by Terry Mixon
A muffled impact and a yell told him that it had hit something, but since he was still breathing, he knew that it hadn’t exploded.
Brad saw the woman piloting the other icerigger. Her eyes were wide with sudden fear and she yanked her controls to her right—his left—hard.
“On the left, fire,” he ordered.
Roscoe was more adept than Brad had given him credit for, managing to jink to the right when he saw how things were playing out. The other icerigger passed only a few meters away and was already flipping as it went by.
Brad emptied his magazine into the enemy icerigger as it raced past, but he suspected that he’d only hit the hull. He pivoted and watched the other vessel tumble and come apart, scattering wreckage and bodies across the ice.
With a grin, he turned and clapped a hand on Roscoe’s shoulder. “Well done! Let that be a lesson to you about the value of keeping your nerve. If we ever form an icerigger combat team, you’re on it.”
“To the Everdark with that!” the man averred. “You people are crazy!”
“Commodore, we lost one of the men,” a trooper said. “The rocket hit him and he went over the side.”
“Take us around,” Brad ordered. “We’ll pick up our man and then we’ll see if any pirates survived the crash.”
Roscoe killed much of their speed and brought them back around.
Even before they’d made it to the fallen trooper, Brad could see that the man was alive and on his feet, sort of. He was trying to stand on the ice and kept falling.
“Come alongside and we’ll pull him up,” Brad told Roscoe.
The icerigger slowed and came to a stop next to the trooper. Some of his fellows pulled him aboard. His armored helmet had a burned dent on the side, telling of a glancing blow from the rocket. The man was lucky the hit or the fall hadn’t broken his neck.
“It’s Ricky!” one of the men shouted. “That hard head saved him again!”
Everyone laughed, including Brad. “Get him on the deck. He probably has a concussion. Now let’s go see if we can find a live pirate.”
The crash of the other icerigger had torn it completely apart and scattered its remains along a wide swath of ice. Without appropriate footgear, it took a short while to locate all the pirates. None were still breathing.
He called Saburo while they searched. “We took out the Cadre team without losing anyone, but we’re not going to be able to get to the spaceport before security catches up with us. Even if we did, they’d never let us take off. We’ll wait here for them.”
“I’m glad to hear that you’re alive,” Saburo said. “Not that it’s going to save you from some ribbing when we finally spring you. If we do.”
“Call Commodore Fields and see if he can bring some pressure to bear. Also have Michelle contact Senator Barnes. Either he or the Agency might be able to influence the situation, too.”
“Good luck,” the Colonel said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
They’d just finished their search when Piazzi Security arrived in an icerigger of their own. All four of them.
Brad knew more would be coming, so he had his people put their weapons down and surrender. Somehow, he didn’t think the fact they’d been defending themselves was going to carry a lot of weight.
And he was right. The security officers secured them with binders and searched them closely, finding a surprising array of weapons his men had “forgotten” to put down.
When one of the security officers demanded to know what had happened, Brad declined to elaborate. “This isn’t a simple story. I think it’s best if I wait until I’m back at your station and talking to whoever is going to end up investigating this fiasco.”
“You think?” the uniformed woman demanded. “There are dead people scattered all over Piazzi and you think you’ll just hold off on explaining yourself?”
Brad smiled blandly. “That’s what I just said.”
The woman tried to stomp off but slid on the ice and fell. Rising, she cursed the ice and probably him, too, before waving over an approaching icerigger filled with more security officers.
“Take this trash back to the station. He’s not talking other than telling me he’s a mercenary. As if that’s going to save his ass.”
An hour later, Brad was handcuffed to a table in an interrogation room with a nice big one-way mirror in front of him. No doubt there would be a number of interested parties on the other side watching as he was grilled.
The door opened and a tall woman in a rumpled suit came in with a thick folder of papers in her hand. She said nothing as she sat across from him and set the folder between them. She just stared at his face, her expression neutral.
They sat like that for over a minute, with him allowing the silence to drag on. Falcone had told him that people she was questioning often couldn’t stand the quiet, needing to fill the void with something. In some cases, even the most amazing admissions.
He wasn’t going to let the woman spook him in the opening rounds. This wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation, but he’d do as much of it as he could on his terms.
“Goodness, but you sure know how to throw a party,” the woman said at last. “A total of twenty-three people dead, a number of vehicles and other property destroyed—including an import/export business with attached warehouse—and all within a few hours of your arrival here in Piazzi.
“What would you manage with a few days to work up a good head of steam, Commodore Madrid? If you can earn rocket launchers in a few hours, do you get nukes if you wait a few days?”
Brad allowed her a small smile, more than a bit uncomfortable with how close that assessment had been to reality recently. “To be fair, they came looking for me. I just did what I had to do to get my people safely clear, Detective…”
“Lieutenant Pearson,” she said. “That might not sound like much compared to your own lofty rank, but I’m big enough around here. Are you going to tell me what you think happened, or are you going to stall me like you did Patrolwoman Leeds?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” he assured her. “Starting with the fact that I didn’t come looking for trouble. Someone else decided to bring heavy hardware to the party. We just tried to stay alive while we ran.”
