by M. D. Cooper
“Is that where Rebecca will take Sera? Back to HQ?” Tanis asked.
“Probably. The Prowler was at the rendezvous, too, lying dark out of scan range. I imagine she’ll have them look for you while she goes back there.”
“How many ships does The Mark have, anyway?” Tanis asked, wondering about additional complications.
“We’ll, I’m not sure since he said this was his ship, too. Ships that I know he owns for sure…about four hundred; dozens of others that at least do regular business with him.”
“And where is this HQ that Rebecca will be going back to?”
Drind didn’t reply right away, but his eyes darted to Thompson’s cold stare and flexing fists, then back to Tanis. She made her face look as open and trusting as possible.
“It’s hidden really well. It’s impossible to find.”
“But you know where it is, right?” Tanis prompted him.
“Sure, I know the coordinates. It’s actually not too far from here.”
“What’s the name of the system?” Tanis asked.
“Oh, it’s not in any system,” Drind spoke as if he was afraid unseen enemies would kill him. “It’s in the dark layer.”
Tanis managed to get the coordinates to the station after that, but Drind warned her that there were sensors and defensive turrets in both the DL and real space. She concluded the interrogation shortly after, with the promise that she would see about getting Drind more comfortable quarters.
The crew met in the galley again, their faces somber as they pondered the implications of this information.
“How do they even dock in the DL?” Thompson broke the silence.
“Very carefully, I’d bet,” Cheeky said with noticeable appreciation in her voice.
The dark layer was just that, very dark. Nothing emitted light at all. It made the interstellar void look like a sunny afternoon. The only natural emissions of any sort were gravitational waves, which was how ships knew when to drop out of the DL and back into real space. Ships could emit light, but the gravitational waves dispersed that light very quickly.
“Even if we believe him that this HQ of his is in the dark layer, and even if we find out that there is a back door, what are we going to do? Just march in there and demand Sera back?” Nance asked.
“We still have Plan B,” Thompson looked at Tanis.
“Why don’t we move our friend Drind to some better quarters and see if we can’t convince him to start spilling specifics about this place?” Tanis said, ignoring Thompson. “Once we’re better informed, we should be able to determine if his story is bunk. While we’re at it, we may as well start plotting a course toward the general vicinity of the place, in case we do decide to all turn kamikaze.”
“Do we have that kind of time?” Thompson asked, his face turning red. “They could be killing Sera right now while we sit around and debate what to do.”
“Their base is some ways out into interstellar space on the core-ward side of the Silstrand Alliance.” Cheeky provided a holo showing its relative position. “It’ll take them a while to get there.”
“Which is great if she’s still alive, not so great if she’s already dead,” Nance said.
“She’s still alive,” Flaherty said flatly.
“How do you know that?” Cargo asked.
“Just listen to Tanis! She’s our best bet to get Sera back,” Flaherty growled at the rest of the crew.
No one knew what to say in response and Tanis looked into the stoic man’s eyes for a long moment. His connection with Sera had to be older than their time on this ship. He owed her something, had some deep obligation to her.
THE BEST LAID PLANS
STELLAR DATE: 07.13.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: The Mark’s Dark Layer Station
REGION: Unclaimed Interstellar Space, Core-Ward of Silstrand Alliance
Sera returned to consciousness in fits and starts. Her head felt like it had spent some time in the fusion reaction chamber…or a week on the bottle. Rather than alert anyone nearby to her conscious state, she kept her eyes closed and took mental stock of her surroundings and where her body lay.
First discovery made: she was lying down. Whatever she was on was padded, at least a little. She could hear the soft sound of air circulation, but no reactor or engine noise. She was either on a station or planet-side. Sera curled her fingers and then her toes. No apparent spinal damage, extremities seemed okay. Next, she tried to lift her arms and found she couldn’t.
Tugging gently, Sera determined she was strapped down. Testing various points, she determined that every part of her was thoroughly restrained. Not tightly, but very firmly. Nothing seemed to be holding her head down. Sera rotated her neck left and right with no problem other than increased throbbing between her ears. Shifting in her bonds also confirmed a previous suspicion: she was completely naked.
Sera responded by having her avatar stick her tongue out at Helen’s ephemeral mental figure.
She could tell that the room she was in wasn’t too bright or she’d see the light through her eyelids. Cracking them, Sera recognized her surroundings as a medical bay.
It seemed standard, if somewhat archaic. There were actually scalpels and other cutting tools here. Sera made a mental correction. Either she was in the medical bay of a sadistic doctor, or one that doubled as a torture facility. Or maybe the medical bay of a sadist doctor that also did the torture. None were promising prospects.
The things she had been trying not to think of raced through Sera’s mind. Where was Sabrina? Was her crew okay? Did they have Tanis? Only by pure force of will, and the knowledge she had gotten out of equally sticky situations, did Sera manage to calm herself.
