The Blarmling Dilemma (Hearts in Orbit Book 1)

by S. C. Mitchell

  “Yeah, he’s out,” he heard Kristin say. “What the hell did you slip him?”

  She must have been on an ear-com, because he didn’t hear an answer, but Kristin laughed loudly as she exited the room and shut the door.

  Rigel lay for long minutes just breathing and listening. With a sudden rush, his ears stopped ringing and his mind cleared. The microbot must have identified whatever drug they’d given him, and administered an antidote. With a deep sigh of relief, Rigel rolled over onto his back and tucked the pillow behind his head. Now he had time to think and question.

  Had it just been chance they’d run into Captain le Piere and his band of pirates? It appeared le Piere had been expecting him? Did they also know about Phoebe?

  Gods, there were just too many questions. It all felt so wrong. He didn’t dare sleep, but he could rest a bit now, while the party wound down. Then he had to find out what was really going on. Escaping before he knew all the facts could be dangerous.

  Chapter 26

  “I’ve reconfigured the schematics to be smaller and more aerodynamic,” Phoebe said holding up her prototype. The shaft was almost a meter long and the head not much bigger than a standard arrowhead. She’d moved the switch to the nock end, just below the feathers, so the archers could activate the explosive head just before they fired. That would make the arrows much safer to carry and shoot than Tucker’s old design.

  The arrow slowly extended from the reconfigured food-processing unit onboard The Blarmlings’ Hope. It had only taken Phoebe about fifteen minutes to make the adjustments needed in the unit to accept and process non-edibles. Mirin and Ryan stood in back of her, their mouths agape, as she made the changes.

  “It looks so complex. How do you know what to do?” Mirin’s question brought to light how desperate the backtechers were. Phoebe had learned to manipulate wires and circuits as a child. These people had never seen even the simplest of electronics.

  She picked up the arrow from the receiving tray and placed it under a scanner. The small crystals were perfectly aligned in the arrowhead. Satisfied, she handed the arrow to Ryan.

  The prince accepted the arrow from Phoebe. “Amazing.” He held it gingerly, gently spinning it between his thumb and forefinger. “Should we test it?”

  Phoebe nodded. “I think that would be a good idea.”

  She had enough synganite left to make five more arrows, so she set the machine to produce them. Tucker had promised to bring more ore to them as soon as he could manage to extract it from the caves.

  She followed Ryan out of the airlock. At the base of the access ramp, Ryan turned toward Mirin. “My lady, the honor is yours, if you wish it.”

  Mirin’s eyes lit as Ryan offered her the arrow. A broad smile crossed her face. “Oh . . . yes!” She strung her bow, and accepted the arrow from Ryan. “What should I use as a target?”

  Ryan pointed toward a tree, with a stout trunk of about a half-meter diameter. The tree stood about forty meters from the ship, a safe enough distance. “How about that one?”

  “Perfect.” Mirin turned toward Phoebe and indicated the micro switch on the nock end of the arrow. “I touch right here, just before I release, correct?”

  Phoebe nodded and smiled. “Yes. The arrowhead should be perfectly stable until you touch that switch. After that it will explode on impact.”

  Mirin took her stance, feet apart, arm straight, as she drew back the bowstring. Phoebe was impressed at the woman’s steady strength. She took only a moment to sight in the tree, then moved her thumb to the trigger button on the nock. With a twang the arrow flew, gliding unerringly toward the tree trunk. The resulting explosion thundered across the forested valley in which The Blarmlings’ Hope rested.

  The large sapling disintegrated as the arrow struck. Only a smoldering stump remained as kindling rained down on the trees beyond. Ryan closed in on Mirin and hugged her. Emotion flared momentarily between the two that Phoebe easily recognized.

  Phoebe thought about Rigel and a cold knot twisted in her gut. Ryan planned on attacking the pirates with this deadly force she was creating. Would Rigel be able to escape? Could she warn him? He hadn’t taken a com unit for fear the pirates would use it to track down the ship.

