Chloe wondered if he was lying. "How did you manage to attend so many? And why did you go to both officer's and mechaneer's academies for the navy?"
Rudy shrugged. "I attended 'em all. Never said I graduated, now did I?"
That startled a laugh from Chloe. She immediately stifled it.
"You look a lot better when you smile," Rudy said. "Maybe I'll rethink that 'leggy noble' bit…"
Chloe's face fell. She looked away.
She flinched when his hand closed on her shoulder. She hadn't even heard him approach.
He said, "Hey, I was only kidding."
"I know," she whispered. "But I've got no right to be happy. This is all my fault. If I'd –"
"If you'd done something different, something different would've happened. Maybe your parents walk away home free and nobody ever catches you and we all live happily ever after. It could happen."
Chloe nodded miserably.
"On the other hand, maybe you get caught and whoever catches you decides to just off your parents to cover his tracks. After all, he won't need 'em as bait since he already has you, and a couple with a kidnapped daughter could raise quite a stink on election day."
Such a scenario hadn't occurred to Chloe. "Who would do something like that?"
"An Animus Hunter, for one. You think those bastards keep their legendary status by leaving a bunch of loose ends?"
"Guess not."
"Definitely not," Rudy said. "Fact is, your best bet is to wait and watch. Those guys probably expect you to do something dumb – which you would have, if not for my expert advice – so they won't take a hard line. While they're snooping around, we'll keep our eyes peeled."
"Won't they recognize me, though?"
Rudy clasped both her shoulders and turned her to face him. His eyes glinted with mischief. "Not for long."
Until the day she did it, Chloe never would've dreamed of letting a man she'd just met take her to his hotel suite.
Of course, until that day, she never would've dreamed of seeing her parents and the Mother Goose lifted into the sky by a Federal destroyer, stranding her on a tourist world, penniless and without the first idea of how to survive – much less how to rescue her family.
She'd allowed Rudy to lead her through the still-filling streets and alleys of the port village, to buy tickets for the gravlev train, to load her into a seat like a piece of human luggage. She'd felt reactive gel conform to her slumping frame and try to make her comfortable, and felt it fail. She'd stared out the window at the endless kilometers of glistening blue ocean and gleaming metallic highway tubes and seen none of it. She'd left the gravlev holding Rudy's hand and let him lead her through a series of almost a half dozen transfers, eventually ending outside a massive building of conch-shaped metal and mirrored windows. She'd been so indifferent, she didn't even offer a squeak of protest when the elevator they boarded within took them beneath the waves instead of up.
"Nice place, eh," Rudy called. He'd vanished into the rear of the suite.
Chloe blinked. For the first time, she mustered the energy to pay attention to her surroundings.
They were, as promised, nice. Cream colored walls curved from a thick dark carpet to meet at the arch-like peak of the ceiling, the painted-on screens of which glowed in a theoretically soothing abstract pattern. An archway promised a recreation room. The two interior doors, Chloe figured, closed on a restroom and bedroom.
The suite's expanse surprised her. Despite his garish flight suit, Rudy didn't strike her as a rich man. Because of his suit, she wouldn't have expected such tasteful decor. She said, "You can afford all this just on tournament winnings?"
He laughed. "Don't bet on it. I'm a test pilot. The tournament is technically company business 'cause I use a prototype. What you see around you falls under the category of 'business expense.'"
"Sounds like a sweet deal," Chloe said absently, her mind already wandering.
If only she'd insisted her parents touch down on Prentice Alpha and drop her off! No one would have bothered them, they could have used the last haul to ameliorate some of their bills – everything would have worked out fine.
Chloe didn't know what she would've done on Prentice Alpha.
She didn't much care.
Were they treating her parents right? Were they allowed to stay on the Goose? Imprisoned?
Tortured?
If I turn myself in, Chloe thought, maybe they'll let Mom and Dad go.
She spun to the door, commanded her flight suit to bare her hand, and pressed a palm to the lock.
It didn't open.
Of course. Rudy hadn't stopped at the front desk to have it attuned to her DNA. She was locked in.
He popped his head into the antechamber. "Where do you think you're going, Invincible Battle Princess? We just got here."
"I have to –"
"You have to sit down and grab something to drink," Rudy said. "Once you've got your head screwed on straight, we can talk about how to go forward."
Chloe hung her head.
"Drink first, talk second, mope never. I can't stand weepy women."
