Heart of Darkness

[Jane Hartman]

Heart of Darkness

Freeport 4, Magellan

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Gravity was always first. Curling around her ankles, tugging at the Executioner's joystick, trying to pitch the little fighter up and back out of the Freeport docking bay and toss it, spiraling, into the inky black of Magellan lingering behind it like a widow's veil. Near enough to twenty years in space, and the transition to station gravity still left her feeling like a sixteen year old sneaking her first drink, senses buzzing in faint objection as her organs settled back into their proper places, blood dropping back into her feet. It was the sort of thing she regularly found herself trying not to think of and so, with the certain sort of inevitability such things have, found herself thinking of little else. There were, in retrospect, Hartman reflected, certain advantages a heavy transport bridge had over a fighter cockpit.

Not enough to make her go back. There weren't enough advantages in a dozen Manhattan brothels to drag Jane Hartman back on to the bridge of a transport. She tugged the cockpit release, sending the plexiglass screen sliding up and away from her, undid the myriad buckles and straps tying her to the spacecraft and - slower then she would have liked - clambered down the well-placed stairs to the docking bay floor, stepping onto the metal with a shock that ran up her flight-cramped legs like an elevator.

Across the bay, an order fighter's landing gear kissed metal, engine comically silent in the confines of the bay. Hartman scowled, tugged the creases out of her flight suit and made her way over. It was not a welcome sight, all sharp lines and a strange, twisting finish that seemed to absorb the light around it, bulbous weapon pods hanging from its wings like chicks caught in the talons of a vulture. Not a military craft. Not in the sense she knew them. The Order fought their wars in the shadows. It was just a right pity that they refused to stay there. But a debt was a debt, and that went beyond her own dislikes. More was the pity.

Bolevara was going to have some explaining to do after this one. And he won't be alone. Behind her, the Executioner's cockpit slid shut.

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