Welcome to Part 6 of the ongoing saga of Grant and Company. If you think
things are confusing NOW, you should have been here to see these poor guys
trying to roleplay it! |->
metlay
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PART 6
Terra, mid-1119
"Captain?"
Grant opened his eyes slowly. Two strangers were leaning over
him. One was a man in his mid-20s, somehow foppish even in a nondescript
prison coverall; the other was a rail-thin, immaculately shaven fellow
with thinning blonde hair and--
Lord Corris's son. The family portrait in the shipwright's hall!
No. No. That wasn't it. A noble, but not a Corris--a Tchorgin.
Yes. Mikhail Tchorgin, professional hostage. And Edison, professional
bitgeek. Hudson's bitgeek. MY bitgeek....
Grant winced. "Ouch. This hurts my head...."
"You and everyone else, Captain." The muscular blonde god got slowly
up from his seated position at the cell door and stalked over to Grant. He
was perfect, Grant noted absently. Nothing missing. Nothing.
"How do you feel?" Nyborg's voice was cool.
"Like my brain's been put through a juicer." Grant sat up, tried
to get to his feet, stopped. He looked around him slowly, suspicions flaring
and dying and flaring up again. Edison regarded him carefully, Tchorgin with
a look of mild concern, Nyborg with a paranoid scowl. 'Captain,' they'd said.
Captain WHO?
Edison made eye contact, then flicked his gaze upward for a moment.
Grant followed the glance. His brow furrowed as he saw the tiny hole in the
ceiling above him. Oho, he thought. No wonder they're playing it crafty.
He looked past Tchorgin, to where Newton was crouched over Tsogukh.
The huge Vargr was curled into a fetal position, rocking back and forth
gently and whimpering softly in a language Grant didn't recognize as the
Transform dialect of Vuakedh that Kherkhoulloth spoke....
He strode over to the pair, pushing gently past Tchorgin, who gave
him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder as he passed. "How is he?"
Newton looked up, hair in his eyes. He started to speak, looked
annoyed, flicked the hair clumsily back from his face. "Pretty bad, sir."
Grant seized on the simple gesture like a hawk on a ferret. He's not
used to having hair, he thought with grim satisfaction. Newton's got a full
head of hair-- but Fell DOESN'T! More and more interesting.
"They didn't even work him over for as long as they did the rest of
us," Fell (Newton?) continued. "They brought him back here after only a few
minutes, and the med orderly looked scareder than hell. He's been in this
shape ever since.... I can't get through to him at all."
"Lovely, just LOVELY." Grant found the Hudsonism came easily to mind.
He looked at Fell carefully. "And how about YOU?"
"I think," Fell said, weighing each word carefully, "I stood up under
this much better than the rest of you. I have a certain natural resistance to
this kind of punishment. And after all, Captain, we should be grateful we
were only worked on by rank amateurs-- the Zhodani would have wrung us out
and hung us up to dry by now."
"True enough." Grant got up and stretched, yawning. "So has anyone
been able to piece together what happened?"
"I remember landing and trying to unload our cargo...." Newton's
voice was hesitant.
"We were accosted by StarPort Authority troopers and forced at
gunpoint into a lockup-van," Tchorgin sniffed. "Plebeians."
"They put us in a cell, and one by one they started taking people
out, starting with you, Captain," Nyborg continued grimly. "And everyone came
back feeling like, well, like...."
"Pling pling pling...."
Grant turned around slowly. Edison was gazing vacantly into space;
he was softly singing a little song, just three notes over and over.
"Pling pling pling, pling pling pling--"
"Edison!" Hudson seized his arm roughly. "You gone nuts on us?"
"Hm?" Edison's eyes focussed slowly on his commanding officer. "Uh,
no sir. I was either (a) daydreaming (b) exhausted (c) suffering from as yet
unquantified aftereffects of the interrogation."
"If that's what it was," Tchorgin snapped irritably. "What sort of
interrogation doesn't involve asking any questions?"
"One where they don't need to talk to you," Nyborg said quietly.
"If they suspected some kind of--"
He was cut off by a yelp of sudden terror from the floor. Tsogukh
uncurled from his huddled position abruptly and looked about him, seemingly
not recognizing any of the faces around him. He backed into a corner, holding
up a hand as if to ward off a blow and whimpering in a garbled mixture of
Vuakedh, Galanglic, and unintelligible gibberish.
"O no please bahyakhta eenay Vfkhayikh arrrghafthaengzak I promise
kyulyolvai aenrraghz oun kokaasha eegh Urzaeng faeng faeng don' hurt me...."
"Hey, hey, hey," Fell soothed, leaning down near the terrified Vargr,
"Don't be afraid. It's US. Your FRIENDS, remember?" He began pointing to
faces. "Captain Hudson, Edison, Nyborg, Tchorgin...."
