Falling Free

She was still laughing softly when she sealed the doors to the treatment room behind her and flew down the corridor toward refuge.

Chapter 11

It had been a mistake to let Ti insist on docking to the Superjumper, Silver realized, as the crunch and shudder of their impact with the docking clamps reverberated through the pusher. Zara, hovering anxiously, emitted a tiny moan. Ti snarled wordlessly over his shoulder at her, returned his fraying attention to the controls.

No—her mistake, to let his downsider, male, legged authority override her own reason—she knew he wasn’t rated for these pushers, he’d told her so himself. He was only the authority after they got inside the Superjumper.

No, she told herself firmly, not even then.

“Zara,” she called, “take the controls.”

“Dammit,” Ti began, “if you’d just—”

“We need Ti too much on the comm channels to spare him for piloting,” Silver inserted, hoping desperately Ti would not spurn this offered sop for his pride.

“Mm.” Grudgingly, Ti let Zara shoulder him aside.

The flex tube docking ring wouldn’t seal properly. A second docking, and all the hopeful jiggling the auto- waldos could supply, couldn’t make the locking ring seal properly. Silver either feared she would die, or wished she could, she wasn’t sure. All her palms sweated, and transferring the laser-solderer from one to another only made the grip clammier.

“See,” said Ti to Zara, “you can’t do any better.”

Zara glared at him. “You bent one of the rings, you dipstick. You better hope it’s theirs and not ours.”

“That’s ‘dipshit,’ “ John, laboring back by the hatch trying to make it seal, corrected helpfully. “If you’re going to use downsider terminology, get it right.”

“Pusher R-26 calling GalacTech Superjumper D620,” Ti quavered into the comm. “Von, we’re going to have to disengage and come around to the other side. This isn’t working.”

“Go ahead, Ti,” came the jump pilot’s voice in return. “Are you sick? You don’t sound so good. That was a miserable docking. Just what is this emergency, anyway?”

“I’ll explain when we’re aboard.” Ti glanced up, got a confirming nod from Zara. “Disengaging now.”

Their luck was better on the starboard hatch. No, Silver reminded herself again. We make our own luck. And it’s my responsibility to see it’s good and not bad.

Ti pushed through the flex tube first. The Jumpship’s engineer was waiting for him on the other side. Silver could hear his angry voice, “Gulik, you bent our portside docking ring. You wireheads all think you’re Mr. Twinkletoes when you’re plugged into your sets, but on manual you are, without exception, the most ham-handed—” he broke off, his voice thinning out in a little hiss, as Silver flitted through the hatch and hovered, her laser-solderer pointed sturdily at his stomach. It actually took him a moment to notice the weapon. His eyes widened and his mouth opened as Siggy and Jon backed her up from behind.

“Take us to where the pilot is, Ti,” said Silver. She hoped the fear that edged her voice made her sound angry and fierce, not pale and weak. All her strength seemed washed out of her, leaving her limp-stomached. She swallowed and took a tighter grip on the solderer.

“What the hell is this?” began the engineer, his voice a taut octave higher than before. He cleared his throat and brought it back down. “Who are you… people, anyway? Gulik, are they with you—?”

Ti shrugged and produced a sickly smile that was either very well acted, or real. “Not exactly. I’m kind of with them.”

Siggy, reminded, pointed his solderer at Ti. Silver, when approving this ploy, had kept her inner thoughts about it most secret. Going in with Ti unarmed, apparently under the quaddies’ guns, covered him in case of later capture and legal prosecution. Equally, it disguised the possibility of making his ersatz kidnapping real, should he decide to bolt back to the side of his legged companions at the last moment. Wheels within wheels; did all leaders have to think on multiple levels? It made her head hurt.

They filed quickly through the compact crew’s section to Nav and Com. The Jump pilot sat enthroned in his padded chair, plugged into the massive crown of his control headset, a temporary, regal cyborg. His purple company coveralls were stitched with gaudy patches proudly proclaiming his rank and specialization. His eyes were closed, and he hummed tunelessly in time to the throbbing biofeedback from his ship.

He yelped in surprise as his headset detached and rose, cutting his communion with his machine, when Ti thumbed the disconnect control. “God, Ti, don’t do things like that—you know better—” A second yelp at the sight of the quaddies was swallowed with a gulp. He smiled at Silver in complete bewilderment, his eyes, after one shocked pass over her anatomy, locked politely on her face. She wriggled the laser-solderer, to bring it to his attention. “Get out of your chair,” she ordered. He shrank back into it. “Look, lady… uh… what is that?”

“Laser gun. Get out of your chair.” His eyes measured her, measured Ti, flicked to his engineer. His hand stole to his seat harness buckle, hesitated. His muscles tensed. “Get out slowly,” Silver added. “Why?” he asked. Stalling, Silver thought.

“These people want to borrow your ship,” Ti explained.

“Hijackers!” breathed the engineer. He coiled, floating in his position near the airseal door. Jon’s and Siggy’s solderers swivelled toward him. “Mutants…”

“Get out,” Silver repeated, her voice rising uncontrollably.

The pilot’s face was drawn and thoughtful. His hands floated from his belt to rest in a parody of relaxation over his knees. “What if I don’t?” he challenged softly.

She fancied she could feel control of the situation slipping from her to him, sucked up by his superior imitation of coolness. She glanced at Ti, but he was staying safely and firmly in his part of helpless—and unhelpful —victim, lying low as the downsiders phrased it.

A heartbeat passed, another, another. The pilot began to relax, visibly in his long exhalation, a smug light of triumph in his eyes. He had her number; he knew she could not fire. His hand went to his belt buckle, and his legs curled under him, seeking launch leverage.

She had rehearsed it in her mind so many times, the actual event was almost an anticlimax. It had a glassy clarity, as if she observed herself from a distance, or from another time, future or past. The moment shaped the choice of target, something she had turned over and over without decision before; she sighted the solderer at a point just below his knees because no valuable control surfaces lay behind them.

Pressing the button was surprisingly easy, the work of one small muscle in her upper right thumb. The beam was dull blue, not enough to even make her blink, though a brief bright yellow flame flared at the edge of the melted fabric of his supposedly nonflammable coveralls, then winked out. Her nostrils twitched with the stink of the burnt fabric, more pungent than the smell of burnt flesh. Then the pilot was bent over himself, screaming.

Ti was babbling, voice strained, “What d’ja do that for? He was still strapped to his chair, Silver!” His eyes were wells of astonishment. The engineer, after a first convulsive movement, froze in a submissive ball, eyes flickering from quaddie to quaddie. Siggy’s mouth hung open, Jon’s was a tight line.

The pilot’s screams frightened her, swelled up her nerves to lance through her head. She pointed the solderer at him again. “Stop that noise!” she demanded.

Amazingly, he stopped. His breath whistled past his clenched teeth as he twisted his head to stare at her through pain-slitted eyes. The centers of the burns across his legs seemed to be cauterized, shadowed black and ambiguous—she was torn between revulsion, and the curious desire to go take a closer look at what she had done. The edges of the burns were swelling red, yellow plasma already seeping through but clinging to his skin, no need for a hand-vac. The injury did not seem to be immediately life-threatening.

“Siggy, unstrap him and get him out of that control chair,” Silver ordered. For once, Siggy zipped to obey with no argument, not even a suggestion of how to do it better gleaned from his holodrama viewing.