The Soldier: Escape Vector

by Vaughn Heppner

  The fourth and final hijack had ended in disaster for everyone except Dan and three of his starmenters. The liner had detonated to cover the escape of Dan and his trio in a pinnace, the explosion killing the professional Patrol tracking team hot on their heels. The team had orders to bring Dan and his men to justice. With the debacle, the Patrol added to the sum that would be given as reward for Dan’s capture alive. Many of the grieving families wanted Handsome Dan alive so they could learn the fate of their lost loved ones.

  Halifax had a knack for this kind of detective work. From the beginning, he found something fishy about Handsome Dan, some memory he had that told him…told him—

  “We should stop at Maurice,” Halifax said.

  They had left Amklana four days ago, the scout cruising the star lanes as they raced for Earth.

  “Never heard of Maurice,” Cade said.

  “No need you should have,” the doctor said. “It’s a Concord hub world and sector capital.”

  “So?”

  “So I might learn something important about Handsome Dan at Maurice.”

  Cade turned to him stiffly. “I’ve told you before. I’m not a bounty hunter. I don’t want to be a bounty hunter and—”

  “Hey, wait a second,” Halifax said. “Didn’t you tell me that I’m in charge of finances?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Were you joking?” Halifax asked in an innocent voice.

  “No…” Cade said after a moment. “I was serious.”

  “Then we should stop at Maurice. It’s important.”

  Reluctantly, Cade nodded.

  Whereupon, five days ago, Halifax had made a slight detour as the scout heated for Maurice.

  The Concord hub world was a strange sector capital, as it was a giant water moon orbiting a gas giant far from the system star. That meant the Descartes dropped out of FTL travel nearly beside the planet—moon. Most of the population lived underground, as the gas giant and water moon traveled through a dusty region with an uncommon number of meteors striking the surface.

  “We have to go down,” Halifax said in the Descartes from orbit.

  “Care to tell me why?” Cade asked.

  “You’re not going to like the reason.”

  Cade sighed.

  “You’re going to act as my bodyguard,” Halifax said. “I’m going to need one, too, as we’re meeting renegade Group Six contacts down on the planet.”

  The soldier stared at Halifax in disbelief.

  “They’re rogue agents, but they keep in touch with what’s going on.”

  “Why don’t we rob just them?” the soldier asked.

  “I’m curious, Cade. Is robbing a moral action?”

  “If you rob from robbers,” Cade said seriously.

  “These are rogue Group Six agents, not thieves or robbers.”

  “Stealing secrets isn’t theft?”

  “Hey, Cade, do you want to reach Earth or not? We lack funds. Crossing nearly seven hundred light-years costs money we don’t presently have. We did: but you gave most of our money away, remember?”

  Cade grumbled under his breath.

  “So why not tell me,” Halifax said. “How do you want to earn cash: the slow honest way or the fast dishonest way?”

  “Bounty hunting isn’t dishonest, just distasteful.”

  “Well, there you go,” Halifax said. “We’re certainly not going to rob everyone associated with Group Six. That will get us on a hit list fast. But if we’re going to grab Handsome Dan—as I think we might—we need intelligence about him, especially as to his present whereabouts.”

  “Fine, fine,” Cade said. “Let’s go down and met your shady friends. If anyone messes with you, I’ll break their fingers or their jaw, whichever is easier.”

  ***

  The scout parked in a space station. Halifax made a call to the water moon below. He must have received an answer. The two rode a shuttle down to Maurice, heading for the southern pole.

  They landed at a packed spaceport seething with all kinds of people. It was a zoo. They rode an escalator for three kilometers, took a mass elevator down and reached the underground city Mast. It was a rabbit’s warren of mazes, lobbies, tunnels, annexes and beggars, a million beggars.

  Halifax walked in front and Cade behind, but it was slow going, with beggars grabbing and clutching at their garments, at times trying to pickpocket them.

  “Here,” the doctor said, pushing a newly purchased baton into the soldier’s hands. “This might help.”

  It did, and soon the sea of people gave the two of them a wider berth and they made better time.

