Relic Hunted (Crax War Chronicles #2)

by Terry W. Ervin II

  A hologram appeared. One of me, lying wounded, bandaged and dying before my pretrial aboard the Pars Griffin. “DNA doesn’t lie,” the woman said with confidence. “Well, it can, but only a fool would alter his DNA to superficially match that of Security Specialist Krakista Keesay. My knowledge, skills, and equipment can see through such measures, if for some reason you might have been posing as a decoy. Anyone foolish enough to do that deserves worse than you’ll get.”

  Okay, so she’d properly identified me. “That last statement’s accuracy, I question. Or, if you truly believe that, I question your intelligence.”

  “Thank you for your candor, Specialist Keesay.” She moved a little closer, but still out of my field of vision, unless I craned my neck. “In your position, I would’ve attempted the same.”

  “Then why wake me?” I asked, already knowing the answer. I decided to crane my neck to see the speaker.

  After I did that, the woman walked within my uncraned field of vision. She was tall. Maybe as tall as Agent Vingee, but darker skinned, a wider nose, and far longer hair, black, which she began brushing. She wore an off-white bodysuit—my mother would’ve named it ecru—and a white medical jacket lined with pockets, like Dr. Goldsen favored.

  “The chemical compounds flowing through your veins indicate you’ve endured cold sleep, but this just made more sense. Easier to hand you off.”

  With that said, I did all I could to break free in one violent effort. And failed. Breathing hard and wincing at the pain in my shoulder, ribs, and knotted skull, thanks to Pallish’s boot, I noticed she’d stepped back a few paces and pointed a pistol at me. Closer examination indicated it fired tranquilizer darts.

  “From your white jacket, you must be a doctor, or a lab tech,” I said, “and think what you’ve got in there will do the job. But if I were to get up, you’d need a .44 magnum to stop me before I broke something on you.”

  “I appreciate your honesty, Specialist.” She gave me what appeared to be a genuine, toothy smile. “I’ve been informed how dangerous you can be. Corporal Pallish told of your courage under fire.

  “If I even suspected you might slip an arm or hand loose, I’d shoot you. That bodysuit you have on won’t protect you from a mosquito’s proboscis, let alone a high velocity needle. And, to show you how fast it works…”

  Click-pfftt. There was a needle in my leg. Three seconds hadn’t passed before I was woozy. Another breath and I was out.

  I awoke later, still strapped down. I heard music and, from the sound of exertion, someone dancing or exercising to it. A fast beat, with drums and synthesized horns. I was wearing a tan jumpsuit. The other one, I thought had been gray. It was hard to remember.

  I’d had a conversation with Captain Sanchez. I worked to recall the details of the brief conversation. Before she shot me, unconscious.

  My shoulder and side hurt a little less. I bet they were still deeply bruised. Rolling my head around on the pillow highlighted a small but still noticeably tender knot on my head. With hybersleep’s slowing of metabolism, it must slow healing too.

  After about thirty minutes of me listening and waiting, the captain ordered the music to stop. She sounded out of breath.

  No time like the present. “Miss Doctor,” I said, “thank you for shooting me. I needed that extra bit of shuteye.”

  She strode into view, wearing shorts and a bra, and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Sweat glistened on her skin, from head to literally her toes.

  “A moment,” she said, “and I’ll provide you some liquid nourishment. Orange, peach, or apple flavor?”

  I was thirsty, and hungry. “Orange.”

  Captain Sanchez, as she’d been called but possibly wasn’t aware I knew, ordered a modern orchestra score to play. It was far louder than necessary and looped three times until she returned to my field of vision.

  “Computer, stop play,” she said, now dressed in her bodysuit, lab jacket and boots. Her long hair was still in a ponytail, but her sweat sheen was gone. In each hand she held a tall glass. One had a long straw, a bendable one.

  There was no reason for her to drug my drink. “You’ve made a mistake.”

  “How so, Specialist Keesay?”

  “What should I call you, Miss Doctor?”

  “Doctor Sanchez will do.” She took a sip from her glass.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Is that your real name?”

