Jack McDevitt - Coming Home

The chain began to move.

The skimmer kept coming. Its engine grew louder.

A hand appeared through an open front window. It was holding something. A weapon. It looked like a blaster.

“Heads up,” said Alex. He and I retreated toward the stern.

Khaled leaped back down onto the deck. He shoved Alex and me behind the after bulkhead and fell on top of us. I couldn’t see anything from there, but the engine kept getting louder. Then an explosion rocked the boat. The skimmer soared past, rose, and began another turn.

“Chase!” Alex’s voice. “You okay?” The overhead was blown off the cabin, and we were beginning to take on water. The deck was sliced wide open.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m okay. What the hell’s going on? Khaled, you all right?”

“I’m good.” He sounded enraged. “Heads up! That son of a bitch is going to do it again.”

We were on fire, and sinking.

Khaled pulled the antishark weapon out of his belt, scrambled onto the bow, and aimed it at the skimmer. By then, I was calling into my link: “Code five, yacht Patriot . We are under attack. Request immediate assistance. White skimmer unprovoked. Using a blaster.”

“Khaled!” Alex grabbed one of his legs. “Get down from there, you idiot. You’re giving him a target.”

“No, I’m not,” said Khaled. “I’m showing him a blaster.”

“That’s not a blaster,” I said. “ He’s got the damned blaster. That’s only a stinger. Or whatever. Will it do any damage to him?”

“It looks like a blaster. And yes, if I can hit him, it will.”

“You’ll get yourself killed,” said Alex.

The skimmer came out of its turn and was angling toward us again.

The Patrol got back to me: “ Patriot , we are on our way. Keep transmitting.” I slipped into the water in an effort to keep the hull between me and the skimmer.

Khaled was standing in as cocky a manner as he could manage, swinging the shark disrupter as if it could actually do some damage. Meantime, my link was connecting with our attacker. “I have its registration number,” it said.

“Open a channel to them,” I told it. Then: “I don’t know who you are, you nitwit, but your number has been forwarded to the Coast Patrol. Back off. We have a weapon!”

They raced overhead again, but this time they did not fire. Instead, they began to turn away and accelerate.

Khaled tossed me a life vest.

The Patrol got there in eight minutes. By then the Patriot had slipped beneath the surface, and the nutcase who’d jumped us was long gone. They hovered overhead in two vehicles and hauled us out of the water. Then one of the officers informed us that the skimmer’s registration number was invalid. “You didn’t actually get a close look at it, did you?”

“I didn’t think I needed to,” I said. “I thought I had its number.”

He looked sympathetic. “It’s bogus. They’re pretty easy to manipulate. We’ve been trying to do something about that for years, but the techs haven’t been able to figure out a way without violating all kinds of security laws.” He paused. “You have any idea who that might have been? You guys have any enemies who want you dead?”

He was talking to Khaled and me. Alex was in the other skimmer.

“I don’t know anybody,” said Khaled, “who’d want to do this.” He looked at me.

“Alex and I don’t even know anyone on the planet,” I said. It had occurred to me that it might have had something to do with Baylee, but that made no sense. Why would anybody care whether we found what we’d come looking for? “I have to think it was just a random nut on the loose.”

When we got back to shore, Alex admitted he’d given much the same answer. “But,” he added, “I don’t hold with coincidence.”

We thanked our rescuers. Everyone got a good laugh when they heard the attacker had been scared off by a shark stinger. Then we completed some documents. Polly showed up at the Guard station just as we were finishing. She apologized, as if it were her fault. “It’s a first for us. If you tell your friends about this incident, Chase,” she said, “I hope you don’t mention Eisa Friendly Charters.”

When we got back to the hotel, Alex steered me over to a sofa in the lobby. “Chase,” he said, “I don’t think we were the targets this afternoon.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Khaled wasted no time getting the engine started and trying to get us out of there. In fact, he started the engine before the attack began.”

“You think this isn’t the first time it’s happened?”

“I’m not sure what to make of it. But we’d be smart to assume the worst. That it was aimed at us. But I think there’s something Khaled isn’t telling us. We should stop somewhere and pick up a couple of scramblers.”

“I was just about to suggest that.”

“Are you still going out with Khaled tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if that’s a good idea?”

“We’ll be okay,” I said.

“All right. Enjoy yourself. But keep your eyes open.”

Khaled took me to a cabaret for dinner. We ate while a group called the Late Nighters played and sang about the wonders of love. Then we got a comedian who was actually entertaining. And the place filled with music again, and we went out onto the dance floor.

It made for an exhilarating evening, rendered poignant by the knowledge that we would probably never see each other again. Khaled looked at me with an air of wistfulness. And to be honest, I couldn’t decide whether my emotions that night were brought on by the circumstances or whether I really liked the guy. And the fact that I was carrying a scrambler gave the entire affair an added dimension. “You know who you look like?” I asked. “Zachary Conner.”

He really did. The rumpled brown hair, the square jaw, the electric eyes. He had everything but the mustache. I don’t know if he could have handled the romantic lead in Last Man Standing or Starburst . But he was close enough.

“You know,” he said, with a grin, “I hear that a lot.”

He had no easy means to travel to Rimway. And all my instincts barred me from even thinking about initiating something that had no chance of going anywhere. We talked about the attack off and on through the evening. While we were out on the floor, I asked whether he’d ever even heard of anything like this before?

“No,” he said. “That’s why I thought it might be directed at you and Alex.”

“There’s no reason,” I said, “why anybody should want to come after us. But I suppose it’s possible.”

“Well, I plan to be careful for a while. I’d suggest you guys be heads-up, too. Maybe you should back off this Baylee thing for a while. That might be the problem. In any case, I’d hate to see anything happen to you.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”

He was warm and gentle, and, unlike most guys, he wanted to talk about things I cared about, rather than about himself. He would have been worth hanging on to.

The evening ended on a note of lost opportunity. “If you get back here, Chase, or you have some free time before you go home to Rimway, let me know, okay? I’d love to do this again.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance, Khaled. But if it happens, I’ll let you know.”

“Good enough.”

We kissed, at first tentatively, then I took things into my own hands.