Hailey's Comet Anthology Page 11

  “Yeah –”

  “Go already!” Spice snarled. She smiled at Lucky as the captain ran away. “He’s not one of the good guys,” she sassed.

  “We’re holding the airlock manually, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s the plan.”

  “I’m not the Wraith I used to be,” Laura pointed out.

  “Good thing I am the Wraith I used to be. We’ll hold it. Just need a tech person to cut a hole.”

  “On it.” Lucky ran to engineering and grabbed an engineer and a torch. They arrived back at the airlock just as the ship set down roughly near the prefab.

  “What the hell are we doing?” the crewman asked.

  “You’re cutting the wall while we hold the passage securely,” Lucky explained. “Spice, use the helmet, just in case. At least you’ll be safe.”

  Spice obeyed her elder. The three of them entered the airlock and sealed the interior door. The pilot extended the gangway until it bumped into the wall of the prefab. “Ready?” Spice asked. Lucky nodded. “Take a deep breath,” she advised.

  She opened the second hatch and they pushed the frame against the wall of the prefab with all their might. “Cut it!” Spice ordered the crewman. “Quickly.” The man took a breath while there was still air in the gangway and started cutting. He cut three quarters of an oval and pushed against the section. He ran out of strength in the low-oxygen environment.

  Spice continued to hold the gangway against the prefab but also extended her leg to push against the cut metal. She got a hand hold inside the opening and with pure strength and determination squeezed the passage and the prefab together, giving her more leverage to push against the panel. When she had created a large enough opening, hands from inside the prefab grabbed onto the edge of the make-shift door and pulled together while Spice pushed with her foot, causing the metal to bend back completely.

  The light from the gangway spilled into the room as the two areas exchanged air and carbon dioxide and equalized. Spice and Lucky could see three faces looking out at them. “Climb over,” Spice commanded, and they obeyed.

  “Where’s Comet?” Laura gasped, losing strength with each breath that depleted the oxygen supply.

  Inside, Comet took one last breath from the only remaining oxygen mask then handed it back to Mandy, pointing her toward the exit. Mandy put it around her head and turned toward the opening. She crawled through the hole with Comet clawing her way out of the hexagonal shelter behind her. Comet focused with single-minded determination on the task of getting to the airlock. She was weakening, though, since she had taken fewer turns with the oxygen masks than the other women over the past day and a half. She grabbed onto Spice’s boot and pulled herself forward. Spice helped her along by pulling her leg back inside the airlock, practically dragging Comet the last half meter.

  Once they were through the makeshift door, Spice warned Lucky to retract her hands while she hit the Close Hatch switch with her foot. With relief, Laura dropped to the ground. Spice ran to the inner hatch and opened it, letting oxygen-rich air flow in generously. Laura and Hailey lay side by side, sucking in sweet air in deep breaths. The engineer revived and the other four women hesitantly removed their masks and found the air to be gloriously plentiful.

  They laughed and hugged each other, exclaiming, “We made it!”

  Hailey turned her head toward Laura, and Laura looked at Hailey. Laura rolled over and put an arm around Hailey’s body and hugged her tightly. “I was so worried about you, Comet. But you really are unbeatable, aren’t you?”

  Hailey took a few deep breaths before she answered her best friend: “No.”

  Survivors

  “Did anyone find Kinkade?” Hailey asked from the bed in Laura’s suite where Laura insisted she stay to recuperate on the way home.

  Laura answered from the sofa, “Found him. He’s pretty dead.”

  “Pretty cold, Lucky.”

  “Justice for many crimes, Comet. You up for a visitor?”

  “Who?”

  “Well, if I tell you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.”

  “What are you doing, Laura?”

  “I’m toying with your curiosity.” The door chimed. “Ah, there she is.” Laura stood and crossed the room to open the door. “Come in, come in.”

  A Wraith in black armor from head to foot stepped into the room. Hailey sat up in the bed. “I thought I imagined seeing a Wraith in the airlock.” The Wraith strode past Lucky and stood at the foot of Hailey’s recovery bed. She removed her helmet. Hailey’s eyes widened, her face lit up. “Spice!” She wrested herself free of the sheets and blankets and threw her arms around Sophie.