  She held the cup so that the straw’s tip was near my mouth. While I drank, she said, “What’s to hide from you? You’re strapped down. I’ve cleansed your colon, and I’ve inserted a catheter.” She withdrew my cup. “Since you won’t be loose while conscious, it’s to be an all liquid diet.”

  “You’re in more trouble than you realize,” I said. “Being cautious now won’t help.”

  She shrugged. “What? You think Fleet will hunt for me?”

  “That’s just one of your problems on the horizon.”

  “My shuttle is one of fourteen constructed and leased to Fleet by Yakum-Blost Industrials. As I am an experienced trauma surgeon, they assigned my contract along with the lease.” Her nasal voice shifted from matter-of-fact to cynical. “Their added contribution to the war effort, without consulting me.”

  She turned, walked away, and set the cups on a shelf. “Corporate theft. Breach of contract.” She pointed toward what must have been beds beyond my feet. “Them? Corporal Pallish and Pilot Beventi. If the military catches up with them, the punishment will be far more severe.”

  “My training in military-corporate law is limited,” I said, “but it might be better if they caught you first.”

  She cocked her head, with a raised eyebrow.

  “It might be better,” I said, “if you don’t use what you get for turning me over to Capital Galactic—if they follow through with payment. Which might be problematic in itself. The longer you’re in prison, the longer you’ll live.”

  “Your thoughts are not tracking,” she said. “I detected only a mild concussion inflicted by the corporal.”

  “Track this,” I said, sneering. “When I escape. I’ll hunt you down. You might be safer in prison, but the day you’re released will be your last.”

  She grinned as if amused. “Really. In another twenty-nine hours, I’ll put you back into hybersleep. When you next wake up, I will have my reward and you’ll be earning your reward.”

  “For what?” I asked, flexing my arms. Alarms went off. She must’ve placed sensors in the restraining straps. Or activated alarms already incorporated into the design. I continued, straining against the straps while speaking over the flashing red lights and staccato beeping. “For killing Crax and Stegmar? Enemies of humanity? Or revealing Capital Galactic’s treachery? Turning on humanity. On their own kind?”

  She reached under her white lab coat to the small of her back, and pulled her tranquilizer pistol. “What you earned for killing a good friend of mine,” she shouted. “A cousin.”

  I was having no luck loosening the straps. They were too strong, too secure.

  She leaned close, up to my face. Anger twisting hers. “You killed Jammie Jazarine.”

  With that, she pointed the gun at my eye.

  I stared straight at her, still struggling, my lip curled in anger. “Another traitor,” I said, “traitor to humanity, like you.”

  “No,” she said, her anger abating. “Capital Galactic loyalists will pay more for you alive, Specialist. They are certain to be more cruel than I could ever imagine.”

  She moved the pistol’s aim from my left eye to my right. “I have imagined this moment for a long time. What, with professional bounty hunters seeking you? The tens of thousands of people keeping a lookout, just in case? I never truly believed it would happen.”

  Pain spiked through my shoulder and ribs. My head began throbbing. I relaxed. No sense spending myself, aggravating injuries.

  “Traitor to humanity, you say”, a sense of amusement in her voice. “For earning an exorbitant bounty for turning in a 4th Cl
ass Security Specialist? A Relic?”

  “I’ve killed more enemy, more Gars and Stegmars than you can imagine, Doctor.”

  “And people too, Specialist. People.”

  “Sure, I’ve killed people. Enemies, Doctor. But I didn’t kill Jamayka Jazarine.”

  She snorted a laugh. “Save your lies.”

  “No reason to lie, Doctor. It was Crax acid that got her. An implant. You’ve heard of them?”

  “Lies,” she retorted, maybe a little too strongly.

  “Believe what you want, Doctor Sanchez.” I met her gaze. “I said enemy. Now you’re one of them too.”

  With that said, she shot me in the arm. She tried to make it look casual, but I saw the troubled concern forming in her eyes.

