Haywire (6 page)

“
Yeah, the flight was boring. We just got to Mom’s.”

“
And how is your mother? You two haven’t started fighting already have you?” His dad scowled, the smile vanishing from his face.

Shawn shook his head, which sent his father’s image sliding back and forth across the ceiling. “No, no fighting. It hasn’t been a love fest, but… it’s okay. Here’s something though – did you know she’s dating someone?”

His father laughed long and loud. “I did not, no. You don’t sound happy about it though.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Naw, I guess I am. I mean, sure, yeah, okay. It’s good. She should have started dating years ago. Then again maybe she was and it never went far enough to be worth mentioning. I don’t know. She’s for sure dating now though. His name is Alex and, get this – he’s a federal investigator. Can you believe that?”

“
Don’t let that cool exterior fool you, Son,” his father said with a knowing tilt of his head. “Your mother likes a bit of adventure, some danger. The stories I could tell... I won’t, you understand, but I could. Let my lack of surprise be answer enough. But, speaking of news, Ilona tells me your band has a big gig coming up.”

Shawn’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “She already called you about it?”

“
Of course. And don’t worry about it, I wouldn’t dream of keeping Mother Dark from playing Minerva’s Den. I’ll have to be there, though. Minor and all that. You understand.”

Shawn chuckled. “Just don’t stand in the front row. Appearances.
You understand.
”

His father nodded sagely. “Absolutely. Appearances. I gotcha. Anyway, I was about to head out for work. Did you want to speak with your step-mother before we hang up?”

“
No, just tell her I said hello. I still need to call Ilona, and take a shower, change clothes, and
then
head downstairs to have dinner. No time, Pops. No time.”

“
You’re a mover and a shaker, Son. Call me and let me know how things are going tomorrow.”

“
Will do. Love you.”

“
Love you too.”

The rest of the evening went by in a blur brought on by too many surprises and too much traveling. By the time he curled up in bed, his head was buzzing. For months he’d dreaded visiting his mother, sure it would mean two weeks of being locked up with the Ice Queen of his childhood, but in just a few hours many of his preconceived notions were torn down. His mother still wasn’t the warmest woman in the universe, but when she laughed, it sounded real, and smiles rested on her lips more easily. She’d even hugged him and kissed his cheek before he went to bed. He had no idea who this Alex person was that had come into her life, but the impact he’d had on her was easy to see. As he drifted off to sleep, Shawn hoped he’d be able to meet the man soon.

For the first time in a long time, Shawn contemplated the notion of having his mother back. It was a strange idea, but he was okay with that. Strange was different, and different was good.

Gimble cleared the airlock and stepped onto the gangplank that led down to a cavernous staging area ringed by the airlocks of other ships, hoping his face didn’t betray the fear that swirled in his stomach like a nest of worms. Men were gathered several paces away from the bottom of the ramp, central among them Captain Julien Laroux, the leader of the Crimson Kings. He didn’t look pleased.

Laroux was not a large man. In fact, compared to some of the pirates standing around him, he seemed slight, but Gimble knew from experience that he was as slippery as a fox and just as clever. Like everyone who made their living amongst the stars, Laroux was dressed in a biosuit with retractable helmet that would protect him from the ravages of the vacuum. But, where the men in his command had to overlay that with bulky armor plates to keep them safe in battle, beneath his biosuit he wore a customized suit of armor made of nano-carbon fibers as thin and supple as cotton yet stronger than steel, and beneath that was a trauma layer that could dispense painkilling wound sealant if something actually made it through to damage him. Energy pistols were tucked into holsters low on his hips, ready to leap out like war hounds and kill at a second’s notice, and tucked into his belt was a coiled metal whip. Gimble gave the guns an uneasy glance, but Laroux’s arms were crossed over his chest.

“
Stumble across some trouble, did we?” Laroux’s Parisian accent cut through the air like a plasma torch.

