Lenny tried not to think about his parents and Morgan as they crawled through the air ducts on level twelve. His parents were toughened by their time in the SOF, but even they had limits.
“We are truly fucked,” he muttered as he moved forward on his hands and knees. “I don’t know what we do now.”
He glanced back, hoping to get some ideas from Mae. She was silent.
“Mae? Shit, hey, come back!”
After a few seconds, she floated back to him. “Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, dipped out again.”
That was precisely what he didn’t want. She was doing it more and more. If she slipped into a coma and didn’t come out, he’d be left alone to deal with this.
“Please don’t,” he whispered softly, hoping she wouldn’t hear. She did.
“I’ll try my best.”
“Anything useful at all this time?” He sat back in the vent.
“Not much. I think I was underground somewhere.” Darkness obscured Mae’s face, but her tone was dreamy, half-lost.
Lenny kept his thoughts to himself on that. He fought down the irrational anger as best he could. It wasn’t Mae’s fault he’d found her, or that she couldn’t remember anything. However, his imagination kept conjuring up terrible fates for his family.
Her hand touched his ankle, making him flinch. “We’ll get them back. These Extraktors aren’t after the Popes. They want me. Your friend Pelorus said as much. Once I get off station, they’ll forget about you, your family, and the Eumenides.”
How she might be so sure, Lenny couldn’t guess. He was sure of absolutely nothing, but he understood the sudden change in his life meant nothing would be the same—even if they did survive this. With that in mind, though, he realized where they needed to go.
Changing direction, he slid, crawled, and climbed through the ducts, all the while berating himself instead of Mae. A woman in a mysterious cryopod sounded exciting, but shit, his mom was right. Someone was looking for her. It wasn’t Mae’s responsibility, but he should have been looking out for his own first.
His dad and Morgan might be alright in custody for a bit, but Daniella served a stint on one of the UPP’s prison planets. How long would it be before her PTSD kicked in and she tried to bust her way out? God, he couldn’t think like that, or this new, mad plan wouldn’t work.
Reaching the top of the vent shaft, Lenny wriggled sideways until he found enough space for both of them to peer out onto the private dock. Mae pressed her face against the gaps in the vent cover.
“What are those ships? They look… fancy.”
The pretty paint jobs and streamlined hulls would not be found at the dock the Eumenides was attached to. “This is the place for those with enough money to avoid rubbing shoulders with ice and scrap haulers.”
He examined the layout with a sharp eye. The private dock only had room for five vessels, but it never filled up. Today, only two ships were berthed in it. One he didn’t recognize, but that was alright because he was very familiar with the other ship.
The Icarus had lived in his mind for months now. It docked nearly a year ago. Some high-ranking Combine manager turned up to conduct an audit. Unfortunately for him, he’d wandered into the wrong part of Guelph for some gambling fun. Got himself stabbed and dumped into the sewage tanks for his troubles. The Guelph station chief got all excited by the idea of inheriting the Icarus, but the Combine would not waste it on him. They’d tied the ship up in the private dock, waiting for someone from Jùtóu HQ to come and haul it back to civilization.
Before that could happen, Lenny planned to steal it. He hadn’t told anyone, especially his family, about the idea. He knew it might be the stupidest thing he’d ever done, but it looked better the longer he thought about it. On Guelph, he’d never be able to be anything but a hauler.
If he didn’t get himself to a brighter corner of the galaxy, Lenny knew his fate. Hauling ice and ore forever, living on the edge of ruin until the endless void claimed him. However, Mae changed everything, and his plans would have to adapt.
“There she is.” He pointed towards the graceful, silver curves of the Icarus. “She’s rated for long haul travel, which will get us to at least the Outer Veil. She’s faster than anything here.”
Mae stared at him. “But I don’t know how to pilot anything.”
He gave a short laugh. “Don’t worry, the guy who brought her here didn’t either. She’s got her own top-of-the-line ship AI, and I’ve got the code.”
“How’d you get ahold of that?”
“Stole it off the executive’s corpse in the morgue.”
Mae stared at him as if she couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of his mouth.
He broke eye contact. “Once you reach the Outer Veil, you should be able to find more info on this Zula Hendricks person. It should tell you who you are.”
“And they’ll release your family.” She pulled her knees in tight as they sat there. “I’ll broadcast a message back to Guelph once I am far enough away.”
“Yeah. Good.” Lenny hated how short and angry his words came out. Again, he reminded himself, this wasn’t her fault—as far as either of them knew.
He withdrew a screwdriver from his bag and started to work on the vent. Strange, how his mental exercise of stealing a ship was now becoming a reality. Lenny had already confirmed that below the vent lay the control panel for the systems of the private dock. How to bypass that was intel that’d taken a bit more effort to acquire.
Sven Gunnerson, chief of security on Guelph, was a sloppy drunk with a liking for gambling and pretty things on the workers’ levels. It wasn’t like the station had a lot of valuables, so Sven got real lax as the years went on. Lenny hacked his wrist-pd once while he was passed out on a bar floor. Getting into the bar was the hard part, since everyone on Guelph was afraid of Daniella Pope. No one wanted to see how she’d react if her youngest got drunk in someone’s seedy bar. Yet, after several attempts at concealing himself with some laughable disguises, Lenny finally managed it on the pay day when everyone headed out to get drunk. If he believed in some governing deity, it might have almost seemed like fate.
