Red Lightning (40 page)

Long silence. Then...

"Over," he said.

I gulped and looked at Evangeline, who was crying. "Copy that, Travis. Is everyone else okay? Over." Thirty seconds.

"All your family members are okay. They were all pretty busy last time I talked to them. There was a lot of damage, lots of stuff to clean up. I don't know if you've heard a casualty report. Last I heard, it was over a hundred, with a few dozen still missing and presumed dead. Most of them are natives. Sorry, I mean Martians. Over."

"My god," Evangeline said. I couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. That was okay, because Travis resumed in a few seconds, in spite of the 'over' business.

"Ah, might as well give you some more information. Your countrymen are not taking it lightly. Some of the black ships have landed again, and they're not being welcomed with open arms. There have been riots. A few of the troops were killed in the blowouts, and Martians got their guns, so the locals are not entirely unarmed now. They've killed a few of the soldiers, and the soldiers have killed a few Martians. I wouldn't call it an all-out fight, there's too much damage to clean up, and too much worry about causing more blowouts. But tempers are, as they say, running high. I wouldn't wear any black clothes if I was out there in public pressure. In fact, most people are wearing red. Over."

I glanced at Jubal, who had popped another pill after his disturbing dreams. Just as well. I'd be able to tell him that Travis was coming to the rescue without upsetting him with more stories about death and... injuries. Oh, my poor sister.

"Roger. Ah, Travis, I don't know what Mom told you, other than to come get us. Over."

Twenty-nine seconds silence.

"She didn't say much, except that y'all had to run. I assumed it had something to do with the invasion. Over."

"It does, in a way. You know the thing we don't ever talk about? I probably shouldn't say any more over an open channel. Over."

Twenty-nine seconds. Then thirty-five. Then forty. I was about to call again.

"No fucking way," he finally said. There was a small note of hope in his voice.

"Way," Evangeline said.

He'd hear that in fourteen seconds, but he went on – or had gone on, considering that we were hearing his words fourteen seconds after he spoke them.

"Okay," he said, taking a deep breath. "Okay, this is great news, if you're saying what I think you're saying. But I'm afraid I have... oh, hi, Evangeline, nice to hear your voice. Like I was saying, I've got some bad news. I have company.

Ah, I don't know where they picked me up, but I've got three black warships only a few miles behind me. I've been pulling two gees for two days, I should catch up to you in a few hours."

"Should I..." I shut up because he was still going on.

"They'll be catching up at pretty much the same time. Obviously they've been following me to find you, and, hell, they're listening, so we might as well say it. Is what we don't talk about aboard? Over."

"Roger that, Travis. Should I keep boosting? Should I cut the drive? You should know that he will get very sick and very scared if I cut the boost. Over."

Pause.

"Fuck me if I know how he's surviving the trip at all. You must be a miracle worker. No, you might as well keep boosting. You don't have to worry about consumables anymore, I've got plenty on board for all of y'all. Not that it'll matter much, because as soon as I get there I expect we'll all be captured. Right, Captain whoever-the-fuck-you-are on that command ship?" Short pause, but no one on the black ships answered him. "Over," he said, sounding infinitely sad and tired.

"But Travis... can't we do something? I mean... we've come so far... over."

Evangeline covered the mike with her hand and whispered in my ear.

"Hello, anybody home? He just told you the assholes are listening in. Do you think he should be discussing tactics with us?"

Oh.

"Maybe he's got a few tricks up his sleeve," she said.

"Travis usually does," I whispered back.

"I'm open to suggestions," Travis said. "But if you have any, it might be best if you wrote them on a piece of paper, tucked it in a bottle, and chucked it over the side, if you get my drift. Here's the situation as I see it. Correct me if I'm wrong, Captain Shitbag on the SS
Snotbucket
, and all y'all on the other two ships, too..."

We had two big advantages. The three black ships could have blasted us to hell and gone, but they wanted Jubal alive. And they were warships, not cargo carriers. They had no means of grappling us, no way at all to capture us without risking violence that would kill us. They could chase us forever, but they couldn't stop us.

