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Counterpoint: Chapter 2: Part 13COUNTERPOINT
CHAPTER 2: THE PILOT
PART 13
By Mayavan Thevendra
Kimiko shouted again into the microphone, but there was no answer, no sign that Valerie had heard her. She cursed the archaic piece of scrap that the junkers were using as a com system, and peered out through the viewing panel; past the debris, and the swinging metal limbs, she saw the salvage boat, it’s access hatch still ajar. The whole bay was washed in the red light of the pressure warning lamps on the walls, and the klaxon on the far side was screaming its guts out. Valerie had to have realised what was happening by now.
“Come on Mailer, shut the damn hatch!”
Brutal images of Kimiko’s classmates being sucked out into space through the open access hatch flashed through her mind, and suddenly her heart froze, as the realisation struck that she herself had left the door to the observation booth open in her wake.
Flinging herself towards the doorway, she grabbed the bar handle, and heaved it shut with such force that she lost her footing, and tumbled to the floor; the door’s pressure locks clicked and sucked, frantically sealing the booth airtight. In the next instant, an impossibly loud hiss shot through from the hangar, as the air inside it was steadily siphoned off into space, the klaxon’s blare growing quieter and quieter as a vacuum formed in its stead. The floor shook again, and clambering to her feet, Kimiko watched the giant hangar doors shake horribly in their frames, and then begin to open. Almost afraid to look, she turned her eyes to the salvage boat; but there were no floating, lifeless bodies - the hatch had been shut, and was apparently secure. A sigh of relief was all Kimiko managed, before the walls began to rumble once again; the junkers’ ships appeared against the blackness beyond, and like a pack of bleeding animals, they came limping across the threshold, and into the hangar. There were four of them, and all appeared to be damaged in varying degrees – smouldering scorch marks riddled across the crafts’ sides indicated cannon fire of some sort, as well as evidence of explosive damage, and one of them looked as though it had been involved in a collision. The boats came to an uneasy stop on the base of the hangar, and while Kimiko watched, crouching behind one of the terminals, the great bay doors drew shut once more.
The terrible severity of what was happening only then occurred to her; Valerie and the others were trapped in the unused salvage boat, and she was trapped on the station. There was no way for them to return to their cells, to deceive the junkers into thinking all was well – once they had left their vessels, it would only be a matter of time before they discovered that their prisoners had escaped, and even if Kimiko could sneak past them to join the other cadets, the minute or so it took to depressurise the hangar meant that any attempt to leave the station would be quickly spotted, and crushed.
Air tanks began to fill the bay with breathable atmosphere; Kimiko decided her only option for now was to hide. Keeping low, she rummaged around the back of the observation booth, lifting up boxes, and wooden planks, searching for anything large enough to conceal herself with. A small storage locker stared out at her from the corner; Kimiko stumbled over the piles of trash, wrenched it open, and slid inside. It was a tight squeeze -a low shelf meant that she had to crouch down and sit with her legs hitched up. She pulled the door shut, taking care not to close it completely and trap herself, and waited. The cold, which she had so far managed to ignore, began to work its way up her spine, and she tried to restrain herself from shivering as she watched through the venting slits in the door for any sign of the junkers. It was a brief wait. Barely half a minute had passed when the hatch to the observation booth unlocked, and swayed open. Not moving, barely even breathing, Kimiko looked on, and listened.
“Tavis, go and find Coombs, I want to know why that jerkoff closed the damn doors behind us!”
A stroke of luck, at least for the moment; Grill had assumed that it was the junker from the canteen who had closed the hangar doors. But as Tavis came into view, and then disappeared out of sight, Kimiko realised that in a matter of minutes, he’d find the junker’s unconscious body where she and Valerie had left it, and raise the alarm. Grill was the next to come into view, and he was fuming. The others filtered in behind, one by one, looking as battered as the ships that had carried them; they cringed with every harsh word that left Grill’s lips, apparently more afraid of him than whatever or whoever it was that had set upon them.
“Pauly, get up to ops, and switch on the damn scanner! Now!”
Another junker scurried out of sight, leaving Grill and two others in the booth, one of whom was so frightened that his legs were shaking. Grill turned to him, the light in his mechanical eye glowing a cold, sickly green, and he smiled.
“Sit down, Toby.”
Toby didn’t do anything at first; he just stood there like some shell-shocked rodent, turning his cap around in his hands, but Grill’s withering stare quickly pushed him to take a seat at the console next to him.
“Boss, I had no idea that hulk was rigged, I swear!”
“I never said you did, Toby.” Said Grill, and stepped nearer to him. “But facts are facts. That ship was your find, you’re the one who brought news of it to me. Awful coincidence that Krey Ganjes smugglers had wired that very same ship to blow itself to pieces, as soon as someone got near it. And I thought it was real strange how your boat was the furthest away from it when it did blow.”
“Boss, please…”
Toby was trembling like he’d gone into shock; Grill took another step, and rested his arm on the console next to Toby’s head.
“Poor Deke, never knew what hit him,” he said. “caught in an explosion like that, probably died instantly, don’t you think?”
Toby shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head, then nodded pathetically, completely bewildered by the question.
