by Alan Baxter
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that right?’
‘Certainly. You are going to be integral to the Plan. We have made a decision to help you whenever you need it. It’s really as simple as that.’
A part of me felt like there had to be a catch in there somewhere. Something about all this made my scalp itch. But, for now, there was no obvious downside that I could put my finger on. ‘Fine. When can you get that ship moving with me on it?’
‘Whenever you are ready.’
I nodded. At least this was getting me to Methesda. It felt good to be back on the trail and taking care of business, however that was being achieved. ‘Good. Just let me finish this roast blent here, then I’m ready.’
Episode 18
The port security scanned my pass and my eyes. Both were faked and both passed the tests easily. Once on board the Sanctuary ship I saw that the opulence of self-satisfaction wasn’t restricted to their places of worship. This boat was like the spaceyacht of some super-rich young playboy, only religious icons were displayed where sports photos would normally be and the serving staff didn’t have their tits out.
They showed me to my cabin, which was also big and opulent. It was private too which was good. After I dumped my bag down I reprogrammed the room’s door lock to a personal code and then went directly into the bathrooms and removed the contacts from my eyes. It was a long and delicate process as biological contacts are fragile and tenacious. They do a good job of fooling security, when they’re coupled with the papers to back up who they say they are, but they’re damned uncomfortable things to keep in for long. Fortunately they could be put back in a lot quicker than they could be taken out if I needed to slip into my alias again in any kind of a hurry.
When I emerged from the bathrooms the doors were all closed up and the Guides were accepting fresh fruit from the serving girls. They offered me some so I took it and sat down.
‘It’s an absolute honour to be travelling with you,’ one of the Guides said, with a shit eating grin.
I just grunted, not trusting myself to say anything nice if I actually opened my mouth to speak. The Guide’s smile faded slowly, like ice cream melting down a wall. After a moment he looked away. Good. We’d set the tone for the trip early and I was happy with that.
There was a low whine and a tremor ran through the ship as we started up and shifted out. The serving girls came around and gathered up the loose plates and utensils, swift and practiced. Then they sat and we all belted in. You’d think that by now, with inertial dampeners, false gravity generation and all that stuff, that take off from port would be a more casual affair. But breaking atmo was as rough and ready now as it was hundreds of years ago. The ship powered up and G-force pressed us down, then acceleration gave suddenly to a moment’s weightlessness. Then everything sank back down to normal. The girls unbuckled and busied themselves again. Seriously, hostesses on a missionary ship? A ship with décor valuable enough to feed a Globe colony for a year? There was something so fucked up about this whole arrangement that it made me feel sick. Still, all I needed was a ride and then I could get back to work. I just hoped that the trail hadn’t gone cold in Methesda. I still had some serious catching up to do.
With that in mind I went up to the bridge in order to make myself known to the Captain. At first encounter he seemed like a nice enough guy.
‘You a Guide too?’ I asked him.
He laughed, like that was a crazy notion. ‘Nah, I just work for ‘em. It’s regular work and good pay to ferry these guys around. Simple as that.’
‘You been doing this for long?’
‘I’ve been doing this kind of work for a long time, but I’m brand new to these guys. I just signed up with the Sanctuary last week.’
Something in the base of my spine sparked at his words, making my arse clench. That was a sign that I never ignored. I made a point of keeping my voice casual, friendly-like. ‘What made you decide to switch to these guys?’
He shrugged. ‘Money. Simple as that. All my life I’ve flown for charters and freelance. I get paid if I fly, I get squat if I don’t. That gets old really fast. With these guys I’m salaried. It’s not a huge retainer, but it’s regular whether I’m flying or not. I crunched the numbers and it works out on average to be a pretty good wage without the long spells of eating rice and living in a box!’
He laughed like this was the biggest joke. I knew a lot of people that had had to live in a box at one time or another. I was one of them. And I’d rather be living in a box than contracted to these bastards. Then again, I was using them now to get me around, so maybe I shouldn’t be so morally superior. I wished this Captain would turn around. I wanted a good look at his face. ‘How long is it to Methesda?’ I asked.
He shrugged again. ‘Course is in and plotted. We’ll be there in forty eight hours if all goes smoothly.’
I was surprised. ‘Forty eight hours? You know where Methesda is?’
He laughed, leaning back in his chair. ‘Yeah, I know. It’s a long way. But these Sanctuary ships are fast as hell. You could outrun a Dem cruiser in one of these if you wanted to.’
He looked around at me and winked, a big grin splitting his face like he’d been axed. I reached up as if to scratch my head and snapped a string of shots with the microcamera that was always there, looking just like a metal stud in my ear lobe. Something was wrong here. I felt like I’d just walked into a trap and there were people all around me, smiling and rubbing their hands together. I suddenly felt like a tiny fly in a big damn web.
I smiled through my discomfort, careful not to give away any misgivings. The surest way to escape a trap was to make sure that the people that had set the trap thought it was working. ‘Well, I’m glad about that. I’m in a hurry to get there.’
‘What’s the rush?’
