The Mechaneer

Chapter 6: Detainment

“I’ve got rights, dammit! I’m a citizen of the Federated Stars – a Civil War vet!”

A man in a masked, unmarked white flight suit leaned back in the chair ahead of Jack. “On which side?”

His four buddies, all similarly attired, thought that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

Jack gritted his teeth.

He sat in a plush, comfortable seat that, unlike most of the comfortable seats he’d ever sat in, felt like real leather rather than reactive gel. A sleek passenger shuttle surrounded him. Two lines, one blue, one red, streaked the white carpet, repeated on the overhead compartments.

Jack hadn’t seen Ellie since the attack. He figured she been placed in the rear section. Treated like cargo.

Dammit!

If Jack had been manacled, he would have tried to strangle one of his captors. No such luck. Rather than shackle their captives, the white-suited men had injected them with Limiters. If Jack tried to take aggressive action, the nanomachines would flood his brain with enough endorphins to leave him in a grinning stupor.

The Federal Senate had issued a blanket ban on Limiters with more than a 24-hour duration. Assuming whoever had captured the crew of the Mother Goose played by the rules, Jack would either get out from under their nanomechanical thumb or get another dose.

He expected the latter.

Thankfully – or maybe not – the Limiters didn’t stop him from getting angry or complaining. The more potent varieties he remembered from the Civil War kept a tighter leash. He said, “Where the hell are you taking us, anyway?”

The guards ignored him.

Jack sighed.

He wondered who his captors were. They didn’t look or act like Feds. Too well dressed, too well equipped, too well trained. He’d offered to pay, with interest, the Mother Goose’s monthly mortgage, but they’d laughed him off, so they weren’t debt collectors.

Then they’d asked about Chloe.

An Animus Hunter’s personal retinue, maybe? Jack didn’t know what kind of support the shadowy psychic hunters needed or got.

He wished he’d gotten a better look at the captors’ boss, or at least his mecha. By the time he and Ellie realized they were under attack, the enemy machine had blocked the rear hatch from opening and sent bully boys in through the main hatch, avoiding half the ship’s external cameras and covering up the other half. Jack hadn’t exactly studied the technical specifications the Goose displayed, not when he’d been busy going for a gun and a defensive position. Something about the mecha stuck in his mind, though.

It hardly mattered. Any military-grade machine could have ripped through Goslings One through Three. Jack had surrendered as soon as he realized how pointless resisting was.

Jack and Ellie didn’t say a word about Chloe, of course. No way in hell were they gonna turn her over to these goons.

Trouble was, if ‘these goons’ had Limiters, they had similar nanomachines to uncover the information they wanted. Maybe Jack, with a military mechaneer’s training and psychological conditioning, could resist their probes, though he doubted it. Ellie? No chance.

He was glad Chloe hadn’t gotten back before the attack, but he wondered why. Had she gotten lost? Decided to strike off on her own?

Or had their captors picked her up with a second team?

He wanted so bad to pull his flight suit's mask up and call her – but he couldn't. Whoever had captured him and Ellie would sure as hell be able to trace whatever response Chloe gave.

All Jack could do was hope.

If he’d failed Chloe, too…

He shook his head. Maybe he’d failed and maybe he hadn’t. He’d gotten captured by nobs once, during the Civil War. Spent all of a week in their holding camp before he took advantage of an Oligarchical raid to break out. Catching Jack Hughes might well prove easier than keeping him.

Of course, he hadn’t had a wife or daughter to worry about the last time. The only guys who’d made a break for it with him were other mechaneers or naval men, all of whom were expected to take care of themselves.

No point in giving up, though.

He had to assume Chloe was free. If so, she’d surely try some damn fool scheme to rescue the rest of her family.

He had an obligation to escape, if only to stop her.

No…

He had an obligation to make sure somebody escaped.

He gave the shuttle’s passenger compartment another glance. It didn’t look like a military design. Way too posh and comfortable. He wasn’t surprised. The Federal Senate frowned on the use of military forces in the atmospheres of its member planets. Gave the wrong impression about the ‘peace and equality of the galaxy.’

