Haywire (3 page)

Annoyance and joy ran through Shawn’s mind in equal amounts. He couldn’t believe their band had finally gotten a shot at playing on a stage as big as Minerva’s Den, but the fact that visiting his mom meant putting that off took some of the shine off the news.

Ilona’s eyes narrowed, and her plump lips screwed into a smirk, knowing what he’d be thinking before he did. “Please don’t use this as another reason to hate on your mom. We’re not playing there as quickly as we could have, but we’re still going to be playing. Besides, look at the bright side – we get a couple more weeks to practice. I’m sure your mom won’t mind if you take a few hours here and there to link up with us. Don’t look at how wrong things are, and look at what’s right.”

She was correct, of course, and his love for her grew a little more. He didn’t need to be positive when her positivity was enough for them both. He worried sometimes that his darker view on life would eventually drive her away, but whenever he said that she shook her head and told him that taking up his happy slack meant she got to be twice as cheerful, then she’d shut him up with a kiss. All things considered, he knew he was lucky.

“
Anyway, I better go. Call me when you get settled at your mom’s. I know you don’t want to be there, but try not to give her a hard time. This hasn’t been easy on anyone, including her. So get going, have fun, and be the good boy I know you are. I love you.”

The message closed with a brief burst of static, and a small bit of his happiness died when her image faded from view. They’d only been dating for a year, but she felt as much a part of him as his own hands, his lungs, his heart. He knew his parents didn’t believe the depth of his feelings for her – he could see the shadows of smirks when he talked about her – but he knew how he felt. Ilona was the woman he wanted to be with for the rest of his life. The fact that she could also sing like an angel was just the cherry on top.

Horns bolted to the ceiling above the baggage conveyors blurted out a short series of warning sounds, and the belt rumbled into motion. As bags appeared, people stepped forward and dragged their luggage away. It took a couple of minutes, but his eyes lit up as a long, flat case rolled into view. He grabbed it with greedy fingers when it came within reach.

The case didn’t look too worse for wear. After unlocking the combination latch he held his breath and lifted the lid. Inside, his guitar sat cradled in a molded velvet indention. The old-fashioned effects pedals – and really, the only way to go so far as he was concerned – were still strapped into place, and his extra strings were snuggled in their pouch. He checked the body of the guitar for any signs of abuse or damage, but everything looked okay. The neck was still tightly connected to the body, the head and tuning pegs were intact, and the Pao Ferro fretboard was in perfect condition. Thankful that it had made the trip in one piece, he shut the case, locked it, and made his way to customs, the final barrier between him and two weeks with his mother.

Callisto was an American Alliance territory, and Shawn – being from Mars – was a citizen of the Eurasian Union. Relations between the two governments wasn’t the warmest it had ever been, but he’d never had any problems getting through customs before, and he didn’t expect it to be any different now. If something had blown up since he’d left Mars, he figured he would have heard about it by now.

A customs officer sat behind a grimy window like a frog, his plump body packed inside a metal booth he barely fit into. The gray and green uniform stretched across his lumpy physique was ill-fitting too, and as he reached for Shawn’s passport through an opening at the bottom of the window he looked out with dour eyes that drooped at the corners.

“
What is your reason for traveling to Callisto?” The officer’s voice was monotone as he asked the question, which he probably repeated a hundred times a day. He barely looked up as he compared Shawn’s face to the image that appeared on his screen when the passport was inserted into a scanner.

“
I’m visiting my mom.”

The officer sniffed wetly into the back of his throat and pressed a button on his computer screen. “And who’s your mother?” As he asked the question he glanced at his screens, ready to compare what Shawn said against what was in the system, making sure all responses matched the transit documents. Shawn had gone through the process dozens of times before, and it never varied.

“
Doctor Alicia Campbell, director of the Groesbeck Museum.”

“
And how long will you be staying on Callisto?”

“
Too long.” The official glanced up and tossed him a
‘don’t screw with me’
look, so Shawn coughed and said, “Two weeks.”

“
Have you brought any organic substances with you? Fruits, meats, nuts?”

“
No.”

“
Do you have anything else to declare?”

“
Only that I can’t wait to go back home.”

The official withdrew Shawn’s passport from the scanner with a sigh, slapped a holographic stamp to one of its pages, and flicked it back under the window. “I can’t wait for you to go back home too, kid. You’re clear to enter Callisto. Next!”

Shawn gathered up his passport and tucked it into his pants pocket, looked at the doorway that led out of the spaceport, and wondered what was on the other side. Would she be there, a smile hammered into place and a hug he’d barely feel waiting for him, or would she do what she normally did and just send a driver to pick him up? Of the two options he didn’t know which he wanted more.

As he neared the exit, he changed his mind. The driver sounded better. At least then he wouldn’t have to endure her deficient mothering in public. Some things were just too much to bear.

“
Gimble, I know I said this before, but I think it bloody well bears repeating: they’re gaining on us!”

Alden Gimble snarled and pushed the throttle of his ship as far forward as it would go, clacking it against the metal stops. A weight pressed into his chest like the boot heel of God as the
Lady Godiva
rocketed forward. Bits of rock hurtled at him like cannon shot, but he knew the heavily mined asteroid belt offered better odds than those promised by the trio of pirate hunters chasing after them.

“
Is that better?” he asked through gritted teeth. Beads of sweat tumbled down his hairless head to sting his eyes. He flinched, then wiped his face and forehead clear with a sleeve already damp from perspiration.

Next to him, his crewmate Gavin Crowe stared at radar screens with rapt attention, his large eyes consumed by the readings on the displays. Gimble and Crowe had been friends and crewmates for years, each of them saving the other’s life more times than either could count. Their friendship was one of the few things in Gimble’s life that he valued. Considering they were the sole crew of the
Lady Godiv
a, it was fortunate they got along so well.

