Ragnarok (The Echo Case Files), Page 2

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  The Fortune’s Favour fell through the sky at a speed to make clouds twirl and brush around the freighter’s hull, like over-eager dancing partners she escaped with a teasing wink.

  Motion sickness was an embarrassing affliction for any naval officer. It struck only when a ship passed through a planetary atmosphere or stellar phenomenon, but both happened often enough in the line of duty. Picking the best seat on a shuttlecraft, sucking a boiled sweet, or reciting poetry in her head were impractical solutions to an impractical problem. Sara Ramirez had only suffered this for the last eighteen months of her decade of military service, so today was confirmation of what she’d long suspected: the cause was psychological, not physical. Because the ship was in a spinning drop towards the surface of Manat and she felt fine.

  Apart from being shot at.

  Sparks flew from the metal-plated doorway she took cover behind as a bullet winged it, and she flinched. The doors to the cockpit weren’t going to close; she’d hot-wired them open in the first place but that didn’t mean getting inside was going to be easy. Not while the freighter pilot was taking pot-shots every time she so much as blinked around the corner.

  Then the Fortune’s Favour bucked as it hit another air pocket on its free-fall towards the surface. The deck plating rose under her in a gut-wrenching lurch, and she heard a grunt of surprise and protest from the pilot. Snatching the hand-rail next to the doorway, she let the momentum of the lurch carry her into the cockpit without sending her sprawling to the deck. She had only a split second to take stock of the situation inside: the pilot stumbling back, gun pointed away from her as he fought to keep his footing; the Manat horizon spinning through the canopy with the surface distressingly close below; a control bank between her and the pilot a mere metre’s lunge away.

  By the time the pilot had recovered his balance, she had dived behind the control bank. When the next gunshot sounded she felt the bullet thud harmlessly into solid metal. She might have worried what it would do to the ship to have its controls shot out like that, but the Fortune’s Favour’s condition was unlikely to get worse.

  The pilot’s footsteps sounded out on the decking as he scrabbled to keep upright while his ship bucked under him, or tried to get a line of sight on her. She took advantage of his distraction to aim her sidearm over the control bank and fire. The gunshot from her more powerful handgun was deafening in the confined space, as was the sound of the ricochet that told her she’d missed and hit a bulkhead.

  Her breath caught as she heard the crackling and sparks of another control panel shot out. Good work, Ramirez chided herself. It doesn’t matter if he shoots out the environmental controls trying to hit you. It might matter if you shoot out the damn flight controls!

  ‘Mercer!’ she called out, not expecting much of a response. Her voice sounded tinny and small against the echo of her gunshot and the rattling of the Favour’s hull plating as the freighter took a hammering from the winds of Manat. ‘You can stand down! How do you think this is going to end?’

  ‘I shoot you,’ came the calm voice of Russell Mercer. ‘Then I get the ship under control. Then I vent the cargo bay and your partner can consider her bad career choices on the long fall down to Manat!’

  Good plan. ‘Not that long a fall any more!’ Ramirez said instead. ‘Do you really want to take your chances, spending this time shooting at me and gambling we don’t all end up a crater?’

  ‘I reckon I stand a better chance of killing you and flying out of here than you do of taking me out!’

  Ramirez gritted her teeth. So do I. She was inside the cockpit but she still didn’t have a precise pin on Mercer, while he knew exactly where she was and would shoot her head off the moment she poked it out from behind cover.

  ‘And if you don’t?’ she asked, though she was stalling for time and knew it. ‘Is a shipment of lachryma worth dying for?’

  ‘Is arresting a drug smuggler worth dying for, Commander? I didn’t think the Confederate Marshals hired them suicidal.’

  ‘We don’t. But apparently we do hunt the stupid.’ She chanced a glance around the end of the control bank, Hauer 55 model sidearm solid and comforting in her hand. A shot rang out and thudded into the decking inches away, and with a scowl she withdrew.

  ‘You stay right there, Ramirez,’ came Mercer’s level voice. ‘I’ll just be getting to the flight controls so we’re not plummeting to our deaths, and then we can get right back to killing one another.’

  ‘Can’t let you do that, Mercer. You’ll vent the cargo bay.’

  ‘Or we could come to some arrangement. You slide your gun over here, I level the ship out, you two come quietly and I dump you at the next semi-hospitable rock I come by. I’d rather not kill two Marshals but, hey, rather you than me.’

  The deck lurched under them again, and a part of Ramirez’s mind screamed that she was supposed to be vomiting at this. Adrenaline told that part to sit down and shut up. By now the pale blue of the upper atmosphere of the Manat sky was becoming a mix of brighter blue and white clouds, and with the next twirl she could make out the wandering sprawl of a river on the surface below, details clearer by the second.

  Time was running out.

  ‘You take a step and I’ll blow your head off, Mercer,’ she said, and peeked up not over the control bank, but at it. Several of the displays were dead, stray bullets putting an end to their function, but others remained lit, giving her more information than she ever wanted about the environmental conditions of an Olympus-class freighter.

  ‘You move half an inch and I’ll blow yours off, Commander.’ Mercer’s footsteps sounded out on the deck plating, slow and cautious as the smuggler approached the precious flight control panel. He had taken cover in the small navigation compartment, and would need to cross a broad line of her fire to get to the pilot’s controls.

  And a glance at the ceiling along that way gave her the answer.

