Gate Quest (Star Kingdom Book 5)

by Lindsay Buroker

  Not from a seat in the back row, Kim replied before realizing she’d just confirmed Casmir was here. Not that it mattered. She was sure Rache knew. And she was doubly sure he wanted Casmir to help him disable the gate defenses. Why else would Rache snatch him?

  I’ll be shocked if he can’t disable it from the lav. Now, if you’ll forward this to him and get his help, I’ll be so grateful to you that I’ll rub your feet. In case that delightful offer isn’t enough to sway you, then I will point out that I have two submarines to your one, and that the rest of your team is nearly twenty minutes away now. That’s plenty of time for my men to force their way on, capture your sub, kill all of the Kingdom soldiers in there, and collect you.

  If you kill anybody, I’ll shoot you myself. Kim glowered down at her stunner, now regretting that she hadn’t requested a rifle.

  That’s no way to get a foot rub. Relay my message to him, please. We’ll try to do this without killing anyone, but that’ll be much easier if we have an ally within.

  I’m not your ally. Not now.

  I’m distressed by that. Tell Casmir, anyway, please. Also, if you could ask him to have his crusher need to conveniently take a piss while we’re boarding, that would help.

  Kim looked at the looming marines ready to fight, all armored and all armed. Casmir hadn’t put his helmet on yet, and neither had she, but they would have to, and then hide under the seats if they didn’t want to be killed.

  She groped for a way to get that lunatic Rache to change his mind—just when she’d started to think he was a decent man when Jager’s men weren’t in his sights, he pulled this?—but the only thing that came to mind was that she and Casmir could volunteer to go over there to avoid a bloodbath. Would the commander even consider that?

  Flustered, Kim forwarded the entire message string to Casmir.

  He read it in a second and gaped at her. Rescue us? What is he talking about?

  You know as much as I do. What should we do?

  Casmir was the schemer. He would come up with something that would spare lives. She hoped.

  Do you trust him? He gazed intently into her eyes, all seriousness for once.

  No! I mean, I don’t know. I’d like to, but this is ludicrous.

  Casmir bit his lip, then dug into his tool satchel with one hand and thumbed open an outlet in the armrest with the other. It looked like something to plug headphones into, but he jammed an adapter and a cable into it and popped open a device that was wirelessly linked to his chip. Commands in a programming language scrolled by, and what looked like a schematic of the submarine flashed on the tiny display.

  Casmir paused whatever he was doing and glanced toward the porthole. The submarine wheeled again to evade an attack, but the torpedo still exploded nearby. Their craft pitched sideways in a roll that would have hurled Kim from her seat if not for the belt. Asger grunted as he almost landed in Casmir’s lap. He gripped the seat backs and righted himself the best he could. The submarine was slow to recover, and the deck seemed to be tilted to one side.

  A command flashed on Casmir’s little device. He had the screen tilted toward her and away from any of the soldiers who might witness it—away from Asger.

  An instant later, the lights inside went out. Everywhere. Pitch blackness engulfed the submarine. The thrum of the engine disappeared.

  The pilot swore vehemently. “Main power went out.”

  “No shit,” the commander said. “Find auxiliary power.”

  “I don’t know if there is any.”

  “Find it anyway.”

  “Are we going to sink?” a soldier’s concerned query sounded.

  Nobody answered him.

  A crackle came over a poor-quality comm speaker—or maybe one running on a weak battery backup.

  “Greetings, Waddler. This is Captain Tenebris Rache on the lethal Bubbles 3. I’ve neutralized your submarine, and I intend to personally lead a boarding party to kidnap your civilian advisors, Casmir Dabrowski and Kim Sato.”

  Zee strode up the aisle to stand next to Casmir’s seat. Asger snarled something inaudible. Kim glanced at him, surprised he was purely angry instead of suspicious at the conveniently timed power outage. Maybe that would come later when he’d had time to think about the moment.

  The marines also issued defiant snarls. Casmir’s new gaming friend swore he wouldn’t let the filthy bastard touch their professor.

