A Star Rising (The Star Scout Saga Book 1)

by GARY DARBY

  He was still toying with the idea when he was startled to hear Shanon say in a whisper through his earpiece. “Dason, listen carefully but do not answer. I repeat, do not answer in any way! Do not key your communicator!

  “We’ve found TJ. She’s okay and awake. We overheard a poacher say that the ape is in a rear starboard cargo hold, but they’re arguing over what to do.

  “If you’re still back there, then you’ve got company. Listen to what I have to say. After talking with TJ, I’m convinced the ape has more than just supersensitive hearing.

  “Its ears are specialized organs that may be able to pick up radio waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. If so, do not transmit! Your comms will lead it right to you.”

  She stopped and then declared, “I think I know how we can counter this beast, and we’ve rigged a little surprise. We’re headed aft. If you can, peel off but do not communicate until you are well forward. I say again, do not transmit!”

  Crouched against the wall, Dason felt a trickle of sweat course down his cheek from his perspiring forehead. His heart raced, and his breathing came fast and hard.

  He considered Shanon’s explanation of the creature’s ability to detect sounds. She made a lot of sense.

  But without his communicator, how to let anyone know of his or the ape’s location? And he couldn’t link up with his teammates because he couldn’t unlock the cargo hold hatch.

  All he could do was to keep moving, somehow evade the savage hunter and hope that either someone opened the hatch door or he found another way out.

  For another long minute, Dason crept along the bulkhead, his hand softly sliding along its smooth metal. He kept the largest plas-containers and machinery between him and where he believed the beast to be lurking.

  He stopped at a slight scratching that came from his left, this time much closer. Dason came up on the balls of his feet, ready to run if the creature surprised him and loomed close.

  Running his hand over his torso vest, he thought that there was one thing he might do to help himself. His snoopers.

  His hand rested on vest pocket that held the little device. What if in pulling them out, he made just enough noise to alert the beast to his presence?

  He decided to risk it. Holding his breath, Dason lifted the set out but stopped in midair when the clawing sound came again. This time Dason had no doubt that the animal drew closer. It must have heard him undo the vest flap.

  Dason fitted the gear on his head and decided to move again. He took two steps and stopped.

  A raspy sound, like something had brushed up against a container, came from behind him. He spun to meet the alien with his long-knife in hand but found only darkness instead.

  The noise came again.

  This time from above.

  Dason jerked his head up. The eyepieces bloomed in full color with the creature’s outline.

  In what seemed like a microsecond of blurring speed the creature had Dason in a crushing, painful hold, its claws pinning him to the wall. With all the strength he could muster, Dason fought back, but it was useless against the overpowering beast.

  With a shock, he felt a sharp object against his skin. The creature must have slid its talons to Dason’s neck!

  Dason was helpless to fight against the razor-sharp claws that would cut through soft flesh and slice open the arteries beneath, leaving him to bleed to death.

  In dim thoughts, he became aware that the lights had come on in the cargo hold and there were people shouting. Something made the loudest noise Dason had ever heard. The sonic booms hurt his eardrums, adding to the pain of the creature’s pincer like hold.

  He felt a tingling sensation, and he started to black out but not before he felt the animal lift him up.

  Dason stared into a monstrous, gaping mouth full of shark teeth that closed on his head and knew he had absolutely no chance to fight back.

  He was staring straight at death.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Star Date 2433.056

  The Poacher’s Ship

  Through a blurry consciousness, Dason heard the murmuring of far-off voices but he couldn't make out the words. Though his ears felt like they were full of cotton wads, it didn’t matter, he could hear!

  He was alive!

  Fingers pulled back an eyelid and a sharp, bright light shone into his eye. He raised a limp arm in protest, but someone pushed his arm back down.

  “He’s coming around,” someone said.

  He understood that!

  Dason forced his eyes open and found the poacher called Bianca standing over him. She fixed cold hard eyes on Dason, while her mouth curved in a dark frown. Next to her, two tall, dour-looking men stood with folded arms.

  “Can you hear me?” Bianca asked and leaned forward.

