The Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad Vol. 3: Banjaxed Ceili Page 10

  The Lamborghini rises into the air. As soon as we clear the perimeter fence, Imogen guns the rocket engine and we scream off over the lake.

  With all its windows gone, the Lamborghini is effectively a convertible. A torrent of air pummels us. I have to turn my face sideways to breathe without choking. Imogen squints her eyes nearly closed. “Back to the spaceport?” she shrieks over the wind.

  “Yes!” I yell back.

  I suppose we’re both thinking the same thing: Finian now looks like the lesser of two evils.

  I glance back down at Flower Lake … and my heart sinks. Maude’s car is rising from the parking lot. The drone chases it for a short distance and then falls back.

  On the floor in the back, Sam sits up. He pulls himself onto the back seat. Awareness clicks into his eyes like the numbers lining up in a combination lock.

  “Come here and show me how to feed this belt into the gun,” I roar, knowing that he managed to do it before, to the extent of nearly emptying the ammo crate.

  “Uhhh? What? Oh. The gun. OK.”

  He scrambles between the seats, dappled with dried blood, but fully healed. The funny thing is he looks thinner. His cheekbones and hip bones stick out as if he’s been starving. I suppose the Gizmo must have got the energy to heal his wounds from somewhere.

  “You just hook it onto here, yes? Then you flip this lever.” He’s happy; he’s been handling firearms all his life. He edges me off the turntable and rotates it to point the gun backwards. Hunched over the sights, he yells, “Come on, baby!”

  “I didn’t know your mother was ill, Sam.”

  He tenses up. “She isn’t.”

  “Then why are you afraid she’s going to die? They treat them fairly well in prison.” At least I hope they do, because that’s where we’re going.

  “So I hear, man, so I hear.” He doesn’t look at me. “But she’s eighty-fucking-two. She gave birth to me when she was in her fifties. Yeah, telomerase repair and all that jazz … but eighty-two is still old, and people tend to die when they get old. Especially if they’ve recently lost a war and been shipped back to Earth under military guard.”

  I watch Maude’s car rise up through the air. “So you were going to steal the Gizmo and take it to her?”

  He nods.

  “Into a maximum security jail? Past the layers of guards and body scanners and feck knows what?”

  “I’d have figured it out, man. I always figure something out.”

  And his breath hitches in his chest. He turns his head away, but I can see wetness glistening on his eyelashes in the light of Arnold’s long evening.

  “You’re all right,” I tell him. I should hug him, but I’m Irish. I touch his arm awkwardly. “You’re all right, Sam.”

  “I’m sorry, man. You guys have been friends to me. This last year? Working construction? We had a good time. Yeah, the work was shit, but we had a good time, didn’t we?”

  “We did.”

  Maybe they still offer rock-breaking as a recreational activity in modern prisons.

  “But I just felt like I had to go through with it.”

  “Sam.” I have to ask. “Did you try to crash the car into me and Imogen on purpose?”

  “Huh?”

  “In the scrapyard.”

  He jerks around to face me, eyes wide. “No, man! The car was out of control. Did you think I was trying to hit you?”

  “It occurred to me.”

  “Fletch, if I wanted you dead, you would be dead.” Sam’s not boasting. His voice is flat. “I don’t want you dead. I just wanted the Gizmo, for my mom. So … OK. Back at the hotel, I put a few bullets into the door to keep you inside, so I could get away with the Gizmo. But I was not trying to kill you.”

  It would be easy to disbelieve him. Believing him is harder. But it is the right thing to do. “All right, Sam. I’m sorry. I had to ask.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I screwed up big-time.”

  “No use crying over spilt milk,” I say.

  Maude’s car is catching up. The tinted windscreen catches the sun. We’re flying over the frilly waves of cactus petals now, high above the usual lanes of traffic.

  Sam hunches over the gun. “Come on, you fucking bitch!” he screams. “Come and get it!”

  I pry him away from the gun, gently but firmly. “Sam, she’s not got any armaments on that. It’s just a company car.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she’d have shot us out of the sky by now if she did. Anyway, she’s not after the Gizmo.”

  “Huh?” he says, unable to understand how anyone could not be after the Gizmo.