  “You can save yourself the loss of lives,” Rache went on, “which my well-trained and cybernetically enhanced men will otherwise take, by handing over the prisoners without a fight. Put them in diving suits and shove them out your airlock. We’ll come collect them. If you don’t do this voluntarily—” Rache’s dry tone switched to one of icy cold, “—we will gladly come aboard and kill every man who’s sworn to do Jager’s bidding. The end is inevitable. You have two minutes to decide. We have you surrounded.”

  Casmir disconnected his device and bowed his head. Probably wondering if he’d done the right thing. Kim had no idea. Rache sounded like he relished the idea of killing the Kingdom soldiers.

  “We’re not giving up anyone,” the commander said after a long pause. Kim wondered if he’d been thinking about it. “We only have to hold them off until the rest of our subs get here. Prepare to fight, men.”

  An eager roar tore from a dozen throats. Kim closed her eyes, imagining those throats all slit, their armor peeled open, and the soldiers dead.

  “I am prepared to defend you, Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski,” Zee announced from the aisle.

  “Good,” Casmir said. “Thank you, Zee.”

  I’m a little skeptical he can force his way on and win, especially with Asger and Zee helping these guys, but, Kim… Casmir found her arm in the dark and patted it. If anyone dies, and I’m sure they will in a fight, I’ll blame myself.

  I know. I think we have to surrender ourselves to him and trust that…

  He wants to rescue us? Casmir texted.

  Kim didn’t need light to know his eyebrows were raised skeptically. Trust that we can get away or figure out how to report his movements back to our people. Does it even matter if he gets the gate first when you’ve got Nguyen’s allies coming to fight whoever pulls it out of the water?

  If she tells people about it, they’ll send science vessels, not warships. Casmir released her arm.

  She sensed him standing up, and she realized he was about to do exactly what she’d been suggesting. If the commander reported that Casmir had volunteered to go, Jager might be suspicious of him. He already had reasons to mistrust Casmir. And so did Ishii. Even Asger did. But Kim didn’t think anyone except Casmir knew she had feelings for Rache—or she had until he’d pulled this idiotic move.

  She lurched to her feet and spoke before Casmir. “Commander, let us go. It’s better than people being killed in a huge fight. If he wants us, it’s for our science and engineering knowledge. He won’t kill us, and maybe we can get away, or even find an opportunity to transmit information back to you on what his team is doing.”

  “We don’t hand people over to enemies of the Kingdom to become hostages,” the commander said coolly. “We’re especially not giving that animal a woman.”

  Kim cursed under her breath. Of all the things for the guy to get uppity about, he was worried about her sex?

  The speaker crackled.

  “Thirty seconds, Commander,” Rache said. “Are you sending them over?”

  “No,” the commander snarled to the comm as Kim yelled, “Yes.”

  “She’s right,” Casmir said. “You need all your men to fight the astroshamans. This isn’t worth people dying over. I’ll take my crusher along to protect us, just in case. And Sir Asger.”

  Silence filled the cabin, and in the dark, Kim had no idea what Asger’s reaction was.

  “Sir Knight?” the commander said, sounding less certain now.

  Asger didn’t reply right away.

  Kim wondered if Casmir would message him and urge him to go along wit
h it.

  “He may shoot you as soon as you’re on board,” the commander pointed out. “He only asked for our advisors.”

  “We won’t let him,” Casmir said. “If he wants our help, he’ll leave Asger be.”

  “You won’t really give him your help, will you?”

  Kim was surprised the commander was entertaining this. Maybe he truly didn’t want to fight Rache’s enhanced mercenaries. Or he agreed that they needed all of their men for the assault on the astroshamans.

  “I’ll lead him to think we will,” Casmir said. “Because we’re so scared that we’ll do anything he says. But we’ll figure something out.”

  “I’ll go with them and keep them safe,” Asger finally said. “They’re right. It’s better than a fight when they have twice our numbers.”

  “Commander?” Rache prompted.

  “We agree to your terms,” the officer bit out.

  6

  The warm, spicy scent of pozole rojo wafted through the corridors of the Stellar Dragon.

