“David Rice, halt where you are!” one of the women bellowed as the other produced weapons. “We are Sanctioned Hunters, you will surrender.”
For all of his intellectual understanding that he’d become a criminal when he’d broken Damien out of the jail in Corinthian, part of David rebelled at drawing and firing on police officers again.
James Kellers had no such hesitation. Even before the cloaked hunters in front of them had cleared their weapons, the short but muscled engineer had yanked his stungun clear of the quick release harness he wore and opened fire.
The loud announcement from the Hunters had at least had the effect of clearing the immediate area, as the locals scattered for cover. The SmartDarts from Kellers’ weapon slammed into both of the Hunters in front of them, pausing for a moment to assess their targets’ health, and then delivering calibrated incapacitating electric shocks.
Both of them went down in convulsing heaps, and David dived past them. He skidded past a cart selling hot dogs; in time to watch a tangleweb shell from one of the Hunters shotguns splatter itself all over the ground next to the cart – the goo instantly hardening into foam that would immobilize a target.
David found himself staring into the barrel of the hot dog vendor’s pistol. He met the woman’s eyes carefully, and she jerked her head sideways. He realized after a second that she was pointing towards a hatchway leading off of the main gallery. With a grateful nod, he dived for that hatchway, barely missing a second tangleweb shell.
Breaking into a run down the corridor, he realized he’d lost James along the way. He turned back to check for the engineer, only to see two of the cloaked Hunters follow him through the hatchway. His hesitation about shooting police was gone now, and he opened fire with the stungun.
One of the Hunters went down, convulsing from the SmartDarts’ electric shock. The other dodged back around the corner, firing a round from her shotgun at David.
David dodged around the corner and managed to avoid most of the impact when the flashbang round went off in mid-air. He blinked against what spots he hadn’t dodged and a passing inability to hear, and then took off down the hallway again.
He turned another corner, moments later, and ran into another Hunter. The other man spun his cloak in a carefully practiced gesture, catching the SmartDarts David fired in the non-conductive fabric of the garment.
Before the Hunter had his weapon targeted, David had closed into his personal space. He knocked aside the barrel of the shotgun, brushed aside an attempt to slam him with the butt of the weapon, and then redirected the Hunter’s momentum into the wall.
Spin-induced gravity and inertia handled the rest, and the bulky bounty hunter went down. Before he could get back up, David grabbed the other man’s weapon, checked the digital display to see what shell was up, and blasted him with a tangleweb shell.
He spared just enough time to be sure the solidifying foam wasn’t threatening the Hunter’s ability to breathe, and then took off again. He was moving a bit slower this time, pulling up a map of Gamma Quadrant to find Kellers.
The engineer was heading towards him, and he changed his course towards James. They finally met up in a dimmer back corridor, each checking behind the other for Hunters.
“How much trouble are we in now?” David asked, breathing heavily. He wasn’t used to running this much.
“No more than we were before, unless you killed one,” Kellers replied. The engineer didn’t seem to have even worked up a sweat. “Amber respects the right to self-defense, even against Hunters. It’s rude to kill one though.”
Both tensed up when they heard voices coming from behind Kellers, and the engineer gestured for David to lead the way away. They weren’t fast enough, however, and an emergency bulkhead suddenly slammed shut ahead of them.
David swore. “Can you open this?”
“Not a chance,” Kellers replied grimly, turning back to face their pursuers. “There can’t be many of them upright at this point, though.”
“Surrender now, Captain Rice,” a voice shouted from up the corridor – the same woman who’d ordered them to lay down weapons before. “You aren’t going to change how this ends.”
“I can bloody well try,” David muttered, checking the ammunition count on his stolen shotgun before tucking himself next to the wall, covering himself as much as possible. Kellers did the same with his stungun – he hadn’t lost his, unlike David.
“Flashbang,” Kellers muttered, closing his eyes as a small metallic object bounced down the corridors. David followed suit, opening his eyes as soon as the flash and noise had faded. He was disoriented, but not as badly as he could be – and he saw the Hunters coming.
Four of them now, all with their black cloaks wrapped completely around their bodies to protect them from SmartDarts, marched down the corridor, their weapons seeking any movement or sign of David or Kellers.
David had three of the tangleweb shells left, and he opened up with them immediately. The automatic shotgun cycled smoothly as he blasted the bounty hunters with the non-lethal shells. Two went down, wrapped in the rapidly hardening foam, but the other pair took cover against the wall, blasting back with similar shells.
Neither hit, allowing Kellers to fire back with his stungun. The SmartDarts didn’t penetrate the black cloaks, however, and the engineer grimly dropped the non-lethal weapon to draw his pistol.
The shotgun had one flashbang round left, and then the remainder were notoriously unreliably non-lethal ‘beanbag’ rounds. Wincing against the impact, David fired the flashbang at the roof in front of the Hunters.
The bright lights flashed, hurting his eyes, and the sounds pounded his ears. When the chaos faded, he loaded the beanbag rounds and stepped around his tiny corner.
