Michael Flynn: Up Jim River

“B-and-B, speak to me. We need guidance out of here. Lock onto our beacons and talk us to the nearest airlock or hangar deck. Speak.”

A voice crackled through static. “Donovan, this is Franq. We got troubles. Almost at shuttle. Get outside. Anywhere. We’ll locate you.”

Donovan glanced at the now-dark Attendant. “Sorry, Peacharoo.”

“How long was I asleep?”

Each of them jerked a bit at the new voice, though Donovan was startled least of all. A part of him—the Brute, he thought—had been aware of motion behind him. Méarana pushed past him, crying, “Mother! Oh, Mother!” Sofwari grinned. Billy looked at Paulie.

“I said, how long was I asleep?” She seemed remarkably alert for someone who had been but lately in a coma. By long tradition, the first words of such a one ought to be “Where am I?” But Bridget ban knew quite well where she was. She was still wearing the skinsuit in which she had been captured.

“About a year,” Méarana said, “maybe a little longer.” She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, suddenly looking years younger, crying, “We found you! I always knew it! I never gave up!”

Bridget ban said, “A year! What kept you?” Then she looked past her daughter, and the sardonic half-smile faded from her lips, and she said, “You!”

Donovan started to say, yeah, me; but as swift as a black mamba striking , Bridget ban had pulled a needier from a coverall pocket and fired.

Donovan ducked and the beam went wide.

Or it did not. Billy Chins snarled as the arm holding the dazer went numb. He ducked around the corner of the pod block. “Do it, Paulie!” he said as he disappeared. Paulie pulled his pellet gun and fired off four rapid shots.

He was a good shot, and four bullets would ordinarily have been sufficient to his purpose. But Debly Jean Sofwari had seen the hand move and had thrown himself in front of Méarana, and so the four bullets found one target.

The impact threw him backward onto his three companions. Donovan and Bridget ban leapt to either side, vaulting on the pod doors to the top of the stacks. Méarana jerked her arm forward and her knife flew from her sleeve and embedded itself in Paulie’s throat.

The Wildman clawed at the knife, lost consciousness as the blood gushed out, and fell to the catwalk. His legs kicked twice, and then he was still.

Méarana knelt beside the science-wallah and bestowed the long-sought kiss on Debly’s lips. His eyes stared at nothing. She thought she would miss the awkward little man with the strange enthusiasms.

Then she sprinted to where Paulie lay, pulled the knife from his throat without breaking stride, and clambered atop the pod rack, where she lay still.

She listened. She watched. Nothing moved. She might be alone in this vast abandoned ship.

“I see you’ve been keeping up your practice,” Bridget ban said in a low voice beside her.

Méarana did not flinch. “I was coming to look for you.”

“You…didn’t have to come yourself.”

“Who did you expect?”

“Little Hugh, to tell you the truth.”

“Why him?”

“You liked him, back when he used to visit. I thought you would go to him for help. Not the old drunk.”

“Did I guess right? I used to think it was Hugh; but it was Donovan, wasn’t it?”

“Do you want it to have been him?” She peered down the aisle where Billy Chins had disappeared. “He better show himself soon.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you hear the rumbling down below? I hope you don’t think one of those Attendants could stuff me in a tank.”

Donovan was a little disappointed in Billy Chins, and more than a little angry with himself.

“Why didn’t you see this coming?”

«I did,» said Inner Child.

I never did trust him.

“Not quite four to two…,” the Fudir muttered.

Three to one. Our baby took out Paulie all by herself, but Sofwari took four in the chest.

“Two and a half to one,” said Donovan. “Méarana doesn’t have a chance against Billy.”

Donovan didn’t know if he had a chance, either. An old man, long out of practice. And a Hound just out of cold sleep. Separated so that they could not coordinate their moves. Billy might have the advantage.

“Brute,” said Donovan, “you watch down that way with the left eye. Child, take the right eye. Sleuth, you and Pedant try to work out his strategy. Silky, you listen for anyone else coming up on top of these pods with us.

“What about me?” said the Fudir.

“Work with Sleuth. When they figure out what Billy is up to, figure out how to handle him.”

“By the time the subcommittee reports are in, Bridget ban will have taken him out, packed up the harper, and abandoned us here.”

“Check our chronometer, Fudir. It took us less than a beat to get ourselves organized.”

“You know, yours is the persona that once worked as a Confederate courier. I was the masque, like that poor woman out at the Iron Cones.”

“I know. I’m thinking, what would I be doing right now, if I were him.”

“And?”

“He’ll wait to ambush us,” Donovan said, “from a direction we’d not expect.”

From below .

When Billy had ducked around the corner, he had also ducked up or down. Donovan was as certain of this as if he had seen him do it.

Yes. The human instinct is to look up for snipers. But the way the gravity grids are set, he can stand on the bottom of a catwalk, and shoot up from underneath.

“I agree,” said the Fudir, “but he’ll be on one of the pod banks, like we are now.”

Sleuth did some elementary calculations. Unless he can move like the wind and climb like an Awzetchan grass monkey, Billy Chins cannot be any farther than …

“There,” agreed Donovan. “Brute? Fudir? This is your show.”

He stood. The pod block possessed walkways, probably for maintenance automata, that wrapped around the block like ribbons framing a gift. Gravity grids ensured that the pod block was “down,” regardless which face one stood on. Commonwealth magic. Peripheral technology couldn’t manage it. The gravity fields would overlap, create resonances, blow the generators.

He loped across the walkway to the other end of the block and, when he reached the end intending to leap to the next block over, the walkway stretched across the gap like Peacharoo’s riding platform. He nearly stumbled in surprise.

Unless Billy has discovered this, he will expect any approach to be by the catwalks . That was some encouragement, anyway.

He crossed the next block the same way. Then he walked down the side for two levels, found the walkway running across the underside of the pod blocks, and hurried back the way he had come. Silky played gyroscope and maintained the original up/down orientation. To her, he was loping antipodally along the “bottom” of a block, whereas to the Brute, he was doing so across the “top.”

He came at last to the block where he expected Billy to be waiting in ambush and spied him sitting cross-legged at the far end, looking down at the catwalk where he expected his quarry. From the point of view of anyone fleeing down the catwalk from Bridget ban’s cocoon, he would be firing up from underneath.

When Donovan had crept closer, Billy spoke. “One direction, I could not constantly watch; and so from that direction you have come. Yet you did not slay me.”

“I’m not a back shooter.”

“One of your few weaknesses. Come sit beside me, brother.”

Donovan crouched on Billy’s left. “Brother? You and I are nothing alike.”

Billy did not turn his head. “I did not mean bio-brother.”

“Nor did I.”