Her name was Heather Pt.9
21 Dec 2017Gmanharmon
Part 8My ears were ringing as I locked the room’s door behind me. I wiped the sweat off my brow, finding Reynaud’s blood and gore in the palm of my hand instead. Voices echoed from the battery of lifts down the hall; it was an Imperial patrol checking for vagrants.
Gotta move. I ran down the hallway in the opposite direction, turned the corner, and pulled the fire alarm. White lights strobed down the hall and klaxons blared, and sleepy patrons opened their doors wondering what was going on. The distraction was enough to let me slip away from the security detail, disappearing in the throng of evacuees out in front of the hotel. An alleyway provided a bit of respite as I planned my next moves.
Need to get off this station and meet up with Holliday. I made my way to the fashion district and ditched the uniform, picking up a new Remlok suit and mag-boots, along with a synthetic jumper, khaki cargo pants, a knit watch cap, and tinted glasses. From here, the dock was just a short walk away, but I noticed another patrol come from the alley carrying my Imperial jacket. Bollards began to rise out of the thoroughfare on both ends to stop traffic and Imperial naval police began setting up a cordon around the market. “Shit.”
“Oh!” said an elderly bystander who was standing next to me. “The last time they blocked off the street, the governor was visiting! How exciting!” He turned to me and touched my shoulder. “I hardly see Imperial politicians anymore since old Duval got killed. Hi, over there!”
This crazy old coot is calling them right to us. “Hi! Young fellow, can you tell us what’s going on?” Two Imperial Masters, dressed in naval camouflage fatigues and armed with blaster rifles, came up the street in lock-step and confronted us.
“A crime has been committed in the hotel nearby, sir. We believe the main suspect is still in the area.”
“Oh,” the old-timer said, with worry in his voice. “Oh, dear me.”
“Have either of you seen this man?” the other soldier asked us, holding out a dataslate with a still-shot of me in my uniform, but my face was obscured enough to be unremarkable. The old man squinted his eyes and regarded the holodisplay.
“No, sorry. Haven’t seen anyone like that.”
“And you, sir?” he addressed me. I could feel his gaze burning through my glasses.
“I think I saw someone like that go into the canteen over there,” I lied, pointing back towards the market food court. They palmed the dataslate and marched quickly towards the vendor stalls while I took off. I dipped down another street, doubled back, and took a shortcut down another alley, arriving at the dock in record time. At the customs check, a squad of Imperials were face-checking all pilots in the queue. Their riot shotguns had orange furniture, indicating less-than-lethal munitions which, contrary to their name, could still kill with a well-placed shot.
Distraction. Now. I cut in line and shoved a man aside. “What’s your problem, pal?” he asked indignantly.
“I told you to stay away from my sister, you piece of shit!” I replied loudly, slurring my speech and becoming shaky on my feet, acting like a drunkard. “She deserves better!”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
“The hell you do!” I put up my fists and lurched forward, feinting a giant haymaker. Unfortunately my mark didn’t take advantage of my enormous telegraph, and caught the full weight of my fist against the side of his head, dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes. The action caught me off-guard, and now I was facing three naval officers with riot shotguns.
“Crap!” I booked it towards the hangars as the Imperials shouted for me to stop, shouldering their weapons and taking aim. A bean-bag round whizzed by my head as I rounded the corner, followed by several more. I drew my revolver, leaned around the corner, and fired three rounds in quick succession, striking one officer. As the other Imperials tended to their casualty in the resulting stampede of frightened pilots and day-trippers, I made my escape.
I burst into the hangar where Reynaud’s Fer-de-Lance was berthed, fired my revolver in the air to scare off the deckhands, and stormed up the gangway two steps at a time. I dropped into the pilot’s seat and performed a quick pre-flight check. The heavily-engineered thrusters began spooling up as the medium pad rolled out into the microgravity of the docking area proper. I didn’t bother talking to StarCon as I released the gear from the landing pad, shooting up into the bay.
“Zorgon Peterson Romeo-Alpha-Foxtrot, you are not cleared for station egress. Repeat, you are not—”
I thrusted upwards and bashed into the keel of a Beluga Liner taking their sweet time lining up to exit the station. The metallic clang of the impact reverberated around the dock, but my shields soaked up a good amount of damage. As the cruise ship began listing to its port side, revealing a giant gash along its undercarriage that began leaking cargo, I slammed the throttle to its stops and boosted out of Ridley Scott’s atmospheric corridor at better than 250 meters per second. The comms crackled as a bulletin rang out.
“Attention all ships in the vicinity of Ridley Scott Station! A Zorgon Peterson Fer-de-Lance, tag number RA-02F, has been stolen from the starport by a fugitive from justice. A bounty of fifty thousand credits will be awarded to any pilot who captures the fugitive and brings them to the Imperial Navy, or can provide irrefutable proof of their destruction.”
