Vas slammed the door behind her.
Chapter Two
She scanned the papers and files while she made her way back down the filthy corridor and the uneven stairs toward the dock. The ship was five years younger than the Victorious Dead and worth at least twenty times as much. Which made her wonder why Skrankle would have tried to scrap it. Which of course meant he hadn’t planned to do that at all. Which meant he’d had a different plan for that ship; one she just interrupted. Vas believed there were always a finite number of problems in any situation. The name of the game was to find them all before they became fatal.
Why Skrankle had this ship and what he had planned on doing with it was problem number one. Number two continued the theme with why he felt safe enough to take apart and sell her ship. Unless he lied and it was intact. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Her month off had turned her brains to mush.
Swearing under her breath, she ran across the catwalk and palmed open the airlock to the Warrior Wench. The unbreakable idents meant that ships could be found by anyone, including a mercenary captain, provided they knew how to hack into the Council’s systems anyway. Fortunately, she had one of the best hackers in fifteen galaxies on her payroll and he’d taught her a few tricks over the years.
She ran across the bridge and activated the console connected to the command chair. It took a few minutes of tricky computer maneuvering, but she got into the Council’s ident tracking system. If the Victorious Dead had stayed intact it would show on the logs on the screen before her. The scan pulled in nothing. At least nothing intact. A few false readings that pinged back from the scan told her Skrankle had spoken the truth for once; her ship had been pieced out. Which again brought her to problem two: why had he felt safe taking apart one of the best-known merc ships in the league?
When she’d dropped the crew off a month ago on Tarantus IV for some downtime, she’d taken a shuttle to deal with some personal business in a neighboring star system for two weeks. Business that seemed both private and harmless until now. The two weeks had turned into four weeks. She had no answers as to how those weeks doubled, but nothing bad had happened. Time just got away from her.
A faint buzzing in her head told her she was missing something, but her memory argued otherwise. She’d finished her business deal, one of the few she couldn’t win. To console herself, she went to Hillet and followed one of the ongoing parties. Partying wasn’t her usual pastime, but the booze had been free and the company not awful. She rubbed her right temple as bits and pieces, like chopped up vids of someone else’s life, came flooding back. Along with a building pressure that quickly turned to pain. She couldn’t recall whom she had been with—just flashes of a big party. She pushed past the pain in her head, concerned at the missing memory. Comfort flooded her mind as an image came forward. Ah yes, that Larakian trader. How could she forget him after those three nights?
Clearly her newly acquired partying lifestyle had led to more than a few holes in her memory. Now that his identity had been cleared up, her headache vanished.
While her extra two weeks were more or less accounted for, the question of Skrankle’s actions was not. Had someone not expected her to return for her ship? He wouldn’t have done this on his own; he didn’t have the guts. Whoever managed to convince Skrankle there was safe profit in scrapping her ship would meet his very own version of hell once she caught up to him.
None of these were things she could address right now. She needed to find her wayward crew, get them dried out, and make sure they were ready for the upcoming battle.
With a thoroughness and paranoia born of years of killing people for a living, she changed all the ship’s codes, including simple lockouts in the galley and crew cabins.
The first campaign with Gosta, her resident computer hacker extraordinaire, had created her code paranoia. Within minutes of engaging the enemy, a Dirthian heavy cruiser, he’d taken complete control of the ship and sent it into life-support lock down. He’d gained entrance to their entire system through an old unchanged lock code from the captain’s personal environmental controls, a.k.a. he climbed in through the toilets. While she admired the ingenuity, she chilled at how quickly he did it. She’d changed all ship’s codes every cruise since then.
Satisfied that the ship was secure, she set out to reclaim her crew. They should be together in one of the small shantytowns outside the giant casino conglomerate of Liltikin. Hopefully. If any of them had disappeared in the extended down time they could just take up permanent residence there.
The shuttle she’d arrived in was docked on the other side of Skrankle’s docks. She could take it planet-side, gather her crew, and get the hell out of this area of space within a few hours.
Her plan went into the crapper the minute she went to pull up the clearance codes that would let the Warrior Wench leave the space station once she got her crew on board. They weren’t available. She finally tracked the codes down only to find they were still secured in the space station’s main office. Whatever Skrankle had been doing to this ship he clearly hadn’t planned on it leaving anytime soon.
She secured the ship’s airlock and went down the dock to the station corridor. Like all of the locks in this part of the station it was rusted and pocked. However, it managed to keep the air out if a breach occurred in the repair yards. Or so she hoped.
Few people walked the main corridor of the space station and many of the shops were closed. Station time worked on loading and unloading times. When ships were in, shops were open.
The intoxicating smell of fresh fried capsina fish caught her when she strode past a new pub. Her mouth watered even as she tried to keep going down the corridor. She made it policy never to eat at new places and certainly never at one too new to even have a sign. But she let the smell of her favorite food drag her into the small, dimly lit pub regardless.
She’d grown up on Kjaria, a mostly empty desert planet in the Pleanterian system. Her obsession with food from the ocean was an ongoing joke to her crew. One of her favorites was capsina fish, with its delicate light orange flesh. Her love of it was something she would hurt people for. Even people she liked. None of her crew joked about capsina fish.