  “Well done!” The words startled Phoebe, coming from behind her. She turned to see Tucker dragging a wagon piled high with synganite behind him. The brown robed, portly man was sweating profusely but also smiling broadly.

  Phoebe went to inspect the ore. “I can get more if you need it,” Tucker said puffing.

  “I think this will be plenty,” she assured him, patting his shoulder.

  Her eyes were drawn toward the still smoldering stump. Her thoughts were centered on the bounty hunter who had captured her heart.

  Rigel crept from shadow to shadow, listening carefully for any sound, any movement, in the dimly lit hallway ahead. The castle was quiet. The partygoers, most in a drunken stupor, had found their beds. Lights were dimmed or extinguished, and the compound slept . . . mostly.

  Ahead, a distant light drew Rigel’s attention. Low and muffled, a voice echoed off the stone walls of the passage. Inching forward, ears straining to make sense of the gibberish, Rigel spotted a dark alcove almost directly opposite the doorway from which the light and sound emanated.

  Peeking into the room, Rigel noted Djon le Piere seated in front of a com console. The man had his back to Rigel and the view screen was in sight, but empty. A disgusted sigh came from Captain le Piere as he began to initiate a communication. It certainly appeared that le Piere wasn’t looking forward to this conversation.

  The view screen blinked and then filled with the familiar visage of Clarence O’Callaghan. Rigel’s gut coiled as le Piere’s demeanor changed from disgust to congenial.

  “Good news, Clarence,” le Piere said. “You’ve sent us another. Payment will be made by the usual method.”

  “Really?” O’Callaghan seemed genuinely surprised. “Who?”

  “Rigel Antares has finally flown into our net. Congratulations.” Le Piere leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped and touching his chin.

  O’Callaghan narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “Impossible. Antares is dead. I killed him myself.”

  “Did you now?” Le Piere chuckled. “Then it is, of course, Rigel’s ghost that lies drunk on the bed down the hall.”

  The look of shock on O’Callaghan’s face made Rigel smile.

  O’Callaghan’s eyes widened, and he swallowed uncomfortably. “You’re sure it’s him? I can’t believe he escaped.”

  Just thinking of the close call, made Rigel go cold.

  Le Piere sat up straight, squaring his shoulders. “You know I’ve wanted to get my hands on Antares for a long while. Yet you tried to kill him? While I’m surprised you had any initiative, how dare you defy me like this?”

  O’Callaghan blanched. “He’ll never join you. He’s too goody-goody. I’ve been on him for years. It’s only by chance he wondered into your sector of influence.”

  “Don’t be a fool!” There was ice in le Piere’s tone. “He and a few of the others were the main reason I took over this miserable, backwater planet. I knew he’d wonder in eventually. I cast a wide net and I do it with purpose, don’t ever forget that.”

  So le Piere had been looking for him, and O’Callaghan had been grooming him all these months.

  Why?

  “I need good people, smart people, working with me if I’m going to expand my operations to other parts of the galaxy. Not some fat fool who couldn’t even pass a Galactic Civil Service Exam without my pulling some strings to help him.”

  O’Callaghan’s plump cheeks turned red and he scrunched his face, frowning back at le Piere. “I’ve done everything you asked. Sent you dozens of good people.”

  Le Piere rocked back in his chair. Ye
s, the pirate captain was as good at manipulating people as Rotund. “Yet you try to kill someone who could be a great asset to our organization. I will certainly have to take that into consideration during your next assessment.”

  “Rigel Antares will never join us.” Spittle flew from O’Callaghan’s mouth, some hitting the camera lens, obscuring his image. “He doesn’t know how to break the law. Believe me, I’ve tried every trick I know to force him to seek you out. That’s why I decided to kill him. He’s worthless to us.”