  “Not everyone in the galaxy is interested in A-tech. She’s just doing her job. Suppressing bad publicity for her employers.”

  “That’s one hell of a job.”

  “It is.”

  Maude’s car slowly but steadily overhauls us. The driver’s side window cracks open. A gloved hand comes out with a gun in it, and shoots at us. Sam and I duck.

  “Imogen! Can this jalopy go any faster?”

  It can.

  Our journey back to the spaceport is a blur of speed, noise, and wind. High above the maze city, Maude brings her car alongside again and sideswipes us. She’s figured out we aren’t going to shoot her. So we do shoot her—her car, that is. Sam places a burst neatly in her engine compartment. That kills her rocket engine, so now she’s flying on momentum and anti-grav alone.

  We pull ahead, until the Lamborghini runs out of fuel.

  This happens when we’re just a mile or two from the spaceport. “I can make an unpowered landing,” Imogen says. She no longer has to shout over the wind, as we’re losing speed rapidly.

  “Do it.”

  We sink towards the factories and depots around the spaceport.

  Behind us, Maude’s car drifts down on the same glide path.

  “We’re going to overshoot the parking lot!” Imogen says. “I’ll have to land in the launch zone!”

  “Ah, feck.”

  We glide over the visitor parking lot. It seems as if we’re still going terrifyingly fast. The sun is setting beyond the spaceport, turning Arnold’s thin atmosphere orange on the horizon. We squeak over the terminal building, so low the wheels clip an antenna sticking up from the roof, and hurtle towards the ground.

  They haven’t bothered to asphalt the launch zone. It’s bare desert. The wheels touch, bounce, touch. Dust sprays up. We roll to a halt, half a mile from the terminal building.

  The squeal and crunch of metal pulls my gaze around.

  Maude didn’t make it over the terminal building! She’s landed on the roof, tearing a swathe through the forest of antennas and satellite dishes up there.

  I wonder for a second if some part of her wants to lose her job. Or maybe even wants to die. The suicide rate for stackers is quite high. .

  Suicidal adventures are not out of reach for the rest of us, however.

  I climb out of the Lamborghini’s windscreen. The doors aren’t working since Maude sideswiped us.

  The terminal’s sweep of windows frame a reflection of the sunset. Between us and the building stands a sleek, porpoise-shaped private spaceship whose matte black paint job swallows the light.

  Two NEPD vehicles stand a short distance away—a patrol cruiser and a cargo ship. I suppose that’s how they got the rocket launcher here.

  A clump of people stare in our direction, frozen in cringing poses.

  All except Finian, whom I recognize by his mustache as well as his uniform. He’s neither cringing nor frozen. He stumps towards the Lamborghini, carrying something—I expect it’s a weapon—in his right hand.

  Imogen and Sam get out.

  “Well, I guess this is it,” Sam says. “It was nice knowing you guys.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Sam, Imogen and I stand in a line, watching Finian plod towards us. Our shadows stretch towards the spaceport terminal, long and skinny, like the shadows of aliens.

  “I
hope there aren’t any TV cameras,” Sam mutters. “It would be kind of embarrassing to make the evening news wearing a swimsuit and a sunburn.”

  “I just wanted a normal life,” Imogen says.

  “You’re not alone, darlin’,” I say, although my own dream of owning a planet is not what you’d call a normal life. Or maybe it is. Maybe you have to get thousands of lightyears from the rest of humanity to have a normal life these days.

  Imogen looks up at me. The low-angled light flatters her sunburnt complexion. Her hair’s a rat’s nest of tangles and Krell wires and crystals, she’s wearing a borrowed swimsuit with a dirty shirt over it, and she’s never looked lovelier. “I have to ask you something, Fletch.”

  “Go ahead.” With half of my attention, I watch Finian walk towards us. He’s got a fair distance to cover and he’s in no hurry. One of the other people is coming after him now.

  “Why did you introduce me as your fiancée?”

  That grabs 100% of my attention. I gaze down at her, drinking in her beauty like a condemned man enjoying his last drink. “The truth is I’m in love with you. Sure I’m an idjit. All I’ve ever done is get you into trouble.”