She didn't answer. With no better idea, she shuffled after him. The recreation room was open to the sky, or rather, the sea. It stretched above and below, showing off a riot of bright-colored fish and gently rolling blue waves. Chloe barely registered the view. She bumped into a couch formed from the same reactive gel as the gravlev seats. She collapsed into it. When an alcohol globe pressed against her fingers, she took it and dropped it into her mouth. Her saliva dissolved the globe and released a rush of cool liquid.
Her eyes shot open.
She wasn't sure whether to gag or pass out.
Rudy said, "Don't like the gin, huh?"
"Not straight," she gasped. In truth, she'd never had it before. Her parents went in for beer, wine on special occasions, and Chloe had only been allowed to drink at all for a couple of years. Her tastes ran more toward sodas.
Rudy motioned to the table between them. A depression in the center contained a colorful array of globes. Spacers still used them to make liquids easier to consume in zero gravity, but they'd become fashionable at least centuries before. "Pick your poison."
"I'm not thirsty," Chloe said.
He shrugged and grabbed a pair of clear globes, seemingly at random. He flicked them into his mouth, swished the impromptu cocktail and shrugged. "You don't know what you're missing."
Chloe closed her eyes. "What are you going to do with me?"
She didn't sound scared. She didn't feel scared. After the day's events, she didn't have it in her to care what Rudy did.
She figured she probably deserved it.
"Dunno," he said. "Nothing unpleasant, though, so lighten up, would you?"
She forced herself to smile, though she felt no more relief than she had concern.
"I am going to get paid, mind. You're racking up debt like it's going out of style."
"Oh," said Chloe. So whatever he might have said, he did want a – what had he called it? A "personal" favor. She'd expected nothing less from a groundling man.
Spacer upbringing crashed into despondency. She almost, almost rallied enough to resist.
Malaise trumped morals. She slumped forward and buried her face in her hands.
Rudy said, "You were a salvage mechaneer, right?"
"Huh?" She wondered why her previous work mattered to him. "Y, yeah."
"Who was your mechanic?"
Chloe's red-rimmed eyes opened. "What?"
Rudy remained sprawled on his own couch, safely across the table from her. "Did you have a dedicated mechanic, or did you work on your own mecha?"
"We couldn't afford a dedicated mechanic," she said, too confused to even consider lying. "Mom and Dad and I did the little stuff ourselves. I mean, sometimes. I didn't do it alone, you understand, but I was pretty good at it. Good enough to keep Gosling Two going, at least."
He flashed a thumbs-up. "Great. I want you to join my pit crew."
"I don't know how to repair a military mecha – a prototype, no less! Besides, how would I get clearance? It's –"
"Don't worry about it. I'll clear everything up tomorrow. They let test pilots get away with anything."
"I don't have time for this," Chloe said. She pushed herself from the couch. The gel sloshed back into its original, angular shape. "Back at the hangar, you told me you'd help me find my parents. That's the only reason I'm here. If you're gonna mess around with some stupid tournament, you can take your so-called help and shoot it out an airlock."
Rudy cocked his head. He seemed infuriatingly calm in the face of her tirade. "So where're you headed?"
"Um," said Chloe.
"Exactly." Rudy flicked an alcohol sphere toward her; she caught it instinctively. "See, the way I figure it, those bureaucrat-soldiers were after you, not your parents – right?"
Chloe nodded. She could buy somebody coming after her parents, but not with a Federal destroyer. The only member of her family who warranted such measures was the one with an Animus Hunter on her trail.
"So what's the rush? They won't leave this planet as long as they think you're here."
"What if they hurt Mom and Dad?"
"Unlikely. Their best bet is to make an exchange, or claim to set up an exchange and try to capture you. They could fake your parents' presence, but why bother when they have the real thing?" Rudy grinned. "Trust me, that bunch don't spend a dime more than they have to, and feeding prisoners is a pittance next to faking them."
"You're sure?"
"Positive. I went to six federally-sanctioned mechaneer academies, you know."
Chloe's eyes widened. She'd never heard of anyone going to more than one, especially not someone as young as Rudy appeared. If he was older than her, it couldn't be by much.
"Yep; you're looking at a pupil of the Etemenos Military Academy, the Imperial Institute for Space Tactics, the Algreil Devil Ray School of Martial Arts, the Federal Officer's Academy, the Federal Mechaneer Training Station, and the Fort Raypoint Academy." Though Rudy seemed to beam with pride, a trace of sarcasm glinted in his eyes.