  Spice hesitantly put her arms around Comet. Hailey backed off. She laughed knowingly. “I haven’t been myself these past weeks. Sorry.”

  “I’m pleased to see you, Comet,” Spice said with a smile. “Bet you’ve got a helluva story to tell.”

  Hailey gazed at her school friend. “You and I, Sophie, we were so innocent. We had no idea.”

  “No idea about what?” Spice asked.

  Hailey shook her head slowly and shifted her gaze from Sophie to Laura. Then she smiled. “Lucky, how do you like my spicy friend?”

  “An excellent Wraith. An excellent person.”

  Hailey nodded. She looked back at Sophie. “Thanks for coming after me.”

  “You bet, Comet. Now tell us what the hell happened to you these last three weeks.”

  The next day, Hailey wandered the ship, looking for her new friends. She found them sharing drinks in the game room. “No games?” Hailey asked.

  “I’ve had enough ‘games’ to last a lifetime. That sadistic pervert deserves to rot in prison. I can’t wait to testify,” Shondra said.

  “He’s not going to prison,” Hailey informed them.

  “What? Why not?” they exclaimed.

  “He’s dead.”

  The foursome fell silent. Hailey continued to tell what she knew after talking to Laura and Sophie. “He had invited some friends to come to the asteroid and ‘take possession’ of you, to use you as they pleased, trade you if they wished, and hurt you if you disappointed them.”

  “They were never going to take us home, were they?” Luna asked.

  “No. They would’ve kept you there until they tired of you, then tossed you out the airlock.”

  “What happened to Trip?” Mandy asked.

  “When he left us to go to his ‘super shelter bedroom’, the weakened wall in the last cell gave out. He got sucked out of the prefab when our door slammed shut. Didn’t have a chance. The whole place went to pieces.”

  “Except our storage closet,” Camille said thoughtfully.

  “Thanks to you, Agent Hailey,” Luna added.

  “It’s my honor to serve you citizens of the Empire. I wish I had my TDN right now. I never want to forget what a courageous team you are.”

  “What’s a TDN?”

  “Nevermind. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Get a drink, Hailey, and sit your Wraith ass down,” Shondra commanded.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hailey replied.

  Epilogue

  Hailey awoke in the Scabbard infirmary after surgery to replace her shorted-out implants. A nurse hovered over her, checking vital signs and injecting things into her IV. When she finally stepped away, Hailey saw a visitor in her doorway: Director Mendez.

  Seeing her struggle to find the remote to raise the head of the bed, Ram entered the room and retrieved the device from the table and handed it to her. Hailey raised herself to a sitting position, then settled and took a long look at Ram. “I, uh, didn’t expect to see you again,” Hailey said.

  “I felt responsible for putting you in that situation.”

  “You felt?”

  “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “Ah.”

  “I… regret what happened.”

  “Kinkade’s death must be a PR nightmare.”

  “What? No. His death has nothing to do with SWORD. As far as anyon
e knows, SWORD had no presence there.”

  “Four people know.”

  “They’ve been very well compensated for keeping that knowledge to themselves.”

  “What about the pilot, the friend, the crew? They’ve always been paid off by Kinkade to ignore what they see.”

  “They see the inside of a prison cell now. Hailey, I regret…what happened to you. I regret not getting you home to your mother when you were four years old. I regret you being recruited as a Wraith.” He paused. “I regret the humiliation you endured on this mission for which I was responsible.”

  “Papa,” Hailey started, then didn’t know quite what to say. Finally, she came up with something. “The memory of the ordeal will fade. My TDN was not functioning at the time. I’ll be OK.”

  “But your LM was also non-functional. I imagine you felt anxiety, maybe even despair.”

  “I felt lots of things, but not all of them negative.”

  “And how do you feel now?” Ram asked.

