Chapter 4
“Bro,” Tui said as he drove them out of town. “Stowing away is a bad idea.”
“It’s only bad if we get caught. Or I fall off and die. Or the launch kills me. Or a piece of cargo shifts and crushes me. Or there’s another layer of security on the Citadel we don’t know about, I can’t unlock it, so I run out of air and Splendid Ventures finds my frozen corpse when they finally get around to doing inventory…I think I’m gonna stop now. Making this list really isn’t helping.”
“I think it’s clarifying,” Tui said.
Jackson was lying on the floor of the backseat, out of sight. Tui was up front driving this rental manually because the vehicle’s self-driving system would never allow something this illegal and dangerous. Jane had easily cracked the system and overridden all the security protocols and recording devices, so the car wasn’t putting up any fuss. Furthermore, they could speak freely without the cops having a record to listen to later.
“Hey, Jane, I just thought of something,” Jackson said.
“Yeah?”
“My blood is on that hornet. They’ll get my DNA and be able to match it to my military records from Gloss.”
“Don’t worry. I had Fifi punch its battery. It was on fire by the time you limped out the back.”
“You’re so thoughtful.”
“It was nothing.”
“I just really want you to know how much I appreciate everything you do for this team.”
“Oh, thank you. That’s sweet.”
“Focus, Jackson,” Tui warned. “We can do the employee of the month thing later. We’ll be on the access road in a few minutes. You know how the accelerator companies always say no cargo liquid, fragile, perishable, or living things allowed for? They say that for a reason! You got your Raj?”
Jackson patted his backpack. “I don’t leave home without it.”
“We’re past all the cops if you want to suit up then.”
So Jackson dug into the main compartment of his backpack and removed Raj, his space suit. In addition to providing pressure, oxygen, and a way to control temperature, a suit needed to protect its wearer from solar radiation and micrometeorites, tiny bits of who knows what flying through the ether at enormous speeds. A speck of ice hitting you at thirty thousand klicks per hour could really ruin your day. The fact that his suit could accomplish that, while being this light and compact, was a miracle of modern technology…And probably one of the only things worth a damn that had ever been invented on Gloss.
The Mirage 360LR was made of composite layers of thin materials that allowed a wide and flexible range of movement while providing a good amount of protection from the surprises Mother Space liked to hurl at you. There were some suits that were even thinner now, but this had been the same suit he’d been wearing when he had escaped his home planet. Raj had carried him through many a dicey spot. Sure, there were more advanced suits available now, but Raj had a funky smell that Jackson welcomed. That funky smell meant luck.
He stripped out of his regular clothes and got into the suit. It was briefly warm, the heat of his body radiating back at him, and then the cooling system kicked in and Jackson settled into his old friend, the material feeling like cool, worn cotton. He checked his mask but didn’t put it on yet. The rebreather canister didn’t last that long, and if he couldn’t get into the Citadel and its supplies, he’d need every bit of air inside it to survive until the Tar Heel could pick him up.
All his regular clothing went into the pack, which still had a bunch of useful tools in it, and he put that on his back. He felt something crawling across his neck, and he almost reflexively swatted at what he thought was a bug, but then he realized that was just Fifi, tagging along to help.
Jane contacted them again. “I think SVC and their cronies are really trying to ruin our day.”
“What do you mean?” Jackson asked.
“They just advanced the container’s launch time. It’s on the move. It’s on the accelerator.”
“They don’t really take off until they get away from population centers,” Tui said as he jammed the pedal to the floor. “We can still catch it.”
“That’s the hub up there,” Jackson pointed out the front window. “Looks like it’s got a lot of security.”
“Good thing we’re not going in that way,” Tui said as he turned onto the access road. “You about ready?”
“Almost.” Normally he’d be doing this in weightlessness, not bouncing along in the back of a rental vehicle. But with practiced efficiency, Jackson kitted up. He attached the grapple to his wrist mount and checked that it was charged. He tapped his thumb against his palm to activate the adhesive, confirmed it was working, then killed it. Then did the same for his feet. They’d only provide a fraction of the grip here that they would in space, but every bit helped. He checked, and then double-checked that he still had the medallion. Good to go. “This will be just like grabbing it out of orbit.”
“Pretty much. Only if you miss this time you’ll probably fall under the train. Or I’ll drive over you. Try not to fall this way. I’d feel bad if I killed you. That would really stress me out.”
“Yeah, I’d sure hate to do that.”
Out the side window, Jackson could see a big, rectangular, container starting down the maglev track. It was going relatively slowly. That wouldn’t last. They would be parallel for only a short window.
There was a security gate ahead of them, with a big sign saying that this area was off-limits except for accelerator maintenance crews. “Jane, the gate’s still closed,” Tui said, but they didn’t slow down. It was a pretty sturdy-looking gate, and their rental was a lightweight polymer electric commuter vehicle. Hitting it this fast would probably kill them. “Jane? Please?”