"SHEVEK!" The word burst out of Tsogukh's throat in a shriek, and he
threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around Fell's knees, his sobs
redoubling in strength.
The others merely looked confused, but Grant's eyes narrowed. Shevek.
What was it Sonderberg had said.... 'It'd be interesting to see what sort of
a song Shevek would sing.' Another piece of the puzzle?
"Shhhh...." Fell patted the crying alien's fur uncomfortably. "You
know me, old buddy. Newton. Remember, Tsogukh?"
The Vargr sat bolt upright as if stabbed. His eyes focussed into
killing slits. "TSSSSSSOHHHHHHHHHH-----" He leapt to his feet, fists
clenched. "--GUKH!" He shhok himself from muzzle to tail as if drying himself
off, and looked around him suspiciously. His voice dropped an octave.
"Well, what are YOU all staring at?"
Newton sighed in relief. "Thought we'd lost you there for a minute,
friend," he said easily. "You okay?"
"NO, I'm not okay!" Tsogukh began to pace the small cell angrily.
"What the hell did they do to me? Was it drugs? Torture? WHAT? I'm so messed
up I can't even remember my own name...."
"You won't have to worry about that for much longer."
Everyone whirled at the new voice from beyond the door. Through the
viewslit, they could just glimpse a helmeted head outside in the hall.
"Time to go, gen'l'men. Any false moves, you die painful instead of
clean. Got that?" The door swung open, and a burly SolSec guard in combat
armor strode into the room, Gauss pistol at the ready. "Turn away from me,
all of you, and hands behind backs to be cuffed. I can cuff you one-handed,
and I'll shoot if you give me any guff."
Tsogukh growled and coiled himself for a spring.
"Ease OFF!" Hudson's voice nearly cracked with suppressed terror.
"Stupid furball, you'll get us ALL killed!"
Tsogukh's ears went back against his skull, and he slowly turned
and put his hands behind his back. "Coward," he muttered under his breath.
One by one, the cuffs were put on. Grant tested his gingerly, hoping
that the circulation wouldn't be cut off from his hands.
They loosened slightly. A ratchet clicked, almost inaudibly.
Jammed open!
Grant stopped moving his arms, and looked over his shoulder at
Edison, who was suddenly concentrating hard on something only he could see.
Fell was looking down at the floor in front of him. Feeling the Captain's
eyes upon him, he twitched an eyelid in a brief wink.
As they were herded out of the cell and down the sterile hallway,
Grant made eye contact with the guard, who regarded him carefully.
"So what happens to us now?"
"You're gonna get blown up trying to escape," the guard grinned back
at him. "Back to the starport, back in your ship, liftoff to a hundred
meters, and WHAMMO! Taken out by the defense batteries! No evidence left to
sift through, nothin'. Neat as neat can be."
"Delightful," Nyborg sighed. They piled down a flight of metal stairs
and out of a thick security door. The heat hit them like a blanket of fire,
sweat springing out on their faces in an instant. Tsogukh began to pant.
The door opened out on a courtyard. The blazing sun had raised the
temperature in the open court to the point where the air rippled and made
vision difficult. An unmarked police van was floating at the gate, and they
were herded aboard by the guard, who sat down next to them with his pistol
covering them all loosely. After a moment, another guard came in and sat down
next to them, a Gauss rifle slung over his shoulder and a wary look on his
face. The first guard looked at him, then at Grant, and gave a tiny shake of
his head.
The sliding door slammed shut on them, and through the glass
partition up front they saw a driver take his place at the controls, and the
gravid form of Agent Sonderberg huff in beside him. Sonderberg turned and
waved into the back compartment at Grant, who pointedly ignored him. The
agent grinned, and picked up an intercom mike from the dash.
"Just a few more minutes, Becker."
Damn right, Becker thought grimly. You fat bag of cancer, I'm gonna
give YOU 'Chief Special Operative in the Terra Theater'! Take MY job, will
you? Just a few more minutes....
The van lurched into motion. No one spoke during the brief period it
took to cross the threshold and speed across the starport to where the
Inexplicable was docked. The first guard relaxed after a moment, letting his
gun hand rest on his knee, within reach of Nyborg. His eyes closed.
"Pay attention, idiot," the second guard snarled.
"Shaddup," was the yawned reply. "They're cuffed, ain't they?"
Grant was watching through the front window as best he could. Down
the service road and through the milling crowds, across the main thorofare,
around a corner...and there before them was the blast shield for Landing
Pad 7-3-26. The automatic doors slid open exposing the long tunnel through
the shield to the inner landing area. Hudson did some fast math in his head.
Twenty kilometers per hour, say ten meters of tunnel--two seconds. It was
going to have to be perfect.
Nyborg yawned and stretched, gathering his legs under his bench seat.
Tsogukh tried to scratch one hind leg with the other. Fell sat upright,
trying to see their destination as the van glided smoothly into the mouth of
the tunnel.
