Spin the Sky (38 page)

“Nausicaa!”

Her grin gets even wider. “Hi there, Mr. Vaquero! I thought I’d bring your son back.”

Trevor punches her lightly on the arm. “You wish.”

Turning back to his father, Trevor throws himself into Cesar, giving him a crushing hug while bragging, “I flew us here all by myself. They had this old ship of yours and we brought it back, me and Nausicaa, all by ourselves!”

Cesar releases his son but keeps a hand on Trevor’s shoulder, unwilling to break that connection just yet. “That’s great, son. Really great. All by yourself?”

He starts to quickly explain about the trouble with Penelope, but then his brain processes what Trevor just said.

“What did you say?” Cesar asks just to make sure he heard the boy correctly.

“I flew here all by myself. Well, all right, so Nausicaa helped. Al showed me. They found that ship you lost back when you saved her folks and we brought it back. Cool, right?”

Cesar agrees that this is very cool. It changes everything. Carefully, Cesar looks at Nausicaa for confirmation. After she gets through punching Trevor for taking all the credit, she bobs her head in agreement. Cesar hardly dares to breath. Can he be that lucky?

“You found the
Surprise
?”

They both shout, “Yes!”

“And flew her back. So then she’s flight ready?”

They nod again, grinning widely.

“What about the weapons? Are they still intact?”

The grins disappear and get replaced by frowns. Nausicaa pipes up, “What weapons, Mr. V?”

Cesar feels like his whole body was inflated by helium and he just popped like a balloon. Well, so they found the ship minus the weapons. Still, that’s better than nothing.

“Were they in the cargo bays, these weapons? Because they never opened those,” Trevor says, watching Cesar’s face closely enough to see the spark of hope that flashed across it.

Turning to Nausicaa, Trevor asks, “That’s right, isn’t it? You never opened the cargo bays.”

Nausicaa nods, also looking at Cesar anxiously. She says quickly, “The cargo bay seals are intact and we left them that way. Thought you’d have a bit of a late Christmas present when you got them back.”

Cesar’s heart sings, but he can’t get ahead of himself. The goal is Penelope right now. Grimly, he fills them in. “Argos saw Asner dragging your mother down here. We’ve got to find her.”

Trevor asks tensely, “What should we do?”

Finally Cesar knows. Pointing towards the arena, he says, “You two go look for her at the tournament. I’ll go to the cargo bay.”

Trevor tells him where the ship is docked and then goes bolting off towards the roaring crowds of Nullball with Nausicaa chasing after him.

“It was nice to see you again, Mr. Vaquero!” she calls to him over her shoulder.

The rage has Cesar in its claws again and he is already blazing towards the cargo bay. Once there, he finds it mostly deserted and quiet, technically open for business except everyone is off at the tournament. Cesar finds the calm to be highly offensive. His wife is missing. There should be alarms. It isn’t a large dock so it takes very little time to confirm his rising fear. She isn’t here. He doesn’t see any sign of Asner either.

Pouncing on the first dockworker he sees, Cesar frog marches the poor man over to a comm and makes him read through the list of ships docked twice.

Then Cesar has the dockmaster look up ships that have departed in the last hour. The man rattles both of them off, flinching at the black look on Cesar’s face when he says, “Seven Skies shuttle, owner Uri Mach.”

There are no other ships that he can connect with Asner or Mach besides this one that is already gone. Cesar knows his wife’s life might very well depend on what he does next. He has to be sure of his next move, even if it means delaying a few minutes.

“Pull up the security footage for the last hour,” he commands. The dockmaster protests. Cesar’s glare combined with the pain from his vice-like grip on the man’s shoulder convinces the dockmaster to do as he is told.

He speeds through the recorded footage until Cesar sees Penelope arrive in the little camera’s view with Asner. Cesar hisses as he watches the man with the crowbar sneak up behind Penelope while she shakes her head over and over. Both Cesar and the dockmaster gasp in outrage when the man with the crowbar brutally attacks the small woman. Cesar watches with horror as she crumples to the floor and is then carried into Mach’s shuttle.