All of the hunters were down, the last two tanglewebbed to the floor from behind. Standing over them, holding an automatic shotgun very similar to the one David had stolen from the Hunters, was a dark-skinned youth with a bright grin.
“Keiko sent me,” he said cheerfully. “She wanted to be sure you didn’t get into trouble on the way down – though I think she underestimated how much trouble even you could get in.”
James shook his head as he approached and dragged the youth into an embrace, rendering the familiar resemblance unmistakeable – their rescuer was lighter-skinned than the engineer, but clearly related.
“Let’s get to Keiko’s,” James told David. “These guys are likely to have friends, and we don’t want to be here when they arrive.”
#
Damien was lost in his work when the door slid open, so Kelly’s voice interrupting his thoughts was a complete surprise. He jerked, turned to face her, and slashed the line of silver fire he’d conjured across a third of the wall of his workshop before he cut the spell.
The acrid smell of burning steel filled the room and he coughed slightly, blinking at the shocked face of his girlfriend.
“Sorry, I missed you opening the door,” he said quickly. Embarrassed, he walked over to the wall his spell had scorched. He’d been practicing against a backdrop he’d enspelled to resist the force of the spells he’d been testing, but his shock had almost caused him to take out the computer screens showing a series of verbal instructions and diagrams.
“You were supposed to meet me for dinner half an hour ago,” Kelly told him quietly. “What’s up, Damien?” She walked over to him, seemingly unbothered by his slicing up his office. She looked at the screen, with its meticulous instructions. “What’s this?”
Damien shrugged.
“This is Amber, and they say everything is for sale,” he repeated to her. “So I decided to test the theory – this is the first of the four combat training manuals the Guild uses to train their Enforcers. I found them all.”
“Enforcers are like cops, right?” she asked.
“And private soldiers,” Damien admitted. “They’re the deadliest Mages the Guild can recruit after the Navy and Marines are done hiring the very best. If the Captain ha
d an Enforcer with him on Chrysanthemum instead of me, one of them could have saved everyone.”
“Like you did?” Kelly reminded him. “Nobody down on Chrysanthemum with you died, David. You did save everyone. I don’t care how good these Enforcers are, they couldn’t have saved Narveer from half a world away!”
Damien glanced away, but nodded his admittance.
“An Enforcer wouldn’t have collapsed and needed to be carried,” he said, very quietly. “Kelzin almost died because I was weak.”
“So, what, you read these books and you’re better?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted, his voice still quiet. “I can learn a lot from these, but training isn’t everything – it’s also raw power. I have unique gifts,” the very nature of their ship – and their problems – proved that, “but I am barely even middle of the range in power.”
“Learning these spells, using power more efficiently, that’s the only way I can hope to face the Enforcers and Navy Mages who will come after us, sooner or later. Even with these, though, I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to protect everyone,” Damien admitted.
That was the fear running under all of his studying, in the back of his mind since Corinthian. His actions and his gift had made the Blue Jay and her crew targets. His presence had made his friends targets – and he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to protect them.
“You took out an Enforcer on Corinthian, didn’t you?” Kelly asked after a moment, pulling a chair up next to him and taking his hands.
“That was luck and trickery,” the young Mage told her. “If he’d had a chance to act, he’d have disabled or killed me in moments.”
“So we rely on trickery,” the engineer replied fiercely. “Your magic saved us at Sherwood and Chrysanthemum – trickery and tricks saved you at Corinthian. The Captain’s no slouch at this game, and you’re stronger than you think.”
She kissed him fiercely.
“I’m not going to tell you not to study these books,” she told him. “You are our best protection, and the stronger you are, the safer we all are. But our problems are not your fault and you are not protecting us alone. We’re hardly helpless – who saved you on Corinthian, after all?”
“You all did,” Damien admitted, resting his head against her shoulder. “And we’re all on the run for that. I owe you all more than I can ever repay.”
“No you don’t,” Kelly told him. “That’s what we do for crew, Damien – that’s what any of us do for our friends.
“When push comes to shove, there are eighty damned determined people on this ship – and we’re not going to let anyone push us around. When you do your wizardly duty to protect us, remember that we are right behind you – and we are not defenseless. You get me?”
“I get you,” Damien replied, giving her a small smile, still worried but regaining some balance.
“Good. Now, you owe me dinner.”
#
David followed James and their ‘escort’ into the office on the bottom floor of the gallery of Heinlein Station’s Quadrant Gamma. The entrance was a discreet door tucked between a gun store and a flower shop that the Captain almost missed. Through the door, they followed a plain corridor back about twenty feet, where another door opened into a pristinely decorated reception area.
Plants lined the walls, bringing a sense of freshness to the air that he wasn’t used to on space stations. A small number of comfortable looking chairs were tucked in one corner for people waiting, and a petite, dark-skinned young woman with short-cropped hair sat behind a desk.
“James, you found them,” she exclaimed. It took David a moment to realize she was speaking to their escort, not his Chief Engineer. “Any issues?”
“They were being picked on by some Sanctioned Hunters,” the younger James replied. “Is Keiko in?”
“Conference B,” the receptionist told him. “She’s waiting for you.”
