Armageddon Theft: An Arek Lancer Novella

by Troy Osgood

  There was a little shaking as we entered the atmosphere and entered the thin cloud cover. The view window filled with white, reminding me of wildspace, before we broke the barrier. Bright blue sky, green trees and blue of water filled our vision once past the clouds.

  Like I had said, a good looking planet.

  It looked pristine, almost untouched. The Tuis worked hard to keep it that way. They kept all off planet commerce in one location and maintained strict flight paths. There were around forty million beings on the planet, only a couple thousand not native and the amount of those that lived fulltime on the planet was even smaller.

  I wasn’t used to seeing this much untouched land. Even Storwo had more cities and tech spread across the planet. Here it was just green. We flew over a couple thousand miles of land and never saw a single city. Yorunital had maybe twenty million living there, so where did the other twenty live?

  Ahead, by scanner only, I could see the city. It would be a couple more minutes before the skyscrapers would be visible to the eye.

  We could see a series of mountains, dark gray against the green, appearing off to the side when the alarm sounded.

  I glanced down at my readouts, looking to see what the noise meant.

  The airlock.

  Again.

  Someone was tampering with the lock.

  Torsi.

  Had to be.

  Cursing I adjusted the Wind’s speed. I could have stopped the ship and put it in hover, but that would have made Tuis Ground Control contact us to see what was happening. A ship pausing in the flight path would delay their tightly controlled flight patterns. And Kaylia wouldn’t have been able to communicate them.

  And I was going to be busy.

  Instead I slowed the ship. We might still get a ping from Dock Control, but at least we were moving.

  “Keep us straight,” I told Kaylia.

  The poor kid looked panicked. The alarm, irregular sleeping, piloting the ship in atmo. It was a lot to put on her. I could see the questions, and the fear in her eyes. I tried to be as reassuring as I could be.

  “You got this.”

  I didn’t wait to see if she reacted and I bolted out of the bridge. I was down the corridor, down the stairs and in the galley in seconds. There was only a couple Storwo, all trying to push against the far wall, away from the door to the lounge.

  The lounge wasn’t as empty as the galley. Storwo hugging a few kids tight, crowding the edges. One woman was on her knees, hands outstretched and held back by two others. All were pushing and moving away from the airlock door. That space was clear except for three people.

  Torsi, Dresla and a kid that Torsi was holding by the neck.

  She had what looked like a knife, taken from my kitchen no doubt, held at the kids neck. I could see a thin line and a couple drops of blueish blood on the poor kid. He was terrified, eyes wide and crying. Looked to be only six or seven, maybe eight.

  Dresla held both arms out, palms extended, so Torsi could see them at all times.

  Both glanced at me as I walked into the room, Torsi’s grip tightening and her eyes dropping to my waist to see if I was armed. I wish. She was lucky. If I was armed I would have shot her right then and there. I hated people using children as shields.

  “Release the kid,” I told Torsi.

  I could see the faceplate for the airlock door controls had been ripped off the wall and some wires pulled, hastily spliced together. The door itself was open, she had one foot past the threshold and I could see a small wrapped object on the floor. The Daelot or whatever it was called.

  “I didn’t want it to be like this,” Torsi said and I did believe her.

  Her stance, her eyes, the hostage, all told me that this was something she had not anticipated. She had been hoping for a clean escape.

  “Release the kid.”

  “She’s the thief,” Dresla said angrily.

  “I know.”

  That earned a quick look from both. Each surprised.

  I took a step closer. Torsi shifted back, pulling the kid who was too scared to struggle.

  What was with beings and taking kids hostage lately? First Kaylia and now this?

  More Storwo were appearing, crowding at the door to the hold. They were quiet, the whole place was quiet. It was surreal. I’d been in similar situations, sadly, and didn’t remember them being this silent.

  “Release the kid,” I said again, putting more menace and threat into my voice. I really wanted to shoot her.