Gimble blew out an exhale and walked down the gangplank as casually as he could. Showing any fear or hesitation would ensure his execution. “Three Alliance hunters had the audacity to think they could cross a Crimson King,” he said, forcing a broad smile on his face. “Crowe and I showed ‘em the error of their ways.”

Laroux tilted his head and pointed at the closed cargo hatch viewable through a pressure sealed opening. “They were not too far off the mark, though, eh?”

Turning, Gimble saw long dark streaks burned into the metal of the ship. Repairing those wouldn’t be cheap, but he shrugged his shoulders and looked back at his captain as though it was of little consequence. “Any dog can get a bite if it snaps its jaws enough times. We lost ‘em, though. Takes more than a flotilla of hunters to bring down a Crimson King, aye?”

Several of the pirates standing behind Laroux laughed and nodded in agreement, but the captain wasn’t nearly as amused.

“
Oui,
it does, but while I am not one to avoid angering those that oppose me, I at least want to have gotten something for my troubles.”

Gimble nodded so quickly his jaws smacked together. “Indeed, Captain, indeed. Rightly so. Fortunately we’ve brought something back with us. I think it’s highly valuable.”

“
We shall see,” Laroux replied, his right eyebrow hoisted high on his forehead and his goatee circling a sneer.

Ignoring the nausea brewing in his intestines, Gimble stepped aside and swept his left hand toward the blackened cargo hatch, while with his right hand he withdrew a small device from a pocket in his biosuit and pressed a button. The hatch opened, and seconds later a pallet rumbled out of the cargo hold on retractable metal arms and settled onto the docking area floor. On it sat the salvaged ship. When the captain and his men walked toward it, Gimble and Crowe followed along beside them.

“
We found it out in the rocks,” Gimble said. “Very strange, very unusual.”

“
Strange indeed,” Crowe said right after, their words nearly tripping on each other. “There was a bright flash of light, and then
poof
! A ship! Could be it’s some sort of experimental jumpship what got damaged when it generated an artificial wormhole. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Gimble’s eyes lit up by an excitement he didn’t really feel. “Now there’s an idea. We could have ourselves a real find here.”

Laroux’s crew nodded and gave the ship wondrous gazes, but the captain looked dubious as he walked toward it. “And from what scrapheap did you pull this?” he asked when he stood before the ship.

“
Pardon, Sir?” Gimble replied.

“
I said, from what scrapheap did you pull this? It looks more like burnt toast than a space vessel. If this is some sort of joke, I’ll laugh once you are hanged.”

Gimble chuckled to deflect the captain’s irritation. Unfortunately for him and Crowe, what Laroux said was true – the ship looked like a worthless hunk of charred metal. Ten meters long from stem to stern, with small nub-like wings on the front and a stabilizer on the back, it little resembled any ship he’d ever seen. Its shape was all wrong, beginning with a cockpit far too close to the skinny nose cone. There were too many engines as well, and they were arrayed in a strange pattern along the ship’s keel and aft, giving it a large hind end that stuck up in the air like a kneeling dog. He’d seen just about every model of spacecraft mankind had crafted, and none of them matched what he saw before him. The only things he recognized as human were the letters and numbers marked on the tail.

“
Has it tried to communicate?” Laroux asked. A glint of curiosity entered his eyes, and Gimble latched onto it like a drowning man.

“
Communicate?” he replied. “No, Sir. We hailed it but got nothin’ back. I bet there’s someone in it though. Dead, surely, but they still might be about to help us understand what it is and what it’s worth.”

Laroux stroked his goatee and then looked at him. “Go listen to it.”

Gimble took a half step backward. “Sir?”

“
Are you deaf as well as stupid? Place your ear on that glossy bubble at the front and listen to it. If there is someone inside, you should be able to hear them. Perhaps they have locked themselves in and lost the key.”

