by Piers Platt
He looked at the wrench one more time, then tossed it over the edge of the ship. The rest of the repair crew were halfway down the ladder; Falken and the foreman were the only ones left atop the ship. Falken leaned over the edge and saw that the welder was still working on the ruptured fuel line.
“Hurry it up!” the foreman barked.
“Almost done,” the man grunted. “There.” He shut the torch off and started to hand it up to the foreman, but the man waved him away.
“Just drop it! We gotta go!”
Falken hauled on the chain, pulling the man back up to the top of the ship. The crewman unbuckled his safety harness, and then dashed over to the ladder, starting down it. He had stepped down two rungs when a dragon landed on his back, sinking its talons deep into the man’s flesh. He screamed, and the dragon tugged him off the ladder, holding him up in the air. The dragon tried to bite into the welder, but its teeth closed on the oxygen tank on the man’s back. Frustrated, the dragon tossed the man aside – he bounced off of an engine housing and fell limply to the ground below. Then the dragon, still hovering in mid-air, turned its attention to Falken and the foreman.
Falken grabbed the foreman by the shirt, then turned and jumped. They landed on their backs on the curving hull of the ship, and for a second, merely slid down the hull. Then the curvature of the ship grew much steeper, and their gentle slide turned into a swift plummet. Falken tried to grab at the hull, but the smooth tiles gave him nothing to grip. A moment later, they hit the ground.
“Ah!” the foreman gasped. “My leg.”
Falken clapped a hand over the man’s mouth, silencing him. Then he stood up and grabbed the foreman by the collar, pulling him underneath the ship’s hull. He saw the ramp of the ship ahead of them and hurried toward it, dragging the foreman behind him.
“Behind us!” the foreman called, wrenching Falken’s hand off of his mouth.
Falken glanced back over his shoulder. The dragon had landed on the ground, and was now crawling on its wings and hind legs beneath the ship, snarling as it pursued them. Falken willed the proxy’s legs onward, putting on a burst of speed. The ramp ahead began to move – someone inside the ship had started to close it. Falken tugged the injured foreman out from under the ship and then hauled him up and onto the ramp as it swung upward. With a final effort, he leapt and caught the edge of the ramp with both hands, pulling himself up and inside the ship a split second before it sealed shut. He slid down the far side of the ramp, landing heavily on his side at the bottom, next to the foreman.
“You broke my leg,” the foreman said, wincing in pain.
Falken sat up and leaned against the bulkhead. “Yeah? Would you rather be in here with a broken leg, or still up on top of the hull?” he asked.
The foreman fixed him with an icy stare. “You called those dragons in on us,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
Falken shook his head. “No. That welding torch woke up every dragon on Olympus,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Bullshit,” the foreman said. “I think you fucked with one of those noise devices, and lured them in to try to take us all out.”
“I just saved your ass,” Falken said. “Why would I do that if I wanted you dead?”
“My men are dead because you didn’t protect us,” the foreman said.
“Those men are dead because you brought them to Olympus,” Falken told him. “And I’m guessing they won’t be the last ones to pay for that mistake. Your ship’s fixed: I’m out of here.”
He bit down three times, and his vision went dark as the connection to the proxy was severed.
Chapter 28
In the evening, the crew of the CGS Extremis gathered in the ship’s mess, taking seats at tables, and watching as Commander Jiyake fiddled with the vidscreen at the front of the room. Chief Risley and Detective Adnan stood to one side, waiting. Finally, Jiyake straightened up, and turned to address the crew.
“I want to ask something of you,” she told them. “It’s a little unusual, and probably dangerous, so before you answer, I want you to be fully informed. Okay?” She turned to Adnan. “Detective?”
He stepped forward and cleared his throat, as a mugshot of Jens appeared on the screen. “I’m Detective Adnan, Harrison’s PD. This is Jens. He’s a crane operator here on Harrison’s – the same crane operator who tore a hole in your hull earlier today. He says he was drunk this morning, but we also have evidence that somebody paid an escort to sleep with him, and they may have been blackmailing him ever since. In short, we think someone forced Jens to disable the Extremis. In order to keep you guys out of the way.”
