Asger opened his mouth to say something else, but Bjarke turned his back on him and stalked toward the Dragon.
Qin gritted her teeth from the top of the ramp. She had no interest in talking to Bjarke.
“Captain,” she called into the hold, “it’s for you.”
Then she wished she hadn’t said anything, because Bonita limped out, reminding Qin of her injury. As soon as she saw Bjarke, she stopped walking, straightening to hide her pain. She folded her arms across her chest and lifted her chin. Bjarke stopped at the base of the ramp and glared up at her. They looked more like combatants than lovers.
“You knew that was going to happen?” he demanded.
“I had no idea that was going to happen,” Bonita said, staring steadily back at him.
Not exactly like that, no.
“Do you know where they’re going?” Bjarke must not have believed her.
Bonita twitched a shoulder. “To avoid your prince?”
“How far? I have to try to follow them, but they blew the back end off my shuttle. It’s nothing but a wreck sitting in its docking bay now.”
“You couldn’t follow him. His ship has slydar.”
“Someone knows where it is,” Bjarke growled. “I’ll talk to station defense and figure out how they detected it, so I can do the same.”
“And what would you do if you caught it? In a shuttle or even in some ship here that they lent you?” Bonita waved toward the yacht Tristan had entered—it looked like some princess’s pleasure cruiser rather than a combat ship. There weren’t any weapons. “Get yourself killed. That’s what.”
“I have to try to catch up with them. I’ll negotiate if I have to.” Bjarke spat. “I have a mission, to take Scholar Sato to the prince. And I don’t give up on my missions. I complete them.” He glared over his shoulder at Asger, who’d also come over, but was standing a few feet back.
“An epitaph that’s sure to look good on your tombstone.”
Bjarke clenched and unclenched his fists. Bonita wasn’t fazed by his bluster. She merely stood there with her chin up.
“My mission was to retrieve Tristan’s pertundo, and that’s it,” Asger said. “Though I’m now thinking I should follow after him and give it to him. He’s going to need it.”
“What are you talking about?” Bjarke demanded as Bonita asked, “What do you mean follow?”
Qin glanced toward the yacht, but Asger shook his head.
“Tristan commed me a minute ago. He saw what was going on from the yacht. He didn’t think he could do anything by himself in a fight against the mercenaries, so he used the smoke as cover to sneak aboard their shuttle.”
“He’s on there now?” Bjarke stared.
“Hiding in a locker. Or he was.” Asger grimaced. “He was whispering to me, but then the comm cut out, and I haven’t been able to get him back. They may have found him.”
“We have to go after them,” Bjarke repeated and faced Bonita again.
“What do you mean we? I have an assignment. I’m off to find a missing scientist. I’m not chasing after mercenaries.”
Bjarke took a deep breath. “I’ll get a ship from the station then. I’m not going to stay here while that villain takes off with our people.”
“Good luck,” Bonita said. “I heard the sultan isn’t a fan of Kingdom citizens.”
Bjarke stalked away looking so frustrated that Qin almost felt sympathy for him. Almost. If he hadn’t shown up, Qin believed Kim and Casmir could have slipped out with Rache without any injuries or damage done at all.
“Bonita—Captain Lopez,” Asger said quietly. “I know this ship can’t battle a warship, but would you be willing to follow them for a while? In case there’s a chance to get Tristan back? I admit, I don’t quite know what Casmir and Kim’s relationship is with Rache—” Asger winced, as if the idea of such a relationship pained him, “—but maybe they can talk him into giving us Tristan back.”
Bonita lowered her arms. She might have been a wall against Bjarke’s anger, but Asger’s quiet, reasonable request stole some of her stiffness.
“I’m sorry, Asger, but we really do have a contract—thanks to you.”
“We don’t know where Scholar Sunflyer is yet, do we?” Qin had been briefed on the mission, and the last she’d heard, Bonita was only starting to research the missing virologist.
“Not yet.”
“We could start out after Rache. Oh, maybe he even has intelligence about Sunflyer.” Qin brightened. “We could comm him and ask to trade information. That might give us an opportunity to find out if Tristan… survived.”