‘Oh, nothing too spectacular. I just got work to do. Like you, I need a regular paycheque.’
He nodded sagely. ‘I hear that, my man.’
He turned back to his controls and I went back to my cabin to run the photos I’d just taken through my Reader.
Episode 19
I sat in my room, grinding my teeth and gripping my Reader like it was trying to run away. What the hell was I supposed to do now? Every Bounty Hunter has a sensitivity to their line of work, call it a professional sixth sense. The more sensitive you are, the better you are. Those people that aren’t don’t stay Bounty Hunters for long. A lot of them don’t stay living for long.
My professional sixth sense had picked up something as soon as I laid eyes on the guy on the bridge and it was right, as usual. This guy, this pilot, had a price on him. Now I felt professionally compromised.
His name is Gavin Bartellian and he’s wanted for a string of quite violent crimes. Various hold-ups, kidnappings and tappings on contract. He’s actually a very scummy guy. My sense of duty to my profession and my sense of moral correctness told me to wrap this guy up and hand in him. My bank balance would appreciate it too. But we were heading out to a Globe, so where was I going to hand in him?
Then it occurred to me that I actually had more serious things to worry about. Was this scumbag’s presence here a coincidence? There’s always room for coincidence, it’s important to remember that. It’s also important to remember that just because a soul is paranoid, that doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you. Was this Bartellian character hired to take me out? Or was it coincidence that he happened to be flying this boat now? What would he be doing as a salaried pilot unless it was part of a contract? I was pretty sure that he hadn’t decided to go straight after racking up the kind of record that he had. No, he must be working something, but was he working me?
I was surprised that he had managed to slip through the Sanctuary security profiling. I have greater resources on hand than most people when it comes to sourcing background intel on a bastard, but I’d found this guy’s most intimate details in a matter of hours. Surely the Sanctuary would have had access to enough information to find this stuff
out, even if it had taken a few days.
Then a strange sensation slipped through me, percolating outwards from my soul. It was a white heat rage coupled with an ice cold dread and I suddenly felt like a nuclear fission engine in meltdown. Those bastards. Those scum-sucking, whore-fucking, worthless holy god bastards!
I felt like a complete blent, a total newb. I might just as well have walked straight out of school and pretended to be a Bounty Hunter. Why had I believed these arseholes when they said they wanted to help me rather than hinder me? They’d just sweetened me up and let me set my own trap by asking them for a ride. Now they obviously planned to hinder me quite considerably with the help of Gavin Bartellian. Fancy such a holy group hiring one of the scummiest dregs of humanity to do their dirty work. They were hardly keeping their own hands clean by hiring someone else. I would have had more respect if one of the Guides had tried to tap me himself. They probably felt like they were maintaining some kind of moral superiority by getting someone else to do the wetwork.
Then again, this raised more questions that it answered. I had to look at this from two directions. Firstly, if all that shit in their holy book was true, why had they decided to hinder me after all? Did they know more about my supposed part in this Plan they keep on about? God’s Plan. For fuck’s sake. You’d think that by now they’d have given up on some holy reason for everything, but blind faith was just that. Blind.
The other direction to approach this mess from was that all that stuff about me in their book was made up to sweet-talk me into this trap. If that was the case, why go to such elaborate lengths? Surely there was an easier way to trap me. And also, why do they want me whacked if it’s not to do with hindering my part in this Plan? Does Pietre Gans, this mutant that I’m hunting, have the Sanctuary in his pocket? Does whoever killed Darver Phelms and set me up there have the Sanctuary in their pocket? Was it Gans that killed Phelms? And, if so, how does he know it’s me that’s coming after him?
Man, I had more questions than a teenage boy after his first date. Then I thought of one way that I could maybe unravel some of this. It stuck in my craw to do it, but I felt like I had little choice. I set up my Reader to encrypt a message and sent it out to Mrs Jones. Remember her? The Dem bitch that set me off on this crazy ride in the first place. I asked her if anyone else knew that she’d hired me to catch Gans. Anyone at all, even within her own organisation. We both knew that we both knew it was a Dem job, but there was no need to talk about the fact and trigger pointless denials that would detract from the important question at hand.
Once the message was sent I double checked the locks on my room and set up a few proximity sensors for good measure. Then I laid down on my cot and waited for a response from Jones.
Episode 20
I was woken from a light doze by an insistent humming. My eyes snapped open but I forced myself not to move another muscle. It was the same sound that I’d heard that night on Rake’s clapped out old boat. None of my proximity sensors had sounded but I could feel and hear something in the room. I slowly let my eyes range around to the extent of my vision without moving. The humming sound seemed to be quite close, somewhere around the top of my head, but out of sight. That distant voice rose up again. ‘You’ll die. Go back.’ I drew a deep breath and then leapt up, spinning over onto my hands and knees on the cot at the same time as I whipped my knife out from under my pillow.
