Gunship (5 page)

“I have a jamming solution in place and ready to go,” Duv announced. “Want I should switch ’er on and see if anything blows?”

Reilly responded sternly, “Nothing blows on my ship, Duv. Jam it out.”

“Roger that.” He launched the solution via their cybertronic network and waited. A green light came up on his status board. “Okay, it’s in place and blocking about eighty-seven percent of the signal. Anybody trying to track it now would have to be up our ass or pretty damn close to it. Do you want a system workup of initial specs, now it’s contained?”

“Yeah, see what you can get off of it. Set the containment to detect any triggers before we sweep-scan it. I don’t want any more surprises today.”

“Heard that alright.” Duv brought up the virtual view of the cyberdefense suite and set the containment field to flag any triggers or back doors prior to the sweep reaching those points. Then he turned his attention to finalizing their course plot. He brought up the route on his holo-display for final check to make sure all of his calculations back to Arias were valid and not going to drop them into controlled space, unfriendly patrolled areas, a star, or a black hole. He confirmed the coordinates and launched the flight pattern, turning control over to the ship’s computer to get them back to Arias by the next day. He got up to come look over Reilly’s shoulder, cup of coffee in hand. She had returned to the Welch records and was looking through everything HAILE had pulled up.

“Seth did really well with this program modification. It’s pulling up everything, even classified records. And he’s sure it’s untraceable?”

“He says it is. Even got us access to the ISUs’ main frame, for those special times when you need the very best!” Duv laughed, then sobered. “Must have got it from his mom—she was always the smart one, teaching him on this stuff from when he could barely walk. Good thing, too. That kid deserves better than being just another dumb stick jockey who can’t even see what’s right in front of him.”

Reilly looked up. “You gotta stop blaming yourself. There were no indications, nothing until it was already over. If you had been there, you’d be dead like the rest of them.”

“I still feel like if I had been there I could’ve made a difference, maybe saved her and my other boy. At least we got Skeeter out…thanks to you. You saved his life.” Duv gave an ironic laugh and shook his head. “You’ve saved all our lives at one time or other.”

“Don’t go getting sentimental on me now, Jackson. You know I hate that shit and I’m already in a hell of a mood after all our fun today!” Reilly growled. “In fact, my day would end a lot better if I could finish it out by kicking your sorry ass!”

“Well, you are right, his ass is sorry, but you’ll have to wait to kick it. Ty asked me to come get you. He has something to show you in the hold.” Chang was quiet as a ninja when he wanted to be.

“Something wrong with the ship’s comms mic?”

“The link is still out between the bay and the forward compartments. Something about a metallic bastard shooting lasers at you when you were boarding?”

“Right. Okay. I’ll head that way. Thanks, Gunny.” Reilly ducked out of the compartment, but as she went, she was sure to give Duv’s shoulder a quick squeeze.

Duv looked over at Chang. “That’s one tough lady. I’m glad she’s with us.”

Chang glanced back at the door. “An army of a thousand is easy to find, but very difficult to find a general. You hungry or what?” He revealed a bowl of brown-looking glop with pieces of potato in it.

“It smells like dirty socks!” Duv made a face.

Chang looked insulted. “It’s dinner. Special potato stew with protein sauce.”

“Special? I don’t like special cooking, I like good cooking.”

“It has ingredients to help banish bad luck. You eat it and the bad luck goes away. This is from a very famous recipe passed down to my family over hundreds of years. One of my great, great, great aunts, I think. Back home, it’s considered an art form to prepare this meal for honored guests, so that they will prosper in the coming year.”

Duv mashed the glop around the bowl. “Huh. Never would’ve guessed they’d make an art form out of abusing food this way and then forcing people to eat it. Your great whatever-she-was must have been a sadist. Or maybe she just wanted the family inheritance. Besides, I really doubt potatoes are going to magically solve our problems.”

Chang grabbed the dish back. “Fine.” He threw a military protein ration from his pocket at Duv, then turned and stomped out, grumbling about “people with no appreciation for good cooking…”

Duv watched Chang disappear down the hall. “Man gets more like a woman every day…it’s just not natural.”

