Vishby sat at the controls and ran a brisk prelaunch, whistling softly through his gills to shut out K-Max’s jibes.
This K-Max fellow doesn’t realize how much trouble he’s in, thought Turnball, the idea pleasing him tremendously. He felt empowered.
“Excuse me, Mr. K-Max, is it?”
K-Max squinted in what he thought was a threatening fashion, but the actual effect was to make him seem shortsighted and perhaps constipated. “That’s right, prisoner. K to the Max. The king of maximum security.”
“Oh, I see. A sobriquet. How romantic of you.”
K-Max twirled his buzz baton. “There ain’t nothing romantic about me, Root. You ask my three ex-wives. I am here to cause discomfort and that is all.”
“Oops,” said Turnball playfully. “Sorry I spoke.”
This little exchange gave Vishby a chance to get the shuttle out of the dock and one of the shuttle’s other occupants a moment to orientate himself and realize that his old leader was about to make his move. In fact, of the twelve rough-and-ready specimens locked down behind the shuttle’s security bars, ten had served under Turnball at one time or another, and most had done very nicely by it, until their capture. Once Vishby had been reactivated, he had easily ensured that these prisoners were allocated seats.
It will be nice for the captain to have friends around him in a time of crisis, he reasoned.
The most important friend was the sprite Unix B’lob, who sat directly across the vulcanized walkway from Turnball. Unix was a grounded sprite with cauterized nubs where his wings should be. Turnball had dragged Unix out of a troll pit, and the sprite had served as his right-hand fairy ever since. He was the best kind of lieutenant, as he never questioned orders. Unix did not justify or prioritize: he was equally prepared to die fetching Turnball a coffee as he was stealing a nuclear warhead.
Turnball winked at his subordinate to let him know that today was the day. Unix did not react, but then he rarely did, icy indifference being his attitude toward pretty much everything.
Cheer up, Unix, old man, Turnball longed to call. Death and mayhem will shortly follow.
But he had to content himself with the wink for the moment.
Vishby was nervous, and it showed. The shuttle sputtered forward in lurchy hops, scraping a fender along the docking jetty.
“Nice going, Vishby,” snarled K-Max. “Are you trying to crush us before the probe does it?”
Vishby flushed, and gripped the rudder stick so tightly his knuckles glowed green.
“It’s okay. I’ve got it now. No problems.”
The shuttle edged from the shelter of the massive curved fins that funneled the worst of the underwater currents away from the dome, and Turnball enjoyed the receding view of new Atlantis. The cityscape was a murky jumble of traditional spires and minarets alongside more modern glass-and-steel pyramids. Hundreds of slatted filter pods sat at the corners of the giant polymer pentagons that slotted together to form the protective dome over Atlantis.
If the probe hit a filter pod, the dome could go, thought Turnball; and then, Oh, look, they used schoolchildren’s designs to decorate the fins. How fun.
Out they went, past the water cannons, which were erect in their cradles, just waiting for coordinates.
Farewell, my probe, thought Turnball. You have served me well and I shall miss you.
A flotilla fled the threatened city: pleasure craft and city shuttles, troop carriers and prisoner transporters, all flitting toward the ten-mile marker where the brainiacs assured them the shock wave would dissipate to the merest ripple. And though the flight seemed chaotic, it was not. Each and every craft had a marker to dock with at the ten-mile circle.
Vishby was growing in confidence and quickly navigated the gloomy depths toward their marker, only to find that a giant squid had latched on to the pulsing buoy, pecking at its glowing beacon.
The water elf turned the shuttle’s exhaust on the creature, and it scooted off in a flurry of rippling tentacles. Vishby let the auto-dock take over, lowering the shuttle onto its magnetic docking buoy.
K-Max laughed scornfully. “You shouldn’t shoot at your cousins, Fishboy. You won’t get invited to family functions.”
Vishby pounded the dash. “I have had enough of you!”
“Me too,” said Turnball, and reached out, casually pinching K-Max’s buzz baton from his belt. He could have shocked the jumbo sprite immediately, but he wanted him to realize what was going on. It took a while.