  Eventually, the two entered a packed restaurant with flashing lights making it harder to see. They moved to the back area. At a rear door, Halifax whispered a code word to a vest-armored guard. The guard passed the code word along, activating a wall speaker. Soon, the rear door opened and a huge man in a black suit appeared. He was taller and wider than Cade, with a bullet-shaped head and hard light eyes like diamonds. It didn’t look as if the man had any fat and that his muscles would rip through the tight suit fabric.

  “Could you take him?” Halifax whispered.

  Cade did not answer, but he was sure he could.

  The huge man crooked a finger, summoning them. “Follow me,” he said in a deep voice. He turned, not waiting to see if they followed, leading them down a short corridor to a large back room with six men counting money at three tables. The skinniest man looked up. He was a thin creature wearing a silk suit and with a horrible burn mark on the left side of his face. The burn had left that eye like a white piece of marble.

  “Halifax?” the man asked.

  The doctor nodded.

  “Did you search him?” the man asked the huge bruiser.

  “Not yet,” the bruiser rumbled. “I thought—”

  “I do the thinking,” the burned man said. “Search them.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Cade said, with the drawn WAK .55 Magnum in his hand.

  Everyone in the room froze.

  “What is this?” the burned man demanded of Halifax. “You two will be dead before you leave the restaurant.”

  “Not if I kill all of you,” Cade said calmly.

  “Reece?” the burned man asked the bruiser.

  The huge suited muscleman eyed Cade. The soldier glanced at him once.

  “Don’t screw with him, Boss,” huge Reece said.

  “You getting soft?” the burned man asked Reece.

  The monster man shook his bullet-shaped head.

  “Sure, fine,” the burned man said. “Put away your piece,” he told Cade. “Halifax, let’s step into here and we can talk.”

  Cade didn’t put away the piece, but he didn’t aim it directly at anyone anymore.

  The burned man studied Cade and finally shrugged, snapping his fingers.

  Reece opened a door, the burned man led, Halifax followed and Cade brought up the rear. After he passed through the door, Reece closed it behind him.

  The burned man called himself Mace Flick. Had he once worked for Group Six? Halifax thought so.

  Cade didn’t listen to the two men talk as they sat at a small round table. He observed and kept his senses on high alert. The door creaked open once, and he saw Reece peer in at him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mace told his muscle.

  The door closed.

  Halifax must have said something that sparked Mace’s interest. The burned man told the doctor that Handsome Dan was an old Group Six asset, a money collector and intelligence gatherer. The missing women had no doubt died under intense interrogation.

  “I knew it,” Halifax said. “It’s good news, as I need Dan for a special job.”

  “What kind of job?” Mace asked.

  Cade’s ears perked up.

  Halifax grinned. “Should I tell Director Titus, the next time I see him, that you demanded need-to-know information?”

  “What are you talking about?” Mace said. “I’m rogue, out of the
business.”

  “Just like me,” Halifax said, as he winked.

  Mace leaned forward. “What are you trying to do? Get me killed? He’s listening, you know?”

  Cade wasn’t sure who the burned man meant.

  “Oh, yeah,” Halifax said in his innocent voice.

  “You bastard,” Mace said. After that, he started to talk in earnest.

  Halifax learned that Handsome Dan the Starmenter had left Grudd in a Gretel Metals cargo hauler, reaching Trinor and lying low there. It turned out that Dan had once been a native trapper on the Arctic world. Halifax also learned that Handsome Dan was ugly as sin, with two larl claw scars crisscrossing his face, meaning that he often wore a Xian facemask, a high-tech item giving him the illusion of handsome features. According to Mace, Dan was strong, fast and notoriously unscrupulous. He especially enjoyed using the Trinor seax to slice and dice those he hated.

  The seax was an ancient Germanic word for knife. The Trinor seax was a long seax in the formal Germanic sense of the Early Middle Ages of Earth. It was fifty centimeters or twenty inches long, pattern welded and had a sword-like hilt.

  The meeting wound down after that. As Halifax rose, Mace said, “Don’t come asking for me again.”

