Escape (15 page)

And then the alarms were back
—
blaat, blaat, BLAAT!
—
piercing through his eardrums and stabbing into his brain. The flashing red lights returned, too. Kieran winced and pressed a hand to his forehead.

“Your test appears to have worked,” the captain observed.

“I guess so.” Mister X. sounded surprised.

“So, what now?” Brathus demanded. “If you were able to disable it temporarily, shouldn't you be able to disable it permanently?”

“Well, yes
—
” The boy's eyes flicked nervously to the captain's smiling face. “
—
and no. Not from this control station. I need
 
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a remote access point, off-station. The lockdown was designed to be shut off from a distance.”

The captain's head cocked curiously to one side. “Is that true?”

All eyes turned to the boy slicer. He swallowed noisily and ran a hand through his long, greasy black hair. “We're going to need to disable the lockdown from one of the ships docked here. That shadow-class corvette will be the easiest, since it will have the most advanced computer systems.”

The captain's gaze slid sideways, to the officer
—
a cadet
—
who had been manning the control station before the boy. “Is that true?” he asked again.

“Go to the Infernal, you filthy
—
” The officer broke off abruptly, his face twisting in agony. He squinted his eyes tightly shut and pressed his hands to his temples. His mouth opened in a silent scream. When the imposter captain looked away, the cadet’s eyes slowly opened and his hands fell to his sides. His shoulders hunched, and his gaze dropped to the floor. Kieran noticed a slow trickle of blood running from one of the cadet's ears.

“Insubordination.” The captain shook his smiling head. “I will deal with it later.”

Kieran's entire party, Kieran included, was staring wide-eyed at the captain.
What the kefick was that?
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, the boy stood up from the station administrator's desk, zipped up his backpack, and slung it across his shoulders. He left the interrupter wired into the top of the control station.

“So, how about it, Cappy?” the boy said, his eyes on the imposter. “You going to show us to that corvette of ours so we can finish the job, or should we show ourselves there?”

“Follow me,” the captain said. He began walking back down the aisle to the lift tube. Kieran's group trailed behind, with Garlan keeping point and Brathus falling into the rearguard position.

As the lift tube doors were closing behind them, Kieran turned to look at the scene in the control room. Everything appeared to be normal
—
as normal as it had been, anyway. Then, a split-second before the doors shut completely, Kieran noticed something he hadn't seen before. The room was full of dust, swirling and eddying through the air
—
intermittently revealed and then hidden again by the flashing emergency lights. Kieran frowned, unsure what to make of it except that someone had neglected to clean the room for a very long time.

The trip back to the airlocks was uneventful. When they reached the airlock where the corvette was docked, Kieran stepped in front of the docking tube, blocking the entrance. From there he turned to address his group.

“Brathus
—
”

“Yeah, what's the holdup?”

“I need you and Garlan to take our rented transport back to
The Corollary
.”

Brathus's brow fell in a dark shadow across his eyes that blinked
—
black, red, black, red
—
with the flashing emergency lights. “So you can run off with the prize?” He shook his head. “Nothin’ doin’, Chief.”

“Dimmi can accompany the boy and me in the corvette, as your insurance policy. We're both unarmed. With her there, there's no way we could double-cross you
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Unless you think she can’t handle us.”

Dimmi took an indignant step toward the docking tube that Kieran was blocking. “Don't worry, Brathus. I can take care of them
—
if I have to.” It sounded like she'd added that last part as an afterthought, like she was planning to
take care of them
whether they tried something or not.

The imposter captain was watching the confrontation with a smile.

“I'd like some added insurance, just in case,” Brathus said.

Kieran nodded. “My flitter is still docked at
The Corollary
. Check the registration. That will give you my name and address.”

Brathus gave a slow, predatory smile and arched one eyebrow. “So we can hunt you down if you try to kefick with us.”

“Don't worry,” the imposter captain interrupted, speaking to Brathus. “He isn't planning to double-cross you. He's just concerned that you will double-cross him.” The captain turned to Kieran. “A valid concern, I'm afraid.”

Kieran's eyebrows elevated slowly.

Brathus looked from Kieran to the captain and back again, his green eyes suspiciously narrowed. “Whatever,” he said. “Watch him, Dimmi. We won't leave until you give us the all-clear from the corvette.”

Kieran reached into his flight suit's pocket and tossed the transport's ignition chip to Brathus. But it was Garlan who snatched it out of the air.

“Thanks, Chief,” Brathus said. He and Garlan turned and started walking down the corridor to the docking tube where the transport was.

“Shall we?” the captain said, gesturing to the docking tube that Kieran was blocking.

Kieran nodded and started down the docking tube. The captain was waiting for the others to enter the tube. The boy slicer did so, but Dimmi was waiting right there with him.

“After you, Captain,” she said.

He spent a moment favoring her with his disconcerting smile. “As you wish.” And with that, he started down the docking tube.

When they reached the end, Kieran hesitated before the airlock doors, waiting for the captain to punch in the security code. Without being asked, the imposter stepped up to the control panel, punched in a sequence of letters and numbers, and the doors immediately slid open.
So he knows
that
code,
Kieran thought. He was surprised. He had expected the captain to feign memory loss and ask Mister X. to slice through the doors’ security.

