Black Hull (18 page)

“We’ve got a tail.”

Crowds pushed through the gold-rimmed
sidewalks of Glisreel’s Main Street. Rainbow advertisements flashed upon
crystal skyscrapers; their hexagonal walls bore the signs of extravagant wealth
by their diamond moulding. Venders along the street vied for the money of
passersby.

“What’s this here?” said a man hidden by
a cloak. He looked down upon a table with a holographic presentation of chess
images, behind which sat two ancient droids.

“XJ, our first entrant,” GR whispered,
nudging his friend to life.

“Hello sir. This is the Glisreel Chess
Tournament of Champions. The prize pool will be ten thousand UCD,” said XJ.

“Chess? Timeless game. How many do you
expect to have?” the man eyed the strange couple with suspicion.

“One hundred, at least,” XJ replied.

“Wow—it seems you have my interest then.
You see, I’m in need of a holiday. This might be my ticket.” The man pushed
back his hood, revealing a lined face, scarred; his once black hair had faded
to grey in most places. His thin eyes squinted a malevolence that the droids
could not recognize.

“XJ—look!” GR squealed. A rocketing ship
blasted overhead, heading into orbit.

“Is that…” XJ said. GR nodded.

“Can’t be, she wouldn’t leave us here.”

“Who left you?” the man replied,
curious, watching the ship they followed. Another ship followed, chasing it
into orbit.

“Our friend Sera, our ship—” GR began,
but XJ silenced him:

“Hush GR. It’s a personal matter, no
concern of his. We’ll deal with it. Please come back to sign up later. The
tournament will be grand, I promise you.”

XJ shooed the man the away and gathered
up his projector and items from the table he’d rented. GR followed him down an
alley toward the docking station several blocks away where the Fogstar had been
stationed. The cloaked stranger watched them go, looked back to the sky, then
followed after them.

A phone rang invisibly in the house.
Karen paused over the stove, looked to Christopher and Mickey who sat
impatiently for their breakfast.

“Hello?” said Karen into thin air. The
house replied:

“Karen, this is Sergeant Reynolds. Can
you come up to the office today?”

“Private,” she said. The kids were cut
off as the sergeant’s voice fed directly into Karen’s ear. “Eric? Is everything
alright?”

“Yea, we have to go over something. It’s
about what happened at Fedeli’s the other month. A loose end I have to tie up
with you about the report we filed.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yea, it’s paperwork. You’ll just have
to sign off on some papers.”

“Okay, I’ll come after the kids head
into school—is that okay?”

“Whenever you can get in is fine.”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

The call ended. Christopher looked
concernedly at his mom.

“Is everything alright? Was that about
daddy?”

“No honey, just bills. Are you guys
hungry?”

“Yea!” little Mickey cheered happily.
She loaded up their plates, and then loaded them onto the school transport. She
slipped into her car and drove anxiously to the police headquarters building.
The incident had been finished two months ago—covered up.
What does he want
now?

Eric Reynolds sat behind his shiny oak desk,
his curtains drawn, his door blocking the view of the hallway.

“Come in, sit down.”

“Hey Eric,” she said.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked. He
poured himself a shot of scotch.

“No. It’s eleven o’clock.”

“I know. The stress of this job is going
to kill me.”

“Is everything alright? How is Vanessa?”

“She’s what she is, you know?” he
replied. He finished his glass and poured another, sitting back down and
sighing.

Awkward silence filled the air. Karen
fidgeted in her chair. Eric was a handsome man, and young—the youngest to have
ever achieved the rank of sergeant at Metropolitan Station. He’d met Mick many
years ago through his father, who’d trained Mick when he’d first entered
FRINGE. They’d become quick friends over fast cars and drinks.

“I’ve been thinking Karen,” he said
slowly. “You know I love him, Mick. But this shit has been going on for too
long. The cover-ups, lying to the media.”

Her face turned white. She realized it
wasn’t just papers, that there were no papers. He was throwing it right at
her—everything she had been too afraid to confront for years.

“It’s his training—”

“I know all about the rewiring he went
through. My father oversees it. It’s a bullshit excuse for his behavior.”

“You know the statistics. Seventy
percent of FRINGE operatives experience changes in temperament for the
worse—anger, rage, violence. It’s not who he is—”

“That’s bullshit. My father went through
it. He never did this kind of stuff. He never punched a waiter in his face
over—”

“It wasn’t the waiter. It was more than
that.”

“Can you tell me what’s going on then?
Because it’s getting hard covering for him.”

“I knew him before you did. He was
different. Completely different. Now, I never see him—and he never sees us.
Three months at a time, then years off planet. That’s how it’s going to be.”

“So that’s it?”

Two tears mirrored each other on either
side of Karen’s face.

“Why did you ask me to come here? Where
are the papers?”

Eric stood up from his desk, finished his
second glass, and walked over. He sat down in a chair beside her.

“You know I have the same shit going on
at home?”

“I thought things were fine with you
two. You’ve never said a word.”

“It always does look like that doesn’t
it? Hell, if I didn’t work here, do you think I’d think any differently about
you and him? If I didn’t have to clean up his shit first hand?”

