by Troy Osgood
But it exists. Illegal in most systems but there are a couple where it’s still allowed and some of the smaller and deeper mining asteroids have slaves masquerading as ‘paid’ employees.
Cheap labor is always desired. Any merchant that tells you otherwise is lying. But there are some that take it to far. Slaves are as cheap as they come. Just barely feed and house them. Because of that, there would always be a market.
Slavers are the worst. The only thing equal is ship thieves. Pretty much everyone hates slavers but everyone loathes ship thieves.
But everyone also has a good fear of slavers.
Space stations like this are their shopping centers. The naive, the weak. Those are their targets.
A being like Eretut would be irresistible.
*****
I was afraid I’d be too late.
Most space stations follow the same general layout. There’s the central tower core that has the shops, restaurants and other services. As well as housing for the people that live on the station. Then there are the connector tunnels that lead to the docking ring or rings.
The sisters and Eretut had headed towards the nearest connector. No elevators needed, the tunnel wasn’t that far from where we had been.
But it was far enough.
I ran as fast as I could, Hert not that far behind. The level wasn’t that crowded, but there was enough that I had to push some and slalom around others. Which slowed me down. They didn’t have that much of a headstart but it was enough.
The problem was that as soon as they got into the docking ring I could lose them. I had no idea where there ship was, in which direction I’d have to run. The ring was huge and it would take a long time to get all the way around it and there were a hell of a lot of dock doors. More doors than actual ships.
The galaxy was huge and there were a lot of shipbuilders out there. So lots of different designs and lots of different sizes. And space stations had to deal with them all. Most stations just put in extra dock doors and airlocks so they could take different size ships. Sometimes coming up to a station and it’s docking ring, it was like a jigsaw puzzle with all these different ships maglocked to it. Made it fun to try to fit your own ship into that mix.
I hit the connecting tunnel and pushed my way into it. I kept scanning the crowds, looking for Eretut’s tall form. The tunnel was large and round, the floor at the halfway point of the circumference. The lower half, that we couldn’t get to, was used for transferring cargo and goods. The top half was for people. Multiple conveying belts lined the metal floor, half coming towards the station and half moving towards the docking ring. The curved walls were made of a shiny metal with large windows evenly spaced that looked out onto the blackness of space.
Luckily the tunnel wasn’t that full. I could see almost the entire length. No large and furry Europan towering over everyone else.
I ran past people, jumping from conveying belt to conveying belt to avoid and move around the various beings. Lots of different races, lots of different sizes. I bumped more than a few. Which could be dangerous. Some species took great offense to being bumped into, even accidently. More than a few fights had started that way.
But I lucked out and ran onto the docking ring a couple quick minutes later. I could hear Hert further back, shouting for me or grumbling as people got in his way. He was trying hard not to run into any being. Engyn’s were heavy and could easily hurt someone in a collusion.
Pausing, catching my breath, I looked both ways. I really wasn’t out of breath. Nowhere near the shape I was a couple years ago when I was still a soldier, but I kept in shape. I needed to pause, to relax a bit in case I needed to sprint.
The ring was lined with doors spaced along both walls. Different sizes and shapes, fit into any space available. The ones across from me led to airlocks that connected to more doors on the outer ring. The ones behind me led to storage bays, each assigned to a docking position. Move the cargo into the storage bay and then it could be collected and moved by the recipient later. Some even had lifts to below to connect to the lower level of the connector tunnel. It was a pretty efficient system. Freight haulers like myself could drop off the cargo and never even see the buyers.
But it was really for the buyers, so they never had to associate with folks like me.
To my right I couldn’t see anything. No one pushing through the crowds. No one moving quickly and nothing standing out like Eretut would.
I turned to my left and saw him. About fifty feet down the ring. Just standing there looking lost and confused. He towered above everyone else, standing against the outer wall to try to get out of the flow of beings. Oddly enough, he was almost directly next to the door that connected to my ship the Nomad’s Wind. No sign of the two sisters.
Quickly I made my way to where he was standing. My eyes scanned everywhere and I tensed as I passed each door, expecting an ambush from one of the sisters. I didn’t think they’d try anything here, too public, but better to be safe. That was probably what happened with Eretut. They tried to get him on their ship and something must have spooked them.
“Eretut,” I said holding up my hand to catch his attention. At the sound of my voice he turned and I could see him standing up straighter, more confident. The confused look somewhat disappeared. He was glad to see a familiar face.
He took a couple steps towards me, gesturing with his arms and not paying attention to the beings he almost hit. I could hear the moaning and grunts as I got closer but still couldn’t understand a word he said.
“Whoa big guy,” I told him stopping in front of him. “I don’t know what you’re saying. Where are the sisters?”
His head tilted like he wasn’t sure what the word was but then the eyes brightened as he figured it out. Eretut gestured behind him with more moans, grunts and a couple hoots. I got the general idea. They’d fled that way. So it meant time to get Eretut out of here.
“Follow me,” I told him and headed a couple dock doors down. I glanced behind me but couldn’t see Hert through the crowd. He must have gone the other way around. No big deal, he knew where the Wind was docked.