  Dason nodded and wished he hadn’t when the room started whirling, and his stomach tried to turn inside out. It was fortunate he hadn’t eaten in a while, or Bianca would be even unhappier.

  “Good. Now listen. I’m Bianca, and you’re aboard my ship, The Queen Bee. We call it that because I’m the queen boss around here and both I and my vessel have nasty stings.”

  She drew back and glared. “Very nasty stings. We’ve got you and your friends, scoutee, and we’re in no playing mood. You’ve cost me the equivalent of a Polaris Rim Stone, and I intend to get my ducats back one way or another. Understand?”

  Dason took a breath and muttered, “Guess so.”

  “Sit up,” Bianca ordered.

  With stiff and sore muscles, Dason rose to a sitting position. From the looks of things, he was in the ship’s dispensary.

  He glanced around and found his teammates, unharmed, seated on the floor against a near wall. Their somber expressions no doubt matched his own. Like him, they had their torso-vests but no knives.

  Dason took stock of his injuries. His arms had several small puncture wounds on them, but someone had dabbed InstaHeal over them. He was surprised and grateful that the rough treatment by the ape hadn’t produced more severe injuries.

  In a sullen tone, Bianca commented, “You should be dead, but if you’re going to wrestle with a T-Ape, you had impeccable timing.”

  She cocked her head toward the rest of Dason’s team. “Thank your friends for getting you away from the beast. A pretty smart idea they had. I’ll have to remember it for future use.”

  Noticing his quizzical look, Bianca laughed. “Don’t remember, do you?”

  Dason shook his head and gave a hoarse, “No.”

  She reached out and pressed a finger to Dason’s neck. He winced a little from her touch. “X marks the spot,” she replied mockingly. “It’s where the ape tagged you. It was gonna save you for its next meal.”

  Dason still had a puzzled look, so in a sarcastic manner while shaking her head, Bianca snorted, “Don’t they teach you scoutees anything?

  “A Torther Ape is a voracious hunter-killer and likes its food alive or a fresh kill. But it had just eaten when it came across you.”

  Dason raised his head at that and his stomach turned. The poacher Mula!

  Bianca went on. “The ape has a retractable spine in its palm that’s tied to a poison sac. The venom is paralytic, keeps the victim alive, but immobile. It conceals or buries its prey and comes back later to feed.”

  She leaned a little closer, her voice silky and snide, “I understand that in humans it goes for the intestines first.”

  Dason tightened his jaw and met her amused expression with a hard stare. “You can stop with the bedtime stories. We’re not children.”

  “Sure, scoutee, have it your way. But you’re not out of the woods yet. You see, you’ve got a little problem.”

  She gestured toward the four novices. “They figured out the ape has an extreme sensitivity to sound energies, so they took a spare communicator and cross-circuited it to create a feedback loop.

  “Then they rigged up an air horn, using a mini-oxy tank and a tri-sone diaphragm from sick bay.

  “Ingen
ious, I must say. Between the horn’s sound blasts in the hold’s confined space, and the hyped-up audio waves, the ape must have been in auditory overload because it dropped you right pronto and backed off.

  “But not before it injected you with its poison.”

  Dason’s hard face suddenly when slack and his eyes widened noticeably.

  Bianca ignored his obvious discomfort. “About the time your friends came to the rescue we arrived and stunned the ape. You were just close enough that you took some of the stun energy as well.”

  Bianca leaned forward, her manner low and menacing. “You should’ve stayed on Alistar instead of stowing away on my ship. You’ve bit off far more than any one of you can chew.”

  A renegade took a step forward. “Feed'em to the ape, Bianca?” he asked tersely.

  Bianca swept her eyes across the novices and raised one eyebrow. “That is an option,” she mused.

  She frowned and hooked a thumb at the door. “Go help Marson with the biospheric synchronizer.”

  The man exited the room and Bianca turned to Dason. “Another thing about the ape’s venom. It’s not only paralytic—it’s toxic. You, my young scoutee friend are dying.”