Then Cesar doesn’t stop moving until he is pulling his old ship, the
Surprise
, away from the dock. He almost pauses when he hears the dockmaster squawking into the emergency speakers. It is some garbled version of “Penelope Vaquero has been kidnapped!” but Cesar has other fish to fry. And fry is what those slimy bastards will do.

As he listens to the hum of the engines powering up, Cesar slips back into the role of tinker ship captain like it is a second skin. A tinker ship captain has to be good at many things. One of those things is making a ship out of the wreckage of other ships. Cesar built the
Surprise
at the peak of his largest fortune and he did it with years of experience and plenty of time.

He runs a hand along its console. It almost broke what was left of his tired old heart to lose this ship all those years ago. To be honest, if he had known he would lose it, Cesar wasn’t so sure he would have dropped it to save Al and Arete.

He’d kept what shreds of sanity he still had out there in the black by lovingly polishing her hull while she sat in the docking bay of his big tinker ship with its loud and frequently irritating crew. To find her again after so many years seems like a sign. It lifts his spirits and gives him hope. Cesar has his
Surprise
back and, judging from the smooth hum of her engines, she is good as ever.

The rocket engines blast him back into his seat as he shoots off in pursuit of Mach’s ship.

Running through the diagnostics, he can’t believe how well everything survived on his little skiff. Cesar made her small and lean, an easy ship for a man to pilot alone. He carefully hollowed out traditional solar thrusters to hide the fastest and most expensive chemical rockets he could find. Then he moved heaven and Earth to collect a nice little hoard of rocket fuel, if it is still stashed in the cargo hull.

He spent weeks reconfiguring the fins and ballast so she could turn on a dime. And then he lovingly strapped all the AI-missile launchers and neutrino beams he could fit under her ballast. The
Surprise
was his baby and she is one mean little bitch.

Mach and his little gang of bandits will never know what hit them. For all their talk about secret projects and lasers, Cesar isn’t impressed. You hear a lot of big talk from Spacers. But really? What can they possibly have?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A
s fast as their anti-grav boots can take them, Trevor and Nausicaa shoulder their packs and go careening through the halls to the Nullball Tournament.

Trevor yells apologies over his shoulder as they crash into people left and right, pushing their way through the crowd.

“I’m calling your Grandpa, Trevor,” shouts an old man as he shakes a fist. Trevor thinks that is a great idea, but he can’t stop to chat. His eyes scan the crowd for a glimpse of his mom.

Trevor explains to Nausicaa as best he can, “She’s got long black hair, usually in a braid. She’s real short and usually she’s yelling at someone or at least looks like she’s about to. She’ll have on anti-grav boots, but who doesn’t right now?” Usually Trevor loves the lack of gravity on the core level, but today it just annoys him.

“Oh man, do I hope your mom is OK,” mutters Nausicaa, trying to catch her breath as she follows in his wake.

There must have been a goal scored because the crowd roars. It momentarily distracts the guards so Trevor and Nausicaa can slip into the arena.

“I wish we could stop and watch the game,” Trevor apologizes, but Nausicaa just shakes her head.

She says cheerfully, “Never been much of a fan, but it does look fun. Maybe if we find your mom and she’s OK, we can watch a bit later,”

Trevor wonders if she can play with her disease and all, but doesn’t ask. He isn’t sure yet how they should talk about her Synthlep. He’s still happy that she came with him back to Ithaca.

•

Mathis, Larry’s old drinking buddy and the ever-vigilant sentry of Ithaca, showed up at Nausicaa’s house, growling about lepers and insisting Trevor go home with him because his granddad was worried. Things moved pretty fast after that.

First, Trevor had to explain to Mathis five or six times that he was just fine. Al and Arete helped him explain to the old man that the main comm link for Lazar House got hit by space junk and destroyed right after the riot, but it wasn’t related to the riots and they should have it back up and running in a few days. Just random bad luck.

Mathis was deeply suspicious of Al and Arete and, to Trevor’s embarrassment, rather hostile until Al poured him a large glass of something amber-colored he called a “restorative.” It made Mathis cheerful and chatty and suddenly in no hurry to go anywhere. When he arrived, Mathis refused to sit and seemed afraid to touch anything, but after his drink, he sprawled in a chair and rambled happily about all his important duties on Ithaca.