It had been a couple years since I’d been out of the 2Es, the Earth Expeditionary Forces; and while I wasn’t in the same operational shape as I had been, my instincts were still pretty sharp. I didn’t feel like anyone was watching us or approaching but I still glanced in both directions before entering the code into the large sliding door.
The door parted in the middle, sliding apart smoothly to reveal a large and square room. Across from us was a blue and gray metal ship’s hull, blue above and gray below. I knew what to look for so I could see the larger outline of the ramp that could be lowered in the gray lower half of the ship and the smaller one that was the sliding door in that ramp. The walls of the room where they hit the ship were ringed in a black material, the gasketing that surrounded the maglocks connecting the Wind to the airlock we were in.
Eretut looked at all of it with wonder. He examined the segmented floor plating beneath our feet, the walls and jumped when the door slid shut behind us. Had he never seen an airlock before? Even with the passenger ships, everyone exited through an airlock that looked basically the same.
Something about his behavior was a little off. It was like he was playing the part of the bewildered species out of his element. Overplaying it really.
The thought hit me as I touched the final key on the pad mounted to the Wind’s hull. The smaller hatch slid open to reveal the nearly empty cargo hold of my ship as some other stuff fell into place.
When I had just found Eretut, it was too calm. If the sisters had been run off there should have been some sign in the crowd. Some excitement, some indication. The incident with the Pierd had drawn a bunch of onlookers. Shouldn’t there have been some in the docking ring?
The sisters were also pretty quick to show up once I had brought Eretut away from the Pierd.
I felt like an idiot.
I’d fallen for one of the oldest cons
in the book.
I rolled to the side just as Eretut’s heavy hand swung towards me. Instead of my head, he caught my shoulder but it was still enough force to slam me into the side of the Wind. I turned to see him standing over me. He was roaring now, angry. No more innocence or bewilderment. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Which was trying to kill me.
He thought he had me pinned to the side of the ship, unable to move out of the way. Most people it would be true, but I doubted he knew the extent of my training.
Instead of trying to duck away from the swing, I kicked out. His arms were longer than mine so he was further away than I would have liked, but I still connected with his knee. Or what I hoped was his knee. Such small legs it was hard to tell.
He took a step back, that was it. It still kept me in range of the arms.
I knew the blow was coming and took it on the shoulder and let the momentum carry me to the ground. I crawled away from him, heading back towards the airlock door. I could feel the next blow coming and rolled away from it, laying on my back and coming up against the wall. Eretut was bent over, arm hovering above the metal decking and body twisted towards me, the flat head and eyes staring at me.
No way to grab my blaster in a small space where Eretut had the advantage. I had to change the situation before he managed to grab me. At that point, it would be all over.
There was a mad glint in the black eyes as Eretut slowly raised his hand. He extended the fingers and with an audible slicing sound two long claws slid out of sheaths on his wrists over his fingers. Long, sharp and with a serrated edge. Europans lived in caves and cliffs of ice, of course they would have claws designed for cutting into the ice.
Or flesh.
I shifted so I was somewhat sitting up, my legs under me and ready to push. Eretut took a step back, sliding the claws out on his other hand. My hand hovered, inches away from my holster. I shifted to the right, towards the docking ring airlock doors and the pad that was mounted to it on my side. Eretut moved a tiny bit that way.
Leaning like I was going to dive for the door I jerked that direction and Eretut took the bait. He lunged for where he thought I would be, claws out, but I quickly shifted and bent my body awkwardly the other way. I landed hard on the decking but was up and running for the open hatch to the Wind.
I needed space and the Wind’s near empty hold had lots of it.
The big Europan was quick to recover. I scrambled through the door just as he twisted and lunged after me. I had a couple steps on him now though as he had to come into the hold fully. He was so tall that he had to crouch to get in. The way his body was made, one long shape with the head at the end that bent forward, his eyes were even lower when he stepped through.
For a second he wasn’t looking directly at me.
Which was all I needed.
I’d pulled my blaster as I dove through the door. Landing on the deck of the Wind, I used the slick surface and my momentum to turn and keep sliding away from the door. On my back I aimed towards the door well I kept sliding. Not the best firing position but it would do.
Pulling the trigger I moved it diagonally up, strafing the door with multiple shots. I knew most would miss, hitting the metal and damaging my ship.
As I came to a stop I heard the soft sound of plasma blasts washing over metal followed by the grunt and moan of Eretut. Not as loud as I had hoped but at least one blast had hit.
Smoke rose up from scorch marks on the gray metal of the Wind as well as from the fur of Eretut. He stood in the doorway, both feet inside, arms held out with claws extended. I caught the scent of burnt fur and saw the wound on his upper left shoulder and another lower down on the right and his stomach. Neither wound, fur smoking and burned away and the wound blackened flesh, seemed to bother him as he took another step into the ship.
I hated aliens that were immune or resistant to blasters.
But now I had time to aim and I’m a pretty good shot.
