A Planet For Emily

CHAPTER FIVE

“Okay, so jacking attempts will almost always involve you.”

“They – they will?” said Suzanne alarmed.

It was the next day and they were in the top cargo hold with Igor and Ira setting up partitions around them, according to the floor layout Suzanne had selected.

“That’s right. They’ll try to hack Max through the onboard network connections and at the same time one of them will grab you from behind like this.” Rods grabbed Suzanne around the neck and put a small piece of plastic pipe to her neck. The hold was a gentle one, but when Suzanne tried to push against his arm and turn, she thought that it was like trying to struggle with a tree ¬– or at least what she imagined struggling with a tree must be like. She had never encountered one outside a simulation pod. Rods, for his part, was aware of the softness of her body and her scent but, having so recently made such a fool of himself over a woman, he was not about to make a fool of himself again so soon, and with someone else’s fiancé. He dragged his mind back to the job.

“What should I do?” asked Suzanne, unaware of any of the byplay.

“Nothing. It’s important to do nothing. Don’t struggle or attempt to get away. You can talk to them, however. They’ll be yelling threats into the intercom. Things like” – Rods raised his voice for realism – “‘open the door or I’ll cut her. Open the door or she starts bleeding!’ And they‘ll be really shouting.”

“More than you,” said Suzanne, who felt deafened.

“Way more than me. Maybe they’ll also tell you to shut up and ‘don’t resist and you won’t get hurt’.”

“But can they cut me with that pipe thing you have.”

“Cruise, pay attention. This is just a demonstration tool I keep around. Believe it or not, I don’t want to cut your throat – not yet anyway. No, it’ll be some piece of plastic they’ve smashed to give it a hard edge, or even a toothbrush handle they’ve cut and lightly glued back together before they got on board. So, as I was saying they’ll be yelling stuff like ‘shut up bitch’ to you and ’you want this on your conscience, do you’, into the intercom. 'She’s a real pretty thing’.”

“You said something nice to me.”

“It’s what they’d say, and you don’t thank them. You’re a hostage, remember, and you’ve got something nasty and pointy at your throat. Let’s get with the program.”

“I’m a hostage. Nasty; pointy; alright.”

“Now the ship is being jacked and they’ve got you. They’re saying things like ‘Real shame if I had to cut her man’. And it’d all be loud.”

“I get the picture, but I do nothing.”

“Correct. Just go with him. He may push you towards the door or he may hang back a few paces. The one thing you can do if you want, is to tell him he’s going to die.”

“Is he going to die?”

“Yep. He has just a minute, maybe less, to let you go and throw away the weapon or he dies.”

“But wait, I’m being held tightly by him – aren’t I in danger?”

“Maybe if he moves suddenly, but I have done it before, and the guys died and the cruise directors were unharmed.”

“My many predecessors?”

“Yes, two of your predecessors, in fact. Two attackers down, no cruise director casualties.”

“But how does my attacker die?”

“Never you mind about that, Cruise. The less you know about that the better. You can talk to him, tell him that I’ll never open the door to save you, and you have a fiancé and it’s not me, and we hate each other, or whatever. You can tell him that if he doesn’t release you he dies. Tell him this isn’t a regulated ship. We’re a long way from Zard controlled space. He messes up, we kill him and put the body out the airlock. One less person at the other end, one more vacancy for someone else.”

“You want me to say all that.”

“You won’t be able to say all that. I’m just giving pointers. But if you say something you may feel more comfortable later - 'cause this guy is going to die on top of you. You may want to feel that you tried to save him.”

“I see. I’ll certainly remember the hating part.”

“You’re trying to make a desperate man give up a big-risk gamble, which isn’t likely to happen, but the hating part may help. Assuming it doesn’t work and he dies, you’ll feel his grip go slack. He won’t have time to cut you. Fall to the ground but fall clear so you’re not trapped underneath his body. When that happens all the lights in the hold out here will go off. Jackings always happen at night after we’ve dimmed the living area lights, so there won’t be much light to start with, but by the time you hit the floor it’ll be pitch black.”

“I stay there?”

“No. Whenever you go out into the passenger area you must have these echo-infrared goggles in your pocket. They are kept in the locker by the door. If you forget Max will prompt you, and she won’t let you into the passenger area until they’re in your pocket.”

“I fall to the ground and put on my goggles. Then what do I do?”