  Her eyes go wide and soft. Then she recovers and says tartly, “I’m perfectly capable of getting into trouble on my own, buster.”

  It may be my last chance ever, so I bend down and kiss her. There’s not time for it to be more than a peck on the lips. I can’t tell if she’s kissing me back. At least she doesn’t pull away. Sam hoots salaciously.

  I straighten up and there’s Finian glowering at us. The sunset’s shining in his eyes, so he has to squint. It’s not a gun he’s carrying, it’s a Starbucks cup, but the gun is there at his hip.

  “Are you turning yourself in?” His voice drops for an instant. “I’m disappointed in you, lad.”

  Then the flash of the old Finian is gone. The other fella catches up to him: a tall man in a Nintendo t-shirt and jeans.

  Finian clears his throat and booms at us: “Hands in the air, miscreants!”

  Where are his minions? Oh, there they are, descending towards the roof of the terminal building in a police flitter. I wonder if Maude will get arrested, too.

  I suspect not. Because I recognize the man in the Nintendo t-shirt, and knowing what I now know, the odds are he’s Maude’s employer.

  “That’s my car,” he says. “I knew I ordered a Lamborghini. Huh, looks like they did a nice job with the customization. Where’d you find it?” This to me.

  “In a scrap yard,” I say.

  “Figures. Bunch of crooks on this moon.”

  “And most of them work for you,” I say. “What’s the world coming to when a man’s own employees steal his car?”

  The man frowns. “Who are you, anyway?”

  I have had enough of the Baron Short charade. “The name’s Fletcher Connolly.”

  The man looks from me, to Finian—who has a nametag that says CONNOLLY below his sheriff’s star—and back again.

  “My nephew,” Finian says, flatly. “He’s so dense he’s got his own fecking event horizon.”

  Sam sniggers. “And I thought I had problems with my family.”

  “That’s Sam Haddad,” Finian goes on. “The girl is Imogen Kincaid, a former Samsung employee.”

  The mention of Samsung makes the man in the Nintendo t-shirt smile. His name is Matthew Steiner and he’s a co-founder of Moto, one of Samsung’s competitors. The Nintendo t-shirt is an ironic reference to one of the companies Moto crushed with its immersive gaming experiences. They still call Moto a startup but it’s the biggest of the new A-tech exploitation companies challenging the Big Tech rulers of the roost. Matthew Steiner has his own tree on Treetop—and I suspect he has extensive holdings on Arnold, as well.

  Of course he’s a stacker.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” I say. I’m confronting a centibillionaire wearing nothing but a pair of Speedos. My life is complete. Lord, now let thy servant go in peace.

  And, of course, Imogen is also wearing a swimsuit, and has an A-tech artefact on her head.

  “I need that back,” Matthew Steiner says, pointing at the Krell artefact. “The King is kind of attached to it.”

  “And what’ve you got to do with the King?” I say rudely.

  Sam’s helping Imogen untangle the artefact from her hair.

  “He’s a friend,” Steiner says.

  “Bullshit,” Imogen says. “He’s Moto’s biggest individual shareholder.”

  I hear an echo of Maude’s voice: There’s no one else to work for in this galaxy… I glance at the terminal building. The police flitter has landed at the edge of the roof. One officer stands on its wing.

  “So the King uses you to do his dirty work, huh?” Imogen says.

  Steiner doesn’t like that. “The artefact,” he says crisply, holding out his hand. He expects us to walk over and give it to him.

  Sam meets my gaze, his eyebrows raised. I take the Krell artefact from him. Steiner’s eyes track it.

  “We were told by a source within your organization, Mr. Steiner, that this is just a toy,” I say, extrapolating from Maude’s contempt for the object. “But I don’t think it is, is it?”

  “It’s being researched,” he says. “If the research can’t proceed, we’ll never know.” He speaks as if never knowing is the worst fate in the world.

  “Ah yes,” I say. “The research. Would that be the research into the physiology of the Krell race, which is being undertaken at a location near here, with the assistance of aspiring biomodders?”

  Steiner starts to speak. I hold up the Krell artefact and give it a good twist. One of the fragile wires breaks with a snap. Steiner closes his mouth.

