by Scott Warren
“We can provide material compensation.”
The Grah’lhin stabbed a spear-like foreleg through the remainder of the carcass and into the top of the composite table.
“Victoria is my quarry, hunter. I have no interest in material wealth, I want her on this table between us. I would be there when you run her down. Aboard your star runner and mine. I would share one more meal.”
Best Wishes’ rightmost eye tracked a small rivulet of blood creeping from the puncture. The other three focused on the monstrosity seated across from him, though seated was perhaps not the proper term. The Grah’lhin was apparently some sort of captain among his kind, but could he be trusted aboard the Springdawn?
Best Wishes leaned forward, baring his teeth. “Where has she gone, Grah’lhin Bargult?”
“Easy, Tessa. Take your time, line it up.”
“Stuff it, Aimes, I know how to goddamn shoot,” said Tessa. She relaxed. Aimes slipped into a teaching mode when he got nervous. It was good to know she wasn’t the only one who was. She stared straight ahead as the feed on the tranquilizer attachment transmitted targeting video directly to her ocular implants. It was a tricky thing to learn, but you got used to it. The barrel of the attachment extruded just a few hairs breadth into the hangar that housed one of the Dirregaunt shuttles. She hoped the glare from the light fixture would be enough to hide it. Dirregaunt were said to have phenomenal senses, sight especially, all the way into the infrared range when they made use of a specialized eye. Something about their home planet’s flora filtering the wavelengths on the surface differently depending on the season.
To Tessa it just made sense, The Dirregaunt were basically bony bipedal wolves with flattened faces and no noses. And about three times as many teeth. You’d have to be pretty thick to think they wouldn’t have powerful vision and hearing. Hopefully it wasn’t good enough to sense the diminutive report of the tranquilizer round.
She held her breath and squeezed, the receivers in her vacuum suit picking up the piff sound as the frozen needle of tranquilizer was pushed out on an expanding cushion of nitrogen. She hadn’t even seen it go, and the Dirregaunt seemed not to notice it. She wondered if it had worked, the system had been sitting in storage for over a decade.
The lone Dirregaunt stopped its patrol, looked about, and then scratched at its hip where Tessa had been aiming. She grinned as it began to sway.
Aimes, also watching through the weapon’s feed, let out a soft cheer and lowered the access hatch. He polarized the anchor for his auto-belay and dropped down on the thin carbon fiber ribbon, his own rifle trained on the Dirregaunt the entire time. As he landed Tessa clamped her own rider to the tether and slid down to land behind him, rifle covering the secondary airlock that led to Taru Station.
The Dirregaunt sentry blinked at him, then turned to stare at the stars through the translucent metal of the outer airlock. His portable maser hung forgotten on its lanyard.
“Look at him Tess. He’s totally fried!” said Aimes as he let the ribbon retract. He would be able to pull it down again when it was time for them to leave.
Tessa had to agree, she hadn’t expected to dart to work as well as it had. Unconscious bodies tended to draw unwanted attention, so the synthesized toxin was designed to devastate cognition and mnemonic functions without impairing motor skills. It was an induced blackout, and while it could see it could not properly comprehend or form new memories. The two Vultures were as ghosts.
She glanced over at Aimes, his neck craned to look at the towering shuttle. His voice crackled over her radio.
“Hell, Tess. It’s almost as big as the Condor.”
“Big Three don’t much care about material constraints. Resource shortages are something that happen to other people. Their logistics limits are far surpassed by their manufacturing capability. And with their metals it’s probably about a quarter the tonnage it looks.”
“Yawn. Thanks for the xenosociology lesson. Let’s find a way onboard, get that intel. Maybe even boost a part or two.
Tessa watched Aimes bound ahead, his rifle at the ready despite their recon confirming they had left only a single sentry. Hell, they hadn’t even closed the ramp. She ran her hand over the underbelly of the shuttle, hoping to feel some measure of the texture through her glove. It was smooth as glass. She heard the metallic tromp of armored boots up the ramp and chased after it. Her heart had been icy cold and steady when she had taken the tranquilizer shot, now it raced, pounding in her chest. As far as she knew they were the first humans to set foot aboard a functioning Dirregaunt vessel. The Big Three didn’t tend to dock in the same circles.
