Moral and Orbital Decay Page 14

  “It was mostly him,” Carl pointed out. “I’m assuming we’ll keep Dr. Blackout here for safekeeping?”

  Cedric rose and stood by Esper’s side. “I’ll ensure her safety in what will no doubt be an effort that will require all her focus.”

  “Hey!” a voice shouted from the cargo bay. “We’re back.”

  Carl rushed to the door and flung it open. With a grin barely visible in Esper’s mystical candlelight, he turned to regard Esper. “Looks like the gang’s all here. Forget the station. We’ll let Roddy power up the engines and blow this ice-cream stand.”

  Esper shook her head. “No. I’m glad everyone’s together, but this isn’t something we can run away from. Once the station is safe, I’m fine with fleeing the legal consequences.” She sighed. It wasn’t a proud admission, but she had to face the fact that she’d grown accustomed to skirting the legal system and any authority higher than her conscience. “But until then, this is one ship that won’t have wizards.”

  Before she lost her nerve, Esper stormed down to the cargo bay with Cedric on her heels. She exchanged perfunctory greetings with Amy, Yomin, and Shoni, accompanied by hugs, but left off any mention of her mission. Let Carl explain it once it was too late for anyone to change her mind.

  # # #

  Roddy was hip-deep in disconnected power cables when Shoni climbed into the engine room to join him. Unlike the humans in the crew, she had little trouble navigating the tight spaces of the construction site that was supposed to be a starship.

  “Roddy?” she called out.

  Roddy hastily slid his beer can under a condenser and lifted his head. “Hey, smooth-fur. Heard you went and got yourself all important. Had me worried half to death. If I’d known you were out in the station, I’d have never headed back here. Carl managed to convince me the best way of saving you was to fix up our ride so we can ditch this recreation of the TransOrion disaster.”

  “I’m fine. I’m just glad to be back here. How… how’s the coaxing proceeding?” She sounded nervous. One of her lower feet was tugging at the hem of her pant leg.

  “It’s going. If your estimate was good, I think I’ve got this. This ship can already make coffee and light these lights. I’ll have main power in ten or fifteen minutes maybe.”

  Shoni swallowed, then shook her head. “I shouldn’t be bothering you now. I’ll leave.” She turned to leave the engine room.

  Roddy sprang upright. “Whoa, don’t run off. I missed you like hell. I can spare the time. What’s wrong? We’re gonna get out of this just fine. Trust me.”

  Shoni paused and hung her head. “Rodek, I’m not cut out for this life. You, Carl, Amy, Esper… you’re all accustomed to a degree of danger pervading your lives. This is a sub-par day at the office for all of you. For me, it’s a catastrophe. I thought my worse day was being reduced to providing scientific advice to a gangster, but time and again, I’m proven wrong.”

  “It’s never as bad as it seems,” Roddy cautioned.

  “Your friend Mort might disagree.”

  Roddy sighed. She’d only been around for Mort. He remembered Chip, Davie, Joshua, and the rest. “Everyone’s ticket gets punched for the next gig sooner or later. Some of us just frontload our living a little harder than the rest.”

  “I’d like mine rationed out sensibly over the next six or eight decades,” Shoni countered. “This lifestyle suits the impulsive and the rash. It suits someone who can’t see their demise around every corner, either through willful ignorance or the standard sort. There are 3,452 people on board this station right now, according to the station chief. I was the one who told them all just how long they had left to live. My curse is seeing the artifice behind the majesty of the galaxy’s workings. Each life is a statistical blip; I want to work my way to the thin end of the probability distribution.”

  “We can settle down,” Roddy said. “We’ll find a nice colony somewhere with plenty of good schools and a great connection to the omni. Maybe we can start a family if you’re interested.” Roddy couldn’t be sure where these words were coming from. He wasn’t drunk. He hadn’t planned anything out. It all spurted from some domestic coolant line in his brain that had blown a pressure regulator.

  “Rodek, I’m baring my innermost feelings here,” Shoni scolded. “I didn’t ask to patronized.”