I boosted again, watching the scopes to see when I break mass-lock from the starport, when I notice a hollow blip beginning to follow me, turning into a hollow triangle. Finally the mass-lock display disappears, and I spool up the frame-shift drive. Lights start flashing as my heat display ticked higher, and I realized that whatever modifications the Marquis made to his ship caused it to run hotter than normal. I watched as beams of destructive light fly past my cockpit as my attacker tried to fire on me, but I managed to jump into supercruise before any damage was done.
A quick look at the nav-panel, and Zaonce 6C was selected. I turned the Fer-de-Lance and proceeded to make my way towards the cold moon several thousand light-seconds away, until I saw the hollow blip pop on the scope again. Another Imperial Courier, probably piloted by another Patreus supporter.
Let me see if they’ll be man enough to face down a Corvette. I switched frequencies on the comms panel and tuned into Holliday’s channel, hailing the Los Angeles.
“Hey, Holliday,” I said, “this is Grayson. I’ll be there in about a minute.”
“Hey, kid,” Holliday replied. “Haven’t heard from you in a dog’s age. We’ll be waitin’ for ya.”
“I’ll be coming in hot. Got a Courier on my tail.”
“Gotcha.” Holliday signed off, and the moon grew closer. I saw the Corvette’s beacon appear on my scope, so I locked on to their signature and started slowing down. The Courier sent me a burst transmission over text.
Attention, fugitive! This is Seraph Benson Hedges, Knight of the Empire. In the name of our beloved Princess Aisling Duval, I hereby order you to drop out of supercruise and surrender yourself, or I will be forced to interdict and destroy you in accordance with Imperial mandate.“Oh, brother,” I groaned, and shot back a text of my own.
Meet me on the dark side of Zaonce 6C and we’ll talk.I drop out of supercruise a few hundred meters from the Los Angeles, quickly getting on comms. “Don’t shoot, Holliday, it’s me! Wait for the other guy!” I throttle down and wait underneath the Corvette until the Courier drops in. Two blasts from her class 4 plasma accelerators sends the little ship into a tumble.
“What in the—” came the reply from the Courier, as I disengaged flight assist and deployed my hardpoints, unleashing a salvo of multi-cannon fire on the Gutamaya fighter. The heavy sabot rounds had been further modified to inflict corrosive damage into their target, with each successful hit eating away the hull. Another volley from the plasma accelerators broke the shield, and my next salvo tore into the cockpit. The canopy blew out in fine shards as dozens of rounds impacted, tearing the Seraph to pieces. One more fusillade directed at the Courier’s power plant sent the reactor into critical mass, and ripped the ship apart in a fiery explosion.
I tethered the Fer-de-Lance to the Corvette’s keel, lashing it to the armor plating with its magnetic landing gear, and crossed the gap between cargo hatches through space. A charred piece of cooling hose flew past my helmet as I made the trip, being guided in by a couple of resistance members grabbing my arms and guiding me through the air lock. My helmet retracted automatically once the room re-pressurized, and I saw it was two of my old friends from back home.
“Hubert!” I exclaimed with delight. “John-Boy!” They hollered when they saw my face, and we embraced and butted heads. They wore the orange armbands of regimental commanders, and were dressed in old Federal cold-weather camouflage uniforms.
“Damn, Grayson,” Hubert said, his drawl as thick as ever. “I’d-a never thunk I’d see ya alive ever again! Lookit ya, flyin’ a souped-up ol’ Ferdie-Lance an’ everythang!”
“T’weren’t easy gettin’ it neither, boy, I tell you what,” I replied, sliding back into my familiar twang.
“Putain, it do me good see ya ‘gain, baw,” John-Boy said. His Creole was nearly unintelligible to anyone who didn’t live in the swampy areas his clan called home. “Less’ get our butts ovah deah, in de galley, an’ jink some beer, nous.”
“I’m-a hold ya to that, John-Boy,” I replied, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Right now, I’m fixin’ ta meet Holliday an’ find out what’s been happenin’ back on the homestead.” Another round of hearty handshakes with my friends, and I made my way through the upper decks to the bridge, where Holliday was standing behind the pilot’s chair, tapping at her dataslate. She looked up and smiled, then beckoned me over. Another figure entered from the corridor leading from the crew’s quarters, and I stopped dead in my tracks.
That face. Those eyes. That smile. That sliver of pink hair. I felt my cheeks flush, a familiar feeling welling up within my chest, my temperature rising. It was unmistakable. My body reacted on instinct: I started walking, then running, to her, and she ran up to meet me in the middle. We embraced each other tightly, wordlessly, then I placed my hands on both sides of her face and stared deep into those eyes I loved so much.
“Heather,” I breathed.
“Hey, Grayson,” she replied, smiling as big and bright as ever. “I missed you.”
“Me too.” She ran her hand through my hair and pulled my face to hers, and we kissed forever. We were back Out There, underneath the Condor. I could smell the fresh grass, feel the soft summer breeze. Her voice is like music, her lips sweet as wine.
Finally, I am reunited with my love. The galaxy has never felt so distant.