Liberty (13 page)

I walked in step with Berrett along the waterway, past vendors and small shops and the remnants of the hangout he had mentioned. A very old water ship bobbed gently up and down in the water as we passed. We turned away from the harbor and walked down toward the looming metal hangars that housed the ships he worked on. Since Berrett had already shut down the cameras, we jogged through the yard without fear of detection. He stopped in front of a large metal door and punched a code into the hangar keypad. The door popped open with a loud buzz, and Berrett and I rushed inside.

“Alright, I should be okay hooking up the trailer, but run ahead of me and make sure I’ve got a clear path to the launch pad,” said Berrett.

“You got it,” I replied. I sped ahead of him, letting my legs stretch out to their full length as I ran past the
Aventine
toward the launch pad. After being curled up in the cellar, it felt good to run. Caleb must have taken special care to clear a path for us, because there was nothing standing between the
Aventine
and the launch pad.

“All clear!” I yelled.

“Get in the cockpit!” Berrett yelled back.

I nodded to him as I jogged back to
The Aventine.
The narrow metal ladder steps welded to the side of the ship led up to a small hatch in her side. I opened the hatch and climbed through to the cockpit. I strapped myself in and tried to quickly familiarize myself with her set up.

She was as lovely on the inside as she was out. Even the chairs were pretty. Compared to the cockpit of the
Misfit,
the
Aventine
was palatial—not to mention clean. I swiveled in my seat as I looked for all the necessarily dials and then stood and pressed the touchscreen spaceshield to check out basic functions. Everything looked good.

As I looked out through the shield, I watched Berrett park the trailer, turn, and run full speed toward the ship.

“Someone’s here!” he hissed as he fell into the cockpit. “Start the ship!”

“Did they see you?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, but I saw them.”

I switched off all avionics to avoid overloading the system and threw the master switch.

Silence.

“Dix ....”

“I got this,” I said. I pulled out the primer plunger and shoved it back and forth, atomizing the fuel tanks and praying that the engine would start making noise. The silence was unnerving.

“Dix.”

“I know, I know, I’m working on it!”

Berrett pointed to the hangar below.

“Skud,” I said.

Standing on the launch pad, waving his arms like an idiot, was one of the hangar employees.

I put my hand on top of Berrett’s head and shoved him to the floor.

“What the—”

“I don’t want that yahoo to be able to identify you, so stay low and shut up,” I said. I locked the primer plunger and flipped the master switch again.

Silence.

I flipped the master switch back and forth over and over again. “Flarking piece of ever-loving skud!” I screamed.

Berrett sat up. “Don’t yell at her!”

“Shut up!” I yelled back.

I glanced back down at the idiot employee and wondered to myself what he could possibly be thinking.

Who gets to work
early?

“Aw, skud, Berrett, he’s going for his Cuff. What do I do?”

Berrett cocked his head at me.

“You’re the captain, Captain.”

I glared at him.

“A lot of help
you
are.” I moved for the hatch, threw it open, and flung myself onto the ladder, but before I made it down one rung the employee fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. Standing behind him was Master Caleb, sporting a look of complete annoyance and holding a crowbar in his hands.

“Caleb!” I cried.

The crowbar-wielding shipmaster shot me a knowing look. “Dix?”

“Yeah?”

“Disengage the parking brake.”

I blinked.

I had forgotten about that.

I gave Caleb a nod and scampered back into the cockpit.

“What happened out there?” asked Berrett.

“Caleb solved the problem of the over-achieving employee. Now shut up and hold on.”

I threw the brake switch, started the engine, and blasted us out the doors and into the air.

Berrett sat back in his chair and strapped himself in. “Well, we’re airborne, you can relax now.”

I laughed. “Sure. No problem. You know how many laws we’ve broken aside from stealing? Not doing a pre-flight inspection, not registering a flight plan. Someone is gonna notice. Flying casual only gets you so far in air space. I have about two more minutes before I can engage the atmospheric thrusters. If no one’s on our tail and our trajectory is lined up with the jump gate,
then
I will relax.”

Berrett kept his eyes on the shield. “Hope Caleb can talk his way out of this. His prints are going to be on that crowbar.”

“I’m sure he’ll wipe the crowbar, Caleb is not stupid.”

Berrett nodded, but his brow stayed furrowed.

I concentrated on flying the ship.
The Aventine
was a smooth ride, and despite my concerns, we made it to the mark without a problem. I engaged the thrusters and we shot out of the atmosphere.

Berrett looked at his Cuff. “Not bad. 6:26 a.m., and we’re smooth—”

Before Berrett could finish his sentence, the
Aventine
shivered and a loud impact reverberated through her walls.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Dunno. Hold her for me,” I said.

“What? I’m not a pilot!”

“You are now.”

I flipped on the monitors and played back the last five minutes of footage.

“There,” I said. We watched as a piece of space junk rammed into the side of the ship.

Berrett winced.

“Well, it looks like most of the damage is superficial, but I’d have to get CiCi to ....”

I scrunched my lips together and sighed.

I had no CiCi.

“You know, you do have the ship’s builder on board,” said Berrett.

“Apprentice
to the ship builder, and yes, I’ll try to remember that.”

“Look out!” cried Berrett.

I grabbed the yoke and hit the thruster as another piece of junk came hurtling toward the shield. We swerved out of the way and barely managed to avoid knocking a satellite out of the sky in the process.

“You were going to say ‘smooth sailing’, weren’t you?”

Berrett winced again. “Yeah, not so much, huh?”

I nodded. “Never take space flight for granted.”

