Silent Flyght – Chapter 26

“Freeze! Raise your hands and get on your knees!”

I scream and jump, my hands shooting into the air.

“Jesus,” one guy mumbles, getting a good look at me. His gaze coasts down my body, and burning embarrassment and shame turn my skin red hot.

“You better keep those eyes on my face, or I’ll rip you a new asshole,” I warn, slowly getting to my knees.

I’m penned in with nowhere to go. Two men in full military combat gear, carrying wicked-looking guns, and a bunch of attitude have found me. One trains his gun on me while the other approaches. I shrink away from him, but he’s not interested in me.

He’s interested in the airlock.

Peering through the tiny window, he swears under his breath and then raises his voice enough for me to hear.

“Commander Correa, we have an opened forward airlock, and a body stuck in the outer doors.” He tries to re-engage the airlock door and close it, but the system beeps at him in error.

Commander Correa? Shit. Gus. It’s Gus’s mom.

“Ship’s AI, why is the airlock door not responding?”

Nanci’s voice is serene, as always. “The airlock door has been keyed open from the inside. This key must be removed for the airlock to be cycled.”

The officer looks from the door to me and back through the window.

“Something tells me that asking for an explanation is just going to make me more confused than I already am.” He waves his gun. “Stand up and lower your arms slowly.”

I’m not sure what he’s worried about. Maybe that I’ll fight back? It’s not like I have anywhere to hide a weapon.

I lower my arms as instructed, and he pulls them together, uncuffed, behind my back.

“Are you sick?” he asks, leaning away as my stomach growls, and my bowels move loudly.

“Kind of.” I break into a cold sweat.

“Come with us, and we’ll ask the commander what to do.”

He leads me back through the ship to the galley common room where everyone on my crew is now being held. Groans come from the attached bathroom, and I cringe for poor Carlos. I’ll be right where he is at any moment.

It looks like everyone put up a valiant fight while I was trying to capture Tomu and get away. Several soldiers have bloody noses or lips, and one of them is sitting with his leg elevated.

Jinzo and Ken both sit, unscathed, next to Skylar. She’s holding an ice pack to her cheek and grimacing. Lia is Lia, again, though she looks pale and sick too. Her skin glistens with sweat, and my clothes hang off her slight frame.

But my eyes are drawn to Gus. His arm is in a splint, and he’s still pale. He faces away from his mother, standing over him. Last I saw Lady Nina Correa, she was in a full-length dress, opera gloves, and a tiara. Now, she’s in black combat fatigues from head to toe. She’s pulled her silvery blond hair back in a ponytail, and her face is devoid of makeup.

Her head lifts, and she pulls back in surprise when she sees me.

“Vivian, dear, have you lost your clothes?”

I jerk my chin at Lia. “I didn’t lose them.”

She sighs and signals to one of her men. “Grab something for her.”

He crosses the room, opens a few cupboards, and finds a blanket near the couch. Wrapping it around my naked body is the best feeling ever.

I let out a relieved breath. “Thanks.” I touch my neck. It’s still bleeding, so I put pressure on the wounds with my bare fingers.

“So,” Lady Nina says, removing her hand from the gun slung around her neck and shoulders, “want to tell me what’s going on here?”

I lift my chin. “Why don’t you tell me why you cornered us and boarded our ship?”

Her lips jerk into a smirk and fall back again. “I think it’s pretty simple. You were harboring a fugitive, wanted on several counts of felony fraud and embezzlement charges. We came to secure him. Where is he?”

“He’s stuck in the airlock doors,” her soldier says. “The airlock was blown from the inside.”

She curses and closes her eyes.

Jinzo and Ken both turn to look at me.

“He’s dead?” Jinzo asks, hope in his voice.

“Yep. Dead as space. Though I wish I had killed him myself. I made sure to tell him to go fuck himself on the way out.”

Lia snickers, bringing her hand to her mouth to hide her smile.

Ken and Jinzo nod to each other. “Good,” Ken says.

“Commander.” The soldier who captured me steps forward. “We came here for the fugitive. He killed himself, and we’ll be blamed for it.”

Lady Nina looks at me carefully. “She could have shoved him in and keyed it herself?”

“I know this ship model. The key only works if the door is already shut. It’s a special panel that slides open once the door is closed.”

She sighs. “We’ll have to make do. They harbored this fugitive for more than a week and through both systems as well. They knowingly took the tourist jump rings to stay off the military’s radar.” She approaches me. “And as far as I can glean from a brief scouring of the ship’s security videos, Captain Kawabata had planned to hand over Tomu Kawabata to Renata Dellis. Is that correct?”

I don’t open my mouth. There’s nothing I can say to that. That’s precisely what I was going to do.

“I suppose he killed himself because he didn’t like either of the choices you gave him for living. And now look what you’ve gotten my son into. Illegal activities? I have every right to call an end to your contract with him.”

Gus stands, and his mother steps to the side.

“You know what?” he says, his voice shaky with pain. “I’m tired of your manipulation and threats. I had wondered why you agreed to my contract with Vivian so easily. One minute you were looking to sell me off to the highest bidder, and the next, you just let me go, without so much as a goodbye.”

Fear builds in my chest as he voices my own qualms about what happened the night of his sister’s wedding.

“Gus,” his mother simpers. He stops her with a glare.

