Pyle nodded and gripped his blaster. Deckland stepped out into the thoroughfare, quickly checking each direction with his weapon before helping Pyle out of the tunnel.
“Hurry,” Deckland said. “The other squad could arrive at any minute.”
“Let’s see how fast you move with a blaster bolt to the calf!” growled Pyle.
“Cry me a river,” Deckland responded as he slung Pyle’s arm over his shoulder. “Move!”
Deckland began helping Pyle along, keeping an eye out for any sign of trouble as they made their way down the corridor to the hanger. Smoke still hung in the air from the detonations of the stun grenades, and Deckland could see Berenger, his partner’s pet Lampak, and his robo-butler in the distance by their ship. Deckland couldn’t help but smile.
I’ll grant Berenger this much, he thought. He’s one tough son of a bova…
So focused was Deckland on their apparent turn of fortune, he didn’t notice the sound of the corridor’s other maintenance doors opening until it was too late.
Deckland turned at the sound of the doors hitting the walls as they swung open, seeing members of the last Pink Sun hit squad emerging from the other maintenance tunnels in the thoroughfare. Solely on instinct, Deckland dropped to his knee, abandoning Pyle as he aimed his weapon at the closest attacker and fired.
The Pink Sun mercenary Deckland shot at dropped, but the others reacted by opening fire.
Red bolts of plasma blasts streaked by, one of them catching a surprised Pyle in the gut. Deckland heard the man cry out as he fell to the ground, clutching his wound.
“NO!” Deckland yelled.
Return fire emanated from the other end of the corridor as Berenger and Wadsworth came forward, blasting away at the new assailants. Deckland turned his attention back to the gunfight just as Spur raced by him, tackling the closest Pink Sun soldier and mauling him.
Deckland got to his feet and walked forward, aggressively targeting any Pink Sun soldier that appeared from the various maintenance tunnels that opened into the corridor. Blaster bolts flew in every direction, but when the smoke cleared, the two Rangers were still standing while the remaining members of the Pink Sun hit squad were all dead.
The instant the gunfight was over, Deckland rushed back to Pyle’s side. The man was clutching desperately at the gut wound that was still smoking, whimpering as blood started to seep from his mouth.
“Blast it!” cursed Deckland as he applied pressure to Pyle’s wound. “Berenger! Hurry! We need to get him help!”
Berenger’s bionic hand rested on Deckland’s shoulder as the Ranger looked down at Pyle. “Ain’t no help to be given, Rook,” he muttered. “The blast tore up his insides and severed his spine. The internal bleeding will take him before we can get him any treatment.”
“He’s our only witness!” stressed Deckland. “We can’t just let him die!”
“We ain’t letting him do anything. He’s beyond our ability to help right now.”
Berenger took off his hat and knelt beside Pyle, who was making panicked and pained noises as the grim reality of his situation settled in upon him.
“Listen to me, Pyle,” Berenger said. “You’re dying. There ain’t nothing that can be done about that now. But if you tell us who hired you to abduct them children, I give you my word… I will make them pay.”
Pyle’s pained eyes met Berenger’s. They were eyes full of fear and regret. But Berenger’s words ignited a small spark of defiance in them, a hope that Pyle could enact some form of vengeance upon his killers, even from beyond the grave. The man opened his mouth to speak and coughed, blood seeping down his chin and painting his teeth. He steeled himself, and with his final breath, he managed to say a single word.
“Archeron…”
A hollow wheeze escaped from the man as he visibly deflated, his eyes drifting off in an empty, far-away stare as his body went limp. Deckland checked the man’s pulse.
“He’s gone,” Deckland said.
“The piece of squick got off easy, if’n you ask me,” grumbled Berenger as he rose to his feet and put his hat back on.
“I got him killed!” growled Deckland as he stood back up. “He was our only witness, and I didn’t protect him! When the bolts started flying, I abandoned him and thought only of myself!”
“You did what you had to, Rook,” Berenger replied. “Yeah, he’s dead. But better him than you.”
“But the case…”
“Ain’t over whilst we still draw breath!” Berenger stated.