The
Aventine
was still relatively unfamiliar territory, so I decided to invest a little time getting to know her. I walked through the sliding doors and into the sprawling hallways. My first quest was to search out the galley. It had been three hours since I had eaten and I was starting to feel it. I walked through the vast cargo hold and down a set of winding stairs. The galley was enormous compared to the one on the
Misfit.
A table was screwed to the floor. On the walls surrounding the table were several built-in storage cabinets. I rummaged around the cabinets, hoping that perchance Master Caleb had snuck in some staples. One unit yielded dishes, utensils, and cookware. I opened another and six folding chairs came tumbling out.

“You okay?” asked Berrett over the intercom.

“Fine!” I yelled.

I was a little concerned as I went to open the last unit, but I shouldn’t have been. It was teeming with foodstuffs. I breathed a sigh of relief, grabbed a handful of jerky, and made my way back out into the maze of hallways.

Thank you, sweet, sweet Master Caleb.

I wandered the halls, pulling open every door to see what was stowed inside. After prying open a particularly stubborn storage locker, I was nearly tackled by a stash of sailboards that had shifted during our departure. Like everything else on the ship, they were a ridiculously expensive model. Someone with very deep pockets was going to be very angry with me.

Aces.

Eventually, I found the crew quarters. When I poked my head in, I was amazed at the care that had gone into every detail of the
Aventine.
Each room was pretty much the same, sporting a cot, a few cabinets for storage, and an oval mirror hanging on the wall above the cabinets. Paintings in ornate frames were screwed to the walls in Plexiglas cases. The covers on the cots matched the color of the wall panels, and the crown molding was incredibly detailed. Unlike Williamson’s Dive, there wasn’t the slightest hint that the molding was metal instead of wood.

The only difference in the captain’s quarters was an adjoining bathroom. The rest of the crew would have to share.

I left the quarters and made my way down a set of stairs and into the shuttle bay. Three shiny new shuttles docked there. They were small, not much larger than your average cruiser, but like the rest of the Aventine, they were designed to be as beautiful as they were efficient. The cockpit slanted up at an angle, and the guts and engine of the ship sloped down the back half of the shuttle. It looked like a sleek, black wedge that had been sanded off and smoothed until there were no sharp edges anywhere on the craft.

“Bet those’ll come in handy,” I said. “Cramped, but handy.” I made my way back up the stairs and through the crew quarters and the cargo hold. Another set of stairs at the far end of the hold led me down into the engine room.

“Generator, check. Back up nuclear power supply? Oooh, check. Nice job, Berr-Berr.”

I heard an intercom crackle over my head. “I can hear you, you know,” said Berrett.

I cringed. “Yeah, well, good.”

“Get up here, weirdo, I’m getting nervous. I’m not trained to do this.”

I jogged back up to the cockpit and waved what was left of the jerky in front of Berrett. “Here.”

He shook his head. “Not hungry.”

“What? How are you not hungry? We haven’t eaten in hours!” I cried.

Berrett played with the curls sticking out from under his cabby hat.

“I should have heard from Caleb by now.”

I shrugged. “It would be smarter to wait to hear from us first. He’d be taking a huge risk contacting us, and I think ...,” I trailed off. The communication monitor started flickering.

“Berrett, don’t, they could be tracking—”

Before I could stop him, Berrett hit the accept button. “Caleb?”

“Hello, Jordan?”

The woman’s voice was smooth as silk, and it had the same effect on me as nails being dragged across a chalkboard.

I stepped in front of the monitor, and there was Eira Ninge, in all her psychopathic glory. “Identify yourself and whatever the flark you’re after.”

The woman rolled her bright blue eyes. “Forget me already, Tabitha?”

“Sorry. I only answer to Dix.”

“Well then, Dix, would you care to move out of the way? I’d like to speak to your new crew mate.”

“Why would I want to do that? He seems to be having a perfectly good day. Wouldn’t want to ruin it.”

She laughed. “Oh, Dix. You could make it so easy. All you would have to do to stop me from slowly ripping your heart into teeny little shreds is to hop in one of those shiny shuttles and fly yourself over to my—”

“Right,” I interrupted. “I hate to stop your monologuing, here, but
you blew up my ship.”

She smiled.

I
hated
that smile.

I reached to turn off the monitor.

“As fun as this friendly banter is, Tabitha, I called to talk to Jordan.”

Berrett stopped my hand from hitting the button.

“Why do you want to talk to me?” he asked.

“Are you
insane
?” I whispered. “She’s probably tracking our coordinates, hang up!
Hang up!”

“Do you have any idea what that liquid around her neck does, Jordan?” asked Eira. “It doesn’t just allow you to cross the border and fly into deep space. If you take a little every day, it alters the chemistry in your body and stops the aging process indefinitely. Such a pity,” she sighed.

“What is?” he asked.

“That it won’t help him now. His poor family, they’ll be so devastated. You know, Jordan, Dix really is trouble. You shouldn’t be protecting her. She’s t..... expensive, shall we say? Cute, but expensive, and I’m guessing the return on investment so far hasn’t been anything to write home about.”

I lunged for the comm monitor, but Berrett held me back, an unreadable expression on his face. “I’m going to ask you again, Ms. Ninge, why do you want to talk to me?”

“The bodies, it seems, are starting to pile up,” said Eira. “I don’t know about you or your little friend there, but I certainly wouldn’t want that riding on my conscience.”

My stomach tightened as I realized what she was getting at, why Berrett hadn’t wanted to hang up. I was afraid to ask, afraid of what Berrett and I would see—but I asked anyway. I had to.

“What bodies,
Eira?”

“See for yourself. This is what happens when you break the rules, Tabitha.”

The image of Eira faded away. In her place appeared the pale, dead face of Master Caleb. The camera pulled back to reveal his body hanging from the mast of the old sailing ship floating in the harbor. Behind him, the entire shipyard was ablaze. There were more bodies than I could count among the rubble.