She didn’t reply, and instead looked
away at the wall, viewing a photograph of a rocket. Below the rocket stood a
man, Eric’s father, smiling, FRINGE logo across his chest. She felt warmth on
her knee—a hand. Her first instinct told her to let it remain, allow it to
grow, but she jerked away. She faced Eric and peered into his empty, longing
eyes.

“I’m burnt out Karen. Vanessa and I are finished.
She’s not who she used to be either.”

“I’m sorry, I had no idea. I don’t know
how I can help you though—me and her, we never got along very well.”

“Because she’s a bitch you mean?” he
laughed, placing his hands back in his own lap.

Karen looked away again, unable to
contend with the intensity of his desire.

“Look—there are no papers to sign. I
just wanted to talk. I have no one else to talk to about all this. And no one
would relate to it anyway. Guys here would laugh me out of the job.”

“Then maybe you should get a therapist,”
she replied coldly.

“Yea, maybe I should. Let me ask you
this: why should we be stuck with bad hands? You waiting three years at a time
for someone who supposedly loves you, me stuck with—” Karen cut him off:

“Mick does love me.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” he said,
standing up again. “This was a bad idea.”

“What exactly was your idea?” she looked
at him cuttingly.

“Just to talk. I need someone to talk
to. I’ve always felt a connection to you when we’ve talked.”

“I don’t know Eric. I really don’t. You
said it yourself—neither one of us is on stable ground. His last departure
was—it was rough this time.”

“I know.” There was a long silence.
Finally Karen stood up, eyeing the door as if it were a pressure release valve.

“I have to go.”

“Meet me for dinner?” Eric said. Karen
froze. He’d been too direct, too transparent.

“I—Eric…” she stumbled for words; a
tornado of emotions, eroticisms, guilts, shames, fears, and excitements ripped
through her body.

“I’m asking you out to talk. That’s all.
You don’t have to say anything. Just go. Think about what you really want.”

She looked back at him, her husband’s
best friend, and saw the emptiness again; she knew it: it mirrored the coldness
in her own body, the longing, the distance between the life she had once
expected and known, and the one she had come to inhabit. She turned, opened the
door, and walked out.

“This is the UCA Bounty Division. We are
ordering you to return to planet immediately by authority of UCA law,” a
crackling voice hissed into the Fogstar cabin.

Sera gripped the pilot rod and tugged it
hard, sending the ship faster away from the planet.

“Did they tell you in school that you
weren’t such a good listener?” Mick said, astonished at her calm.

“Sit down and strap in. Both of you,”
she commanded. Mick and Axa obeyed. The com broke in again:

“You are ordered to stand down—you are
wanted on four counts of murder, one for military personnel. We have permission
to shoot you out of the sky. I repeat, we have permission to shoot you down.
Please slow and redirect your course for a Glisreel port.”

“Maybe I would have been better off
staying on your old ship,” Axa grumbled.

“Shut up and relax,” Sera said, turning
with a smile. “You may not have much time left, so you might as well enjoy it.”

“She’s crazy,” Axa said to Mick, who
stared at the trailing blip on the radar screen.

“She’s also good—damn good—so let her
work,” Mick said, banking she’d do what he’d seen her do before: beat
impossible odds, namely by sending a cruiser against two light-class vessels.

“Mick, you ever heard of a
stall-reversal gambit?” Sera asked.

“That’ll be a new one,” he said.

“More ships’ll be trailing us soon if we
don’t blast this one out of the sky. Here’s what I’m going to need you to do.
Go to the engine room, kill the thrusters.”

“Something tells me you don’t mean put
the brakes on,” Mick replied.

“No, I mean we are going to near break
them apart. It’s our only shot.”

“Fogstar, stand down immediately. We are
ready to open fire.”

“They won’t shoot,” she said. “These
types are as lawless as law can be, and that’s saying something. They know we
have plastic and expancapacitor bodies on board. That’s their paydirt. Idle
threats. They won’t destroy the treasure they’re after.”

“Are you sure?” said Axa nervously. Sera
ignored her.

“Okay, Mick, go shut down the main
thrusters, rotate them, and then fire them up again. Do all that in a span of
ten seconds. You got it?”

“No—not at all, you want to give me a
little more?”

“You know where the thruster shut-down
switch is, in the engine room?”

“Yea.”

“Okay. You shut them down. So we’re
gliding. Then, rotate the thrusters.”

“Rotate them?”

“Spin them the fuck around. So they’re
pointing backwards.”

“The main thrusters backwards?”

“Yea, and then turn them on. Then watch
your head. I’m going full burn.”

“We’ll fall out of the sky,” Axa said.

“Damn right, and while we’re spinning,
I’m going to blow this bounty hunter apart. Or would you rather go to the UCA
Penitentiary?”

“Ok, got it,” Mick said.

He unstrapped himself and ran to the
engine room. He found a grid of switches and knobs, and finally, the main
thruster switch. Under a panel was a wide knob that rotated different parts of
the wing and thrusters. He found one knob under a separate panel that rotated
the entire main thruster.

“Ready?” Mick asked over intership com.

“Yea, now.”

He punched the button and the roar of
the engines stopped. He cranked the knob hard. In the cold silence of space,
the main thrusters wheeled around one hundred and eighty degrees, pointing in
the opposite direction of the ship’s momentum.

“Cover your head!” Sera called.