“Right this way,” their guide instructed David and Kellers. He led the way through a door concealed behind a large potted tree and into a mid-sized conference room.
The room continued the theme of plants. Plant trays ran along both sides of the room, supporting what David believed to be strawberry plants, of all things. Two smallish trees flanked a professional holographic display podium at one end, and a massive black table filled the room.
Leaning against the end of the table closest to them was a tall, pale woman with flaming red hair and bright green eyes. When they entered, she wordlessly dragged James Kellers into a tight embrace.
She released him after a moment and inspected him carefully.
“You’re alright?” she asked sharply.
“We’re fine, Keiko,” Kellers told her. “I didn’t realize James was working for you,” he continued, nodding towards the younger man.
David glanced from the younger James, to his James, to Keiko, and saw the familial resemblance all around.
“I thought you said Keiko was a friend from school,” he said dryly, nodding towards James. “Did I misread how friendly you were?”
Keiko and both Jameses looked at him strangely for a minute, and then Keiko laughed.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” she told him. “James Junior here is my brother’s son – with James’s sister. I didn’t think of how it would look.”
“And I didn’t realize that Brian’s kids were both working for you,” the older James admitted. “James helped save our asses, though. A bunch of Sanctioned Hunters jumped us in the gallery.”
Keiko nodded, her face suddenly grimmer. She turned to the younger James.
“James, can you go and tell your sister to close up?” she asked. “I’ve no more appointments today, so you two can shut things down and take off.” She glanced over at the older James. “Tell your parents that I’ll be bringing James and his Captain over for dinner later.”
“Will do,” the youth confirmed and disappeared from the conference room, carefully closing the door behind him.
“Take a seat,” Keiko instructed, gesturing towards the table. “I apologize for the trouble,” she continued. “If I’d been expecting anything, I’d have sent more men than just James to escort you.”
“We are wanted fugitives, Miss Keiko,” David reminded her quietly. “I presume James told you that.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” she told him. “According to the Protectorate, you’re not. If there’d been a Sanctioned Bounty on you, I’d have known regardless of whether or not James here had told me when he set up this meet.”
Keiko touched a spot on the black conference table with a long pale finger. A section of table around it lit up with touch controls, which she promptly manipulated to bring up a page of text on the holographic display.
“They must have been after the Blue Star bounty,” she admitted. “I knew it existed, but it looks like it’s been expanded recently. Azure has doubled the bounty on you, Captain Rice, and added specific bounties for your ship and your Mage Montgomery. Montgomery is specified alive.”
“No such consideration for me, I presume,” David said quietly. The lack of a Protectorate arrest order was strange. Even ignoring Damien’s modifications to the Blue Jay, they’d staged a mass jail-break to get him out.
“No, Azure still wants you dead,” Keiko said calmly. “Which is a recommendation in my books,” she added. On the holo-display, data continued to flow as she searched through databases. “Huh,” she said suddenly, “that’s strange.”
“What is?” Kellers asked.
“There’s no Protectorate warrant for you,” she explained, “but there is a request to inform the Navy if you are in-system and to hold your ship.” She shrugged. “It’s a mass-mailing to every MidWorlds system.”
“So we’re going to be trapped here?” David asked.
“Hardly,” the woman replied with a laugh. “For warrants, there’s a standing agreement for payment to the Co-ops for delivering prisoners, but for a one-off like this, there’s no money attached. Which means
that the ADC won’t do shit – they’re a business, after all.”
The operation of law enforcement and defense in Amber confused David, but he was willing to take her word for it for the moment.
“So, we’re safe then?”
“For the moment,” she confirmed. “At least, from Sanctioned Hunters who want to keep their Sanction – the idiots who went after you in the Gallery will be unemployed by morning. The Defense Co-operative does not like their Hunters freelancing – and doing so as publicly and messily as that is a big no-no.”
With a sweep of her hand, she cleared the data.
“Sooner or later, someone will look at that request, and ask whoever the notification is supposed to go to for money,” she admitted. “Then, the Protectorate will pay up, and your ship will be locked down. So we’d better get to your business quickly. What do you need, Captain Rice?”
“We’re heading out on a Fringe run,” David told her. He slid a datachip across the table to her. “I need a pretty standard speculative cargo; the details are on the chip. We’ll be paying cash by electronic transfer.”
“Let me see,” Keiko told him. As she began to review the data, she began to wrap one curl of her red hair around her left hand, distracting David enough that he almost missed Kellers’ sigh beside him.
“I can get this, but about a third isn’t manufactured here,” she admitted. “The price will be higher, and we’ll need to convince some people to re-direct cargos in mid-transhipment – that’s money and favors.”
David took his gaze off of her hair and blinked himself back to reality.
“What do you need?” he said finally.
“Smart man,” she said approvingly. “Favors make the world go around – if I’m going to call in favors I’m owed to help you, then I’ll need a favor myself. A big one.”
David simply gestured for her to continue.
“I am involved with several organizations in the Fringe,” Keiko said slowly. “Groups resisting the influence and control of the Core World Mega-Corps.”
Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) Page 25