Asger winced again, but he must have believed he was swaying Bonita, for he waved for his father to come back over.
“I’m not wasting fuel following a ship I can’t see all over the system,” Bonita said.
“We know where they’re going,” Asger said as Bjarke rejoined them. “Casmir made that deal with Sultan Shayban to capture Prince Dubashi.”
Bjarke squinted at him. “You think that means Rache is headed to Dubashi’s base?”
Asger hesitated. “Yes.”
“Then, Captain Lopez,” Bjarke said, facing her again, “I will offer you ten thousand crowns to take me to Dubashi’s moon base. Once you drop me off, you can go complete your other mission.”
“Isn’t that the base that’s swarming with mercenary ships right now?” Bonita asked. “Even I saw that invitation. Mercenaries don’t tend to be crazy about bounty hunters.”
Bjarke clenched his jaw. “Fifteen thousand crowns,” he said tightly.
Qin didn’t think Bonita was objecting out of a desire to negotiate for more money, but Bonita didn’t wave away the offer. She looked at Qin. “What do you think?”
“It’s your decision, Captain,” Qin said, surprised Bonita was consulting her. “You just steer me where you want me to go, and I’ll grab my weapons and go.”
“I guess I can research Sunflyer while we’re on the way.” Bonita pointed a finger at Bjarke’s nose. “When we get within firing distance of that moon, I’m kicking you out the airlock. You’ll have to use jet boots and a galaxy suit to maneuver your way into the base. There’s no way I’m asking for permission to land in that wasp’s nest.”
“If Scholar Sato is planning to deliver herself into the enemy’s hands,” Bjarke said, “I’ll do what I must to retrieve her.”
Qin doubted that was what Kim planned, but she didn’t say anything. She liked the idea of going to possibly help Kim and Casmir rather than turning the other way on some unrelated mission.
“Whoever’s coming, climb on,” Bonita said. “We’re taking off.”
“You may want to wait,” Viggo said, “as it’s not yet clear if the shuttle is going to make it back to the warship. The station is turning two of its cannons to target it.”
20
Casmir was flattened to the hull inside the shuttle, gripping a handhold like a rope dangling from a cliff, and doing his best not to be trampled by Rache’s mercenaries or his own crushers. The little ship whipped about more like an Old Earth biplane than a spacecraft. His stomach seemed to pitch about inside his torso as the force of their acceleration threw him up toward the ceiling, down toward the floor, and then smashed him against the bulkhead. He caught Kim’s glance—she was hanging from the handhold next to him—and all manner of regret darkening her eyes.
Had they made a huge mistake? Casmir had noticed that the mercenaries hadn’t been shooting to kill, but that didn’t mean nobody had been injured. He’d tried to hustle Kim and the crushers out as quickly as possible, so Rache’s people wouldn’t have to linger in the station.
Rache’s people who were cursing mightily as the shuttle twisted through impossible maneuvers, threatening to give them all whiplash. The men kept eyeing the crushers, though they were the least mobile things in the shuttle. They reshaped themselves on the fly to put more mass in whichever direction gravity was pushing them.
“Dabrowski, what are all thos
e crushers doing in here?” Rache demanded from somewhere beyond the sea of armored men.
However many people the shuttle was supposed to seat, it had to be fewer than were in it now, assuming one counted crushers as people.
“I am a Z-6000, programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski,” eleven monotone voices said at once.
Zee—Casmir’s Zee—said, “I do those things also. With flair.”
“Unless one of them is a birthday present to me,” Rache growled, “I’m not amused at this unexpected overage. These shuttles have maximum weight capacities, you know.”
“I told you that you should have gotten him a crusher for a gift,” Kim whispered.
“No, you didn’t. You only twitched your eyebrows vociferously at my fungi gift box.”
“Eyebrows can’t be vociferous. The root of that word means voice. Implying sound.”
“Oh, I heard your eyebrows twitch.”
Casmir’s toes rose off the deck during one of the maneuvers, and he momentarily saw over the big mercenaries to where Rache was ducking into the shuttle’s navigation area. Gift giving, it seemed, would wait.
