“Hey,” Aaron croaked. His voice broke in the middle and he half-grinned.
Susan walked over slowly, returning his smile as she got closer. “I thought we might lose you there for a while.”
“That’s what Jessica says.”
Susan glanced around and found Jessica smiling at the two of them. The smile suggested that the doctor suspected there was more to Aaron and Susan’s relationship. Her smile faltered as Susan’s eyes swept over her, and she excused herself and stepped out through the med bay’s double doors.
Susan slid a small stool over and sat down to the left of Aaron’s bed.
“So how did your first command go?” Aaron asked.
Susan sighed. “I never want to be in command again,” she answered honestly. “You can have it.”
Aaron grinned. “Thanks, because I’ve missed it.”
She spent a few minutes catching him up on the drug run and the events at the spaceport. He seemed impressed with her command decisions and that she had locked up Eric and Thomas for the time being.
“Enough about that, though,” Susan said a tad impatiently. “I want to know what happened to you. I already know you completed the assignment, but I want to know the rest.”
Aaron nodded and told her the details of his mission, right up to finding Thomas sitting on his doorstep.
“Lucky for him that you didn’t follow through on your promise to shoot him the next time you saw him,” Susan said.
Aaron nodded again, but this time he winced. “Yeah, you’re right. I nearly did shoot him, but I’m glad I didn’t.” He continued on with the story, pausing only briefly before he told her the way he had turned control over to the computer. How it had killed Terra and the telepath at the business complex. He paused and waited for her to say something.
“I couldn’t sense you outside that building,” Susan said quietly. “I thought you were dying or something. Do you remember?”
Aaron shook his head. “I don’t remember anything that happened while the computer was in control.” He paused again, uncomfortable with the topic of conversation. “It’s showed me what happened, but to me, it’s like watching a movie.”
Susan didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. How do you respond to something like that? she thought. She cast around for anything to ask, anything to keep the silence from dragging along. “So you killed all five?” she asked.
“No,” Aaron said, “only four. The fifth one wasn’t there. Emma the telepath said that someone called Nelson was stuck in a place called Mettin City. I assume he’s the fifth.”
Susan frowned. “I doubt he could connect this ship with what happened.”
Aaron shrugged. “I doubt it, but I don’t plan on coming back here, and the name they have is wrong.”
“Better retire the Soaring Freedom name,” Susan said.
Aaron considered only for a moment and then nodded. “We have other falsified names for the ship. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
The ship had several false identities, just like each member of its crew. They had just lost one, but they still had several more. If it got bad, then they would have to purchase more. They weren’t that hard to get. As with all things, the better the quality, the more expensive they were.
“Any idea how they found Eric and Thomas?” Susan asked.
Aaron blinked. “I hadn’t thought anymore about it. Did you ask them?”
“Of course, but they’re clueless.”
Aaron chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Susan asked.
“Clueless is a fairly apt description for those two,” he said.
Susan shared in the joke, but only for a moment. “I could get them and we could discuss it.”
Aaron nodded. “Looks like they’ll have to get in line,” he said.
Susan looked around to see the rest of the crew staring at them through the windows; even Grady had left the quiet of his room. She smiled and waved them in.
As they entered, there were greetings, hugs, and even a few rude jokes at Aaron’s expense. He didn’t mind; he was home and it felt good. Molly even shed a few tears for him. That felt weird; he hadn’t expected to ever have anyone crying over him again.
“So where we headed?” he asked.
“Well, at the moment we’re going toward Beta Leporis, but we’re still several weeks away. We thought we might change once you woke up,” Adam said. “Any idea where you might want to go?”
Aaron considered for a moment. “No,” he said finally, “but give me some time and I might just come up with a destination for us.”
“What about our two malcontents?” Eve asked.
Aaron sighed. Leave it to Eve to bring down the mood, he thought. “Susan and I were just talking about them. Why don’t you bring them in? I have some questions for them.”
Grady, Russell, and Adam all left the room and remained gone for nearly ten minutes. When they returned, a disgruntled-looking Eric and a rumpled-looking Thomas walked between them.
