Dee continued to tap on the hull. It appeared, from Tiger’s point of view, that he was changing his rhythms up. Whatever Dee was trying to do, it wasn’t working. Tiger looked to Ruff, who’d noticed the same thing and was now looking back with a concerned visage.
“Need some help?” Tiger offered.
The black man sighed. “Just getting old and my memory ain’t what it used to be, I reckon.” He paused a second to scratch his head in frustration. “It’ll come back to me.”
“Well, it needs to come on back pretty fast.” Tiger glanced nervously behind him at the corridor. “You know, before Ruff’s buddies find us down here with our fingers up our asses.”
“No … that wouldn’t be good for any of us,” Ruff agreed, nervously adding, “certainly not for me!”
“Aw, hell, Ruff! It’ll be over quick for you.” Tiger winked at him. “Like you said … they shoot deserters on sight, remember. Knowin’ those ol’ boys you ran with … you won’t ever leave this moldy ass cave.”
“What a ray of sunshine you are, Tanner Thomas.” Ruff made another attempt at a sarcastic smile, but it just didn’t work for him. The boys back at GenetX had some work to do with facial expressions.
“Will you two give it a break?” Dee called over his shoulder. It was starting to get to him that he couldn’t remember the right rhythm to unlock the ship. Whose dumbass idea had it been to lock the fucking ship by a sequence of thumping? Oh, that’s right. It’d been his. What was the name of that damned song that Cap’n Reb had liked so much? One of those old redneck rock songs from the late twentieth century. Sideburns and bell bottoms. Afros and polyester. Some group from what’d used to be Arkansas. Cap’n had thought it so humorously fitting for the big, midnight-black ship.
Ohhh … what was it? Night Nelly? Dark Debbie? Black Billie? No! Black somethin’ though! Black Sabbath! No, but where had he heard that before? Sounded awful familiar. Black fuck … Black what? Black Bam … No, wait!
“Black Betty!” he belted out, as it came to him. “Black Betty! Bam Bam! No … that’s not it!” His head nodded in time, as the beat slowly came back to him. Behind him, Tiger and Ruff looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“That’s it!” The words started coming to him, and his fingers started tapping the beat. He drummed out the rhythm in the exact spot on the hull, where the sensors absorbed the command.
A soft electrical whirring sound filled the secret hangar, and the ship slowly began to awake. There was a loud hiss, stale, pressurized air escaping as the main hatch cracked open. Inside the opening, soft, glowing lights illuminated the cabin. After years in hibernation, Night Mare was coming alive. A female voice emanated from an unseen speaker, greeting them.
“Dee Train Ridley! About motherfuckin’ time you got your ass back down here to check on me!”
That voice, black, brash and full of attitude stopped Tiger in his tracks as he was stepping onto the gangplank. Turning, he looked at Dee and the man smiled.
The Master Builder gestured at his creation. “Tiger Thomas … meet my beautiful Shaniqua.”
Tiger was touched. “You patterned the ship after your wife? That’s sweet, man!”
“Are you outta your fuckin’ mind?” Dee looked at him like he had three heads. “You think I wanted to come to work every day and listen to my wife? Hellll naw! I gave her the personality of this fine ass gal I use to date at A&M back in my college days. Man, that girl could make me walk funny for days!”
“Well, hell! Why didn’t you marry her then?”
“Cuz, I found out she was making half the football team walk funny too,” Dee admitted sheepishly.
“Who’s this damned cracker? Why’s he named after a cat?” Shaniqua asked. “Where’s the Cap’n? Where’s the weird-ass motherfucker with the Jew name?”
“German!” Dee corrected her. “Doctor Schmidt was German!”
“Sounds like you chose wisely on the marriage.” Ruff leaned in, giving his two cents worth.
“I thought you had a strict “no pets” policy, Dee, honey. Who let the mutt in here?”
Tiger looked at Dee with a raised eyebrow. “Does she talk like that all the time?”
“She grows on you.” He didn’t look so confident, though.
“You know what all this damp air has been doin’ to my processors? Not to mention my servo relays,” the ship was going on. “And you sit yore ass down here for five years and get dripped on over and over and over cuz y’all was too damned cheap to fix a leaky ass roof. Shit was like some kind of water torture.”
“All right, listen up, Shaniqua!” Dee barked sharply, deciding it was time to lay down the law. “Tiger is your new captain. You belong to him now. You’re responsible for his safety.”
“Who! Hold that shit right there!” the ship shot back, urgency in her voice. “What’re you saying, Dee honey?”
“Yeah, what’re you sayin’, Dee?” Tiger echoed. “You not going with us?”
“You just gonna leave me with this white bread mufucka?” Shaniqua whined. “Just like that? I thought I meant something to you. After all these years, you just came down here to give me away!”
“Yeah, what the fuck?” Tiger grabbed his friend by the arm. “I thought the plan was we were all leaving together, bro.”
“No!” Dee shook his head. “The plan was for me to put you in a spaceship and get you off this rock. I never said I was going with you.”
“So, you’re going back up through all those soldiers?” Tiger was incredulous. “That’s suicide, Dee! Look what we had to go through to get here.”
“You wanna go back to space, Tiger. My days as a spacer are over. I blue-balled a long time ago.” He could see Tiger was visibly upset. He put a hand on his distraught