“Out of the way of what?” a crewmember asked.
Adnan turned to Jiyake, who tapped a button on her wristpad. Exterior footage of the space station appeared onscreen. “This is a view of Harrison’s during the crane incident. All inbound traffic is on hold, and here’s the Liberty Belle leaving her slip and getting ready to head to Olympus. Beyond her is the Starfarer – scheduled for New Caledonia – leaving at about the same time.”
“Didn’t we inspect Starfarer, ma’am?” a female crewmember asked.
“Yes, we did. They passed inspection.” Jiyake looked over the room. “The Liberty Belle has since arrived at Olympus. Soon after, the emergency distress beacon on the Adrenaline Junkies went off. I’ve been unable to reach anyone on that ship since then. But I have had two conversations with Captain Muir on the Liberty Belle. In both conversations she was unusually … abrupt. I’m not sure how else to describe it, she just seemed uncommunicative. Not her usual self.”
“They’re running a rescue op out on Olympus on their own,” an ensign pointed out. “Could just be stress, ma’am.”
“It could be,” Jiyake agreed. “That’s absolutely true.” She took a deep breath, then exhaled. She held up fingers on one hand, counting on them. “So here’s where we’re at: the Ecolympus crashed, and we don’t know why. The Adrenaline Junkies is now offline, too – status unknown. The Liberty Belle is at Olympus now, but their captain is acting strange. It also appears as though somebody went to some lengths to sabotage us, in an effort to keep us here at Harrison’s. And finally, the Starfarer departed Harrison’s at the same time as the Liberty Belle, headed in the same direction. You guys remember what was in the Starfarer’s hold?”
“A couple of big shipping containers,” the female crewmember said.
“Yes,” Jiyake agreed. “Two large, empty, metal shipping containers of a custom design. I think they could be used as cages … for dragons.”
The room was silent for a moment. A petty officer raised his hand. “Why steal dragons?”
“I don’t know,” Jiyake admitted. “They’re dangerous and protected – no one’s allowed to transport them off Olympus. That makes them rare, exotic … valuable. And anytime you make a rule, someone’s going to want to break it.”
“What do you think, Chief?” another crewmember asked.
Risley crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I dunno who’d be stupid enough to want to keep dragons, but I think the commander’s got a nose for trouble. Remember two patrols ago, when she had us hang out for a little longer at that rendezvous point, and we ended up bagging the smuggler crew? If she thinks something fishy is going on, I’m with her.” He pointed a finger at the deck. “And if someone fucked with my ship to pull off some heist, I’m sure as hell not just sitting around on my ass, doing nothing.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Jiyake said. “But let me be clear: this is all just a theory right now.” She looked at Adnan. “A hunch. We’ve got a lot of seemingly random coincidences that add up to something suspicious. But we don’t have definitive proof of criminal activity, aside from what I’ve told you so far.”
Adnan nodded. “From an investigation standpoint, it’s compelling, but if the Starfarer crew were here right now, I wouldn’t have enough to charge them. At this point it’s just a lead.”
“Right,” Jiyake said. “It could be nothing. I could be j
umping at shadows.”
“… or there could be not one, but three different ships in danger on Olympus right now,” Chief Risley pointed out.
“True,” Jiyake said.
“Ma’am? Even if it’s true, their plan already worked,” the petty officer said. “We’re benched. We can’t go anywhere with that big hole in our hull.”
“Patched hole,” Risley corrected.
“Well … yeah, Chief,” the petty officer replied. “It’s patched now. But we still can’t leap to faster-than-light. That patch would come right off, and we’d get torn apart at superlight speeds.”
Chief Risley eyed Commander Jiyake. “There’s a super-freighter at Harrison’s right now,” she said. “It tied up at docking arm twelve yesterday.”
The petty officer frowned, and then a slow smile spread across his face. “You want to stick us inside the super-freighter’s cargo hold.”
“We’d fit,” Jiyake said. “With room to spare. I checked.”