He dropped out of the vent, and the thump of his boots on the dock sounded far too loud. Lenny opened the panel to access the system controls and checked how much time he had before the intrusion protocols activated. His hands were clammy and extra clumsy as he worked. A small chime sounded.
Mae landed softly next to him like a cat. “Have you got this?”
He pressed his lips together before muttering, “Yeah, I got it. Just keep an eye out for station security, OK?”
She put her back against his, and stared into the dimness of the bay. It meant she wouldn’t see what he needed to do. Explaining his augment was always a tricky subject, and one revelation too many.
Tangling the wires together, he bypassed the circuit. The chime stopped, and Lenny activated his augment. With the physical protocols disengaged, he pushed forward with his mind. The security system patterns were glowing, thin threads dangling in the air. Inserting Sven’s code into the broken pieces of data, the light dipped for a second, then grew bright again.
WELCOME CHIEF SVEN GUNNERSON
He wiped a bead of sweat from his face and straightened. “Come on, the Icarus is right there.”
Once they stepped away from the wall, the security cameras spotted them. These were always on and monitored—unlike most cameras on Guelph. Lenny didn’t have codes for them, or the time to hack into the main station system. So, they’d have five minutes before the security detail made it to the dock. Usually that was plenty of time to catch any would-be ship-jackers as they struggled to gain entry to their target. Lenny hoped that Sven’s codes to board the Icarus were still good.
He submitted the launch sequence into the docking mechanism. It took about five minutes to power up and prepare to open the bay doors. Reaching the shiny doors of the Icarus, Lenny punched in the entry code and breathed easy when the hatch unlocked immediately. The interior lights blinked on and the engine stirred to life.
“There isn’t much time,” he told Mae in a hurried gasp. “The dock will uncouple, but you won’t get a clearance from station control, obviously.”
“So, I’ll have to punch it.”
He handed her the pad. “These are the coordinates for Thedus. It’s Three World Empire space, so these Extraktors won’t have jurisdiction there. Don’t stop until you reach the border.”
Mae swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Me too. Find out why these people are after you.” Lenny hated a puzzle without a solution. “When you get your answers, send me a message, okay? I don’t think I can sleep until then.”
Mae’s shoulders straightened slightly, and she brushed away a curl of hair from her face. She was dirty from climbing through the vents with him, but unforgettable. Lenny tried to secure the image of her standing there in his memory, even if she wasn’t doing the same. However, before she could close the hatch, the Icarus’s interior lights all flicked off, and the warming engine fell suddenly silent.
“Young people these days, always taking what doesn’t belong to them.” Under the Icarus’s engines, they’d not heard a unit of synthetic and human soldiers approach. They moved in tight ranks and so quietly that they were now only three meters from the vessel’s door.
Their leader, a strange and extremely pale man, kept his pulse rifle trained on them. Their uniforms were dark, slightly patterned with slate gray, and on the collar was the symbol of the Jùtóu Combine. Lenny had been right—even when only observing them from behind as they’d arrested his family—that they were not Guelph station security.
Lenny had no choice but to raise his hands. He glanced at Mae. Would her military instincts kick in, as they did before? She was unarmed, but her training seemed to include that. Something about her expression said she was calculating odds.
The man at the front smiled thinly. “If you run, we will shoot your human companion where he stands. I don’t think you can carry him out of range fast enough to save his life.” He lunged forward and yanked Lenny behind him and into the crowd of armed troopers. They knocked him to his knees and, forcing his arms behind his back, cuffed him within a split second. The pain lasted longer than the actual subjugation.
From this lower vantage point, Lenny got a good look at the squad. Several of the humans were outfitted with obviously mechanical limbs, and a couple sported the stretched faces of the die-hard augmented. A unit of synthetics and those who wanted to be like them. He’d never heard of such a thing.
He struggled against the cuffs and tried to rise back to his feet. One of the combat androids struck him in the back and then pressed its foot down hard between Lenny’s shoulders. The cool press of a pulse rifle against his temple stopped him from attempting anything further.
Through the legs of their attackers, he glimpsed Mae. She still stood at the door, one foot inside the ship, though there was no way it would be of any use to her now. If these bastards worked for the Combine, they’d always been in control of the Icarus. Lenny wanted her to run, but he was also absolutely positive that this would be the last thing he’d ever see. Nothing about the squad surrounding him said they were playing. He didn’t like the taste of being helpless one bit.
The standoff stretched on and on, but eventually, Mae threw down the pad, dropped to her knees, and raised her hands behind her head. Two human troopers rushed forward and cuffed her. But oddly, her restraints were different from Lenny’s.
Her cuffs were chunkier, with lights that indicated some kind of additional technological restraint. Somehow, these people already knew about her combat skills.
“What about this one, Captain Warrae?” A boot crashed into Lenny’s ribs, knocking the breath out of him.
“Bring him,” came the chilling reply. “He makes good leverage with the other.”
With that, they yanked him to his feet and shoved him along in Mae’s wake. Morgan or Daniella would have complained, insisting they were citizens of the Union of Progressive Peoples with rights. Lenny knew better than to bother. This was a Jùtóu Combine station, and no one gave a damn about those rights if there was money involved.
Captain Warrae’s expression was a flat mask. His sergeant’s, though, told Lenny what this was all about: greed. He could only hope he’d get some answers before they relegated him to a penal planet to serve time as both his parents once had.