My first shot caught him in the other shoulder, staggering him back. My second grazed his arm but did what I wanted it to. The cooling tubes of his biosuit started leaking. My third shot took him in the neck, where his head bent forward.
That one made him howl.
He took a step forward, glaring at me with hate, smoke rising from the blaster scorch marks across his body and stopped as he felt liquid dripping down his leg. Already a good amount was pooling on the floor of the Wind. From here I couldn’t tell what it was. Some kind of coolant.
Eretut shook that arm, drops and spray flying everywhere. He was aggravated and turned back towards me, growling now.
I shot him between the eyes.
It took his body a bit to register that it was dead. He stood there, the eyes still dark, a new blaster mark in that small forehead region he had just above the noise. The body toppled forward, hitting the deck. Coolant continued to leak out of the biosuit tube.
Standing up I walked around the body, kicking it a couple times to make sure he was dead.
This is what being a good samaritan gets me, becoming the target for ship thieves. They probably thought they had found an easy mark, not a trained spec ops soldier. Ex-soldier but still, not what they were expecting.
Surprise and strength go a long way and even with my training I had come close to getting hit by Eretut.
I got lucky.
*****
I stepped around the growing puddle of coolant. Not sure what kind it was, no way I wanted to touch it. Some of that stuff could be pretty nasty. And volatile. The tube was only an inch diameter and there really wasn’t that much of it, not for Eretut’s size. Europa was a very cold world so whatever he had going through the biosuit tubes had to be pretty strong.
So what was the next step for the thiefs? Eretut plays the part of the lost lamb, the naive traveler out of their element, and then ambushes the mark. What were the sisters doing during this? How was he to contact them?
They had appeared pretty quick after I had first encountered Eretut. At the perfect moment. Right on cue. Had they been summoned? Would make sense. I bet if I did some digging I could find a lot of encounters where this had worked for them. They probably had the timing down.
How did he contact them? Nothing visible. No wristcomm, headset or anything.
He would have needed to activate some kind of transmitter so they knew when to show up or had some kind of listening device on him. Being careful not to touch any of the leaking coolant, I searched him pretty thoroughly. I ran my hands through his fur, feeling for anything that would be attached. Nothing on his back so I rolled him over.
As soon as I had him on his back, looking down at the body with his head flopped back, I remembered an odd movement he had made. It had been before the Welkers showed up. He’d been telling his story, his arms waving around, but had stopped to scratch himself. The only time he had done that.
Sure enough, in that area, I found the transmitter. A small box with a single button tied into his fur next to the skin.
Thankfully it wasn’t a listening device, just a signal. The sisters didn’t know I’d taken him out. They were probably somewhere nearby waiting for him to transmit the all-clear.
No reason to keep them waiting.
I hit the button.
*****
There could have been some kind of prearranged pattern or something that Eretut was supposed to send them. I didn’t know and didn’t care.
I only hit the button that one time.
Either it would be the all-clear signal or it wouldn’t and they would know something was up.
Plan for the worse. That’s what my old commander always said and what I tried to do.
I was planning for them to show up knowing it was a trap.
Starting a fight that you could avoid because you were embarrassed wasn’t a smart play. I was angry at myself for falling for the obvious con. Even with Eretut dead, their operation could still continue. There were a lot of ways that two good looking women could get o
nto a ship. That really wasn’t my concern. If someone else fell for it, that was on them. I just wanted to teach them a lesson for messing with me.
Really it was me taking my anger at myself out on them.
*****
I left the door between the airlock and the docking ring unlocked. A clear invitation.
When it opened I couldn’t see but I could hear. The Wind was silent and the doors sliding apart in their tracks were quiet. It was the noise from outside that alerted me. Even half crowded docks like this one created a ton of noise. Conversations, hovercars, doors. Just so much to make a loud background noise.
That noise disappeared as the doors slid closed and I waited.
I could imagine what they were thinking. The unlocked doors, the empty airlock with visible blast marks, and the open hatch into the Wind. There was a chance it wasn’t a trap, that Eretut had done his job and been wounded. They would play it safe and cautious. They would move through the airlock, approaching the open hatch slowly.
But once there they would see it.
Eretut’s body.
It had fallen right at the hatch so I had pulled him further into the Wind’s hold. I didn’t want them to see it right away.
Now that they could see him, what would they do?
“You can come in,” I yelled out from where I stood at the far end of the hold, out of their sight. “I won’t shoot.”
I still couldn’t see them, they were smartly staying just outside of view. It limited their look into the hold but limited my view of them. Which was fine. I didn’t need to see them clearly but I did need them to get fully into the hold.
Most likely they were talking with each other, maybe had even stepped further away. Run or confront? I figured the older sister, Jada, was preaching caution and the younger, Tani, thought they could still get their prize. It was two against one afterall. Which would be the most convincing.
It was Tani.
She stepped into the Wind first. Her weapon was drawn and she kept her profile tight to the hull as she scanned the open space. Not many crates, there never was and just the one door at the far end that led deeper into the ship. No sign of me. Tani moved to the side and Jada stepped in. She did the same, weapon out and scanned.
