Scarlet (10 page)

Cinder glanced up at the seam in the middle of the ceiling. “That’s convenient.”

“And there she is.”

Cinder followed Thorne’s gesture. His ship was larger than she’d expected—much larger. A 214 Rampion, Class 11.3 cargo ship. Cinder pulled up her retina scanner and downloaded the ship’s blueprint, speechless at everything it could claim. The engine room and a fully stocked dock with two satellite podships took up the underbelly, while the main level housed the cargo bay, cockpit, galley kitchen, six crew quarters, and a shared washroom.

She rounded to the main entry hatch and saw that the seal of the American Republic had been hastily painted over with the silhouette of a lounging naked lady.

“Nice touch.”

“Thanks. Did it myself.”

Despite her worries that the painting could make them more easily identified, she couldn’t help being faintly impressed. “It’s bigger than I expected.”

“There was a time when she housed a twelve-man crew,” Thorne said, petting her hull.

“Should be plenty of room for avoiding each other then.” Cinder paced beneath the hatch, waiting for Thorne to open it, but when she glanced back she found him lovingly rubbing his temple against the ship’s underside and cooing about how much he’d missed her.

Cinder was in the middle of rolling her eyes when an unfamiliar voice ricocheted through the warehouse. “Over here!”

Turning, she saw someone crouched over Alak’s body, haloed in a square of light. They wore the unmistakable uniform of the Eastern Commonwealth military.

Cinder swore. “Time to go.
Now.
”

Thorne ducked toward the hatch. “Rampion, code word: Captain is king. Open hatch.”

They waited, but nothing happened.

Cinder raised panicked eyebrows.

“Captain is king. Captain is king! Rampion, wake up. It’s Thorne, Captain Carswell Thorne. What the—”

Cinder shushed him. Beyond the ship’s hull, four men were making their way through the crowded warehouse, flashlights shining off the assorted landing gear.

“Maybe the power cell is dead,” said Cinder.

“How? It’s just been sitting here.”

“Did you leave the headlights on?” she snapped.

Thorne harrumphed and crouched against the ship. Footsteps grew louder.

“Or it could be the auto-control system,” Cinder mused, racking her brain. She’d never worked on anything larger than a podship before, but how different could they be? “Do you have the override key?”

He blinked at her. “Yeah, let me just pull it out of my prison-issued pocket and we’ll be on our way.”

Cinder glared, but was silent as an officer passed two aisles away.

“Stay here,” she whispered. “Keep trying to get in and take off as fast as possible.”

“Where are you going?”

Without answering, she slinked around the side of the ship, a blueprint already streaming to her retina display. She found the access hatch and pried it open as quietly as she could, before crawling up into the ship undercarriage, contorting her body to avoid the wires and cables that crammed the space. She pulled the hatch shut behind her with a dull click, and found herself encased in darkness. The second interior door was more difficult to break into, but between the flashlight and her screwdriver she was soon wriggling out of the insulating layer and into the engine room.

Her flashlight beam zipped across the massive engine. She found the computer motherboard on the blue lines overlaying her vision and squirmed toward it. Pulling the universal connector cable from her hand, she snapped it into the main computer terminal.

Her flashlight dimmed as her own power was diverted. Pale green text scrawled across her eyesight.

DIAGNOSING COMPUTER SYSTEM, MODEL
135
V
8.2

5% … 12% … 16% …

Ten

Thorne jumped at a clang overhead.

A man’s voice followed—“Hear that?”

Thorne crouched down between the ship’s landing feet and flattened himself against a metal beam. “Captain is king,” he whispered. “Captain is king, captain is ki—”

A subtle hum pulsed over his head. Pale running lights flickered on near the ship’s nose.

“Captain is—?”

Gears started to rattle before he could finish. The hatch opened, the ramp lowering onto the concrete. Heart leaping, Thorne dodged out beneath it, just in time to avoid being squashed.

“Over there!”

A flashlight beam fell over Thorne as he swung himself up onto the descending ramp. “Rampion, close hatch!”

The ship didn’t respond.

A gun fired. The bullet pinged off the ship’s overhead light. Thorne ducked behind one of the plastic crates that filled the cargo bay. “Rampion,
close hatch
!”