Just then, one of the comm units on a dead Pink Sun soldier squawked. “Team Black, Team Yellow, what’s your status? Report.”
Deckland and Berenger both looked toward the source of the sound. Deckland moved toward the body of the soldier and unclasped an ultrawave radio from the man’s belt.
“Team Black, Team Yellow, what’s your status?” the voice on the other end repeated. “Report.”
“Speaking of drawing breath…” Berenger muttered.
“You said reports indicated there were only two squads left,” Deckland said. “Who’s calling them?”
“Their buddies in the starfighters outside, most like.”
Deckland looked up at Berenger. “Starfighters?” he said.
“Yeah, I forgot to mention, The Leadbelly’s sensors picked up two fightercraft patrolling the area outside the hangar in case we made it to our ship,” Berenger said. “I reckon they’ll fire their missiles at the hangar as soon as they figure out their men are all dead.”
“Great Observer!” said Deckland. “That kind of damage could destroy this entire station!”
“Yep,” agreed Berenger. “Which is why we gotta get the squick off this tin can. Right quick.”
Berenger immediately turned and began jogging toward The Leadbelly with Wadsworth and Spur in tow. Deckland took one last look at Pyle’s body before racing after his companions.
As soon as the group was back on the ship, Wadsworth re-engaged the rear ramp’s hydraulics and began closing the cargo bay door. Berenger walked with purpose toward the bridge as Deckland followed closely behind. Berenger wasted no time climbing into the pilot’s seat and bringing the Black Sun fightercraft up on the ship’s sensors as Deckland took his seat in the co-pilot chair. What he saw on the sensor readout didn’t exactly put him at ease.
“Both ships have broken their patrol and are moving to make an attack run on the hangar,” Deckland reported. “We’ve got maybe ninety seconds before they’re in position to fire.”
“Ninety seconds? Plenty of time,” replied Berenger as he powered up the ship.
“I can’t help but notice it didn’t sound like you were being ironic when you just said that,” noted Deckland. “Do you have a plan you’d care to share with me?”
“I plan to open a hyperspace window right on the edge of where the station’s gravitational shadow is, and then I’m gonna fly us into it and the squick outta here.”
Deckland blinked at Berenger. “You’re gonna…” he muttered. “Berenger, the closest you could possibly open a hyperspace window is still beyond the trajectory of those Pink Sun fighters! We’d never make it past them before they are in a position to intercept us!”
“Yeah, if we were moving at sub-light speeds,” Berenger said. “But we’re gonna jump into lightspeed, right from the hangar.”
“You’re going to accelerate to lightspeed outside of hyperspace?” cried Deckland in disbelief.
“Yep.”
“Are you out of your mind???”
“Nope.”
“Berenger, if there’s any debris in our path, even something as small as the size of a pebble, it’ll rip through this ship, and we’ll be completely annihilated!”
“You got a better idea, Rook?”
Deckland frowned. He glanced up at the two fightercraft on the ship’s viewscreen as they maneuvered into position. If they waited much longer or tried to take off regularly, they would be sitting ducks for their attackers’ missiles. If they
followed Berenger’s plan, they were just as likely to die, but at least they had a chance.
“Unfortunately, I do not,” Deckland grumbled.
“Thought so,” Berenger said as he finished powering up the lightspeed engine and placed his hand on the ignition button. “Hold onto your jimmies, kid. This bova is about to buck.”
In the distance beyond where the fightercraft were positioning themselves, The Leadbelly opened up a hyperspace window. Deckland gripped the arms of his chair as he steeled himself for what was about to happen.
“Yee-haw!” said Berenger as he hit the button.
The image on the screen distorted as The Leadbelly phased into lightspeed, accelerating forward at 93% the speed of light, tearing out of the waystation, past the attackers, and directly into hyperspace.
Chapter 13
The blue kaleidoscope of lightspeed evaporated after a few seconds and the viewscreen of The Leadbelly filled with the white backdrop of hyperspace dotted with the black gravitational shadows of distant stars. Deckland released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and suddenly relaxed.