  “I… I’m not sure that I am.”

  Shoni crossed her arms. “You’d seriously give up playing guns and starships with your human friends to settle into a life of domestication and safety?”

  Roddy scowled in reply. “Not when you put it that way. But some less grim version of that, sure. Can’t grow old running on the edge of the law. All the best pirate stories end with a lavish retirement. We’re not exactly pirates, so we shouldn’t get to retire like kings. I figure maybe I end up working on the near side of the law, maybe doing off-the-books starship mods and patching up smugglers’ rigs. It’d be cozy work with plenty of deniability. I’ve got enough reputation out there that I’d get clients.”

  A mischievous smirk crept into the corners of Roddy’s lips. “Or… maybe we could head back to Kethlet. You know, patch things up.”

  Shoni scoffed. “My professional credentials have been permanently revoked. If Chief Fujita had access to the omni to verify my certifications, I’d have gotten airlocked.”

  Roddy had never gotten the full story of how Shoni had been driven from academic life. Near as he could figure, it was scandalous, salacious, and by outlaw standards, dull. Still, if he played his cards right, he had the rest of his life to find out.

  “Hey, there’s plenty of time to plan out our whole lives when we’ve got lives to plan out. I’ve still gotta get the Mobius ship-shape.”

  Shoni nodded, backing toward the engine room door. “Right. And once we’re space-borne, we can have our talk.”

  “Later. Yeah.”

  How much later, Roddy wouldn’t commit to. He wasn’t sure what he’d just signed up for, but he was positive that it was more than he’d meant to when Shoni walked through that door.

  Picking up his beer, Roddy drained the contents. “OK, engine. You and me got some startup sequences to go over…”

  # # #

  Carl sat in the cockpit because if he kept himself in the same room with Amy, he wouldn’t be ready when the time came to blast their way off YF-77 once and for all. The indicator lights were on, but there was nothing to indicate. The only working system he had access to was the music player, and without access to the ship’s database, he had nothing to pump through the speakers.

  He strummed the strings of his Les Paul guitar—the one Roddy had stolen for him before Keesha Bell’s illegal collection had been impounded. The strings felt good under his fingers after a stint with a tacky sensation to them shortly after Cedric had twisted the local scientific laws into a pretzel. Without consciously choosing, he found himself playing the chorus to “Hotel California.” Without an amp, it was just a really quiet acoustic.

  As soon as he realized what he was doing, he stopped. Carl chuckled at himself. “We can leave any time now. Aaaaany time now.”

  “Carl?”

  His hand slapped down over the fret board, silencing the ringing strings of his final chord. That had been the comm. Roddy’s voice was coming through loud and clear from the engine room using honest-to-Newton science.

  Carl hit the button to patch him through to the engine room. “Cockpit. This is Carl. What’s our status?”

  “Diagnostics are still down, so you won’t see it yet, but the engines are in startup. We’ll be powered any minute.”

  Carl let out a whoop. “Rodek, you are the man. Beers are on me next place we stop.”

  Through the surrounding gloom, Carl could now make out the hangar doors by the running lights of the Mobius. There was still no sign that the station was coming back online. But now there were chronos working. He should check with Shoni and get an updated estimate plugged into the computers—when they came back online.


  Apparently the computers were slow learners.

  In his head, Carl plotted out target points for the turret-mounted guns. If the shields came back up soon enough, they’d just need to perforate the steel clam-shell style doors and ram their way through. If shields weren’t an option, they’d have to blast complete cuts around the outside or bulldoze with the hull, possibly doing severe damage to the ship.

  Anything was better than being trapped inside when Karafuto IV took its revenge on YF-77 for all the minor injuries its mining had caused.

  Carl wasn’t normally one to anthropomorphize a planet, but this one seemed to be in the mood to eat space stations, so it got special treatment.

  The itch to flee burned in Carl’s fingers. The flight yoke beckoned. The guns sang him taunting lullabies. They were so close to escaping this sinking coffin that the legendary wizard Harry Houdini would applaud them from beyond the grave.

