Chapter 11
Biggs crashed into them at full speed, knocking Ramon aside like a rag doll and propelling Isaacson into a cluster of tethered crates. His body disappeared amid an explosion of wooden slats and packing foam.
“How does it feel, now?” Biggs demanded. “Now that you ain’t got your buddies here to back you up? When you got a dozen other lowlifes with you, it’s easy to whip a man who’s wore out from a hard day’s work. Zeke never had a chance, and then you punks killed him for no reason. He never did nothing to you. You got the wrong man, and that’s the worst mistake of all.”
He pointed to a pair of men nearest Isaacson. “Set him up.”
They looked at each other with uncertainty and then glanced at the empty spot where Ramon had been a moment before. After a brief hesitation, they obediently pulled Isaacson from the wreckage and shoved him in Biggs’ direction. The rest of the crew looked on in uneasy silence.
Biggs grappled the collapsed prisoner and held him by the shoulders at arms’ length. “You cons always thought you was so smart. Too smart to get out and work hard like the rest of us. Too good to get your little hands dirty. You know what happens when hands that steal meet hands that work?”
Biggs joined his right palm with Isaacson’s left and interlocked their fingers. Isaacson struggled to say something—anything—but was barely able to breathe after having the wind knocked out of him.
Biggs looked him full in the face and slowly began to tighten his hand into a fist. The men encircling them began to squirm as Isaacson’s fingers spread and flexed backwards. Someone started to speak, but was checked by the cracking sound that followed.
Isaacson gasped in the most desperate way and was unable to say a word.
Ramon opened his eyes and waited for the objects in front of him to come gradually into focus. He heard the sound of a body smashing into a group of crates, followed by a command of, “set him up again.” Voices murmured uneasily and nearby boxes creaked as they were moved aside. Far beyond the commotion, Ramon thought he heard a familiar sound. He held his breath and listened intently, filtering out the noise around him. This time he distinctly heard the three tones of an incoming message from the comm panel across the room.
“Hey, wait!” he shouted, or rather attempted to shout, but nothing came out above a hoarse whisper. He tried several more times, searching for the voice that had failed him, and was finally able to make himself heard. “Hold up,” he rasped as he emerged from the wreckage and struggled toward the comm panel. “Somebody’s ringing through. Got to be the transport.”
Everyone turned to watch, including the men who had been digging through the crates for Isaacson. They slowly began falling in behind Ramon. This turn of events bewildered Biggs, who was left alone and forgotten in the back of the room.
“Hey, what’s going on?” asked the upstaged Biggs. “I ain’t done here yet. I’m still… uh, don’t you guys want to watch me… Where’s everybody going?”
“It’s the transport,” Lopez said, “the transport, Biggs. Come on, let’s see what’s up.”
“But I…”
“Later,” Lopez said.
Visibly deflated, Biggs cast a confused glance back toward the broken crates where Isaacson was buried, and then reluctantly joined the others.
Ramon exchanged a glance with Cory and answered the hail. The monitor flipped on, revealing the angry face of Norm Casper as he leaned into the camera.
“So you’ve done it to me again, you bunch of incompetent half-wits! I risk the lives of everyone on this ship waiting around for some eleventh hour passenger, tossing out every bit of good sense I’ve got, and for what? For what, I ask? So you can make a fool of yourselves and me and everyone involved in this whole rescue!”
“Norm,” Cory began.
“Don’t Norm me, you idiot. You and your little Sancho Panza sidekick there have really shot yourselves in the foot this time. You should be glad you’ll be dead by morning, or else you’d have a lot of explaining to do for this little fiasco.”
Seeing Cory begin to flare, Ramon edged in front of the monitor and attempted to diffuse the situation. In a composed tone he said, “Norm, if you plan to ream us, how about first telling us what you think we did?”
“Think? What I think you did?” He let out an unrestrained growl and reached up for the camera, roughly swiveling it around to reveal a man in the seat next to him.
Cory’s face immediately brightened and he leaned in closer to the screen. “Reverend, it’s good to see you conscious. I knew you’d pull through just fine. Maybe you can explain what Norm is so upset about.”
He responded with an uncomfortable tug at his clerical collar, and nervous eyes darting in Norm’s direction. “Mr.—Cory is it?—this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this.”
“Tell him,” came Norm’s voice from off-camera.
“I’m afraid we have a problem.”
Cory’s gaze intensified. “Don’t tell me we miscalculated. If there’s not enough fuel, don’t let Norm blame you for that, Reverend.”
“Tell him!” Norm ordered.
“No, there’s enough fuel. It was a different kind of miscalculation. Mr. Cory, my name is Anders Isaacson.”
Cory and Ramon froze in stunned silence.
“See, a riot broke out in the prison and when the cells were all opened, I tried to get the Reverend out of there in one piece. We both took a lot of abuse when they caught us in the shuttle bay, me especially. It was all I could do to get him in the shuttle and close the door behind us. And that’s the last thing I remember, until I woke up a few minutes ago on this transport.”
He received only blank stares, so he continued after an awkward pause.
“I untied myself and looked around, figuring he’d be here somewhere, but I couldn’t find him. When this man here saw me, he called me ‘Preacher’, and I didn’t know why. That’s when I realized I was wearing these clothes. I guess I got a pretty good idea what happened, but don’t ask me to explain why. All I can say is that I didn’t do it—never would have done it. So it must have been him.
