A Dark Horizon (Final Dawn, Book 3)

by T W M Ashford

  It was unnervingly quiet. The few unlocked rooms they bothered to briefly check and clear were totally unoccupied. Then again, with a building as difficult to charter as the Ministry’s headquarters, it was hardly any wonder. They had to consult the map twice more before they reached one of the many doors leading into the inner chamber. Each time they did, the route was different from the one they’d followed moments before. They only came across a minister once as they were crossing a narrow stone walkway, but she’d been minding her own business half a dozen floors below. They’d let her be and continued on unseen.

  As with the last door, only a data pad scanner allowed entry. The same masked operative produced the same borrowed keycard and was about to unlock it when the squad leader grabbed her arm. Her other hand tightened around her rifle in preparation for inbound security.

  But the other operative shook his head. He made a point of inspecting the clip of his battle rifle and his pouch of plasma grenades. Relaxing, she and the third mercenary did the same. This was an easy job – a high-profile and therefore lucrative job, but easy nonetheless – but that didn’t mean they could afford to get complacent.

  Who knew what security the Grand Ministers had in there with them?

  They each gave a thumbs-up. The mercenary with the keycard unlocked the door, then crouched down with her eye in line with her rifle’s sights.

  The door to the chamber slid open. It was dark on the other side. The air felt thinner. Foreign. The third operative did a quick sweep of the corridor beyond, then beckoned for the others to follow.

  A set of stairs led up to the long, central platform on which the Grand Ministers conducting their meeting. They could hear one of the ministers talking passionately to the others. Beyond the summit of the stairs, the mercenaries could make out the thousands of delegate booths – all empty, of course. There would be no shocked crowd to witness today’s events.

  They climbed the steps with footsteps as light as the first flakes of winter snow.

  The seven Grand Ministers sat in a circle at the very tip of their platform in the centre of the chamber. Their chairs, each designed to suit the body type of their individual species, glistened like gold jewellery thanks to a ring of miniature spotlights beaming out from the platform floor. They were deep in discussion, though none of the mercenaries could hear what about. Proxima Delta, most likely. Besides each other, the ministers were alone – no assistants, no scribes, and no guards.

  Perfect.

  The shadows ended where the narrow strip to the platform began. The three mercenaries crouched at the edge of the darkness and, without a word needing to pass between them, attached scopes to their rifles. There was no need to get any closer. It wasn’t as if their targets had anywhere to run.

  They turned their black visored helmets towards one another. The squad leader made a gesture to indicate on my mark. He raised three fingers, dropped one to two, then dropped another…

  They opened fire.

  Ballistic rounds boomed like explosions in the thin air. Muzzle flashes broke the gloom like fireworks. Empty shells rattled against the cold floor.

  And the blue forcefield frazzled with each and every hit.

  The mercenaries quickly stopped firing when they realised none of their shots were getting through. The Grand Ministers far on the other side of the forcefield jumped in surprise, but only one of them was frightened enough to leave his seat.

  “Get out of here,” snarled the head mercenary. “It’s a trap!”

  The other male operative was already down by the door. He slapped the keycard Keeto gave them against the door’s scanning pad, but the pad kept flashing red.

  “It won’t open. We’re stuck in—”

  Three laser strips shot out from projectors on either side of the corridor and dissected the mercenary before he could finish his sentence. His head, legs and torso hit the ground one after the other. The stench of cauterised flesh filled the air.

  “Back up the stairs,” the squad leader ordered. “Now!”

  But they weren’t even halfway up before two large, reinforced rotary cannons emerged from hidden compartments high on the chamber walls. They snapped to face the mercenaries and their six barrelled clusters began to spin.

  The female operative fired a few rounds at one of them, but each shot ricocheted harmlessly off its metal casing. The head mercenary went to aim his own rifle, then conceded defeat.

  An easy job. Huh. He should have known better.

