Titan Run

by Mark Kertzman

conclusion

Several minutes later, I entered the station. At the end of the accessway, Susannah was floating, stock still.

“Susannah? Are you all right?”

That was a big mistake. As I got closer, I saw a big man, backed by two more. All three of them were tough-looking, miners or prospectors. Their clothing was worn, their faces hard and full.

The big one had a hint of red in his hair, but it only made him look tougher. He had a strong work-scarred hand on Susannah’s shoulder, and he looked over it at me, a smirk on his face. “So, this your new loverboy?” he asked Susannah.

“No, of course not, Paddy,” she replied.

I knew he would catch up with us, but I had miscalculated how quickly. Now I was in the middle of it, whether I liked it or not. He had brought some of his prospector friends to help him out in teaching me a lesson. You see, out here, if you messed with another man’s woman, you paid for it with a little of your own blood.

“Listen, uh, Mr. O’Grady. I know you believe this is a matter of the Code. I have to tell you it is nothing of the sort. I had nothing to do with your wife. As I already explained to you, she contracted me to bring her to Titan, and that’s all.”

“I don’t believe a word you say, pilot.” Paddy growled at me, still gripping Susannah’s shoulder hard.

“Well, then, is that going to be a problem?” I steeled myself for what was coming.

“Yeah, it’s going to be a problem.” Paddy acted suddenly, shoving me back, and sending me spinning into the accessway wall.

Even though the shove into the far wall was a little stunning, I shook it off and came right back at Paddy, taking him high with a straight-armed shove. He flipped backwards, and as I went past, I got a kick into one of his henchmen.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Susannah hit the other one, not hard, but enough to send him reeling. Then, as I flew past, heading up the long docking area accessway for the station proper, I realized that Susannah was following me.

We were both skimming the walls, pulling on handholds as fast as we could. Behind us, I heard the prospectors sorting themselves out to give chase.

We hit the topside hatch. I undogged it, but at the last moment got all chivalrous and threw her through it before me. Paddy was coming up fast, like a tubby bat, his arms spread wide to grab whatever he could.

Levering myself through the lock, I waited for him to catch up. Just as soon as he was in range, I let loose with a fist full into his face. The blow stunned him, sending him crashing into the coaming around the hatch. I slammed it shut.

The station opened out, passageways extending in four different directions. I pulled Susannah into the one headed for the main shopping arcade, hoping a crowd would give us cover.

“What are you doing?” I whispered urgently as we avoided passers-by.

“What does it look like? Paddy doesn’t care about the truth; he just wants to punish us.”

“Yeah, well, I think that I can take care of myself, but you have to go back.”

“No!”

Just as we reached the end of the shopping arcade, I could see Paddy and his two associates crowding through the lock in pursuit.

“They saw us,” I told her. We floated through another hatch, and into a larger concourse lined with shops, cafeterias, and people. Most of the crowd were roughnecks, but there were quite a few scientific types, administrators, and pilots here, too.

“Come on.” She had gripped my arm tightly, but I slowed her down.

“Let’s mingle with the crowd.”

We made our way more sedately down the length of the concourse, hoping we would be lost from view. That didn’t happen though; probably not enough people to mix with. Our pursuers kept on coming right at us, pushing the occasional passerby out of the way. People were beginning to mutter behind us as they saw trouble float by.

Beyond the shopping area was a combination hydroponics bay and recreation area. There was no one in it now, and that was to our advantage. As soon as I cleared the hatch, I pushed Susannah to one side, then took off in the opposite direction.

“Hey!” she shouted at me.

“Stay there!” I yelled at her, taking cover behind some large flowering vines.

“What are you doing?” She panicked and began to pull herself up towards me.

The hatch opened again, and Paddy pulled his bulk through. He saw her, and flew to meet her. “Get off me!” she screamed, struggling with him.

I waited a beat for the henchmen to catch up, then I leaped from cover.

I took one of the prospectors with my forearms to his head, flipping him over and slamming him into a support stanchion. As he groaned in pain, I launched myself at the second heavy helper. He was ready for me but still couldn’t prevent us from careening into a hydroponics rack.

I took a couple of punches to the stomach but held on, then snapped his head back as we hit. His skull gave a loud crack as it contacted a solid metal support beam. His eyes defocused, and he slumped in my arms.

Disentangling myself from the vegetation and the prospector, I reoriented in space, then launched again for Paddy and Susannah. They were a writhing mess of limbs, floating towards the other end of the bay. Susannah was giving as good as she got, but couldn’t last forever.