“I figure if the Reverend’s not in here with us, he must be back there on the station with you. Maybe he could tell us what’s going on. He is there, right?”
The men in the bay looked at each other with searching expressions and then back at the heap of demolished crates behind them. Lopez turned to Cory. “You mean that ain’t…?”
“No.”
“So all this time…”
A sigh. “Apparently.”
“Then what about the bomb?”
“There’s no bomb. You and the others, go get the— ” He hesitated. “ Just go get him and bring him up here.” Cory started to look back at the monitor, but averted his eyes, unable to adjust to the new identity of the familiar face before him.
Several men started for the back of the room. Biggs, who had been detached from the group, looked up and shouted, “Yeah, set him up!”
Lopez glared at him with contempt. “It ain’t him, Biggs. You got the wrong guy.”
Biggs returned a puzzled look.
“It ain’t him, you big dope. You just knocked the teeth out of a preacher. You understand?”
He didn’t, but the force of Lopez’s tone was enough to check him while the men searched through the debris. They found him, dazed but conscious. They carefully pulled him out and into the open where Cory was waiting. Cory eyed him cautiously.
“It’s you,” the former Isaacson whispered. “I thought…”
“You thought I was dead.”
“I thought I had killed you. I’m glad I was wrong.”
“Are you? How can I believe you’re who he says you are after you nearly killed me and left me for dead?”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen. I couldn’t let you catch me—I couldn’t let anyone get to me until I knew that Isaacson was safely aboard the transport and on his way. If you discovered who I was, you would have pulled him off and put
me on instead. That would have ruined the plan.”
“And just whose plan was that? Yours? I want to know what it’s all about before you expect me to believe that you’re really the preacher and that you did this willingly. For all I know, you’re both convicts and the real preacher is still down in the prison with a knife in his back.”
“Yes, a good point.
“As for the plan, and whose it was, I’ll return to that. But first, you need to know that I never intended to cause all this commotion. What I did was supposed to take place quietly. I found a secluded place and waited for the transport to leave. The announcements about a delay kept coming regularly and then two of your men stumbled across me. I fled rather than let them question me.
“A short time later you discovered me. Had you told me the transport had already left, I would have told you who I was. But I’m afraid you had a plan of your own that I knew nothing about. I had to stall you.
“There was fiery contempt in your eyes, Mr. Cory, perhaps even hatred. I saw that it was directed at a perceived evil, and I knew at once that you were a good man determined to right a wrong. Forgive me for indulging in a little parley, but I needed to kill some time as I determined my next move. I also must admit that I enjoyed seeing how you faced the enemy. It was inspiring.”
Cory’s anger wavered and he looked over to check Ramon’s reaction. Ramon gave him a nod that indicated he believed the man.
“But you told me you put a bomb on the transport.”
The preacher grinned as best he could with his lips as torn and swollen and they were. “No, you suggested it, actually. I just failed to deny it. In fact, I added a little water to the seed you planted because it did have a grain of truth in it. As I said before, it was a bomb, of a sort, that I put on that ship. Certainly cargo with explosive repercussions, as we have already learned.
“As for what happened next, I can only ask for your forgiveness. You lunged for the door and I had to act fast. I had noticed a locking mechanism on the control panel just before you arrived. In a panic, I engaged it, fled from the room, and traveled to this part of the station. I had no idea what I had done until nearly an hour later when I overheard two of your men talking on the intercom. I deeply regret endangering you.”
“That still doesn’t explain why some of my crewmen are missing.”
Ramon interrupted to point out that Tyrell had already been accounted for, and that left only one man missing. Cory asked the crew if anyone had learned anything of the other man’s disappearance, but none of them had.
“What’s this guy look like?” Biggs asked.
“Skinny white guy with red hair and glasses,” Ramon answered.
“That’s him,” Biggs said. “Snuck into my room while I was asleep and tried to swipe some of my bottles. He woke me up and then him and my fist had a discussion about why it ain’t a good idea to steal from somebody twice your size. He probably ain’t come to yet.”
Cory looked down at the man beside him. “Then it’s true? You really are the preacher who went down to the prison?”
“The very one.”
“And you switched clothes with a prisoner and put him on the transport in your place?”
“I did.”
“Why would you do it? If you felt you had to save somebody, why did it have to be a criminal? I’ve got lots of good men on this station. Why in God’s name did you have to trade places with a condemned man on death row?”
“I don’t know. I’m only following orders.”
“Orders from who? Who would trade the life of a good man for a villain?”
The preacher reached out a shaky hand and placed it on Cory’s arm. “The same one who sent a boy with a slingshot out to defeat a nine-foot giant. The one who told a prophet named Hosea to marry a prostitute, and chose apostles from tax collectors and coarse fishermen. The very same, Mr. Cory, and it’s not my place to ask why, but to obey.
“History is replete with what seemed at the time like bad decisions. Do you know your Bible, Mr. Cory? Young, innocent Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, and God allowed him to be sold into slavery for most of his life. I’m sure you would have disagreed with it. But it put him in the right place to eventually save his entire family from certain death. We never know what effect our actions will have a generation later.”
Cory had no reply. He simply sighed deeply and looked down at the battered hand staining his sleeve red. After a moment’s silence, a voice shot from across the room.
“Hey! Where did everybody go? Cory, did you find your preacher or not?”
“Ramon,” Cory said, “tell Norm we found him. Have him put his passenger back on camera. I suspect the Reverend here will want to talk to him face to face.”