The gate started sliding open, but it was moving at ultra-slow speed.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Jackson said.
“We’ll make it,” Tui replied.
The gate inched its way open like some two-hundred-year-old grandpa was pulling it.
“Tui,” Jackson said and put his hand on the ceiling to brace for impact.
And then they shot through the opening, the gate scraping the mirrors of the rental completely off. There was a screech as the gate scraped alongside the car, and then they were through. Jackson glanced back and saw the mirrors tumbling along the road.
“They’re going to take your deposit for that,” Jackson said.
“Sorry,” Jane said. “I was busy killing alarms and spoofing cameras. The security on this launch track is tight. Tui, the second Jackson’s aboard you need to flip around and get out of there if you don’t want to get caught.”
“If it was easy, more people would hijack containers this way,” Tui said.
“What are you talking about?” Jackson asked. “This ain’t hard. All you need is a super hacker, a giant cargo ship waiting in orbit, and an idiot willing to kamikaze leap from a moving car onto a moving train to ride it into space.”
“When you put it that way…”
Outside the Sharmala terraformed zone, Nivaas was a desert of purple-tinged sand and jagged rocks, but thankfully the maintenance road was paved and in good repair, so they could keep this smooth.
They had a good view of the container. It was a big rectangle with a disposable nose cone on the front, and a reusable rocket on the back. It proudly wore the orange and white Splendid Ventures logo, but Jackson still visually confirmed the ID numbers painted on the side, because it was one thing to risk your life to hijack a mech worth millions, rather than a container full of toilet paper or something. Their target had been doing a leisurely 100 kph until it got out of town, but it was already starting to accelerate.
“Pulling alongside,” Tui said.
Jackson rolled down his window. “I think I liked plan A better.”
“Plan A was the dream. And now you woke up. Go!”
It seemed stupidly dangerous, climbing out the window and onto the roof of a speeding car, but truthfully, he’d done a lot worse. He used Raj’s gloves to stick himself to the polymer body of the vehicle, and then pulled himself up and onto the top. He immediately regretted not closing his mask, because some purple sand grit of this planet got him right in the eye. That had been stupid. Luckily, the shaded eye film gave him enough protection that it didn’t blind him, but he unstuck one hand to pull up his hood and visor before an insect hit him like a bullet.
Jackson crouched and held on tight as Tui maneuvered them as close as possible. The captain had come up with this last-minute desperation plan by looking at the aerial view and seeing that the access road ran relatively parallel and close to the accelerator track…Except that what looked easy from a few thousand klicks in the sky was a whole lot different on the ground.
The road was kind of close, off and on. Except there were enough small veers from side to side that Tui had to keep compensating. So they were swaying from side to side. While the container was on a path of unerring straightness…And going faster and faster.
“Your window is closing, Jackson,” Jane warned.
A basic psychological feature of the people chosen to be pilots was that they didn’t get too riled up under pressure. Jackson scanned the road ahead and picked what he thought was the best spot. Then he checked the container—which was now pulling past, even though Tui was giving it all they had—and picked his landing zone near the rockets. It wouldn’t do any good to stick himself to the container if he wasn’t anywhere near an access hatch.
He aimed and launched the grapple. It hit the flat surface of the container and locked on. Monofilament cord reeled out, so thin but strong, it was the galaxy’s best fishing line.
Tui veered away, then curved back. They had to be going 150, the container faster. They were closing again. Nearing the best spot. There was a quick, instinctive calculation of speeds and vectors…
The car closed in.
Now was the moment. And Jackson leapt.
The impact was hard. He slapped at the container wall, but Raj didn’t stick well. He skidded, then dropped toward the maglev tracks.
Tui hit the brakes and instantly fell behind. He hadn’t been kidding about not wanting to run over him.
Jackson dropped another meter, and then the grapple line snapped tight and kept him from falling. It would have ripped his arm from the socket, but Raj’s pressure compensator spread out the impact. That sudden cessation of movement enabled him to get one palm stuck down tight. He followed that by getting a toehold.
Jackson looked down, saw that his other foot was dangling centimeters from the maglev track flashing by beneath, and carefully lifted it away. He began to climb, like a fly on a wall. He’d been wrong. This was a lot harder in gravity. Space was unforgiving, but it had a few perks.
“Did you make it? Are you alive?”
“Working on it.” Though it was nice how Jane sounded genuinely concerned for his safety.
The rear access hatch was locked, obviously. Plus it was an old-fashioned mechanical, so Jane couldn’t unlock it for him remotely. It took him a few seconds to get his multitool from the pouch on the outside of his pack, but then he used the plasma cutter to burn the latch. Jane couldn’t open this for him, but she could at least jam the alarms his rough methods surely set off.
“I’m in.”