At the top, they stopped and looked down into the shallow valley beyond. Stacia had to admit that whomever General Borealis had clandestinely hired to take care of this part certainly knew what they were doing. The ship’s position between hills gave it a perfect natural cover from prying eyes. There was an enormous scorch mark and debris field surrounding the ship exactly like they had expected.
Except there was also one detail they hadn’t planned.
“Um, I know I’ve only ever seen a small handful of spaceships in my life,” Skin said, “so maybe I’m wrong. But is that ship upside down?”
“Yes, that ship is most definitely upside down,” Stanton sighed.
“This wasn’t something I had a contingency plan for,” Stacia said.
“Let’s wait until we get closer,” Stanton said, suddenly sounding full of a determination he hadn’t shown before. “As long as everything is still in working order, I still might be able to do something about that.”
“How?” Stacia asked.
“You yourself said I have somewhat of a reputation as a pilot. And I did in fact have to land a ship upside-down once. Theoretically, this should be the same thing in reverse.”
“I’m not sure if it works that way,” Stacia said, but she said nothing else. She and General Borealis had figured that Stanton, should Stacia be able to find him alive, would be the best person to pilot the ship off planet. Stacia herself had some minor flight training, and her tactical implants could give her some help, just enough that she could land a small ship in an emergency. But once it came to piloting ships that were lying on their backs, she was completely out of her comfort zone.
Stacia had to admonish Skin not to stop and pick at the debris as they went down the hill to the ship. The young woman wasn’t used to seeing that much useful material just lying around, and the born survivor in her seemed to want to gather it all up just in case.
“But, we might need it…”
“Skin, no. Trust me.”
“It could be used to make a house, or a sled to pull supplies, or…”
“Where we’re going, we don’t need to make that stuff ourselves out of scrap. All that stuff gets manufactured in mass quantities. You can walk into a store and walk away with a house bigger than anything you’ve ever seen, if you have a vehicle that can haul it.”
Skin stared at her, her wide eyes showing her obvious disbelief that any such thing could possibly be true. Reluctantly, Skin put all the scrap she had gathered back on the ground.
By the time Stacia and Skin caught up to him, Stanton had already made a circuit around the whole outside of the ship at least once. “I recognize this make,” he said. “A Cumbermarch H-85. Not exactly the type of ship I would have expected anyone to use for a rescue mission off one of the most dangerous planets in the galaxy.”
“Why not?” Skin asked.
“It’s basically a rich person’s luxury cruiser. Maybe an older model that the trendiest people wouldn’t be caught dead in anymore, but still reliable.”
“Like I said, we didn’t have much time to waste while we prepared for this,” Stacia said. “We had to take whatever we could find. It was either this or something called a NewHouse N.”
Stanton made a disgusted face. “A NewHouse N wouldn’t have survived any of the crap this one needed to go through just to get here, let alone get off the planet. Why those two? There had to be plenty of better options.”
“Because we didn’t just need one. We needed two ships that were of exactly the same make.” She explained why and what would be packed into the ship’s hold.
“Makes sense, I guess,” Stanton said.
“Getting one older ship no one would miss was easy,” Stacia said. “Getting two that were exactly the same was a bit trickier given the time constraints. So, what do you think? Can you do something with this?”
“I think so. We need to get inside first before I can be one hundred percent certain.”
Getting in proved to be interesting. The ship’s boarding ramp could easily be opened with a code and a few hidden switches, but it opened from the bottom. Which meant they all had to climb all over it until they were on what was now the top. Stanton was able to hold his own on this climb, but Skin still needed help. As Stacia pushed her up the side, Skin pointed out the faded letters in chipped red paint that they passed. “What do those markings mean?”
Stanton turned his head sideways in an effort to read the upside down writing. Stacia, however, already knew. “It’s the ship’s name.”
“Ships have names?” she asked. Then, with a little more anger and incredulity, “Ships have names even when I didn’t have one?”
“Wait a second,” Stanton said. “Am I reading this correctly, or did the chipping to the paint remove something important in the translation?”
“No, you’re reading it correctly.”
“Who would name their ship that?”
“You said yourself that it’s an old luxury ship. It was probably originally owned by an old man in need of an ego boost.”
“I can’t read,” Skin said. “What’s the ship’s name?”
“Daddy’s Adult Toy,” Stacia responded.
“I don’t get it.”
“I’ll explain the concept of adult toys to you later. I’m sure it’s something you’ll like quite a bit.”
Once the hatch was open, they dropped down to the ceiling, being careful not to smash any more of the overhead lights.
“Inside looks a bit roughed up,” Stanton said. “Is this the way it was when you got it, or are we seeing damage from its less than conventional landing?”
“My guess is that it’s probably a little of both, but I couldn’t say for sure. I was already taken away in handcuffs when this part of the plan went into effect.”
Stanton stood straighter as something occurred to him. “Hey, are you going to be able to return to the Galactic Marines after this?”
Stacia just looked at him silently.
“But can’t your name be cleared? Can’t you explain what this was all about?”
“My trial and sentence was public knowledge. And the other thing that’s public knowledge is no one gets off of Leviathan. If we do get off and anyone finds out…”
“It would be chaos for the Galactic Marine bureaucracy, wouldn’t it?”
“There are probably people that would kill us rather than have it go public that their impenetrable prison isn’t as perfect as they’ve been saying for over a hundred years, especially given the corruption within that we already suspect exists.”
“Well, that’s why we’ve got to go public, get all of this information out there…”
“We can’t go public, Stanton. You, me, even Skin, once we leave, we’re fugitives.”
“What do you mean? Neither Skin nor I did anything wrong. I crashed here, and Skin was born here.”
“It doesn’t matter. Escaping from Leviathan is against the law.”
“That’s a stupid law!”
“Yes, it is. But according to the accepted public history, there is no such thing as an innocent person on Leviathan. They refuse to acknowledge that people like Skin exist, and last I saw, all efforts to change the law because of what happened to you are deadlocked. If I had to guess and subscribe to conspiracy theories, I’d say that the people responsible for keeping the law from getting changed are the same ones responsible for you crashing in the first place.”
Stanton apparently didn’t have anything else to say to that, instead going quiet as he stalked around the ship and inspected it in places that didn’t seem of much consequence to Stacia. The luxury craft was designed, when it was right-side up, so that it could be flown by just one person if needed, yet had accommodations for up to six people. Any furniture in the rooms that hadn’t been bolted down was of course strewn all about, but most of the nonessential pieces had been removed prior to the ship being sent here. Skin took a turn that the other two didn’t and vanished for a time, although Stacia could swear that she heard the young woman crawling around in the ductwork. Stanton and Stacia finally ended up in the cockpit, where Stanton had to climb up onto the dangling pilot seat in order to inspect the controls.