The Dark Run Ch. 02

Jarek trudged over to her, falling twice, and peered down the hole that she had cleared in the garbage. There was a small circular hatch at the bottom of it.

"Why the hell would they-" he started to say.

"The garbage haulers use it," Harmony said as she entered another access code. Jarek had just enough time the register the fact that they were at the bottom of the station and that this was an external hatch before Harmony pulled it open. He almost screamed, thinking for a panicked and completely irrational second that she had forgotten that he couldn't survive in exposed space, but then he saw a second hatch at the bottom of a short tunnel. He realized what Harmony had done, and he was not the least bit surprised when she opened the second hatch and lowered herself into the helm bay on the top deck of their waiting ship. He still didn't understand how she managed such complex multitasking, but while they had been running from the police and even fooling around in the closet, Harmony had undocked from the station mooring and flown herself down here.

Laughing, he followed her down the ladder, pulling the garbage room hatch closed. His stomach lurched again as he passed though the station's gravity barrier and into the weightless interior of the ship. Harmony had already drifted over to the pilot's chair, which she insisted on using even though flying the ship was no different for her than walking was for anyone else. He closed the top hatch of the ship and sealed it, and then he shoved off from a bulkhead and shot himself toward his own chair next to Harmony's. He could already hear the engines spinning up, and he had just barely strapped himself in before Harmony released the docking clamps and thrust the freighter down and away from the station.

"Neat trick, but you're cleaning up the mess." Jarek said as stray garbage floated around the bay.

"Fair enough," Harmony replied.

Jarek leaned over to kiss his wife, but he stopped suddenly. It wasn't the smell wafting from her clothes that stalled him, but rather the sight of three bristling gunships dropping below the edge of the station and heading straight for them.

"This is the Pran IV Police," a harsh voice blared through the bay's speakers. "Heave to and prepare to be boarded."

"Well that's not good," Jarek said. "Is it just me, or is security a wee bit tighter than the last time we were here."

"They're not security," Harmony said as she fired more thrusters and spun the ship sharply downward. The main engines fired at the same time, and Jarek was slammed back against his chair. On the monitors in front of him, he saw three more ships join the first cluster in the pursuit.

"Yeah, I guessed that. Who are they, then?"

"I don't know yet," Harmony snapped, and Jarek realized that talking to him was probably not high on the list of the dozens of tasks that she was simultaneously performing. "I'm trying to figure that out," she added in a softer tone.

Jarek left her alone for a moment, but then she started displaying information on the screens around him. The basic body of the gunships was the same that security forces all over the Run used, but Harmony was also analyzing the weapon configurations and even the expert combat maneuvers of the squadron. It didn't take long for the answer, unbelievable as it was, to become obvious.

"Fuck me," Jarek said. "Settlement Corps? There hasn't been a military patrol in this sector since... There's never been a patrol in this sector. Why the hell are they after us?"

Harmony was quiet for a moment, even after an either very poorly or very carefully aimed warning shot glanced off of the cargo bay hull in front of their windows.

"Jarek," she finally said in an ominously quiet tone, and he froze. She only started sentences with his name on two occasions. One was to explain something that she thought a child should have understood, which was often, and the other was when something deadly serious was about to happen. This was going to be the latter, he knew already.

"When I told you what I found in the computer last year, I didn't exactly tell you everything."

"Umm, what?" Jarek asked, too dumbstruck to say anything else as another energy bolt barely missed. Orders to heave to were screaming out of every speaker and computer panel in the bay. "What are you talking about?"

Harmony turned to face him, and gut wrenching emotion poured over her face.

"They aren't after us, baby. They're after me."

To be continued...