  “Physically, weak, but I’ll rebuild. Mentally,” she ran through the devices in her brain, feeling the comfort of being her old Wraith self again. Then she checked on her ability to override the limbic monitor. She felt, for the few seconds that she tested it, the way she did on the voyage home: grateful for Laura, Sophie, and her co-captives, relieved to be free and alive, yet extremely sad for all the people who had suffered under the twisted influence of Artemis Kinkade III over the years. She let the LM function normally and felt all the strong emotions fade to the background. “Papa,” she said finally, “I’m fine.”

  Hailey’s Comet 6: Memory

  By Selma J. Lewis

  From One Assignment to the Next

  The DRAC was going to crash. Hailey Ramirez could see that from the cargo bay where she fought off two thugs who were trying to force her out of the open side of the Dual Rotor Attack Craft. She glanced at the altimeter on the DRAC’s dash. They were not falling quickly, but the pilot’s struggles to gain altitude were less than successful.

  “Bail out!” she commed the pilot through her helmet comm. With a flick of her eye on the Heads Up Display, she redirected her voice to the outward synthesizer which made her voice sound ominous and robotic to the man and woman she was fighting. They were a burly pair, though she never figured out what kind of pair they were: siblings, spouses, mere associates in crime… it didn’t really matter. They were about to die.

  “Uh, folks, I suggest you forget about me and concentrate on your own survival. This beater is going down.”

  “Yeah, right!” the man retorted. “Nice try.”

  “Well, I consider that fair warning. I’ll be seeing you… or not.” Hailey stepped to the edge of the DRAC and scanned the landscape. The craft was nearly over a lake. She switched back to the pilot’s comm. “Can you get to the water before you bail?”

  “I’ll do my best,” he grunted. Hailey held on to the safety handle while she leaned out the side, watching for the best moment to jump. They were still fifty meters above the terrain and two hundred meters from the leading edge of the lake. Her proximity alarm alerted her to the advance of the male thug behind her. He shoved her out of the DRAC’s open side, but she held fast to the safety bar and swung to the outside of the craft. His momentum carried him over the edge.

  The burly man clawed at Hailey’s body, trying to arrest his fall, but he was unprepared, uncoordinated, and, ultimately, unlucky. His counterpart yelled, “Linus!”, as she rushed to the edge to see where he was. Hailey swung back onto the inside deck and recalculated their position. Forty-seven meters below, and one hundred meters ahead was her planned landing zone.

  “Agent Ramirez,” the pilot commed urgently. “It’s a small lake. Don’t know depth. We’ll have to bail right in the center to be safe. ETA…”

  “Thirty-five seconds,” Hailey finished. “Be ready!” Her implanted brain and body enhancements helped her measure, calculate, predict, and execute every move she made down to the millimeter and millisecond.

  The female thug, distraught over the loss of her partner, turned toward Hailey with fury in her eyes. “You still have a chance,” Hailey said through her synthesizer.

  “You bastard! I’ll kill you!” the woman replied.

  “Bastard? Usually, people call me a bitch.” Her foe threw herself at Hailey. Hailey was strong, but the woman had mass on her side. She shoved Hailey against the safety bar she still held. With her arms around Hailey, she tried to pry her away from the bar and throw her out of the DRAC. With a mental thank-you to her wrestling coach, Hailey slipped down and out of the woman’s grasp. “Really, this is your last chance to save yourself,” Hailey warned. Her internal countdown timer was at twenty-one seconds.

  An unintelligible grunt was the only reply. Hailey thought about making a snarky comment, but the poor criminal was already furious. She legitimately tried to redirect the woman’s attention to her own impending fate, but the thug remained locked in her fury. Finally, Hailey just hit her in the face, hoping to snap her out of it. The woman shook off the strike and swung her muscular arm at Hailey’s face in return. Hailey always wondered why people tried to hit her in the head when she was wearing a full-coverage helmet designed to absorb impacts far greater than a human strike.

  Hailey ducked and the woman’s swing missed; she teetered on the edge of the deck, spinning her arms wildly to regain her balance. Hailey grabbed her shirt and held her inside the DRAC. “Ten seconds, Corporal!” she reported to the pilot.

