Relic Hunted (Crax War Chronicles #2)

by Terry W. Ervin II

  This area held scattered men and women attired similar to Vingee, with business jackets over bodysuits. Various colors depicted the corporation they worked for.

  Off to the left, beyond a bench, I got my first view of a Troh-got—actually, a pair. The thirty-five pound aliens could best be described as a scaly yellow centauroid cross between a centipede and a reptilian chipmunk. They were damn ugly, but not quite the level of a V’Gun, which were Chihuahua-sized aliens with a tentacled squid-ish torso resting atop a tarantula-like body and legs.

  Even if they were ugly, physically Troh-gots weren’t intimidating, even if their saliva was said to be mildly venomous. But, with instinctive tactical skills and advanced technology, their military prowess was another question, both on the ground and in the vacuum of space.

  My reading indicated that Troh-gots breathe methane, or at least originated on a planet with methane prominent in its atmosphere. No supplemental breathing apparatus appeared to be part of the equipment clipped to the synthetic straps that adorned the aliens, and pouches that reminded me of small saddlebags.

  Straps and harnesses seemed to be the norm among intelligent space-faring species. Of the aliens that I’d encountered, the Gar Crax, Chicher, Umbelgarri, Stegmar Mantis, Bahklacks, V’Gun, and now the Troh-gots, didn’t wear clothing like humans. The Gar Crax elites did don full body armor. I recalled one Selgum Crax on the quarantined planet Selandune that wore a bodysuit similar to an average I-Tech human.

  The Troh-gots’ yellow scales resembled withering flower petals, but were certainly more sturdy and durable. The dull color stood at odds with their neon green harness straps. Their slitted eyes, each with a dozen facets, certainly took in the light spectrum differently than my eyes did. No reason their brains wouldn’t interpret what their eyes gathered in ways I hadn’t even tried to imagine. Alien thought patterns were so…alien. That their vision would parallel their thought patterns only made sense.

  Humans held pariah status among most alien species. Our superior immune system protected us from alien diseases, especially when supported by vaccinations. The Chicher might be considered a greater risk. The two Troh-gots didn’t appear to be concerned about the potential health risk.

  A quick turn of her head indicated Vingee saw the centauroid aliens too, but that didn’t slow her stride. Whether they caught her interest or not, she portrayed a determined business executive. Her taller than average stature and long strides did turn a few heads. I made eye contact with those that took notice of Vingee, and they quickly turned away, back to their meals, computer clips, or other business.

  Vingee took a seat on a high stool outside one of the kiosk cafes and nodded for me to stand off to the side. Another executive sat at a tall round table next to Vingee’s. He glanced up from his computer clip, apparently unimpressed, figuring she was one of the Bonnisbin Orbital Colony’s estimated 38,000 mundane visitors. Last records indicated the colony maintained just over 11,000 residents. Those included engineers, technicians, administrators and support staff, business owners and workers and security personnel. Two of the security types were on patrol, wearing gray-green coveralls under plasticized body armor covering most of their torsos, and armed with medium duty laser carbines, MP pistols, and stun batons. The armor and lasers were certainly meant to say something to visitors, especially as a number of them, like me, were armed.

  Both security men fixed me with what they thought were intimidating stares. Having faced elite Crax, I felt like a bobcat observing a pair of puffed up tomcats. I’m sure my indifferent yawn wasn’t what they were accustomed to. One security specialist slowed but the second, the older of the pair, muttered something and they continued on with their patrol.

  A valet serving bot on wheeled feet approached Vingee. It reminded me of the Tin Man from the near ancient Wizard of Oz. That film, along with a few others, somehow had remained popular through the decades and was probably on Axin’s play list. The valet bot’s wheeled feet and overall boxier shape showed that the designers weren’t trying to replicate the old film character, at least not to perfection.

  Many I-Techs, advanced as they professed to be, still carried a spot of nostalgia for the less complex and tech-ridden times within them. Some might call it a hidden blemish.

