Trapped: Chaos Core Book 1

by Lalonde, Randolph

  “That’s not the point, everyone wants to support you while you get through this.”

  Spin turned and faced Sun at the top of the stairs. “I’m fine. I can’t see what anyone could do to help. The meds take the edge off, I can focus on what’s important. When I’m not busy with that, I can mope and feel sorry for myself in private.”

  “Um, coming out of FTL in a few seconds here,” Nigel said, getting out of the pilot’s seat. “I’ll fly this thing if you want, but I’m no pilot.”

  “No worries, we were finished,” Spin said as she dropped into the chair. “I’ll take the controls, Sun’s distracted by my lack of wailing and whining.”

  “I think I’ll go see if our passengers are ready to go,” Nigel said, hastily escaping from the cockpit.

  “I’m just watching out for you,” Sun said. “If you say you’re all right, then okay, but if you need someone to help you through this, I’m here.”

  “Okay, got it,” Spin said. The Fleet Feather emerged from the wormhole and new sensor information was added to the preemptive scans that were already under way. Their destination, Genna Station, was only minutes away. “It’s an old colony ship,” Spin said. “Shouldn’t we be picking up energy readings at this distance though? Maybe some port traffic?”

  “Yeah, Genna’s always busy,” Sun said, adjusting the scanners. “There are usually hundreds of ships around. There’s usually an old British Alliance carrier around too, it’s the main defence.”

  Spin increased the range of their scans as she and Sun watched the results come in. There was some wreckage spread across thousands of kilometres, but no active ships or buoys.

  “This isn’t bad, it’s whoa-crazy bad,” Nigel called up from below. “I’m watching the scanners, and I’m only picking up basic life support on the station. There are no ships around it, a holy-fuck-ton of damage to the port side, and a few cargo containers tucked in to an open section.”

  “Is that a metric holy-fuck-ton, or an Issyrian standard measure holy-fuck-ton?” Sun asked as she scanned through the data.

  “Either way, I don’t think your boy Quino or his people are here. If they are, they must have gotten slagged along with whoever was unlucky enough to see this go down first hand,” Nigel said.

  “The scrambling field is still up,” Sun said. “Just enough signal noise to make small life signs inside impossible to pinpoint. There could be scavengers aboard, we wouldn’t be able to see unless there were thirty, maybe forty of them in a small area.”

  “I’m sure there are,” Spin said. “If those containers weren’t sign enough, there are still computers in there,” Spin said. “Navigational guidance computers, small ones. Our antenna’s picking a few of them up, so the cherry pickers and bigger outfits probably haven’t found this place yet.”

  “Excuse me,” asked a female voice from below. “We aren’t going there, are we? From what I’m overhearing, it sounds bad.”

  It was one of their less useful passengers, a young woman who was sent to the work camp by the Countess as a punishment. Spin hadn’t taken the time to get to know most of them, especially since they were only waiting, eating their food and breathing their air until they reached a somewhat civilized port. “Della,” Spin said into her comm.

  “Wow, your new communicator’s nice and clear. Yes, Spin?”

  “Can you make sure our passengers are comfortable?”

  “Miss? Are we going there? It sounds dangerous?” the woman at the bottom of the stairs pressed.

  Della was there a few seconds later. “Don’t worry, they know what they’re doing. Just have a seat and we’ll tell you what we’re doing once we know for sure, okay?”

  “I’m just,” the woman stammered. “I have to contact my brother, you know, he’ll want to know what the Countess did to me. He’ll need to know where I am so he can come for me.”

  “I know. We’ll get to civilization soon.”

  Sun shook her head and leaned away from the scanner displays. “There’s maybe a handful of people in there, the scramblers keep me from finding out where, but we won’t be alone if we go aboard.”

  “This may be worth checking though,” Spin said. “If I can get one or two of those navigational nodes, the small ones, I could use them to make new hardware transponders. Maybe even add a security layer to our next ship.”