Looking at her watch, she decided she had enough time to get some food to go. Her crew turned into night owls when on shore leave and it was still too early for them to have recovered from the previous night.
A waitress started to approach her, but Vas beat her to the punch, forcing the small, blonde human to follow her while she strode to the bar. There were advantages to being tall and imposing—people often did what you wanted them to do.
“Capsina fish, large order. Side of whatever produce you have that’s planet grown, and a huge container of ale. To go.” She thought about it for a second. “Make that a small. Just a small container of tavaan ale.” Being drunk in the middle of the day wouldn’t be a good idea under the current circumstances. Besides, she’d be in a happier mood if she drank, and she needed to “keep the bitch up” as Deven, her second-in-command, would say to convince her crew to accept the Warrior Wench.
The waitress nodded and went to get her food.
Vas studied the pub. Jagged construction poles jutted across the back indicating a future dining area. Deep green jacadin wood planks appeared real until she tapped at the planks on the bar. The tinny sound the wood made indicated it only looked like jacadin timber. Obviously the owners wanted to come across more upscale than they were. She turned while she waited so that she could see the entire room, including the kitchen door. Paranoid she may be, but it had kept her alive all these years. Few people from her home world could say that. Her family sure as hell couldn’t. Her brother had taken care of that.
The waitress appeared with her food and drink packed in cheap foamlian-core containers. Vas hoped she could finish the food before they disintegrated. She toyed with staying and eating at the bar, but while she needed to give her crew time to regain consciousness, she really didn’t want to give t
hem enough time to wander off. She needed to be down planet-side just after sunset.
“Will you need anything else?” the blonde asked.
“I need my—” Vas said as the bill keypad was shoved into her hand “—bill.” She shrugged and put her chip code in. The waitress entered her code into the small machine, then snapped the printed paid receipt on the table.
Vas left the empty pub and made her way down through the intermittent groups of gray-suited freighter mechanics and the usual narrow-eyed shopkeepers to the station office. In the few minutes that she’d been in the pub, a new life had come to the station. She picked up speed and started drinking her ale as she walked.
The station office was like all station offices; whether they were planet based or space based, they all used the same decorator and must have cloned their staff. The room was painted an unappetizing puke beige and felt crowded even when she was the only one in the lobby. The countertop protecting the back area was made of Ilerian granite, possibly the weakest stone in the known galaxy. The dissolving edges were receding rapidly and would soon vanish completely.
A tiny Dliari scuttled sideways out from a back room. Ancient spectacles perched on her long snout bobbed as she gave Vas an odd sideways glance.
The species changed, but all bureaucrats acted the same.
“What does you need?” The voice came through an old series two translator at the base of the Dliari’s throat. Even better, a bureaucrat too lazy to learn Common.
Vas sat her food and drink cautiously on the counter. “I need the clearance codes for the Warrior Wench. I’ll be taking her out in a few hours.”
The crustacean Dliari peered closely at her and her food before finally shaking her head. “You is not brothel owner, not your ship.”
Vas had expected problems, and carefully placed the required documents on the counter next to her food. The resulting groan from the Ilerian granite made her snatch her food container.
The Dliari clicked her mandibles as she made her way forward in her zigzagging walk, snatching the files with a clawed hand as if Vas was going to take them back.
“Will take hours. You come back when I done.”
Vas shrugged and walked back to the only chair in the lobby. “I’ll just wait here, thank you.” She popped open the food container and smiled as the lovely fish odor filled the room.
“You can no eat here!”
The squeal at the end was interesting; Vas didn’t think that the series two translators could make that sound. She grinned and bit into the perfectly cooked fish. It was just luck she got a Dliari. Her eating fish would be a vulgar insult to a member of that sea born species.
“But I have to wait for you to find my codes.” She gave a shrug. “I can’t leave until I get them.”
The Dliari swore something the translator couldn’t handle, and vanished into the back room.
Vas was just licking the last of the fried fish off of her fingers when the Dliari returned. She pushed the files back across the counter.
“There. You go.”
Vas smiled. It seemed that everyone she encountered on this station wanted her to leave. And she was more than happy to give them what they wanted.
“Thank you so much.” She checked the codes. They looked correct and the time stamp was good. With another smile, Vas tucked the files into her inner pocket and left the office.
She was congratulating herself on the quickest bureaucrat interaction she’d ever had when a man lunged out of a maintenance corridor and slammed into her. The collision knocked both of them to the decking, her arms and legs tangling with his. Struggling to her feet, she considered ripping him a new one for his clumsiness, but was stopped by the look his face. His blue eyes were rimmed in white and beads of sweat ran down his face as he stared at the corridor he’d just run out of. His eyes held the panic of a man ready to jump out an airlock without a suit to get away from whatever pursued him. With a whimper, he scrambled to his feet and bolted away. Vas let her hand drift toward the butt of her blaster as she methodically—and with practiced caution—turned toward the service corridor that had ejected her clumsy assailant into her path.
