Zero nodded and took off towards the elevators.
Rork addressed the group. “Step one is to regain control of the trainship. Who is next in charge? So I can get out of here.”
The young men and women talked to each other but said nothing to him. They quieted.
“Look, your command crew was wiped out by the EDF, but you’ve gotta have somebody else and I need to get on with my itinerary.”
A bone-thin young man with a cigarette in his mouth stepped forward. “That was the Cartel. Since you’re not in uniform, maybe you’re Cartel, eh?”
“Why would the Cartel fire on their own slaver? Anyway, that shot passed right over me as I landed here while under attack from that EDF ship the...” Rork snapped his fingers “...the
McTrain
, or something like that.”
The crewmen broke out into raucous laugher.
“The
John McCain
is what you mean.” The cigarette dangled now from the smiling crewman’s mouth. “And it’s got some company maybe you didn’t know about, eh?” He pointed behind Rork.
Rork turned and looked out the sundeck’s huge floor to roof window. There was a second ship. Blocky and compact, what could only be a Cartel cruiser crouched next to the EDF monster just a few thousand meters from the trainship’s bow.
“Who put this man in charge?” A short, loud woman pushed her way through the crewmen and poked her finger into Rork’s chest. “This man is a pirate, wanted by both the EDF and the Cartel. You have no authority here.”
Rork studied her, amused. Bobbed frizzy black hair framed intense brown eyes and a sharp nose. Her bosom and backside were ample. He nodded approvingly.
“Given that we’re under attack now by both the EDF and the Cartel, I guess I’m the right man for the job!” His instincts screamed at him to flee but this sorry group was doomed without him.
She shook her head. “It’s just the Cartel. They want me. I’m a whistleblower. Are you prepared to protect me?” She crossed her arms and looked him up and down.
He shot her a skeptical look. “I heard about a girl they have a bounty on but she’s a runaway daughter or something.”
She frowned at him.
Rork shrugged. “Where’s the address system?” he asked the crewman.
The pixie-cut girl sauntered over to him and tapped the left side of her chest. “Talk.”
Rork leaned forward, his mouth at her adequate breast. “Listen, everyone. I’m Rork Sollix and I’m taking charge of this ship temporarily until we get out of this mess. Now, there are a few ships nearby: a couple from the EDF and at least one from the Cartel. There is nothing to worry about. Just remain calm. I’m going to negotiate our way—”
The window behind Rork flashed red and a sharp trill sounded.
“Someone is hailing us,” said the crewman, her eyes wider now.
Rork cleared his throat. “I’m going to negotiate my— our way out of this, everyone, so just remain calm. Nothing to worry about.” He turned to the girl. “Answer it.”
Old Man Barbary’s impact-crater strewn face startled Rork and the fearless pirate took a step back.
“Oh, good. I know where you’re going to be for awhile.” The wine-stained corners of his mouth upturned into a sneer.
“Are they acting under your orders?” Rork asked.
Barbary looked away. “So you think you’re going to negotiate your way out of this?”
He’s just inferring that.
Rork opened his mouth.
“I know that because I have informers on board the
Achilles
.”
Barbary’s V-shaped, closed-lipped grin was too ugly to bear and Rork looked away.
“Well?” Rork asked.
“You have a snitch of your own over there. I want her. And then I will be gone. For now.”
“There’s ten-thousand people here, Gamil. How am I going to find her? And the other—”
Barbary pointed past him. “Black hair, snooty expression, just a few meters behind you.”
Rork turned around, looked at the whistleblower and shook his head.
For a whistleblower on the run, you’re not very good at hiding.
“The thing you don’t know,” he turned back to Barbary, “is that I have a weapon. This ship is armed. I can blow you out of the sky whenever I please.”
Barbary leaned his head back and guffawed. He leaned forward again, his nostrils flaring and his eyes tight. “Out of appreciation for your classic bluff, I will give you Lala in return for the whistleblower. I want an answer now.”
“Give me a few minutes. End connection,” he said to the nervous crewman.
Barbary opened his mouth and his image disappeared. Rork’s gaze clung to the scene outside a moment longer.
“I want all outbound communications blocked, except those I explicitly authorize. Can you do that? We may have an informer on board.”