Fortunately, all I needed was a second while Paddy was distracted by her resistance. With all my strength, I chopped hard on the back of his neck as I crashed into his back. He grunted once, then very slowly released his grip on her.

“Are you all right?” I asked, pulling her free from her now-unconscious husband.

“Okay,” she wheezed. She looked a little shaken up, but not seriously damaged. “I’m not used to this.”

I assumed she meant fighting in zero-g. Nursing a sore stomach, I chuckled. “Yeah, isn’t it fun? It’s like wrestling with an upside-down octopus.”

“You seem to be doing all right. What now?”

Taking her hand, we headed for the other end of the bay, so we could leave the big bruisers down here. Proceeding into another deserted access passageway, I shrugged again. “What do you mean, we?”

She laughed, but it didn’t sound funny. I had to stop and look at her.

“You can’t leave me. We have to go — now. My husband is going to be even angrier when he wakes up. He’s going to want to get back at both of us, and we’d better not be here when that happens.”

While I saw some sense in that, I picked my next words carefully. “No, Susannah. Even though your husband Paddy was wrong, we are through with this. We fought in a fair fight, and now the Code says we’re done. I’m finished.”

“But you have to help me. I can’t stay here; it’s not safe.”

“You hired me to get you here, and I did.”

“Sure, but here is no good. Paddy knows where I am, and he won’t stop.”

“That is not my problem.”

“It is now. The hell with the Code. It doesn’t help me. I can help myself.”

“I’m sure you can,” I answered wryly, turning away from her to undog the next hatch.

“Don’t patronize me, Ryan. You and I are going to go back to your ship, and we’re going to get out of here. Either that, or I am going to take your ship without you.”

The skin on the back of my neck crawled, a sudden warning that I knew was too late. Very slowly, I turned to face her.

From somewhere, she had produced a little pistol. It was an elegant chrome revolver with stained sandalwood grips, probably a thirty-eight, very ladylike. The dark snub-nosed muzzle stared at me from her double-handed grip. She was sighting down the barrel and into my eyes, looking scarily competent.

“Have you been carrying that thing the whole time?”

She nodded in response.

“So, why didn’t you just use it to get away from your husband?”

Again, that sharp, brittle laugh rang out. “And face the Code’s justice? I wouldn’t survive a week in Ceres if I plugged Paddy. You, on the other hand, won’t be so missed. Now move it, or I will put a hole in you and take your pathetic little ship.”

“Sure,” I muttered. Very slowly, so as to not upset the nice lady with the gun, I turned back to the open hatchway. Equally slowly, I pulled my body just past the large steel hatch.

Timing is everything.

As I went past the door, I grabbed its edge, and flipped behind it.

Susannah hesitated, just a heartbeat, unsure of what I was doing. That was all I needed.

With my legs gathered underneath me, I slammed the hatch shut in her face. She did the only thing that she could think of, and fired shot after shot, right into my face, emptying the gun.

Things didn’t work out as planned, however. You see, the pressure-resistant steel and polymer door was now between me and that gun. The bullets whined off of it and pinged away in all directions. The pressure hatch was tough stuff, but the hydroponics compartment had fragile plastic panels, to let sunlight in.

She banged on the hatch, but I had already slapped the emergency override, locking it.

“You bastard!” I heard her yell, very faintly.

Pointing down to the other end of the bay, I yelled back at her, “You’d better get out of there. The walls could go at any minute.”

After a moment’s fruitless pounding, she turned and swarmed away from me. A few moments later, alarms started to ring throughout the station, indicating an explosive decompression.

* * *

The rescue team couldn’t save anyone. All they could do was recover the four bodies. The other lock had slammed shut automatically, overridden by the decompression alarm.

Maintenance was pretty upset, what with the mess. However, the local Patrol Office didn’t even bother with me once they found out it was a matter of the Code. They let people sort out their own problems out here, just as they do in the Belt. One of the patrollers did agree with me, though, that it was a pretty stupid thing to do, to fire off a loaded handgun in the station. We may have to settle our own differences from time to time, but going all the way to lethal force in a fragile environment is just dumb. Maybe there is a lesson in that.

Greed had blinded me from seeing something important. The Code keeps us together, out here at the cold edge of civilization, but it also imprisons us into roles we can barely get out of. I guess I’d never understood how important freedom was, even if getting it meant risking everything else.

I’ve stopped going back to Titan Station. There are too many ghosts for me. That was the last Titan run I ever did.