  Dason felt an electric shock run through his body. “What do you mean?” he rasped out, his whole body now rigid.

  Bianca nodded toward the other outlaw. “It’s fortunate for you that Stinneli here was, shall we say, in the ‘medicinal arts’ before he decided to enter a more lucrative practice. He’ll explain.”

  Stinneli took a step forward and frowned. “The toxin destroys the nervous system. In a few hours, your muscles will cramp until, in agony, you curl up in the fetal position.

  “Your eyesight fails; your major organs will shut down; you foam at the mouth. Your heart muscle goes arrhythmic. You lose consciousness and go comatose.

  He shrugged. “You’ll be dead in less than a day.”

  Shanon gasped at the finality of his announcement. Dason’s mind went numb, and he couldn’t think or move.

  Bianca motioned to her companion. “Now, it just so happens Stinneli’s familiar with the venom’s chemical properties and to be on the safe side before we grabbed the ape, he produced an inhibitor for the venom.

  “He injected you with just enough so that we could have this little parley. It’s not a cure, and it won’t last long.”

  Dason looked from Bianca to his teammates who stared back with unbelieving eyes. “How long?” he asked.

  “With what he gave you? As he said, in a few hours.”

  “And the full inhibitor?” Dason whispered.

  The female poacher leaned back against a countertop and folded her arms before she answered. “Maybe a week or so.”

  She paused before saying, “That’s the good news. The bad news is that we don’t have the chemical stocks in our little dispensary to whip up another inhibitor dose or an antidote. And what we have left I’m saving for my crew.”

  Bianca sneered and leaned toward him. “Not exactly what you had in mind when you joined up to go explore the Almighty Firmament is it, scoutee?”

  Dason had had enough. “Listen, I’m not a scoutee, but a novice Star Scout, poachee!”

  “Ooh. . .” she taunted, “isn’t he the brave one?”

  In a flash, she whipped out her laz-gun. “And this, scoutee, lets me call you anything I want and reminds you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  She lazily waved the laz-gun back and forth. With a scowl, she holstered the weapon. “Enough. Here’s the deal. I lost several of my crew thanks to the ape, so we’re short-handed.

  “We’ve got a couple of jobs coming up, and I need a full crew. I don’t have the time to go recruiting, so you’re going to take their places.”

  Leaning back, she continued. “The jobs are small, with easy pickings. In fact, they’re actually legal so you won’t be ‘aiding and abetting’ as the magistrate is fond of saying.

  “Play it smart, don’t give us any trouble, and after we’re done, I’ll set you down on one of the LeClare colonies. They’ll have the medical facilities to take care of your little problem.”

  “How do we know you’ll keep your word?” Shanon asked.

  Bianca frowned and shrugged. “You don’t. But that’s a chance you’re gonna have to take.”

  “The nature of the jobs?” Nase asked.

  Bianca considered his question and cocked her head to one side before answering. “Guess it won’t hurt to tell you. First, Stygar Six. We’ve got a lead on some quadro-diamonds.

  “We do a little prospectin’ and if the diamonds are there, we pick up a load. Stygar Six is an open planet, so we don’t even need Imperium mining warrants.

  “Then to Canopus. Wealthy bidder wants to add Sand-Diggers and a Sea-Panth to his private gardens. We’ve even got planetary permits for harvesting the XTs. But since I’m short on crew, I might not be able to meet the contract’s time requirements. That’s where you come in.”

  She peered at Dason, saying, “After that, we’ll make for the colonies.”

  Dason mulled over her proposal. Yes, both activities were indeed legal, but the idea of helping known poachers left a bad taste in his mouth. But he also had to contend with the stark realization that he might not have much of a choice.

  He could, of course, choose to disbelieve Bianca about the Torther Ape and its venom. But his experience in the hold with the beast and the painful site in his neck seemed to accord some truth to her explanation.

  Dason glanced at his teammates before turning to Bianca. “Could we talk about this alone?”

  “No, but I’ll give you some space.” She motioned with her head, and Stinneli retreated outside the infirmary. Bianca stepped next to the door and leaned back against the bulkhead.

