The Damsel Read online

  I stifled the urge to scream something at this asshole for reminding me, thank you very much, that he’d probably just offed my only friend. Instead, I bit my tongue and nodded.

  “Okay,” I answered evenly, staring out into the blackness of space through the cockpit windscreen and gathering my thoughts. “Fine. Just tell me this—what the hell do you want me to do now?”

  “I want to get off world,” the hijacker answered.

  “Done,” I pointed out. “Now what?”

  “I want to go to…” The voice trailed off.

  I gritted my teeth.

  This guy hadn’t even figured out where he wanted to go before he hijacked a jump capable cargo ship, shot its pilot, then blasted off world with an untrained stand in?

  Great. Just fucking awesome.

  “I want to go to, uh,” the hijacker continued, “to… to Paris V. Yeah, man, Paris V.”

  Paris V was a trendy place, with loads of casinos, hotels, resorts, and girls—as long as you had stacks of cash to pay for it all, which I had to guess did not describe someone who would hijack a Black Sun 490.

  “What are you gonna do there?” I asked. “Because unless you got a duffel bag full of cash you dropped off in the hold or a Seven Suns Black Card in your wallet, you ain’t gonna find shit to do on Paris V.”

  I neglected to mention that since I still hadn’t closed the cargo bay door, if he had had a duffel bag full of credits in the hold, he didn’t have it there any longer. I just wished the ship’s safety system didn’t prevent me from opening the internal hatch when the outer door was open. If it didn’t, I would have just strapped myself in, opened the door and vented the cabin and him with it before closing the door and letting the ship automatically re-pressurize.

  As I dreamt about turning his body into a frozen chunk of human space junk, he prattled on. “Paris V is gonna be fucking awesome. I’m gonna go score me some cash at The Louvre and then go score with some girls at Moulin Rouge. Then, I’m—”

  “What do you think The Louvre is? A charity? It’s a fucking casino, and a high roller one at that. You don’t go to casinos to make money. You go there if you’ve already got money. Like I said, unless you’re a lot richer than I think, two days after you hit Paris V, you’re gonna find yourself in some ratty hostel off Rue du Seine turning tricks for cash. Did you not listen to a word I said about Paris V?”

  “Uh, yeah, okay, fine.” He didn’t say anything for a moment until he piped up with his next bright idea. “Well, what about New Reno?”

  I put my head in my hands. The only thing worse than a hijacker with a plan, it seemed, was a hijacker without one.

  “Have you ever been off world? Anywhere?” I asked.

  “What difference does that make?” he said.

  Something about his tone set me off. I risked a look back at him. He sat atop the turret hatch, knees drawn up, pistol between them, casually pointed at my back. Despite my pounding headache from the earlier beating I’d taken, one look at him was all it took for everything to fall into place.

  The guy was a kid—maybe nineteen at the oldest, but his trendy blonde spiky haircut, designer shoes, and name-brand shirt marked him as probably even younger. Where he’d gotten the gun, I hadn’t the foggiest, but his lack of scars made it obvious he wasn’t a career criminal or street tough. He was far too defensive and too impulsive to have been at this very long.

  He was also too dumb, since he’d hijacked a ship as obviously shitty as ours. I figured he must not have understood that since hijacking ships is a good way to get killed, most of the folk who do it professionally hijack the best ships rather than the worst ones, and not just because the worst ones aren’t worth anything. It’s really because the worst ships are unsafe, and, crewed by people with nothing to lose who would think nothing of gunning you down the first chance they got.

  People like me, in other words.

  Furthermore, since the first two places he’d picked to go when his harebrained scheme had been an unexpected success had been two places popular on the holos, I guessed this was his only exposure to off-world life, which meant he was going to be in for a rude awakening when he got exposed to the ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the rest of the universe that wasn’t nearly as pleasant as Paris V and New Reno were made out to be.

  The kid was an amateur who didn’t realize just how much of an amateur he was, which made him very, very dangerous indeed, like a baby viper who couldn’t control his venom.

