Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (9 page)

Jake walked onto the elevation platform and
noticed a pigment-shift painting on the side of his aircraft. An
image of Paula lounging under Minh-Chu’s callsign: RONIN, her
modesty maintained only by smoke trailing from a recently fired gun
in her hand. Jake stared at it a moment, stunned, then burst into a
debilitating bout of laughter.

“What?” Minh asked, alarmed. He looked at
the side of the fighter and hung his head. “Yeah, she bonded that
on yesterday.”

“Well, she looks pretty good,” Jake said,
taking a breath. “I hope you’ll be happy together!” He managed to
say before he burst anew.

“But I-“ Minh began to offer lamely as he
finished stepping down from the fighter.

Jake put his hand on his friend’s shoulder
and looked him in the eye. “If she’s so mad for you that she’s done
this, there’ll be no shaking her off. I hope she’s got some
redeeming traits we haven’t seen.”

“She can be nice in quiet moments, and she’s
ambitious,” Minh said. “Doesn’t think people take her very
seriously, though.”

Jake straightened up and recovered. “Well,
this isn’t going to help. I’ll get a scrubber and we’ll get this
off.”

“Yeah,” Minh said. “I’m sticking to my guns
though, we’re split. She’s getting harder and harder to keep at
arm’s length. I still can’t believe she didn’t believe me.”

“Just stop,” Jake said. “Or I’ll get started
up again.”

“It’s not that funny!” Minh retorted. “It’s
actually pretty scary!”

Jake was just starting to snicker again when a bold
message appeared on his head’s up display:

NOW! DO IT NOW!

The elevation pad dropped two metres in half
a second. The side Jake stood on lowered more, and before he could
move the Uriel skidded in his direction, trapping him against the
side of the elevation shaft.

Minh tripped over one of the thruster pods,
the emergency hood of his vacsuit activated before he struck his
head soundly against the side. “We’ve got a malfunction with lift
six!” He announced to the deck crew.

“This isn’t a malfunction,” Jake said. He
tried to push the rear thruster pod of the fighter away from him,
but the left arm of his suit’s strength augmentation failed. “I’m
pinned.” Just as he said it, a man wearing a grey worker’s vacsuit
leaned over the opening of the short elevator shaft and dropped a
roughly rewired compact battery right on top of him.

“EMP grenade!” Jake warned.

It went off, effecting the fighter through
its open cockpit, and the systems on Jake’s lower quality vacsuit.
He could feel the little artificial muscle there was layered into
it stiffen. Without power, the material would be more hindrance to
movement than assistance.

“I’m pinned,” Jake said again, struggling
under the weight of the fighter and the panic rising in his mind.
“My suit’s keeping me from getting crushed, but it’s not doing
anything else.”

“Hold on, my suit’s okay,” Minh said. “I
might be able to get you out.”

“You’ve barely got augmentation, that’s a
pilot’s suit,” Jake said. He opened a channel to Frost. “Get over
here, we need your loader to pick up this fighter.”

“Is this an accident?” Frost asked.

“You know it isn’t,” Jake replied.

Three grey suited workers dropped into the
elevation pit, one falling on top of Minh as he was balanced on an
engine pod pylon. The pair went crashing down, and that’s when Jake
saw a makeshift restraint in the attacker’s hand. “Watch it, Minh!”
Jake said. “He’s trying to get a restraint on you!”

One end of the modified metal cargo tie
clapped closed around Minh’s arm before he could turn over and
react. He flipped from his stomach onto his back and punched his
attacker in the throat. The blow would have been devastating if the
worker wasn’t protected by a labour suit.

One of the other workers moved to stand over
Jake, who looked up to him and said; “I promise you’ll suffer the
worst.” Panic intermingled with hate as he blindly struggled under
the fighter’s engine. He took note of a green stain pattern on that
worker’s legs. It made his suit unique, and Jake promised himself
it would be the man’s undoing.

The man above him didn’t reply, only pressed
a button on a makeshift control box. The pressure doors above
started to close just as Frost’s loader suit came into view. “I got
ya, lad,” Frost said as he caught the doors in the hands of the
suit. The pair of heavy doors clamped shut on its hands and severed
several fingers.