Duv pulled open a hidden compartment under his console, revealing a can of Spam and some crackers with cheese whip from one of the storage bins. He kicked up his feet and popped open the Spam. “Now, here we have the battle pilot special: heavily preservative-laden pressed pork with a side of cheese and crackers guaranteed not to hex you, bind you up for a week, or give you the shits. A real pig in every tin. Now that’s good eating!”

Reilly found Ty and Skeeter in the cargo bay, dirty and tired, and surrounded by open crates and boxes.

“What the hell is all this?”

On one side of the bay, a virtual military arsenal had sprung up. The HEAT grenades, crate of battle rifles, and breacher charges had now been joined by several other significant items including heavy battle blasters, high-grade ammo and armor for around forty souls, field-deployable defensive shields like the one they had encountered at the building on Vervian 813, a variety of communications equipment with encryption, and four new Bofors laser turrets complete with tantalum rounds and rail gun inserts with rapid generation capability. This was probably where Welch was planning to get that Bofors from for their deal. Reilly made a mental note to inform him that the price of the job had gone up since he hadn’t felt the need to fully disclose that his brother was a security psycho with eight Enforcers on his payroll. She could use those turrets for her ship.

The opposite side of the bay had crates of items she had never even seen before. One crate held ledgers that appeared to be written in a strange code. Another held bars of some kind of bluish-green metal. A third crate bearing radiation warning signs held foot-long glass batons that looked like they had some kind of fog and white lightening inside.

Ty walked to one crate and pulled it open. Inside was a pair of fingerless gloves that had a round disc on each palm. “Watch this,” he said.

Ty strapped a glove onto his hand and then touched his index finger to the disc. And then he was gone.

Reilly gaped openly in surprise. Ty continued to talk, and she could hear his footsteps, but even with those aids to help her, she still couldn’t be sure of where exactly he was. Skeeter laughed at her look.

“It’s a portable holograph designed for one person,” Ty explained. “When you put it on, it reflects the light and stuff around you back out so it looks continuous, like you’re not even there. I tried to find the kid earlier with the thermal goggles. That bounces back too, so there must be some kind of refractive layer of light that interferes with the heat signature of whoever is wearing it. Or maybe a heat dissipater or something—I don’t know, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

She jumped as Ty reappeared right next to her. “So this might come in handy on some of our future jobs—it’s like having an invisibility shield that no one can penetrate.” He grinned wolfishly.

Seth held up a second small box for her inspection. “These are really cool!”

Inside were a number of contact lenses. Reilly picked one up and examined it, then placed it on her eye and blinked once. Instantly, she saw what appeared to be a twenty-inch computer screen. Seth handed her a small keyboard with a touch pad. Reilly navigated the screen, exploring the software and the various options, which included a targeting folder, personnel tracker, GPS locator, biometrics program, and even a few star maps. She clicked out of the program and blinked slowly once more to shut the software down, then carefully removed the lens from her eye.

“I ain’t seen software like that in a while,” Ty commented as he took the lens and set it back in the box again. “Welch has around forty pairs in here, just waiting for someone to set them up. The processors are just above the size of an atom and use tiny lasers to transmit the screen directly to your retina so your eye can see it. Looks like you can have them implanted, too, if you want it to be more permanent. They look like a step up from what we used to get issued for ops.”

Seth chimed in, “Half of them have augmented reality software, too.”

Ty and Reilly looked at him in surprise. Augmented reality software was fairly high tech and only elite mission units were given access to such specialty tools. This meant that the contact lenses would allow the user to monitor their surroundings 360 degrees, see through objects, locate hidden objects, or create three-dimensional environments for operational planning purposes. The wearer would be able to view both the real world and the virtual world at the same time, a critical ability, especially when dealing with current technology where enemies could employ both in defense of their objectives.

Reilly walked over to look in the other boxes and crates. Some of these items had to be prototypes or even restricted-access program items. However Razam Welch had come to own them, she was pretty sure it wasn’t through legitimate transactions. She gave Ty a glance and kept walking through the crates.

Ty caught the look. “Skeeter, we’re about done here. Go check on Duv and see if he has anything for you or wants some chow. If not, then grab some food yourself and hit the rack. It’s late, and we’re gonna have a busy day tomorrow with securing all of this stuff.”