The shuttle jolted, as if they’d run into an asteroid.
“The bastards are firing at us,” someone growled.
“Why? We barely messed up their station.”
“And not until they started shit with the Fedallah.”
Rache, now up front breathing down his pilot’s neck, did not respond to the commentary.
“Can you do anything to stop them from firing?” Kim asked Casmir.
He shook his head. “We’ve flown out of range of their wireless networks. I didn’t think to set something up while I still had access.”
“Because you didn’t know they could see Rache’s ship and would fire at it. And us.”
No, it would have been nice if he’d had some warning about that new development.
The shuttle veered in another direction, reminding Casmir of the one and only rollercoaster ride he’d gone on as a kid that had involved loops and hanging upside down. He hadn’t thrown up that time, but only because he’d been too scared to think of it.
An alert came via his chip, Sultan Shayban requesting permission to contact him.
“Uh oh,” Casmir muttered.
He’d told Shayban from the beginning that he would take the crushers to Dubashi’s base—that was their deal, after all—but at the time, he’d believed he would be able to finish building the hundred-crusher army first. He hadn’t expected to go with Kim when she was kidnapped or that she herself would want to go to the base.
A part of him was tempted to deny permission, but no, he would have to talk to Shayban sooner or later.
Casmir Dabrowski, the message scrolled past. Have you been kidnapped by those mercenaries? Are you in that shuttle? My people are sorting through the footage in the ship bay, but someone hacked into the system, and it’s a mess.
Someone? They hadn’t yet figured out that he was that someone? Maybe Shayban assumed Rache had come to the station for inimical purposes and had been responsible for all the trouble.
Yes, Scholar Sato and I are both on the shuttle.
Prisoners! Damn that Rache. I knew he was here for some vile end, but I wouldn’t have guessed it was to kidnap you. Does he also want crushers made? The Kingdom knight warned us that Rache had blown up one of their ships and might be gunning for us next. And then we sensed his sneaky warship lurking scant kilometers away from our asteroid.
Casmir didn’t want to lie to Shayban, but he accepted that this might not be the best time to straighten out erroneous beliefs.
How did you detect his spaceship?
That was where Rache’s—and Casmir’s—problems had started.
We purchased a slydar detector from Sayona Station in Cerberus. I wouldn’t usually do business with such a sketchy establishment, but this was too good to pass up. The slydar detector is still in the beta-testing phase. I’m so pleased that it worked, since it cost a fortune. I thought we would be using it to detect Dubashi’s ships, not Rache’s, but now we will know when any friend or foe attempts to sneak up on Stardust Palace.
“A slydar-detector?” Casmir mouthed.
We will stop firing at that shuttle since you are aboard, but what can I do to get you back, Casmir? We have warships of our own that we can send after Rache. They can be out there in twenty minutes. I’m not certain if they’ll be fast enough to catch his foul mercenary ship.
Actually, I think he intends to take us to Dubashi’s base. Perhaps… we should go along with him willingly, and then find an opportunity to kidnap your nemesis.
I think you will only be shot. There is a bounty out for you, you know. Dubashi wants you dead.
I do know that. I intend to be crafty.
You have not completed the army of crushers. They would have assisted greatly with craftiness.
Indeed. I did leave the one I made for you, and the other eighty-odd should be completed soon. I left the machinery running, and the nanites have already been programmed and injected into the matrices. I hope to return soon with Dubashi in tow.
Casmir didn’t get a prompt answer, and he wondered if Shayban was digesting that or if he’d seen through the charade. Maybe some new footage had come in that he was reviewing.
If I am not as crafty as I think, Casmir added, and I am unable to come back for the crushers, I am certain you will find a use for them.
As soon as Shayban found someone to reprogram them to obey him. Thus far, Casmir had only made him one.
“Have they stopped firing?” Kim twisted, trying to peer out a porthole.
The shuttle was still zigzagging its path, but the gyrations weren’t as wild, and they hadn’t been struck again.
