“And the big green one is the command ship,” Jax guessed.

Runstom angled their vessel in a direction that would take them away from the barge and the command ship equally and they edged forward slowly.

“Faster might be a good idea,” Jax said, realizing suddenly that he was gripping the arms of his chair so tightly that his fingers hurt.

“To run is to be chased,” the officer said quietly. “We’re just one of them for another minute or two, then we’re nothing but Xarp-wake.” He seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. “I’m surprised nothing has come across the comm. They must be keeping radio-silent.”

Jax thought about that as they inched ponderously away from the action. He thought about these gangbangers, who seemed to him like fictional space pirates, with their ridiculous weapons and uniforms. The fact that he had not really gotten a good look at any of them only served to fuel his imagination more. The very idea that they were so organized; able to cripple the barge and board it, all while maintaining such a committed level of stealth. Radio silence meant sticking to a plan, it meant discipline and competence. These were qualities one didn’t associate with anarchist space pirates.

He hadn’t noticed the wide but short flat panel that ran part-way across the center of the top of their viewport until it lit up and blinked red a few times. It stopped blinking and a series of numbers appeared on it.

Jax looked at Stanford and opened his mouth, about to ask him what they were looking at, but the officer had a grave look on his face as he stared at the numerical sequence that lit up the cockpit. “It’s message traffic on the comm.” He frowned and looked straight forward determinedly, as if he needed both eyes on the road at that moment. “I don’t know what it means.”

“Oh,” Jax said, realizing. “It’s code.”

Runstom cast him a sideways glance and Jax read interest on his face for a fraction of a second before he re-gripped the throttle and stared back into space. “Code?” he asked idly.

“Like a cypher.” Jax tried to get at his satchel, which was wedged between his thigh and the seat restraints. “Want me to write it down? We could try to—”

“Forget it,” Runstom said. “And hold on. Xarp in thirty seconds.”

“Stanford?” Jax said quietly. “Where are we going?”

“I flipped a coin,” the ModPol officer said. “We’re going to go find that superliner.”

CHAPTER 10

Runstom and Jax stared out of their wide, short viewport, marveling at the magnificent beast only a few hundred kilometers distant: Royal Starways Interplanetary Cruise Delight Superliner #5.

Of course, Runstom hadn’t actually flipped a coin. Jax saw him as a cop, through and through, and as such, he knew the officer left as little to chance as possible. Cops in the holo-vids were always saying that they “like” someone for a crime. The operator came to understand that this did not mean they enjoyed the company of the suspect in question, but rather that of all their choices, if they had to pick one person to be guilty, this was the one. That small “like” was a code-word that represented lots of reasoning, possibly some hard evidence, and, more often than not, a fairly large helping of instinct.

The ship was massive, like a floating city or a small moon (if a moon could be oblong in shape), a seemingly perfect oval when viewed from any angle. The clean, white surface was dotted by small half-bubbles of glass; although they only looked small in comparison to the rest of the drifting hulk. Up close, those little bubbles were a few thousand meters in diameter, giant pockets of different flavors of paradise. Endless beaches, tropical islands, quaint villages, majestic mountains, vast canyons, hip and sleepless clubs, rolling green hills. Any paradise you might dream of, you could find fabricated just for you in one of those immaculate domes floating through deep space.

They had started out by Xarping randomly once, then again. The third time, they headed to the last logged position of the superliner based on the notes Runstom had made, since that was the only reference they had. The officer explained that the first two jumps were necessary to throw off any pursuers. The gangbangers could easily plot a trajectory based on their first Xarp away from the barge. Following that trajectory at Xarp speed was extremely difficult, but by stopping, turning, and Xarping elsewhere, Runstom pretty much guaranteed their escape.

Once they came out of Xarp the third time, the wake of their target (in the form of radioactive discharge) left a clear path for them to follow. It didn’t take them long to catch up. The gargantuan ship was barely capable of Warp speeds, and most of the time she cruised around at sub-Warp. Her flight crew only used full Warp to shorten up some of the longer stretches between the outer planets.

Currently, she was making a lazy trek somewhere between the orbits of Barnard-4 and Barnard-3. There were numerous docking bays up and down the sides of her hull, used by small shuttles that ferried passengers to and from inhabited planets and moons wherever a sub-orbital docking station was absent.

“How are we going to convince them to let us dock?” Jax said as they took in the sight. “As in, dock our stolen-from-a-space-gang-who-stole-it-from-a-military-outfit personnel transport?” He shot a glance at Runstom. “Do you think they made markings on the outside? We haven’t even seen the outside of this ship!”

“Yeah,” Runstom said calmly. “I’m assuming they did.”

“Oh.” Jax tried to match the other man’s passiveness. He looked back at the superliner. “So you have a plan?”

“I tell the truth,” Runstom said. “Well, part of it anyway. We were in a ModPol vessel. It was attacked by a space gang. We escaped by commandeering one of the attackers’ ships and fleeing at Xarp speed. By luck we happened on the superliner’s wake, and we followed it. We’re almost out of fuel, and we just need to dock and ride it out until the cruise ship gets closer to B-3.”

“Huh. Sounds like a reasonable story, I suppose. Although, I just have to point out: it sounds a little … well … made up.”

“I can beam them my ModPol credentials. They’re coded to my genetic profile. Impossible to counterfeit. And if they need further corroboration, they can ask the fly-boy tied up in the back.”

The fly-boy in question – the Space Waste pilot they more or less kidnapped (Jax was pretty sure Runstom never read the man his rights) – was named Prosser. That was about the full extent of information they got out of him during the flight. Any attempts to communicate with the gangbanger usually resulted in a spew of vulgar threats against his captors, and given the reputation of Space Waste, they were inclined to believe him. After two attempts to question Prosser, Jax couldn’t bear to listen to the guy anymore. His nightmares were bad enough already.

Jax remained unconvinced of Runstom’s plan, but it actually worked out pretty well. They got authorization to dock with the cruise ship and had their gangbanger pilot (he refused to talk to anyone on the superliner, too, of course, but evidently his presence alone supported their story) transferred to the small brig on board. Runstom even convinced them to give their newly acquired transport ship a quick paint job. They had never gotten a chance to see the outside of it, not that it mattered to either of them. They got a room reserved for emergency use, down in the servants’ quarters, and managed to scare up some spare clothes.

“Well, then,” Jax said, after taking a look at their meager accommodations. “Now all we have to do is find a sat-transmitter somewhere on this boat that’s the size of a metropolis.” He sat down wearily on one of the bunks. “If only we had some kind of equipment that we could use to detect a transmitter. Not that we could detect one unless it was in use anyway.”