  Dr. Sanchez didn’t speak a word to me during the rest of my wakeful hours aboard the medical shuttle before being placed back into hybersleep. I didn’t have anything pleasant or even neutral to say to her. The doctor’s matter-of-fact attitude, from providing vitamin-fortified orange drink to draining my catheter, offered minimal comfort and health maintenance. She did provide an audiobook performance of Moby Dick through a nearby speaker, a novel that I’d never read.

  The selection hinted at what the doctor thought about Relics, and offered a thematic mix of messages from defiance and death to friendship and duty. She played it twice, giving me additional opportunity to ponder my own direction and situation, if that was her intent. Nevertheless, it was a welcome distraction from boredom, and a respite from thinking about what lay ahead. There was no doubt about Sanchez’s belief. Capital Galactic loyalists would not be kind to me. Cruelty was the word that sprang to mind.

  In no way did I intend to go down without a fight, little as that resistance might ultimately prove. I’d offer them as little satisfaction and enjoyment as was within my power. That, I determined and promised myself to do.

  Dr. Sanchez put me back into hybersleep without a word and a blank expression on her face. Too late for second thoughts.

  The next person I saw was one I hoped to one day see again, but not in the circumstances under which our meeting occurred.

  Chapter 36

  I was sitting erect on a metal stool, my back against a wall and my wrists cuffed to rings set into the seat. Bright lights made it difficult to see the man sitting in a padded chair about ten feet away.

  “No need to pick up right where we left off, Security Specialist Keesay,” pronounced a male, nasal voice. What was it with CGIG and nasal tones? Then it registered. I knew that voice and hatred immediately welled.

  “Lawyer Heartwell,” I said, reminding myself to stay calm, and not play into any desires he, or any other Capital Galactic refuse, might have.

  “It means so much that you remember me after our brief time spent together.” Sarcasm dripped from his words. With a hand-held remote he altered the lighting from a spotlight aimed at me to fluorescent set into the low ceiling.

  The room was a simple square, about twelve by twelve feet, uniform white walls, ceiling and floor with a single metal door behind Heartwell.

  The malevolent man smiled. Average height for an I-Tech, slicked-back, blond hair and what had once been a round face. There was more leanness to it now, a haggard expression. That all fell to the background, behind his malicious eyes and grin. He wore a business suit much like I remembered from our first meeting, but wasn’t sporting a yellow tie, which would identify him as a lawyer.

  Circumstances change.

  “This time, Specialist, we are not under any time constraints.”

  “You should already know my view on this, Lawyer. If humanity wins the war, you lose. If humanity loses the war, you lose.”

  “Your information is out of date, Specialist, on a great many things. Your side has lost the war. It’s all over, except for the dying.” He paused, waiting for my reaction, which wasn’t forthcoming, so he continued, saying, “You will address me as Warden.”

  My Stegmar-bitten shoulder wasn’t hurting too much, so I shrugged, deciding to pick my battles. Conflict would emerge soon enough. “Understood, Warden. A demotion?”

  With a straight face, he replied. “A lateral career move. My special talents and skills are a perfect fit for this facility’s needs.” He pointed his remote at me, shaking the end. “This career track offers more opportunities for upward movement. If I recall, you once said that the victors in this war won’t have much use for lawyers. On that, I believe we found agreement, Specialist.”

  His face split into a toothy smile, one like a cat getting ready to pounce might make. “What about you, Specialist? Besides wearing a fictitious name patch, what else has changed? Who holds your contract, and was it a demotion, lateral move, or a promotion?”

  First battle.

  During our previous encounter, when I was lying wounded and under the care of V’Gun surgeons, Heartwell discovered that interrogation drugs available to CGIG were useless. My body’s ability to resist owes to an injection then Field Director Karlton Simms gave me after I’d prevented Representative Vorishnov’s assassination. If the V’Gun, a diminutive alien species that resembled a mutated combination comprising a squid and a tarantula, didn’t have a countering serum, nothing Capital Galactic might concoct had a chance.

  “I prefer not to share that information, Warden.”