  Grand Minister Philo Na Ji, the Ministry’s representative for the Mansa Empire, stood at the edge of the flickering blue forcefield and watched as the rotary cannons tore the two remaining mercenaries first to ribbons, and then to a fine pulp. Grand Ministers Zsal and Heram came to join him, though Heram quickly turned away when he saw what was left of the assailants.

  Once the cannons quietened, Philo Na Ji spoke into the personal data pad he carried.

  “Yes, it’s been taken care of. Thank you, Jack Bishop. The executors tasked with Minister Keeto’s arrest are already on their way.”

  22

  Fall From Grace

  Jack pulled the data pad from his ear and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Thank goodness.” He glanced across the hotel room at Minister Keeto, who had given up the password to her data pad only minutes before. “And don’t worry. I don’t think she’s going anywhere.”

  The minister lay on the floor with her shoulders propped up against one of the apartment’s armchairs. Her black robe was ripped. Blood had soaked into the carpet. But as painful as it looked, most of her wounds were superficial.

  “The Grand Ministers are still alive. The same can’t be said of your strike team. It didn’t take much to convince the council of your plan – they’ve had Minister Glessant spying on you for months now. I guess they’re harder to hoodwink than I am.”

  Jack put the data pad down on a nearby table and walked over to the mini-kitchen where Klik stood. She was wiping her bony forearm blades clean with a paper serviette.

  “Jesus, Klik. You really did a number on her. Are you all right? Don’t take this the wrong way, but people back home might have called you a psychopath.”

  “Really?” She didn’t seem all too phased by the remark. “Back on Paryx, everyone just called me Klik.”

  “I guess we come from different worlds in more than just the literal sense.” Jack shrugged. “Well, I can’t say it didn’t work. And thank you for putting the safety of the Grand Ministers first. I know that—”

  “Hey. Don’t patronise me. I did what needed to be done, that’s all.” She tossed the bloody napkin into the small, automatic waste incinerator beneath the counter. “Doesn’t mean I’m happy about saving the same people who either enslaved my race or turned a blind eye to it. But do you know what this means, minister?”

  Minister Keeto groaned from her position over on the carpet.

  “It means that we’re done with all the time-sensitive stuff!” Klik clapped her hands together. “We can spend as long as we want squeezing all the information about Charon out of you!”

  “No!” wheezed Keeto, raising one hand whilst pushing herself up into a sitting position with the other. “No. I’ll tell you. It doesn’t matter anymore. He doesn’t matter. You can’t stop—”

  She winced and clutched at her side. Her hand came back a dark red colour. She begrudgingly wiped it against the side of her robe.

  “The Garnidian system. Its star is a white dwarf of the exact specification Charon needs for his wormhole. That’s where you’ll find him. That’s where you’ll find the Iris.”

  Klik advanced towards her.

  “You wouldn’t be lying to us, would you?”

  Keeto shook her head. Despite everything, Jack felt inclined to believe her.

  “What would be the point?” she replied. “Charon’s already there. You can’t stop him. You can’t stop any of it.”

  Klik glanced warily at Jack, who nodded. She retracted the blade
s. As angry as Klik was, Jack wasn’t convinced she intended to use them again unless she had to.

  “All right. A Ministry task force is on its way up here to take you into custody. We’ll tell them everything you told us, and—”

  “And they’ll send out a fleet to stop Charon?” Keeto rose shakily to her feet. “Come on, Jack. Don’t be so naive. They’ll have another useless debate about it. By the time they make a decision it’ll already be over, and the galaxy will be left scrambling in the aftermath. I wish I could see it.”

  “I’m sure you can – you’ll just be watching from a prison cell. Sit back down.”

  Keeto barked a single, unhinged laugh that made the skin on the back of Jack’s neck grow tight.

  “I would be so lucky.” She edged towards the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the casino, still clutching her side. “No, I have failed them twice already. I will not betray them as well.”

