The Passenger
Chapter 6
Making a living flying through space, all by yourself, usually gives you a good background in crisis management.
At any moment you may wake up to the sound of a failing energy converter, which could drop you out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere at any moment, or to an impending problem with the life support system, which could leave you with only a limited amount of time to fix it before you die.
The second something like that happens, you switch into crisis mode. You drop everything and you deal with the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. Sometimes you only have a few seconds to assess the problem and decide what to do about it. Sometimes you don't even have a few seconds.
So I got back on my feet without missing a beat, knowing that we had less than a minute before all hell would break loose. Some fast footwork was definitely in order.
First things first: where was Anne?
With some relief I realized that she was still in the Pride's hold, which meant she would have been hidden from view during the fly-by. The first thing to do was to keep it that way. A few steps took me to the Pride's open cargo doors.
"Anne!" I shouted. "Stay where you are!"
"The hell I will," she said, with some heat. "We're all in this together. You're not going to get your ass shot off while I'm sitting here, Harvey Ross!"
Which was more or less what I had expected. That's Anne for you. Which makes me proud and happy, but also complicates my life considerably now and then. However, I could understand her point of view. In her place I'd probably feel the same way. I also realized that this was one time when I was going to have to explain my orders. There wasn't really time, but the was no help for it, either.
"Anne, please do as I say. They're after you, which means they won't start shooting until they know where you are. The best way you can help to keep us safe is to stay out of sight for the moment."
"He's rrright," Raz rumbled from behind me. "Anne, go to the back of the carrrgo hold. It's closest to the engine rrroom. Morrre difficult to scan."
Anne looked deeply unhappy, but she turned and disappeared behind the shipping containers that still filled half the hold. I turned to Raz.
"What weapons do we have?"
He shook his head.
"None that we can get to in a hurrry."
"Right. Layne?"
Layne, who still stood by the tanker's cabin, thought for a moment.
"Nothing conventional," he said. "But... Hang on."
He turned around, bent down and peered underneath the tanker at the mess of old and broken repulsor field coils that hung there. After a few seconds he got up, looked at us, and shrugged.
"We may as well try it," he said. "Cross your fingers."
"That doesn't sound encouraging," I said. "What do you have in mind?"
He looked over my shoulder and shook his head.
"No time," he said. "Just do as I say. Do you have any metal objects on you?"
I shook my head.
"No," Raz rumbled.
Layne reached into his pocket, took out a small knife and threw it away as far as he could.
"Any implants?" he asked.
"Anne," I said. "She...""
"She'll be safe in the hold," he said. "We're out of time. Stand here, and when they come for us, try to get them as close to the tanker as possible."
As he turned and climbed into the tanker's cab, the fighter completed its turn and began to descend. It fell like a brick for a few long moments before it braked savagely on its underjets. The sound was like the roar of an angry god; it easily drowned out the asthmatic noises from the tanker's turbine, which was still running. The dust storm created by the blast from the jets was like the end of the world. Then the fighter's suppressor field kicked in, and the dust settled as quickly as it had risen.
Before the landing struts had even touched the dirt, the fighter's aft hatch opened. Three men jumped out in single file. They immediately cleared the blast area and came running toward us, falling into a standard military leapfrog maneuver. One of them would drop on one knee and brandish a blaster rifle to provide cover for the other two as they advanced, then the next one would take over and cover the rest of the team while the first one caught up. They were obviously very well trained, very professional, and very bad news.
Within seconds they had reached us, and I found myself staring at the wrong end of a blaster. Raz still bore the scars from the last hit with one of these babies, and I tried not to think of what they would do to my far less massively built body.
The three shock troopers appeared to be lightly armored, which heartened me a little. I've encountered any number of security heavies over the years (you can't really avoid them when you visit as many worlds as you do in interstellar shipping) and when they go in hot and heavy, they tend to be encased in full body armor to the point where you can't even determine what species they are. But these guys were human, or at least humanoid, and while they wore heavy suits that were obviously highly resistant to blasters and projectile weapons, their helmets did not fully cover their faces and their dun-colored fatigues were tucked into what looked like standard issue combat boots. In other words, they didn't expect much resistance from us. Which was a fair assessment, of course, because short of kicking them in the nuts (something their combat gear could easily cope with) there was very little we could do to defend ourselves.
"Don't move," one of them said calmly to Layne, who was sitting in the tanker's cab like he belonged there.
"Yagodda wrong guy, pal," Layne drawled. "I ain't dun nuffin'."
The trooper raised his blaster rifle.
"Quiet," he said, in a strangely dead and flat voice.
The one closest to me, whom I had tentatively labeled as the team commander, consulted a s mall display on his wrist. Then he turned to me.
"He's the one," he said.
He aimed his blaster at my breast bone and looked at me without any expression on his face.
My initial impression appeared to have been right: these guys were seasoned professionals. An amateur would have stepped forward and shoved his blaster into my chest, but this guy kept enough distance so that the barrel of his weapon was just beyond my reach. His colleagues covered Raz and Layne in a similar manner.
"Where's the prototype?" he asked me in that strangely dead and flat voice.
"What prototype?" I said.
His expression didn't change. Or rather, he still didn't have any expression. All of them had these strangely dead-looking eyes, as if their current business was nothing but mind-numbingly dull routine.
"I'm not going to ask you again," he said. "I don't have time for this. Last chance."
Well, he'd never get his answer if he shot me, so what the hell.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
His lack of expression didn't change. Keeping his blaster on me with one hand and without taking his eyes off me, he reached into a hip pocket and took out a small, gleaming metal rod. He pointed it at me and pushed a button.