  Qin’s stomach rumbled, and she allowed herself to be deterred from her mission to learn everything she could about Johnny, and she headed for the lounge. Before they’d left System Cerberus, she’d carefully gone through his pack, but she’d found little more than clothing, a couple of DEW-Tek pistols and smoke bombs and grenades. A few types of hard currency had been stuffed into an inside pouch, but there hadn’t been any identification or any hints to who he truly was.

  Since then, she’d poked around on the network, hoping to find his name in an article or on a roster of Kingdom knights. But she wasn’t sure how to spell it, as the name he’d given hadn’t been one she was familiar with, and she also hadn’t found lists of knights in the databases for either System Cerberus or System Hydra. The Kingdom probably kept that information private.

  On the kitchen side of the lounge, Bonita was stirring her stewpot. Freshly fried tortilla chips filled a basket on the counter next to a couple of sauces and sliced cabbage and radish.

  Qin’s stomach rumbled again, and she headed to grab the bowls from the cabinet and help set their little table. They’d come out of the wormhole gate and into System Hydra that morning and were accelerating toward Tiamat Station three days away, so they had enough gravity to dine in comfort.

  “Grab a bowl for Toes,” Bonita said.

  “You didn’t invite him to dinner, did you?” Qin glanced around the lounge in alarm, though she would have seen and smelled him if he’d been in there.

  “No, but prisoners like it if you feed them. And he’s a paying prisoner, so I might even bring him seconds.”

  “Are you going to comm the Osprey and see if they really want him?” Qin asked.

  “I hailed them when we first entered the system. Their comm officer couldn’t be bothered to answer, so I left a message, and they haven’t gotten back to me yet. If they don’t want our help, I’m not going to force it on them. Or force him on them. He also said we could drop him off at Tiamat Station. That would give us an opportunity to get supplies—my fresh vegetable offerings are limited, as you can see—and the opportunity to have nothing to do with the Kingdom.”

  “Bonita,” Viggo chided, “shouldn’t we make another attempt to communicate? I’d like to find out if Casmir is on that ship before we decide to have nothing to do with it.”

  “You can send messages to his chip if you’ve been missing him. I don’t see any reason to cozy up to a Kingdom warship that isn’t interested in us.”

  “He can’t repair X-17’s faulty nozzle over his chip. That requires hands-on work.”

  “I agree that we should try again,” Qin said. “So we can find out if the Kingdom knows who Johnny is. Maybe there’s a reward for turning in someone impersonating a knight.”

  Bonita looked up from her pot. “Did you find evidence to prove that’s what he’s doing? Besides the supposedly removable tattoos?”

  “I didn’t find anything but clothes and weapons in his bag, but if he really was a knight, wouldn’t he have a pertundo? Like Asger?”

  Asger. A little zing went through her as she imagined his face in her mind.

  He’d sent a message sometime in the last week, but courier ships didn’t risk visiting System Cerberus that often, so she’d only received it that morning when they entered Hydra. He’d asked how she was doing on her quest with the pirates and if she’d found any trees to hug. He’d also said he was tied up with work for his superiors, but that if she needed help, she should let him know, and he would try to find an opportunity to take leave.

  She’d appreciated the note, the fact that he’d been wondering enough about her to write. It meant something. She wasn’t sure what, but it at least meant he considered her a friend, didn’t it?

  Casmir had sent a couple of messages, too, both to her and Bonita, and more openly expressed concern at their silence, but that seemed more the norm from him. He probably checked up on all of his friends and relatives regularly. He wasn’t stoic and distant like Asger. Asger’s note had seemed… special.

  “Even when the shafts on those are collapsed, they’d still be large to stick in your luggage,” Bonita said, and Qin pulled her mind back to pertundos, not certain knights. “And if the Druckers searched his stuff and found one, that would have made it hard for him to spy on them.”

  “Do you believe he’s a knight?” Qin hadn’t seen Bonita going down to the cell except to take meals, so she had relaxed her concern that Bonita might do something unwise—like take Johnny up to her cabin for a romp between the sheets.

  “No, but I’m not sure we can condemn him based on the lack of a purple cloak and an axe.”