  I could have too, without hitting the kid. She was taller than her hostage, all her head and most of her chest visible. Easy shot.

  But the blaster was safely locked away up in my bunk. Out of reach. Too far away.

  I’ve never been a good negotiator. I’ve always been a blunt force kind of guy. I prefered to shoot or punch my way out of problems. Not talk. It’s always so much simpler.

  Torsi was starting to look panicked. I could see it in her eyes as they darted around the room. The Storwo woman that was being held back was on her knees now, crying and reaching for the kid who was reaching for her. More blood was forming on the kids neck as he strained against the knife.

  Dresla said something in Storwoi. She stared at Torsi calmly, arms at her side, body positioned to charge. Torsi’s free hand chopped through the air and she spit something back at Dresla in their language. I had no idea what was said but it made Torsi angry and she took a large step back, dragging the kid.

  “What did you say,” I asked Dresla, voice loud enough for Torsi to hear.

  “I told her that she was trapped and to give up,” Dresla replied not taking her eyes off Torsi. “I also said that we would give her a lighter sentence if she gave up her contacts.”

  “That went over well,” I muttered with a sigh.

  What was Dresla thinking? She had no authority, not anymore. Not really. They both knew that. No one would care about Torsi’s contacts, who she was going to sell to. Not yet and not for a long time. There would be no lighter sentence on Hoin. The refugee camp would administer frontier justice. If she gave herself in, Torsi knew she probably wouldn’t survive long. All Dresla did was remind Torsi of what she was facing.

  It was time to calm things down.

  Just because I didn’t like negotiation, talking, it didn’t mean I had no idea how to do it.

  Most of it was just to keep talking, engaging the person and basically stalling until you had an opening.

  “What happened,” I said getting both Dresla and Torsi’s attention. “What caused this?” I waved my hand indicating the stand-off.

  “I started to suspect that she was the thief yesterday,” Dresla said, her attention returning to Torsi. She took a slow step forward, her motion barely noticeable. At least I hoped so. I glanced at Torsi who didn’t seem to catch it. “So I kept an eye on her. Caught her trying to get into the airlock.”

  I filled in the rest. It was during the Storwo’s sleep cycle, lights out. Torsi had tried to quietly get into the airlock, maybe to hide the Daelot. She had no idea about the alarm, like Dresla did, but it didn’t matter as Dresla had caught her anyways. Torsi reacted quickly and grabbed the nearest hostage, a sleeping child.

  Now what were we going to do about it? More accurately, what was I going to do about it?

  Torsi looked from me to Dresla and shifted position so she could look behind her and still mostly see us. Her free hand reached out and touched the controls mounted on the inner wall of the airlock. The Nomad’s Wind isn’t a large ship. Most of the space is taken up by essential spaces: living spaces, engineering and the cargo hold. Because of this, the Castellan ship builders had built the escape pod off the airlock instead of a seperate room like in larger ships.

  That meant that Torsi was steps away from the escape pod and was now trying to open the pod’s access door.

  And yes, the pod door was not code locked. Why would it be? The idea of an escape pod was to be able to get into it quickly. A code defeats that purpose.<
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  The pod didn’t have that much range. Limited fuel capacity, most of the space given over to life support. It had the capability of planetary landing, as well as launching in atmo. Torsi could get in the pod, launch it and land pretty much anywhere on the planet.

  So why not let her?

  I didn’t care about whatever it was she had stolen. That was Dresla’s concern. My concern was not getting my ship damaged.

  Or letting that kid get hurt.

  “Take the pod,” I told Torsi. “Leave the kid.”

  Dresla turned to me quickly, angry. She started to say something but my look stopped her. It said ‘my ship, my rules’. She backed down.

  Torsi nodded as the pod door slid open. She gave Dresla one last look, waiting for the other to make a move. Nothing happened so Torsi pushed the kid forward and stepped into the pod, kicking the stolen artifact before her. The door slid shut behind her as Dresla caught the kid.