“Make for the door and put yourself on the other side of it. As it’s pitch black no one else can see. Igor and I will come out the other way. Igor has infrared vision and I’ll have goggles. Then we sort out the other jackers. Once we’ve cleaned up, and taken away the bodies and prisoners, you come out and reassure the passengers. The crew has full control of the ship after an incident. We will arrive at our destination at the time previously advised. No further details will be given for security reasons but there will be no further events. Go back to sleep.”

“The captain I hate says no further details; we will arrive at our destination as previously advised. Go back to sleep. I can do that.”

“You’re meant to say you hate me to the jackers not the passengers.”

“I’ve just been in a jacking attempt; I’ll be upset; I won’t be thinking straight – but wait, why am I in the passenger section at night in the first place? You said not to come out after dinner unless it’s an emergency.”

“Good point. It will be an emergency. Probably a medical emergency. A woman, or a child maybe down with an unspecified but violent sickness because they’ve been slipped some poison. You’ll think food poisoning.”

“This sounds dire.”

“Only the patient can go through the door into the crew quarters – an exception is a mother with a sick child – and they won’t be able to move beyond the sick bay. Max has lots of tricks up her sleeve to ensure they don’t. But the whole point behind the poisoning is to get you to come out. If they can’t get back inside the crew quarters then they threaten to kill you. We’ll run through it a few times, with me playing the part of the nasty jacker who wants to slit your throat.”

After playing at jacking for an hour or so, Rods took Suzanne off the ship, to a large, mined-out gallery, facing a pile of low-grade ore that was not worth the trouble of the colony to process. He gave her a pistol and earmuffs. Suzanne had seen guns in films, like everyone else, but had never been anywhere near one and did not care for the development.

“Just as I don’t want you panting around in the background if and when we do find your sister, I don’t want to have to break off fighting for my life to show you where the safety catch is,” Rods had said.

“Will we be fighting for our lives?”

“Can’t see how we would be, but I’m not ruling it out, and that means you should know where the safety catch is.”

Suzanne banged away at the ore pile, which she could not fail to miss, with what Rods called a Glock G-20 and then with a lighter, more compact weapon which he called a SIG Sauer. Suzanne was not enthusiastic about pistol shooting, but she was sure that she was better off and certainly a better shot with the lighter weapon.

“If I have to take someone to a fight, Mr. SIG Sauer is my choice,” she told Rods. “He’s cute and easy to handle. I can hit stuff with him.”

“Maybe. Mr. SIG Sauer has superficial attractions, I admit, and he’s fine in his place for precision work, but Mr. Glock is really your choice. I don’t see you shooting much unless you’re up real close. So, you’ll have time for one shot, and then you really want Mr. Glock as your steady, reliable partner.

“The way I see it, you flash that winning smile of yours, let them come up close, maybe a body length, then say ‘get a bang out of this’ and blow them away.”

“Why should I say anything at all?”

“You see people make remarks all the time in films, before or after shooting someone.”

“If I’m going to shoot anybody, I’ll be too horrified to say anything.”

When Rods finally released her from training, she went back to her main job of organizing the cruise and, with help from Max and the files, organising the ship for its paying guests. She said a quick goodbye to her new friends on Fin’s Reef, Emily in particular, knowing that the ship’s schedule would take her back there in a week, and worked like a demon on the hop back to Lucifer III. The work paid off. With the partitions in place, the upper hold of the Maxwell looked like the interior of a low-rent passenger liner that might have sailed the oceans in earth’s distant past. There were printed signs pointing the way to the bathrooms – an innovation of Suzanne’s of which Rods approved – plus printed notices in each room explaining how the beds would not be made during the trip, and other notices about the dos and don’ts of being a cruise passenger. Rods glanced in a couple of the rooms and decided that his new cruise director had handled the details of beds, chairs and coffee machines well. There were even plans for a table tennis tournament, using one table stored in the rec room. He walked through to the crew quarters meaning to say something, only to be startled by a whole new Suzanne in the corridor.

“Wow!”

She smiled. “You like it?” She wore a blue skirt, a grey shirt with turned up sleeves, a hostess cap and was wearing makeup for the first time since Rods had known her. She had also turned blonde.

“You look great!”

“You’ve actually said something nice to me.”

“Enjoy the sun while it lasts, Cruise. So where did all this come from?”

“One of my predecessors was my size and left clothes in lockers on C Deck. I also found the blonding agent. Couldn’t do much about the shoes.” She was still wearing her ship-board slip-ons.

“We can find shoes at one of the ports, but there is a problem in that you now look too attractive.”

“That’s a problem?”

“Uh-huh! A few of our passengers are hopping to an all-male mining colony. There was a time when those colonies used to offer young ladies as an incentive to get guys there.”