She shook her head. “This is a civilian transport ship. We have no way to do that.”
Rork frowned. “Can we steer it yet? Propulsion?”
“We’re working on it but it could take a few hours.”
“What’s your name?” Rork asked her.
“Riley.”
“Riley, did you notice any change in the view while I was talking to the Cartel ship?”
“No.” She glanced out the window. Her eyes went wide and she turned back to him.
He nodded. “In other words, we need propulsion now.”
She nodded and ran off, her plump little buttocks rising and falling.
Some pleasures are in abundance, even in the darkest moments.
“Riley!” he roared.
She stopped and turned.
“Stay close. You’re my second in command now. Find someone you trust to do the legwork.” He walked over to the whistleblower. “I need to call you something.”
“Mary Ellen.” She angled her face away from him, her eyes wary.
“You heard.”
“Who is this Lala?”
Only my reason for being.
“Someone very important to me.”
She put her wrists together and held her hands out in front of her.
Rork shook his head. She had a vibrant strength about her, a defiant courage. It excited Rork. He studied her dark eyes. Her feminine endowments belied an obvious magnetic violence, like a caged animal that would die rather than submit. “I don’t hand people over to the Cartel. I fight the Cartel. And the EDF.”
“What if he kills your Lala?”
He drew in a sharp breath. “He knows I’ll destroy him and his family.”
“So you want to kill his family, too?”
He nodded. “If need be. He killed my father.”
Mary Ellen nodded. “What if I told you that he’s my father?”
Rork studied her. “Little girl ran away from her daddy? I think you’re going to get us all killed.”
“Do you know where he’s keeping her?”
He shook his head.
“I think I know. I know all his bases and hiding spots. I can help you find her and get her out.”
“In exchange for not handing you over? Why does a Barbary run away, anyway?”
She looked away and opened her mouth to speak. The metal floor rose up at Rork’s face and he got a hand up just in time to break the worst of it. He rolled over and out across the sundeck. Everyone was gone. He pushed himself up. Bodies piled upon bodies, some moving, some groaning, some not.
“What the hell— Riley!” Rork turned and looked out the window. The EDF ship filled his view now. A wavy beam reached out from it, covering the trainship.
The metal plates under him rumbled again and he lurched backwards.
Riley crawled up to him. “It’s a tractor beam. They’re saving us.”
He looked again. The EDF ship retreated to his right. Dead ahead were the block-gridded outlines of Luna City, the sprawling gray settlement at the South Pole of the Moon. It was too close. He turned to Riley. “If they’re saving us then why are we flying into Luna City?”
She looked from the window to Rork and back again. “To land?”
“Get those engines up now and in full reverse, you hear me? Now!”
She nodded and crawled off.
Rork stood up and walked over to the window, ignoring the screams and groans behind him. He tapped the display next to it and brought up NBX Now.
A woman’s perfect, tan face with close-cropped blonde hair appeared on screen with the image of a trainship next to it.
“Our top story at this hour is the shocking EDF attack on the FTS
Achilles
, a trainship carrying settler volunteers and badly needed food and medical supplies to the outer colonies.
“Chairman Barbary himself is responding and expects to contain the damage but warns that everyone on board the trainship is at risk of further EDF attacks. The cowardly surprise assault just moments ago may be revenge for colonists’ recent democratic decision to continue their alliance with the Cartel in the face of Earth Government abuses.
“For more information or news tips, ‘scope us at NBX.”
What?
Rork’s head spun. Cartel or EDF? What would either group stand to gain? He switched off the broadcast. Outside, the Barbary ship swung over the side of the
John McCain
. Red bolts shot from its forward and side cannons at the destroyer’s bridge. The laser pulses spread out and dissolved upon contact with the EDF ship’s shields but the wavy tractor beam cut off.
Rork’s cranium impacted the bulkhead.
Zero’s panicked face hung over Rork. The mystic’s mouth moved but no signals reached Rork’s mind. Rork sat up and wobbled. His head was full of cotton. Distant, muddled echoes tickled the back of his mind. Zero pointed and Rork looked.
Mary Ellen held a rag-clad child in her arms, its limp body curving down between and over her wrists.
