Assured (Envoys Book 2)

by Peter J Aldin

  “Or something.” He sighed. “We have a problem.”

  “Dammit,” she whispered.

  “He wants money not to tell about your secret message we got out last week.”

  “Say it louder, moron, so the whole passageway can hear.” She tilted her head side to side, cracking her neck. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She got up to pace around. “I’ll cut the bastard’s heart out.”

  “For real?” he asked, eyes widening.

  “No, not for real. Too much blood. I’ll poison him.”

  “Sheesh.”

  She stood over him, hands on hips. “Well, what’s your solution? Gonna turn me in? Gonna pay him to keep his beer hole shut?”

  “Ana. I’m not doing either. You know that.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “To go ahead and tell the captain.”

  “You what!”

  He put a finger to one of his eyes. “And I told him I’d play the captain my eye-cam recording of his extortion attempt.”

  “You …?” She shifted her hands from her hips to her pockets. “Huh. Extortion’s illegal with you guys?”

  “It is.”

  “And he bought that?”

  “Seemed like he did. Just before you came in.”

  “Well. Good. Maybe problem solved.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Chipper told her.

  His head ached. From the exhaustion of the long trip to Kh’het3 and back stuck in a crappy navigator’s seat. From the prospect of having to do it again soon. From the stress of the past few weeks.

  Now this.

  Ana was looking at him funny, her head tilted. “Guy, you really got your ECF going? It recording me now?”

  He made a face. “I was bluffing. Can’t just fire it up at will. Ya gotta go through a whole hard-startup routine that your team leader runs before you can use it.”

  “For reals?” she said.

  He sighed, hoping Sintopas wasn’t going to the captain now, hoping the dirtsack had bought the lie. He wasn’t Peacekeeper, and he wasn’t command rank, so there was no reason he should know about Peacekeeper security protocols. Except that people found out things they shouldn’t every day of every week. And Sintopas had just proved that.

  “Chip?” Ana prompted. He’d forgotten to answer her question.

  “Yeah. For reals. Also stops someone hacking it and spying through it.” He rubbed a hand over his face and tried a grin. “Wouldn’t want someone looking through your eyes while you’re taking a leak, ey?”

  “Or making love.”

  He felt his neck warming. To move on from that topic, he added, “Or playing poker. They might report your hand to someone else at the table.”

  She held his gaze a moment before responding, making him wonder at her thoughts. “Especially if Cinderpants there was getting the report. Dude must have some serious money problems if he’s desperate enough to try’n blackmail a Peacer. So, you think he’ll pocket what you’re selling?”

  “Pocket what I’m ...?”

  “Xerxes talk. You think he believes you?”

  “Jeez, I hope so. Coz we’re both in the crapper if he doesn’t.”

  After she’d gone—never telling him why she’d appeared in the first place—Chipper dimmed the cabin light and lay back with an arm over his eyes. With Bradstock on duty and Westermann and Stines at the hangar bar, he should have been able to sleep.

  Except questions kept popping into his brain. And not just questions about the upcoming mission or Sintopas …

  Why had Ana mentioned making love? Why had she held his gaze like that? Was she attracted to him after all? Should he chase after her and make a move? Should he invite her up to the observatory deck where couples went for dates?

  Had Able Spacer Rezudi passed his birthday note to her too early?

  Am I just a big, fat idiot?

  He turned onto his side and tried to think about something else.

  “Making love,” Ana muttered to herself in disgust as she returned to her billet. “Why in hell did you say that to him?”

  16

  At 2030 shiptime, Chipper was down on hangar deck loading cambots onto the Lioness and one of the skiffs. The other skiff had taken a small party of Assured crewers across to the Tluaan frigate—Dr. Nkembe, Master-At-Arms Seroughi and the skiff pilot. The short-range runabout would stay there with them, not that it would be much use except to evacuate them into Kh’het4’s orbit if there was a fire or other emergency. Chipper knew these skiffs had operational ranges within the thousands of kilometers, not the millions a capital ship, fighter, or pursuit runner was capable of.