A hum of oscillating energy greeted her as she climbed the ramp, the suit’s modest computer calculating its likely location within the shuttle. Her ocular implants lit up as they identified xenotechnology, but there was no library for what she was seeing. The Dirregaunt were so far ahead of them they couldn’t even decipher a tenth of their technology, what little scraps humanity had scavenged over the years were still largely a mystery. The programming languages had been cracked, woefully underdeveloped as the Dirregaunt simply didn’t need them. A team of specially trained crewmembers did astral calculations as precisely as any human computer.
“Aimes, you want bridge or engine room?” she asked. Aimes was already out of sight, damn if he wasn’t right about this ship being almost the size of the Condor.
“Engine room, I want to see the look on Aesop’s face when I tell him I rubbed my balls on a Dirregaunt horizon drive.”
Tessa rolled her eyes and headed for the forecastle where she hoped to find the bridge. On the cruiser the command and control center would be deep within the ship, safe from piercing lasers and other weapons. It was the same way on the Condor. But on smaller ships and shuttles it wasn’t uncommon to have the pilot’s stations at the fore of the ship, behind a translucent alloy so that the navigator could guide by sight and feel instead of view screens.
The shuttle beyond the next hatch was surreal, hung with loose cables painted like vines and with swirling mist covering the deck. Tessa was suddenly feeling like she was back home in the Everglades on a cool morning, navigating the swamp with her grandfather’s boat.
“Tess, you feel like you need a machete?” her radio chirped.”
“You want another xenosocio lesson or you just like hearing yourself talk?”
“Oh please, Ms. Baum, take me to school. Learn me good,” Aimes whispered in her ear. Tessa almost rebuked him, but reconsidered. Xenohistory and sociology was her passion and it was rare that she was given a chance to explore it. You generally didn’t get into space without higher education but most marines opted for degrees in sports medicine or aviation or military science.
“The Dirregaunt home planet is a single band of swamp that wraps around their world from about 25° north to 50° south. That’s why they’ve only got fur on their upper bodies, they spent a lot of time with their bottom halves submerged. Those bone hooks on their chest they’d loop over tree branches to sleep suspended out of the water until they learned how to build things to keep them above it.”
“So the ship is like a marsh because of what, nostalgia?”
“Basically, yeah. It’s easy to forget where you come from when you left your home planet eight millennia ago. By the time we were inventing things like pants, most of their race had never even seen their home world. The Praetory makes sure that their navy keeps their ships like this. Being back in a jungle helps them think like hunters, or at least that’s the idea.” said Tessa as she started up a ladder to the next deck. It made her feel like a gator was going to snap at her heels, between the mist and the vines it was too similar to the Everglades. Her retinal implants coordinated with her suit’s computer, automatically mapping the interior and comparing it with Aimes’ version. “I’m almost to the bridge,” she huffed, finishing her climb.
The security was completely laughable, doors opened automatically as she approached, though she was unsure of the me
chanism that sensed her passage. Of the labels on chambers she had seen nothing that read armory or weapons locker. A species at war in space for so long they had forgotten how to fight on the ground. It fascinated her. Pushing through the roiling mist on the deck she reached the hatch her implants insisted was the entrance to the bridge. It shimmered and slid open to accommodate her, rolling back like a liquid. She stepped through to the bridge.
Her retinal implants went crazy, highlighting control inputs, data displays, and translating the virtual HUD projected onto the translucent metal bow of the shuttle. She laughed as her vacuum suit’s computer began synchronizing with the remote server a few decks up on Taru Station. A weekly crypto would be automatically sent in a few days as the server synched with the larger UE network, and with it, their data. If only this shuttle had a science station for her to ransack, but she would have to make do with the terminals displaying the precious engineering data. Her implants took snapshots as she scrolled down, stealing every numerical value they could detailing the operation of the Dirregaunt shuttle’s engine.