Chloe wondered if he was lying. "How did you manage to attend so many? And why did you go to both officer's and mechaneer's academies for the navy?"
Rudy shrugged. "I attended 'em all. Never said I graduated, now did I?"
That startled a laugh from Chloe. She immediately stifled it.
"You look a lot better when you smile," Rudy said. "Maybe I'll rethink that 'leggy noble' bit…"
Chloe's face fell. She looked away.
She flinched when his hand closed on her shoulder. She hadn't even heard him approach.
He said, "Hey, I was only kidding."
"I know," she whispered. "But I've got no right to be happy. This is all my fault. If I'd –"
"If you'd done something different, something different would've happened. Maybe your parents walk away home free and nobody ever catches you and we all live happily ever after. It could happen."
Chloe nodded miserably.
"On the other hand, maybe you get caught and whoever catches you decides to just off your parents to cover his tracks. After all, he won't need 'em as bait since he already has you, and a couple with a kidnapped daughter could raise quite a stink on election day."
Such a scenario hadn't occurred to Chloe. "Who would do something like that?"
"An Animus Hunter, for one. You think those bastards keep their legendary status by leaving a bunch of loose ends?"
"Guess not."
"Definitely not," Rudy said. "Fact is, your best bet is to wait and watch. Those guys probably expect you to do something dumb – which you would have, if not for my expert advice – so they won't take a hard line. While they're snooping around, we'll keep our eyes peeled."
"Won't they recognize me, though?"
Rudy clasped both her shoulders and turned her to face him. His eyes glinted with mischief. "Not for long."
Chapter 6: Detainment
New
Chapter 6: Detainment
"I've got rights, dammit! I'm a citizen of the Federated Stars – a Civil War vet!"
A man in a masked, unmarked white flight suit leaned back in the chair ahead of Jack. "On which side?"
His four buddies, all similarly attired, thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard.
Jack gritted his teeth.
He sat in a plush, comfortable seat that, unlike most of the comfortable seats he'd ever sat in, felt like real leather rather than reactive gel. A sleek passenger shuttle surrounded him. Two lines, one blue, one red, streaked the white carpet, repeated on the overhead compartments.
Jack hadn't seen Ellie since the attack. He figured she been placed in the rear section. Treated like cargo.
Dammit!
If Jack had been manacled, he would have tried to strangle one of his captors. No such luck. Rather than shackle their captives, the white-suited men had injected them with Limiters. If Jack tried to take aggressive action, the nanomachines would flood his brain with enough endorphins to leave him in a grinning stupor.
The Federal Senate had issued a blanket ban on Limiters with more than a 24-hour duration. Assuming whoever had captured the crew of the Mother Goose played by the rules, Jack would either get out from under their nanomechanical thumb or get another dose.
He expected the latter.
Thankfully – or maybe not – the Limiters didn't stop him from getting angry or complaining. The more potent varieties he remembered from the Civil War kept a tighter leash. He said, "Where the hell are you taking us, anyway?"
The guards ignored him.
Jack sighed.
He wondered who his captors were. They didn't look or act like Feds. Too well dressed, too well equipped, too well trained. He'd offered to pay, with interest, the Mother Goose's monthly mortgage, but they'd laughed him off, so they weren't debt collectors.
Then they'd asked about Chloe.
An Animus Hunter's personal retinue, maybe? Jack didn't know what kind of support the shadowy psychic hunters needed or got.
He wished he'd gotten a better look at the captors' boss, or at least his mecha. By the time he and Ellie realized they were under attack, the enemy machine had blocked the rear hatch from opening and sent bully boys in through the main hatch, avoiding half the ship's external cameras and covering up the other half. Jack hadn't exactly studied the technical specifications the Goose displayed, not when he'd been busy going for a gun and a defensive position. Something about the mecha stuck in his mind, though.
It hardly mattered. Any military-grade machine could have ripped through Goslings One through Three. Jack had surrendered as soon as he realized how pointless resisting was.
Jack and Ellie didn't say a word about Chloe, of course. No way in hell were they gonna turn her over to these goons.
Trouble was, if 'these goons' had Limiters, they had similar nanomachines to uncover the information they wanted. Maybe Jack, with a military mechaneer's training and psychological conditioning, could resist their probes, though he doubted it. Ellie? No chance.