  I kept an eye on the serving bot while remaining aware of people moving around. Just what a personal guard was expected to do. By tapping at icons on the bot’s chest screen, Vingee selected tea and crackers with coconut paste.

  Patches, and painted over welds, along with minor fractures in some of the support structures, emphasized that we were in one of the colony’s older sections.

  Several minutes after the metallic bot delivered Vingee’s tea and crackers, Agent Guymin passed by with our cart. His next task was to secure quarters for our stay, and detect any surveillance equipment installed: standard or auxiliary but always nefarious. It wasn’t that anybody, including the colony’s administrative wing, knew we were with Intelligence. Rather, corporations and government entities, and presumably alien diplomats and their entourages, spied upon anyone they could. Uncovered secrets meant leverage, power and, for us, maybe imprisonment. Or death.

  The same for those we hunted.

  Down near the end of the line of shops and cafes, my eyes caught sight of a man I recognized. Or thought I did. It wouldn’t do to keep looking, let alone leave Vingee to verify my suspicion. My ocular was in record mode. Reviewing the sequence would settle the issue—if the brown-haired man proved to be who I thought he was. The scene replayed through my mind. Gray-green security coveralls with an orange armband, identifying him as an auxiliary business associate, but for who—if it was him?

  The more I thought about it, the more I was sure it’d been him. We’d met on the Mavinrom Dock while I was on layover. Then we crossed paths again, serving in the same company of conscripts, fending off a Crax invasion of New Birmingham, one Tallavaster’s three colony cities. The last time I’d seen Kent O’Vorley he was speeding away on an ATV, trying to evade a Crax ground assault shuttle. I was on foot with a mixed squad of Crax and Stegmar hot on my heels as I sought escape, or at least a final stand in an abandoned quarry.

  Chapter 13

  Our suite consisted of two rooms, plus a small bathroom containing a toilet, sink, and shower with both a water and a sonic cleaning head. Two twin beds for me and Guymin. One queen-sized bed for Vingee.

  The furniture consisted of a desk with an outdated computer built into it beneath a wall screen for entertainment and interfacing with colony information and services. That was in the room Guymin and I were to share. We weren’t high-end, so the single holo-cast projector was in Vingee’s room, along with her bed, chair and desk.

  The suite’s walls were dull blue with a shag carpet that had seen wear but not enough to require replacement. The padded chairs in each room matched the gray bedcovers, and white sheets.

  The white ceiling reached just under eight feet with no conduits showing. That meant the suite had once been a premium one. Space dock design engineers normally avoided excess vertical space, considering it wasted space in a limited environment. Vingee was tall, even for an I-Tech, but nowhere close to bumping her head, unless she chose to wear platform-heeled boots. The ceiling’s random collapse was more likely than Vingee opting for the unsound fashion choice.

  Guymin had placed black tape over one spot in a corner near the ceiling in line with the entry door. Fiber optic camera, probably standard in all rooms so that the dock’s security could keep track of who entered. I agreed with Guymin. Cameras in the halls would suffice for Security’s needs.

  In Vingee’s room he’d disconnected the holo-cast projector and affixed thumb-sized devices to the walls, ceiling, and the floor under the carpet. His remote control activated them; their purpose was to foil sound receptors placed on or pointed at the opposite side of our room’s walls, floor, or ceiling. Such devices could capture sound waves striking surfaces, especially waves created by speaking. Sophistic
ated software could convert the captured data back into conversations that resembled any standard recording.

  I’d always been on the other end, trying to keep track of what visitors on Pluto and passengers and colonists on the Kalavar were up to but, unless there was cause, only in public areas. Ship and colony security teams expected corporate visitors to have equipment to foil basic surveillance efforts. From parts carried in two of my shotgun shells, in Vingee’s personal computer clip, and within the cart, Guymin assembled an A-Tech device, probably Umbelgarri in origin. That was something Security wouldn’t expect. The assembled device looked like a ceramic toadstool but with tiny metallic studs scattered across its surface.