“Hey Aimes, nothing sticky up here. How about the engine room? Anything not tied down?”
“Nah, everything is built right into the superstructure like a damned plastic mold. I grabbed what I think is an emergency respirator and maybe something to seal equipment breaches. Occs are going crazy back here though, I can barely keep track of everything. Tess, this is a gold mine, but we gotta get gone.”
“That … may be a problem,” Tess murmured into her radio as she ducked down.
Shit. Through the bow of the ship she could see the Dirregaunt returning to the hangar and approaching the stunned sentry. A lot of Dirregaunt. Looks like they were returning to the shuttle. The shuttle that just happened to have a pair of marines digging around inside. Had there been some sort of alarm they had tripped or did they just have rotten timing? They were five minutes into their seven minute planned excursion, and damn if they weren’t the wrong seven minutes.
She heard Aimes swear as she opened up her ocular implant feed to show him the Dirregaunt detachment probing the stupefied sentry. No way out undetected. She used her virtual keyboard to pull up the partial schematic of the shuttle, frantically searching for another way out. There was none. They could shoot their way out, but if the Dirregaunt discovered there were still humans aboard Taru, and that they’d killed several sailors in their own hangar, they’d apply enough pressure to turn the entire station against them. They wouldn’t be able to hide for an hour.
“Tess, what’s the game?”
She highlighted an area of the schematics and sent the image to Aimes. “Here, meet me here, we just have to find a place to hide and hope they leave again soon. Quick, go now.”
She abandoned the bridge, sliding down to the lower deck and meeting Aimes on the port side of the shuttle as her suit began to pick up the vibrations of the Dirregaunt boarding the craft. She pushed into what looked like berthing in front of Aimes, hoping that the Dirregaunt would have no reason to use the compartments on such a short trip. But where to hide… There were no bunks, Dirregaunt slept while suspended from hooks, a survival trait to put them out of reach to the primal predators of their primordial jungles. The lockers though. Inside? No, if they had any kind of shelving they’d never fit. Behind. There was some space between the bulkhead and the floor. She got down on her belly and squeezed into it, ceramic plating on the vacuum suit scratching a tiny groove on the back of the locker. Aimes slid in behind her, rifle held in his right hand in case they were discovered. All she could see was the ablative plating on his ass.
She saw Aimes tense up as the door slid open and a pair of footfalls began to pad inside. The rough whistling tones of the Dirregaunt language began to drift into her receiver and a translation appeared on her ocular implants.
“They said it looked as though he was drugged,”
“Tales. Low Branch is always sticking his nose where it is unwelcome. In this rotted hive it has given him more than he expected. He probably sampled the local fare. We are all likely to end up the same if we stay here any longer, I cannot believe the commander has struck a deal with one of them.”
“I admit; Best Wishes is not as I expected. His pursuit of the Malagath Prince is … obsessive. Tavram is almost certainly dead.”
“What can you expect of one born to the lower caste? He does not belong in command, and he will always have something to prove.”
Tessa sighed. Some things were universal, bitching about your commanding officer appeared to be one of them. Her arm brushed against the bulkhead and she froze.
“Did you hear something?”
“Just the engine joining. Stow your gear and come.”
Shit. Her suit had been reading new vibrations but she had hoped it wasn’t the engine. Damn the luck. Aimes beside her was uttering a prayer. Funny, she never knew him to be religious, but it had the sound of something practiced. The deck shuddered beneath her belly as the shuttle spun away from Taru Station out towards space.
A questing hand brushed against hers and she clasped it wordlessly. Tessa was terrified, but she had her rifle, her vacuum suit, and most importantly a marine she’d fought beside for years. Behind the fear, though, she was surprised to find stubborn grit.
Ten thousand years ago the Dirregaunt had been a race of hunters, but despite the effort of the Praetory they’d left that behind when they spread across the stars. She had not. Let them see how humans hunted in the jungles. She squeezed her right hand and felt Aimes squeeze back.