“Well, look at that,” Berenger drawled with a mischievous smile. “We’re still alive.”
“What you just did was incredibly dangerous,” Deckland muttered.
“It worked, didn’t it?” replied Berenger. “Besides, we were facing the Great Expanse. Ain’t no gravitational shadows to smack into for tens of lightyears. Figured we’d be safe doing a blind jump, and we were.”
“I’d call it lucky, not safe.”
“Either way, we’re still in one piece,” Berenger said as he reoriented the ship along a scouted hyperspace lane and re-engaged the lightspeed engines.
Deckland could feel his hand shaking from nervous energy as The Leadbelly began making its getaway from the waystation and the remainder of the Pink Suns’ eraser unit. He gripped his hand to stop it from trembling and suddenly felt tired as the adrenaline from the experience started to wear off. He clenched his teeth as feelings of anger began to knot his stomach, images of Evarest Pyle dying before him still running through his mind.
Berenger side-eyed his partner, noticing the dark look Deckland was wearing. The Ranger shifted uncomfortably in his seat, as though he knew he should say something but didn’t really want to. Eventually, his instincts won out.
“The first gunfight is always the hardest,” Berenger said. “Not that they ever get easy, mind you, but you do get used to them.”
“I’m not upset about the gunfight,” Deckland muttered.
“First time killing a man… that can wear on you, too—”
“That’s not it either,” Deckland replied. “Every kill we made on that station was justified. I won’t be losing sleep over any of it, I assure you.”
“Then why the long face?”
“Because…” grumbled Deckland, “I got our one lead in this case killed.”
“That’s not on you, Rook.”
“Like hell it isn’t. When I saw those men emerging from the maintenance tunnels, I should have gotten Pyle to safety first and foremost. He was the priority. Instead I abandoned him to protect myself.”
“You relied on your instinct, and you were correct to do so,” Berenger said. “Pyle was a piece of squick dirtbag kidnapper. He weren’t worth dying over.”
Deckland shook his head. “He was a dirtbag, but he was our best chance of getting justice for Roseca Villem and finding all those other missing children. They’re the ones who will pay for my mistake. You were right. I wasn’t ready for what awaited us on that station.”
Berenger frowned. “I don’t say this often, so don’t get used to hearing it, but in this instance, I was not right. Whether you believe it or not, you did good back there, Rook. You didn’t get yourself killed, and more importantly, you didn’t get me killed. Matter of fact, you handled yourself better than I expected you would. It ain’t often I’m wrong about someone, and it’s even less often I’m glad about it. But in this case, in particular, I’m mighty glad.”
Berenger’s words alleviated some of the anger Deckland was experiencing. He didn’t know why, but for some reason he welcomed the man’s approval despite his own disapproval of Berenger’s methods.
“None of that changes the fact that we lost our one solid lead in this case,” Deckland replied.
“It happens, kid,” Berenger said as he swiveled his chair to face Deckland. “And when it does, you gotta step back and re-examine what you know to try to find a new lead. So, what do we know?”
Deckland nodded, realizing Berenger was right. Kicking himself for his mistakes wasn’t going to avenge Roseca Villem’s death or save the other missing children. He had to get back on task if he wanted to solve this thing.
“We know the Pink Suns are involved in this, somehow,” Deckland replied. “Did you record the faces of our attackers with your bionic eye?”
“I did.”
“Then we should try to identify the men who attacked us,” suggested Deckland. “Run facial recognition on them and use them and their connection to the Pink Suns to get a warrant to seize the company’s records and find out who hired them to kidnap the children in the first place.”
“There be a couple problems with that course of action, least as far as I can see,” Berenger said. “First and foremost, I doubt the Pink Suns had any of the men who attacked us on the waystation on their official payroll, just as I’m certain Pyle and his men weren’t either. None of our attackers had any marks, uniforms, or badges that would indicate they were employed by the Pink Suns. Heck, if it weren’t for Pyle, we’d have never known who those dirtbags were. So, I doubt there are any actual records linking our attackers to the Pinkies. My guess is that if we were to do a search, they’d come up as known criminals or pirates and the incident will be shrugged off as a run-of-the-mill waystation raid.”
