3127 – Zoanda, Caliphisto Central, Akacian Ocean
A new alarm blared from his right. Kale looked up in disgust. He hated this ship. He hated its stuffy cabins, its constantly malfunctioning air and water filters, and its highly ineffective fuel usage. But more than anything, he hated the constant alarms that continued going off for any tiny little thing.
He had lost the first ship he had ever owned just over three years ago and since then, had not felt like he had control of the ship he was currently in. He had lost that first ship of his crashing down through a heavily wooded area on Oxaoca, where he had attempted to rescue a young woman for the second time. He had grown fond of her. In fact, it was the rescue mission that had brought her into his life. From that moment on, his life had spun wildly out of control.
That adventure had also left his first ship destroyed beyond repair.
Since then, Kale had traveled with his hodgepodge crew: Ayia, the woman he rescued and who now financed all of his ventures; Gheno, his adoptive younger brother who was half genius, half hormones; and Sentinel, a sentient AI they had rescued from the deepest fathoms of space. Kale had spent nearly two months recovering from the bullet wounds he suffered right after crashing on Oxaoca, back on one of the best facilities on Mars. Ayia had inherited a vast amount of money from her father and had taken the whole crew to spend a few weeks on Mars, Sol, the home of mankind’s first colony.
Mars was a veritable paradise, and the three humans had taken time to relax. But Kale’s itch to travel and work had come around again. He formed a partnership of sorts with Ayia and purchased a new ship, a smaller Lion class trader ship. It was ugly, really a floating block, and nothing like his former Midnight Oil, but it was certainly larger. It also had space to house Sentinel and the recovered cores from the Midnight Oil.
Three years now they had spent together, crossing the Commonwealth’s systems and the Independent systems, carefully avoiding the civil war engulfing the Dominion. Business had been good, but Kale never fully recovered, at least mentally.
Ayia found him equally intriguing and confusing. He was a wonderful merchant with a real knack for finding trade routes that really maximized profit. And yet, she began to notice a certain edge in him, a death wish, she called it. He began taking more and more risks. He would claim it was for profits, but each risk became more extreme. On three occasions, she thought she had lost him. Luck had come through on each of those times, but Kale never reacted like one would expect. Instead of the sheer joy of surviving near-death, he came out of them with an even more sour demeanor.
The only time she saw him with any smile or hint of joy were in those brief moments right before those risky situations. It had been a while since she had even seen him like that, though.
Their latest bunch of jobs had been very low-risk, even if they were unusual. Two months ago, they had taken a job for an archeological survey group from an Earth-based Museum. They had gotten some information regarding one of the first exploration drones that had crash landed on Caliphisto, long before actual humans would arrive. Caliphisto was one of the first Ocean planets, similar to Alioth, in the line of the first Human expansion from Earth. The discovery and retrieval of the drone would bring a great amount of prestige to the Museum.
Zoanda, which had once enjoyed growth in wealth and population in the first two hundred years after its discovery, had sunk down into a back-water system. The system was borderline anarchy, barely any government at all. Ironically, the ocean planet was known as a haven for pirates that prowled the nearby systems. Zoanda was close enough to Commonwealth systems to make it the perfect hideout. Pirates and raiders would jump back to Zoanda after hitting Commonwealth ships and hide under miles of ocean, well away from the prying eyes of any satellites.
The museum directors had found documentation of sonar readings from a fisherman on Caliphisto that showed a possible location for the drone. The drone itself was only a smaller part of a much larger vessel and Kale and his crew had been tasked in finding the larger vessel, floating it up to the surface, and retrieving the drone. The price was more than enough for a seemingly simple job, but the museum had asked for secrecy. They claimed they wanted to be the first to claim the drone. Sentinel had discovered ulterior motives.
