Vanguard Page 7

  “Cassie has some unexpected talents,” Lochan remarked.

  “She’s an engineer,” Mele said. “The sort of engineer who has trouble just following instructions and refuses to overspecialize.”

  “There are advantages to being part of a group of misfits,” Lochan said. “Looks like you did everything that we needed.”

  Mele glanced at him for just a moment before returning her gaze to the pilot. “You thinking you didn’t do much? You identified a big problem, figured out who to task with dealing with it, then let her do the job without trying to interfere or micromanage. You kept an eye on the big picture, and trusted me to do it right or let you know if there was a problem. And when everything went down, you backed me up. That’s a pretty good boss from my point of view.”

  Despite the tightness riding his guts, Lochan couldn’t help smiling at her. “You’re saying I did something right?”

  “Yeah. Sorry to ruin your perfect record of failure.”

  “We’re not out of Vestri yet.”

  “I don’t know what anybody told you,” the pilot interrupted. “We’re just regular merchants. We were just going to take you to . . . to . . . Vahala.”

  “Varaha?” Lochan said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve already searched your copilot. His ID is from Apulu.”

  “Where’s your ID from?” Mele asked, tapping the pilot’s forehead with the shocker. “Your copilot was carrying a military-grade pistol before I took it away. Lethal weaponry. What’s that doing on a regular merchant?”

  “If you want to get out of this without a prison sentence,” Lochan said, “you’ll cooperate with getting us another ride out of this star system.”

  “None of this was my idea,” the pilot insisted.

  “Then you’ll be happy to help us, won’t you?”

  “They won’t just let you walk away with their shuttle,” the pilot said. “The ship is going to come after us.”

  “Do they have any weapons?” Mele asked.

  “Yeah . . . a . . . pulse particle beam.”

  Lochan saw that the pilot had hesitated for just a moment before replying. “You know,” he remarked, “I have some experience as a politician, so I know it takes a little longer to think up a lie than it does to give an honest answer. If that freighter wants to chase us, fine. He’s got a lot more mass than we do, and not all that much thrust. He’ll take a long time to catch us, and once he’s close we can outmaneuver him.”

  “This shuttle is expensive!” the pilot said. “They won’t let it go! They’ll wait until life support on this bird is failing and you guys have to give up or die.”

  “We’ll find another ride before then,” Lochan said with a confidence he didn’t really feel.

  • • •

  A day and a half later, Lochan Nakamura’s ability to fake such assurance was being tested as never before.

  “Toxic levels in the air are close to critical,” Mele Darcy told him in a low voice.

  Lochan glanced back at the other refugees, slumped in their seats, all of them showing the effects of thirty-six hours with little water, no food, rising temperatures inside the living compartment, and steadily deteriorating air quality. “How long do we have?”

  Cassie shrugged, looking like someone who had spent the last day digging ditches in the hot sun. “I’ve tweaked the gear as best I can. Maybe six more hours before people start passing out. About eight hours maximum before we start losing some of them.”

  He looked forward to where Lukas was keeping an eye on the pilot. The freighter had indeed lumbered into pursuit of the shuttle, not able to keep up but staying within several light minutes. The shuttle itself wasn’t built for long-distance acceleration, and the pilot had been complaining with increasing urgency that fuel was getting low. “I figure we’ve got about four hours left before we’d have to give up. If we wait longer than that, some of these people will die before we could dock with the freighter.”

  Cassie nodded. “That’s probably right. The question is, do we give up now or wait those four hours?”

  “Wait the four hours,” Mele said. “We’re not beaten yet.”

  “I don’t see how it makes much difference right now,” Cassie said. “I’d hate to cut it too close. I think we should give it up to make certain we don’t lose anyone.”

  Mele looked at Lochan. “Lukas already told me he doesn’t want to have to decide life and death for people. So I guess your vote decides it.”

  Mele and Cassie watched him, waiting for a decision. If there had been someone else here to pass the buck to, he would have done it. The idea of someone dying because he made another mistake was unbearable. But so was the possibility that another ship could show up after they had surrendered.

  Mele was in favor of waiting, though, and if he had to make a choice of whose judgment to trust, she would be very high on the list. “Let’s keep heading for the jump point,” Lochan said.

  “For how long?” Cassie asked, looking resigned.

  “You said it. If nobody has shown up in the next four hours, we’ll have to give up.”

  “Live to fight another day,” Mele corrected him, grinning as she wiped sweat from her face. “If it comes to that, Apulu is not going to be happy they caught me.”

  “Here, too,” Cassie agreed.

  Lochan looked away, knowing that someone with political skills like his might be able to work his way up even within the confines of a forced labor system.

  If he was willing to abandon Mele and Cassie and Lukas. Maybe sell them out.

  He was tired of that kind of thinking.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding toward the others. “If it happens, we’ll make Apulu regret catching us. Is the shuttle’s distress beacon still on?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mele said. “It’s on the emergency rescue setting.”

  “That won’t help,” Cassie said, “unless somebody shows up in time to respond to it.”

  “Truth,” Mele admitted. “But it can’t hurt. And if anyone shows up, they’ll know right away that we need help.”