  “No worries,” the doctor said.

  “And leave your gunman behind next time,” Mace added. “That was embarrassing.”

  “He is also a testament to how much I respect you,” Halifax said.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Mace said. “Just get the hell out of here before I have my people burn you two.”

  Cade and Halifax left without incident, reaching the spaceport four hours after arriving. They took a shuttle upstairs and were soon on their way again in the Descartes.

  Five days later, they arrived in Trinor orbit. Despite everything they’d learned, the key problem for Cade was going to be in finding Dan on Trinor. Mace hadn’t had any idea about the starmenter’s location here. Other problems existed, as Dan no doubt had old friends on Trinor who would help him, clearly had friends in Gretel Metals—a Grudd corporation—and certainly had friends, if one could call it that, with Earth Intelligence.

  “My best guess is that he’s in Minden,” Halifax said in the Descartes’ piloting chamber. “Hiding in the open is often the safest bet. He could be trapping in the back country, but I think an operator like Dan would enjoy posing as a guide for rich hunters, maybe future targets.”

  Cade stared at the doctor. The soldier didn’t care for the job of bounty hunter. It was mercenary, beneath his dignity as a combat officer and smacked of cold-blooded man hunting as compared to hot battle during a war. Still, Cade refused to balk at the finance assignment and give Halifax the pleasure of saying, “I told you not to regret it.” Besides, capturing a pirate was a good deed, and the ample reward money for Handsome Dan would solve their cash needs for months to come.

  Yet, finding Dan would be one thing, kidnapping him and leaving Trinor another.

  First things first, the soldier told himself. “Have you contacted the Ossuary?” he asked.

  “I’m about to do that,” Halifax said.

  “Let me know what they say,” Cade replied. “We’ll make the rest of our plans after that.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Marcus Cade came down to Trinor on the Ossuary’s heavy lifter. The Luxury Yacht Ossuary—with five officers, twenty crew and seven rich hunters and their servants—had arrived from Tomb. Tomb had heavier gravity than most Earth-norm worlds, and its natives were tougher and stronger than average. Maybe that was one of the reasons its rich folk liked to hunt larls on Trinor.

  Cade walked off the ramp from the landed heavy lifter, carrying luggage to the stoutly built log hotel in Minden. Like the others from the lifter, the soldier wore a thick parka, pants and snow boots, and he had a heated breather. It was little more than a tube stuck in his mouth with a snorkel-like mouthpiece. A battery-powered generator heated the nearly frozen air as it passed through the tube into his mouth. Every area of his body and head had covering. Even so, at night, outdoor activity was severely limited due to the extreme cold.

  Soon finished with his chores—Cade was masquerading as a servant for Senior Finch—the soldier went with many of the others to the Bread & Brew. The place was even more stoutly built than the hotel, with native log construction, a veritable fortress against the cold. Cade left his breather, parka and snow-pants in the antechamber. Inside the main area, the B&B had an eatery, bar and poker room. Cade ate a roast beef sandwich and drank ale from a frosted glass alone at a small table.

  As he ate the sandwich, Cade ruminated on Earth Intelligence’s long reach throughout the Concord of Planets. In his opinion, it would have been easier to rob another spy station as they’d done on Durdane II, but he’d given leave for Halifax to pick their next money-gathering project.

  Am I a soft touch? Velia helped us. We couldn’t have pulled it off without her help. I couldn’t just leave her in the lurch. She earned the money and a second chance for happiness.

  Cade muttered under his breath. He needed to forget about Velia. She was the past, a blip on the quest to find and free his wife. Get your head in the game, Force Leader. You’re dealing with murderers and kidnappers, the scum of the space lanes.

  The soldier’s eyes narrowed as considered the target. Handsome Dan had gone to ground on this frozen wasteland of a planet. Would the brazen starmenter be content with lying low, or would he try to hijack a spaceship so he could recruit another pirate crew? The Ossuary might be a good pick for Dan, the rich hunters a lucrative target.