“
If that’s all she’s got, we’re both in for a bad end, ‘cause those Alliance ships are
not
giving up, nor are they slowing down.” Crowe’s waxen face was pale in the light of his screens.

Gimble flicked his eyes down to the small screen near his right knee and saw what Crowe meant. “Goddamn them. Then our only option is to fight.”

Crowe snickered.”You’re mad.”

“
What, you think the
Lady
can’t handle ‘em?”

“
One ship? Without doubt. Two? Perhaps. Three? We’d be flotsam before we hit the belt’s outer markers.”

Irritation curled Gimble’s upper lip. “Then what, pray tell, would you suggest?”

Crowe turned to the screen on his left and pressed a button, expanding their map of the local asteroid field. Near the upper right corner a blinking blue dot came into view. He tapped the dot with a ragged fingernail, then gave Gimble’s shoulder an excited jostle. “There’s what I call a port in the storm. If you would, turn us softly to starboard and bring up our nose.”

“
Would it be rude if I asked where we were going?”

Crowe turned and gave his friend a dark grin. “Vesta.”

A tingle of excitement lit up Gimble’s spine, and a dark sound rumbled in his throat that few would have recognized as the laugh it was. “Oh yes, that’ll do nicely.”

Gimble tilted his control stick and brought the ship around to a new heading. It took them deeper into the asteroid belt than he’d wanted to go, but Vesta was a busy little patch of space, and what better place to shake a hunter than to lose them in the crowd?

Soon small dots filled Crowe’s screens, each one a stray bit of rock and ice. Once upon a time, a person could have flown from Mars to Jupiter without fear of hitting a single pebble, but two centuries of frantic mining had changed all that. Some areas of the asteroid belt had been swept clear for commercial traffic, but large swaths of it were lousy with debris, and it took a skilled hand on the helm to navigate the wilds of it.

“
My sky is getting sorely crowded.” Gimble steered around two spinning boulders that easily would have crushed the ship had he been a second slower in his actions. Pings rattled against the ship’s hull like rain when smaller rocks pelted her, but the
Lady
shrugged them off. Her titanium skin had suffered worse.

Crowe huffed and shook his head. “I take comfort in knowing that what’s bad for us is worse for them and their big ships.”

In total agreement, Gimble edged around a group of rocks and dodged past another near collision. Suddenly two small asteroids hurtled at them from their port side too fast to avoid, so he flicked the gun toggle on his stick and sent streams of super-heated plasma hurling into the spinning rocks, breaking them into pieces too small to damage the hull. Once they were through the debris cloud, a massive round shape came into view, its dark surface blotched with craters and hastily erected buildings. Gimble couldn’t remember being so happy to see something so ugly in his whole life.

“
Ah, she is indeed a pretty sight, Crowe.”

Vesta’s colossal bulk dominated the space before them. At over five-hundred kilometers thick, it overshadowed everything around it. The only other object in the asteroid belt larger than it was Ceres, but Ceres was far away and no threat to its dominion.

Gimble watched a parade of lights float around the asteroid like flies buzzing over a fat carcass, each light a starship coming or going from dozens of mining sites littering the asteroid. “And how is the old girl? Busy this evening, I hope.”

Nodding, Crowe stared intently as his screens. Crowe did most things intently, and he took his job as navigator and radar operator with all the seriousness such a position demanded. “Plenty busy. Looks like a full load of ore is on its way out. That sort of traffic will muddy our wake nicely.”

Gimble steered the ship to port and pushed its nose downward, then glanced over at the screen near his right knee again. On it dozens of small dots streamed away from the mine opening closest to them, their flight path leading them to the Mars wormhole. A large metal ring surrounded the wormhole, its slow spin keeping the mouth of the conduit open. “Brilliant timing.”

Proximity alarms blared to sudden life, dousing the warming fire of his relief.

“
Those bloody Alliance bastards made it through the rocks.” Crowe growled low in his throat and banged his hands against his displays.

Gimble’s thumb hovered over the afterburner button on the side of his throttle for a moment as he considered how far they were from Vesta, how much fuel they had, and how close the pirate hunters were on their aft. The math wasn’t in their favor no matter which way he looked at it. He snarled as he activated the afterburner. “Let’s see just how committed those buggers really are to this chase.”

A stream of antimatter particles flooded into the nuclear reactor propelling the
Lady Godiva
through space, and his skin pulled taut across his face as their speed swiftly increased. His vision blurred, but he saw clearly enough to keep them headed toward the mining dock. A light on their communications panel blinked in angry flashes, but he ignored it.

Balls of plasma blasted away from the Alliance ships and slammed into the
Lady’s
outer hull. Dark marks scored the skin of the ship, but the ablative armor took the damage and held strong. Even so, Gimble winced. He knew the ship could take it, at least for a short time, but that didn’t dull his sympathy for her pain.

“
It’s alright, my love,” he whispered. “We’ll lose ‘em yet.”

“
I hope so, for all our sakes.” Crowe’s tone was less than sure.

“
Perhaps this will ease your mind a bit then.”

Gimble sent them into a tight roll, and the Alliance cannons, unprepared for the maneuver, shot harmlessly into space. He tilted the stick forward and to the right, and the ship responded by going into a spiraling dive toward Vesta, which now entirely filled their field of view.

The pirate hunters fired their cannons again, but the blasts narrowly missed the
Lady
as Gimble turned the stick to one side and then the other, changing her direction and heading in as unpredictable a manner as he could manage without losing total control.

“
That’s got ‘em.” Crowe bounced in his seat. “Cut across that mine’s docking outlet there and you should be able to–”