Skeeter made a face at Ty. “Chang made some kinda of gross protein goulash. We smelled it earlier. He says it’s supposed to take away our bad luck…but I think that’s crap.” The last part came out rushed and gave him away, but he tried to look bold. He had hoped to hear more about what Reilly thought of their new cargo.

Reilly shot him a look, and he gulped. He liked Reilly, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t scared of her. He knew firsthand that she was not a person you should cross, and although she had saved his life, that didn’t stop him from being cautious around her. He had seen what she was capable of. Images flashed unbidden behind his eyes of blood and lasers and darkness. He quickly shook them off.

Duv had originally planned to take him to stay with relatives on one of the central planets and take up a local cargo run after his mother had died. But Reilly wanted a pilot she knew and trusted, and that was Duv. She had given him the lower berthing area and offered to cut Skeeter in on a share of the work as long as he pulled his own weight and helped out around the ship. And as long as he followed orders and didn’t cause trouble. Duv agreed, since he’d have gone crazy doing milk runs for a living, and because Skeeter could learn a lot while working on the ship.

Skeeter sighed. “Besides, Duv’s got some Spam and stuff stashed on the main deck. He’s probably eating that.” But he had already started moving towards the hatch.

Ty growled, “Boy, get going and stop ratting out your crewmates. And don’t let me catch you listening in or you’ll have my size elevens up your…” But Skeeter had already taken off.

“So, did we get any rations in this haul that we can squirrel away?” Reilly asked once he was gone.

“No, and I looked, too. Last time Chang got on one of his superstitious kicks, I couldn’t go to the bathroom for a week. And then it was like the Falls on Marston the next…”

Reilly held up her hand. “More information than I needed or wanted.” She wandered back over to the crates filled with bizarre items. “What I do want to know is what all of this stuff is and where it came from. And most importantly, how fast can we offload it? Items like these don’t come easy, and I’m willing to bet not all of the owners are dead. All we need is a bunch of people with access to weapons like this on our trail. If that happens, we can kiss our retirement and our asses goodbye. This ship isn’t rigged out for long-term ops, and we’re definitely not set up for serious fighting. Not to mention that this kind of cargo will paint a big target on our chests for a number of unfriendly folks looking to cause problems, thanks to our work righting wrongs on behalf of the former Quorum.”

Ty ran his hand over his hair, brow furrowed. “Even in the ISUs we didn’t have gear like this, so I’m thinking it’s either experimental or alien. Neither one is great for us. I’ll have to go through each crate and see what we can offload easily and what items are going to draw too much attention. We’ll have to take them to some of our other contacts. Or maybe dump them.”

“I’m not sure how much luck we’ll have with that. I don’t want to just dump them, either. Items like these draw attention, and not just from buyers but also from folks who have been stolen from. We’re going to have to be real cautious on who we approach. The wrong word in the right ear will have us hopping around the galaxy like rabbits with who-knows-what chasing us down.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Get some rest and then get Skeeter to help you secure the items we can use in the aft bulkhead in the morning. If we don’t know what it is, secure it on the starboard side, but make sure to leave space between items. I really don’t want anything blowing up or doing whatever half of this stuff does and taking us out with it. I’ll take a look these ledgers, see if I can make anything out of the code they used.”

“You got it. I’m going to do a walk-around and get her buttoned up for the night. See you in the morning.”

Ty climbed up the catwalk and disappeared into the passageway leading away from Chang and the mess. Reilly smiled, amused. It looked like everyone had a stash of emergency food hidden away. She picked up one of the ledgers and idly thumbed through it. The code was one she was not familiar with and appeared to be in some type of strange foreign characters. She sighed and grabbed a few more of them and headed toward her bunk. Maybe Welch could read the ledgers. Of course, he probably wouldn’t agree to help her initially, but Reilly had found many ways to be persuasive over the years, especially when people like him put her and her crew into unnecessary danger for their own gain. She gazed out the small porthole above her workbench at the stars. She’d have answers once they touched down tomorrow, and a paycheck. After that, they’d unload their extra cargo, go find a safe port, and set down for some R&R. But the unsettled feeling she had continued to grow as she opened the first ledger and got to work.