Alexander Outland: Space Pirate (22 page)

Lionside looked relieved. “So, is that Miss Slinkie behind you?”

“Let’s assume I’m not feeling chummy enough to confirm. What’s in this for you? Why are you talking to us and not arresting us?”

He glared at me. “I believe I mentioned my name comes from the ruling family of this planet, from centuries ago?”

“Yeah. I’m not big on royalty, titles, or authority, for that matter.”

“Yes, I know. However, I am. This is my planet, these are my people. I may only be a major, but the blood of this planet’s leaders runs in my veins. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some insurgent scum murder my people randomly simply because they want power and glory.”

I was almost impressed. He meant it. He meant every word. I really hoped I wasn’t going to have to implement any Hostage plan—Lionside was pure hero, meaning he’d take the shot to save the innocents. Which meant we’d be running or captured, because I had a hard time shooting most people in cold blood, heroes especially. Someone like Nitin was a different story, but he was as far away from hero as you could get.

“They want to rule the galaxy. And they’re part of the pirate armada.”

“How do you figure?”

“Control Herion Military, control the solar system. Control Herion Solar, control the entire Gamma Quadrant. Spread out, control all the Quadrants.”

“That’s why they have to be stopped, here, now.”

“Yeah, I’m picking that up.”

Lionside was looking at me and the area around me closely. “Ah, Almondinger, you’re alive and with Outland. Should I ask why?”

“Who are you talking to?” I hoped the kid would keep his mouth shut.

“Captain Almondinger, who is standing behind you.”

“Don’t know anybody by that name.”

Lionside seemed to be thinking. I was surprised that he could. “You’ve done your best to block him from me, much more than Miss Slinkie, which means you’re more afraid I’ll recognize him than her. So, since I know you were taken by Nitin against my orders, and I also know at least part of your crew were kidnapped with intent to kill, someone had to have helped you get out of Military HQ. It wasn’t Nitin or any of his men, and I’m only missing one man. So, what planet is the young man who’s been calling himself Captain Percy Almondinger actually from?”

“Aviatus.” Tanner stepped out from behind me. I was going to have to have a word with the kid about heroics and why they were bad. If he survived this incident. “I’m sorry, Major. I had to help them—they relate to my real mission.”

Lionside didn’t seem upset. At all. I’d heard steroids made you meaner, not placid, but maybe Herion steroids were different. “I understand. What should I really call you?”

“Almondinger’s still fine,” I said before Tanner could open his mouth again.

Lionside chuckled. “Fine, Captain Outland, I’ll play the game.” He looked serious again. “Are you actually going to stop these people, or just run away?”

“I’d love to say run away. It’s what I’d prefer to do. However, my impression is that we won’t have a chance to run. So, we’ll be
taking them out. Or dying. Not sure which yet, but if you’re a betting man, put the money on dying.”

He laughed. “Actually, I’m putting my money on you succeeding, Outland. Otherwise, I’d just kill you where you stand.”

I heard the unmistakable sound of guns cocking.

“S
o, now that your men are around us, what’s your real plan?”

Lionside put his hands up slowly. “Not my men.”

I resisted the urge to curse. Cursing on the public streets was a big no-no on Herion. I looked around. To see the Governor holding two large, nasty-looking laser shotguns. “I’ll take these miscreants off your hands.”

I jerked my head. “Get the kid inside.”

Slinkie grabbed Tanner and dragged him off to the tankfloater.

“Outland, what help can I give you?” Lionside sounded serious.

“Letting us take off safely would do for a start. Sending Herion Military cruisers with us would be better.”

“I wish I could.” Lionside’s voice was bitter. “But Nitin’s convinced Herion Political that we shouldn’t get involved.”

I was about to pursue this line of thought when the Governor barked. “Move it! Both of you, into the tank!” He backed up and wasn’t looking at us.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, Lionside, but come on. You get in the back.” I took one of the big guns from the Governor. “I’ll drive.”

“What a joy that will be. We need to hurry.”

I saw what the Governor had spotted—a platoon of Herion Military heading our way. I put my money on them being Nitin’s men.