“They’re still after the Condor, Tess,” he said.
“And they’ll find her. Hell if they know where to look they can outrun her and be waiting. Marin doesn’t have a prayer.”
“No, but she has two marines already aboard the enemy ship.”
“And we can cause nine kinds of hell. You think the Dirregaunt share the Malagath fear of space walkers?”
Chapter 6: Conflict of Interests
“Good morning Miss Wong, Director Sampson is in your office.”
Alice Wong paused, steaming coffee half-way to her lips.
“The Director? Did he say why?”
“No ma’am, only to send you straight in when you arrived.”
Alice peered at the door behind her secretary, behind which the director of Union Earth Technology Division waited. Unusual for him to visit the State and Colonization department, UETD barely gave them the time of day. Everyone knew colonization was secondary to scientific and technological advancement. Half his time was spent in the offices of politicians across earth, the rest was spread between the various Union Earth research stations orbiting UE colonies that picked apart tech brought home by the Privateer Corps. He was one of a very select few individuals who warranted a personal ship equipped with a horizon drive. Alice Wong typically had to hitch a ride with a resupply freighter when she visited a colony.
Alice pushed the door open, the sharp click of her heels disappearing on the carpet. Director Sampson stood facing away from her, pensively looking at a photograph he removed from a shelf. She couldn’t tell which one from her current angle. She approached.
“Alice, good morning. Please, come.”
So it was Alice then, not, Miss Wong, or Madam Secretary. She was unsure whether to be complimented or insulted. His tone was quite familiar, despite having met her only once before, at the House of Parliament in London.
“Director Sampson,” she said carefully. He smiled, but didn’t correct her or offer her the use of his first name. So, he wanted to establish authority.
He raised the picture. “Your daughter?” He asked.
“Yes, Huian,” she replied, “At her commissioning ceremony when she became an officer in the Navy.” In the picture, Huian stood in her dress uniform, her new rank insignia being pinned to her collar. Alice had taken the picture herself, one of her proudest moments.
“Named for your late husband’s mother, I see,” he said. Retinal implants. Of course he would have
them, like all the UEN and UEMC officers. And Huian too, now that she was a privateer. Alice set her tablet on her desk, feeling centuries behind.
Director Sampson continued. “Currently serving with the Vultures. Interesting coincidence. Have you met Captain Marin?”
Alice Wong had. She first encountered Victoria Marin at a christening ceremony whereby the woman got excessively inebriated and groped the assistant head of Colonial Affairs in front of his very scandalized wife. One did not readily forget Victoria Marin. She shuddered to think what habits Huian might be learning on the bridge of the Condor with her, but she had been switched at the last minute from the nice, safe Union Earth Navy billet Alice lined up for her.
“She struck me as a precocious woman, Director.”
“She’s an insufferable bitch is what she is. I feel badly for your daughter, stuck up there with that psychotic drunk. She should never have been given the Condor.”
He raised a hand as if to run it through his silvering hair, but dropped it and replaced the photo. The plastic smile returned as he faced her, deepening the creases at the corners of his eyes.
“Actually the Vultures are the reason I’m planetside today. How well do you know Taru Station?”
“Taru? We have holdings there, managed by the Jenursa. Outside our normal support network but the privateers have had some success in that region. That whole area is a bit Wild West. Rowdy at the best of times.”
“Rowdy is good, Alice. Rowdy means salvage. Rowdy means advancement for us. So rowdy, in fact, that the Vultures scuttled a Grayling vessel just off the station.”
“What? When?” asked Alice. Her mind immediately went to Huian. She looked at the portrait Sampson had held earlier.
“Don’t worry, your daughter is fine. It happened sometime last night, the Condor repelled an attack and hit back with a solid one-two that left the Grayling ship ballistic towards the first planet in the Taru System.”
Alice let out a relieved breath, but paused. “That sounds like a privateer matter, what does it have to do with State and Colony?”