I fear you will get yourself killed, Shayban finally replied. This was less of a concern for me when I did not know you and I thought you were trying to swindle me. But now, I would regret having, however inadvertently, engineered your death.
Casmir felt guilty since he wasn’t being honest about everything with Shayban. You didn’t engineer this, Your Highness. I suspect Prince Jorg wanted the crushers to invade Dubashi’s base, and that is why he’s lingering in this system, so I would have ended up on this path regardless.
But you would have ridden into battle on the bridge of one of your people’s warships, not cuffed and gagged as a prisoner being dragged into the base by that mercenary.
Kim nudged him. Rache was coming back into the main cabin.
I still have hope that I’ll be able to work myself into a better situation than that, Casmir replied. Maybe Rache would be willing to keep me alive in exchange for a crusher of his own.
That villain doesn’t need any more advantages. Good luck, Casmir. Let me know if I can assist you.
Thank you. I will.
Casmir wondered if that offer would extend to assisting him in getting rid of the invaders in System Lion. He might ask, but only if he managed to defeat Dubashi, as the sultan wished.
“They had us in their sights,” Rache said, stopping in front of Casmir and Kim, his magnetic boots keeping him locked to the deck as the shuttle slowed. Were they nearly to the Fedallah? “Then they stopped firing.”
“Yes,” Casmir said. “I requested that.”
“From whom?”
“The sultan.”
“You and he are buddies?”
“He likes crushers, and I made him one.”
“You haven’t made me one.” Rache turned his masked gaze toward the nearest one—Zee. Zee loomed close enough to spring if Casmir needed help.
“See?” Kim mouthed to Casmir.
“I did bring you a gift.” Some of the mercenaries were watching this conversation, and Casmir reminded himself that he was nothing more than some odious prisoner to Rache’s men. He should try not to blow Rache’s cover by suggesting they had a relationship.
“Is it better than a crusher?” Rache asked, deadpan.
“No,” Kim said b
efore Casmir could answer.
“It’s a nice gift,” Casmir protested. “There’s not even a lipstick holder.”
Alas, the mask hid whatever relief or alarm Rache might feel.
“Scholar Sato,” he said formally to Kim with a little bow, “I must inform you that Prince Dubashi requested that I kidnap you and bring you to him.”
Casmir arched his brows. Was that true? Or was Rache saying that as an explanation for this side trip for the sake of the men watching their exchange?
“I was going to be disappointed if you didn’t kidnap me this month.” Kim did deadpan even better than Rache.
“I have no doubt. We will discuss this further in my briefing room once we’ve docked.” Rache headed back up the aisle toward navigation.
“Does he still have a reward out for me?” Casmir asked, wondering if Rache could walk the two of them into Dubashi’s moon base under the guise that they were prisoners.
Unfortunately, Rache and Casmir had tried that back with the terrorist base on Odin, and it hadn’t worked. The former chief superintendent of Royal Intelligence had known too much about Casmir and Rache to be fooled… and he might have reported all that to Dubashi, if he’d been working with him, as Moonrazor had implied.
No, he must have reported that, Casmir realized, thinking about it for the first time since he’d received the new information. That was why Dubashi wanted him dead now, because like that former chief superintendent, Dubashi thought Casmir would be a strong ally of Jager and the Kingdom and a threat to his schemes.
“He just wants you dead,” Rache said over his shoulder.
“I’m afraid I can’t look forward to discussing that, then,” Casmir said.
Bright light appeared outside of the portholes as they flew into one of the Fedallah’s shuttle bays. They landed on the pad and took on the ship’s spin gravity. Casmir’s stomach did a few flip-flops, though he suspected it had more to do with nerves than shifting out of weightlessness.
They would soon be on their way to the base of the extremely rich and powerful man who wanted him dead. The extremely rich and powerful man who wanted the entire Kingdom annihilated. If he was as crafty as he’d promised Shayban he would try to be, Casmir might have the opportunity to keep both of those things from happening. If not, he’d get himself and his best friend killed.
Planet Killer (Star Kingdom Book 6) Page 28