“Then the super-freighter flies us to Olympus, we pop out of their cargo hold, and suddenly we’re back in business,” the crewmember said. “That’s sneaky as hell, ma’am. I like it.”
“Well, there are two problems with that plan,” Jiyake said. “For starters, I’d have to commandeer the super-freighter. There’s a provision in the Colonial Guard policy manual for that kind of scenario, but it’s a little murky. Basically, if we commandeer the super-freighter, and it turns out nothing was happening at Olympus, I can be held liable for any of their lost revenues. And I’d probably lose my commission. But … I’m willing to take those risks.”
“The other problem,” Chief Risley added, “is that we don’t know what we’re up against. At minimum, we’re probably facing off against the Starfarer. If they’re the kind of assholes we think they are, and they attacked one or more of the ships at Olympus, then they’re definitely armed. Normally, we can out-gun most anyone that’s stupid enough to take us on. But we’ve got a compromised hull – any hit on our little patch-job is likely to take out the whole ship.”
“And there could be other hostile ships at Olympus, too,” Jiyake said. “Multiple armed ships, for all we know. We’d be flying in blind, against an unknown enemy, in a wounded ship. That’s a lot to ask of any crew. So … if we go at all … it would be volunteers only.”
Chief Risley set a pad of paper and pencils on the nearest table. “Anonymous voting. I wanted to just go around the room, but the commander’s a softie, so we’re doing it her way. Tear off a piece of paper, write ‘yes’ on it if you’re in, or ‘no’ if you’re not, and we’ll see what we see. I’m writing ‘yes,’ for the record. Nobody fucks with the Extremis on my watch.”
Within a minute the papers and pens had been handed out, and the crew were soon passing their decisions back to the front of the room. Jiyake reviewed them, one by one, and then looked over the crew and smiled.
“Prep for launch,” she told them.
*
“I’d like to come, too,” Detective Adnan told Commander Jiyake, as their transit tube sped through the bowels of the space station.
“Are you sure?” she asked. Outside the spherical pod, the gray tunnel walls flashed by, punctuated occasionally by the bright white lights of a station stop.
“You might need a lawman to make some arrests,” he said.
“Detective, every member of my crew is empowered to make arrests,” Jiyake told him. “We do it all the time.”
“Well … I want to see this one through,” Adnan said. “It started here on Harrison’s, so I feel some responsibility for it.”
“There’s a good chance we see some fighting,” Jiyake warned. “If we’re right, the Starfarer is not going to go quietly.”
“I understand,” Adnan said. “All the same – if you can find room for me, I’d appreciate the chance to tag along.”
“It’s fine by me,” Jiyake said. “I never say ‘no’ to help.”
The transit tube slowed, jerking slightly, and then came to a stop at a station marked 12. Jiyake kicked the door open. She stepped up onto the platform, with Adnan close behind. A gray-haired man wearing a well-worn captain’s uniform stood waiting for them.
“Commander Jiyake?” he asked.
“Captain Pindar,” she said, gripping his hand in greeting. “Thanks for meeting us.”
“You fly cargo liners for nearly thirty years, you learn not to ignore the Colonial Guard when they call,” he said. “Though I thought our initial inspection was clear …?”
“It was,” Jiyake said. “This is Detective Adnan.”
“Nice to meet you,” Pindar said. “If our inspection was clear, Commander, what seems to be the problem?”
“I’m actually coming to you for a favor,” Jiyake said.
“A favor?” Pindar frowned.
“To be blunt, I need a ride,” Jiyake said. “I believe there’s a major crime occurring in this sector, but my hull’s breached, and I can’t make FTL travel to go intervene.”
Pindar raised an eyebrow. “Where?”
“Olympus,” Jiyake said.
Pindar’s other eyebrow lifted up, as well. “Commander, I’m supposed to start cross-loading cargo from three other freighters onto the Nakimo in thirty minutes. After that, I’m due at my next stop in twenty-one hours. I have a schedule to keep. But instead, you want me to fly your ship to a dragon-infested colony, where a major crime is occurring?”
