Spice Crimes

by Dale Ivan Smith

  “The interior may be a disaster, but this shuttle will fly.” She said, buckling herself into the pilot seat. Leonidas and Temur strapped the mafia goon and the once more unconscious Screechy into seats beside the wall, while Abelardus and Yumi sat on the other side of the compartment.

  Temur looked like he wanted to join Alisa at the co-pilot position, but held back, likely out deference to Leonidas.

  The man didn't miss much, Alisa thought.

  Leonidas noticed that as well. "If you are pilot-trained, please take the other seat," he told Temur. Alisa nodded. She'd rather have Leonidas beside her but it might also be better to have the newcomer as co-pilot where Leonidas could keep an eye on him from behind. Temur was a very tough read for her. His story seemed likely, but she wasn't sure and not being sure could get you killed.

  Temur strapped himself into the co-pilot seat, but kept his hands resting easy by his sides.

  "Technically we should check with control, but I'm thinking we don't need the bother," she said to the others.

  “You’re the pilot,” Leonidas said. Temur nodded.

  The shuttle's engines engaged and they lifted off, bound for space. The shuttle pretty much steered like a brick, but it successfully made orbit.

  "Now we just need to dock with the space tug." A space tug was not exactly her first choice when it came to a pursuit vessel, but beggars couldn't be choosers. She brought up the holo display. Sherran Moon's blue limb shone at the bottom of the image, while off to port was the gas giant Aldrin. The shuttle's homing locator began beeping softly. "Ah, there you are," she said, and brought the shuttle around for an approach to the space tug.

  "Let's see what you’re called," she said to the space tug’s glowing image in the holo display.

  A name flashed in the air before her. "Crimson Hercules."

  She snorted. "Not subtle." Of course, the important question was whether there were any crew aboard the Crimson Hercules. She looked over her shoulder at Leonidas, who sat patiently waiting, silent. The man could outwait a mountain. "We left in such a hurry we forgot to ask our lady prisoner about the crew aboard the tug, and she’s taking another nap.”

  "I believe there is no one aboard," Temur said quietly.

  "Well, that's good to hear, but belief isn't proof," she said. "And I don't want us flying into a trap. That would ruin all of our days. Besides, why do you believe that?”

  Temur continued to show no emotion, replying matter-of-factly. "The crew compliment of such a tug is small, typically four to six. The Crimson Star Pirates also have a warship which I believe pursued your vessel when it left Sherran Moon; ‘believe’ because I don't see such a vessel on the holo display. It is highly likely that that pirate vessel also has a tracking device.”

  Alisa’s stomach clenched at the thought of a pirate warship chasing down the Nomad. The ship had escaped armadas and Alliance destroyers, but she’d always been in the pilot’s seat during those escapes. This Khouri, even if Temur was correct and she wasn’t the intentional thief she seemed, wasn’t Alisa.

  Crimson Hercules appeared on the view screen. It really was painted red, a cylindrical hull with a bulb-shaped bow, and an oversized drive assembly aft. Two ring-like structures encircled the cylinder, just behind the bulb-shaped bow, where Alisa assumed the vessel’s NavCom was located.

  Leonidas leaned over her shoulder to get a look at the tug. “Are those sensor arrays?” he asked.

  She drummed her fingers on the console. “Maybe.” But it was a tug.

  She thought for a moment. “Grab beams—those are grab beam assemblies.” Other tugs she had seen usually had them flush against the vessel’s hull. “Clearly Hercules is a custom job.”

  “I don’t suppose either of you can sense anyone aboard that tug?” she asked Abelardus and Young-Hee over her shoulder.

  “No,” they said.

  Great, she thought. She wondered what the odds were that if there were any pirates aboard the Hercules they were on qui-gorn as well?

  Now came the matter of docking with the tug. Alisa turned around in her seat. Screechy was still unconscious. Well, that would have to change. Alisa left the cockpit and crossed to where Screechy was slumped in her seat. The mafia thug huddled against the wall on the far side of Screechy. He took one look at Alisa and tried to move further away, but failed since there was no more room.

  Alisa smiled. “This is one way to wake up a sleeping-not-so-beauty,” she said, and slapped Screechy. The woman’s body jerked.

