Chapter 15
Walking onto the deck of docking port two-one-seven, Jarred found the
Fancy Girl
sitting safely in its berth where he had left it only a few short hours earlier, allowing himself his first relieved breath in as much time. The trip back to the dock had gone smoothly, but there was no telling when more Sect troops might suddenly storm in and start shooting things up again.
Though there didn’t seem to be any immediate signs of trouble in the bay, he couldn’t help but feel that something was out of place. The dock was a hive of activity, with pilots busy tending to their vessels, aided by the bay’s numerous mechanical hands, civilians casually coming and going. Everything seemed normal enough, but the feeling persisted. Something was . . . missing.
Jarred felt someone step up next to him and glanced over at Elora. She was staring ahead at the very thing he was, her expression unreadable, though he didn’t have to try hard to imagine what was going through her mind. Boarding the ship would feel like turning her back on her brother and truly leaving him behind. He wanted to convince her that wasn’t what she was doing, that they weren’t leaving Ethan, but this wasn’t the time. He had a plan to help the boy, but he couldn’t accomplish it here or now. No, his instincts told him that they had to leave . . . before the option was no longer open to them.
Jarred turned his attention to Sierra as she walked past him a few steps and stopped, placing her hands on her hips.
“Which one is yours?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder at him.
Jarred pointed towards the
Fancy Girl’
s berth and watched as Sierra turned to look at the ship.
“Not bad,” she commented, turning on her heel to march off towards it. “It’ll do.”
“Not bad?” Kern asked incredulously, as he stepped past Jarred as well to walk around the ship for a closer inspection. “Do you know what this is?”
“You mean, beyond our ride out of here?” Sierra retorted, dryly.
“This is a Meridian Stargazer,” Kern continued, seeming to ignore the sarcastic remark. “They stopped making these over a century ago. It’s a classic.
“How does she fly?” he asked Jarred, without a backwards glance, continuing on with his examination.
“Well enough,” Jarred replied, simply. Normally, he would have jumped at the chance to converse with someone who had a real appreciation for an airworthy specimen like this one, but their current situation as it was, it hardly seemed appropriate.
“I’ve never seen one in such good condition,” Kern went on, not seeming put off by the unenthusiastic response. “It must have set you back a few credits.”
Jarred couldn’t help but smirk. “You’d be surprised.”
“I’m not very often,” Sierra remarked, with a raised eyebrow.
She was still weary of him. He didn’t really blame her. He had no intention of trusting her either. He viewed her distrust of him as a good thing. As suspicious of him as she was, she was even more so of everyone else around them. It didn’t hurt having another pair of trained eyes watching for trouble. So, she could continue being as weary of him as she liked. Once they got clear of this mess, he would find a safe, quiet place where they could part ways. He assumed she was just as eager as he was to do so. From there, he wasn’t quite sure of what he was going to do. There was still Elora . . . and Ethan. The solution to their problem wouldn’t be quite as simple.
“It’s a bit flashy for a bounty hunter’s transport.,” Sierra went on, continuing to stare him down. “I wasn’t aware the Guild’s contracts were paying out so well.”
“Well, now you’re aware,” Jarred responded, quickly, meeting her scrutinizing gaze. He knew where her questioning was leading and he didn’t have the time or patience for an interrogation now. “We could hang around all day and discuss just how lucrative an industry it is, if you’d like, or maybe we should just be moving along before another Sect raiding party kicks down the door looking for your little friend.”
It took mentioning her for Jarred to even remember that Orna was still with them, standing quietly as always at the rear of the group, observing their exchange.
Sierra glanced momentarily over at Orna, then returned her suspicious gaze back to Jarred. She continued to eye him for a moment before finally nodding her agreement. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Stellar!” Jarred exclaimed, sarcastically. “I’m ready right now.” Retrieving the ship remote from his pocket, he triggered the
Fancy Girl’
s boarding ramp and watched it drop into position on the deck. “If you’d all care to board, we can get this pleasure cruise under way.”
The words had barely left Jarred’s lips when an alert tone sounded over the bay’s comm system. Almost immediately after, the numerous civilian access doors around the bay began sliding shut one after another, each sounding a metallic thud as they were locked in place. Only the bay’s sudden silence, as all work stopped on the floor, allowed Jarred to hear the electronic drone of the dock’s entry port shield powering up, and he turned to see the faint crimson glow of the energy field shimmering to life in the open portal that was their only means of escape.
They were effectively sealed in.
A moment later, the comm came to life again, this time with an amplified, very calm and formal sounding, female voice.
“Attention, civilian aviators,” the operator began. “This is a citywide bulletin wave for all Trycon docking ports. Effective immediately, all privately docked vessels are hereby grounded at current points of harbor, pending further notification by Trycon airspace authorities. We thank you for your cooperation.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” Kern commented, looking around the bay. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”
Kern caught both Jarred and Sierra’s looks of doubt and shrugged at them in response. “What? It’s possible.”
As the alert message began to repeat itself, this time in another of Trycon’s many multicultural dialects, Kern called out to a small dock mech rolling in his direction. “Hey, mech!” The mech came to abrupt halt as he stepped into its path. “Where can I find the docking supervisor?”
The mech’s head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, as it appeared to slowly scan the dock, eventually returning to Kern to squawk what Jarred took to be a negative response.