We had two big disadvantages. First, we were unarmed.

"What can I say?" Travis asked, defensively. "When I had this ship built I never thought about having to fight pirates. I got no laser cannons, no blasters, no space torpedoes. I got a good shotgun, a rifle, and three handguns. That's it."

The second drawback to our situation was that we had nowhere to go. They might not be able to stop us or capture us, but they sure as hell could follow us. Forever. Where we were heading there was nothing at all. Behind us were all the possible ports of call, and every one of them would be infested with more black ships, alerted by these fellows, waiting for us to land. We might fly around for months, but eventually the food and oxygen would run out.

"Stalemate," I said.

"Well, no," Travis said. "Not even a Mexican standoff. It's a traveling siege. Sooner or later they'll wear us out. All we can do is decide when."

"Situation like that," Evangeline said, "best thing to do is put it off as long as possible. Something might change."

"I agree," Travis said. "You hear that, Captain Scrotum? We're not turning ourselves in just yet. What I'm going to do is rendezvous with my friends, take them off that flying bread-box, and then turn around and head for home. Maybe somebody else will be in control when we get back, we can work a deal with them and watch them shove it up your asses. Maybe the mass-murdering pimps who are paying your wages will be too busy fucking your mother to pay attention to you. Of course, they'd have to tie a dirty towsack over your mother's face to fuck her..."

Neither Captain Scrotum nor Captain Shitbag nor any of the other colorful captains Travis addressed over the next hour had anything to say. Maybe their feelings were hurt.

Probably not.

Over the next half hour the time lag gradually lessened. We didn't use the radio much, as we didn't have anything to say that we wanted Captains S & S to hear, just a time check now and then so the ships' computers could calculate the rendezvous.

Finally Travis's ship hove into view beside us and we got our first look at it. I'd heard about it but never seen it. It was pure Travis.

He'd based the design on an old movie,
Destination Moon
. It was sleek and silver, and had four landing fins because it was designed to enter the atmosphere of Earth – or Mars or even Titan – and come down on its landing jets. It was quite large, maybe bigger than the black ships. It wasn't the largest private space yacht, but it was up there in the top twenty.

Written on the side in old cursive, like the U.S. Constitution, was the name:
Second Amendment
.

Evangeline had gotten Jubal prepared while our ships matched speeds. He was in his suit but not his helmet. He was shivering and holding a sturdy barf bag up to his face.

We cut thrust at the same time, and drifted side by side. I turned on the headlights and rotated the ship to the sounds of Jubal's volcanic heaving. A cargo bay was opening on the side of the
Second Amendment
. Inside was a land/space vehicle in the same family as my nameless little shuttle, a boxy thing like mine, but slightly larger. As I watched it crawled forward, extended its front wheels over the lip, and then with a little spurt of its jets, moved past us and into the darkness, presumably into interstellar space, as we would have no place to put it and no way to find it later. Expensive, throwing something like that away, but Travis had said not to worry about it.

I jetted forward and into the bay. It wasn't meant to be entered while in space, normally a crane would lower it to a planetary surface or it would be used as a lifeboat. But there was enough room for me to ease in and position the shuttle in the center of the cargo bay.

"You clear of the door?" Travis asked.

"All clear," Evangeline said from the back.

"Closing doors." I couldn't see anything, but Evangeline told me when the doors were shut.

"Resuming acceleration." Slowly the thrust built up and the shuttle settled down to the floor. Then it came on stronger, until it was half a gee.

"Don't get out yet, guys," Travis said. "I'm watching... damn. Oh well, it was a long shot."

"What's that?"

"I was hoping one of those guys back there might hit my shuttle. I tried to get it in the right position, maybe they wouldn't notice it, they were five miles back... like I said a long shot. Okay, I'm pressurizing the bay."

We could see the air rushing in, as water condensed and froze into hard little ice crystals, then we could hear it. A green light came on and Evangeline and Jubal went into the bay, Jubal holding a second barf bag like a holy rosary. It cycled, and I went through, helmet in hand. They were already hustling toward the air lock/elevator at the front of the shuttle. It was cold in there! Frost had formed all over the shuttle but heated air was flowing all around us and inciting it, where it dripped onto the rubber nonskid floor. We all three squeezed into the air lock, which sealed, and immediately rose five decks to the bridge, just under the pointed nose of the
Second Amendment
.