Grant pulled convulsively on his cuffs. For a harrowing instant, the
ratchet seemed to catch, then pulled free with a soft zipping noise. Beside
him, the first guard yelled, "Hey, what the--"
Simultaneously there was a loud thud and an "Oof!" From the other
guard. Close on that was a veritable cacaphony of yells, growls, grunts, and
scuffling noises. Sonderberg looked back through the window, and scowled in
frustration as the reflected sunlight from the tunnel's mouth on the glass
obscured his vision. He reached behind him blindly for the dash.
Becker's voice was tight. "Nyborg! Door lock!"
There was the thunk of a gauss shot, and the sliding door slammed
open. Becker grabbed the door frame and swung himself in a tight arc around
the frame, grabbing and pulling open the passenger door. At that moment the
van burst out into the blazing sun again, almost in the shadow of the
Inexplicable, and the thin man and the fat were rolling in the sand.
The van screeched to a halt. The first guard was thrown free.
Scrambling to his feet, he hissed to Fell, who was crawling after him,
"WNRK! Yell it, don't spell it!" And with that, he was sprinting for the
tunnel mouth.
Nyborg and Edison vaulted from the van, sprinting for the ship.
Becker had managed to get free of Sonderberg and was staggering up the ramp,
his rival in hot pursuit. Suddenly a gleaming spherical object appeared in
the open hatchway, hovering for a moment and then swooping down the ramp. It
was the secretary-bot Hudson had nicknamed Hector.
The sight of the familiar robot made Hudson pause for a moment, and
Sonderberg took advantage of the delay, charging up and grabbing him in a
hammerlock. "Got you!" he gurgled, panting and beet-red with exertion. "Never
get away!"
"Get clear, GET CLEAR!" Hector shrieked, bowling Edison over.
"Someone's initiated an automatic takeoff sequence! We only have a few
seconds--"
"YOW!" Edison wasn't a gambling man. He skidded to a halt and turned
back to the van, only in time to see the senseless body of the driver crumple
to the sand. Fell leaped behind the wheel, and the van spun up off the ground
and into motion, Tchorgin kicking the dead guard out of the back and Tsogukh
scrambling to get onto the roof. Edison leaped for the van, as the
Inexplicable's thruster plates suddenly burst into agonizing radiance and the
rusty old freighter began to lift off the ground, Becker and Sonderberg still
grappling madly on the rocking, shaking gangplank. With a mighty heave,
Nyborg leaped and grabbed hold of the end of the ramp just before it rose out
of reach. In a few seconds, he had gained the ramp's surface, and charged
into the fray.
Sonderberg looked up, just in time to scream in agony as a round from
the Gauss pistol ripped into his shoulder. He let go of Becker's throat, and
the semiconscious agent rolled down the ramp and off the end, plummeting
toward the ground below.
"GOTCHA!" Tsogukh's powerful haunches flexed under the sudden strain
as he caught his commander's limp body in his arms. "DRIVE, FELL!"
The van spun away into the blast tunnel, unnoticed as Sonderberg and
Nyborg faced off on the pitching ramp. Nyborg looked over his shoulder. They
were ten meters high and rising. Any second now, the defense batteries would
open fire....
"Nyborg, for God's SAKE!" Sonderberg sobbed, his pudgy fingers
clutching at the empty air that had been his worst rival's throat a moment
ago. "You're a Loyalist! And so was CHANDRA! It doesn't have to be like
this-- we can HEAL you...!"
The smile that answered him was calm and self-assured. "I am
Daryavayush Michael O'Connor, FSO, and native of Iddamakur. Your death will
be the most important of my career. I'm sorry that I can't take credit for
it...."
Sonderberg sank to his knees, the blood loss making him dizzy. "Uh?"
"You're about to be killed by the attack YOU ORDERED." They were
above the wall now. Far away, O'Connor saw the plumes of the missile
launchers as they fired. He shook his head in disbelief.
"Another shining example of SolSec efficiency."
They were the last words he ever spoke.
The van shot flailing out of the blast tunnel and shot across the
service alleyway, rounding the bend past the neighboring wall a bare second
before the blast sent a column of roaring fire down the tunnel after it. The
flash lit up the sky to impossible brightness, and the crash and roar of the
Inexplicable's funeral pyre mingled with the screams in the crowd as burning
debris rained down on the port.
"This is a fine set of circumstances," Edison remarked as the van
bucked under the blast wave. "We are now (1) on a foreign planet under
hostile control (2) wanted by the police, SPA, and SolSec (3) minus our best
combat expert (4) mentally in less than peak form (5) penniless (6) without
identification papers (7) minus our only transportation off-planet (8)
dressed in prison garb (9) exhausted (10) hungry and (11) apparently in
no position to even attempt considering intelligent options as to our next
move."
"No problem," Tchorgin smiled. Or was it Jaeger?
TO BE CONTINUED