He was glad Chloe hadn't gotten back before the attack, but he wondered why. Had she gotten lost? Decided to strike off on her own?
Or had their captors picked her up with a second team?
He wanted so bad to pull his flight suit's mask up and call her – but he couldn't. Whoever had captured him and Ellie would sure as hell be able to trace whatever response Chloe gave.
All Jack could do was hope.
If he'd failed Chloe, too…
He shook his head. Maybe he'd failed and maybe he hadn't. He'd gotten captured by nobs once, during the Civil War. Spent all of a week in their holding camp before he took advantage of an Oligarchical raid to break out. Catching Jack Hughes might well prove easier than keeping him.
Of course, he hadn't had a wife or daughter to worry about the last time. The only guys who'd made a break for it with him were other mechaneers or naval men, all of whom were expected to take care of themselves.
No point in giving up, though.
He had to assume Chloe was free. If so, she'd surely try some damn fool scheme to rescue the rest of her family.
He had an obligation to escape, if only to stop her.
No…
He had an obligation to make sure somebody escaped.
He gave the shuttle's passenger compartment another glance. It didn't look like a military design. Way too posh and comfortable. He wasn't surprised. The Federal Senate frowned on the use of military forces in the atmospheres of its member planets. Gave the wrong impression about the 'peace and equality of the galaxy.'
The shuttle also wasn't headed for orbit. The sky outside stayed the same uniform blue.
Jack figured he and Ellie were bound for some kind of drop point, maybe a disguised civilian building used for black ops or police work. The guards might not all stick around for fear of drawing attention. If they trusted the Limiters to protect them, they might leave a real skeleton crew, just one or two guys.
The thought brought a grim smile to Jack's face.
Limiters were powerful things, but they weren't perfect. They didn't respond to thoughts, just to changes in brain chemistry – changes that, in a disciplined mind, could lag whole seconds behind thought and action. Jack knew a few tricks to let him get off at least one or two blows.
Have to make sure he only needed one or two.
Have to hope Limiters hadn't improved since the Civil War.
Once the guards were down, it didn't matter if Jack saw the world through an endorphin haze for a few hours. He trusted Ellie to get herself safely away. Maybe, just maybe, to lead him out, too, though he considered his own escape optional.
He felt downright confident about the plan when he felt the shuttle's thrusters flare below him, then fizzle to a halt as it settled onto a landing pad.
"Up," said one of the guards. "You've got a meeting to attend."
"That's too bad, guys." Jack flashed a grin. "You know, it's the damndest thing, but I just remembered I left my notes at home. Why don't you just let me head on back and pick 'em up. You won't even know I'm gone."
The guard's mask twisted as he scowled. "Get moving, wise guy."
"You know what your problem is?" Jack rose while he talked and started toward the hatch at the front of the compartment. All he wanted was to keep the guards distracted so he could scope the area. "You guys work too hard. If I were on a gorgeous planet like this, you can bet your ass I wouldn't be slaving away at some kinda nine to five job."
"We're on call exactly as long as it takes to get you to your meeting," the guard said.
"Huh," said Jack. So they trusted some other security system, probably electronic. He suppressed his grin. "Sounds like a pretty sweet package. Where do you get perks like that, anyway? Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work here?"
"Just shut up and fall in."
Jack shut up and fell in. He'd learned enough about his captors just from the few taunts he'd thrown. Now he needed time to absorb the information.
He surveyed the landing pad. They seemed to have ended up on some kind of private dock, a platform with only half-pipe highways linking it to its neighbors – wherever they were. Everything on Wellach floated above or within its world-spanning ocean. All the commercial centers were linked by gravlev trains, but not this arcology. It floated far enough off the beaten path he couldn't see any other platforms. One large building, easily big enough to swallow a dozen Mother Geese, and a trio of outbuildings of about a tenth its size, rose from the plate. Despite its scale and isolation, it didn't much look like a military base. It had the same posh appearance as the shuttle.
Jack glanced over his shoulder, saw a pair of their captors lead Ellie down a second ramp.
"You okay, Hon?" Jack called.
Ellie didn't answer. She stared at the waves sloshing against the edges of the platform, a blank smile on her face.
"Hon…?"
"The felid is subject to heavier Limiters," the guard Jack had needled before said.
"You son of a –!" Jack choked back his curse and clenched his fists to his sides. Not yet. He couldn't make his move yet. "If Ellie's hurt, I'll make sure you regret being the one to hurt her."