  I sighed. “Look, kid—”

  “Don’t call me kid,” he snapped.

  “Fine,” I agreed with a shrug, “I won’t, but listen to me. You are making a huge mistake. First, you’ve hijacked a spacecraft, which even your dumb ass probably doesn’t need me to tell you is a capital offense, and you got no way to fly if you kill me, which is probably what you think you’d like to do. You’ve also got no money, which means even if you do manage to get someplace, you can’t do anything once you get there. Did I miss anything?”

  The kid sneered, “I don’t need your fuckin’ analysis, okay? I’m the one with the gun. What’s going to happen is you’re gonna fly me where I tell you to, then I’m going to kill you and sell this ship for cash. How’s that?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I did miss something, actually. You got shit for brains. Since you’ve just told me you’re going to kill me anyway, why the fuck should I do what you tell me to? Also, by the way, I’d love to see you try to offload this ship without a title or seller’s license. You can’t even—”

  “I can too. There are lots of ways to—”

  “Yeah, kid, it can be done, because I’ve done it,” I snapped. “But the kind of people who help you do that sort of thing would take one look at you and shoot you dead on the spot rather than take the trouble to buy it off of you. Or, likely as not, they wouldn’t, because this rustbucket is worth about as much as your shoes and wouldn’t be worth killing you for, much less paying you for.”

  For once in my life, I wished I was facing up against a smart crook instead of a stupid one.

  “So, here’s a new plan for you, kid,” I snarled. “You let me take this crate back down to Ramseur, I kick you off and I take my friend to the hospital on the double quick. Meanwhile, you pray he isn’t dead and doesn’t get that way, or else I come by your house in the middle of the night and gut your entire goddamn family. Sound good?”

  The kid flinched.

  The possibility of my boss being dead had really started to sink in, and I felt the return of an anger I hadn’t felt since my Braxton years so long ago.

  “No!” shouted the kid, voice high and quivering. “You’re just trying to scare me and tell me what to do. Fuck that. I’m in charge here—I got the gun, so you listen to me!”

  I shrugged. “Fine, kid, but that was your last chance. This thing may end badly for me, but I straight up guarantee this is going to end badly for you.”

  I turned back around to check the cockpit and see if any new warning lights had come on.

  Several had, but something else entirely caught my eye: the maintenance log. It looked much like it always did, with time stamped records of ship processes turning on and off, relays operating, and sensor readings, with one major exception. At the bottom of the log, a message stared at me.

  ///10.23.1114.01 – Relay XB889: ON 01.01.02

  ///10.23.1114.02 –Radiation Sensor Set 94B DETECT OFF

  ///10.23.1114.03 –909011.2 mBUS FAULT

  ///10.23.1114.04 –where are we

  The boss was alive, and somehow, he now was typing in the maintenance log. I figured he must be appending a note to one of the sensor relays in the turret, which I knew was possible, but I’d never done.

  The where are we message repeated.

  I fiddled around with the keyboard and VDU until I saw the option come up on screen to “Create Maintenance Data Note.” I typed back: don’t know nav computer broken but on autopilot to neares
t nav beacon.

  The response wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for. I was looking for a way out of this mess or perhaps a congratulations for not smashing us into the ground on my first-ever flight. Instead, I got wrong correction factor so nav computer is steering us wrong look out the window idiot.

  I did so and realized that instead of heading toward a nav beacon, the ship instead headed toward what appeared to be a small asteroid belt. I grimaced and pulled gently left on the stick to try to steer us toward where I thought the nav beacon would be. Nothing happened.

  I swore silently as I typed can’t steer ship.

  I could almost hear his insulting tone through the maintenance log: disengage autopilot maybe?

  I flipped a few switches until the autopilot disengaged. I swung the ship around as slowly as I could, but the maneuver did not escape the attention of our hijacker.

  “Hey,” he said. “I didn’t tell you to change course.”