Frost would be fine, fingers intact, but no
help at all. “I was sure that’d work,” he said with a chuckle.
“I’ll get the hatch open from up here, you just threaten and sneer,
might frighten them into givin’ up.”

“Not funny, you sonofabitch!” Jake shot back
as he watched a second worker drop down and help his mate with
Minh, who had gotten the upper hand and clobbered his first
attacker with his half-fastened restraint. He drew his sidearm with
the other hand and was just about to take aim as it was knocked out
of his hand from behind.

“How did you let hunters onto your crew?”
Minh asked. He tried to scramble after his weapon but was equally
preoccupied by a new set of hands trying to grab the half-affixed
restraint.

The entire scene was thrown into chaos as
the elevator’s base dropped suddenly. The gravity deactivated and
the air rushed out of the space, drawing Minh, Jake, and their
three attackers out with it.

Jake was free, but didn’t have so much as an
emergency manoeuvring jet. He was turned away from the action. “Did
you get your sidearm back, Minh?” Jake asked as he let himself
turn.

“Not so much,” Minh replied. When he came
into view, his hands were up. One of the workers must have gotten
hold of Minh’s sidearm right before the elevator decompressed, and
it was pointed at the pilot’s head.

“Now, you’re going to be cooperative or I’m
going to start shooting at your friend here,” said the worker.
“Aren’t these Violator sidearms designed to cut through suits just
like this?”

Jake had nothing to say. He drifted slowly,
helplessly, as he spotted a point of light in the distance. They
knew too much about them, their plan was too good. There was a
knowledgeable informant involved who probably even knew about
Jake's regenerative abilities, otherwise they’d be pointing the gun
at him.

“Lad, bad news,” Frost said. “There’s a
shuttle going in your directions. I’m headed for an emergency
hatch. I've contacted our flyboys, but I don’t think either of us
are going to make it in time.”

“I know,” Jake replied. “Get to a gun
emplacement on the Enforcer and contact the Carthan authorities. If
they can’t intercept, I want you to get a cannon working and
disable the shuttle.”

It had been weeks since Ayan had seen Jake.
Jason’s plan to keep the Samson crew, Jake especially, mixed in
with the rest of their workers was only effective if they visited
people they cared about as little as possible. According to Jason,
if Jake or any of the crewmembers visited known associates often,
then someone could track them over time and discern with fair
certainty who was who, or at least who was important.

Ayan didn’t like it, neither did the Samson
crew, but Jason was right. As a result, Jake hadn’t set foot on the
Clever Dream, or gone near Ayan, for weeks. He couldn’t even check
his personal messages more than once every few days in case someone
found a way to watch network activity.

When Ayan realised she was actually nervous,
she attributed it to that separation. As she made her way through
Greydock, the strange guilt at feeling perhaps a little closer than
she should to Liam Grady was pressed away by memories of Jake. He
was a great communicator too, when there was time to sit and talk,
and they’d done so for hours.

If anything, she was sure her guilt with
regards to Liam Grady came from the thought that she might be
leading him on, by being open to his supportive presence that was
made so much warmer, so much more intimate by his gentle hands.
Touching someone’s bare skin on Freeground was more personal than
it was in many other cultures, as they spent so much time covered
up under the skin of a vacsuit. Liam might not have known, but he
made her skin tingle when his warm hands made contact with the bare
skin her dress afforded her. There was nothing indecent or
unwelcome about his attention. In fact, he wouldn’t make her think
twice if he behaved that way with other people. For all she knew,
his caring hands paid attention to other people just the same.

“But he doesn’t touch Laura that way,” Ayan
muttered to herself, drawing a glance from a young man passing her
in the quiet, lush, carpeted hallway. She flashed him a smile,
which he returned shyly. The walls were adorned with dark hardwood
planking and flickering sconces. She’d only seen anything like it
in old movies and period interactives, never in person.

It reminded her of Liam more than anything.
The earth tones, dim yellow light and air of luxury were all things
that she associated with him. A brief, unintentional recollection
of his comforting hand on her back became a daydream. She was
standing at the window in that boardroom and the negotiator was
reading aloud, but he may as well of been in a different room for
all the attention she afforded him.