Trevor didn’t want to go back with Mathis. He was in love with the idea of piloting Cesar’s old ship home. For starters, he’d left as a victim and this way he would return triumphantly with this sweet ship. Also, he was really hoping his Dad would decide that he didn’t need the ship any more, so Trevor could have it. Trevor didn’t want to let the ship out of his sight.

At first, Al and Arete thought Trevor should go home with Mathis. They didn’t want Trevor’s family worried. Nausicaa helped him argue that Trevor, after spending every waking hour of the last day or two on the little ship, could fly it anywhere. She’d spent most of those hours with him on the ship.

After a second glass of restorative, Mathis decided it wasn’t really important that Trevor come right back and, if it would only take a few hours to outfit, there was no reason the boy couldn’t fly this other ship back. Mathis was not the kind of man to think you should leave a perfectly good ship behind if you could take it with you. When Al insisted he take the bottle of amber-colored liquid with him, Mathis was only too happy to leave Trevor behind and toddle back to his ship.

“I hope he takes a little nap before he leaves,” Arete fretted.

Al put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Unless I miss my guess, that old man has plenty of practice doing things blind drunk. He should be fine, honey.”

Trevor admired how gracious they were to the drunken old man. He turned and smiled into Nausicaa’s luminous eyes. Over the last few days, he’d come to realize that she was quite possibly the prettiest girl in the solar system.

Nausicaa smiled back at him in that glorious way she did, but then her mouth twisted and her face crumpled. She burst into tears and fled the room.

Trevor gaped at her retreating figure. He got up, wanting to follow her. “What did I do?” he asked Arete, bewildered.

She smiled at him gently. “It’s time for you to leave, Trevor. I think my daughter is getting a head start on missing you. Let’s give her a little privacy. I’m sure she’ll come out to say goodbye.”

Al packed up a change of clothes for Trevor as he quickly cleaned himself up. As Trevor and Al left for the docks, Arete handed him a package of food and a water bottle and gave him a gentle hug. Trevor strained to hear Nausicaa, but there was silence from the direction of her room.

“It’s really too bad you are an outworlder,” remarked Al after they had trudged in silence for a quarter of an hour. “It will remind Nausicaa that there’s a whole world out there but she’s so much safer here, where we can control her condition.”

Trevor understood what Al was saying and he also understood the gentle warning beneath it. Nausicaa had Synthlep and there wasn’t any getting around that. Trevor still glanced back a dozen times, hoping to see her running up to tell him goodbye. He knew they couldn’t kiss even though he was dying to try it, but at least he could hug her one last time and feel her heart beating against his chest.

Nausicaa didn’t come.

Al went through a final check of the ship with him, then said goodbye. “You and your family are always welcome to visit,” Al said sincerely. “And be sure to tell your father again how much I esteem him.”

The man walked off. Trevor dawdled with powering up the engines, packing away the food and clothes, tidying up the ship, and rechecking all the systems. Finally, he knew he was just wasting time. She wasn’t coming. Trevor walked over to shut the outer doors and suddenly there she was.

“Permission to come aboard, Captain,” Nausicaa called, grinning widely. She snapped off a jaunty salute and walked past him into the cabin. Dumping her pack in a chair, she turned and asked, “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

“Uh,” he stammered. “I thought you had to stay here.”

She flapped an unconcerned hand at him and sat down in the co-pilot chair while putting on a comm. “My mom said it was fine. I’ll get a shuttle back tomorrow. You need my help in case something crazy is going down at your place.”

She said it like it was no big deal, so he guessed it wasn’t. Trevor shrugged, sat down at the comm and strapped himself in. The trip was pretty uneventful until they ran into his dad. Since then, his heart has been pounding a disco beat in his chest.

As they weave through the crowd, there’s no sign of his mom and Trevor is getting worried. He’ll see long black hair out of the corner of his eye, but when he turns there’s no hint of his mom. He keeps spotting a glimpse of someone who looks like her, but it never is.

While they look around, Trevor sees enough of the Nullball game to realize that it has only just begun, but it’s going to be epic. Both teams are playing their hardest, determined to win. There are amazing shots and unbelievable saves. The crowd is hyped up to a fever pitch.