Gun Runner Page 3

  “Captain?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m so sorry, Mistress. I’m afraid there’s been a terrible mistake.”

  “What mistake?”

  “Your passenger—the companion model. There’s a patrol boat following us. They’re demanding that we turn him over to them.”

  Shit. I considered bursting out of my cabinet and attacking him, but I restrained myself.

  “Why would they do that?” I heard Rose ask.

  “Where is your companion, Mistress?”

  A hard edge had entered the voice of the android. He was a model-Q, far from an idiot, and he had orders that superseded hers.

  “Um…” Rose said, “he’s in the closet, of course. He’s a companion-type. A model-K, I think.”

  The captain stepped inside the cabin, moved quietly to my closet and threw the door wide open.

  “There you are,” the captain said.

  I looked at him quietly. How do you fool an android? I’m no expert. There weren’t many of them out on the fringe where I was from. The Conclave worlds love these things—but I found them disturbing.

  “Captain Gorman,” the android said, startling me. “We’ve been required to fire our braking jets in order to allow a patrol ship to take custody of you. Please come with me.”

  “I’m not Captain Gorman,” I said evenly, not budging from my narrow closet.

  The android’s expression didn’t change. “Excellent,” he said. “In that case, this is all a matter of misunderstanding and human error. I thought that might be the case. The odds in these situations always skew to such causes.”

  I nodded. “Very good. Now that we’ve sorted out this misunderstanding, you can accelerate. Rose is anxious to be on her way.”

  The captain kept smiling, but he didn’t go away. “That is impossible, I’m afraid. We are already engaging the forward braking thrusters. Don’t you feel it?”

  Right on cue, I did feel it. The ship shuddered, and our bodies were pushed lightly toward the prow. A few seconds later, the ship shuddered again. A luxury yacht would be well-equipped with inertial dampeners, but apparently we were braking so hard that they were being overcome.

  “What an inconvenience,” I said in a neutral tone. Secretly, my heart was pounding and my armpits were trickling with sweat—but I didn’t let on.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rose said, touching my arm sweetly.

  She wore a real look of regret on her face. Clearly, she expected me to be apprehended and arrested. I didn’t think this was part of her plan—but she now saw the outcome as inevitable.

  “Very well,” I said. “Let’s go to the main hatch, shall we?”

  “That’s most cooperative of you, Gorman,” the captain said. “I had assumed you might attempt resistance. The patrolmen said as much.”

  “Nonsense. This is all a misunderstanding.”

  He nodded again. “As you say. This way, please.”

  This was the critical moment. Would the captain let me get behind him? He obviously knew I was lying, but he was no combat model. Smart, competent, orderly—but not programmed as a guardian.

  “After you,” I said, stepping out of my shallow closet and standing meekly at his side. “I don’t know the way.”

  The captain hesitated. I could almost see the circuitry in his brain spooling up and spitting thoughts. At last, after perhaps a single, awkward second, he walked ahead of us. The passage was only about a meter wide and two tall. There wasn’t room to walk abreast. I followed him, and Rose followed me.

  I considered asking her to stay behind in her cabin. I really did. She’d been kind to me, and I had no desire to upset her life any further.

  But there wasn’t any more time for niceties. The ship shuddered again, probably losing another thousand kilometers an hour of velocity.

  Rose was mild, even sweet. Up until this moment, she’d only seen the aftermath of my sometimes violent path through life. I didn’t want her to witness the full truth of it, but sadly, it couldn’t be helped.

  When I saw no other android crewmen in the passage, I reached forward, gripping the captain’s wrist.

  His flesh was of the highest quality. It didn’t feel like plastic, it felt like real skin. Perhaps the arm hairs were a little too stiff and wiry against my palm to be natural—but I was still impressed by how real he seemed.

  Holding onto his wrist, hooking his ankle and pushing at the back of his shoulder, I caused him to trip and spin around as he fell. He smashed his face on a protruding rung of a ladder. The force of my shove and his weight wrenched his neck to one side.