  Cassie shrugged, making it a gesture of surrender to Mele and Lochan, then pulled herself upright before walking with slow, careful steps back to check on some of the others.

  Lochan watched her go, feeling morose. “How the hell did I end up here?” he said, not expecting a response from Mele.

  But she gave him an arch look. “You tell me.”

  “Do you want the truth?”

  “Usually.”

  Lochan couldn’t help smiling slightly at that. “You know I’m a failure.”

  “No,” Mele said, shaking her head at him. “I know you’ve said that you’ve failed at a lot of things. Not the same.”

  “All right,” Lochan said. “If that’s how you want to see it. I’ve admitted to trying to micromanage everything. But I haven’t told you, or anyone, why.”

  It was Mele’s turn to shrug. “Does the why of it matter?”

  “Yeah. It does.” Lochan paused, tasting something bitter that didn’t come from the foul air he was breathing. “Micromanaging lets you pretend to control things without understanding them or caring about them. And that’s what I’ve done. I’ve never cared enough about anything to really try to understand it. Even my marriage. She should have been everything to me. Instead, I let being in charge be everything to me.”

  Mele cocked a disapproving eyebrow at him. “You didn’t love her?”

  “I thought I did. I swear I thought I did. But what I loved was . . .”

  “The thought of her being in love with you?”

  Lochan stared at Mele. “Yeah. I guess so. So I gave up. That’s the truth about me, Mele. I’m out here because I’m looking for something that will make me care enough to try enough to be something other than a serial failure.”

  Mele
looked around the cabin of the shuttle. “It looks like you cared enough about not becoming slave labor to try.”

  “Yeah, but assuming we get out of this—”

  “Was it just you?” Mele interrupted. “Or did you care about what happened to the rest of us?”

  He took a moment to think, trying to sort out what would sound right and what he really felt. “Yeah. I cared about the rest of you.”

  “Say we get out of this. We’re home free. How many other people have already been hauled to some place like Apulu? Can you care about them? What about other places? This can’t be the only star system where someone is taking advantage of the lack of adult supervision.”

  “There must be others, yeah.” Lochan shook his head. “But that would be too big for anyone to tackle. One person couldn’t make a difference.”

  “Did one person hijack this shuttle?” Mele sounded exasperated with him. “You’ve been going through life solo, even in your marriage. Haven’t you figured out teamwork yet? It’s not that you don’t care, it’s that you don’t want to share the credit for what goes right. Stop pretending it’s anything else. If it’s worth doing, it doesn’t matter who gets credit. What matters is that it gets done.”

  Lochan sat silently for nearly a minute, trying to come up with arguments that would refute Mele Darcy’s blunt statement. And failing. Trying to get angry. And failing. But, for once, those failures weren’t a bad thing. “I’m going to think about what you said, Mele. Thanks.”

  She grinned. “You’re welcome for the chewing out. And lucky you, we’ve got nothing much else to do for the next few hours but think.”

  The next three hours would have felt longer if not for the way the increasingly foul atmosphere inside the shuttle and Lochan’s growing fatigue kept causing him to drift off for short periods of unconsciousness that didn’t feel like sleep and gave him no sense of having rested. Fortunately, that same lassitude was keeping the other refugees from panicking or demanding immediate surrender. As the final hour began ticking down he moved up to the flight deck again, where Mele had relieved Lukas and was once again watching the pilot.

  “How much longer are you going to do this?” the pilot asked Lochan in a dull voice.

  “A little while longer,” he replied.

  “The kids will die first, you know.”

  “I’ve heard that, yeah. How long do they live on Apulu? What do you make them do?”

  “I’m not a player in that,” the pilot denied. “But the pretty ones . . . I’ve heard it’s ugly for them.”

  “How do you play at all with a system like that?” Mele asked, angry enough to twitch her finger toward the trigger of the shocker aimed at the pilot.

  The pilot shook her head. “You go along with something, then something else, then a little more, and before you know it you’re neck-deep and can’t see any way out. I’m not proud of myself. I’m not like those three apes who were going to guard you. They like treating other people like cattle. I just got stuck in it before I knew what was happening.”

  “Maybe you can help us even if we give up,” Lochan said. “Give us some aid after we’ve been captured.”

  The pilot shook her head, her expression dreary. “I’m no hero. I’m not brave. I’m nothing except a bird driver.”

  “But the kids—”

  “I try not to think about it. I’m not going to stick my neck out.”

  Lochan glanced at Mele, who shook her head to indicate that arguing with the pilot was a waste of time.

  Forty-five minutes left before he had to make a decision.

  Something new appeared on the display.

  The pilot looked up, her face reflecting surprise. “Another merchant ship. Mixed passenger and freight.”

  Lochan exhaled slowly, fighting down an urge to laugh out of fear that it would sound half-hysterical. “How long until we can reach them?”

  The pilot extended her hand, sweeping it through the virtual display. “On our own? Four hours.”

  “Too long,” Mele said.

  “You have to give up.”

  “What if they come to meet us?” Lochan asked.

  “We’re still half a light hour from the jump point,” the pilot complained.

