Steven Brust - My Own Kind of Freedom

“Focus on the lines, Miss Tam.”

Something twisted inside of her head, and the dots became gray, their sizes pulsated, and she was falling, falling, falling into them.

She tried to scream, but there was something in her mouth.

She fell through one of the dots, which splintered and became infinite.

She wished she could scream.

He hated this.

No, he really, really hated this.

The flying part was fine. He had no trouble with the flying part. He liked the flying part.

It was the part where people kept shooting at him that he had a problem with.

And then there was the ship. He wasn’t fond of the ship. In general, the Vortec LC 9 “Gopher” was a fine mid- to low-level interceptor: fast and maneuverable in lower atmo once you learned her tricks, decently armed, and with truly astonishing vertical acceleration. But he just couldn’t be happy flying a ship with a third of a wing and both rudders shot off by a SAM that had also taken out half her thrust.

“Pioneer Blue six. Mayday, mayday. Have taken hit from surface to air missile, am going down. Stand-by for location. Transmitting…now.”

His weapons man’s voice came into his left ear. “Hey, Chill, did I just hear you say something about us going down?”

“Well, Archie, the ship is going down. If you can think of a way to stay up here without it, I’ll be okay with that.”

“We’re over Alliance territory. We’ll be captured for sure.”

“Okay, Arch. You’re right. I changed my mind. We’ll just keep flying with no thrust and no control.”

“Don’t be mean, Chill.”

“Sorry.”

He slid in and out of a glide, managing to lose speed and altitude without quite stalling. Or, at any rate, only stalling intermittently.

“Okay, we’re below mach one. Ready to go for a ride?”

“Not really. You sure we have to do this?”

There was a lurch that re-arranged Wash’s backbone as the gravboot tried to suck up more than it could handle, gave out, and came in again as best it could.

“I’m sure. Eject! Eject! Eject!”

A moment later he said, “Arch?”

“Sorry, Chilly-boy. Something else is busted too.”

“Can’t eject?”

“Nope. How ’bout yours?”

“I don’t know. Well, partner, this is going to be fun.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Land.”

“Chilly, you should bail.”

“A little silence, please. The doctor is at work.”

He fought with and against the ship, with and against gravity. The ground was coming up fast. “Like a leaf on the wind,” he murmured.

She found him on a makeshift road, just inside one of the guard posts. He seemed lost in thought, but greeted her with a nod.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad, Sergeant.”

“No, it wasn’t. I could get used to seeing the Alliance run. The Colonel knows his business.”

“Why, Sergeant, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say a kind word about an officer.”

“Probably the last, too.”

“We held the town, anyway.”

The sergeant glanced at her. “Okay, Zoë. What is it?”

“Well, we’ve survived a battle. I mean, not a hit-and-run grab at supplies, but a real battle.”

“Right.”

“And we even won.”

“I believe we did, yes.”

“And most of the men performed well.”

“I noticed that same thing.”

“A couple of minor wounds, and, compared to what we had before, pretty good medical care. The men are pleased about that, Sergeant.”

“I hear a ‘but’ on the way, Zoë.”

“Are we going to get a real meal sometime in here, Sergeant?”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I ought to check on that.”

“They’d appreciate it.”

The Sergeant nodded, started back toward the encampment, then stopped and looked down the road again. “We should move around behind them and take a shot at their supply line. Even if they have enough ducks to chase us out, it’ll put the fear of God into them. They’ll be running all the way back to Cheska by morning.”

“Going to suggest that to the Colonel, Sergeant?”

“No need. He’ll come up with it himself. Those poor bastards.”

“Who? The enemy?”

“Yeah. They have no idea what they’re going to run into.”

“Lambs to the slaughter, Sergeant.”

“That’s the honest truth, Zoë,” he said, and led the way back.

Kaylee heard her name called and pulled herself out from under the aft inertia interlock.

“Yes, Cap’n?”

The Captain and Zoë were standing there, flanking a tall, broad-shouldered man with a wide, sensuous mouth and bright eyes. Yum, said a little voice in her head.

She gave him her warmest smile.

“Kaylee, meet Jayne, our newest crew member. Jayne, Kaylee is our mechanic.”

She stood up, wiped her hands on her coveralls, and stuck out her hand. He wrapped it in his massive paw and grinned.

“This deal keeps getting better and better,” he said looking her up and down.

Kaylee frowned, glanced at the Captain, then at Zoë. “Huh,” she said, and climbed back under the interlock unit.

“She always this friendly?” said the new guy.

“No, I think you’re special,” said Zoë.

“I’ll introduce you to the pilot,” said the Captain, and three sets of footsteps retreated.

I hate it when they open their mouths and ruin everything, thought Kaylee, and returned to her work.

I’m sending this with a twelve hour delay from a public terminal. By the time you receive it, we will be aboard a ship and well away from this world. Obviously, I’m not going to tell you our destination; the Alliance is, I am quite certain, carefully monitoring everything you receive, from every source, wherever you are. In fact, I have no way of knowing if you’ll receive this; they may be interrupting your communication. If they are, then, may whatever Alliance officer is reading this zai ta qiaoxiao diqiu de mianqian shoudao qian shang qian si de siwang.

And, yes, as you know by now, River is with me.

She was tortured, experimented on, and damaged. By any reasonable definition, she has been turned into a psychotic. And I do mean turned into: there are unmistakable signs of organic damage. They cut into her brain.

At times, she is my sister. I hope to increase the frequency and duration of these moments. At present, I’m trying different cocktails of psychotropic medication with varying amounts of success. Perhaps there is a corrective surgery that could undo the damage inflicted on her in that place, but we can’t go to a real hospital without the Alliance finding her and putting her back in the Academy, where they would continue torturing and twisting her. This I will not allow.

I really don’t know if you’ll be reading this, and I don’t know how you’ll respond. I’m surprised to discover that there is a part of me that actually cares. I will, perhaps, have the opportunity to message you again when there are further developments with your daughter.

Until then, I remain,

He usually liked hanging out with Shorty, because it made him seem taller, more cultured, and certainly more intelligent. Usually. Just now he wasn’t enjoying it at all.

“Okay, Shorty,” he said, “what I don’t understand is why you went to so much work to make sure the alarm went off. If you’d ignored the gorram thing—”

“I was trying—”

Shorty ducked as three bullets raised a cloud of plaster dust over his head.