  When Guymin turned it on with his hand-held remote, a pulse wave strong as a light breeze passed through me. It probably disrupted sound surveillance as well as foiled monitoring efforts within the electro-magnetic spectrum.

  Guymin shut the door leading to our room, affixed a sound scrambling device to it—which was probably unnecessary—and said to me, “You look a little twitchy today.”

  “Used to having my pump shotgun,” I said. “And I saw someone I recognized.” With a few adjustments, I transferred my ocular’s files to my com-set so that it’d be easier for the three of us to view my flagged observation together.

  After Vingee called up a program on her clip, Guymin pointed his remote at me, instructing the collector in my double-barrel’s stock to dump its contents, what it’d already gathered. “This first,” he said.

  Vingee looked up from her screen. “You’ll have to step closer to the clip, Keesay. Even with our equipment’s compatibility, the scrambler’s degrading the data transfer.”

  It surprised me that they seemed disinterested in who I’d seen. “O’Vorley,” I said, knowing they’d seen him in the Documentary. “I think he’s here.”

  “The young security specialist?” Vingee asked.

  I nodded.

  Her left eyebrow rose. “Let’s see.”

  Instead of the wireless transfer, I pulled the retractable cord from my com-set and plugged it into her computer clip. With a few adjustments I sent the proper time frame. When it showed, I froze it in the middle of the half-second instant.

  Guymin nodded before scratching his cheek. “That’s him.” Then he added, “Good work, Keesay. Not doing a double-take. Any recordings or anyone observing you won’t have detected any interest in your young friend.

  Young, I thought. O’Vorley was only a few years younger than me. After what he’d survived on the Zeta Aquarius Dock and on Tallavaster, he was anything but the green security recruit I’d first met.

  “Since neither of you has spoken up,” Vingee said, “that means none of us knows why he’s here.”

  “If it matters,” I said. “Shouldn’t be a problem to find out who he’s working for.”

  “Might not be prudent for you and O’Vorley to cross paths,” she replied. “At least until we discover that.”

  Agent Guymin nodded in agreement.

  Chapter 14

  My main duties consisted of escorting Vingee and Guymin to business meetings and standing outside the meeting room, sometimes with other security personnel, usually personal guards, or conveying files to the Nuclear Pitchfork for Axin and Dvoracek to decrypt with the assistance of the shuttle’s computers. Several times Guymin or I relieved the engineer and pilot so they could escape the shuttle’s confines and explore the dock.

  Most of the food to be had on the dock consisted of carbohydrates and proteins derived from various strains of algae and bacteria, much like what the Pitchfork offered. It was just that the dock stocked a different assortment of base microorganisms, resulting in synthesized meals that provided a different taste, along the lines of corn-fed vs. wild grazing cattle. Both beef but with subtly different gustatory characteristics.

  Appearance, smell and taste were aspects seemingly easy to manipulate. Consistency and texture, those were more difficult to mimic, especially with meats and certain fruits and vegetables. One thing that docks did have that interstellar vessels lacked, especially the smaller ones, was bread. Fresh bread. Slices were expensive, but worth it, whether part of a sandwich, or simply spread with margarine, artificial jams, or flavored pastes.

  After a meal, where I enjoyed a synthesized chicken patty sandwich and Vingee selected synthesized vegetable soup and crackers, both of us with fruit juice with vitamin supplements, we made our way to another meeting. This one was arranged to discuss the specific number and types of hydroponic systems desired, and a cost estimate for installation and maintenance of the systems. The length of the contract, Vingee believed, would be a key sticking point. The orbital dock intended to secure the equipment, observe and learn how to use and maintain it. Then they’d dismiss Mayfair Mining and Industrials’ services. A cost-saving measure for the dock, but not acceptable to the corporation Vingee, in the guise of Ms. Long, represented.

  Nobody from the Pitchfork had spotted O’Vorley. Maybe he’d departed. Nor had we seen many Troh-gots. Thinking about the centauroid aliens while we made our way to one of the older additions to the orbital dock, I asked Vingee, “During the Silicate War, it was believed that the Troh-gots’ home planet had a methane atmosphere. The several we’ve seen here seem to have no problem breathing in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. No supplemental breathing apparatus that I could see.”

