Death Drop (41 page)

“Where’s Doj?”

“Dammit, luv, how should I bloody know?!” Simon shouted. “Did you check the pipes in engineerin’?”

Dezmara considered what Simon had just gone through and decided to let him earn his pay for once and let it ride. If the ship had been locked down, there wasn’t anyone on board who could have taken Diodojo, and there was no way for him to get out. “Get me flight controls, Simon, and then open that gate.”

“Luv, the first will
probably
happen, but I can’t make any promises on the gate. That bugger ‘as the most complex security programmin’ I’ve ever seen.”

“I understand, Simon. I really do. So let me say this the only way I know how. Find a way to open that gate or we’re dead. Got it?”

“Right, luv,” Simon said with excitement. “Flight controls are back! Take that, you tosser!”

Dezmara decided to save the congratulations and pats on the back until they were far away from Luxon and safe among the stars again. She jumped into her captain’s chair, pushed the throttles forward, and yanked on the control stick. The Zebulon class star freighter leapt into the air, rippling the pools of blood around the bullet-riddled and dismembered bodies on the dock with the whirlwind force of her engines.

“Awful sorry ‘bout missin’ the run an’ blowin’ the streak an’ all, luv,” Simon said solemnly as he continued to rap at the controls in front of him. “We’ll miss this one an’ be right back on top next run, you’ll see!”

“There’s nothin’ to be sorry about, Simon. You’re gonna open that gate and we’re gonna fly outta here, meet at the rendezvous, and then kick every runner’s ass as usual,” she said coolly.

“B-b-but, luv,” Simon stammered. “You know the rules! You can’t win a run unless
all
of your cargo is accounted for…” Simon paused in hopes that it was just the stress of the current situation that made her forget that an entire container full of cargo was still sitting on the dock with their only load-bot and that they were blasting off without them.

Dezmara tapped the control console and swung all guns to starboard and then set the autopilot. “Just keep him outta my ship an’ get that damn gate open.”

Simon’s eyes followed her in disbelief, his mouth slightly open, as she slid out of her chair and turned quickly for the door. He was still typing rapidly with one hand, but the rest of his body was turned to the exit.

“Sy?” she said sternly. “You got that?”

“Y-y-yes, ma’rm,” he said as he bunched his furry brows in confusion.

“Good,” she said and then slid the kranos back over her head. “Now, if this bastard’s as good as you say he is, you’ll need both hands to keep him off our ass and open the gate.”

“Right, ma’rm,” he said as he wheeled back around, and his hand rejoined the frenetic work over the multitude of buttons and flashing lights like it never left.

“Oh, and Sy—in about three minutes, you’ll want to make sure you’re holding on to something.”

Simon was about to look over his shoulder and see if his expression of pained bewilderment could coax an explanation out of her, but the sound of Dezmara’s boots disappeared down the main deck and she was gone.

Dezmara synchronized the flight controls with the kranos and the display began counting down from one hundred and eighty seconds. She ran down the hall and quickly cut into the training room, sprinting across the padded floor to the large weapons cabinet and flinging the heavy doors open with a loud bang. A number of formidable and interesting-looking firearms, blades, staffs, and chained devices jostled in their mounts against the padded interior of the cabinet doors. The armory had a weapon for every situation and, oddly enough, Dezmara was an expert with each and every one of them she came across in her travels—no training, no practice, just a complete and instantaneous ken between warrior and instrument, as though she had wielded each one for a thousand years before. Knowing exactly what her insane plan required, Dezmara unhooked two long rifles with strange bulbs at their tips. She slung two harnesses over her shoulder, gripped a rifle in each hand around the stock and trigger-guard, and made for the engineering room as quickly as possible.

The sound of power rumbled through the open doorway to Simon’s second home on the ship, after the galley, and the customized and finely tuned engines vibrated Dezmara’s stomach. Simon’s empty chair was still facing the doorway after her last visit, and although she knew exactly where he was and why, she found it strange not seeing him there hunched over his keyboards or wrenching on the engines. Simon’s engineering control station sat in the middle of the room, and to either side, lining both walls and most of the ceiling, was an intricate tangle of pipes of various sizes and functions. The tubes intersected and diverged as they combined and separated the multitude of liquids and gases needed to run a star freighter as well-built as the
Ghost
. She would bet her next ten cups of oshkva that Simon could describe the function and contents of each pipe in the entire works, but that’s exactly why she hired him—he was
supposed
to know those types of things. To her, it was a maze of metal.