  “That could save us hundreds of thousands of credits,” Sun said. “But I don’t want to take too much of a risk. I’m thinking we should move on, leave the vultures to pick at this.”

  “We just get aboard quick, run for the nearest node, pull one, maybe two of the smallest computers, and run back.” The converted colony ship came into view. It was over three kilometres long and two wide with nearly three hundred decks. “We’ll do a close pass with the Fleet Feather, try to get past their scramblers and then dock where we don’t see scavengers. If this was an official claim…”

  “There would be a buoy announcing it,” Sun said. “So they’re not supposed to be here either.”

  “Right. So, we might need the tech if we want to make our next ship untraceable, are we getting it?”

  Sun thought for a moment, looking at the large grey and green station that filled the cockpit window. “We split up, give ourselves half an hour and bug out.”

  “An hour, I know we can get some serious tech in one hour. The more we bring to the table when we meet someone who we can trade this ship in to, the better.”

  “All right, an hour,” Sun said. “No risks, if any of us run into armed opposition, we get back here and move on. We’ll have to land somewhere in the Diori system to drop our passengers off and ask about Quino, see if his people got off the station.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Spin said, leaving the pilot’s seat. “You’re the better pilot.”

  “We’ll have to do something about that,” Sun said, sitting down. “You need more practice.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  02

  It was like a race, with Nigel, Sun and her all running through the corridors on the starboard side of the station. They stayed away from the control centre and engineering, that is where they’d find serious scavengers. They all took different corridors so they could get as much as possible then get out. “I got one!” Sun said over their encrypted channel.

  “What? It’s only been five minutes!” Nigel replied. “I’m going deeper, going to find a real jackpot, I bet there’s even a store in this section.”

  “Just get the navigational nodes, they’ll be worth a lot more than anything you find in a store,” Spin said as she skidded to a stop in front of a panel. There was a node right behind it, cheerily announcing the location, spin rate, trajectory, and other essential data to any systems that would listen. A station that size needed that kind of technology to keep itself together, and to make managing it much easier for the administration. Why they used such high quality components for a simple task was beyond Spin, but from the looks of the darkened corridors, everything in the converted colony ship was top of the line. As she pried the access panel loose and started detaching the palm sized, sealed computer from its interface cables, she wished that she’d had a chance to see the station in its prime. “Got one,” she said as the last cable came loose. The computer kept running for several seconds before it powered down. “This one’s in an impact case, like a black box.”

  “Mine was too, whoever had this ship built spent more money than all of us have ever seen put together,” Sun said. “This place is going to be crawling with vultures like us in no time.”

  “Going down a few levels, may be out of comm range for a few minutes, see you back on the ship,” Nigel said.

  “Don’t go too far, Nigel, these aren’t worth getting left behind for,” Sun said. “Nigel? God dammit, he’s already out of range.”

  “Ooh, my node had a backup,” Spin said as she pried a second one loose and disconnected it.

  Navigational nodes, or complex micro-quantum computers of the class
that were scattered across Genna Station were becoming more difficult to find all the time. No human could effectively ensure that one was made properly on the assembly line, it took complex computing to make them, the kind of computing that artificial intelligences were responsible for before they went rogue. Sure, humans would eventually develop software that could do the same job, but that could take decades.

  There was a CMQC at the heart of every ship that served as a genuine, unique transponder, and as long as Spin had the hardware, she could program a convincing fake. If she could bribe an official to enter a fake transponder built with one of those, it would become as good as real, with records backing it up. The thought of having a ship with more than one transponder so they could hide in plain sight made her want to make the hour she had to loot as many of the Genna Station’s navigational nodes as possible. If they could get more than three, they could easily wipe out the data on them and sell the hardware as high-end blanks.