  Vazak, Stines and a couple of technicians helped Chipper stow the bots, conversation minimal. Stines appeared to be paying the price for hard drinking before a mission. No doubt he’d still fake his way onto the skiff when Assured drew close enough to Kh’het3 to launch it, and the XO arrived to see them off. Chipper didn’t suppose it mattered whether or not the man was under the influence; it wasn’t like they were going to see action. Stines would be a skiff passenger only, available for the one-in-a-million chance that things went ass-up, there to make the non-soldiers feel safer. Chipper and Vazak would serve the same purpose on the Lioness.

  Shorter trip this time, he told himself. And no Chinyama. I’m getting one of the comfy racks this time.

  While a technician loaded the final cambot into the skiff’s belly-bay, Stines slunk up alongside Chipper to offer him a small vial of gold-colored liquid. “Hair of the dog?”

  “The dog didn’t bite me,” Chipper replied, returning his attention to the tech.

  “Then let’s have one to toast our mission success.”

  Chipper groaned. Toasting missions was tradition. Not toasting missions was seen as bad juju. He checked no one was watching, then eyed the vial. “Sure that’s not your urine sample?”

  Stines huffed and swallowed half of it himself, then offered the rest to Chipper. “To doing our jobs.”

  Chipper took it. If Stines could try and make peace, perhaps he should too. They were called Peacekeepers after all. “And coming back alive,” he said and sculled what was left. His face puckered as he handed back the vial. If that hadn’t been urine, it had been damned close.

  Stines flinched when Vazak appeared between them. “Gods! How does something that big move that quietly?”

  Vazak raised the big plastic jug of water she was carrying. “I drink too. We all come back living. We also kill some bad things.” She gulped down the water—all of it—then tossed the empty jug onto a nearby pallet.

  “Glad she’s going in your ride,” Stines said. “She’ll be pissing like a raincloud an hour into the trip.”

  Pan had invited Gregory and Fowler to his cabin for a light meal and a glass of Castoran tequila. They crowded his tiny table, making small talk, taking turns stealing peeks at the wall clock. Gregory also ventured a glance or two at Pan’s acoustic guitar standing in one corner. He’d never seen Pan play it. Then again, Pan was a self-contained sort; his music would be something of a private retreat.

  At 2145, Chinyama’s voice came through Pan’s commset, transmitting from the bridge. “Assets were launched forty minutes ago. Assured is parked five thousand klicks from orbital. Assets now splitting off from each other as they close on the planet.”

  The three men finished their meal at leisure and a steward brought them coffee.

  Twenty-three minutes after his first update, the XO commed again. “Devilfly had taken out three rail guns on orbital’s hull and is leading a swarm of twenty fighters away from it. Lioness is on Kh’het3’s nightside and approaching atmosphere.”

  Six minutes after that: “Skiff approaching orbital. Lioness has detected a two-fighter patrol in high atmosphere and targeted them from distance. We have no indication of whether or not the enemy got word out.”

  Pan used a napkin to wipe coffee from his lips and replied, “We’re on our way to the bridge, XO.”

  Fowler considered his rema
ining tequila wistfully as the other men rose. “If there were only more time to enjoy moments this good. May I say, gentlemen, that the times might be dire, but it’s been instructive to serve with men and women of principle such as yourselves and—” He gestured at the cabin door. “—your bodyguard waiting out by the lift. I wish most of the Enforcers I’ve served with were half as attentive and intelligent as she is.”

  “She could have joined us for the meal,” Pan told Gregory. He indicated the dregs of the finger food and the half bottle of alcohol. “Plenty here.”

  Gregory replied, “Breaking bread with boring farts like us makes her uncomfortable.”

  Pan chuckled. “Don’t blame her at all.”

  “She’ll enjoy returning to the bridge, then.” Fowler emptied his glass and followed them from the room. “I’m sure it’ll be anything but boring tonight.”

  They were in the elevator—with Grace—when Chinyama commed it. “Captain in the lift?”

  “Yes, XO. What is it?”