The sentient AI had dug up classified information on the drones and discovered that, very much like himself, many of the first drones had AIs. The drone they were attempting to find was nowhere near what Sentinel was, but still was certainly valuable. All forms of sentient artificial intelligence had been banned and destroyed after the Tech Wars of the 23rd centuries. AIs existed today, but did not have the sentient and flexible capabilities these early predecessors had. Peddling in ancient AIs was essentially dealing in the black market.
Kale didn’t mind. He had quite possibly the galaxy’s most sentient AI on his ship.
Kale reached up and shut off the alarm.
“Which one is that?” Ayia asked, walking into the small cabin.
“I don’t even know,” Kale grumbled.
Ayia held her tongue. She wanted to lash out at him, but knew it would solve nothing. Instead she walked over to where he had turned off the alarm and looked at it closely.
“Kale, this is the hull breach alarm. That’s important, right?” she said, rather shocked.
“Yeah. But it’s nothing. It’s just water getting into the hull. We’re not in space, so it doesn’t matter,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“So, you did know what it was,” she said.
Kale shrugged, never turning to face her. He continued to watch readings off of the computer.
Ayia shook her head and turned to walk back out but stopped short. The Zoanda sun was pouring in through the small windshield. She walked over and peered out, shielding the sun from her eyes. There was a gentle swell on the ocean and the sky was crystal clear. There was no change in weather forecasted for many days and they were likely to be done with their job in a few hours.
The Lion ship, which Kale had failed to name, sat floating on top of the waves, using its own gravity field to create an air pocket right underneath it to float on the water. The ship still sank into the water a bit, causing the hull alarm to blare from time to time.
“Where are we at?” Ayia asked, about the drone.
“We’re almost there.”
They had scanned the area and found the drone’s vessel rather easily. It rested at the bottom of the ocean, nearly a mile down. The whole section of the ocean here was flat, and the round drone craft stuck out on any radar or sonar. The sphere was clearly not a natural object lying on the ocean floor. They had sent a tow cable from the Lion the entire way down with Gheno in tow. The seventeen-year-old had volunteered to follow the cable down in a small gravity bubble of his own to make sure it connected properly. From there, Kale would have the Lion would extend its own gravity field down onto the drone and bring it back up slowly. Gheno had been down there for nearly two days now, but everything was going smoothly. Now, the large round ship was nearly at the surface. They would disconnect the drone from the large ship, cut down the large sphere, and fly off with the prize.
“Gheno has already located the drone, too. Has been working on top of the ship to get it read,” Kale explained.
Gheno had used his own gravity bubble to create a small work area on top of the sphere. He had been working in the dark for more than a day. He had just sent a message back that he was finally seeing light.
The hull alarm blared again and Kale hit the button again, slamming his hand on the console.
“Can’t you just turn it off, somehow?” Ayia asked.
“It’s a hull alarm. That’s rather important,” Kale snapped.
Ayia turned to look back out the window, when she thought she saw something. It was a speck in the distance and she had to squint. The sun was too bright and she couldn’t focus. The alarm went off again.
Kale slammed his hand on the button again, but this time the alarm didn’t turn off. Kale looked up. It was
n’t the hull alarm.
“Captain, we have two ships inbound,” Sentinel’s voice piped over the comm.
“Are we expecting anything? Or anyone?” he asked.
“No,” the AI replied.
“How much longer for Gheno?” Ayia asked.
“Just ten minutes,” Kale answered. “He’s right under us. Sentinel, have him cut loose and come up. Let’s be ready for anything.”
Down just thirty feet under the Lion, Gheno heard a chirp over his helmet. He glanced down at a display pad on his wrist, where Sentinel was letting him know what was going on. He had reduced his gravity bubble to cover only his body and he sat on the ancient hull, holding on to the cable that was pulling the ship up. He typed “ok” into the pad and then looked up. He could clearly see the shape of the Lion above him, rectangular, like a box. He typed a command onto the pad, and then let go of the cable. His small bubble began pulling him up towards the underside of the Lion. There was a hatch, usually used for a lower entrance into the ship, which he would use.