  “Ouch! That hurt, damn it!” Screechy gave Alisa a look of pure murder.

  “You’ve got a choice,” Alisa told the woman. “Tell me the access codes, or I’ll have my Starseer friends root around in your head.”

  Screechy was running her tongue inside of her closed mouth, moving beneath her skin like some sort of alien slug. Alisa suppressed a shudder.

  Screechy swallowed hard, then grinned.

  “Well?” Alisa asked. “Yes or no?”

  “Go ahead and try,” Screechy said.

  Abelardus shrugged. His eyes narrowed, and a look of determination came over his face. He closed his eyes, concentrating. After a moment, he shook his head. “I can’t pick up her thoughts any longer.”

  Screechy grinned at him. “That’s right, handsome,” she said. “You can’t.”

  “I can’t, either,” Young-Hee said. “She must have taken more qui-gorn just now, hidden somehow in her mouth. But it normally doesn’t act that fast. Do you have a special variety?” she asked Screechy.

  Screechy shrugged. “I’m not telling.”

  “Get up,” Alisa ordered her.

  “No.”

  Alisa sighed and glanced at Leonidas. “Would you help her?”

  “Certainly.” He unbuckled Screechy and hauled her to her feet.

  “Look at me,” Alisa ordered her.

  Screechy refused, so Leonidas turned her head with one massive hand, forcing her to look at Alisa.

  Alisa stared at her. “You can let me try and see if I can interface with the tug’s automatic docking system, or you can give me the access codes.”

  “Go to hell,” Screechy said with a nasty grin.

  Alisa shrugged. “Fine. You’ll have a front row seat.”

  She went back to the pilot’s seat. She scanned the console again until she found the auto-dock and swung the shuttle around to line it up for an approach on the underside of the tug’s hull, where she could see a hangar door, currently closed, located just behind the second ring assembly. With luck, the auto-dock would engage when the shuttle drew close enough and the hangar door would open for them.

  “Here’s where we see how good your auto-dock system is,” Alisa said over her shoulder. She slowed the shuttle. The tug grew larger in the view screen.

  Alisa waited for the auto-dock indicator light to go to green. It stayed red.

  The tug was closer, filling the view screen. They’d crash in seconds.

  “You need a code!” Screechy blurted.

  Alisa banked the shuttle away from the tug just before it would have crashed into the closed door. “Fine. What is it, or shall we go through this again?”

  Screechy told her, and on the second approach the door dilated open. The shuttle landed in the tug’s hangar bay with a slight bump. The door irised closed behind them.

  “Is there anyone on board?” she asked Screechy.

  Screechy shrugged. “Find out for yourselves.”

  The hangar bay’s lights were low.

  “Is there a reason for the low lighting?” Alisa asked Screechy. The woman didn’t answer.

  “Temur and I will sweep the tug,” Leonidas said. He stood, his newly acquired destroyer in one hand. Temur joined him at the hatch, carrying the combat wand, or whatever it was called.

  “Be careful,” Alisa told them.

  Both men nodded. Leonidas pressed the hatch release. Alisa drew her blazer pistol. Abelardus and Young-Hee held their blazers, looking uneasy at doing so. Not having th
eir usual weapons must be uncomfortable for them, Alisa realized.

  The hatch opened and Leonidas and Temur slipped into the shadows in the hangar bay, disappearing from view around the corner of the shuttle.

  Alisa turned to face Screechy, aiming her blazer at the pirate woman. “I’ll ask you again,” Alisa said, trying to sound as sugary-sweet as she could, “are there any crew aboard the tug?”

  Screechy didn’t answer, refusing to look at Alisa. Her face was still pale, but her lips were pressed into a thin line. “You aren’t the type to shoot me,” Screechy said.

  “You sure about that?”

  Screechy didn’t answer, but the mafia goon looked like he wanted to be anywhere besides being in the line of fire if Alisa shot and missed Screechy.

  Abelardus and Young-Hee faced the open hatch.

  “Anything?” she asked them.

  “I sense Leonidas,” Young-Hee said, “and now that I’ve been around him for an extended period of time, I can just make out Temur’s presence. Leonidas’s mind is clear. He’s focused on his search.”