  “People have died to assist you with your research, Mr. Steiner. Their bodies have been thrown out with the rubbish. Yes, I know you’re about to say they signed disclaimers and waivers and all that shite. They accepted ten thousand pages of terms and conditions without reading them, and that puts you in the clear, I suppose.”

  Finian slurps from his Starbucks cup, his eyes hooded. His silence is all the encouragement I need to go on. I’m shivering in my near-nakedness as the sun goes down, and I’m as angry as I have ever been in my life.

  “It’s a sickness in my opinion, Mr. Steiner. And I’m not exempting myself. We’re starting to think A-tech can solve all the troubles of the universe. It’s like a religion, actually. And you’re very good at selling it to consumers.”

  Steiner actually smiles at what he takes for a tribute to his achievements.

  “But your business is heading for the rocks, isn’t it? Because we’re finding out that there are limits. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked. It’s getting harder and harder to reverse-engineer A-tech discoveries, because we do not understand the thought processes of the aliens who made the stuff. You’re very intelligent, I have no doubt, but you don’t understand how they thought, either.” I shake the Krell artefact. A crystal falls off. Steiner spasms. “Take the Krells. They were particularly inscrutable. The King’s had this item in his collection for ages, and you don’t even know if it was a toy, or an advanced aqualung, or the key to the seventh seal of the apocalypse.”

  “Hence this research project,” Steiner says with forced calm.

  “Yes, this bloody evil research project! Operate on human beings so they look like Krells, and maybe they’ll become Krells, and we’ll finally find out what was in their heads! Build them and it will come, is that the idea? It’s nothing but a fecking cargo cult.”

  I’m not really angry at him. I’m angry at myself. Have I not worshipped at that same altar, forsaking all else to pursue A-tech, because I want to ascend to alien status myself: Fletch, planetary overlord?

  “Jesus, we’re primitives,” I choke out.

  Steiner’s hot to defend his project. “DNA does actually affect neurological function,” he says.

  Imogen lets out a cry of disgust. It takes me another minute to realize what Steiner just
said. It’s not just surgery. They’re implanting alien DNA into human beings–and that’s probably why this artefact matters so much to them! It’s got loads of DNA on it from long-dead Krells using it as a snorkel.

  Click. Finian unfolds his arms and opens one of his enormous fists. A rubberized cylinder expands into a whippy baton. “Thank you, Mr. Steiner, for confirming that you are conducting illegal genetic engineering experiments,” he says. “Your confession has been recorded and transmitted to a secure server. You have the right to remain silent …”

  Steiner stares at him like the desert itself rose up and spoke with a human voice. “You’re supposed to arrest them. Do your fucking job.”

  “My job is to uphold the law,” Finian says. “Which you just admitted to breaking.”

  “Talk to my lawyers,” Steiner says without missing a beat. “And give me that fucking artefact.”

  I pretend to ponder it for a moment. Then I pass the Krell artefact to Imogen. She crushes it in her bare hands, twisting the wires until they snap, and drops it to the ground. I step on it, grinding it into the dust. The little crystals disintegrate under my heel. It’s so old.

  A little voice in my head wails that I’m destroying millions of dollars. But there’s a heady satisfaction to the deed. The look of dumbfounded horror on Steiner’s face makes it all the sweeter.

  Even Finian stares in astonishment. Knowing my history, he must think I’ve lost my wits. Me—destroying A-tech?

  Of course he’s got no idea that I have another A-tech artefact, worth a hundred times more, stuffed down my Speedos.

  Steiner makes a convulsive movement towards us. Finian lowers his baton to block his way. The A-tech mogul spins on his heel. “Happy now?” he barks at Finian. “You fucking Luddite.”

  “Insulting the badge won’t get you anywhere, Mr. Steiner.” Finian takes a pair of handcuffs of his belt. “It’ll be best for yourself if you come quietly.”

  Steiner steps back. Hands on his hips, he sneers at the aged Irish sheriff with his funny accent and his white moustache. I wonder if he has any idea who Finian used to be. “You clearly didn’t get the memo,” he says. “The NEPD was created to enforce law and order.”