  Something internal cracked. In a real human, that sound would have indicated the breaking of neck vertebrae.

  I let go of him, allowing him to crash the rest of the way down to the floor. Behind me, Rose was making gasping, hitching sounds. I was sure she’d never witnessed violence like this.

  I didn’t dare console her, however, as the captain wasn’t done yet. He sprang back up, showing surprising vigor. I guess they’d built him to do more than serve drinks. In an emergency, he had to be rugged and strong enough to keep his passengers alive.

  With a wobbling step, he turned to face me. His hands were raised, not in a professional fighter’s stance, but in a clearly defensive posture. His head hung sideways and dangled there, suspended by three bundles of thick cords. The artificial eyes in that decapitated head roved over me. He stared at me, even though his face was upside down and flopping around on his chest. The overall effect was ghastly.

  The captain rushed me, hands upraised like claws. Rose screamed, but I paid her no heed. My slim pistol was in my hand, but we were too close, and I knew shooting him in the chest probably wouldn’t stop him.

  We grappled, and I struggled with his frantically grasping artificial limbs. They flailed over me, tearing and gouging. Blood ran down my ribs from a wound in my chest.

  Jamming the pistol down into the open hole where his dangling head had once sat, I squeezed the trigger. I released two bursts, then two more.

  The life went out of the captain, and he clattered onto the deck.

  Two other androids soon appeared. They were service-types, no more than glorified waiters.

  “What’s happened?” one of them asked.

  “There was an accident,” I said smoothly, toeing the smoldering remains of the captain. “He’s malfunctioned.”

  I turned to Rose, who released a single sob. She had her hands to her face, and several fingers in her mouth. Her expression informed me that I was unlikely to be seen as a dashing adventurer in the foreseeable future.

  “Rose?” I said to her gently. “I’m taking this ship. Do you want to accompany me? Or do you want to go home?”

  She chewed on her hands some more and stared down at the tangled mess on the deck. “Would you do that to a person? Would you do that to me?”

  “Not to you, never.”

  She looked up again, and there was new wisdom in her gaze. She’d led a very sheltered life. She’d never seen true violence, neither on a screen nor in person. I’d taken the romance out of it for her.

  Finally, she shook her head. “I can’t go on with you. I… I thought I could, but I can’t. The fringe, where you’re from… it must be awful out there.”

  I smiled with half my mouth. “Sometimes it is. It’s definitely more interesting than the Conclave. For me, it’s home.”

  Rose nodded as if she was dreaming. She stared down at the ruined captain, and she never looked me in the eyes again.

  Chapter Five

  Subduing the rest of the crew was easy. They weren’t very smart, but more importantly, they’d just lost their leader. Without their model-Q captain to direct them, they couldn’t override the will of any human.

  Using a lifepod in the belly of the yacht, I fired Rose out into the void with a twinge of regret. I’d truly enjoyed our short time together—but we were too different. It would never have worked out. She was too innocent and there was
no way to guarantee her safety.

  Once the lifepod was away, I turned the yacht’s thrusters up to full. The ship surged, having an overpowered engine and no cargo to burden her. She thrummed and thrummed louder until the sound became a roar.

  A few baffled crewmen stood around me. They made suggestions now and then, asking me to slow down, to turn around, to contact the patrol ship that trailed us and inform them of our emergency situation.

  Needless to say, I did none of these things. I didn’t even acknowledge their prattling words, but I did keep an eye on them. It was possible that someone aboard the patrol ship could breach the yacht’s firewall and place a command into their brains remotely. If they began to openly rebel, it would be a problem.

  Fortunately, that didn’t happen. We soon approached the slip-gate entrance. This was my next challenge.

  A row of ships waited in a neat line to fly through the gate. Each had an assigned position in the queue and a slew of electronic documents that had been automatically stamped and approved by a dozen handshaking computers.