Deckland frowned. Despite his instincts to proceed anyway with the identification of their attackers, he knew Berenger was probably right.
“You said there were a couple problems with my suggestion,” Deckland said. “What’s the second?”
“The second is that it would appear the Ranger Initiative has been compromised,” Berenger continued. “Pyle suggested that whoever hired the Pink Suns to covertly abduct children knew to dispatch the kill squads because they were aware of the report we submitted to the GRI dataserver once we had a lead on The Long Haul.”
“Are you saying the Initiative has a mole inside it?”
“It’s possible,” Berenger said. “It’s probably more likely that someone is simply monitoring the dataservers the Initiative set up to network the databanks between all the Imperial agencies involved in the task force. But either way, we can no longer rely on the Initiative and its resources to investigate this case.”
“Then, we can’t access the Initiative databanks to do any research,” muttered Deckland.
Berenger nodded. “Nor can we call in back-up,” he said. “If whoever is really behind this does have access to all the Initiatives dataservers, they’re going to know about every report we file and every request we make, which means they’ll always be a step ahead of us. They’ll be able to eliminate any evidence we acquire, alter any reports we submit, and track all our movements throughout the Frontier.”
“You’re saying we can’t trust anyone.”
“Not in our current predicament, no. We have to assume going forward that all of our communications are compromised and that everyone back on Barnholm is a potential mole.”
Deckland nodded, clear that neither he nor Berenger were happy with that development. “So, we’re on our own from here on out,” Deckland said.
“Unless you want another hit squad breathing down our necks,” Berenger replied. “Our only way to turn this situation around is to solve this case and take down whoever is pulling the strings. And to do that, we’re gonna have to stay off the grid. The Pink Suns we left behind on WS-4855 will no doubt report that we got away, so the
bad guys are going to be looking for us.”
“Then we have to solve this case using absolutely none of our usual resources, while being hunted by trained killers and an as-yet unknown bad guy who could possibly be tracking our every move.”
“Precisely.”
Deckland sighed. “Right,” he muttered. “Okay, then, what else do we know? We know the Pink Suns are involved in this, and we know Pyle’s route connects Sarjana and the abduction sites with the New Frontier Conglomeration…”
“And who do we know with connections to both the New Frontier Conglomeration and the Pink Suns?” asked Berenger.
“You think Stygaard has something to do with this?”
“That’s precisely what I think.”
“If that is indeed the case, what does Stygaard need to facilitate the kidnapping of children for?” Deckland asked. “He’s running a mining colony, not to mention petitioning for a Legacy. Why risk that by doing something so blatantly criminal?”
“Same reason any powerful man aims to do blatantly criminal things,” replied Berenger. “He doesn’t believe he’ll ever be caught.”
“Yeah, but we’re not talking about embezzlement or violating safety and environmental regulations here,” Deckland said. “We’re talking about running a quadrant-spanning kidnapping ring. Stygaard has armies of robots and skilled workers. It’s not like he has to collect children to staff sweatshops.”
“His motivations could be something a tad more inappropriate,” suggested Berenger.
Deckland nodded. “That’s certainly a possibility, but it doesn’t seem to track,” he said. “The missing children don’t fit a specific profile. They consist of both boys and girls with nothing to distinguish them beyond the fact they are all children whom no one will miss if they should disappear. And even if we are to assume Stygaard is kidnapping children for a more perverted reason, that doesn’t explain the curious manner in which Roseca Villem died.”
Berenger stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “Stygaard’s motivation for doing something like this is murky, that’s for sure,” he muttered. “But there’s just something about that guy that rubs my jimmies in reverse. He may have acted like he was trying to support Moreland’s investigation, but it seems he did things to undermine it wherever he could. He didn’t want us visiting the actual crime scene, and when it became clear we were going, he tried to keep an eye on us with his Pinkie thugs.”
Lawmen- Rook and Berenger Page 15