Instead of embracing her anger and turning
on him the moment after Liam Grady’s reassuring hand touched her
back, she turned towards him, his arms and his robes wrapped around
her. She imagined his embrace would be warm, firm, and that she’d
have all his attention in that moment.

Ayan brought herself back to reality,
clearing her throat and shaking her head. The door to the room Jake
had rented for their rendezvous was right up ahead, and she was
blushing because of a daydream that brought more guilt than she
thought she deserved. “Fickle, stupid girl,” she cursed under her
breath to the empty hallway.

She checked the lines of her dress, and
straightened it a little before touching the entry pad. It
recognised her and the door slipped open silently. There, looking
out a window overlooking the other side of Greydock, was Jacob
Valance. His long coat and dark gloved hands contrasted against the
buildings around the hospitality tower. Long ago they had been
painted green and blue, plated in silver and gold, but time had
worn down their tones, their sheens. The metal beneath was red in
most cases, white in others. It was old construction, still useful
and sturdy, but not as appealing as it once was.

He turned and practically grinned at her as
he crossed the room. It was rare of him to be so openly happy, and
her heart skipped a beat as she met him in the middle. Jake picked
her up off her feet and whirled her, nearly knocking a serving tray
off a table with her heels. “I couldn’t stay away,” he whispered
against her ear.

Thoughts of Liam fled from her mind at the
sound of those words. The thought that the need to see her could
break the discipline in a man like Jacob Valance was thrilling. To
her, Jake was more stalwart and honour-driven than even Oz. “I
missed you,” she said, a tear squeezing through her clenched
eyelids.

He put her down and held her more loosely,
kissing her briefly before looking her in the eye. There was an
eagerness in everything he did that was surprising, refreshing.
“You’re supposed to be on the Enforcer, there are only a few hours
left,” she scolded playfully.

“You’re supposed to be in negotiations,” he
retorted, imitating her.

“We just came to an agreement. They’ve
agreed to a land grant, a low but significant price for what
remains of the Enforcer, most of the other things we were after,
including a lift on the local warrant for you and the rest of your
crew. Oh, and we’ve secured sovereignty.”

“All that in a few weeks,” Jake said. “It
felt like forever, mind you, but you reached high and I’m
impressed,” he told her.

She smiled at him because of the
uncharacteristic praise, not in the fact that it came, but in how
it was said. Somehow it didn’t sound like him, even in the burst
messages they’d shared through Jason, the way Jacob was speaking
was somehow – off. “Thank you,” she replied. “Is everything-“

Before she could finish the question, his
lips were on hers, and she knew that whoever was kissing her was
not Jacob. This man’s eager manipulations were nothing like the man
she knew, and she tried to pull away.

He caught her arm and yanked her to him.
“Wheeler sends his regards,” he whispered against her temple.

* * *

Minh closed the canopy on his Uriel fighter
and it began to come to life. He kept his eye on Jacob the entire
time; they were adrift outside the Enforcer, and that ship was
almost in range. “I’ve got ya, Jake,” Minh said. “I’m coming to get
you.”

“Don’t use real names on comms!” erupted
Lowell, the second in command for the salvage operation.

“It doesn’t much matter now, lad,” Frost
replied over the channel. “Seems like whoever’s behind this knows
who’s who.”

“Any luck getting the doors open so you can
give me a hand?” Minh asked as he signalled his fighter wing.
They’d be there in six minutes, maybe more. Not fast enough.

“We’re cutting now,” Frost replied. “They
burned up all the door mechanisms we’ve checked.”

“The emergency cranks don’t work?” Jacob
asked.

“Aye, they planted burners on timers,
destroyed the shafts,” Frost replied. “Must’ve taken a week or two
to plant ‘em.”

The heavy transport shuttle came around the
port side of the Enforcer and into sight. It’s side loading doors
were open and Minh could see three crewmen ready with weapons. He
locked weapons on it right away, but held his fire. “Shuttle to my
three o’clock, at one two seven by nine zero zero five three, by
two zero five, you will power down immediately or be destroyed,”
Minh warned. It was less than two hundred meters away from Jake,
with a side loading door open.