  Captain le Piere sat up straight, squaring his shoulders once again. Rigel could almost feel his imposing presence. “That was not your call to make, O’Callaghan. Remember who you work for. Do not cross me again.”

  Le Piere’s hand moved toward the control panel.

  “Wait,” O’Callaghan cried. “Antares has a woman-”

  Le Piere cut him off. “This discussion is over.” He hit a switch on the control panel and the screen went black.

  Rigel breathed a sigh of relief. At least O’Callaghan hadn’t been able to tell le Piere about Phoebe.

  A second figure moved into view through the doorway—Carter Pullman, le Piere’s second in command. Rigel had been considering the possibility of capturing le Piere, hustle him back to The Blarmlings’ Hope, and making a run for the nearest galactic security center. The bounty on le Piere would pay for the repairs on his ship a hundred times over. Hell, he could buy a whole new ship and speed the Blarmlings back to Blarm.

  But with Pullman in the room with le Piere, Rigel knew his chances of capturing the pirate captain and getting away dropped to nearly none.

  “What about the woman?” Pullman’s comment shot a chill through Rigel’s gut.

  “Yes,” le Piere answered, “it is probably time we bring Phoebe Callista and her little friends in. At the very least, she will fetch us a nice ransom from that rich father of hers.”

  Rigel’s head reeled. Somehow le Piere already knew.

  “I was so hoping to convince Antares to bring her to us himself, as his first act of loyalty.” Le Piere again rocked in his chair. What was the man pondering?

  Pullman crossed his arms. “Do you really think he’ll ever join us?”

  Le Piere sighed. “No. In that, the fat fool is probably right. A pity. He has such potential.”

  The pirate spun in his chair to face the doorway, then stood. Rigel could see the intense fire in the man’s eyes. “Kill him, then go fetch the girl and the Blarmlings.”

  Sweat drenched his shirt. He backed further into the shadows of the alcove and drew his blaster, checking the charge.

  Frack!

  The blaster’s battery was defective, leaking energy even when not used. He only had 27% power in the gun.

  Carter Pullman exited the room and turned down the hallway, walking toward the room Rigel had been assigned. As he moved, Pullman drew his blaster from his hip-side holster.

  Djon le Piere poked his head out of the doorway. “And make it quick. Antares is not one to take chances with.”

  Pullman laughed. “I doubt he’ll be much of a problem. He’s dead to the world right now. Soon, he’ll just be dead.”

  Rigel flipped his blaster’s setting to stun, aimed, and fired down the hallway, hitting Pullman in the back. As the pirate slumped, Rigel pivoted and shot le Piere in the chest. The man’s eyes widened as he fell heavily to the floor.

  Stepping across the hall, Rigel hoisted le Piere to his shoulder. Maybe he could still make this work. If he could just quietly escape the castle, and get le Piere back to The Blarmlings’ Hope.

  Without their leader, how helpless would the pirate gang be? Surely they’d come after him, but maybe it would take them time to organize. Just maybe . . .

  “Hey!” The voice behind him was jarring.

  Rigel spun, firing blindly and hoping to hit whoever’d discovered him. Night sentry or semi-drunk partygoer on his way to the head, it didn’t matter. Rigel was too deep in the castle guts to escape if someone raised an alarm.

  A shadowed figure somersaulted into a side passage and out of sight.

  “Shit, Rigel, what the hell are you doing?” The voice belonged to Fen Vibald, the ex-bounty hunter turned pirate. Rigel had once considered Fen a friend . . . still did.

  Rigel crawled back into the alcove for protection, dragging le Piere behind him. “Fen, we’ve got to get out of here. We’ve been tricked.”

  Enlisting Fen’s aid would double his chances of a successful escape.

  “What are you talking about? It’s good here. No more being harassed by that bastard O’Callaghan.” Fen didn’t know. More than likely most of them didn’t know.

  “O’Callaghan’s working with le Piere.” Rigel checked the charge on his blaster. 16%.