Though the lighting was dim, she could tell by the structure of the walls, deck, and ceiling that this was a station of some sort—roomier than a ship, but not as liberal with space as a planetary facility. As she surveyed her surroundings, the door opened and Rebecca entered. Why was Sera not surprised?
Her captor wore a hazsuit with the helmet off. Sera had a flash of jealousy for how the tight suit showed off what was an amazing figure. Lower g certainly was kind to large-breasted women.
“What’s with the suit Rebecca? Scared of little ol’ me?”
Rebecca’s smile was anything but pleasant. “Sensibly cautious. You’d be surprised at how many twitchy freighter captains put little surprises in their blood for people who start cutting into them. I’ve learned to be cautious.”
Sera cursed herself. That would have been a great idea. Why had she never thought of it? “So what’s the drill here? You ask questions, I pretend I don’t even know what year it is, you use some of your tools, get no further, and then we call it a day? I’ll tell you what. I’ll save you the trouble. I don’t know squat, go away.”
“Don’t you want to know about your crew?” Rebecca asked. “You’ll surely want to know what I’ve already done
to them.”
Sera didn’t fall for it. While she respected their courage and skill, she knew that at least one or two of them would have cracked under the type of questioning Rebecca was sure to use. If her crew had been captured, Rebecca would already know that ‘Rachel’ was the missing cargo, and Tanis would be the one strapped to the table.
Not that she was going to let Rebecca in on that reasoning. She struggled in her bonds. “What have you done to them?”
“Nothing permanent…yet.” She let the word hang in the silence between them.
“Look, we don’t have that stupid container. You’ve got Kade’s organization now, what more do you want from me?”
Rebecca smiled again, this time it was more predatory. “I really must thank you for that; this really did work to my advantage. I managed to get Kade out of the way, and pin it on you and your crew. With all the other senior captains away on raids, I get to solidify my position. I couldn’t have asked for a better turn of events.”
Sera groaned inwardly. Was this woman going to gloat all day or just get on with the torture?
Rebecca continued unabated. “But that stupid container, as you call it, is worth more than all of this,” the obligatory hand wave indicated her surroundings. “You are going to tell me where it is. That much is certain.”
“If Padre has it, how am I going to tell you were it is?”
“We won’t worry about that today. Today I’m just going to get to know you a bit better.” Rebecca walked leisurely toward a cart with some of the more barbaric instruments on it. “If one is careful, one can put quite a few holes in a human being and neither cause them to die, nor even fall unconscious. Let’s see how many we can make in you.”
Sera gritted her teeth and prayed to whatever gods were listening for strength. Her prayers were granted. She had the strength to both scream and cry at the same time for hours.
OF MICE AND MEN
STELLAR DATE: 07.14.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Interstellar Dark Layer
REGION: Silstrand Alliance Space, Core-Ward of Silstrand Prime
“There’s some disbelief regarding your statement that your HQ is in the DL,” Tanis said as she sat with Drind in the cramped cabin they had given him. She had been working on earning his trust over the intervening days and was now cross-checking his earlier intel. “Since there is nothing to react against in the DL, there is no way to maneuver. How do you dock?”
Drind couldn’t help smiling. “It’s genius really. One of Kade’s engineers just happened to spot this relatively small blob of dark matter that isn’t moving, well not much. He did some testing and found that with the right force, a gravity drive can tether to the dark matter and anchor the station. They use gravity fields to pull ships in for docking. There’s a probe in regular space that has the current coordinates of the HQ and ships simply transition to the DL at that point with zero relative motion.”
Tanis mulled it over. That aligned with what Sabrina and Cheeky had suspected.
“So, how do you suggest that we drop in to make our rescue run?”
Drind’s face drained of color. “You can’t do that! HQ is impregnable.” He looked around as if he could determine the ship’s course or maybe some way off it. “You can let me out next stop if that’s your plan. I may be somewhat grateful for you getting me out of that mess. But not that grateful.”
“You don’t really think we’d abandon Sera, do you?” she asked.
“You won’t be abandoning her; she’s already dead.”
Tanis had considered it—heck, everyone on the ship had. The consensus was that, although she may be a bit worse for wear, Sera’s knowledge was simply far too valuable to kill her. If Tanis was free, Sera was alive.
“She’s not dead,” Tanis said.
Drind wasn’t dumb. Tanis had noticed that during her first encounter with him, as he looked over her scan logs on the bridge. Something seemed to click in his mind and he suddenly sat back on the bunk.
“It’s you.”
“It’s me what?” Tanis asked, feigning confusion.
“You’re what Kade was looking for. You’re what was in that container.”
“I have to admit, I’m impressed,” Tanis nodded. “How did you figure it out?”