She gave him a sardonic look and leaned back in her chair. “Did it perhaps occur to you that you should call security? That we should’ve come in to stop these people?”
Before he could answer, she opened the folder and started spreading pictures of death and destruction. The Crystal Clear Importing building, now burned to the ground, the wrecked vehicle that had attempted to intercept the food truck, another several vehicles—all wrecked and burned—that he’d never seen before but assumed were what was left of the main strike force after his allies had dealt with them, and then the wrecked icerigger.
“Twenty-three dead strangers, all armed,” she said slowly. “We recovered rocket launchers and other heavy weapons, too. They blew a hole in the ice trying to take you out after you waltzed through a crowd of people to hijack your own icerigger.”
So, that was how Roscoe was playing it. Not that he blamed the man for throwing him under the bus.
“We didn’t exactly know we were going to run into the rink,” he said truthfully. “If I’d known, I’d have found another path. These are Cadre pirates and this isn’t the first time they’ve attacked me recently. On New Venice, they blew up a police van and killed seven heavily armed officers. I wasn’t about to let more innocent people walk into that kind of thing.”
Without mentioning Agent Watson or her underworld lover, Brad recited the short version of events that had brought him into conflict with the Cadre on Ceres. He had barely started when he saw her openly skeptical expression, but powered on to the end of the story.
“So, you just happened to go right to the importer that was working for the Cadre?” she asked, her tone letting him know she didn’t buy that at all.
“Sometimes, luck is bad,” he admitted.
“Let’s say that I believe everything you’ve told me—which I don’t. That still doesn’t excuse what you did. You and your men are going to Hoth for this, and you can take that to the bank.”
“Hoth?”
“Our maximum security prison. It’s way down in the ice under Ceres City. Only one way in and no prisoners ever come back out.”
Brad certainly hoped that wasn’t the case, but he supposed it was possible the Agency would wash their hands and let him go down.
“If you want any chance of avoiding that,” the Lieutenant continued, “you’ll tell me who else was involved. Even with your timeline, there are a lot of bodies that you couldn’t have left behind, based on street cameras.
“There were a number of other people in stolen vehicles that ambushed fifteen people before vanishing back into Piazzi. Who are they and why did they get involved with you? Or are they your people and still on the loose?”
He was a bit at a loss as to explaining Fraser’s people. He wouldn’t give them up, though.
“Not us, as you say. I can’t explain who they are.”
Pearson leaned forward and poked her finger onto an image of the dead. “Can’t or won’t? That’s the thread I’m going to use to unravel your entire series of lies, Commodore. That’s the little detail that’s going to see you on ice for life.”
A sharp rap at the door earned the Lieutenant’s wrath. She stood, strode over to the door, and yanked it open. “What?”
A gentleman in a suit stood between two security officers with lots of ribbons and various metal tabs that Brad suspected meant very high rank.
“This interview is over,” the man said. “Commodore Madrid is being released into my custody and this case is closed. A pirate attack dealt with swiftly by a visiting mercenary and his company.”
“Bullshit,” Pearson growled. “I’ve got them cold and no one is covering this up.”
“Let it go, Pearson,” one of the security men said. “He had authorization to do this from the highest levels of the Commonwealth government. Legal authority to use deadly force here and capture or kill those pirates.”
The suited man held out a sheet of paper. “This should cover things nicely. An order from the Belt Governor’s office to let them go.”
To say that Pearson was outraged might have been the understatement of the century. She looked as if she were about to have a stroke.
Her resistance to the idea was overcome when the senior security officers pulled her out of the room with perhaps more force than was warranted. Then again, seeing her snarling at them, it might have just been the minimum they could use to distract her.
The man in the suit stepped forward and extended his hand. “I’m Mark Perez with the Governor’s office. I suggest we make haste and get out of the building before the good Lieutenant decides to shoot you and just accept the consequences. She’s got something of a…reputation, if you know what I mean.
“Your men are already in a van outside, and we’ll go directly to the spaceport from here. I hope that you’ll take this the right way, but I don’t expect that visiting Ceres again should be on your vacation plans for…oh, a century. At least. Shall we?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Brad had visions of a baying mob of security people in hot pursuit of the van on the way to the spaceport, with Lieutenant Pearson in the lead wielding a torch in one hand and a pitchfork in the other, but they arrived without any issues. The vehicle took them right up to his shuttle.
Saburo was standing on the shuttle ramp and made sure everyone made it inside, including the injured trooper with the concussion. He waved at the suited man, who didn’t bother getting out of the van, and followed Brad inside.
“I suggest you strap in,” the Colonel suggested. “We already have your gear and they gave us a very narrow window to lift off. Once again, you’ve somehow managed to get us banned. At this rate, we won’t be welcome anywhere in the system by sometime next year.”