  “Yeah? You also never told me what course to take, so unless you want to fly into an asteroid field, you’d better let me get us headed toward a nav beacon.”

  “Get us to the jump point,” he ordered. “We’re going to New Reno.”

  “All right,” I said, even though I had no idea how to get us to the jump point and even less of a clue how to jump.

  I pointed the ship in the same direction as the pinpricks of light I knew to be other crafts’ running lights, although the targeting computer still showed all green so I couldn’t tell what size or type they were.

  There was another maintenance message from the boss: good job steering this is sarcasm btw.

  I scowled as I typed back glad to see you aren’t hurt also sarcasm.

  His next message was more useful: fuse relays showing rear cargo door open, is that right?

  I knew what he was thinking. I smiled. I typed back yes but safety won’t let me open inner door while outer is open b/c pressure diff.

  “What are you typing on so much up there?” the hijacker asked.

  I hate it when people rudely interrupt discussions of what’s the best way to kill them.

  “Well, I’m going through the ship’s maintenance data trying to figure out what’s going on,” I lied. “Remember those gunshots in the cabin? Remember the coupl’a shots that missed you and gave me this?” I put a finger up to my bloody-and-still-ringing ear. “Those two rounds went in here.” I pointed to the two bullet holes in the center console, which I was pretty sure hadn’t hit anything more important than the cockpit’s windshield defroster. “Those two shots have done some pretty major damage to a mainboard or two, and I’m trying to figure out how to reroute stuff so I can get all the systems back up.”

  “Can we jump?” was all he wanted to know.

  I shrugged.

  The real answer was not really, but it had nothing to do with the gunshots and everything to do with the fact I had no clue how to calculate a jump, but there was no point in telling him that.

  “Sure, we can, kid.” I kept the lie train rolling smartly down the tracks. “‘Cept, we don’t have comms, and that might make things a bit tricky when in-system wants to scan us before we leave your lovely home system here, don’t ya think?”

  I craned my neck around to see if the very sensible thing I had just told him had sunk in, hoping perhaps he would abandon this colossally stupid enterprise.

  No such luck.

  Instead, he doubled down on his lunacy. “Just burn past insys and hit the jump point.”

  I sighed. I needed to get rid of this kid before one of his bright ideas did it for all of us.

  “Look, genius, I dunno if you paid any attention to the ship you chose to hijack before you came in here swinging that pistol upside my head and shooting the place up, but this is a cargo hauler, and an old one at that. This thing isn’t a fighter and it ain’t a combat shuttle and it ain’t a corvette. This isn’t the holos, guy. I try to pull a stunt like that—with my turret locked down, no less—and insys will hull us no sweat.”

  “I’m getting tired of your excuses,” the kid snapped. “People burn past patrols all the time.”

  I turned all the way around to face him. “Yeah, they do. In the movies, you dumb shit, but try that in real life and we’ll be sucking vacuum before we get close to the jump point. Even piece of shit little planets like Ramseur—which would have to be quite a piece of shit indeed to produce someone as epically fucked up as you are—have insys fighters with missiles, something which I realize in the holos pose little danger, but pose significantly more danger when you’re in a tin can like this one and they’re actually shooting them at you. Guess how many missiles we’ll take at full shields?” I asked him, giving him a sardonic smile.

  He shrugged, scowling like a spoiled brat who’d just been told he was up past his bedtime.

  “Try zero,” I offered. “That’s right—not a fucking one. Even at full shields, a single insys imrec will turn us inside out.” I tapped the cockpit windshield.

  “So,” I continued in as calm a voice as I could muster, “how about you just let me work out the comms issue while you sit back there and keep your finger off the trigger so you don’t accidentally shoot me in the back of the head, okay?”

  When I turned back around, the boss had a message waiting for me in the log: i disabled door safety to rear panel but cockpit safety is on different system.

  I considered that a moment. So, the door safety switch at the cockpit still wouldn’t let me open it, but the rear panel just above the turret hatch now had the safety disabled, meaning if I could somehow get back there to my usual station and flip the switch, the door located not three feet from that switch would open and vent the cabin out into space.