The pirates around the captain laughed good and loud, but Gimble felt none of their mirth. Up close it looked alien, with strange markings stamped into the dark hull like lettering from a long dead language. But, knowing he had no choice, he took a deep breath and shuffled over to the ship. He then leaned forward and settled his head against the glass of what he thought was the cockpit canopy.

“
Hear anything?” the captain asked. “Perhaps the tinkling of gold coins?”

The pirates burst into raucous laughter again, and Gimble grimaced as he focused on the glass beneath him. For several long seconds all was silence, but then he thought he heard mumbling, like someone speaking in another room. A series of dull thuds suddenly vibrated against his cheek and ear, and his heart skipped a beat.

“
There’s someone in there!” he said, pushing away from the ship.

The captain’s eyes widened and his amused smirk vanished. “Are you certain?”

Gimble nodded and took a step back. “I heard ‘em talking and thrashing around.”

Laroux clapped his hands and waved his arms in a broad, sweeping gesture. “Well then, let us not keep them waiting. All of you, open it!
Rapidement
!”

Several pirates went to a workbench littered with various pieces of equipment. When they returned they had a large device with wicked looking pincers on one end and handholds on the other. After the pincers were pushed into the seam that separated the canopy from the rest of the hull, they pushed toward the ship and activated the device. Loud metallic grinding vibrated the air painfully. They didn’t have much luck at first, but eventually the tiny seam began to widen. When the canopy suddenly flew open with a loud pop, everyone nearby staggered back in surprise. Pent-up atmosphere billowed out of the cockpit, the air foul and moist.

“
Sacré bleu!”
Laroux said, reaching down to his hips for his pistols. The twin guns were drawn and pointed at the damaged ship in steady grips, but seconds ticked by without anything for them to shoot at. After half a minute of waiting, the captain pointed his left gun at Gimble and waved him toward the ship.

Swallowing his fear, Gimble nodded, drew his sidearm, and walked toward the vessel slowly. He had a horrible feeling in his gut that this day would be his last, and he wasn’t in any rush to get it over with.

Laroux stomped his right foot on the deck, sending a sharp thud echoing around the staging area. “Move! Stop dragging your stupid heels!”

Gimble jumped and nearly pulled the trigger on his gun which, given his luck, would have sent a pulse of energy straight into his foot. He ducked his head and dashed for the open cockpit. As soon as he was next to it he rose up to his full, if meager, height and jammed his gun forward, ready to shoot anything that moved. Instead he gasped and his arms fell to his sides.

“
What do you see?” the captain asked.

A figure slouched in a pilot’s seat, as he’d presupposed there would be, but the person he saw wasn’t enclosed in the usual biosuit all spacefarers wore. Instead, the person was clad in armor, though armor that looked as smooth as skin and nearly as tight. Most of the armor was colored a shining gold, but bits of it around the boots, gauntlets, helmet, and torso were cobalt and crimson. After a few seconds’ scrutiny he realized the armor was worn by a woman by the curved shape of it around the waist, legs, and chest. She looked like a statue of a long forgotten goddess or Valkyrie, and he was awed of her savage grace, even while motionless.

Laroux coughed loudly. “Do not make me ask you again.”

Gimble turned his face to the right, but his eyes never left the woman below him. “Captain, I think… I think it’s a woman. She’s… I don’t know how to describe it.”

“
Très bien
, yes, a woman. Fine. Is she alive?”

Despite the sounds he’d heard earlier, the figure in the cockpit hadn’t moved since he’d approached, so he wasn’t sure how to answer the question. “I don’t know. She could be.”

“
Could be? What kind of answer is ‘could be’? Reach in and find out, you
imbécile.
”

The last thing Gimble wanted to do was put any part of himself into the cockpit, but the guns aimed at his back were powerful motivators. His right hand continued to hold his gun while his left reached in. To his surprise, when his fingers touched the armor it wasn’t the cold metal he’d anticipated feeling. Instead it burned like feverish flesh. And not only was it hot to the touch, but a throbbing sensation pounded beneath his fingers like the beating of a heart.