“You only think you’re funny,” Brad assured him as he took one of the open seats and started strapping in. “Did Commodore Fields arrange this?”
The Colonel shook his head. “Senator Barnes called and spoke with the governor and probably passed on that this was Agency business.”
That did sound more likely. The Senator had a good amount of influence and the Agency had some muscle, too.
“We ran into a wall, but we might have gotten some data,” Brad said as the shuttle took off. “Did you get everything we had or just the weapons and armor?”
“They said everything. Of course, they also cursed your name, so take the level of cooperation with a dash of salt.”
That made Brad chuckle. “I had a data chip with some of the shipping records for the merchant ships that work for the Cadre. Turns out that the woman Fields sent me to talk with was their face here on Ceres.”
“Awkward,” Saburo said judiciously. “Do you think she had any classified info on them? Maybe we could go back and get the rest of her records.”
“I wouldn’t count on that, if I were you. I saw a picture of the import/export building burned to the ground. It wasn’t us, so the Cadre hit squad torched it. They’d have purged the computers first.
“Even if we could, that would mean going back down to Ceres. I don’t see us getting any cooperation from security, do you?”
Saburo smiled and shook his head. “I suppose not. Once more, you’re a shining example of how to win friends and influence people, boss.”
“It’s a gift,” Brad agreed. “How is Agent Watson?”
“Good news on that front. Kirabo was able to isolate the poison and thinks she’ll recover some, but not all the way. The damage is too great for that and it was in her system too long, but enough that she could live a relatively-normal life somewhere.
“Not as an Agent, but maybe retired. I somehow suspect that’s more than most of them get in the end, based on our experience.”
“The laws of chance seem to get a negative tug around us,” Brad said.
“When everyone is shooting at us, innocent people around us take hits,” the Colonel agreed. “Still, she might have contacts down there that can get us more information.”
Brad imagined she might. With Fraser plugged into the underworld, and them hating the ground the Cadre walked on, it might be possible to leverage more information now that they knew who had handled the cargos.
The Cadre kept their lips sealed far better than one would expect, but they had to tell people something. If anyone could find their scent, it was the criminals in competition with them.
On that note, he’d need to have the Agency make things up to Fraser and, through him, the people that had taken on the Cadre to cover his backside. They might be criminals, but they’d raised their profile with the pirates. There’d be payback and Brad hated leaving debts in his wake.
They docked with Freedom twenty minutes later and Brad got out before the shuttle headed back to Oath. One of their other shuttles must’ve already arrived, because Michelle was standing there beside the Fleet officer.
Throwing decorum to the wind, she rushed forward and hugged him. “I was so worried that they’d kill you down there. Or that security would lock you up forever.”
“It was a damned close thing,” he admitted, hugging her hard and giving her a quick kiss.
“Closer than any of us would’ve wished,” Fields agreed as a grinning Saburo stepped behind him. “We need to get into my office and discuss what happened. Both your superiors and mine want some answers to some unfortunate questions.”
Saburo held out the data chip that Brad had been talking about earlier. “Commodore Madrid told me that he had some shipping information here that might give us a clue. Perhaps Agent Watson or her associates will be able to assist as well.”
“I sure hope so,” Brad said as Fields took the chip and called for one of his subordinates. “The Cadre is up to something and we’re still completely in the dark. That c
ould end up costing a lot of innocent people everything. We need answers and we need them now.”
After telling the full story of what had happened on the surface, Brad accepted a drink. Frankly, he thought he’d earned it.
“Why did the Cadre have so many people here?” Michelle asked, taking a drink for herself. “It can’t be because they thought we’d be dropping by. Until we arrived at Earth, we had no reason to suspect we’d be coming to Ceres.”
“That may not be completely accurate,” Brad said, taking a sip of smooth whiskey. “Watson was sure that someone in the Agency had betrayed her before we got our orders. That same person—or people—could’ve gotten word of where we’d be in time to warn the Cadre. All it would take is them having a ship in good position and they’d be able to have a team waiting for us.”
“In Piazzi?” she asked. “That’s relatively specific.”
“And I’m sorry for sending you into that, Brad,” Fields said. “I thought she was a straight shooter.”
“Thankfully not, since she tagged me in the armor a few times before I ended her,” Brad said.
Seeing that his attempt at humor had failed spectacularly, he sighed. “It’s better that we found her, I think. We got some data that we might not have otherwise gotten. The pirates were after tungsten in large quantities. I just have no idea why.”
Sadly, no one else seemed to have any ideas why that was either.
“I sent a message back to Oath so that Agent Watson could contact her good friend on the surface,” Saburo said. “With any luck, they can dredge up a few details about the cargo. Or perhaps speak with someone that was in a position to overhear where they were taking it.”
“If they do,” Brad said, “we can follow up and take out another group. With the price of the refined material, it has to be for something critical. They paid hard currency for it at the market value. That has to hurt their bottom line, and it means that it’s something they simply had to have.”