The shuttle also wasn’t headed for orbit. The sky outside stayed the same uniform blue.

Jack figured he and Ellie were bound for some kind of drop point, maybe a disguised civilian building used for black ops or police work. The guards might not all stick around for fear of drawing attention. If they trusted the Limiters to protect them, they might leave a real skeleton crew, just one or two guys.

The thought brought a grim smile to Jack’s face.

Limiters were powerful things, but they weren’t perfect. They didn't respond to thoughts, just to changes in brain chemistry – changes that, in a disciplined mind, could lag whole seconds behind thought and action. Jack knew a few tricks to let him get off at least one or two blows.

Have to make sure he only needed one or two.

Have to hope Limiters hadn't improved since the Civil War.

Once the guards were down, it didn’t matter if Jack saw the world through an endorphin haze for a few hours. He trusted Ellie to get herself safely away. Maybe, just maybe, to lead him out, too, though he considered his own escape optional.

He felt downright confident about the plan when he felt the shuttle’s thrusters flare below him, then fizzle to a halt as it settled onto a landing pad.

“Up,” said one of the guards. “You’ve got a meeting to attend.”

“That’s too bad, guys.” Jack flashed a grin. “You know, it’s the damndest thing, but I just remembered I left my notes at home. Why don’t you just let me head on back and pick ‘em up. You won’t even know I’m gone.”

The guard's mask twisted as he scowled. “Get moving, wise guy.”

“You know what your problem is?” Jack rose while he talked and started toward the hatch at the front of the compartment. All he wanted was to keep the guards distracted so he could scope the area. “You guys work too hard. If I were on a gorgeous planet like this, you can bet your ass I wouldn’t be slaving away at some kinda nine to five job.”

“We’re on call exactly as long as it takes to get you to your meeting,” the guard said.

“Huh,” said Jack. So they trusted some other security system, probably electronic. He suppressed his grin. “Sounds like a pretty sweet package. Where do you get perks like that, anyway? Maybe I’m in the wrong line of work here?”

“Just shut up and fall in.”

Jack shut up and fell in. He’d learned enough about his captors just from the few taunts he’d thrown. Now he needed time to absorb the information.

He surveyed the landing pad. They seemed to have ended up on some kind of private dock, a platform with only half-pipe highways linking it to its neighbors – wherever they were. Everything on Wellach floated above or within its world-spanning ocean. All the commercial centers were linked by gravlev trains, but not this arcology. It floated far enough off the beaten path he couldn't see any other platforms. One large building, easily big enough to swallow a dozen Mother Geese, and a trio of outbuildings of about a tenth its size, rose from the plate. Despite its scale and isolation, it didn’t much look like a military base. It had the same posh appearance as the shuttle.

Jack glanced over his shoulder, saw a pair of their captors lead Ellie down a second ramp.

“You okay, Hon?” Jack called.

Ellie didn’t answer. She stared at the waves sloshing against the edges of the platform, a blank smile on her face.

“Hon…?”

“The felid is subject to heavier Limiters,” the guard Jack had needled before said.

“You son of a –!” Jack choked back his curse and clenched his fists to his sides. Not yet. He couldn’t make his move yet. “If Ellie's hurt, I’ll make sure you regret being the one to hurt her.”

“Nobody's been hurt.” The voice, icy cool, cocky and familiar, came from behind Jack. “Nor has your property suffered serious damage.”

Jack turned, slowly, to face the speaker.

He knew he wasn’t gonna escape.

He should’ve known by the electric blue and red stripes of the shuttle's carpet.

He was surprised how little the lean, almost skinny man had changed. He looked older than he had during the Civil War, his face a bit stronger and marked by a few lines here and there, and he wore a groundling-style suit with only a red-and-blue harlequin tie to bring to mind his old flight suit. But he had the same shit-eating grin, the same half-squint, smirking electric blue eyes, the same strawberry blonde hair, even, improbably, something of the same boyish good looks. Of course, he’d been little more than a kid back in the day, so he had an excuse to look young.

“It’s good to see you again, Colonel Hughes,” once-Commodore Otto Aber Algreil said.