  The whole bureaucratic mess was automated for the most part—but I had no documentation whatsoever. My plan was to use their system against them. Following rigid routines was the norm at Conclave worlds for both androids as well as humans. I was counting on them to maintain their lockstep discipline.

  Timing was particularly essential to my escape. The patrol ship behind me might be able to order the crew who operated the slip-gate—whether they were human or not—to shut it down or deploy weaponry. I couldn’t give them the time they needed to execute such a plan if they were smart enough to come up with it.

  Gritting my teeth, I fired up the engines and set their thrust to maximum. We were soon careening through space, regaining the velocity lost through braking a few minutes before.

  As our speed increased, I abused the ship’s navigational system. I forced it to operate in ways that had never been intended. Using the Dawn Star’s pricey sensor array, I locked onto a large freighter ahead. It was following a measured course at precisely the recommended speed. Gliding along, it would enter the slip-gate in the next few minutes.

  My plan was dicey in several ways. First off, if the freighter slowed or otherwise altered course, the gate would blink open and shut at the wrong moment, destroying my newly stolen yacht. Secondly, I had to get very close to the freighter while moving about three thousand kilometers an hour faster than she was, timing it so we both entered the gate at the same moment.

  Proximity and speed—that was a combination that had provided many pilots an easy way to die in space. But there was no way around it. The field would only open for the blink of an eye. The gateway would be small, with only a spare fifteen percent or so of wiggle room around it. Opening a slip-gate took copious amounts of power, and power always cost money. Always. Therefore, the operators would open and close a small gateway for the briefest span possible.

  Choosing a fat vessel to slip through with improved my odds of threading this needle. The nimbus of space around her would be larger and open for a fraction of a second longer than it might for a smaller vessel.

  Checking the numbers twice, I finally looked forward. My eyes locked onto the distant flashing pinprick of light that was the blinking gate. I dared to smile. Escape was at hand.

  At that moment, my new ship shuddered. It lurched and began to rotate in a flat spin.

  I knew what had happened in an instant. The patrol ship had fired on me, nailing my tail section. Perhaps the patrolmen had divined my plan, and they sought to stop me at all costs. I was both surprised and impressed that any Conclave officer possessed the balls to do such a thing.

  Struck hard by the blast, my android crewmen were flying around the command deck like so many mannequins. They hadn’t strapped in—no one had ordered them to do so.

  Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to properly secure myself in the pilot’s seat. A harness crisscrossed my body, and it cinched up automatically as G-forces tugged at me laterally.

  As a pilot, I’ve dealt with many dire situations. The first thing I did was flip off all the automatics and safe-guards. Ship-board computers took a dim view of seat-of-the pants flying, so I had to stop them from interfering.

  Gripping the manual sticks, I soon realized my main engine was out, but my lateral thrusters were still operating. So were my forward braking jets.

  Spinning the craft around one more time, I leveled her off so she was flying straight again—but straight backwards. Then I goosed the braking jets on the nose, which sped the yacht up just enough to match speeds with the freighter I planned to piggy-back on.

  A comm light was blinking on the main panel. Reluctantly, I opened a communications channel.

  “Dawn Star!” shouted the ship’s speakers. The voice was human, which slightly surprised me. “You must heave-to! You will be destroyed with our next salvo.”

  Previously, I’d refused to respond to any transmissions the patrol ship had sent. Unfortunately, they’d left me no choice.

  “Patrol officer,” I said. “We’re unable to comply. Our engines are damaged—”

  “Liar!” he roared at me. “You’re burning your braking jets right now. Steer away from the slip-gate or so help me I’ll blow you out of the sky, Gorman!”

  My teeth bared themselves. In about ninety seconds, I would reach the slip-gate—but I had the distinct feeling I wasn’t going to make it. Worse, I was out of ideas…

  Then something came to me. A trick I hadn’t played yet.

  “Patrolman, hold your fire. Rose Engels was injured in your last attack, but she yet lives. Will you kill her, the daughter of a faithful Elector of the Conclave?”