  “Sir, we have a serious glitch.”

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, the skiff has been captured.”

  Pan flinched as if stung. “Captured! How?”

  “Sir, it’s best you see the video.”

  The lift doors opened onto bridge level at that very moment and Pan darted out, power-walking down the hall with the others in his wake.

  “Told you it wouldn’t be boring,” Fowler said.

  “Report!” Pan snapped, entering the bridge. Peacekeeper Westermann on watch jolted to attention.

  From the helm, Chinyama didn’t face them, just pointed to the mainscreen where a frozen recording lurched to life. It showed the tan-colored and rippled surface at one end of the orbital with the dark gray box of a skiff sidling up to it. “This was taken by the drone we parked five hundred meters from the membrane.”

  Gregory had wondered why they’d labeled the ends membrane and not simply hull. He could see now: the surface there rippled like sailcloth in a breeze. What would cause that effect? Changes in inner pressure? Things brushing against it inside? He watched the video with dread. Something awful was looming, but he had no idea what to expect. The camfeed zoomed in tighter, showing the skiff firing jets in small bursts, angling its nose toward the membrane, its work-arm already reaching for the bots in its open belly bay. Nothing happened for the first moments after the small craft had come to a full stop itself, then …

  Though the bridge crew had already seen this, a chorus of gasps shot around the room. One of the gasps was Gregory’s. One moment, the skiff had been there—the next it was gone.

  “Mr. Sintopas, replay slower,” said Chinyama.

  The feed jumped back to a point where the skiff still sat there. Depicted clearly now in slow motion, an area of the membrane extended out and over the skiff, drawing it under and into itself.

  “Jesus,” Grace rasped at Gregory’s shoulder.

  “It’s like a giant tongue or something,” Fowler said.

  When the motion settled, the membrane smoothing back in place, the skiff was gone with no sign of where it had passed through, or—

  “How?” Gregory asked.

  “We’ll figure that out later.” Pan bent over a sensor panel and started calling up data. “Comms, forward that recording to the Lioness. They need to get their asses up there and get our people back out. Helm, get us closer. Hold at two hundred klicks from orbital. XO, do we have signals from the skiff?”

  “No, sir. No data, no comms.” He did something to the helmpanel and the feed on the screen shifted to an interior camera within the runabout, showing the pilot, a tech, and Peacekeeper Stines shouting and waving their arms while alerts blared within their cabin. A few seconds in, the recording fizzled into static, then blackness. “We’ve had nothing since that.”

  “Are we moving, helm?” Pan asked, not looking up from the panel he was reading from.

  Lieutenant Toller said, “New position in six minutes.”

  “Comms, where’s Lioness?”

  Gregory had been vaguely aware of Sintopas’s chatter in the corner of the bridge. The Ensign raised his voice now. “Sir, they’re en route. They didn’t get to drop off their cam—”

  “Don’t give a damn about their cambots. Did you tell them what they’re getting into? Good, then comm them again and ask for ideas. XO, if you have any, I’d appreciate them too. Fowler, get word to your people to warm up in case they’re needed. Westermann, go get the two Tluaanto and bring them here. I have a feeling we’ll need their perspective.”

  Ana was in half-kit—combat fatigues, no armor—finishing her light warmup in the Rec Hall. She flung a leg up on a bench and leaned into a hamstring stretch, gripping the toes of her boot. It was incredible that someone like her who wanted action was stuck on the capital ship jogging and stretching. Meanwhile, someone like Chipper who wanted off such duties to go help flood victims got to go.

  Umbrano lifted dumbbells a few meters away. Hecate and Manolo should have been here too. She had a feeling the pair were somewhere tapping into Assured’s data and comms feeds again. Which was damned stupid, since they were all in this together now, and headed for a formal alliance anyway.

  She dropped her leg and got the other one up and was leaning into a new stretch when someone cleared their throat nearby. She turned her head without releasing the stretch to see a navy rating, some no-name spacer she might have seen on the hangar deck or serving dinner. The man stood a couple meters away, out of arm’s reach, as if she might lash out at him. If he kept doing that nervous jig on the balls of his feet like that, maybe she would.