  Dason turned to the four and took a deep breath. “I can’t ask or tell you to do this. This is beyond my authority as team leader. These are criminals. If we go along with them, I don’t know what legal consequences this may have for Star Scout Command but I—”

  Sami chopped the air with one hand. “Who cares about ‘legal consequences’? Don’t you get it? If we don’t do what they say, they’re going to have us do a jig with that ape or space us. I know how these people think.”

  He turned to Shanon. “You said it yourself, witnesses are the last thing they want around.”

  Shanon bit down on her lip while admitting, “Yes, I said that, but they’ve kept us alive this long. That says something.”

  Nase spoke up to say, “No guarantee that even if we do what they say that they’ll give us safe passage.”

  “But,” TJ remarked, “don’t forget that they held me hostage without harming me.” She pressed her hand against her forehead. “Even fixed up my cut.”

  There was a long moment of silence while they exchanged looks. Dason broke the silence by saying, “No matter how this turns out, my vote is that we finish this together just as we started out, as a team.”

  Nase pointed out in a slow, deliberate voice, “It appears we have two choices. We go with them and trust that they’ll keep their word about helping Dason and freeing us. Or we decide not to go and accept the consequences, whatever those may be.”

  The four looked at each before Shanon took a deep breath and stated, “Roll call. I choose to do as they say. It’s the only chance Dason has. TJ?”

  “Are you kidding? You guys didn’t desert me—I’m not going to desert Dason. I’m in.”

  “Nase?”

  “I accept their terms,” Nase replied.

  “Sami?”

  “You realize,” Sami began, “that we’re dancing a devil’s dance here, we—”

  “Sami!” Shanon growled. “This is serious.”

  “You’re darn tootin’ it's serious!” Sami yelped. “Either way, we’ll get zipped by these guys or some Imperium battle cruiser will blast us out of the sky. Or—”

  “Sami . . .” Shanon muttered in a low, ominous tone.

  “Okay, okay,” Sami answ
ered and let out a big sigh. “I’ll go along, but only to show you I was right when they deep-space us.”

  Shanon looked up at Dason. “TL?”

  Dason gave her a crooked, thankful smile and turned to Bianca. “Looks like you’ve added five more to your crew.”

  “Very touching,” Bianca commented in a snide fashion before slapping at the door control. She waved Stinneli in and motioned toward Dason. “Give him the inhibitor.”

  The poacher medic grabbed Dason's forearm and air-injected the compound just under the skin. With quick swipes, he swabbed the site with an antiseptic and remarked, “Other than dying, you’ll be glad to know there are no serious side effects to what I just gave you if it doesn’t work.”

  “That’s comforting,” Dason answered drily.

  “I’m putting you in an empty cargo hold,” Bianca stated. “You’ll stay there while we make the hyperspace transit to Stygar Six.

  “It’s about a twelve-hour run. Remember, we go through the drill, get the job done, and your friend here gets to a medical facility.”

  Her voice grew hard. “Toe the mark and we’ll keep our end of the bargain. Get out of line, and I promise you, you’ll regret it.”

  She hooked a thumb at the door. “Aft, outboard, portside. Move.”

  A few minutes later, Bianca directed the young scouts into a small cargo bay. She turned and gestured to the metal door while saying, “I’m locking this hatch, so don’t try and tamper with it!”

  As the metal door closed tight, the novices glanced at each other and almost as one, leaned up against the wall and slid to the floor.

  Drained of his mental and physical abilities from the last several trying days, Dason’s head drooped forward on his bent knees. Too tired to even break out a field ration to eat, though his stomach growled like a Gonda Wolf, Dason closed his eyes and began to drift off.

  Then a thought hit him, and he became alert again. He turned to Sami. “Sami, I need to ask you some questions.”

  Sami raised a hand and pleaded, “Give it a rest; I’m too pooped to pop any more ideas.”

  Since Sami wasn’t going to cooperate, Dason turned to Shanon, who had curled up next to him on the other side. “Shanon?”