  I ran forward to the airlock control panel. The wiring was a mess. The panel had not been opened with finesse, it had been forced open. The wires were ripped out, a couple quickly spliced together. No care, just speed.

  And there was no way I could get it back together quickly. Not in time to stop the pod from launching.

  I wasn’t worried about the pod launching and opening the ship up to the atmosphere. The pod’s access doors were a small airlock, two sets of doors. One on the pod and one on the ship. The seal on the ship side wasn’t that great, I would need to get the airlock doors shut before the ship could go off planet but there was a bit of time.

  The deckplates shuddered, a vibration building and sliding along their length. I heard the exterior pod doors opening, sliding back on their track. I half hoped they would jam open.

  I had no intention of ever abandoning the Wind. She was my ship, I was the captain and I would go down with her. Fighting the whole way. I didn’t keep up with maintenance of the pod, not like I should have. Pods were supposed to have regular operations. Getting them started, opening the doors. Basically everything short of launching it.

  Which was supposed to be done every two or three years. I’d owned the Wind for five years and never done it. Not an expense I wanted to pay.

  And now that I had Kaylia, maintaining the escape pod suddenly became very important. Just add it to the long list of things that I didn’t have credits or time for.

  There was a loud metallic snap, the maglocks holding the pod in place releasing. I could hear the engine and feel the Wind lurch as the escape pod shot out of the angled front end. Of course it would work perfectly.

  I could picture it in my head. A ten foot long cylinder, barely the height of an average man, and maybe five feet wide, all a shiny gray color with no view window. It had two large thrusters mounted on either side of the cylinder at the back with wings that could be extended for atmospheric flight. Inside there were five padded seats along the sides and one seat directly forward, the pilot station. The thing was small and cramped but it did the job.

  There was no noise that I could hear through the Wind’s hull plates or over the sound of my ship’s engines.

  The pod would drop down, heading towards the ground, since that was where the Wind’s front end was pointing. It’s launch speed and trajectory would put it directly in front of our path. Torsi needed to be quick if she was going to avoid the ship crashing into her.

  I felt the ship lurch to the side, the quick maneuver too much for the inertia compensators to deal with. I heard the sound of multiple things crashing to the floor, people and objects. There were cries of surprise and a couple of pain.

  I ignored the movement of the ship, trusting that Kaylia knew what she was doing.

  Honestly. I was impressed at the rapid movement. I hadn’t expected her to be able to react that quickly.

  “How could you let her go?” Dresla asked as the ship settled and smoothed out.

  I spared a quick look over my shoulder. The kid was gone, probably in the arms of his mother where I couldn’t see. Dresla was angry. I didn’t care.

  Finding the wires I wanted, I reconnected them to the control panel and hit the code. The airlock door slid shut.

  Turning I started towards the galley and the stairs when Dresla stepped into my path.

  “Why did you let her go?”

  I fought down the urge to laugh. This tiny little thing looking up at me angrily.

  Sighing I forced myself to calm down.

  Dresla was only doing her job. Or what had been her job. Her dedication was commendable. There really was no point in apprehending Torsi and getting the artifact back. Who would she return it to? Who would judge Torsi?

  As I looked at the anger in Dresla’s eyes it hit me.

  “She stole it on your watch didn’t she?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  If stares could kill, I would have been dead.

  Dresla was not happy, which told me that I had guessed right.

  She stared up at me, angry and embarrassed. I ignored her, pushing past and into the galley. I was up the steps quickly, hearing her following behind me.

  As soon as my head crested the floor I saw Kaylia standing in the opening to the bridge. She was frantic, hands moving too fast for me to keep up. I had no idea what she was saying. Normally she was good about doing her sign language slow for me to follow, but not when she was overly excited, nervous or scared. She was all three. A couple quick steps and I was standing before her. I took her hands in mine, lighting holding them.

