The Complete Warlord Trilogy: An Aeon 14 Collection
Page 18
“Even if it is, the pods are still an incredible find,” Anna said, wondering why Jace didn’t seem impressed. Maybe he was just playing her to see what else she was holding back.
“True, true,” Jace nodded. “Send the pods you have over here, and we’ll inspect them.”
“I’ll send over one,” Anna said. “Once you agree to a price, and the funds transfer, you’ll get the rest.”
Jace’s dark eyes grew darker, but after a moment’s consideration he nodded. “Very well. But send over the woman—the one you mentioned in your message that has leverage over the Streamer captain.”
“Chieftain—” Anna began, but Jace cut her off.
“I am leaving you with the majority of the spoils, and taking you at your word that there is further bounty to be had. Send the woman. That is not negotiable.”
Anna knew better than to argue the point. “Very well.”
* * * * *
Katrina kept her focus on the Havermere as she drifted through the black between the two ships.
Untethered EVA had been her least favorite part of her training in her youth, and she had managed to go her entire life never having to do it for real.
Until now.
She was still seven hundred meters from the Havermere, and thus far appeared to be undetected.
Katrina ignored his comment.
Katrina resisted the urge to give her head a rueful shake—she didn’t want to mess up her trajectory.
Troy gave a snort.
Katrina chuckled.
Katrina replied.
They didn’t speak further, and Katrina killed the connection to avoid detection. Five minutes later, she was nearly at the Havermere; she held off firing her retro-jets until the last minute, only managing to slow to one meter per second before hitting the hull with a loud clang.
Stars, I hope no one was around to hear that, Katrina thought as she activated her maglock boots and slowly walked across the ship to an auxiliary hatch.
The hatch would be sealed against any external access, but Juasa had disabled the locks yesterday. Hopefully no one had run any maintenance checks and spotted the change. If so, this would be one short rescue.
Katrina flipped open the manual keypad beside the hatch, and punched in the code Juasa had given her.
To her great relief, the access light turned green, and the hatch rotated ninety degrees and swung open. Katrina gauged the room in the small airlock to be just barely big enough for her powered armor, and carefully pulled herself in.
Moment of truth, she thought, and keyed in the command to cycle the airlock.
Air rushed into the enclosed space and, a minute later, the interior hatch on the airlock opened. Katrina crawled out into a—thankfully—empty maintenance tunnel.
Katrina swept the dark, narrow tunnel with her armor’s sensors and confirmed that she was alone. Then she turned and quickly sealed the airlock before moving down the maintenance tunnel to the ship’s bow.
* * * * *
Anna swept into the forward bay, the gleam of her silver skinsheath reflecting off the deck as she strode toward the shuttle.
It was still guarded by Kelly and Tali, as the unconscious form of Juasa was nearby.
She hoped the two women wouldn’t question her change of clothing. With luck, they’d just assume that she didn’t want to meet with the Chieftain of the Blackadder while in her tacky white KiStar uniform.
Which was actually the truth.
Anna considered that when this job was done, she could help herself to Verisa’s wardrobe. The woman may have been a lying Streamer, hoarding all her tech, but she had a great sense of style.
“Get her in the shuttle,” Anna ordered the two women as she approached.
“Who?” Kelly asked. “Juasa?”
Anna shook her head. “Yeah, shit-for-brains, Juasa. I’m taking her over to the Verisimilitude.”
“What about the pods?” Tali asked, her brow lowering. “Should we unload them?”
Anna shook her head. “No, I’m taking them over, too.”
“What? All of them?” Kelly asked.
“Yeah, all of them. That’s Jace Kaidan over there on that ship. He wants all the pods, he gets all the pods. Don’t worry, we’ll get our cut.”
Tali’s eyes widened at the mention of Jace’s name, but Kelly folded her arms and widened her stance.
“Blackadder are pirates. You take Ju and the pods, you take all our leverage with them.”
“Oh, fuck it, I don’t have time for this,” Anna swore as she reached behind her back for the pistol tucked into her belt. She whipped it out, and fired three shots at Kelly, then pivoted to put two into Tali.
The weapon’s report echoed through the bay, and a worker on the far side cried out in alarm. Anna fired a few shots in his direction, not bothering to see if she hit the man before reaching down and grabbing Juasa by the hair.
“Time to finally earn your keep, you stupid bitch.” Anna muttered as she dragged Juasa onto the shuttle, and dropped her onto the deck. She considered securing the unconscious woman, but decided not to bother as she sat down at the small craft’s controls.
Anna ignored him as she fired up the shuttle’s grav drive and lifted it off the docking cradle. Hemry pinged her again, insisting she give him an update.
She chuckled as she disconnected from the shipnet.
Suckers.
* * * * *
Katrina peered around a corner, checking that the coast was clear before moving into a corridor that would lead her to the main passageway between the forward and rear bays.
She decided to take the risk, and made a wireless connection to the shipnet; then she tapped into the maintenance subsystem. From there, she attempted to reach Juasa once more.
Dammit! Katrina swore in her mind, feeling a frantic sense of urgency fill her as she moved as quietly as possible through the corridor. She should have worked out a way to bring Juasa on the first trip to the Voyager. Then they could have just boosted away, and activated the stealth systems.