  Alisa smiled. Of course, Leonidas wouldn’t have idle thoughts running through his head, though it would be nice to know an errant thought or two about her ran through his mind even in times like this.

  A cascade of destroyer fire erupted outside. Everyone inside the shuttle hunkered down in their seats. Alisa kept her blazer aimed at Screechy, but craned her neck, trying to look around the hatch.

  A bright flash lit up the hangar bay, and an explosion thundered an instant later. A second explosion just outside rocked the shuttle, sending Alisa and the others inside to the floor. She scrambled to her feet, heart in her mouth, and blinked, trying to clear her vision. The others were getting up. “Move and I will kill you both,” she told Screechy and the goon. Both stayed still, in half-crouches that would have been amusing if the situation weren’t so dangerous and uncertain.

  He’s fine, Abelardus said in her mind.

  She let out her breath. She motioned at Screechy and the goon with her pistol. “Sit.” They did as she ordered.

  Leonidas appeared in the hatch, his eyes wide, face concerned.

  “We’re fine,” she told him. That was when she noticed a smoldering hole in the shuttle’s hull, where the metal had melted away. She frantically scanned the shuttle’s console, found the controls for the fire suppression system and activated it. The smoke dissipated, and the orange glow around the hole cooled, revealing a gap big enough for Alisa to stick her head through.

  “What kind of bomb was that?” she asked Leonidas, who was still at the hatch, surveying the hull breach.

  “Pinpoint grenade. Banned by the Empire decades ago because its ability to melt metal could readily cause a hull breach.”

  Alisa shot a glare at Screechy. “What were your friends doing with banned Imperial weaponry?”

  “Using it.”

  Alisa’s jaw tightened. “Move,” she ordered the two captives and motioned at the hatch. They filed out, followed by Alisa, with Abelardus and Young-Hee behind her.

  There were a pair of dead pirates, dressed in red leather, on the deck near what looked like a supply compartment. Cargo cubes were stacked in rows along one side of the hangar bay, clearly from a variety of different shippers. Plunder, Alisa guessed.

  Leonidas cycled the airlock and they headed into the crew compartment. He and Temur took point and swept the tug’s compartments. They found no other crew.

  They reached NavCom. It was a large room, with seating for all seven of them. Alisa felt more comfortable with the prisoners in full view, and ready to be quizzed, if need be.

  Screechy refused to say anything about a tracking system, but Temur found it on the NavCom console before Alisa did. It turned out that the second ring wasn’t a grab beam array, it was a sensor array—massively boosted—and Alisa began to suspect that the tug was capable of capturing very large ships. No wonder it was named Hercules.

  The tracker indicated that the Nomad and its cargo was on Waro Moon. Why the hells had the thieves stopped there? It was a deadly jungle environment. No one in the history of the Tri-Suns system had ever tried to colonize it.

  “Waro?” Alisa wondered aloud, and glanced at Temur and Leonidas.

  They both shook their heads. Screechy, sitting on the right, shrugged. “Beats me,” the woman said.

  The mafia goon was studying his knees. “How about it, Protection Inc. person, do you know why my ship would be on Waro Moon?”

  He wouldn’t meet her stare. “Nope, don’t.” One of those types, she decided.

  “You really going to play around with me on this, little man? I have a cyborg and a scary-deadly, former Imperial Scout on hand. Either, I’m sure, could get what you know out of you, though it might be a bit messy in the doing.”

  The man went pale, and shuddered. “Okay, okay! Yeah, so there might be a secret mafia base on the moon.”

  She leaned forward. “Which mafia?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, my friends here are waiting to have a go.”

  “Okay, we might have a base there.” He lifted his bound hands when her glare hardened. “I don’t know for sure, but that’s what I heard. I’m just one of the boys.”

  Muscle-headed muscle in other words, nothing more. “But why would Protection Inc. take the Nomad there?”

  “We were supposed to take your ship, with you on board.” He flinched when Leonidas’s expression turned deadly. “I didn’t hear that we were going to kill you, just that we were to escort you to the destination drop. I didn’t hear anything about going to Waro. But then the ship was gone and you guys showed up, at the same time as the pirates.”