  “You’re crazy man and I’m not gonna let you ruin a good thing for me.”

  A blast lit up the hallway and tore out a chunk of the stone wall. Fen’s blaster was most definitely not set to stun.

  Rigel looked down at Djon le Piere, lying unconscious beside him on the floor. Over a million credits. He heard running footsteps in the hallways all around him.

  Frack!

  He pulled le Piere’s body deeper into the alcove and made ready to spring. Getting out with le Piere just went off the table. He’d be lucky to get out at all.

  Rigel fired two shots blindly down the hallway toward Fen, then sprinted off in the opposite direction, diving into the first side hallway he came to. He almost ran into a pirate standing there.

  “What’s going on?” the sleepy-eyed man asked.

  “Spies in the castle,” Rigel answered, puffing from his exertion. “Someone shot Captain le Piere. They took a couple of shots at me as well. Watch yourself. I’m going to try and get behind him.”

  Rigel patted the man on the shoulder and dashed off down the hallway. Confusion would be his best ally now, and hopefully he’d just sewn a boatload of it.

  He hadn’t seen most of the castle, and didn’t know the layout, so he was running blind. He stopped to listen then tried to pick a path away from the voices and footsteps. But dashing this way and that got him nowhere but lost, as the castle continued to wake up. Heavy boots pounded the stone flooring all around him. Lights, dimmed for nighttime, came back up to full brilliance in every hallway. The windows on the main floor of the castle were too small to escape out of, or sported thick iron bars, and he found the front door guarded by the time he made his way to it.

  Eventually he stumbled into the big throne room. It was empty, but he heard footsteps approaching from each of the three doorways. Scanning the room, his eyes came to rest on a forth doorway with the door closed. It was his only escape, so he dashed to it. He heard no sound behind the door when he pressed his ear to it, so he pulled it open.

  Behind wasn’t a hallway, just a small closet. Sighing, Rigel entered and pulled the door closed behind him. Maybe if he waited here, they would eventually assume he’d escaped and stop searching for him. At the very least, he could hope to be overlooked for a while.

  He checked the power on his blaster. 6%. Only a couple of shots left.

  If he was found, he was dead.

  Muffled voices filtered through the wooden door.

  “No sign of him north.”

  “He’s a slippery one, he is.”

  Rigel backed deeper into the closet, putting his back to the cold stone wall and leveling his blaster at the door. He would at least go down fighting.

  “Well, check that closet. There’s no other place in here he could hide.”

  Gritting his teeth, Rigel slid left, into the corner of the closet. With luck he could take out whoever opened the door, then get to that man’s gun before anyone else could shoot him. As he leveled his blaster, he leaned back against the wall. Suddenly he was fall
ing . . . through the wall. What had appeared to be solid stone, pivoted inward. He backpedaled and managed to retain his balance, slamming into another stone wall. Then the panel he’d fallen through swung back silently, leaving him in darkness.

  “Nothing in here,” he heard someone say. After long moments of silence he expelled the breath he’d been holding with a long sigh.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Rigel noted pinpricks of light in the distance to his right. He could just make out the walls of a very thin hallway with what appeared to be small holes in the left hand side.

  A secret passage?

  He moved down the hallway, stopping at the first peephole. Peeking out he surveyed the throne room he’d just exited. Noting that some of the pirates were still lingering there, he moved on.

  The passage was far from even, snaking up and down, and at times thinning to the point Rigel had to turn sideways to continue on. From the occasional views he got of the rooms outside, it appeared he was generally moving up toward the second floor of the castle. Voices caused him to pause and listen.

  “Le Piere’s awake, and madder than a Dramakian Bantherder. He wants Antares’ head, and bad,” said a gruff male voice.

  “Shame that,” answered a female voice. “Seemed like he’d’ a fit right in with us. An’ sexy as ‘ell. Wouldn’t have minded tipping the sheets with ‘im, no I wouldn’t.”