  “Copy. On my way out. Good luck, Agent!” The pilot had a parachute, but not much room to deploy it. They were forty-two meters high. If he could get it to open at all, it would slow his fall enough to make the impact on the water’s surface survivable.

  Hailey did not have a parachute, but she had her suite of mental and physical enhancements, not to mention her specialty suit made only for Wraiths by the geeks at SWORD. Hailey switched to voice for the last time. “Try to land vertically, feet first, to break the surface! Go!” she advised the woman as she let go and jumped out of the DRAC, head first.

  The woman watched Hailey fall. Instinctively, she grabbed ahold of the safety bar and kept her feet planted firmly on the deck. The DRAC fell more quickly without the pilot working to control it. It flew downward at a thirty-degree angle, quickly approaching the opposite shore of the small lake. The criminal’s hesitation cost her dearly. By the time she leapt out of the DRAC, it was too close to the shore. With her forward momentum, and her downward acceleration, she was headed for a landing spot in half a meter of water.

  The DRAC crashed on the weedy banks of the lake.

  Meanwhile, Hailey spent her three-point-oh-three-second fall to run calculations. The lake below her was only four meters deep, she estimated from the readings on her HUD, but she required five meters of depth to arrest her momentum. She ran the numbers and made a plan. Three seconds into the fall, she was perfectly vertical, head down, arms at her sides, and legs stuck together. Point-oh-three seconds later, her helmet broke the surface tension of the water, her reinforced spine absorbed the shock of the impact and her body followed her head into the lake. Instantly, she tucked her head, shifting her body to a nearly horizontal vector, avoiding the bottom of the shallow lake by a few centimeters.

  She pushed off the bottom and swam to the surface, intent on finding the pilot. His chute floated on the lake fifty meters away. She swam the distance easily. “Corporal,” she called. “You OK?”

  “Yeah,” he gasped, treading water nearby. “I think I broke my leg. Hurts like hell.”

  “I got ya,” Hailey replied. “Float on your back,” she ordered. She grabbed ahold of his collar and headed for shore. “Bet you didn’t expect hijackers on your flight today,” she said conversationally as she pulled him along.

  “These Frontier ‘Disputes’ are getting old,” he replied. “I’m glad my tour’s up in six months. When do you get out?”

  “Never,” Hailey replied.

  Laura Schwartz
met Hailey back at the airport where the DRAC had begun its fateful journey. “Those two were the last of the gang I was rounding up. They tried to get away on Corporal Miller’s flight.”

  “Y’did good work, Comet,” Laura replied. “Saved a lot of lives by getting these rebels off the streets.”

  “Until the next rebels take their places,” Hailey replied. “Miller’s right. These ‘disputes’ are getting old.”

  Laura broke the bad news. “You’re being sent to Sigmatál. It’s a fun little zinc mining colony that’s trying to fend off rebel infiltrators.”

  Hailey threw her head back. “Rebels, again?”

  “I think there will always be rebels in a society the size of the United Orion Empire. People are free to have their opinions, but when they try to force their agenda on a neutral colony against their will, those people need to be stopped.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “This one’s close. You can catch a ride on a cargo transport leaving Tanlo-Vicom in forty-four hours. You’d better get going if you’re gonna make the connection. I’ve brought your single here, so you can leave whenever you’re ready.”

  “It’s called Meteor, Lucky,” Hailey reminded Laura.

  “Maybe you should stencil that on the side so I can remember,” Laura teased.

  “Bye, Lucky,” Hailey said, exasperatedly.

  “Good luck, Comet,” Laura returned.

  Sigmatál

  Hailey entered the Sector Security office in the capital of Sigmatál. “Commander Kraus?” she asked the first person she saw.

  “The commander’s office is at the end of that hall,” the receptionist said, pointing to Hailey’s left. Hailey strode down the hall. She wore the black jumpsuit uniform of a SWORD agent, but not the armored suit. She did not want to intimidate the commander more than her natural Wraith vibe already did. She would change into her Chameleon Adaptive Armor when the need arose.