  “What?”

  He swallowed. He held out a small plastic envelope. She had seen these used from time to time for missives that weren’t trusted to hackable comms systems. With enthusiastic code-tweakers like Manolo and Hecate aboard, Assured’s crew probably should have been using them more often.

  “What is that?” she said, but in a tone pitched to avoid Umbrano’s attention.

  “Corporal Tukimatu said you’d want this at 2200. It’s almost that now.”

  “Oh, yeah?” What the hell was Chipper sending her? At a specific time while he’d be away? The early signs of curiosity in the spacer’s body language made her bluff. “Oh, right! Mission materials. Just throw it under the bench. I’ll get to it.” She stretched forward, touching her knee with her forehead, waiting till the guy had gone. She got the leg down, flexed and released all her limbs, did a little jog, then cool as an ice moth she stooped to grab the parcel. Opened it. A note was inside. An actual handwritten note. She could see the cursive script through the paper it was written on.

  Chipper sent me this?

  Was it a last will and testament? Couldn’t be. Could it?

  She turned her back to Umbrano—though he didn’t seem to have noticed anything—and unfolded the note, whispering, “This better not be a love letter, ese.”

  It did include a poem. But it wasn’t a love letter. In a way, it was just as bad …

  Jogi.

  Happy birthday.

  Yeah, I bribe personnel clerks to give me all my teammates’ birthdays. Sue me.

  I was thinking you’d probably be glum about it being your birthday. Or you wouldn’t care maybe. Xerxians don’t seem big on personal celebrations, I guess. But you should celebrate, seriously.

  I was also thinking you were pretty down about your past life the last time we chatted. And I remembered part of an old poem my Ma always loved. It gave her strength, she said. It’s my birthday gift to you. Not saying you ain’t strong. Just hoping this means something to you.

  In cold and fire

  Light and dark

  Clash and clamor

  Void and spark;

  Though separated, pressurized,

  Born in travail, born to die,

  Torn asunder, crushed between,

  Boiled and beat in forge unseen,

  This truth is endless, this truth is keen:

  The stars
remain

  And so do we.

  It’s about overcoming all the crap in the centuries after PBT virus. It’s about toughing it out. Being tough makes me think of you.

  Ana. Forget about that idiot poker player. He’s nothing. More important: stop looking back and start looking forward. If your history is a drag on you, then ditch it. Just ditch it. Be free, be fresh, be who you want and chase what you want. What YOU want.

  Chipper.

  She read the note twice. Then crumpled it in her fist. Then checked Umbrano wasn’t watching before smoothing it out and reading it a third time. Then she shoved it in her thigh side pocket.

  “Big dumb bulala,” she muttered.

  As Lt. Catanno piloted the pursuit runner out of the planet’s atmosphere, Chipper and Vazak reached for their e-suit helmets. The warrior’s gray e-suit didn’t look much sturdier than the thin combat coverall she wore beneath it. By comparison, Chipper’s was thick with armor-plating and flat equipment pouches, and black-on-blue with beam-mitigation coating.

  After locking on his own helmet, he handed Catanno his—a precaution, since the pilot wouldn’t be going EV. Chipper glanced at the narrow door in back of the cabin. It hid an airlock with a ladderwell above it, designed for manual exit out top of the Lioness. To avoid venting the main compartment during the rescue op, it would be their way in and out. He unlocked an equipment locker and grabbed two PR19s. Handing one to Vazak, he said, “Better than a knife this time.”

  She turned it over a couple times. “Okay. Good gun.”

  He passed her a chargepack and showed her how to slap it into the rifle. Four spare chargers went into his suit pouches. His finger hesitated over his own weapon’s selector before choosing STUN rather than AP.

  Bracing himself at the pilot’s backrest, he observed their approach toward the orbital’s sides. He pointed over Catanno’s shoulder. “They were pulled in at the end of the station, around there.” The end where the skiff had been lost was a one-sixty or so meters away to port.