  “Well, don’t blame us for the ship being gone,” Screechy said.

  Alisa held up a hand. “Fine, so all we know is that Protections Inc. ‘might’ have a base on Waro Moon, for who-knows-what reason. How about the Crimson Star Pirates- do you happen to have a base there, as well?”

  “Hells, no. Why would we?” Screechy’s face wrinkled in disgust. “The place probably stinks of vegetable rot and all kinds of reptile shit. We live for space.”

  She said the last like it was some sort of motto.

  Alisa sighed. “Looks like we’ll have to get to Waro Moon, take the shuttle down to the surface. Everyone will be invited,” she added, giving the lady pirate a nasty look. Screechy shuddered.

  8

  Khouri’s hands danced across the console as the cargo-hauler hurled toward Waro Moon. The damaged Crimson Pirate Ship was barely still in sensor range. A small vessel appeared from the pirate ship and followed the Nomad toward Waro. A shuttle, it had to be. The pirates were tailing them. That was just wonderful.

  But, she couldn't worry about the pirates right now. She had to deal with deadsticking onto a planetary body. And not just any planetary body, a mist-shrouded, jungle moon.

  Sensors indicated the Star Nomad had reached the moon's upper atmosphere. Emergency alarms began sounding.

  "I know, I know, the drive is off," Khouri told the ship. The ship shuddered. The anti-grav cut out, and the acceleration yanked at her, Zavon and everything else on board.

  The radar showed a body of water below. The ship jerked, and she jetted thrusters, fighting against the yawing.

  Finally, sweat wreathing her forehead, Khouri was able to bring the Nomad's nose down. A floor of white clouds spreading out below them showed on the view screen now. Sensors indicated the cloud deck extended down to just five hundred feet above the surface of Waro Moon.

  Landing was going to be tight. They were pulling five gees at least. She hadn't glide-landed since before the war, when she did the orbit drop races on Umbra, and that was in her sunrunner. She checked the sensors for one last look into space before the heat of reentry overwhelmed them. The pirate shuttle was still some way from the atmosphere. It disappeared from sensors as the Nomad plunged into the mountainous white bank of clouds.

  Aero braking t
ook every ounce of concentration Khouri had. She nearly blacked out trying to keep the ship from skipping back out of the atmosphere. Finally, the Nomad had shed enough energy and slowed enough that Khouri could begin looking for a landing spot. If only the reactor and drive systems were functional.

  All through the descent Zavon was strapped in the co-pilot seat beside her, murmuring, “You’ve got this. You’ve got this.”

  The radar was still on, thanks to the emergency power. If that had cut out, chances were they wouldn't be landing, they’d be slamming, and that would be that for all of them.

  A mountain range showed on the horizon. The ship's altitude was under a mile now, and the mountain range extended at least that high. She managed to bring the ship around one last time, just before the emergency power to the thrusters cut out. Life support, instrumentation and lighting were still receiving power.

  Suddenly the ship dropped beneath the clouds. There were saw-toothed, emerald green mountains before them, and just below, a great shining lake. They shot past the mountains, just clearing the peaks, and then dropped toward the jungle. It was a riot of green forest as far as the distant horizon. The ship barely turned now, without thrusters it was only a glider, and not optimized for that kind of flight.

  There! At ten degrees from dead-ahead was a clearing. Their airspeed was dropping fast. They'd be landing—or crashing—at any moment.

  She wiped sweat from her eyes.

  “You’ve got this,” Zavon repeated.

  “Don’t be so sure.” Her heart pounded in her ears.

  "We haven't crashed yet," he said in a low voice, and managed a jaunty grin.

  "There's still time," she managed through gritted teeth.

  The fuzzy spider bobbed like crazy.

  "Here we go," she shouted, and the ship shot down. There was a rushing sound and a rumble from below, a series of hard bumps, and then the clearing. They rushed over it, and continued down. At the far end, coming up too soon, far too soon, was another line of huge, leafy tree-like things. The ship hit the ground and began sliding and bumping and grinding like a cheap arousal dancer in a Baku sex club.