Travis was there when the door cycled open. Jubal practically leaped into his arms, sobbing and shouting with happiness. Travis was grinning like a fool, slamming his hands against Jubal's broad back. Evangeline and I hung back. I looked at her, and she wiped away a tear. Then Jubal and Travis were beckoning to us, and it was a very small but very happy little party there for a while.

Jubal didn't want it to stop, he was babbling happily, trying to tell all of his story at once, in no particular order, much of it in Cajun French. But Travis brought us all down to Earth... so to speak.

The bridge was a wide, comfortable cylinder, like a wheel of cheese. There were sofas and tables around most of it, with about a quarter devoted to the captain's chair and a control console array. There were windows all around, but they were closed. He had drinks laid out on a table, and some snacks. Mostly crackers and cheese...

When we'd stopped laughing and explained about our diet for the last three days, Travis produced sliced ham, bread, mustard, and apples from a fridge concealed in one wall, and we all made sandwiches while Evangeline and I brought him up to speed.

"Okay," he said at last. He produced a video screen on another wall, and we looked at three black disks, about evenly spaced, outlined in bright, flickering light like a solar corona during an eclipse. I knew they were the saucer-shaped black ships, seen from the top, accelerating along with us. Actually, getting closer, it looked like, as the distance between them was gradually increasing.

"They're moving up," Travis confirmed. "They'll have us surrounded in about thirty minutes. They're taking their time. No hurry. They'll get us boxed in, and then I guess they'll make their move, if they've got one."

"Do you think they can do anything?" I asked.

"I haven't been able to think of anything. Not and be sure of getting Jubal alive. Even if they had some sort of grappling equipment, and I'd bet a billion dollars they don't, it would be easy for us to keep jigging and jagging away from it. Too risky, too many things to go wrong and destroy both of us."

"So we're fu –
ouch
!" Evangeline glared at me and rubbed her arm where I'd pinched her. I'd never impressed on her strongly enough that Jubal was depressed by blasphemy and obscenity and she'd forgotten.

"I don't know," Travis said. "I figure if they're ever going to talk, it'll be when they're alongside. Then they'll make whatever offer they're going to make. Jubal, tell me about the black bubbles. The... what did you call them?"

"Stoppers," he said. "See, there ain't really no bubbles at all, no. I mean, they look like bubbles, so that's what I call 'em, but they really... the word the other folks use for 'em is superstrings, but that's stupid. They ain't strings, and they ain't super."

"I thought superstrings were incredibly tiny," I said.

"Tiny don't signify," Jubal said, shaking his head. "Somethin' got sixteen dimensions, all twisted up in a way... well, it make my head hurt when I think about 'em, so I don't think about 'em much. But you can unscrew 'em some. They can unfold, if you know how to give 'em the right
twist
." He opened an imaginary mason jar in the air.

"But why are these different from the first kind?"

"Sixteen dimensions," Jubal said. "Four squared. Four of 'em is... time dimensions. Different kinds of time. So if you unwind a string a different way, the stuff inside it..." He frowned. "Inside ain't the right word. The bubbles don't have no insides, see. They's not even really all here, the silvery part you see is just the part that sticks out from where they really are into where we really are." He looked at us hopefully.

"So where are they really?" Travis asked.

"I ain't figgered that part yet. Some other infinite universe. Or someplace, make us look like little bitsy meebas in a microscope." Meebas? Oh, amoebas. "Anyway, I ain't thought about it much, because it hurts my head, but I figgered how to unstring one a them strings so that it can be any size. Didn't know what it'd do to something inside it. Killed rats, it did." I remembered that the rat they'd placed inside a Squeezer bubble had turned into a fine gray powder. "And if you can make 'em any size, what's inside can be squished real right. That's the Squeezer bubbles."

"And the stoppers?"