  “It’s okay kiddo,” I told her. “You did good.”

  And she had. That jerky maneuver had been just enough to get us clear of the escape pod. Torsi was stupid. We were in the process of landing, the pod shot out directly in our path. Of course Torsi had no way of knowing that but Kaylia had managed to get us just enough out of the way. The turbulence would have buffeted the escape pod heavily. No way was it a smooth ride.

  The kid removed her hands and signed more slowly.

  There’s a transmission from Ground Control.

  I nodded, and with hand on her shoulder, lightly directed her back into the bridge. She moved to her co-pilot’s seat and pulled her legs up, arms around them, head resting on her knees. A clear sign she wasn’t fully recovered.

  Sitting at my station, I pulled the headset on and immediately heard the Tuis Ground Control.

  “Unidentified ship, please acknowledge receipt of landing authorization.”

  I glanced at the comms and saw the incoming coordinates and clearance from the Tuis. As well as an indication that a message had been sent. Where had that come from? Kaylia or I hadn’t sent a message recently.

  “Ground Control this is Nomad’s Wind, Terran registration SE6890. Landing authorization acknowledged.”

  It sounded innocent enough but I knew that if I hadn’t acknowledged and given the ship’s registry, we would have been shot out of the sky.

  “Purpose of landing on Tui?”

  “Refueling,” I replied.

  “Length of time on planet?”

  I thought about how to answer that one. Buying and loading fuel would take an hour at the most, not even that. But Torsi had taken my escape pod. That would be expensive to replace. I knew Dresla would want to go after the thief. Could I make her stay on the ship somehow? I could leave her behind. Refuel and go. If she wasn’t back, she’d be stuck here. That would be on her, her decision.

  Dammit.

  “A couple hours, maybe a day,” I told Ground Control. “I have a shipload of refugees from Storw and they’ve been stuck in the ship for days. Could use some air and space.”

  I could feel Dresla’s expression of surprise without even looking.

  There was a long pause before Ground Control answered. Probably trying to decide how much they could overcharge me.

  “There will be additional docking fees for an extended stay,” the reply said finally.

  Couldn’t wait to see what this would cost me.

  “Understood.�
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  I removed the headset and programmed in the docking coordinates, setting the ship on auto pilot.

  Now to see what that random message was.

  “Captain,” Dresla started to say but I held up a hand, stopping her.

  Wasn’t in the mood. Not yet.

  The message was just an info burst, data sent out as a transmission. It had been hidden in the Feed drop when we had hopped into the Yersk system. When the ship’s system had automatically downloaded the latest from the Galactic Feed, it had automatically sent out this preprogrammed message.

  I almost laughed, a little upset with myself. It was a neat trick. Torsi had gotten me to give her access to the lounge’s vidscreen which connected to the Feed, which allowed her to send the message. Smart.

  The system quickly decoded it so I could read it. A simple encryption had been used, a basic one to protect the message well being transmitted across satellites and through wildspace. It also made sense that it didn’t take long since the encryption had come from the Wind’s own system. Tt would be easy for that same system to decode the message.

  It was what I thought. A meeting time, here on Tui. Torsi’s contacts.

  The sale was happening on Tui.

  “Did you do anything to tip Torsi off that you were on to her,” I asked Dresla without turning around, pulling up the meeting coordinates.

  “No,” she said, a tad indignant. “Despite what you may think, I am good at my job.” There was a pause and a sigh, the tone more humble. “It was only recently that I discovered that Torsi was the thief.”

  I wanted to make a sarcastic remark, something to make the guilt that Dresla must be feeling even stronger. She owed me an escape pod. But I couldn’t. Even the most observant person needed to be forgiven if they were distracted by the destruction of their entire planet.

  “Something tipped her off,” I explained. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have gone for the escape pod.”

  “I did think it odd that she tried to leave the ship now and not earlier,” Dresla said stepping into the bridge and onto the top step that led down to navigation and weapons.