“I don’t hear from you for days on end, and then we’re being boarded by your ship. It’s not a coincidence.”

His stare is deathly, and I feel bad for everyone else in the room that has to witness this mother-son altercation.

Nina is frozen, like someone has hit pause on her life.

Gus reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a small black box.

“Look what I found inside one of my boxes of belongings.” He hands it over to Jinzo, and Jinzo pops it open with a frown. “Pretty sure it’s a tracker.”

“And a bug,” Jinzo says, pointing into the box. “Recorder and transmitter.”

I am beyond embarrassment now.

“Okay, fine. Great.” Nina throws her hands up into the air. “We can stop with the pretenses then.”

“Yes, let’s do that.” Gus’s voice is deadpan. “And make it quick. My pain killers are wearing off.”

She stares at his arm for a moment. Maybe torn between being a mother and a military commander?

“Commander,” one of her men warns, “you can’t change the plans.”

Plans? What plans do they have that we fit into? She sticks with being a commander.

“You and this woman” — she jerks her chin at me — “sat in the inner garden and talked about how she saw the future. You talked of love and dreams and stupid shit. And I knew right then that I could use it all to my advantage.”

I close my eyes and wish for a swift death.

“You never bugged the gardens!” Gus is outraged as he stands up. “Dad said it was always the one place in the house you kept to yourself!”

She locks eyes with him. “I had surveillance installed two years ago. On the night of Tiffani’s wedding, I watched your whole conversation. I figured she was cultivating the Rio plants that the top brass want so badly. This was my easy way to an end. We would follow you around, and the moment you left the ship unattended, I would send in a squad and seize them for the military.”

She turns her attention to me. “But you… You never left the ship unattended. There was always someone here. And with a new, more secure AI, I knew we wouldn’t get what we needed without a fight. Then you and Gus spoke of Tomu within range of the bug, and I saw an opportunity.”

She puts a hand on my shoulder and pushes me towards everyone else. I have that ugly sense of foreboding, like snakes are slithering through my body, trying to find a way out.

“Take the plants, the seeds, and whatever else you find in the auxiliary cargo bay,” I say, hoping this is all she’ll seize from the ship. “I don’t want it anymore.”

And it’s true. The seeds, which were supposed to be what would save my farm, have been nothing but trouble from the start.

Nina laughs. “While that is very generous of you, I’ve been ordered to collect a lot more.” She softens for a moment, and I can see the weariness in her eyes. “You have left me no choice, and there’s nothing I can do to help you now. So, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take the seeds and the plants, and we’re going to take your whole ship.”

Skylar jumps to her feet. “The fuck you are.”

“Sit. Down.” The guard next to Skylar pushes on her shoulder and forces her back into her seat.

“Don’t touch me, you pig,” she growls up at him.

Nina turns over her wrist. “Lieutenant? You’ve secured Mr. Silva’s shuttle?” She nods as she listens to the response. “Okay, prepare for our arrival in five minutes.”

Blinking back to the room, she points at me. “You will take your consorts and crew on Mr. Silva’s shuttle and head out to Palo Alto. It’s a two-day journey from here at shuttle speeds.” She turns around. “I will take Gus.”

“No, you will not,” Gus states.

“Darling, please —”

“Don’t ‘darling’ me. You betrayed me, used me, and put the lives of the people I love in grave danger. You’ll be lucky if I ever talk to you again.”

“I had no choice.” Anger rolls off of her in waves.

“You always have a choice.”

Her face hardens. “Fine. If that’s the way you’re going to play it. What about your broken arm?”

I step forward. “I have a moss I’ve been growing, from Rio, that’s supposed to have healing properties. Let us take some with us.”

Nina marches off in the airlock’s direction. “Take some. This is no longer my top priority. Gentlemen, secure the passengers and get them to their shuttle. The rest of you, take over the ship and slave it to the Millennium. Let’s get this show underway.”

There’s no use arguing here, and the weight of this situation falls on me so heavily, I just want to be dead. I wish I had been the one in the airlock, not Tomu. My stomach clenches, and I gasp in pain as the invisibility plant decides it’s time to leave my body. Carlos is quick to exit the bathroom when I get there.

Once I’m done, we’re all escorted through the ship to Marcelo’s shuttle. They allow Ken to leave to get Frogger from my room and retrieve 0G9P2O, the moss that regrows internal organs. I hope it also fixes bones because going two days without medical help could be disastrous for Gus. Doctors can use nanobots to knit together broken bones, but with delayed hospitalization, it will be even more painful for him.

“How about some clothes for me?” I ask before they shut the door on us.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” one of the men drawls. “You’ll have to make do with the blanket.”

He wiggles his fingers at me as he shuts his side of the airlock.

“Go fuck yourself,” I say, smiling and wiggling my fingers back.

The airlock door slides shut, the space between Marcelo’s shuttle and the Amagi depressurizes, and we pull away.

I watch the Amagi shrink and listen to Skylar’s and Lia’s quiet, muffled sobs behind me. Lia is crying for the loss of the animals, all confiscated by the military. Skylar is crying for the Amagi and mumbling that her mother is going to kill her.

And as captain, this is all my fault. This is my failure because I just didn’t understand how badly my own brother hated me and how devious a person he could be. He got his revenge and went out with a bang.

What will happen to us now?