  “Failed who?” Jack sidled towards the apartment door in case she planned to make a run for it. “It’s not too late. Maybe the Ministry can offer you protection in exchange for your testimony.”

  “I’m already dead, Jack.” Keeto smiled and shook her head. “But that’s all right. Soon everyone else will be, too.”

  She threw herself through the glass.

  “Jesus Christ!” Jack and Klik rushed to the broken window just in time to watch her body crash through one of the roulette tables below. “What the…”

  Minister Keeto lay in a broken heap amongst the cards and chips. A puddle of blood bloomed across the casino floor. Gamblers and staff ran screaming from the scene in a stampede. A few others, immobilised from fascination or shock, pointed up and shouted at Jack and Klik in the apartment room above.

  In unison, they quickly drew away from the window.

  “Why did she do that?” asked Klik, clicking her mandibles together in a panic. “Like… what can put that much fear into someone?”

  Jack paced back and forth. This looked bad. Really bad. Here they were, standing in a hotel room they shouldn’t have access to with a minister’s blood splattered all across the carpet. As far as anyone in the casino downstairs was concerned, they just threw that minister through a window. And whilst he had no doubt Celest Verte was filled with security cameras able to exonerate him in an instant, he wasn’t sure the incoming task force – or an angry casino mob – would feel the same way.

  “We can’t stay here,” he told Klik.

  “You’re telling me. We’ve got to get to Garnidia before Charon sets off a black hole!”

  “No, I mean we can’t be here when the task force arrives.” He shepherded Klik towards the front door. “The Grand Ministers won’t care how we got the answers we needed to save their lives, but they will have a lot of questions about why she’s now dead instead of in handcuffs. We won’t be thrown in prison,” he quickly added, noticing fear erupt across Klik’s face, “but we don’t have time to explain everything. And Keeto was right about one thing – they won’t listen. They won’t do anything. If we want to stop Charon, we’re going to have to do it without them.”

  “Do it alone, you mean.”

  “Yeah. There’s just one problem.”

  “Oh, there’s a lot more than just the one problem with this plan. From what you’ve told me, Charon has a space station capable of inducing a black hole. He’ll no doubt have a small army protecting it. And even if we get there in one piece, neither one of us has the slightest clue how to stop it. But please, go on – what’s this one problem we’re facing?”

  “We don’t have a ship.”

  “Ah! I think I can help with that.” Klik sheepishly pulled out a set of keys from her trouser pocket. “I snatched them off Keeto while I was, erm, convincing her to unlock her data pad.”

  “Well, I guess she won’t be needing these anymore,” said Jack, taking the keys off her. “Now all we need to do is figure out where she’s parked.”

  Celest Verte was in a state of chaos following Minister Keeto’s suicide – or, from the perspective of the resort’s many thousands of visitors, murder.

  Jack didn’t know if word had reached everybody on the station yet, nor if Celest Verte considered a death on its casino floor a valid reason for shutting down. But the corridors of the Residential District were noticeably more empty than when they first arrived, and even the reception desks were abandoned. The task force was going to find a ghost town when they arrived… if they didn’t stumble across Keeto’s dead body downstairs first.

  At least the elevators still worked. Jack guessed it wasn’t a good idea to keep everybody trapped on each floor while there was a potential killer on the loose.

  He scrolled down the long list of different levels, wondering where Keeto’s private cruiser might be parked. It could be on the other side of the resort for all he knew, accessible only via two elevators, a vacuum tube, four travelators and a shuttle. But then he saw what was probably – hopefully – their best bet.

  Garages.

  Jack pressed it and the elevator started moving downwards. He looked over at Klik, who had her hands splayed against the glass walls as she watched each floor whizz by. It took a second for him to realise what seemed different about her.

  “Klik – your mask!”

  She patted her exposed face in alarm.