  “Running to the next one,” Spin said as she sprinted down the hallway. Genna Station’s gravity, air recyclers and heaters were all still running, and she couldn’t figure out why. On a whim, she linked the computer printed on her arm to the next service panel through her suit. “Um, Sun? The station says that emergency self-repair systems are running. That’s why life support is back up.” She opened her headgear and let it slide into the pocket between her shoulders. “The air even smells clean.”

  “That’s nice, did you get the next node? We don’t have time for sightseeing.”

  “Okay fine, grabbing this node and moving on,” Spin said. “I almost feel bad though, it’s not like the station will miss a couple dozen of these, there are hundreds throughout, but if a few more scavengers go after the nodes, there could be trouble.”

  “The next crime lord who takes this place can worry about that. It’s not like this place was home to the finest people in the galaxy,” Sun said.

  “You have a point,” Spin said as she dropped another pair of nodes into her hip pocket. “That’s four for me.”

  “I have five, we might just call it quits soon and retreat while the getting’s good. We’re already ahead of what we thought we’d get.”

  “And that’s not including whatever Nigel is into right now.” Spin ran down the hallway, chasing a bright blip on her scanner that told her that the next node, or pair of nodes were several hundred metres down the long corridor. “Still, I’d rather make use of the whole hour, who knows how much we’ll find if we risk just a little.” The sounds of her thigh-high boot’s heels clacking against the deck rang in her ears. The longer she used the things, the more she hated them. Finding some sensible boots was starting to become a priority.

  She slowed to a walk for a few moments to catch her breath, admiring the thick transparent metal hull to her left. The view of the stars with little light to interfere was stunning. The brightest part of the galaxy shone before her eyes, a luminescent cloud of stars. For the first time, thinking of Larken, and how she wished he could be seeing that with her didn’t only sadden her. She knew him well enough to imagine an expression of wonder. Out of the two of them, he was the one inspired by visual things, and this would have sent his imagination on a wonderful tangent. “I’ll see the sights for both of us.”

  “What’s that, Aspen?” Sun asked.

  “Nothing, just took a minute to catch my breath,” Spin replied, turning towards the corridor that would lead her to at least one node. A four way split in the hallway was coming up. Her scanner beeped a warning as she noticed something move in the darkness, and drew her sidearm as her boots failed to get a good grip on the deck. Spin slid to a stop, still on her feet, brandishing her sidearm at a thickly muscled short man carrying a massive rifle. He aimed it at her, his eyes wide with surprise and stopped as he realized that she’d beaten him to it, and already had her weapon pointed at his head. “Don’t move,” she said, noticing that he had a taller, much bigger friend to his left.

  To her right, the shadows seemed to move in the gloom, and someone in a heavy helmet drew her weapon, pointing it at the largest of the group. “This is definitely not where I saw myself ending up today. Standoffs with three strangers are not on my list of favourite things,” Spin said, holding her inertial multiplier sidearm – a vicious looking thing with a five-centimetre-wide pulse emitter on the front – as steady as she could. She loved seeing a standoff in entertainment. The tension, the suspense, and at the end of every great standoff, someone always fired, setting the whole thing off. It was her first time being in one for real, and she was quickly gaining an understanding of the real danger, hoping for a very different ending than the one she usually cheered for.

  “What? Did you say you’re in a standoff, Aspen?” Sun asked through her comm. Spin was very happy her question couldn’t be overheard.

  “I’m Spin, just passing through,” Spin said. “Leaving, in fact, unless someone has something to say about it.”

  “I might,” the short, muscled rifle bearer said. There was something familiar about his voice.

  “I’m coming, I have you on my locator,” Sun said.

  The tallest of them twitched his weapon to the left, so it was aiming at the helmeted comer, who flicked her pistol’s aim at him in return. “I am absolutely, positively certain that I do not have a dog in this fight, no grudge with any of you and I don’t want what’s here enough to lose my head.”

  “Scavenger?” the rifle bearer said, and from the sound of his voice she finally realized who he was. Lin Shae, an acquaintance of the captain of the Cool Angel.