“Well, it wasn’t a dog, that much was obvious. But this ship doesn’t have the ability to tell a dog’s bio signature from a human’s when in cryostasis, so unless they popped it open, the fiction would have held.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “Why did they open it?”
Tanis smiled. “They got away at Trio without being boarded, and were interested in knowing what they’d risked their lives for.”
Drind looked amazed. “They actually escaped Padre’s guys in Trio? How much of the scan was faked?”
“Not much, just the part where the ship decelerated after the RM was fired. In reality, they twitched at the last moment and made it to FTL with half a second to spare.”
“Holy shit,” Drind whistled. “That captain Sera has quite the pair.”
“I’m told it was one heck of a ride.”
“I’m beginning to understand part of why they want to rescue her,” he snorted. “Not that I think it’s sane. Why are you in on this, anyway?”
“She saved me, I owe her the favor. Besides, Sera seems like a decent sort.”
Tanis finished the statement as Cargo opened the door to the room.
“Don’t let her hear you say that,” he said. “It would ruin the fiction she likes to portray.” Drind noticeably pulled away, sidling against the bulkhead. The reaction appeared to annoy Cargo. “Would you cut that out, I’m not going to hurt you.”
Their reluctant castoff straightened. A bit.
“So what’s it going to be? Going to tell us what you know or do we ship you somewhere in cryo so you can’t rat us out?”
“That’s a shitty choice,” Drind muttered.
“Better than sticking you in the middle of this if you don’t want to be.”
Drind looked as if he had an acerbic reply ready, but he bit it back. Cargo had a point.
“Isn’t there anything you can think of that would help us?” Tanis asked. “We’ve been more than kind to you, and we’ll be taking down Rebecca, or at least taking her down a notch.”
“You’d better take her all the way down,” Drind looked deadly serious. “If you don’t, there will be no safe place for you this side of Sol.”
“There’s still the bounty on Kade that every system for ten parsecs is offering. We could get that money and arm up to take them down,” Cargo said.
“It would take a lot more money than that,” Drind said. “You’d still need some way to get in. Missiles may not work well in the DL, but HQ has a reactor that can keep its lasers slicing and dicing for hours.”
Tanis snapped her fingers. “That’s it. We need an army and an in. We’ll get both.” She turned to Cargo. “We need to set a course for the closest star system that has a stable government.” She wasn’t sure if stability was the norm here or not, but it didn’t hurt to be specific.
She turned to Drind. “Kade must have had ships that were not generally known to be his, that dock both at system stations and at his HQ.”
He nodded. “There are a few.”
“Do you know their normal ports of call?”
“Not even remotely. Information like that wasn’t exactly bandied about.”
Tanis kept thinking aloud. “What about places where his pirate ships would frequently be lying in wait?”
Drind was silent for a moment as he though. “It is pretty common for a ship to hang in the outskirts of the Big OJ looking for traders stopping through for fueling.”
“Big OJ?”
“Oh, Gedri. The crews back at HQ call it the Big OJ…it’s a really damn orange star.”
“What’s with all the traffic there?” Tanis asked.
“Like he said,” Cargo gestured at Drind, “the system is rife with helium for fusion,
and there are a few outfits that have antimatter production sites. A lot of ships running low will coast into the system with their engines off.”
“Yeah, some will coast in from a fair ways out. Makes for good pickings,” Drind added.
Tanis had a few questions about that but didn’t want to voice them in front of Drind; it may give away her lack of knowledge regarding the ninth millennium. They thanked Drind for his time and left his cabin for the galley where the rest of the crew had gathered as they watched the conversation.
“Why do ships drop out of the DL and coast in? Wouldn’t it be better to stay shifted to get in faster and safer?” Tanis asked.
“Takes power to stay shifted in the DL. People often will drop out early and coast into a system to save money,” Cheeky replied with a shrug.
“I guess that makes sense. Sounds like we’ve got the makings of a plan,” Tanis said while pouring a cup of coffee. “We coast into the Big OJ and wait to get paid a visit from one of The Mark’s pirate ships. We take their ship and hop on back to the ol’ HQ where we get Sera back.”
Cargo shook his head. “Us and what army?”
“Sounds like a good way to get ourselves killed,” Thompson added.
Tanis smiled. “I’ve been doing a bit of research on the ninth millennium. Sera said things were different, but I really didn’t expect so much to be lost. She was right about FTL spelling the end of human advancement,” Tanis said and held out her right arm and pulled back her sleeve.
What looked like skin changed its appearance to metallic silver, the effect racing all the way down her arm. She quickly downed her coffee and held the cup by its side.
To everyone’s astonishment the cup dissolved into the palm of her right hand and a blue light emitted from her right forearm. Tanis held her left hand out to catch the object materializing there. It was a small ceramic handgun. Tanis put it down on the galley table while everyone stared open mouthed.
