Cool Pursuit: Chaos Core Book 2

by Lalonde, Randolph

  “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?”

&n
bsp; “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 in 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 were a good bluffer, Lin,” Spin said.

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

  “You don’t remember playing Seven Star on the Cool Angel? 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?”

  “You surprised me, besides, don’t you hunt slaves as a side business?”

  “No, we used to bounty hunt before the ‘bots went crazy and cut up their humans. You know, tracking murderers, big ticket thieves, no slaves though. That’s shit-heel work, thug bullshit.”

  “So, we’re all right here, and he’s your kin,” Spin said. “So, who’s this helmet whose pointing her weapon at you?”

  Lin glanced at her, then back to Spin, his eyes widening. “Fuck.”

  “Do you remember Marli Owen’s daughter, Terry?” a garbled female voice asked from the black helmet.

  “Oh, shit, he took a hit out on me for that?”

  “No, you idiot, I’m her, I’m Terry. You didn’t even leave a note. I’ve been tracking you for three weeks.”

  “Didn’t recognize you in the combat armour, how ya been?” Lin asked, trying to sound casual.

  Spin lowered her sidearm and dropped it into her thigh holster.

  “You gave me the grish. It’s in stage two.”

  Spin’s jaw dropped. “Oooooh,” Sun and Nigel said over their channel, she could practically hear the pair of them cringing. Of all the sexually transmitted diseases to catch, the grish was the worst. It remained dormant in its first stage, spreading to partners with little trace. Stage two resulted in painful internal and external sores that dripped pus. It took months to treat in that stage, and if you didn’t catch it in time, it would move on to phase three, the flesh eating phase.

  Lin’s nephew looked shocked, glancing from Lin to the helmeted woman over and over again.

  “Oh my God,” Sun said over the communicator. “I almost slept with him last year. Bullet dodged. But, hey, we could make a friend here.”

  “A friend who will have us cleaning chairs and toilet seats every time he visits,” Nigel said. “What did I just start hearing? I just got back into range.”

  “Never mind, we’ll catch you up later,” Sun said.

  “At least you’re not pregnant?” Lin told Terry with a shrug.

  The sound of a loose panel somewhere down the dark corridor made everyone flinch. The corridor intersection was flooded with bright light as the helmeted former lover fired. Spin understood what Sun was getting to, they could make an ally – if a sleazy one – out of Lin. Even though Spin thought he deserved what he had coming, at least a little, she leapt at the armoured woman, tackling her to the ground.

  To her surprise, Terry batted her hard enough to knock the wind out of her and send her sliding more than a dozen metres down the hallway. As soon as she started to slow down, Spin rolled into a side corridor, a short range plasma bolt narrowly missing her.

  The nephew took the opportunity and opened fire on the helmeted woman, peppering her with blazing energy shots until she was a heap on the floor. “Everything okay, Spin?” Sun asked.

  “I got clear, and Terry the dark helmet girl is a hot pile. Don’t know about Lin, I’m going to check now,” Spin said as she rushed back to the hall intersection.

  “Good, I’m one hatch away, but have to cut through.”

  “I’ll be here.” Spin was already reaching into her jacket for her emergency patch kit.

  “Fuck, that was my good arm,” Lin groaned as he laid on his intact side. The stump of his right arm was a burnt mess, and there wasn’t enough of the arm left to reattach. “Thanks for slagging that bitch, Jon.”

  “You kinda had it coming,” Spin said as she knelt down with a tension patch. “This is going to hurt like crazy before the medication kicks in.” Lin screamed as she stretched it over his stump and it conformed to the end, wrapping the wound up to his shoulder and affixing itself tightly.

  Jon, who was carefully prying the helmet off Terry’s head, only spared his screaming uncle a short glance.

  “Okay, the meds are kicking in,” Lin said, panting. “You didn’t have anything that you could have given me first?”

  “Sure I did, but I thought you deserved some misery for passing the gish around, I mean, seriously, who doesn’t use protection these days? It’s not like there’s a clinic on every corner.”

  “I lost a fucking arm and you’re giving me shit about not sealing up before getting it up?” Lin asked.

  Jon laughed, it was a low, breathy sound. “This might fit you,” he said as he offered the helmet to Spin.

  Spin looked at it and at the woman on the deck. The only thing not reduced to a burnt pile of human remains was her face, which was twisted in an expression of fury and pain. “Thank you, Jon,” she said. “I think I’ll clean it before trying it on though.”

  “We’ll be going back to the ship,” Lin groaned. “Jon, get my quad blaster.”

  Jon did so, then pried Lin’s disembodied hand off the handle and offered it to him.

  “Don’t think there’s enough arm to put that back on, buddy,” Lin said.

  “Wait, you’re not going to wait for your scavenging ship? Maybe they could take care of you.”

  “I’ll fess up. We’re scouting for Kiren Arms. I was just taking a run through the ship here to see if there were any high end trinkets we could grab before we reported this gold mine. I thought we’d have a good payday coming, but it looks like I’ll be spending it all on a new arm.”

  “And some serious anti-fungal treatments,” Sun said as she emerged from a side passage. Like Spin, she was in a thick, form-fitted containment suit, only hers was dark red. Her white jacket was armoured, but not quite as well made as Spin’s, which was black and had a refractive coating on top that made it seem darkly multi-coloured.

  “What? Is the Cool Angel right behind?” Lin said.

  “No, we broke away from that crew a while ago,” Sun replied. “You’ve seen better days.”

  “You’re not here because of some unrequited thing, are you? Already had one former sex-type-thing
track me down today.”

  “Absolutely not,” Sun said emphatically. “We just bumped into you by luck. We had no idea there was anyone else aboard.”

  “Speaking of which, there are pickers aboard, I’ve been avoiding them for hours, and my knees are getting a little wobbly. The meds are doing me a lot of good, so I should get back to the ship. Take whatever you can carry, it’ll be two days before we report this thing as abandoned and a salvage crew dig in.”

  “We’ll help you to your ship if you or your nephew tell us all about the places a few people who want to avoid the law may do business. We’re looking for a safe harbour to operate out of, and someone who will trade with people trying to avoid the law. Someone who won’t turn an escaped slave in.”

  “Sure thing,” Lin said. Jon picked his uncle up, a feat that seemed easy even though he was only slightly larger than him. “I’ll even set you up with our ident, so you can call us up later. You know, in case you need anything, or want to get together.”

  “Thanks,” Sun said. “But just business.”

  “Sure, just don’t share what happened here, I have a reputation.”

  “No problem, the more you share, the less we’ll share,” Spin said.

  “Deal.”

  03

  “All right, Nigel’s in,” Della announced with a giggle towards the cockpit door. Sun made sure the airlock was secure then detached from the station. She let the Fleet Feather drift fifteen meters from the base before activating the thrusters and putting the derelict behind them.

  “We’ll be good to make our next wormhole jump as soon as you get us clear,” Spin said. She was looking over the information that Lin had given them. “He really gets around. Five ports in three days, two of them off UCA’s scanners.”

  “That’s a start. Did he give us any information that’ll help us get in touch with Quino?”

  “Well, Wayland Prime is a ‘junk pit’ according to his personal log entry on it. The UCA carpet bombed the place with EMP emitters and conventional warheads then left the planet for dead almost a year ago. There are a few cities though, it says the Red River Rippers, or Rippers are Quino’s new outfit, they’re in – you guessed it - Red River Province.”