Lionside shocked me to my core and got into the tank without argument, questions, or posturing. I almost hoped he’d try something sneaky so I could go back to hating him.

The Governor ran for the passenger’s seat. I covered him, then tossed the guns back to Slinkie, jumped into the driver’s seat, and took off. “How much charge left?”

“Enough. I kept it turned off most of the day.” The Governor fired out of the window as I floored it and the tank sped off.

“Those could be my men,” Lionside said mildly while the Governor sent out a steady stream of laser fire.

“They aren’t.” The Governor sounded like he was enjoying himself. “Unless your men work for Nitin.”

“Shoot to kill, sir,” Lionside said cheerfully.

“He’s growing on me, Alexander.”

“Thanks for that. I’ll try not to let it shatter my self-esteem.” The positive of being in a tankfloater was that it was hard to get hurt when you were inside of one. The negative was that it was hard to go fast. We were moving at a decent pace for a low-stress situation, but not fast enough for hot pursuit. Even on foot Nitin’s goons probably had a good shot at catching us.

“Head down this street.” Lionside pointed. “We have no military there at the moment.” I turned. He was right, we were reasonably alone.

“I think we need to bring Major Lionside along.”

“Governor, it’s official. You’ve gone senile.”

“Alexander, they’ll kill him if we leave him on Herion.”

“What’s your point?”

“I might be able to help you, Outland.”

“By trying to run my show?”

“No. The captain is the ruler of his ship. I, perhaps more than many others, understand that.”

“Who’ll take care of things down here?” It was feeble, even I had
to admit that, but it was worth a shot.

“Someone else.” Lionside sighed. “I’d love to tell you I could get things under control here. But I know better. Nitin’s got too much power, and I have too little.”

I was amazed he’d admitted that. “You’re really from Herion? All the way through?”

“All the way through. We weren’t always under martial law, you know.” He sounded sad. Great. Another one. I wasn’t going to like Lionside, either. It was going to be easier to keep hating him, though, than it had been to hate Tanner. I knew Lionside still had the big lust going for Slinkie.

We had a barricade ahead of us. “Lionside, why did you send us this way?”

He sighed. “It was our best escape option.”

“Right. It’s our best get captured option, you mean.”

“Well, we’re in a ’floater, Outland. Surely you can fly it.”

We were a lot closer to the barricade. No worries, Lionside was right. I’d just go airborne for a ways and then go back to low profile. I hit the airborne button. Nothing happened. “Ah, Governor? I thought you said you’d kept the charge up.”

“I did. I sat there in the heat of the day, broiling with no cooling on, waiting for you to finish playing around.” He was back to peevish. Wonderful.

“Tanner! Kid, pull it together. Why aren’t we going up in the air like I want to?” We were now very close to the barricade.

“Hit the button.”

“I did.”

“No, I mean really hit it.”

I slammed my fist on the airborne button. The tankfloater coughed and rose up from the ground. We just cleared the barricade, meaning we were, perhaps, five feet off the ground. “Why isn’t it going up any higher, Tanner?”

“We’re overloaded.”

“How can that be? It’s a tankfloater! It’s supposed to hold more
people and weapons than we have.”

Lionside cleared his throat. “If Tanner, as you’re calling him, took this from where I presume he did, it’s one of our, shall we say, less effective engine models.”

“What, in plain language, does that mean?” We were over a huge hole. I’d somehow driven us not to the spaceport but to the center of Herion’s urban renewal project. The hole looked deep as well as wide.

“It means we need to land very soon or blow up.”

“I
’m wide open to suggestions.” I didn’t see anywhere to land that wouldn’t result in our blowing up anyway.

“Just go down,” Lionside said, voice all calm authority. “It’ll be fine.”

“Really? Because I’m so not fine with dying.” I didn’t see any options, and the tankfloater was starting to shudder in that way a vehicle will when it wants to let you know it’s not happy and is about to share that unhappiness with its occupants.

“This work is being done on the sewer lines.” Lionside said that as if it were no big deal.

“Close the windows!” Tanner, Slinkie and I shouted in unison.

“No need to give in to hysterics,” Lionside said.