“You’re killing them! You have to stop it now. We have to surrender,” Zero screamed.
Rork looked at him, confused.
“There are two-hundred dead children down there. Hundreds more are injured. In fact, there are almost twenty-thousand souls on board and they’re all children! And this is all our fault!” Zero’s eyebrows tightened and his eyes softened.
“Not my fault. I didn’t do that.” Rork struggled through the noisy haze to process the events. He had to decide what to do. He needed to make a decision, before more people died.
“But you can stop it. We’ll surrender. It’s the right thing to do. Though we encounter many defeats, we are not defeated.”
Rork waved his hand in Zero’s face. “I’m not going back to that cage. Forget it. And these kids are better dead than in the mines.”
“What if—”
“Anju and Devi?” Rork asked.
Zero shook his head. “Maybe we have to encounter these defeats to know who we are, to rise from it and to achieve enlightenment.”
“Screw enlightenment. I want freedom.” Rork walked over to the window and looked out.
Barbary’s ship smoked and the
John McCain
’s prow refocused on the trainship. Rork saw the lights of Luna City and made out the double-helical X Tower on its surface, the central projector of the city’s magnetic dome. The dome kept the air in and the radiation out — an invention that permitted civilization beyond the comfy confines of Earth.
He tapped the display, selected the EDF ship and opened a channel.
“ESS
John McCain
,” said a female voice.
“This is Rork Sollix on the trainship, the fugitive you want. I surrender. Cease your attacks. I give up, unconditionally. Just stop attacking this ship! And help us!”
“R
EQUEST
DENIED
.”
The connection with the EDF ship dropped. Rork turned to Zero, his mind a jumble.
“Didn’t I just surrender?”
“Did you? Are you sure that is indeed what you—”
“What do you mean, am I sure? Yes! I am sure!”
Zero nodded. He placed one arm across his chest, rested the elbow of his other arm over it and with that other hand cupped his chin. He massaged his beard, a dark scowl on his face. “There is something bigger than us going on here.”
“I told you it wasn’t our fault.”
“I did not imply that we are blameless.” Zero scolded him with his eyes. He took a small step back and pointed out the sundeck window.
Rork turned around. A red pulse landed next to the sundeck and the plates rattled under his feet. A dozen more red pulses flew from the EDF ship’s pointed prow. They raced directly for a point somewhere between Rork’s eyes and his scalp.
“Run!” Rork turned and pushed Zero ahead of him. They sprinted across the now-empty sundeck, feet smacking thin metal, turning and launching the next forward.
Zero crossed the bulkhead and extended his hand. Rork threw himself after him, his fingers aching, grasping for Zero’s.
The pulses hit and an icy scream reverberated through Rork. The breath pushed out of his lungs. Bulkheads further on boomed shut and Rork slammed to the floor as the pressure fell.
Zero hauled him into the corridor and the sundeck’s bulkhead door closed behind them. They collapsed to the floor, their mouths moving but precious little air entering their lungs in the sparse atmosphere.
Air flooded in from above and a curling cloud formed over Rork’s head. He pulled himself up.
“An—” The word caught in Rork’s brittle, parched throat. He held up his right hand, his fingers grasping the warm drink his body ached for.
“Wait for recompression, sir.” The squirrelly voice tickled Rork’s ear. He leveraged himself up using the guardrail and got to a kneeling position.
The corridor turned right where Rork sat. A closed bulkhead limited his movement just a few meters ahead of him. Behind him was the now burned-out sundeck. Far down the corridor in other direction lay another closed bulkhead.
A dark dent appeared in the sundeck’s bulkhead followed by a wheezing-sizzling.
Rork got himself up. He grabbed Zero’s arms and pulled him down the corridor. He banged on the closed bulkhead and tried to speak but his throat didn’t respond. He tapped the com button, again and again.
The door opened and Rork dragged Zero through, his shoulders fallen, his arms hanging low, his neck aching from sustaining the weight of his head.
Another wheezing-sizzling sound and a hole opened in the sundeck bulkhead. A high scream started but cut off when the bulkhead door collapsed and disappeared.
A breeze swept Rork and Zero backwards, inexorably backwards, all progress disappearing in milliseconds. Rork saw himself in space. It was over.