  “It’s more of a halberd.”

  Bonita waved a dismissive hand.

  “There’s a ship dead ahead on our course, Bonita,” Viggo said. “It’s showing signs of weapons damage, and there are breaches in its hull. It does still have power and is issuing a distress call.”

  “I’m sure there are a lot of ships in this system that can help it,” Bonita said. “Especially this close to the gate.”

  “They may not have much time. It’s a ship we’re familiar with.”

  “Not the Osprey?” Qin asked.

  “No,” Viggo said. “It’s the Machu Picchu.”

  Qin frowned, trying to place the familiar name.

  “The research ship where you went for treatment after you were exposed to the gate on the cargo ship, Qin,” Viggo added.

  “Oh, right.” Qin tapped a nail to her chin. Even though Kim had been the one to give her treatment, it had been using the ship’s equipment, which left her feeling indebted and inclined to help the crew.

  “Huh.” Bonita set her spoon aside and put the lid on her pot. “What’s it doing in this system? That was a Kingdom ship, wasn’t it?”

  “Registered to one of the universities on Odin, yes,” Viggo said. “Perhaps if we answer their distress call we can find out.”

  “If the Osprey is in the system, it can help the ship.”

  Qin frowned. Even though she knew they had to be careful out in space by themselves, especially since the Dragon was ostensibly a freighter with only a single railgun mounted on the top, she didn’t like the idea of abandoning people who might need help. If they were on a research ship, they were likely civilian scientists, not pirates or criminals who’d gotten themselves into trouble.

  “We are nearby,” Viggo said.

  “Is there a reason you’re eager to help out and potentially risk ourselves?” Bonita asked.

  Viggo hesitated. “I believe it’s what Casmir would do.”

  Bonita dropped her face into her hand.

  Qin smiled faintly. “Casmir has made quite an impression on Viggo.”

  “We’re making a new rule going forward, Qin.” Bonita lowered her hand. “No more mechanics, roboticists, or engineers are allowed as passengers.”

  “Because they’re a bad influence on Viggo?”

  “Because Viggo falls in love with them.�
�

  “Really, Bonita.” Viggo sniffed impressively well for someone with no nostrils. “I’m not in love, but since we will likely meet Casmir again, I would like to act honorably and help those from his world. Then he’ll be more inclined to—”

  “Adjust the nozzles on your vacuums?” Bonita cut in.

  “Certainly.”

  Bonita waved her spoon at her pot, then handed the utensil to Qin. “Don’t let this burn.”

  “Where are you going?” Qin asked as she headed out.

  “To alter course to check on the damaged ship.”

  “You’re a good woman, Captain,” Qin called after her.

  “A good woman who’s probably walking into a trap that’ll get us all killed.” Bonita disappeared down the corridor.

  “A slightly bitter and jaded woman but a good one,” Qin said.

  “She has informed me on more than one occasion,” Viggo said, “that tendencies toward skepticism, pessimism, and disbelief help keep one alive longer.”

  “Oh?” Qin sampled the pozole rojo, the two kinds of chiles dancing on her taste buds. “That sounds verbose for her.”

  “It’s possible she used a shorter idiom in her native tongue to convey the point. It involved avoiding getting one’s testicles cut off.”

  “That sounds more like her.”

  “Yes.”

  Asger stood in the airlock with Casmir, Kim, and Zee, water filling the chamber and their armored shoulders mashed together in the tight space. A bag Kim had slung over her shoulder clunked him in the side of the helmet. It had something hard in it. He hoped that meant she and Casmir had a plan. When they’d spoken, Asger had been about to agree with the marines that they should fight to keep the damn mercenaries from forcing their way aboard their submarine.

  Then Casmir had sent a single one-line message. Go along with it. It’s better than people dying here.

  He had the niggling suspicion that Casmir knew more than he should about what Rache wanted, but he wouldn’t speak of it while they were still on board. Not that it was likely there was any recording equipment active at the moment. The power was still out in the submarine, and they’d had to open the airlock hatch and order the chamber to fill using manual levers and latches.