  “Mr. Cheney,” she said, referring to Agent Guymin as we traversed a public corridor, “told me that the mechanism which controls their cellular development is much more flexible than our DNA.” She paused. “I think he specifically said ‘malleable.’”

  A pair of tan-clad maintenance techs approached from the other direction, observing the conduits running above our heads. The visual assessment was supplemented by a handheld scanner. Their tromping boots were louder on the sections of metal grating than mine.

  I moved in line to the right ahead of Vingee as the corridor was only comfortably wide enough for three across.

  The notion that a Troh-got’s respiratory physiology could change so drastically was intriguing. I wondered if the aliens manipulated themselves through drugs, through exposure, or selective breeding, or something else. Maybe the same process enabled them to resist human-borne infectious microbes.

  Guymin, who might know, had gone ahead to set up for the meeting.

  This dock section, known as the After Dawn Annex, suffered from inconsistent gravity control. Not terrible, but it made for interesting elevator rides. Vingee and I were waiting for one to arrive and take us up three levels. We’d waited about thirty seconds. I figured she was going to direct me to press the call button again when the metallic doors slid open.

  A burly security man stepped out, armed with an MP pistol and heavy-duty stun baton. The short-bearded fellow grunted at me when we made eye contact as he passed.

  His ward, a tall, lanky man, followed him out. Upon seeing him, something stirred in the back of my mind. Anger. Bitter anger. I met the man’s gaze. Something about his blue eyes was familiar—but his face wasn’t. Whatever it was screamed vigilance. With effort I refrained from moving a hand toward my revolver. The tall man’s gaze lingered on me as he strode past. That stride—something rattled my caged memories. The lawyer’s personal guard slowed and turned, sensing something was amiss. Latent hostility emerging. His hand was on his holstered pistol.

  Confused and angry, without knowing why, I followed Vingee into the elevator. “Take us to Level Nine,” she ordered the computer-controlled elevator.

  As the lift began to rise a familiar odor penetrated my nose. Lingering musk-scented cologne mingled with wintergreen breath mint! I hadn’t taken a breath during the brief encounter. After the elevator closed, in that instant, everything fell into place. A curse fought to erupt—a burning desire to curse his name.

  “What is it, Specialist Bleys?” Vingee was staring down at me.

  I stiffly glanced up at the surveillance camera. Teeth gritted. I couldn’t say anyth
ing. Not in there, knowing someone would overhear.

  Hawks! The man, it didn’t look like him. Tall and angular, but olive skin instead of white, a broad nose instead of long and narrow. But it was him, his arrogant, cruel eyes. Falshire Hawks! “Elevator, stop!”

  Thoughts ran through my mind. Go after him? Hawks recognized me, but he doesn’t know I recognized him. He could be gone—I might never get another chance.

  I ordered, “Elevator, return to previous level.” Maybe Vingee was right. Plastic surgery might’ve helped—No, it wouldn’t have. I recognized him.

  “Elevator, stop,” Vingee said. “Bleys, what is it?”

  Every second meant more time for Hawks’ escape. I flicked up the snap of my holster’s holding strap. I used to wear my holster cross draw, but Guymin had gotten me one for my strong side. It meant I could draw faster, should it come to that.

  “We need to retrace our steps without delay,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “Elevator, return us to level six.”

  “Why?” she asked, again countermanding my order. We locked gazes and she relented. “Elevator, level six.”

  I glanced up at the security camera. Its presence was obvious. The microphones weren’t, but they were certainly there within the elevator, recording.

  When the elevator came to a stop I strode out, reminding myself I had hollow tip rounds loaded in my revolver and one slug and one 00 buckshot loaded in the double-barrel.

  Vingee put a hand on my shoulder, gripping it. I shrugged her off, continuing down the corridor. When I made it to the first cross hall, no one was in sight. “Remember my lawyer?” I said over my shoulder. “The first one who didn’t really have my best interest in mind?”