  “More lies. She’s in the lifepod you ejected a million kilometers back. We’ve already—”

  “Spoken with her? Yes, of course. It was a ruse, you fool. She wants to escape your dull planet. She recorded those words to make you believe she died in this action.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Think about it. You’re brighter than these androids. How could I have escaped without help? How could I have gained her cooperation so quickly? She’s been helping me all along. If you wait a few more minutes, you’ll see the lifepod tragically self-destruct. That fiction was to keep you from hunting us, we’re two lovers—”

  “Shut up. You’re lying—and you’re stalling. I’m going to gun your ship down, Gorman.”

  I opened my mouth to say more, but the channel had gone dead. He’d closed it.

  The last twenty seconds to the slip-gate were gut-wrenching. I had to wonder if each heartbeat was going to be my last. After all, I’d been bluffing hard, and the patrol-ship captain had suspected it.

  My only hope was that he just didn’t have the guts to blast me out of the sky—not when Rose might be aboard the Dawn Star.

  In the end, as I slid away into the blinking eye of white radiance with the freighter, I thought I saw the patrol ship fire again.

  Maybe he’d actually spoken with Rose by that time, or perhaps he’d obtained permission from the ground—it didn’t matter. The yacht was in sub-space before the bolts had a chance to reach us. I was gone a moment later, riding the rails of hyperspace that linked one of our star systems to the next.

  “That was rough,” I sighed, turning off the gravity and releasing my restraints. All around me, androids struggled to stand. They made feeble complaints. I ignored them, demanding a globe of real coffee. Somehow, one of them managed to bring it to me a few minutes later. One of the robot’s plastic fingers was missing, and another was twisted up at an odd angle.

  “Repair yourselves,” I ordered. “And repair the ship in any way you can.”

  Glad to have instructions, the androids stopped milling around without a purpose. I gave them a half-gravity setting to make their work easier, then retired to the ship’s nicest cabin.

  The trip through hyperspace wouldn’t last forever, but it was enough time to get some rest. I headed for Rose
’s comfortable bunk. After all the excitement, I felt I could use a short nap.

  Chapter Six

  I awoke to gentle chimes. Snorting and sitting up, I pulled together my kit and hit the shower. I came out feeling refreshed.

  Reaching the bridge, I found the androids were still awake, and still looking lost. Several of them tried to give me food and coffee—I took the coffee.

  “Do you have any stims?” I asked them. “I’d kill for a stim right now.”

  They blinked at me. “A stimulant? What type—?”

  I snapped my fingers irritably. “A smoking stick, a stim! Have you got them or not?”

  They looked baffled. It was just my luck, these robots were straight-arrows. Stims were almost illegal on Prospero.

  Leaving the bridge, I ransacked the ship. I found some old brandy, and a silver case that looked promising. I couldn’t get it open as my thumbprint didn’t match.

  “That belongs to Master Engels, Rose’s father,” one of the bots told me unhelpfully.

  “Is that so? Well, it just so happens he told me I could use any of his things I wanted the last time I saw him.”

  “Oh…” said the model-K, retreating. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  I finally pried the silver case open with a screwdriver and found it was full of slim, white sticks. I smiled, lit one up, and puffed on it eagerly.

  “Damn… it’s been years.”

  In reality, I’d never actually smoked a stim. I was a clone who remembered the sensation—but I didn’t like to think about that.

  A few hours later, I reached the exit leaving hyperspace. I had no idea what planet I’d be arriving at, but I knew that the captain of the freighter I’d hitched a ride with would be angry when we got there. He’d contact authorities, and the chase would continue.

  I ate a hearty breakfast made for two—the androids kept asking me where Rose was, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them she’d abandoned ship lightyears ago. Next, I took stock of things. I needed a plan. Fortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’d evaded custom agents and the like. It wasn’t even the first spacecraft I’d stolen. Ideas came to mind.