On board the ship, Kale looked over the readings. Two smaller ships, an unknown type, were flying towards his makeshift boat. They were likely hand built ships, with the salvage of many ships put together. These hodgepodge-type ships were common in the poorer systems like Zoanda. They also made it hard for them to prepare. They could be wealthier fisherman or it could be what went for police in this system. Most likely, though, they were pirates.
“Sentinel?” Kale asked.
“I'm working on it. Our gauss gun won’t work but I have some ideas,” the AI said.
“I'm counting on it,” Kale said, getting up.
Ayia followed him out of the pilot’s cabin and into a small side hallway. Kale reached into a hidden closet and took out two palm-sized handguns. He handed one to Ayia and then closed the closet back up again. He reached up and began opening the hatch that led to the upper side of the Lion’s hull.
“You're going out there?” she asked, surprised.
“If they’re fisherman, then it’s nothing. If they’re police, then we can talk. If they’re pirates, then I can buy them off.”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” she said.
“That’s why I have this,” he said, tapping the handgun on his right leg.
“I'm going with you,” she said.
Kale turned around to say something, but stopped. He turned back around and opened the hatch. The hot, humid air came pouring into the ship, a sharp contrast to the stale dry air. Kale reached up and pulled down the ladder and locked it into place. He climbed up and out onto the hull just as the two ships came flying over the floating Lion.
They were open-air skiffs. The planet-bound ships used the same gravity drives as spaceships, but at a far smaller scale. Kale counted eight men on one skiff, ten men on the other. The two ships flew back over the Lion and then began circling back around.
“Those don’t look like fishermen or police,” Ayia said, pulling herself onto the wet hull.
“Yeah, you're right.”
One of the skiffs came hovering just over the rear of the Lion and lowered itself until it was almost touching the Lion. Three men jumped out from the side of the skiff and came walking over to Kale and Ayia. They were pointing rifles at them. Kale raised his hands up into the air and motioned Ayia to do the same. The three men came at them cautiously. They stopped about fifteen feet from them and one of the men tossed a small black object at Kale’s feet. Kale reached down and picked it up. A voice chimed in from the small communicator.
“You have wandered into our waters. There is a price to pay for swimming in these waters,” came the husky voice.
Kale raised the com to his face. “I have no problem paying the price.”
“That’s good to hear. I'd hate to have to sink that ugly boat of yours,” the voice said.
“Name the price,” Kale said.
“I'll have that thing you're pulling up out of the water,” replied the voice.
Kale looked back at Ayia.
“You’d find no value in that object. How about a monetary figure?” Kale replied back into the com.
“I'll be the judge of that. Your call, Captain. Your treasure, or your lives,” the voice echoed across the hull.
“Not much of a choice then.”
“Good. Good. My men will go with you inside and retrieve the package. We get it, you leave here alive,” the voice replied.
Kale raised his hand up and gave a thumbs up. The three men began walking towards him, rifles still pointed at them. Kale set the communicator down and turned to Ayia.
“How would pirates know what we’re doing here?” he asked.
“We weren’t secretive enough?” Ayia asked.
“Or our employers weren’t,” Kale said quietly, as the three men approached.
Kale pointed down at the hatch. The first man nodded his head and pointed the rifle at Kale. “You first. He stays here with her. We don’t come back, he kills her.”
The second man nodded.
Kale made eye contact with Ayia, then descended down into the hatch, followed by the other two men. Kale dropped to the ground in the hallway with his hands up. Both men came down and kept their rifles pointed at him. He motioned them to follow him. He led them down the hallway until they reached a small stair case.
“The hatch is down there,” Kale pointed.
The man pointed his rifle at him again and Kale shrugged his shoulders and walked down the staircase. As he walked, the man following him poked Kale in the back with the rifle, just to make sure he knew he was there.