  “Ah, dammit! I left it back in the apartment.” Klik gave the elevator door a kick. “Oh well. I’m fed up of hiding anyway. If people don’t like it they can—”

  “Send you back to Paryx to be enslaved for the rest of your life?” Jack shrugged. “But yeah. Fair enough. It’s not like you can go on wearing it forever.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “Besides, I’m sure the Mansa will catch me sooner or later anyway.”

  “Sorry, Klik. That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.”

  They fell into silence as the elevator continued to descend through its long, transparent pipe. They passed the cyberpunk race track Jack saw on their way up – the stands of the stadium were now empty, the race bikes stashed haphazardly in their bays. Jack hoped everyone wasn’t in a rush to get back to their ships. The last thing they needed was gridlock.

  The gentle hum of whooshing air lowered in tone as the elevator slowed to a stop. The doors to the Garage level slid open.

  There was no mistaking the smells that immediately wafted into the cabin. Gasoline, oil, freshly welded metal… and a sort of tangy odour Jack had come to recognise as somnium, the mysterious element that powered most of the galaxy’s skip drives. A pre-recorded emergency message playing on a loop through a speaker system asked visitors to evacuate in a calm and orderly manner.

  “I was hoping for a parking garage rather than a place where ships get fixed,” said Jack, giving the elevator’s button panel another inspection. “They must be on the same floor, right? Be a nightmare moving the ships about otherwise.”

  Klik hid her face as a pair of Dryggs hurried past the elevator doors.

  “I guess? Surprisingly enough, I’ve never had to park a ship before.”

  “Hey.” Jack put a reassuring hand on Klik’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about the mask. You’ve got as much right to be here as anyone else, okay? I bet nobody will think twice about it anyway.”

  Klik nodded and took a deep breath.

  “Okay. Thanks, Jack.”

  “No problem. And even if somebody does notice, we’ll be long gone before they can do anything about it.”

  They stepped into the Garage corridor before the elevator got called to another floor. It was darker and less glamorous than the rest of the resort, which came as little surprise to Jack. The walls and floor were metallic and grey, with long yellow stripes painted down their length. Engineering drones raced along rails installed on the ceiling in a similar manner to the mail-bots up in the Residential District, only these were much bigger and carried canisters of fuel instead of advertisement slips.

  “Hey, look.” Klik elbowed him in the side. “There’
s one of those Information Kiosks we were looking for.”

  Jack’s shoulders sagged. Right across the corridor from them was a six-foot tall, two feet wide, inch-thin sheet of metal, its entire face a bright-blue electronic screen on which an interactive, three-dimensional map of Celest Verte rotated serenely.

  “Of course. Now we find one, just as we’re leaving.”

  Jack marched over and gave the screen a prod.

  “Hmm. Nothing seems to—”

  “Hello!” The screen suddenly changed to show a happy cartoon face. It was green – the same colour as the resort’s branding. “Welcome to Celest Verte, where your desires and credit have no limit! What can I help you with today?”

  Jack took a sudden step back, hoping that trying to use the screen as a touch pad wasn’t considered an awful social faux pas in the eyes of an AI. It didn’t look unhappy about it. Then again, its artificial face didn’t look all that intelligent either.

  “We’re, erm, trying to find a ship,” he replied.

  “Is it your ship?” asked the kiosk.

  “Yes?” said Jack, slowly.

  “Then check your key fob!” The cartoon face on the screen grew a self-satisfied grin. “Double tap it to see your current hangar and bay!”

  Jack checked Minister Keeto’s keys. He hadn’t paid the little green triangle of plastic hanging off the ring much attention before. Two taps with his thumb made it flash the digits C113 three times before turning blank again.

  “C-1-1-3,” said Klik. “How do we find that?”

  “That’s hangar C, bay 113.” The grinning face on the screen sprouted a green hand that pointed to the left of the kiosk. “It’s the first hangar on your right if you head down that way, and then, once inside, your bay will be down the second row on your left! Can I help you with anything else?”

  “No, that’s perfect,” said Jack. Klik was already halfway down the corridor. He started jogging after her. “Thank you!”