“
I’m working on it!
”

He froze, glancing up at the pipes and tubes that lined the ship’s ceiling. “Rampion?”

The following silence was punctuated by the clang of the ramp on the outside concrete, the thumping of booted feet, then the ramp creaked again and started to rise back up. A shower of bullets lodged into the plastic storage crates, pinging off the metal walls. Thorne covered his head and waited until the ramp was closed enough to block the bullets’ path before shoving himself away from the crate and running toward the cockpit.

The ship vibrated as the ramp slammed shut. A volley of bullets pinged against the hull.

Thorne scrambled toward the emergency lights that framed the cockpit, shoving aside unopened crates. His knee smacked something hard and he let out a string of curses as he collapsed into the pilot seat. The windows were dirty and all he could see in the dark warehouse were the faint lights of Alak’s office and the flashlight beams darting around the Rampion, searching for another way in.

“Rampion, ready for liftoff!”

The dash lit up with controls and screens—only the most important ones.

The same sterile feminine voice came over the ship’s speakers. “
Thorne, I can’t set the automatic lift. You’re going to have to take off manually.
”

He gaped at the controls. “Why is my ship talking back to me?”

“
It’s me, you idiot!
”

He cocked his ear toward the speaker. “Cinder?”

“
Listen, the auto-control system has a bug. The power cell is on the fritz too. I think it can make it, but you’re going to have to take off without computer assistance.
”

The words, too dry in the computer’s tone, were punctuated by another round of bullets against the ship’s closed hatch.

Thorne gulped. “Without computer assistance? Are you sure?”

A short silence was followed by the voice again, and Thorne thought he could detect Cinder’s screeching despite its monotone. “
You do know how to fly, right?
”

“Uh.” Thorne scanned the controls before him. “Yes?”

He squared his shoulders and reached for the controller that was attached to the ceiling. A moment later, a slash of sunlight cut across the warehouse as the roof opened down the middle.

Something pounded against the ship’s side.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you.” Thorne jabbed the ignition.

The lights across the dash dimmed as the engine thrummed to life.

“Here we go.”

Another crash echoed from outside the hatch. He jogged a few switches, engaging hover mode, and eased the ship off the ground. She rose up smoothly, the magnets beneath the city pushing the ship easily as a dandelion seed, and Thorne exhaled a long breath.

Then the ship warbled and began to tilt.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t do that!” Thorne’s pulse raced as he leveled the ship.

“
The power cell is going to die. You have to engage the backup thrusters.
”

“Engage the backup wha—oh, never mind, I found them.”

The engine flared again. With the sudden jolt of power, the ship lurched to the opposite side and Thorne heard a crunch as she rammed into the next ship. The Rampion shuddered and started to slip back toward the ground. Another rainfall of bullets beat against the starboard side. A drop of sweat slid down Thorne’s back.

“
What are you doing up there?
”

“Stop distracting me!” he yelled, gripping the controls and righting the ship. Overcompensated. The ship tilted too far to the right.

“
We’re going to die.
”

“This isn’t as easy as it looks!” Thorne leveled her out again. “I usually have an automated stabilizer to take care of this!”

To his surprise, no sarcastic comment was spat back at him.

A moment later, another panel lit up. M
AGNETIC CONDUCTORS STABILIZING.
P
OWER OUTPUT:
37/63 … 38/62 … 42/58 …

The ship settled calmly beneath him, once again trembling in midair. “Right! Like that!”

Thorne’s knuckles whitened on the controls as he arched the ship’s nose up toward the open roof. The engine’s purr became a roar as the ship soared upward. He heard the last ricochet of bullets and then they fell away as the ship broke free of the warehouse and was flooded with the light from the yellow sun.

“Come on, darling,” he murmured, squeezing his eyes shut as, without resistance, without wavering, the ship left the protective magnetic field of the city behind, drew on the full power of her thrusters, and speared through the wispy clouds that lingered in the morning sky. The towering skyscrapers of downtown New Beijing dropped away and then it was only him and the sky and the endless landscape of space.