"Nobody's been hurt." The voice, icy cool, cocky and familiar, came from behind Jack. "Nor has your property suffered serious damage."
Jack turned, slowly, to face the speaker.
He knew he wasn't gonna escape.
He should've known by the electric blue and red stripes of the shuttle's carpet.
He was surprised how little the lean, almost skinny man had changed. He looked older than he had during the Civil War, his face a bit stronger and marked by a few lines here and there, and he wore a groundling-style suit with only a red-and-blue harlequin tie to bring to mind his old flight suit. But he had the same shit-eating grin, the same half-squint, smirking electric blue eyes, the same strawberry blonde hair, even, improbably, something of the same boyish good looks. Of course, he'd been little more than a kid back in the day, so he had an excuse to look young.
"It's good to see you again, Colonel Hughes," once-Commodore Otto Aber Algreil said.
"I've got rights, dammit! I'm a citizen of the Federated Stars – a Civil War vet!"
A man in a masked, unmarked white flight suit leaned back in the chair ahead of Jack. "On which side?"
His four buddies, all similarly attired, thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard.
Jack gritted his teeth.
He sat in a plush, comfortable seat that, unlike most of the comfortable seats he'd ever sat in, felt like real leather rather than reactive gel. A sleek passenger shuttle surrounded him. Two lines, one blue, one red, streaked the white carpet, repeated on the overhead compartments.
Jack hadn't seen Ellie since the attack. He figured she been placed in the rear section. Treated like cargo.
Dammit!
If Jack had been manacled, he would have tried to strangle one of his captors. No such luck. Rather than shackle their captives, the white-suited men had injected them with Limiters. If Jack tried to take aggressive action, the nanomachines would flood his brain with enough endorphins to leave him in a grinning stupor.
The Federal Senate had issued a blanket ban on Limiters with more than a 24-hour duration. Assuming whoever had captured the crew of the Mother Goose played by the rules, Jack would either get out from under their nanomechanical thumb or get another dose.
He expected the latter.
Thankfully – or maybe not – the Limiters didn't stop him from getting angry or complaining. The more potent varieties he remembered from the Civil War kept a tighter leash. He said, "Where the hell are you taking us, anyway?"
The guards ignored him.
Jack sighed.
He wondered who his captors were. They didn't look or act like Feds. Too well dressed, too well equipped, too well trained. He'd offered to pay, with interest, the Mother Goose's monthly mortgage, but they'd laughed him off, so they weren't debt collectors.
Then they'd asked about Chloe.
An Animus Hunter's personal retinue, maybe? Jack didn't know what kind of support the shadowy psychic hunters needed or got.
He wished he'd gotten a better look at the captors' boss, or at least his mecha. By the time he and Ellie realized they were under attack, the enemy machine had blocked the rear hatch from opening and sent bully boys in through the main hatch, avoiding half the ship's external cameras and covering up the other half. Jack hadn't exactly studied the technical specifications the Goose displayed, not when he'd been busy going for a gun and a defensive position. Something about the mecha stuck in his mind, though.
It hardly mattered. Any military-grade machine could have ripped through Goslings One through Three. Jack had surrendered as soon as he realized how pointless resisting was.
Jack and Ellie didn't say a word about Chloe, of course. No way in hell were they gonna turn her over to these goons.
Trouble was, if 'these goons' had Limiters, they had similar nanomachines to uncover the information they wanted. Maybe Jack, with a military mechaneer's training and psychological conditioning, could resist their probes, though he doubted it. Ellie? No chance.
He was glad Chloe hadn't gotten back before the attack, but he wondered why. Had she gotten lost? Decided to strike off on her own?
Or had their captors picked her up with a second team?
He wanted so bad to pull his flight suit's mask up and call her – but he couldn't. Whoever had captured him and Ellie would sure as hell be able to trace whatever response Chloe gave.
All Jack could do was hope.
If he'd failed Chloe, too…
He shook his head. Maybe he'd failed and maybe he hadn't. He'd gotten captured by nobs once, during the Civil War. Spent all of a week in their holding camp before he took advantage of an Oligarchical raid to break out. Catching Jack Hughes might well prove easier than keeping him.
Of course, he hadn't had a wife or daughter to worry about the last time. The only guys who'd made a break for it with him were other mechaneers or naval men, all of whom were expected to take care of themselves.
No point in giving up, though.