Kern stood up straight with his hands on his hips and scanned the dock for himself. “Alright, I’ll take that as you don’t know. Well, are there
any
organics
on duty today I might be able to talk to?”
Jarred’s eyes widened in realization as he finally discovered what had been troubling him about the bay and he silently cursed himself for not having caught it sooner. A quick glance at Sierra told him she had also just come to the same conclusion, her lips curling down into a scowl.
The mech responded to Kern’s question with a long string of unintelligible binary dialect before finally turning to go off on its way, leaving Kern to turn back to face Sierra. “And you wonder why I hate mechs.” He seemed about to go on, but stopped himself as he noticed both of their reactions. “What?”
“We’re in trouble,” Sierra answered him, with a look that mirrored Jarred’s own concern and frustration.
“Yeah,” Kern said, cringing slightly. “Of course we are.”
Jarred glanced back at Elora. She looked unfocused and withdrawn, her gaze seeming transfixed on nothing in particular. He doubted she had even heard the broadband alert, still lost in her feelings of grief and guilt. He needed to get her as far from this place as he could, and he needed to be quick about it.
“Kern,” Jarred called out as he turned around, receiving the man’s attention. He tossed him the ship remote. “Go aboard and warm up the engines. We need to keep a low profile with the grounding, so run through the low power start up sequence, then keep her on standby. Once the barrier is down we’ll need to make a quick dust off.”
“Hey, I think I know my way around a flight deck,” Kern answered, sounding only slightly offended. He then glanced over at Sierra for confirmation and received an affirming nod.
“Where are
you
going?” she asked, turning back to Jarred.
“To get that shield down,” he replied, pointing towards the port barrier.
She took a step closer to him. “I’ll go with you.”
Jarred nodded in agreement and then turned to face Elora, who was now actually looking back at him.
“Go with Kern,” he directed her, trying to be as gentle with his words as he could be. He didn’t want it to sound like he was ordering her to get onboard and out of his way, but it was the safest place for her right now and she wouldn’t be able to help him in her current emotional state.
“Both of you.” This was directed to Orna, who stood just behind Elora, having been taking the situation in with her usual lack of concern.
Orna stepped up next to Elora, resting a hand gently on her arm. “Come,” she spoke softly. “There is nothing more we can do here. You can be of best use to him now by staying safe from harm.”
Jarred waited for Elora to put up an argument which, to his surprise, never came. She instead gave Orna a resigned nod, seeming swayed by her melodically soothing words and, with only a brief glance back in his direction, she turned to follow Kern towards the ship’s ramp. He had expected her to put up a bit more of a fight and wondered who Orna had been referring to when she spoke.
Himself . . . or Ethan. Most of what Orna ever said seemed to have multiple meanings, so in the end, he guessed it didn’t really matter what
she
meant, only what meaning the
listener
took from her. Judging by the result, he assumed Elora had heard the latter.
“Keep your comm open,” Sierra called after Kern.
“
Copy that
,” Kern responded back, over her active comm unit as he marched up the ship’s ramp, Elora and Orna close behind him. “
Try not to shoot anyone
.”
Jarred managed to pull his eyes from Elora only once she had disappeared up the boarding ramp, turning from the ship to look up at the dock’s upper level control room. Sierra’s gaze was also locked steadily on their target as she raised the comm to her lips.
“No promises.”
* * *
Kern stepped onto the flight deck of, what he considered to be, one of the finest examples of space worthy craftsmanship in the past century and slowly found his way to the forward control seat, taking in every console and display with a sense of child-like awe. Holding his breath, he eased himself down into the pilot seat and let his hands pass gently over its controls. Small displays on both sides of his arms began flashing to life at his touch, revealing the ship’s current dormant status.
“Hello, old girl,” he whispered, softly to the ship. “How are we feeling today? I was thinking I might take you for a little ride. What do you think?” He heard the gentle hum of the engines coming online as he began their silent warm up sequence and grinned to himself. “That’s what I like to hear.”
He sat back in the seat for a moment, content to simply breath in the ship around him, before finally sitting back up to continue initializing the rest of the start-up systems, his grin growing broader.
There was no doubt about it. He was in love.
* * *
Jarred stood in front of the lift tube to the dock’s upper control room and gazed up at the tinted view panel that stretched across the length of it. The lift was the only access point to the control center and the only way to open the barrier doors was up there. Unfortunately, access to the tube was restricted to dock personnel.
“It’s key card activated,” he informed Sierra. “I’ll have to run a bypass.”
“A bypass?” Sierra asked, skeptically.
“Well, normally I’d just blast a hole through it, but under the circumstances, I think the situation calls for a little more discretion, so why don’t you just keep an eye out for security.”
“I don’t think so,” Sierra responded, stepping in front of Jarred. “After seeing you in action, I think it’s fairly safe to say that the word
discreet
is lost to you.
You
can watch the dock.”
“Alright, suit yourself.” Jarred took a step back, shaking his head while suppressing a grin. There was no reason to be insulted by the remark. After all, he didn’t really specialize in subtle
or
discreet. Instead, he turned around to face the dock and placed himself in front of her so she could work while he kept watch.
The dock itself seemed calm enough, considering the lockdown, and aside from the lack of organic personnel, there were no signs of trouble. But if the past few days’ events were any indication, he had no doubt that it would find them soon enough.