Leading with the muzzle of her blaster, she took three steps into the corridor. The barren gray walls were unremarkable and the empty corridor didn’t give her a clue as to what had caused that flyboy to flee.
Shaking her head at yet another delay, she holstered her blaster into the gun belt then continued toward the shuttle. Thoughts of her difficult crew filled her mind as she marched through the empty corridors toward the shuttle dock. For their sakes, they all better be in the same spot. She slapped at the shuttle’s airlock control and strode onboard.
She tried to contact her second-in-command as soon as she landed the shuttle on the planet, but he didn’t answer his comm. She briefly thought about contacting her other officers, but she wanted Deven to know about the ship first. Telepaths got touchy when others knew about things they felt they should know first.
The days and nights on Tarantus IV went faster than her internal clock; one reason she would never pick this for a vacation spot. Although it felt like early afternoon to her, night had already fallen on this part of the small planet and the Lucky Strike space station gleamed like a third moon in the desert air. Her crew should just be getting up and about now.
Loud gambling halls, with daylight-mimicking lights, were another reason for her dislike of this world. Tarantus IV had even less to offer for survival than her own unlamented home world. But thanks to an ingenious miner six hundred years ago, it had gambling—lots of gambling—the types of gambling that were illegal everywhere else.
She hated gambling. Her money was earned at the cost of lives. The idea of wasting that money didn’t set right with her.
The cool night air smelled fresh and clean once she got away from the landing pad. That is, until she approached the mass of giant buildings known as Liltikin. Not really a city in the proper sense, Liltikin was a collection of massive casinos that cooperated for mutual benefit. Each one was a kingdom unto itself with its own unique style and odor. Moreover, all of those smells hit her about a hundred yards out from the first behemoth.
Stepping inside the casino, she knew her second-in-command wouldn’t be in there. He had a level of class that warred with his chosen lifestyle. The flashy pink signs, horrific pink carpeting, and pink–colored air didn’t even come close to Deven’s requirements. She wasted a few seconds wondering just how or why someone would color air. Shaking her head, she fled for the next casino.
The second den of ill-lost funds appeared promising. The open entry was wide enough for a small shuttle to dock, and provided a view of the elegant interior. Light golds and sea blues dominated the color palette, with a few dark wood accents on the ceiling and far walls. Carefully draped fabrics from thousands of worlds flowed from the five-story-high ceiling to be gathered against the walls creating a space both intimate and generous at the same time. The gambling tables were all carved out of pure rare stones. The five-card ta-long table immediately before her was once a single block of rare Elierian jade. The fast-paced calir game table gleamed an ebony that could only have come from a single lump of Wavian coal, a substance so protected that a single ounce could buy a fleet of ships. The entire decor invited those of delicate sensibilities to come in and donate their money.
She definitely didn’t fit in.
For the first time she realized she still had on the clothes she’d worn yesterday. And her duster carried more than enough proof of its name. She couldn’t remember when she last braided her hair; but the telltale red wisps near her waist told her it had been a while. The sneer on the face of the casino host told her the same thing. She glared back. Robots should never be programmed with facial expressions.
She held up one hand instead of reaching for her blaster, as she wanted to. “I don’t want any trouble and I’m not staying.”
The skinny droid rocked back on his metallic heels.
&nbs
p; When the droid didn’t say anything, she continued, but kept her voice low. “You don’t want me here; I don’t want to be here. I’m trying to find my second-in-command. The sooner you help me find him, the sooner I can stop leaving dust on your floor, got it?”
A faint humming emanated from the yellow man-shaped machine, and it nodded. “Agreed. Who is it you are searching for? What does he look like?”
She did a quick surveillance around the gambling floor even though she knew Deven wouldn’t be there. His gambling usually took place in private rooms. As a rule telepaths, or espers as they were commonly called, didn’t like crowded spaces. Deven might be different from most espers, but he had reasons for gambling alone.
“He’s about 6’2”, a bit taller than me, pale gold skin, likes to show lots of it, and has tar-black hair hitting past his shoulders unless he hacked it off again. He’d probably be in your tao-go room or a private suite.” She’d give the thing Deven’s name, except that he never used it on casino planets.
The droid cocked its head, another annoying mannerism, and then froze. An instant later it turned in her direction. “I believe I have found your friend. He is indeed in a private suite.” The droid’s eyes gave pale reflections of the images he scanned. Most likely tapped into the security cameras. “You did not say he was an esper.”
She frowned when an image of Deven entering a suite appeared on the droid’s eye-screens and focused in on the two linked metal bracelets on Deven’s right wrist. No esper above a level one could travel without them. The laws may have given them equal rights eighty years ago, but that didn’t mean people felt safe around them. Which was one reason that Deven usually wore a heavy inlaid bracelet over the telepath-blocking metal bands.
“I don’t think that’s a concern. He’s not breaking any laws; you obviously have seen the bracelets.” She folded her arms and glared at the droid. Not really at the droid, more at the small army of security most likely watching her every move through the droid. “Tell me, droid, is there a problem here?”
Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench Page 2