He had to assume Chloe was free. If so, she'd surely try some damn fool scheme to rescue the rest of her family.
He had an obligation to escape, if only to stop her.
No…
He had an obligation to make sure somebody escaped.
He gave the shuttle's passenger compartment another glance. It didn't look like a military design. Way too posh and comfortable. He wasn't surprised. The Federal Senate frowned on the use of military forces in the atmospheres of its member planets. Gave the wrong impression about the 'peace and equality of the galaxy.'
The shuttle also wasn't headed for orbit. The sky outside stayed the same uniform blue.
Jack figured he and Ellie were bound for some kind of drop point, maybe a disguised civilian building used for black ops or police work. The guards might not all stick around for fear of drawing attention. If they trusted the Limiters to protect them, they might leave a real skeleton crew, just one or two guys.
The thought brought a grim smile to Jack's face.
Limiters were powerful things, but they weren't perfect. They didn't respond to thoughts, just to changes in brain chemistry – changes that, in a disciplined mind, could lag whole seconds behind thought and action. Jack knew a few tricks to let him get off at least one or two blows.
Have to make sure he only needed one or two.
Have to hope Limiters hadn't improved since the Civil War.
Once the guards were down, it didn't matter if Jack saw the world through an endorphin haze for a few hours. He trusted Ellie to get herself safely away. Maybe, just maybe, to lead him out, too, though he considered his own escape optional.
He felt downright confident about the plan when he felt the shuttle's thrusters flare below him, then fizzle to a halt as it settled onto a landing pad.
"Up," said one of the guards. "You've got a meeting to attend."
"That's too bad, guys." Jack flashed a grin. "You know, it's the damndest thing, but I just remembered I left my notes at home. Why don't you just let me head on back and pick 'em up. You won't even know I'm gone."
The guard's mask twisted as he scowled. "Get moving, wise guy."
"You know what your problem is?" Jack rose while he talked and started toward the hatch at the front of the compartment. All he wanted was to keep the guards distracted so he could scope the area. "You guys work too hard. If I were on a gorgeous planet like this, you can bet your ass I wouldn't be slaving away at some kinda nine to five job."
"We're on call exactly as long as it takes to get you to your meeting," the guard said.
"Huh," said Jack. So they trusted some other security system, probably electronic. He suppressed his grin. "Sounds like a pretty sweet package. Where do you get perks like that, anyway? Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work here?"
"Just shut up and fall in."
Jack shut up and fell in. He'd learned enough about his captors just from the few taunts he'd thrown. Now he needed time to absorb the information.
He surveyed the landing pad. They seemed to have ended up on some kind of private dock, a platform with only half-pipe highways linking it to its neighbors – wherever they were. Everything on Wellach floated above or within its world-spanning ocean. All the commercial centers were linked by gravlev trains, but not this arcology. It floated far enough off the beaten path he couldn't see any other platforms. One large building, easily big enough to swallow a dozen Mother Geese, and a trio of outbuildings of about a tenth its size, rose from the plate. Despite its scale and isolation, it didn't much look like a military base. It had the same posh appearance as the shuttle.
Jack glanced over his shoulder, saw a pair of their captors lead Ellie down a second ramp.
"You okay, Hon?" Jack called.
Ellie didn't answer. She stared at the waves sloshing against the edges of the platform, a blank smile on her face.
"Hon…?"
"The felid is subject to heavier Limiters," the guard Jack had needled before said.
"You son of a –!" Jack choked back his curse and clenched his fists to his sides. Not yet. He couldn't make his move yet. "If Ellie's hurt, I'll make sure you regret being the one to hurt her."
"Nobody's been hurt." The voice, icy cool, cocky and familiar, came from behind Jack. "Nor has your property suffered serious damage."
Jack turned, slowly, to face the speaker.
He knew he wasn't gonna escape.
He should've known by the electric blue and red stripes of the shuttle's carpet.
He was surprised how little the lean, almost skinny man had changed. He looked older than he had during the Civil War, his face a bit stronger and marked by a few lines here and there, and he wore a groundling-style suit with only a red-and-blue harlequin tie to bring to mind his old flight suit. But he had the same shit-eating grin, the same half-squint, smirking electric blue eyes, the same strawberry blonde hair, even, improbably, something of the same boyish good looks. Of course, he'd been little more than a kid back in the day, so he had an excuse to look young.
"It's good to see you again, Colonel Hughes," once-Commodore Otto Aber Algreil said.