  Cade shoved his empty plate from him. He didn’t want to waste time searching for Dan. Every moment spent here was one more that he wasn’t heading for Earth and his wife. Grab the starmenter and get back aboard the scout. His mouth tightened. It was time for intense action to intimidate any would-be friends and associates.

  Cade ordered a second mug of ale before leaving the restaurant area. According to his observation, the B&B was full of tough, rough men and a few waitresses wearing next to nothing. The women seemed haggard and overworked.

  Could he convince one of the waitresses to point out Handsome Dan to him? Maybe, but they would likely alert their boss, at the least and probably their lover.

  Cade drained the mug and went to the poker room, a smoky den with groups of thick-shouldered men huddled around round tables, playing cards. The rattle of chips, the laughter, banter, haunted eyes, shuffled cards and drifting smoke made a familiar scene to Cade. Soldiers loved playing cards, as it passed the time and allowed them to believe themselves cunning bastards when they won and unlucky fools who should now easily find a girl to love. Lucky in love, unlucky in cards was an ancient maxim, no doubt first coined by card losers.

  Cade joined a group, sitting down, passing over two #100 Concord Universal Credit Notes, the sum of their money reserves. He received thirty-two red chips and forty blue. The reds were worth #5 CUCNs and the blues #1 CUCN.

  “Do you want to wait for the blinds to pass before you enter?” the dealer asked.

  “No, I’m in,” Cade said.

  “It’s five to you then, small blind,” the dealer said.

  Cade moved five blue chips from his pile, putting them before him. He looked at his hole cards next, seeing a six and seven of clubs. No one had raised, but there were three limpers, meaning they’d called the big blind of ten chips. Cade raised to twenty-five. The big blind folded, and the limpers called, matching his raise.

  The flop showed a five of hearts, an eight of clubs and an ace of clubs.

  Cade had an open-ended straight draw, a flush draw and a pair of sixes. He bet one hundred CUCN.

  The other three players called.

  The next card was another ace, a heart.

  Cade stared at the board. “All in,” he said, shoving the rest of his chips forward. He was semi-bluffing—he had nothing, but he was representing that he had an ace in the hole and two on the board, for three aces. More importantly, h
e could still catch a four or nine to make a straight or a club to make a flush.

  “Call,” the next player said. He was a big muscular man with a pelt of black oily hair, shaved eyebrows and a quirky mouth that didn’t quite match his speech, like an unsynchronized holo-vid actor.

  “I’m out,” the second player said, tossing down his cards.

  “Got an ace, eh?” the third asked Cade.

  The soldier just stared at the man, a bearded dwarf with huge shoulders.

  “I’m all in,” the huge dwarf said, grinning through his beard at Cade. The other player called.

  The next card was a deuce of clubs, giving Cade a flush. His high card was a seven of clubs. Did any of the others have a flush as well, but with a higher club?

  Cade flipped over his two hole cards.

  The quirky mouthed man scowled with his shaved eyebrows at Cade’s hole cards. “You have a flush, damnit. I can’t believe it.”

  The grinning dwarf mucked his hole cards by tossing them face down to the dealer.

  The dealer nodded, shoving the winnings to Cade. That left Mr. Quirky Mouth with nothing, while the huge dwarf had around three hundred left in chips.

  “Give me another hundred,” Mr. Quirky Mouth said, tossing a credit note onto the table.

  Cade noted the man had powerful hands with black-painted fingernails.

  The game continued and Cade stacked his chips. For the next four hours, he went up and then down, having five hundred in chips at the end. Mainly, he watched, cataloging patrons but more the dealers and cocktail waitresses. He drank more ale, tipped the dealers when he won, tipped the girls when they brought his drink and listened to the prattle and stories of those playing cards around him.

  He finally settled on a quiet dealer, an older man with a scar on his forehead and a thick white head of hair. The toughest looking patrons knew his name and usually greeted him. He nodded back or muttered a word or two. His name was Chulik. According to what Cade heard, the man used to be a trapper and obviously had a mangled left arm. He said little, watched much and winced now and again as he shuffled the cards. It was clear Chulik knew everyone and often from long association.