  Carl’s hand punched the shipwide comm. “Shoni, report to the cockpit for stellar cartography duty.”

  It was time to get that revised estimate.

  Carl couldn’t bring himself to abandon Esper and Cedric while there was still time for them to get back to the Mobius. But by the same token, staying behind to die with them wasn’t part of the plan. Carl had noble ideas now and then, but any plan that got Amy killed when he had the power to save her was off the table.

  # # #

  Esper swept through the mining station trying to steel herself for the task ahead. It was too late to turn back now, but she wished she had brought along Mort’s old staff—the one made from Earthwood that always felt old beneath her touch.

  Cedric kept up easily, his long stride taking three steps for every four of Esper’s. “You know where we’re going?”

  “The gravity stone,” Esper replied, not so much as slowing. “Can’t you feel it? It isn’t perfectly formed. You can sense the ripples and angles to the force holding us prisoner to the floor.”

  “I can’t.”

  Esper didn’t pause, but the comment got her to divert her attention behind her momentarily. “I figured a terramancer would be especially sensitive.”

  “On a good day, possibly. It’s been so long since my presence felt welcome in the universe that I’ve forgotten the sense of my surroundings.”

  “Don’t worry,” Esper assured him as she diverted down one of the maintenance shafts that headed toward the core of the station. “Once everyone is safe, we’ll work on getting your powers under control. In the meantime, try to act more menacing than actually being menacing.”

  “I was never much good at intimidation.”

  Esper snorted. “It’s in your blood.”

  They were accosted twice on their way to the central hub of the station. The first time they merely quickened their pace and ignored the shouted protests that faded behind them. The second time, Esper had used magic to freeze a pair of mechanics in place.

  It was long past the time when adding magic to an already overwrought station was going to make a difference.

  When Esper and Cedric reached the chamber that housed the gravity stone, they entered to find a work crew tinkering with the star-drive in an adjacent alcove.

  “You can’t be in here,” the lead mechanic bellowed. “This is a restricted area.”

  Mort appeared, raising a finger to gain Esper’s attention. “Be imperious. This is the time to get the attention of the universe.”

  “Begone!” Esper boomed, allowing a touch of magic to shake the chamber. “Science has had its chance.”

  “Call them cogs of the machine god,” Mort suggested.

  Esper was never much good at bullying people, so she took the advice of an expert source. “You cogs of the machine god have failed to rescue this doomed station from the clutches of this planet’s gravity. Time for someone to right this foundering ship before it sinks to the fiery depths of atmospheric re-entry.”

  “Not bad,” Mort commented. “Now, it’s your call whether you’d like to add a threat to get them to skedaddle, or let me take over first and handle it myself. I’d recommend something questioning their devotion to the scientific arts.”

  “Vacate this area, you cultists of the scientific heresy. I cannot guarantee your safety.” Esper lowered her voice to Cedric. “Keep them away if they attempt to interfere.”

  Taking a steadying breath, Esper approached the gravity stone. It was clamped in a steel framework and surrounded by a safety fence that came waist-high, running the circumference of the stone. It was suspended at the midpoint at floor level, extending both above and below. Esper found a clear spot where the framework would allow both her hands to rest comfortably.

  “Any time now,” Mort prodded. “Best not try to get things started on your own.”

  “Hey!” one of the lingering mechanics shouted down. “Our only chance of surviving a station crash is that stone. I can’t let you—”

  “Silence!” Cedric shouted. “Disturb her at your peril. The thread of our lifespan hangs aside the blade of this woman’s concentration. Do not jostle or distract the hand that holds that blade.”

  Mort snorted. “Should have just incinerated the bastard before we started messing with moon-sized gravitational forces. Now, quit filibustering and relax. I’ll take over from here.”

  Esper inhaled as she caressed the stone beneath her fingers. “You had one job to do,” she told the stone. “It’s time for you to learn another. I know you have it in you.”

  “That candy floss you’re peddling isn’t going to get this job done nearly fast enough. Just step aside and let an expert handle this.”