“Oh.”

“And regular visits from those same young ladies. No one does it now, ’cause the guys are lucky to even get a berth with Earth Station so crowded, but they’ve heard the stories and they’re hoping. They’re guys. They’re always hoping. And where they’re going they won’t see a real woman for a long time.”

“Do you want me to switch back?”

“No. Igor and I’ll be in the security enclosure.” To take on passengers, Rods set up a small area with a portable scanner the passengers had to walk past. “Any problems and we’ll be there in moments. Igor and I can make them back off.”

“You’re not going to hit anyone in front of the other passengers are you?”

“Me? I’m supposed to be a lamb, remember.”

Suzanne was in her fourth day as a cruise director when she met her first passenger. She had no idea what she was getting into when she agreed to work for Rods, but the experience pushed concerns about her fiancé and even the gnawing fears for her sister, into the background for a time. It helped that The Max offered tolerable value for money. Her passengers were getting their own beds and couples even their own, small rooms for the trip – rare for the down rim operators carrying people fleeing Earth Station to anyplace that would take them. There were three other ships operating regularly in the same area of space, Suzanne later discovered, and two of those had taken full advantage of those refugees, and the traders at each port trying to scratch a living. No one in the area would recommend them or deal with them unless they had to. The third, The Kyiv, run by an older husband and wife team was ethical, but The Kyiv was too slow and small to take many passengers.

That left The Max and a full roster for Suzanne’s first hop as a cruise director. Her initial job was to sit at a small table with a screen to check in her passengers in a narrow walkway to The Max’s main airlock. Rods was in his screened off area to her left, with the scanner and temporary door. If the passengers and their luggage checked out, they got through the door to the open airlock hatch.

Suzanne had just processed her third passenger and was enjoying herself when a shadow fell across the table. Someone grabbed her wrist. It was a gigantic young man with massive arms and shoulders, a spade beard, and small, mean black eyes. Behind him was a string of young men giggling over their leader’s actions. Suzanne had noticed them before but thought they were further back in the queue.

“Hey!” spluttered the passenger who should have been next.

“Now you’re a pretty thing,” said beard. “What’s your name?”

“I’m the cruise director. Let go of my hand.”

“She’s the cruise director, boys,” he called out. “That’s a new name for what you do, isn’t it? I’ve heard about girls out here helping out us lonely miners.”

Suzanne stared at him coldly, fairly sure that Rods was not far away.

“Take your hand away, please,” she said quietly.

“Oh now, come on lady,” said Beard, not moving his hand. “I know the deal here. I need some entertainment.” His friends sniggered.

“You heard the lady!” said Rods. He had emerged from a door in the security enclosure a few paces from Suzanne’s table, with Igor in front.

“Oh no,” said Beard, in mock horror. “The security.” He put his hands up to his shoulders. “Take me away.” His chorus line was, by this time, in a continual state of merriment. The other passengers in the queue looked apprehensive. “Why don’t you and tin pile here vanish, I’m talking to this young lady.” Beard put his hand on the table again, but Suzanne moved hers.

“Igor, bring him.”

Igor extended one hand to grab beard by the right wrist then pulled him towards the enclosure door. Beard’s knowing smile turned into a frown. He tried to pull back only to be yanked almost off his feet.

“You wait until I get in there!” Beard roared, as he was dragged through the door which Rods closed.

“This’ll be good,” sniggered one of the chorus, “Maceman’ll pound that guy to a pulp.”

There was shouting then several dull thuds. The enclosure door burst open and Maceman flew through it, to land beside Suzanne’s table, doubled up in agony, one eye already starting to swell. The chorus line fell abruptly silent, aghast. Rods came out rubbing his right-hand knuckles.

“He took some putting down,” he muttered. “My friend, I’m glad we’ve had this talk about the in-flight amenities.” The big man glared wordlessly at him. “We also have an on-board code of behavior which comes down to guys like you being nice, or Igor and I come around to discuss the issue in our own colorful way. You gentlemen!” Rods pointed to the chorus line, who were doing their best to vanish into the concrete. “Drag your friend here out of the way of the other passengers and wait by the bags. You’re all going through last. Now, move!”

They nodded and hauled their leader away. Rods turned to see Suzanne frowning at him.

“Whaaat?” he said, spreading his arms. “I didn’t hit him in front of the other passengers.” He went back to the security enclosure shutting the door, damaged by Maceman’s abrupt exit, with difficulty.

“Does the captain know about that man,” asked one woman in the queue.

“Madam, that was the captain,” said Suzanne.