“May be occurring,” Adnan pointed out. “We don’t know for sure.”
Jiyake sighed. “And there’s a good chance we’d be putting the Nakimo in harm’s way, at least until we can get the Extremis out of your cargo hold. The criminals are likely armed, and dangerous.”
“That’s a hell of a favor you’re asking for,” Pindar said.
“I’m aware,” Jiyake said. “I wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t my only option. And if I didn’t think people’s lives were at stake.”
Pindar bit his lip, and eyed the commander, and then the detective. “I have a colleague who’s fond of bragging about a time his ship was commandeered by the Colonial Guard. Apparently they needed it for an undercover sting operation. The way he tells it, he didn’t have a choice in the matter – the Guard just seized his ship for the duration.”
“That’s probably true,” Jiyake said. “I do have the ability to do that, if the situation warrants.”
“Well,” Pindar said, rubbing his chin. “I’d love to be able to shut him up, the next time he wheels that story out at the bar, by telling him about the time I escorted a cutter into battle.”
Jiyake grinned. “Does that mean you’ll help us?”
“No,” Pindar said, shaking his head. “At least not officially. You better invoke whatever legal crap you need to, and commandeer my ship officially. Otherwise I’ll have corporate fining me for lending my ship out for a fool’s errand.”
“Consider it done,” Jiyake agreed. “The Nakimo is officially under command of the Colonial Guard. I’ll send you a copy of the paperwork in about two minutes.”
“Hmph,” Pindar said, grunting in mock annoyance. “Damn Colonial Guard, always throwing their weight around.” He smiled. “Where’s the Extremis now?”
Jiyake checked her wristpad. “Waiting about five hundred meters off the Nakimo’s bow, if Chief Risley hasn’t run into any traffic flying over here.”
“Good. Let’s get it loaded up,” Pindar said. “And then I’ve gotta go call my boss and pretend I’m upset about all this.”
Chapter 29
Falken pushed the lid to the sensory displacement pod upward, and found Shep waiting for him, pistol pointed at his chest.
“Did they fix it?” Shep asked.
“I don’t know,” Falken said. “The dragons came just as we were finishing the repair.”
“Out,” Shep said, gesturing with the pistol. “Back to the conference room.”
Falken padded down the hall in the wet bodysuit, with Shep behind him. In the conference
room, Falken’s fellow hostages sat around the table, watching the screens. Kuda leaned on the table, talking to Captain Auresh’s image.
“… testing it now,” Auresh said. “Stand by.”
Falken took a seat between Raynard and Vina.
“How are you feeling?” Falken asked the journalist.
“Weak,” Raynard replied, quietly. “And worried.”
Vina put her hand on Falken’s arm. “How did it go?” she asked.
“They lost another couple crewmen,” Falken said. “But I think they got it fixed.”
“What happens now?” Vina whispered.
“I don’t know,” Falken said.
Auresh appeared on the screen again a moment later. “Engines are operational. Get ready to move.”
From the end of the table, Ed spoke up. “Don’t forget our deal,” he said. “Get me off this planet, and I’ll reward you handsomely.”
“Captain?” Kuda asked.
Auresh frowned. “He can come. The others stay. Clean things up over there, and then get to the Starfarer. We’re taking off in five.” The screen shut off.
‘Clean things up,’ Falken thought. Ah, shit.
“Everybody up,” Kuda ordered.
Falken stood, surreptitiously gauging the distance to Kuda, who was closest to him. But he’s no fool … he’s maintaining enough distance that I’d be dead before I got anywhere near him.
Falken looked over at Shep, who was typing into the computer terminal at the table; Falken saw that he was deleting all of the research center’s security camera footage for the day, and disabling the cameras.
“What about the other two? The pilot and the captain from the resupply ship?” Shep asked, stepping away from the computer.
Kuda frowned, then dug in his pocket. He pulled out a set of handcuff keys and tossed them over to his brother. “Go. I’ll stay here.”
Shep turned and disappeared down the hallway toward the Liberty Belle’s docking tube, pistol in hand.