  Which was great, except one tiny detail. Namely, venting the cabin would also vent me right out as well, leaving no one to close the hatch. But if somehow, I could make it back up to the cockpit, I could hit the switch at the cockpit station and close the hatch again, because if the ship sensed a sudden depressurization, the cockpit safety would disengage and allow the hatch to be shut.

  I knew this because we’d had an incident where the boss had forgotten the hold was unpressurized, although the rear cargo door was closed. When I’d opened the internal hold hatch the resulting air pressure equalization had almost blown my eardrums out before my boss closed the door from his station.

  I hadn’t forgotten or forgiven him for that.

  For the next few minutes, I tried to figure out how I was going to leap from the cockpit across our hijacker to the switch, flip it, and then leap back to the cockpit without being shot first or sucked out into the void second.

  Then it hit me.

  I typed a quick message to the boss: hold onto your hat.

  I pretended to focus on the targeting computer. Then I made a show of flipping a switch and swearing under my breath.

  “What’s going on?” the kid asked.

  “Uh oh, kid, bad news—real bad,” I told him.

  “What? What is it? What do you mean bad news?”

  “I got an insys tail—that kind of bad news,” I lied, trying my best to sound scared.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean insys has probably been trying to contact me ever since you had me blast off-world without clearance. Since I haven’t said a word in response, they must figure I’m up to something, so they’re out behind me at about ten thousand klicks.”

  The kid was silent for a second while all that sunk in. “They’re gonna shoot us?”

  I resisted the urge to scream “No, you idiot, voice comms go out all the time and you just use Morse code with your running lights to communicate like people have been doing for like eight hundred years” but I decided giving him a useful little bit of spacefaring knowledge would be a waste of breath since I was planning on spacing him in a minute anyway.

  Instead, I responded with all the false worry I could muster in my voice. “Uh, yeah, they’ll p
robably start shooting soon if they don’t hear from us.”

  I was kind of halfway hoping the kid would start crying or begging for his mom, which would lead to a quiet surrender of his firearm, but I’ll admit I was wickedly pleased with the stupidity of his response.

  “Don’t try to pull one on me now,” he warned me with a squeak of false bravado. “You’re just trying to get insys to board us. I’m not falling for that. You’re gonna fight him off or die trying.”

  I could barely contain my glee but tried to sound as desperate as I could. “Uh, okay, kid but… this ship, if you didn’t notice, is a two man operation, see, and since you shot my dude earlier, there’s nobody to man the turret, which means fighting isn’t much of an option.”

  I trailed off and left the bait in the water, waiting for him to strike.

  Five seconds passed before he took it.

  “I can man it,” he told me in a statement of such massive ignorance it’s a wonder it didn’t create a point of infinite ignorance mass and density and form a black hole of ignorance, ending all life in the system.

  It was just the kind of stupidity I was counting on.

  Before I could answer, I noticed another message from the turret: no way. Apparently, my boss had his ear pressed to the turret hatch and had gathered the drift of my plan.

  I wiped the grin off my face before I turned back to face the hijacker. “You sure you can man that turret?” I asked. “I dunno, but like you say, you’re the one with the gun. Thing is, you mag-locked it earlier. Open the switch box there.” I pointed at the rear maintenance panel right next to him. “And count three switches in.”

  He flipped open the maintenance cover and counted three switches to the red rocker switch under a protective plastic cover. He pointed to the switch, apparently unconcerned about the fact it had DANGER written in big red letters across the cover.

  “That one?”

  I pretended it was no big deal. “Uh-huh, that one.”

  He opened the cover and flipped the switch.

  There was a bang like a bomb blast as the internal crew compartment/bay door slid open and the ship explosively depressurized. The pressure loss ripped the air from my lungs and snapped my head back fast enough to give me whiplash. I felt blood vessels popping and thought my eyes were going to bulge out of my head.