Thorne’s fingers stayed clamped like iron shackles around the controls until the ship had erupted from Earth’s atmosphere. Light-headed, he adjusted the thruster output as the ship slipped into natural orbit before prying his hands away from the controls.

He slumped, shaking, back in the chair. It took him a long time to speak, waiting for his heartbeat to slow to a manageable pace. “Good work, cyborg girl,” he said. “If you were hoping for a permanent position on my crew, you’re hired.”

The speakers were silent.

“I don’t mean a lowly position, either. First mate is available. Well, I mean, pretty much every position is available. Mechanic … cook … a pilot would be nice so I don’t have to go through
that
again.” He waited. “Cinder? Are you there?”

When still there was no response, he pushed himself out of his chair and stumbled out of the cockpit, past the cargo bay, and into the corridor that split off to the crew’s quarters. His legs were weak as he reached for the hatch that led into the ship’s lower level. He clomped down the ladder into the tiny hall between the engine room and the podship dock. The screen beside the engine room didn’t offer any warnings of space vacuums or unsafe compressions. It also didn’t say anything about a living girl inside.

Thorne tapped the unlock icon on the screen and twisted the door’s manual bolt, then shoved the door open.

The engine was loud and hot and smelled like melted rubber.

“Hello?” he called into the dark. “Cyborg girl? Are you in here?”

If she responded, the words were lost in the engine’s thrumming. Thorne gulped. “Lights, on?”

A red emergency light brightened above the doorway, casting gloomy shadows over the enormous revolving engine and the masses of cords and coils that sprawled out beneath it.

Thorne squinted, spotting something almost white.

Sinking to his hands and knees, he crawled toward her. “Cyborg girl?”

She didn’t move.

As Thorne came closer, he saw that she was on her back, dark hair sprawled across her face. Her robotic hand was plugged into the port of an exposed computer panel.

“Hey, you,” he said, hovering over her. He peeled up her eyelids, but her gaze was dark and empty. Craning down, Thorne placed an ear against her chest, but if there was a heartbeat it was drowned out by the roaring engine.

“Come on,” he growled, reaching for her hand and working the connector out of the port. The nearest computer panel went dark.

“Auto-control system disconnected,” lilted a robotic voice overhead, startling Thorne. “Engaging default system procedures.”

“Good plan,” he muttered, grabbing her ankles. Thorne dragged her slowly into the hallway and propped her up against the corridor wall. Whatever her cyborg parts were made of, it was a lot heavier than flesh and bone.

He pressed an ear to her chest again. This time he was met with a faint beat.

“Wake up,” he said, shaking her. Cinder’s head slumped forward.

Sitting back on his heels, Thorne screwed up his lips. The girl was horribly pale and filthy from their trek through the sewers, but in the hallway’s brightness he could tell she was breathing, if barely. “What, do you have a power button or something?”

His attention fell on her metal hand with the cord and plug still dangling from her knuckle. Grabbing her hand, he peered at it from every angle. He remembered a flashlight, a screwdriver, and a knife in three of the fingers, but he wasn’t yet sure what her pointer finger was hiding. If it was a power button, he couldn’t see any way of getting at it.

The connector cable though …

“Right!” Thorne jumped up, nearly toppling into the wall. He jabbed at the screen that opened the door to the podship dock. White lights flared overhead as he entered.

He grasped Cinder’s wrists and tugged her into the dock, dropping her in between the two small satellite ships that sat like toadstools among a mess of cables and service tools.

Panting, he reeled the podship’s charging cord out of the wall, then froze, staring at the girl’s cable, at the ship’s cable, at the girl.… He cursed again and dropped them both. Two males. Even he could tell that they wouldn’t connect.

Knocking his knuckles against his temple, Thorne forced himself to think, think, think.

Another idea flashed and he squinted down at the girl. She seemed to be growing paler still, but maybe that was a trick of the lighting.

“Oh…,” he said, a new idea dropping into his brain. “Oh, boy. You don’t think … oh, that’s disgusting.”

Shoving away his squeamishness, he gently pulled the girl toward him so that she collapsed over one arm. With his free hand, he searched around her tangled hair until he discovered the tiny latch just above her neck.