That would have been a far better plan…
Katrina realized that she had become sloppy, remaining connected to the subsystem after sending out her broadcasts. Before she could disconnect, the voice said,
Katrina wondered why Sam was reaching out to her like this. Is this a ploy? To what end? The tap doesn’t give away my physical location; not this quickly, at least. She decided to chance a response.
a asked.
Katrina didn’t need to guess who that was.
Katrina had to give Anna credit. She wasn’t taking half measures.
Sam snorted.
Katrina took off at a full run, banking around a corner and into the main passageway between the aft and forward docking bays. She careened off the wall, pushed an automated hauler aside, and burst past a group of crewmembers.
It was only four hundred meters to the forward bay, and she covered the distance in less than fifteen seconds. Bursting into the bay, she nearly collided with a fleeing man with blood running down his arm.
Her eyes landed on the empty cradles, and then caught sight of the shuttle passing through the grav shield and into space.
“No!” Katrina cried out, the armor triggering her external speakers and blasting the cry of anguish into the bay. Rage coursed through Katrina’s body, and she looked for someone to take it out on. All she found were the bodies of two dead members of the crew.
Sam wisely did not respond as Katrina considered her options.
None came to mind.
An assault on the pirate ship would be suicide; it would be fully crewed with killers. Her only option was negotiation. She needed to get a message to Troy, and advise him of what she was planning.
Katrina shook her head and made a connection to the hack that her nano had performed. It would take a minute to initialize, but what choice did she have?
The nano responded, and began to put into effect the bridge that would allow her to use the comm array without detection.
Katrina didn’t reply to him, and instead messaged Troy.
Katrina let out a long breath. There was still room for hope.
“You! Freeze!” a voice called out from the entrance to the bay. Katrina turned to see seven of the Havermere’s crew in the entrance. Six held pulse rifles, and the seventh hefted a railgun.
“Take it easy with the rail,” Katrina said. “We could lose forward shields with another hit like we just took. You want to hole the hull and suck vacuum?”
“You come nice and slow, and we won’t have to worry about that,” the man with the railgun said.
Katrina surveyed her surroundings, and saw a stack of crates that contained hull plates. Those should slow down whatever the rail fires—provided the label is correct and they haven’t been repurposed.
“Fat chance,” Katrina retorted. She unslung her projectile rifle, sprayed rounds at the Havermere’s crew as she ran toward the stack, and then dove behind it.
Something pinged off her armor as she leapt. She landed on her side and flipped over, worried about what she would find. There was only a large dent in her thigh plate; the railgun must fire at a lower velocity than she’d feared—or they had dialed it back, also worried about holing the hull.
Still—that’s gonna ache in the morning, she thought.
The crates shook as high-powered rounds hit them, and Katrina shook her head.
Katrina sent out a set of probes and saw that the enemy was only firing at the sides of the stack, hoping to catch her as she peered around while they slowly approached to flank her.
Such two-dimensional thinking.
She leapt onto the top of the crates and fired another salvo, taking out three more of the shooters before dropping back behind her cover.
When she hit the deck, it lurched, and for a moment, Katrina thought that she’d bent the plate with her powered armor. Then the floor beneath her shifted again, and she realized that the ship was moving.
A moment later, the artificial gravity died, and the ship shifted again. Her armor’s maglock boots held onto the deck, but the crates weren’t strapped down and they slid toward her.
Katrina tried to get out of the way, but she wasn’t fast enough and one of the crates slammed into her. Her maglock boots let go, and she flew into the bulkhead—the crate of hull plating following close behind. Katrina fired her armor’s jets, getting clear an instant before the crate slammed into the place where her head had been.
The hull dented and Katrina could hear a slow hiss. It seemed the shields were now down entirely. Vacuum waited on the other side of that alloy.
On the far side of the bay, the Havermere’s crew weren’t faring much better with the shifting cargo and flying tools—a situation made even more dangerous by their lack of armor.
The bay’s a-grav systems wavered, creating a rollercoaster feeling in Katrina’s stomach, and then failed altogether.
Katrina took another shot at the man holding the railgun, and hit him in the right arm. The weapon fell to the deck, and she fired her jets at full power, streaking across the bay.
Behind her, the exterior door’s grav shield began to weaken, and air began to seep through, creating an eerie whistling sound.
The three remaining members of the Havermere
’s crew fired on Katrina as she approached, but the kick from their weapons made aiming impossible without gravity.
She barreled into one, and pushed another back, her maglock boots activating the moment her feet met the deck.
A second later, the exterior bay door’s grav shield failed entirely, and a deafening FOOM thundered through the air. One of the men clamped his hands over his head, crying out in pain.
A torrent of air blew around her as the bay decompressed, and Katrina grabbed two of the men who had been firing at her a moment ago, and hauled them into the passageway, reaching its relative safety a second before the emergency pressure door slammed shut.
Katrina surveyed the corridor and saw two more of the Havermere’s crew: a man and a woman. Both had their hands clamped over their ears, as well. Their moans and mewling sounds filled the thin air.
They were no longer threats, and Katrina ignored them. She turned down the passageway and ran toward the lift.
Katrina had no idea how to answer that question, so she ignored it.
<’Safe’ is a relative term, but yes; I believe the inhabitants were unharmed.>
Small miracles, Katrina thought privately.
Katrina replied.
Katrina was glad that Troy didn’t try to convince her to come back—though she half-wished he would. She didn’t see any way that this would end well.
* * * * *
Consciousness slowly returned to Juasa, though she almost wished it hadn’t. Everything hurt—a lot.