They reached the bottom and were in a room that was partially flooded with sea water. Kale splashed into the water and began walking over to a set of crates on the far side of the room. He stopped short and pointed at the crate.
“Open it,” the man ordered. The second pirate was looking around the room, which was heavily stacked up with crates and boxes.
Kale reached over and pried open the crate, tossing the cover over. The guard came over and looked inside. The entire crate was filled with straw and the pirate looked up.
“Sentinel?” Kale called out.
The man looked at him quizzically when the lights in the room went out. Kale felt a strong surge as he was dragged by an invisible force into the wall. Shots began firing off and Kale heard splashing and movement. There was a shout followed by a gurgling sound, and then the sound of a gun firing on full auto. Kale couldn’t see a thing and felt himself crushed against the wall. The gunfire continued for a few more seconds, the flash of fire showing the confused man firing in circles. Then the flash stopped and Kale could just barely make out a form struggling with a second. The two forms stopped just as the lights came on.
Gheno was standing behind the second pirate, a long blade protruding out through the pirate’s chest. Blood came out of his mouth as he tried to speak, but he couldn’t say anything. Gheno stood back and let the man drop onto the ground. Blood stained the water around him.
Kale tried to get up and felt immobilized.
“Sentinel?” Kale asked.
“Released,” replied the artificial voice.
Kale felt the force of gravity that was both protecting and holding him disappear. He stood up and saw the other pirate, throat cut so deep his head was barely hanging on to the body. Kale looked back up at Gheno. The boy he had picked up from Alioth nearly four years ago had grown. He was almost eighteen years old, but was much larger than Kale was. He stood nearly six foot two inches and was lean muscle. The young man was a borderline genius, but had also developed a strict workout regimen for his body. He had recently allowed his hair to grow out, and the loose black curls now reached his shoulders. He smiled at Kale and reached to pull the blade from out of the pirate. He had trained extensively with that sword.
“Any more?” Gheno asked.
“One is outside with Ayia. Switch clothes with one of them.”
Kale began undressing as well, taking the clothes off the pirate
without most of his head. The two of them dressed as best as they could with the dead pirate’s clothing. Kale took one of the empty crates under his arm, then picked up one of the rifles and tossed it to Gheno. He picked up the other one. Both of them walked up the staircase.
“Sentinel. Tell me you have something we can use,” Kale asked out loud.
“No guns, nothing. The best I can give you is a few minutes with a gravity shield.”
“What about the drone?” Gheno asked.
“Let’s get Ayia safely back in here first, and then we will deal with it.”
“Captain, if we don’t get airborne, they can sink us quickly,” Sentinel explained.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“And we can’t get airborne with that cable attached.”
“I got that too.”
“Then what…?” Gheno began to say.
“I’ll deal with it.”
They stopped just under the hatch with the sunlight pouring in through the hole. Kale turned, looked at Gheno and nodded. He picked up the crate onto his right shoulder and began going up the ladder. He put the crate through and stepped up, keeping his head down. Gheno followed, looking the opposite way. Kale heard Ayia gasp and he had to hold a smile knowing that if he had fooled her, he had fooled them.
“Is that it?” Kale heard the third pirate say.
“It is,” Kale replied, pushing the crate over. As the pirate lowered his rifle to look at the crate, Kale raised his and fired three shots straight into his chest. The pirate never stood a chance and dropped in an instant, falling over the crate.
Gheno turned and raised his rifle at the skiff and opened fire. The men on board were caught completely unprepared. Gheno couldn’t see if he hit anyone but clearly the small craft was in disarray. The second skiff was far off, but instantly turned around to head in their direction. The nearest skiff then turned while some of the pirates began returning fire.
Kale grabbed Ayia and both nearly tripped down in through the hatch. Kale landed on his back and Ayia stumbled in after him.
“KALE?!?” she gasped in surprise.
Kale pushed her off of him and stood up.
The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2) Page 2