“We finally don’t stink,” Slinkie snarled. “Close the windows, batten the hatches, do whatever we have to in order to stay that way.”

“What Slinkie said. Only more so. Governor, while I’m keeping us from crash-landing, see if you can find something that gives us some sort of extra protection against seepage.”

“There.” Lionside pointed to some buttons. The Governor pushed them all. A couple he had to hit. One Lionside had to reach through from the back and slam. The last button was engaged as the wheels hit the ground. Or what was passing for ground down here.

There’s a way vehicles drive when they’re on a substance that’s less than firm. The tankfloater was driving this way, only to a huge degree. It’s hard for a big, lumbering tank to drive “squishy,” but it was doing a stellar job of it.

“Lionside, where are we?”

“Inside the main sewage pipe. It had some corrosion that was causing problems. We went through the hole in the pipe.”

“That was some hole.”

“It was some corrosion.”

“I’ll take your word on it. Where are we heading?”

“Main sewage shaft leads to the reclamation plant.”

“Wonderful. How do we not go there?”

“We should hit a fork in the tunnel. When we do, take the left side. It leads to the spaceport.”

Whatever Lionside and the Governor had engaged was working. I didn’t smell anything horrible, and we were still dry inside. This was good, because we weren’t dry outside. I had to put on the wipers. What they were wiping was best left unsaid. Forever.

“Nap, how are we going to get out of this thing?” Slinkie sounded beyond repulsed. I could hear Tanner gagging in the background.

“You two need to stop looking out the windows. And, Tanner? Be glad the Governor’s got shotgun this time.” The old geezer wasn’t fazed at all by our little sewage swim. I guess the daily prune diet made him appreciate what he had to work to create.

We sludged to the fork and I managed to turn the tank. We weren’t going very fast, but I had to figure no one but the most insane or dedicated would be following us. Our destination couldn’t be hard to guess.

“Do we have any radio communication in this thing?”

“I have a universal communicator, Outland. Who are you trying to reach?”

“Well, I’d like to know who’s after us, what’s going on aboveground, and, should we be able to connect via a private, non-monitored, non-bugged channel, I’d like to talk to my ship.”

I heard background noise now. It wasn’t too loud, but I could make out voices, mostly because they all seemed to be shouting. Lionside listened while we sludged along. “No survivors from the nightclub explosion.” He sounded angry, but went on. “No casualties at the bath house explosion.”

“We could have told you that.”

“Do you not want the communications, Outland, or is it simply impossible for you not to make a comment?”

“Oh,
so
sorry. Didn’t mean to rain on your official parade, Lionside.”

“I hope we find rain when we’re out of this crap.”

“Hush, Slinkie. Lionside wants to relay information.”

“Hilarious. Sewage plant is still secure. Spaceport is still under sewage lockdown.”

I didn’t cheer. I figured it would come off as conceited. Besides, I knew how the cosmos liked to work. If I mentioned my superior plan, something would come along to ruin it.

“Huh.” Lionside sounded confused. “That’s odd.”

“What’s odd?”

“There’s a… stampede?”

I let that one sit for a moment. “Stampede? Something’s stampeding in Spaceport City?”

“Apparently yes.” Lionside listened some more. “Interesting. It’s a huge herd of donkeys. Causing quite a ruckus. Can’t be shot, which makes it difficult.”

“Why can’t they be shot?” I thought about Ol’ Temper. I was willing to shoot that donkey. Couldn’t imagine why anyone else would have a problem with it. Other than, perhaps, Jabbob. Got an uneasy feeling.

“They’re our planetary symbol. The hardworking donkey that overcomes obstacles to survive?” Lionside sounded annoyed.

“Oh. I thought Herion’s symbol was an ass. That always made more sense to me.”

“Donkey. Not ass.” Lionside now sounded offended.

“Then why aren’t you called Donkeyside or something? If your name used to be held by the rulers?” I resisted asking why he wasn’t called Asseside, but it took all my self-control.

“Alexander, can we discuss heraldry and heritage another time?” The Governor sounded as uneasy as I felt. Either he was worried about who was leading the herd or he knew what I was thinking. Possibly both. “Major, is there anyone with the herd?”