“Dammit, Doj, I have no idea where you’d be in this mess!” she said as she quickly searched all the openings at eye-level that might accommodate a creature of Diodojo’s size. Not finding anything, Dezmara scaled a ladder near the left wall that led to the gun deck above engineering to examine the nooks and crannies that were too high to see directly into. She bounded up the ladder and had cleared six rungs when something flashed in the corner of her vision and she turned suddenly to see what it was. Two burning orbs glimmered in the darkness just inches away from her face, and a roar exploded above the noise of the engines. Dezmara swung out from the ladder on her right hand and pulled her left automatic before the yowl died away and was replaced by a noisy purr.

“Goddamit, Doj!” she said as she let out a heavy sigh and holstered her gun. “I almost killed you! What’s the big idea, scarin’ the shit out of me, huh?” Dezmara reached forward and scratched the big beast under his chin. Diodojo responded in his usual fashion by squinting his eyes and purring even louder than before. He inched forward and then pushed the side of his head against her hand affectionately. Dezmara eased his face toward her again and carefully watched his expression as she gently prodded around the bump on his head.

“Well, the swelling is down and you seem to be in good spirits,” she said as the countdown in the kranos passed ninety seconds. She started to unsling the harness she had brought for him, but an uneasy feeling made her pause and a wave of doubt whispered into her mind again. She looked back at Diodojo and studied his hiding place. Only his gray face stuck out of the small opening between a series of tightly packed pipes that skirted the gun deck and disappeared toward the back of the engine room. She could tell that Doj was making an effort to be seen and that there was no possible way the rest of his body could squeeze through on this end. Dezmara climbed a few more rungs and dialed in the dark-vision on the kranos. She looked directly behind Diodojo’s position and could see that he had reached his perch from a T-junction in several bundles of pipes. It was a tight fit on all sides with no room for him to slide out on either end—a natural harness in the pipeworks.

“Shit…” she said in a dazed whisper as the countdown clicked past thirty seconds. “Doj, you stay here and hold on tight ‘til I come and get you. Things are gonna get a little crazy, okay?” Diodojo let out a small roar and Dezmara knew he understood. She never could explain it, but she always felt like he knew exactly what she was saying. Simon, of course, said it was just wishful thinking and that Diodojo was ‘just another dumb animal that Dezmara needed to love,’ to which she would respond, “That makes the two of you.” But she always felt that she and Doj shared a connection. She put the insole of her boots on the outside rails of the ladder and let gravity take over. She ignored the heat through her gloves and clapped down on the floor. She grabbed the rifles she had left on Simon’s chair and then ran into the corridor, cut sharply to her right, and charged down the main deck to the cargo hold.

Dezmara sprinted through the cargo hold door and shimmied between the stacks of containers lashed to the deck, holding both rifles high above her head. Her mind was racing and she needed to rein in her paranoid imagination so she could get out of Luxon alive.
“You have
no idea
if that’s where he was during the run to Prosiris,”
she said to herself.
“He could’ve been climbing around or in an entirely different spot

“But Doj is smart. He’s flown with you for years. He wouldn’t pick an unsafe hiding place during a run…

“You don’t have time for this shit! Bottom line is, you didn’t make sure he was secure before you flew like a maniac to Prosiris and Doj ended up with a cracked skull! Now, Simon is on
your side
—he’s always been on your side—and he’s helping you get your Human ass out of here by opening that gate…god, I hope he opens that gate…”

Dezmara settled the argument with herself just as she emerged from the stacks of containers, and gusts of air, stirred by the engines, whistled up the extended ramp at the back of the
Ghost
to greet her. She placed the rifles on the deck, pulled the harness from her shoulder and quickly slipped it over her legs and around her waist. She tapped the kranos and a large hook and cable lowered from a winch attached to a network of support girders overhead. She looked up at the grid of reinforced alloy and examined the collars that were meant for the last container.