“And then those tugs appeared from out of nowhere, and started blasting. They tore Meijin’s bird right in two, poor bastard. They got Dumont’s ship right in the ass,” said Grill, pointing a thumb to the other junker in the booth, “and it was all I could do to get out of there without my damn wings falling off!”
“They shot at me too, boss.” Whimpered Toby.
“That they did. Now why do you suppose that was?”
Toby shrugged, and shook his head again. “I don’t know, boss.”
“Oh, you don’t know, boss?” Grill leaned forward, until his mangled, machine-grafted face was a mere inch away from Toby’s. “Let me suggest a reason. After you sold us out – “
“No, boss…”
“Shut up! After you sold us out, to your cocksucker Krey Ganjes friends, they figured it wasn’t worth the effort to pay you, and decided to off you along with the rest of us! How about that reason, you miserable little fuck? Does that sound plausible?”
Toby was a quivering wreck at this point, dribbling and blowing mucus bubbles like a six-year old. He could barely speak coherently, let alone argue his defence. Grill stared scornfully at him for a moment, then stood back up, turned around and walked away.
“You know what? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one. Tell you the truth, I honestly don’t think you’re smart enough to have set up something like that. I mean, for Christ’s sake, what are the chances that a big time syndicate like the Krey Ganjes, would put their trust in a dumbass like yourself?”
“That’s right, boss! They wouldn’t,” Toby said, nodding enthusiastically, “they wouldn’t, no way!”
In one smooth motion, Grill pulled a small calibre handgun from his belt, spun around, and shot Toby once through the forehead. The sound of it jolted Kimiko, and she nearly kicked the locker door open out of shock. Toby’s lifeless body slid lazily to the floor, his face a frozen mask of disbelief.
“But I guess they did.”
Grill turned to face Dumont, the other junker, who was wearing a look of abject horror, and waved his pistol , casually.
“Relax.”
“S-sure thing, Grill!”
Slipping the gun back into his belt, Grill pushed Toby’s body to one side with his boot, and activated the communications terminal.
“Pauly. Pauly…Pauly!”
“Yeah, Grill, I read you.”
“Well, fucking answer, then! Where are those bastards, can you see them?”
“No sign of ‘em Grill. I think we lost ‘em.”
“Don’t think! Just look, and don’t take your eyes off that damn scanner!”
“You got it.”
Just then, the radio handset slung to Grill’s side began to chatter; Kimiko’s heart missed a beat. Grill snatched up the walkie-talkie, and opened the line.
“Go ahead.”
“This is Tavis. I’m in the canteen - I found Coombs.”
All of a sudden, Kimiko’s gut felt tight. She watched, and tried desperately to stay calm.
“ Well, he’d better have a damn good reason for shutting those bay doors behind us; I just had a little ‘chat’ with Toby, I’d hate to have to come talk to Coombs as well.”
“Grill, he’s out cold!”
Grill stood still, an ugly grimace across his face. “What?”
“He’s knocked out! Someone’s banged him over the head pretty good.”
It was only a matter of time – the game was up. Grill realised what was what in a heartbeat.
“Those kids.”
“Say again?”
“You idiot, those damn kids we brought on board, some of them must’ve gotten loose! Get Coombs back on his feet and go and look for them, both of you!”
Shoving Dumont out of the way, Grill squinted out into the hangar towards the last salvage boat, in which Valerie and the others were hiding. Kimiko’s breath quickened, but there was nothing she could do.
“The spare’s still here, they must still be on the station somewhere.”
Grill paced back and forth a couple or times across the booth, almost absent-mindedly picking at the skin around his facial graft, and slowly ran a glove through his hair.
“Jesus.” He sighed, quietly. “Dumont, is it too much to ask to have one day, just one day, when the entire galaxy doesn’t decide to shit on top of my head? Is it?”
“No, it ain’t.”
“In one day, I get a shipful of meat, and Confederate meat to boot, and then old Toby here brings me news of the best junk haul we’ve found since the start of the year. And then it all turns to crap. Every God damn bit of it!” yelled Grill, and drove a vicious kick into Toby’s corpse. “I mean, Christ! I’m a hardworking guy, do I deserve this shit? Do I?”
Dumont said nothing to answer to his chief’s ranting, he just shrank against the wall and nervously shook his head.
“Damn it, I’m thirsty. Get me a beer.”
“Sure thing, Grill.”
Kimiko had the whole thing sorted out. As soon as Grill and Dumont left the booth, she’d make a break for the spare salvage boat. With these ‘Krey Ganjes’ characters on their tail, sooner or later the junkers would have to leave the station, and they’d leave the hangar doors wide open after themselves; when the coast was clear, the cadets could fly the boat straight out, and head back to Confederate space. Kimiko psyched herself up; the plan was foolproof, all she had to do was wait for the right moment – once it came, she’d be home free. And then the locker door opened.
“Grill. Look here.”
The low light of the observation booth poured in; Kimiko threw her hands up in front of herself, and slowly lowering them, she found Grill staring down directly at her.
“You.”
He looked her up and down, as though he was eyeing a dead animal – that same look he’d given her when she was lying paralysed in her cell.
“Well, you’re not quite a beer, but you’ll do.” He smirked. “Get her out of there.”
Back to Counterpoint Main
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