  Heartwell probably had a good idea, if he or his people got information from Dr. Sanchez, Pilot Beventi, or Corporal Pallish when they handed me off. That phrasing hadn’t stuck out to me until that moment. Handing me off meant they didn’t deliver me to this ‘facility.’

  Another thing I hadn’t paid attention to when I first awoke was where I might be…what this ‘facility’ might be. No disjointed feeling, so no condensed space travel, or vibration common on a moving shuttle or ship. The facility could be part of a space dock or planetside—or moonside. Actually, except for the fluorescent lights’ hum, there was no other noise, except for me and Heartwell breathing.

  In those few seconds I hadn’t noticed Heartwell’s sinister grin reappear. “Wrong answer, Specialist.” Thumbing an icon on his remote, he triggered an electric shock.

  I struggled to ignore the pain assaulting every nerve ending, the shocks causing spasmodic convulsions. When my stool toppled I managed to tuck my head and lessen the impact when my skull struck the metal floor.

  The shocking charge continued. I closed my eyes and drew inward, trying to think, to be elsewhere. A sustained stun baton’s shock, but calibrated for maximum pain rather than physical damage or long term incapacitation. A lesson, where I experienced a similar shock during a hands-on experience during Penal Training 101. That instructor-administered shock had been similarly calibrated, but only for an instant and a minute fraction of the strength now coursing from the stool into me. The connecting shackles ensured I received a constant flow of pain.

  I didn’t know how long it lasted. Except for brief seconds, I couldn’t keep my thoughts focused on anything other than the biting pain. When it stopped my jaw ached where I’d clenched my teeth, my muscles were cramped—arms, legs, back, abdomen. I was sweating and gasping for breath.

  My bladder had discharged. Fortunately Dr. Sanchez had cleansed my bowels. Otherwise it would’ve been worse. False result that it was, maybe it suggested to Heartwell that I’d managed to retain a small element of self-control.

  Sometime later, maybe seconds, maybe minutes, maybe longer, I realized the intense spotlight was on me once again.

  “Your initial pragmatism disappointed me, Specialist.” Heartwell’s words were clearly enunciated, smug with confidence. “I thought I might actually have to wait to administer punishment. Shall we try that again?”

  After a drawn out pause, Heartwell asked, “Tell me, Specialist, who holds your contract?”

  Unsure my voice would hold any defiance, I shook my head. Then, I recalled the pain I’d endured, Crax acid flowing in my veins. I stared up at Heartwell. “I prefer not…to share…that,” I said with a snarl, and
braced for what I knew was to come.

  Whether he continued to ask the question or just periodically tap his icon, I didn’t know.

  The jolting fire continued, burning its way into my dreams. No doubt the bastard watched my body twitch and convulse long after I’d lost consciousness.

  My security training aimed at resisting interrogation and torture was limited. Surviving as a hostage? I’d studied it, both in theory and limited scenario participation during training. My plan had always been to go down fighting. Corporal Pallish’s treachery, attacking me from behind—after we’d survived combat against the enemy together?

  I thought on this as I sat naked in a 1.5 x. 1.6 meter room, shackled to the steel-grated floor. White walls and ceiling. Bright white spotlight shining down on me. It was so bright I couldn’t see beyond it to the surveillance camera I knew was up there.

  My wrists were shackled as were my ankles. The chains, or more accurately metal cables, that held each limb were only a foot and a half in length. Placement of the ankle cables bolted to the floor beneath the metal grate forced me to sit on my buttocks. I had to lean left or right to relieve the biting pressure inflicted by the grating, which was no more than a millimeter thick with each square in the grid being four centimeters per side. I could lean my shoulders against what I named the rear wall, but it left me at an uncomfortable angle, with my neck and head pressed against the wall. My wrist cables disappeared into the base of that wall, a part of some sort of spool that controlled the amount fed into the cell, releasing or further restricting my comfort, and range of movement.

  Three factors made it even more uncomfortable. The first was hemorrhoid burning and itching. That’s what I guessed it to be. I’d never been afflicted, and there were effective medications. Security duties can include assignments where sitting for hours on end occurs. From what I’d read and had described, I was suddenly suffering from a severe case.