“Hey,” said K-Max. “What are you—? You just took my . . .” And then the lightbulb moment. “You aren’t cuffed.”
“What a bright boy,” said Turnball, and thrust the buzz baton into K-Max’s gut, sending ten thousand volts crackling through the pixie’s body. The guard jittered on point like a possessed classical dancer, then collapsed in a boneless-looking heap.
“You shocked my fellow officer,” said Vishby dully, “which should upset me, but I am okay with it, more than okay, actually, even though you can’t tell by my tone of voice.”
Turnball shot Unix another wink that said, Watch your genius boss at work.
“You don’t need to feel anything, Mr. Vishby. All you need to do is release bars three and six.”
“Just three and six? Don’t you want to release all your friends? You have been lonely for so long, Turnball.”
Bars three and six popped up, and Turnball rose, luxuriously stretching his legs, as though he had been seated for an age.
“Not just yet, Mr. Vishby. Some of my friends may have forgotten me.”
Unix was also freed, and went immediately to work, stripping K-Max of his boots and belt. He shrugged off the top half of his own jumpsuit and tied it off at his waist, so the scar tissue of his wing nubs could get a little air.
Turnball felt a twinge of unease. Unix was a disturbing fellow, loyal unto death, but strange beyond strange. He could have had those wing nubs carved down by a plastidoc, but he preferred to wear them like trophies.
If he ever shows the smallest sign of disloyalty, I will have to put him down like a dog. No hesitation.
“Everything all right, Unix?”
The pale sprite nodded curtly, then continued to frisk K-Max’s person.
“Very well,” said Turnball, taking center stage for his big speech. “Gentlemen, we are on the brink of what the press often refers to as an audacious prison break. Some of us will survive and, unfortunately, some won’t. The good news is that the choice is yours.”
“I choose to survive,” said Ching Mayle, a gruff goblin with bite marks on his skull, and muscles up to his ears.
“Not so fast, Mayle. A leap of faith is involved.”
“You can count on me, Captain.”
This from Bobb Ragby, a dwarf fitted with an extra restraint in the form of a mouth ring. He had fought at Turnball’s behest in many a skirmish, including the fateful one on the Tern Islands, where Julius Root and Holly Short had finally arrested Turnball.
Turnball flicked Bobb’s mouth ring, making it ping.
“Can I, Mr. Ragby, or has prison made you soft? Do you still have the gumption?”
“Just take this ring off and find out. I will swallow that guard whole.”
“Which guard?” asked Vishby, nervous in spite of the thrall rune that pulsed at his throat.
“Not you, Vishby,” said Turnball soothingly. “Mr. Ragby didn’t mean you, did you, Mr. Ragby?”
“I did, actually.”
Turnball’s fingers flew to his mouth. “How troubling. I am conflicted, Mr. Vishby. You have done me no little service, but Bobb Ragby there wants to eat you, and that would be entertaining, plus he gets grumpy if we don’t feed him.”
Vishby wanted to be terrified, to take some radical action, but the rune on his neck forbade any emotion stronger than mild anxiety. “Please, Turnball, Captain. I thought we were friends.”
Turnball Root considered this. “You are a traitor to your people, Vishby. How can I take a traitor for a fri
end?”
Even a magic-doped Vishby could see the irony in this. After all, had not Turnball Root betrayed his kind on numerous occasions, even sacrificing members of the criminal fraternity for creature comforts in his cell?
“But your model parts,” he objected weakly. “And the computer. You gave the names of—”
Turnball did not like how this conversation was going and so took two quick steps and buzzed Vishby in the gills. The water elf fell sideways on the pilot seat and hung in his harness, arms dangling, gills rippling.
“Jabber jabber jabber,” said Turnball brightly. “All these guards are the same. Always sticking it to the cons, eh, my boyos?”
Unix spun Vishby’s chair around and began a thorough search, taking anything of potential use, even a small pack of indigestion tablets, because you never knew.
“Here’s the choice, gentlemen,” said Turnball to his captive audience. “Step outside with me now, or stay and wait for an assault charge to be added to your sentence.”