Could the corvette actually belong to the terrorists?
Only if it were stolen,
Kieran decided. Shadow-class corvettes had been exclusively designed for the Sentinels. The shadow class was renowned for its advanced stealth and sensor systems, and those systems made shadow-class corvettes dangerous and highly-coveted ships for anyone trying to elude detection. It was tough to imagine anyone getting away with stealing one.

So maybe it was an inside job?
Maybe the captain really is an UBER officer. That would explain the uniforms
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

But it was unlikely that even UBER would have one of the corvettes.

The captain led the way through the airlock and into the ship; they followed. The lights came on automatically inside the ship. Immediately after the airlock, they were confronted by two separate corridors, one curving around to the left, the other curving around to the right. Dead ahead, between the two corridors, there was a door with the words
Hangar Deck
embossed into it.

Kieran grinned as he, Dimmi, and Mister X. followed the captain down the left corridor.
A hangar!
It was practically his dream ship; it even had room for a couple interceptors
—
or maybe one highly modified fighter.
It was just a pity he couldn't afford to keep the ship. He had promised to pay his crew with the proceeds from selling the corvette
—
not to mention that he would never get away with flying around in a ship that was meant to be exclusive Union property.

As they walked down the corridor, they walked past a number of closed doors. A few of them were conspicuously recessed at the end of short corridors.
Gun turrets,
Kieran guessed. The corridor ended, and they passed through a wide-open space that was unadorned by any frills. Near the center of the room was a table with a dozen chairs and a holoprojector for a centerpiece. The space probably did double duty
—
briefing room and mess hall. Along the sides of the room were viewports with reasonably comfortable-looking chairs arrayed beneath. On one side the viewports showed the side of the seraphim-class yacht docked beside the corvette, and on the other side, an uninteresting view of the station. Kieran guessed that the viewports were holoscreens rather than actual viewports.

Finally, they came to the cockpit of the ship. There was room for a pilot and copilot, with two other stations besides. Four crew just to properly pilot the ship. Kieran's eyes skipped around the cockpit, greedily taking in the shiny, black masser-hide flight chairs, the muted blue and green glow of the control screens
—
the semicircular arc of transpiranium, aerodynamically swept back from the rounded prow of the ship, looking out at the solid rock walls of the asteroid.

The captain had stopped behind the rearmost pair of chairs and was gesturing for Mister X. to take his place in one of them. Dimmi was keeping a careful eye on the captain from the entrance to the cockpit. Her hands were dangling loosely at her sides, with inconvenient reach of her two plasma pistols.

The boy shrugged out of his backpack and quietly took a seat where the captain had indicated. After a few minutes of pounding keys at the station, and manipulating holograms with impatient gestures, the boy nodded and turned to Kieran.

“Lockdown disabled.”

The captain nodded and turned to Kieran. “You've done your part. As promised, you may take this ship as payment.”

“That's it?” Dimmi asked, frowning from the entrance to the cockpit. “You're not going to verify that we've actually disabled the lockdown?”

The captain turned a broader-than-usual grin upon Dimmi. “I trust you.”

Turning back to Kieran, he reached into the inside pocket of his captain's jacket
—

“Hey!” Dimmi was holding one of her pistols two-handed, the barrel aimed at the captain's head, and the red dot of a laser sight on his forehead before Kieran realized she had even made a move. “Nice and slow, okay?”

The captain obliged smilingly, and his hand reemerged from his jacket holding a pair of ignition chips. He opened his palm for everyone to see them clearly, eyebrows patiently raised at Dimmi. Her expression of alarm faded to a frown.

“I'll take those,” she said, taking a careful step forward, one hand reaching, the other keeping her aim steady on the captain's forehead.

“One
—
” Kieran snatched one of the ignition chips from the captain before Dimmi could take them both. “
—
of those.”

Dimmi turned her frown upon him as she took the other ignition chip. “Fine,” she replied, pocketing the chip. She stepped aside from the entrance to the cockpit, and gestured sideways with her pistol. “I believe that concludes our business together, captain creepy.”

“I'll show myself out,” the captain said, his smile not flickering as he walked past Dimmi.

“By no means,” she replied with false geniality. “I'll escort you.”

“As you wish,” the captain replied, not bothering to turn around.

Kieran watched them go, absently turning the ignition chip over and over in his hand.
Captain creepy
 
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.
that's for sure
 
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“Kieran.” The boy spoke so softly, that Kieran almost didn't hear him. He turned to the boy just as Dimmi and the captain disappeared down the right-hand corridor of the pair which wound from the common area through the aft quarters of the ship.

“What's up, Mister X.?”

The boy's eyes were wide and frightened. “Did you notice something strange when we were in the control tower?”

Kieran frowned. “I noticed a lot of strange things. Which one in particular are you thinking of?”

“That
 
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captain called Brathus by his name.”

“So?”

“So
 
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” The boy leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially: “We skipped the introductions, remember?”