  She didn’t answer, but eyed the muzzle of his massive rifle for a moment, her eyes finally adjusting to the scant light. He didn’t have any bags with him, neither did his friend, so they weren’t here to pick at the bones of the great ship. Did he track her here? Was he moonlighting as a slave hunter?

  Her shoulder complained at how long her arm was outstretched holding the inertial multiplier. It was a large weapon for a handgun, but surprisingly light. No, it wasn’t the weight of the thing that had her arm aching, it was how long she’d been aiming it at Lin Shae’s head.

  He had a much more intimidating weapon, a pulse rifle that looked like he’d torn it off the side of some old starfighter. The other two, one who pointed at Lin, the other who pointed at her, she didn’t know. One was probably a henchman for Lin, that was the one that pointed at her, he had a blue and green Mohawk and an absent look on his face – she expected him to start drooling any moment. The other, the one who quickly shifted her aim back to Lin, she didn’t know, and it didn’t seem like Lin knew the woman in the blacked out helmet either. The thing had bars running down the front in a V and from her body armour, Spin guessed it was a woman, but it was hard to tell for sure. It could have been a small man, or a short alien.

  “Aspen.” Lin said, his forehead creasing in irritation. “Why’s a girl like you stealing from a place like this?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “That’s my business,” Lin said. “Just unlucky enough for you to catch up with me. Am I wanted dead, or alive?”

  Spin’s confusion only deepened as she realized that Lin thought she was tracking him.

  “This suspense is killing me, why don’t we blast it out and see whose armour is better?” asked Lin.

  “I have the best armour, question answered,” said the dark helmet. It waved its plasma blaster from Lin, to Spin, to the Mohawk, who actually looked a little intimidated for a quarter second, then back to Lin.

  “I’m almost there,” Sun said through the comlink she had buried in her jawbone. “God, this ship’s big.”

  “I’m just waiting to see who tires out first. You brought the biggest gun, Lin. You might be regretting it now, though. Just wondering, why are you on this drifting heap?”

  “Salvage, my wrecking crew is going to latch on to this old heap any second now.”

  “Nothing on scans,” Sun said, out of breath from running down a corridor somewhere else i
n the old colony ship. Hopefully somewhere close. “If he had help coming, they’re really late or they’re already so close to the station that their location is being hidden by the jammers.”

  “You never could bluff, Lin,” Spin said.

  “When did you get a chance to see me gamble?”

  “You don’t remember playing Seven Star on the Cool Angel? The officer’s game?”

  “Oh, now I remember, you were serving drinks and slinging snacks, some kind of petty officer.” Lin adjusted his grip on his outrageously large rifle.

  “Getting a little hard to hold on there, Lin?” Spin asked with a smirk.

  “I’ve got hours left in me, hours, don’t worry.”

  “So, who’s the guy with the unfortunate haircut?” she asked.

  “My nephew,” Lin replied. “Boy will do anything for me.”

  His nephew smiled broadly, nodding, his eyes not quite focusing right.

  “Family’s important. You know, if you’re just doing salvage, I’ll just leave you to your work after we get a few parts for our ship. There’s someone else here though, their jammers are keeping me from seeing where they are though.”

  “My handiwork. I say you just move along,” Lin said without hesitation.

  “We only want a few nav nodes, won’t mean anything to your bottom line.” Spin said.

  “Okay, fine. Did you just come here for salvage? Most people don’t even know this place was abandoned yet.”

  “Actually we were looking for Quino, this used to be his place, right?”

  “Well, yeah, he shared with a couple other outfits, but not for about nine months. He moved on to Wayland Prime, running an even bigger operation there.”

  “So, you’ll put that down if I promise to grab a couple parts and move on?” Spin said.

  “Well, yeah,” Lin said.

  “Then why did you draw on me?”

  “You drew on me first, remember?” Lin asked. “Why is that, anyway?”