The thick I-beam straps were custom made by Simon from the same material as the trusses lining the ceiling, and like most of the
Ghost’s
infrastructure, the cargo collars had large circles drilled out of them at exact intervals to lighten the ship. These particular restraints should have been clamped tightly around the last container with the splined shafts on their ends meshed into the grooved locks on the floor. Instead, the C-shaped beams swayed empty on their cables above her as the ship hovered. She wouldn’t have the time, or the means, now that Libby was broken down on the dock, to line the container up and lock it down with the collars. She was almost certain she could get the cargo into the hold, but she wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to secure it to the deck once she got it there. “You’re gettin’ ahead of yourself, girl. Just get the damn thing on board first!”

With fifteen seconds left in the countdown, Dezmara threaded the cable through a heavy ring attached to the deck, clipped the hook to her harness, and then jogged over to a floor-mounted winch to her left. She pulled down on the lever sticking out on the side of its cylindrical body and then yanked on the line with both hands. The big spindle turned freely, whirring and humming as the thickly braided cable spilled to the deck and coiled haphazardly at her feet. She gripped the hook in her hand, ran back to the center of the cargo bay door, and scooped up one of the awkward-looking rifles. The top of the gun had a grooved channel above the barrel and she laid the cable inside. She fastened the cable hook to a large, offset ring on the backside of the bulb extending from the barrel and then worked the pump action back and then forward again with a smooth chik-chik. She loaded the second rifle in the same fashion using a winch on the right side of the bay.

The countdown hit
three—
Dezmara secured the right winch hook to the second gun and cocked it.
Two
—she bent down and picked up the other rifle and took a deep breath.
One.

The
Ghost
launched forward with a burst of power from her engines and Dezmara could feel the acceleration pull at her hips as the cable she had clipped to her harness stretched taut. “Come in, Simon,” she bellowed into the kranos over the violent eddies lashing at her body as the ship sped through the dockyard.

“Yeah, luv.”

“Be ready to take some fire up front.”

“Er…how much bloody fire we talkin’?”

“If I’m right about those guns on the mountain, not much. Mostly glancing blows.”

“Well, I hope you’re bloody right—I don’t fancy being shot at so close to the windows, luv! Not that it matters much. Those eigh’y eights’ll shred this ol’ girl in two jifs if they get a clean pop.”

Dezmara understood why Simon was worried. The ship was armored and could take some damage, but Rolfing 88s were huge, powerful guns and there was very little distance between the circling
Ghost
and the multiple gun turrets on the mountainside. To make matters worse, there was simply no room for Dezmara to maneuver the ship—no way to present a more elusive target or to create angles of opportunity for attack. She wouldn’t want to be up front right now either, but they had to take out all of the Rolfings if they were going to get the cargo container and escape up the tube and out of the gate—and that’s the only way Dezmara would play it. “You let me worry about the guns and cargo. What’s the deal with the gate?”

“I’m tryin’, luv. But every time I get in, the bloody encryption changes the code!”

“You can do it, Sy. Just keep at it.” Dezmara was trying to convince them both that they were going to get out alive, but she knew their chances were getting slimmer by the second. Dezmara broke off communication as the ship swung dangerously close to the tower on the next dock. She steadied herself against the wall as the
Ghost
banked hard left and she heard every gun aboard open up in an orchestrated blitz on the mountain. She saw the bent, crumpled remains of the Rolfings over dock seven as they sped past and she cracked a mischievous smile. “Two down…”

The
Ghost
soared on in its intrepid flight and took out the guns over docks eight and nine before the portmaster caught on. There were six more stretches of decrepit alloy beams and buckled planks jutting into the circular cavern from the mountain, and all twelve guns above each of the dockyard doors breathed fire and spat metal in fiery coughs and fits, two at a time, as they approached. But Dezmara had won this round. It was a simple game of attack vectors and she played it brilliantly. By flying to the inside of the towers and as close to the mountain as possible, Dezmara decreased the angle of attack until the buttresses that helped hide the Rolfings obscured their fire. She approached with the triggers on the fore guns mashed open, and the revolving barrels dotted the mountainside in line with the port’s defenses before they could get a clean shot. Dezmara heard a smattering of frustrated return fire glance harmlessly off the forward fuselage and then the com crackled inside her helmet.