  “Give me communications with them,” Lochan said, letting his voice go rough and threatening. “Don’t mess up anything because we’re going to meet up with that other ship in time or you’re going to die along with us.” Did he mean that? He wasn’t sure.

  The pilot seemed convinced, though. She hastily tapped controls, then nodded to Lochan.

  “This is Lochan Nakamura aboard the shuttle signaling an emergency, calling the freighter that recently arrived in Vestri Star System. We are former passengers from the freighter Brian Smith, stranded here by pirates. The freighter pursuing us is from Apulu and is trying to take us from here by force. We urgently request that you alter course to meet us. Our life support is badly strained and won’t hold out much longer.”

  He stopped speaking, staring at the display and wishing that he believed enough in his ancestors to pray for their help.

  “You can’t wait for a reply,” the pilot said, sounding desperate. “They’re half a light hour away, which means half an hour for them to get your message, and another half an hour before we hear their reply. In another hour, it’ll be too late to meet up with my ship before the air gets too bad to sustain life. We’ll all die.”

  “Maybe they’ll come to meet us,” Lochan said.

  “They’ll think it’s a trick! They’ll think we’re pirates who want to trick our way aboard their ship!” the pilot insisted. “They won’t change course! Everybody on this bird will die because of you!”

  He almost wavered then, thinking of the others in the passenger compartment, thinking of the kids.

  Lochan looked at Mele. “What’s your advice?”

  “Me?” Mele grinned. “I say we go for it. I wasn’t going to live forever, anyway.”

  “She’s a Marine!” the pilot hissed at Lochan. “They’re all crazy!”

  “I guess it wore off on me,” Lochan said. He knew what Cassie would vote, not out of fear for herself but worry about the others aboard, and Lukas was still making it clear he didn’t want to have the burden of decisions laid on him. Which meant that he was deciding this one. No, not just him. He and Mele. A team. He had never been a team player, but as Lochan confronted what might be his last decision he finally realized the truth of what Mele had told him, that being a part of a team wasn’t about diffusing responsibility as he had long thought, or letting others claim credit, but about fostering support for both decisions and individuals. Something he could not have decided on his own, he could do with Mele’s support. “We’re going for it. Adjust course to intercept that new ship as soon as we can.”

  “It won’t be soon enough!”

  “Do it,” Mele said, something in her voice causing even Lochan to feel a thrill of fear.

  Shaking her head, the pilot made the adjustments, then sat back in her seat, eyes closed, her lips moving in silent prayer, or maybe in silent curses aimed at Lochan and Mele.

  The last minute left before they could have still surrendered to the freighter from Apulu came and went. Lochan watched the slow progress of the new ship, wondering if he had doomed everyone aboard the shuttle.

  It sure seemed like he had.

  Chapter 4

  “They’re adjusting vector,” Mele commented. “Isn’t that what’s happening?” she prodded the pilot.

  The pilot opened her eyes, scanning her display with growing wonder. “Yeah. About twenty minutes ago they started coming over and down toward us. But they couldn’t have gotten your message yet when they did that. Why would they do that?”

  “The distress beacon,” Lochan said. “It’s been transmitting for hours, so they would have heard that as soon as they
arrived at the jump point, right? They must have reacted to it.”

  The pilot’s hand flew through her controls. “We might make it. If they keep coming over to close on us. We might make it.”

  “I’ll tell Cassie to keep us alive until we meet up with that freighter,” Lochan said. He stumbled back to the passenger deck, feeling weak from more than the foul air. “There’s a ship on the way to pick us up!” he called. “A big, new, beautiful ship!”

  Twenty minutes later, Lochan was back on the flight deck when a message came in from the new ship, one that must have been sent soon after the ship arrived at Vestri. “This is the Mononoke, Brahma Star System registry. We have received your distress signal and are altering vector to meet you.”

  • • •

  Carmen Ochoa sat on one side of a small, square table. She had been asked to be in this meeting because the ship’s files had revealed her past experience at conflict resolution. Seated opposite her was the Mononoke’s executive officer. To her right was the Mononoke’s security chief. To her left was a rumpled-looking man named Lochan Nakamura, who had been leading the refugees from the shuttle. He had a pained expression that occasionally transitioned to a wince.

  “Are you all right?” the executive officer asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Lochan Nakamura replied. He raised one hand toward his head. “Your ship’s doctor said the headache is because of the life support problems on the shuttle before you picked us up. It should go away soon.”

  “The freighter Harcourt F. Modder has demanded that we turn you over to them to face charges for hijacking their shuttle,” the security chief told Lochan.

  “We told you what happened and why we did it,” Lochan replied.

  “The available evidence, thin as it is, supports your account,” the security chief said. “We have complaints and warnings on file about the way station at Vestri. And we downloaded enough from the shuttle’s systems before letting it go to confirm that it and the freighter both came from Apulu as you say, and not from Varaha as they claimed. That’s enough for me to recommend to my captain that we not surrender you. But none of that is enough to build any sort of case against either the way station or the freighter, even if there was somebody who would act on that evidence. My recommendation is that you all write this off as an expensive detour that could have been a lot worse.”