  ‘Look,’ Ramirez said, one hand gripping her Hauer, the other running across the environmental controls and praying she remembered how these freighters worked, ‘you can get a good deal if you come quietly. A guilty plea and information on your suppliers and you can be free in three years - five, tops.’

  ‘I like the idea of being free tomorrow, thank you,’ said Mercer. ‘But it’s generous of you, Commander, and once the Favour’s mine again I’ll be sure to remember -’

  Then he stepped under the fire safety system and she smacked the activation button.

  Foam sprayed from the vent above him, and Mercer gave a gurgle of surprise as he was engulfed. It was just one spurt but it was enough to stagger him, and she stepped out from behind the environmental controls, Hauer 55 raised.

  ‘Drop the gun, and freeze.’

  His pistol was pointing at the ceiling as he’d lifted his hands against whatever was spraying into his back. Mercer took one look at it, one look at her, spat out a curse - then let his gun clatter onto the deck plating. ‘God damn it...’

  ‘Russell Mercer, by the authority vested in me by the Orion Confederacy Marshals Service you are under arrest for the trafficking of Grade 1 narcotics.’ Ramirez stepped forward, reaching to her belt for the restraining cuffs. Mercer’s shoulders had already sagged with defeat and he was planting his hands on the back of his head. ‘You may remain silent; any statement you make may be used as evidence. You have the right to retain and instruct -’

  Then the Fortune’s Favour hit another air pocket and the entire freighter bucked like someone had yanked the prow back with a tritanium cable.

  Intentionally or not, Mercer’s bulk slammed into her with an impact to send them both sprawling. He had a good four inches on her in height and almost half her weight again, and so her shoulder hit the metal deck plating hard. Then Mercer’s hand clamped around her gun, and he slammed her wrist into a control panel to make her drop it.

  She was trained, but he was on top of her and bigger and heavier enough for that to matter. Her head smacked into the deck,
her jaw snapped shut, and the cockpit of the Fortune’s Favour was spinning around her just as much as the skies of Manat outside were spinning around the freighter.

  And Russell Mercer was stood over her with her gun.

  ‘Nice try, Commander,’ he said, chest heaving. ‘You almost had me there. But did you really think you were going to overpower me alone?’

  Then a panel over his shoulder came to life with a bleep, and Ramirez smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I did think I could distract you long enough for Tycho to hack into flight control from the main computer core.’

  And all of a sudden the Fortune’s Favour wasn’t in the spinning free-fall that had started when Mercer’s shipmate blew out the port impulse engine. The backup was powering up and the ship was levelling out. To Ramirez, flat on the deck, everything became calm and still. To Mercer, the deck jerked underneath him and his aim went wild as he flailed for balance.

  He screamed as Ramirez’s booted foot slammed into his knee. She didn’t stop even when it locked, and there was a sickening crunch of broken bone. She rose as the big man fell, grabbed him by his shirt - and slammed him into the deck on his front.

  She snatched her restraining cuffs even as he swore and whimpered on the floor. ‘- counsel. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you.’

  By the time her partner made it to the cockpit, Mercer was secured and cuffed and had been sat down on the seat next to the environmental control panel, pale and sweating from his broken leg.

  ‘Course is set in, Chief,’ said Maggie Tycho with a cheer that made it hard to believe they’d just been locked in a plummet to their deaths. ‘The Favour’s coming back around to land at Dahr Spaceport and we should be there in, oh, ten minutes?’

  Ramirez was sat facing Mercer in the co-pilot’s chair, her Hauer in her lap. She gave her partner a wan smile at the news. ‘Good work. Get on the comm to local law enforcement and have them waiting to receive us the moment we land. What took you so long?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Tycho as she sauntered to the communication panel, sparing Mercer a clip around the ear as she passed. He swore. ‘I know I said I’d bypass hardwired security protocols specifically designed to stop someone from taking control of a ship from outside the cockpit, but he had about twelve movies loaded up on his ultranet account that I wanted to watch and I got distracted browsing...’

  Ramirez chuckled as Tycho leaned over the comm panel and punched the information through to Dahr flight control. ‘Rosales is still out?’

  ‘Out like a light, cuffed, and locked in the cleaning cupboard. I could have brought him up here, Chief, but seriously, he’s not going anywhere and he’s huge,’ said Tycho once she’d finished, turning around. ‘What did you do to Mercer?’

  ‘Broke his leg.’ Ramirez took a deep breath and risked a glance out the cockpit viewport. They were coming in lower now, the high buildings of the city of Dahr rising like needles poking out of the dusty plains of the surface of Manat. It wasn’t as comforting a sight as it should have been. ‘The landing protocol’s automated?’

  ‘Once we’re in range of the spaceport their computers’ll pick us up and bring us in,’ Tycho confirmed, frowning at her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Just watch Mercer while we land,’ said Ramirez, and holstered her Hauer.

  ‘And what are you going to do?’

  Ramirez bent over, burying her face in her hands. ‘Try to not vomit all over you.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’ But Tycho drew her sidearm anyway, turning to scowl at the pallid Mercer. He looked more bothered by his broken leg than by the five and a half feet of diminutive Confederate Marshal glaring at him. ‘You just had a gunfight on a free-falling ship and were all right, but now we’re coming in fine and smooth you’re back to no stomach for flying?’

  ‘What can I say?’ mused Ramirez, eyes shut as she tried to not think about how little it would take for enemy gunfire to peel off the hull plating of a light Olympus-class freighter like the Fortune’s Favour and burn them up in the atmosphere. ‘I was distracted.’