  Esper released the tension from her shoulders, her back, her legs. The one part of her that she refused to relinquish was her mind. “I know you can do it, but this is my burden.” She spoke softly, addressing Mort rather than the stone. “You can either help or quit distracting me. Your only hope is that I succeed.”

  “Blast it all, girl. This is no time to grow a spine!”

  Esper measured her breathing, all but falling asleep standing up and drifting into that mental state where anything seems possible. She continued to cajole the stone into pushing back against the planet.

  “I can’t even hear you, now!” Mort protested. “And for the record, your efforts are doing piss-all here. Pushing a space-station isn’t the sort of genteel conversation to have over tea with pinkie fingers extended. Grab this station by the nose-ring and yank it back into a safe orbit.”

  Esper continued to remain calm. She had one final ploy to try. “Fine,” she whispered. “Then tell me what to say, and I’ll say it.”

  Keeping up her placid demeanor proved impossible. As Esper parroted the words Mort fed her, the bile rose in her stomach. Her tongue felt ready to catch fire. The syllables were barbed wire pulled from her throat. Anger kindled like the embers of a blacksmith’s forge, and Mort worked the bellows.

  The gravity stone thrummed with power.

  # # #

  Carl sat in the gunnery chair. The actuators had come online a few minutes ago, and he’d climbed right in. His hands closed over the grips for the turret controls; his fingers rested lightly on the triggers. Visions of plasma bolts slamming into the confining hangar doors played out in his imagination.

  His heart didn’t race, but Carl felt his breath coming deeper and quicker than usual. This was that same old feeling he used to get before a naval mission. After too long confined aboard a carrier, every fiber of him itched to launch his Typhoon.

  Now, being trapped aboard Mobile Excavating Station YF-77 by technical failure, rather than orders, he felt that same pent-up yearning to be free.

  “Come on, old boy,” he cajoled the ship softly. “You know it’s time to go.”

  A nagging worry plagued him. Esper was too stubborn for her own good. He believed every word of it when she’d claimed to be willing to die trying to save everyone aboard the mining station. That was where Carl got off the ferry. Daring escapes relied heavily on there being an
escape. Captains didn’t go down with the ship when they had the option of saving the ship.

  Carl didn’t want to leave Esper or Cedric behind, but he wasn’t going to die with them if the Mobius could break free and escape.

  The gunnery chair buzzed. He could feel it in the pedals that controlled the turret’s axial rotation. It was subtle, but to an old spacer like him, the presence of that gentle vibration was the restoration of something long missing.

  Thus, Carl was unsurprised to hear Roddy’s voice on the comm within seconds. “Engine’s online! Science reigns once again!”

  “How long to weapons?” Carl asked.

  “End of the ramp up to full power, you’re good to go hot on the guns. I’m gonna give the hydraulics a quick once over and get the cargo ramp up.”

  “Do your check, but leave it down.”

  “Didn’t quite copy that, captain.”

  “You heard me just fine,” Carl snapped. “I expect two wizards back any minute at a dead run. We’ll raise it when they’re aboard.”

  Carl drummed his fingers on the gunnery control sticks. He wanted to fire. He wanted to blast the station doors and vent the hangar to vacuum. But the second he did so, that would be the end of any chance for last-minute passengers.

  “Let ‘em ride up twosies in the airlock? You’ll get that sealed faster than the ramp.”

  “Fine,” Carl relented. “Just don’t do anything to keep Esper and Cedric from getting back aboard in time. This might get tight.”

  “I’ll call Shoni back in. She’s out in the corridor watching the atmosphere get closer.”

  Carl swallowed. He hated the thought of what was going on outside those hangar doors. The station was spinning, and as soon as the Mobius broke free of its gravity stone, the hangar opening would turn into a spinning saw blade for them to clear before the next tooth swung around and chopped them in half.

  He glanced at the chrono in one of the turret’s consoles. They had eighteen minutes left until YF-77 entered the atmosphere of Karafuto IV. Carl made an executive decision that at the five-minute mark, he’d start firing.

  # # #