My knife point gently slid back and forth through empty air and the humming had receded somewhere. I couldn’t tell where. I looked around the room and wherever I looked the humming seemed to be behind me or above me. Never in front of me. I stepped off the bed and cancelled the proximity alarm that sounded without looking at the small unit. Like a hunter, I stalked around the room, listening, my eyes sweeping back and forth, the knife held up before me like a talisman against evil. I could hear the humming sound swim around me, like it was teasing me, but I could see nothing. And the voice. It just kept repeating, ‘You’ll die.’
Then a sharp, echoing beep sounded through the room making me jump. I spun around and the humming vanished at the same time as I realised that it was my Reader that had beeped. The sound and the sensation of presence had gone.
I picked up the Reader and checked it. A response from Jones.
“My employers are aware that I have engaged someone to catch Gans, but only I know that it is you. You and I are the only people in the ‘Verse that are aware of your mission. You sound paranoid. Should I be concerned? I hope to hear that you have caught Gans soon.”
I hoped to hear it too. Bitch. How can a soul sound paranoid in a typed message? Still, it did narrow down the questions a bit. I would have to take it on faith that she was telling the truth and, assuming that was the case, then no one could know that I was after Gans. That certainly didn’t help with the whole Darver Phelms scenario but it did maybe wrap up something of the Sanctuary scenario. Perhaps I could assume that they were simply acting on their own initiative with regard to their holy book and this was how they planned to hinder me. This was some freaky shit that I could well do without. What the hell did I do to deserve a mention in the holy texts of the Sanctuary?
A cold calm settled over me. It’s how I feel when I go into what I call ‘pro-mode’. There are times when there’s been enough research, enough questions asked whether they’ve been answered or not. Enough flying under the radar and playing a quiet hand. Sometimes it was necessary to get pro-active and that’s when I went into pro-mode.
I had no intention of sitting on this shiny ship waiting for these scum to move against me. Gavin Bartellian was a wanted man with a healthy price on his head. And his was an alive or dead contract, my favourite kind. Then there were two Guides on board and two hostesses that I’d seen. I checked the ship’s manifest through the console beside my bed and learned that there was no one else on board. No engineer, no other crew, nothing. This was one of those fancy ships that looks after itself. I don’t entirely trust the concept myself, but when you have Sanctuary money I guess you can afford the best kind of ship and the best kind of backup should it become necessary. Well, in this instance all that was going to work to my advantage. Two hostesses, two Sanctuary Guides and a scumbag. No problem. Time to get pro-active.
Episode 21
A lot of people will tell you that the best form of defence is a good offence. That’s true to some degree. After all, if you think someone is about to punch you in the face, haul off and smash the bastard first before he gets a chance and you’ve just defended yourself perfectly. But the best form of defence is actually a good offence with planning and backups in place.
I pulled out a pair of shades that cost more than a month’s rent and were one of my most prized possessions. They wirelessly linked to my reader and gave me a Head Up Display of any number of things. I set the HUD to show me heat signatures. Then I hooked into the console in my room and used some very cheeky software on my Reader to access the ship’s mainframe. I got it to identify all the people on board and track them, then uploaded that information to my HUD as well. It was quite surprising how much information you could stay aware of at one time if it was presented well.
Then I delved a bit deeper and started the more complicated stuff. I set all outgoing communications from the ship to be redirected to me. It would appear to whoever initiated them that they were still being sent, but they actually wouldn’t go anywhere at all. And I’d get a notification of them in my ever-busier HUD.
Then I did the hardest part and locked down both the ship’s lifepods and its override mechanism. Now no one would be able to blow the ship up or escape it without reversing my work. I didn’t plan on anyone having time to do that.
I slipped my knife into a sheath in my trouser leg where it was out of sight yet very quick and easy to draw, then slipped from my room, locking the door behind me. I kept an eye on the HUD to see where everyone was. The hostesses were in the galley just off the main communal area. They were probably preparing a meal of some sort.
The Guides were both in the communal area. Being holy or some shit. Bartellian was on the bridge. I needed to get to him first.
Using my continued remote access to the ships mainframe I pulled up blueprints and found a route. I had to go to the back of the ship, down into the engine bay and along through the cargo hold. Then I could come up into the bridge from the other side of the communal area without having to go directly through it. It was fortunate that this ship was big enough to have multiple access points. It made my job easier.
Using the mainframe to switch off sensors and cameras for a few moments as I passed by them, I made my way down and through the engine bay. It was the cleanest engine I’d ever seen, like a showroom display model. There was something slightly untrustworthy about a clean engine, I decided. The cargo bay was empty and equally clean. Almost sterile. I wondered if this was the maiden voyage of this particular boat.
I checked everybody’s location again, but no one had moved. Carefully I made my way back up to the main deck, behind the communal area. Then I made my way even more carefully up the steps to the bridge. I was hoping to find Bartellian in his pilot’s chair with his back to me and that would have made everything just fine.
He was in his pilot’s chair when I cleared the top of the stairs, but not with his back to me. He was facing me, grinning like a cat and pointing something at me that definitely ended with a barrel. Judging by the size of the barrel I was in deep shit.
Episode 22
Well, the best laid plans and all that. How the hell did he know I was coming?
‘I suppose you’re wondering how I knew to expect you?’ he said, still grinning.