“Thought you were dead,” Eric said when he caught sight of Aaron. He and Thomas stopped at the foot of Aaron’s bed.
The crew was spread out, some on the left and the rest along the right wall.
Aaron grinned at him. “I feel like it.”
“So what’s the deal?” Thomas asked. “Why are we still prisoners?”
Aaron chose not to answer that particular question; instead, he steered the conversation the way he wanted it to go. “How’d you get caught?”
Eric and Thomas shared a look, and they both shrugged. “No idea,” Eric said sourly.
“Did you get in contact with anyone in the Miram Union?” Aaron asked.
Eric snorted. “Do we look fucking retarded to you?” he demanded in his normal, grumpy voice.
How do I answer that? Aaron thought. He couldn’t very well give an honest answer. Why, yes, Eric. You do look fucking retarded to me. There was a muffled snort from behind him, and he turned to see Susan pretending to cough. He felt pretty sure she had just been in his mind and had heard his thoughts. She wouldn’t meet his gaze.
He turned back to Eric and Thomas. “How could they have found you, then?”
Eric and Thomas shared another look and then shrugged again. “No idea,” Eric repeated.
“Did you contact anyone that you knew before?” Aaron asked again, “whether or not they are in the Miram Union?”
“No,” Eric replied, sounding annoyed.
“Did you contact any criminals and give them your actual names?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Did either of you tell any of your whores an amazing story of your dramatic escape from a Unionist prison ship?”
“No.”
“Did you mention us to anyone?”
“No.”
“And you can’t come up with any reason why these people found you, when they were looking for us?”
“No!” Eric said, his voice rising now. “There’s absolutely no reason that I can think of for them finding us.”
Aaron lapsed into silence. His mind was racing, trying to find a reason why these two knuckleheads had been caught when Will and his group had been looking for them. Finally, he said, “Tell me step by step exactly what you did when you left this ship. I’m assuming that the first thing you did was to get drunk and find some female companionship.”
Eric looked sour, so Thomas answered. “We wanted a drink and some company, but the first thing we did was get a room.” He looked a little embarrassed, but continued, “You know, in case we did find a couple of women. We rented a room, dropped off our clothes and our guns, and then we . . .”
“Guns?” Aaron asked, interrupting. “What guns? You should have only had a few changes of clothes to take with you.”
“Uh,” Russell said, suddenly looking embarrassed. “I let them each take a gun. It seemed fair and you wanted them to just go away. I thought it might help.”
Aaron ignored Russell, his attention was focus
ed on his two malcontents. “Which guns did you take?”
“I took one of the Logans,” Thomas said slowly. His eyes narrowed and he watched Aaron closely. He seemed to sense that Aaron’s mood had changed.
Eric, however, was oblivious. “What does it matter?” he demanded. “It’s only right that you at least give us a chance to defend ourselves.”
“What gun did you take?” Aaron repeated, quietly.
Eric sighed deeply. “I took the Patterson,” he said after a moment.
The Patterson! Aaron thought.
“What is it?” Susan asked. She must have sensed the change in him.
Aaron ignored her. He kept his attention riveted on Eric. “You found your pack when I freed you from the kidnappers . . . was it in there?”
Everyone seemed to sense that something important was happening, but they all seemed unaware of exactly what it was.
“Yeah,” Eric said slowly, nodding.
“Where is it now?”
“I put it with the other guns in a locker,” Russell answered. “Why?”
“Go get it, please,” Aaron said.
Russell frowned at not getting his question answered, but he dutifully left the room.
“Care to clue the rest of in?” Eve asked. “What’s so important about that gun?”
Aaron looked up from where he had been studying the shape of his feet through the blanket. “That gun is the one that Benjamin Dunn gave me after our smuggling run to Bathia. He gave it to me before I even asked about buying any guns. He called it my bonus.”
Every face looked thoughtful now.
“You think he, what, put a tracking device in the gun?” Eric asked slowly.
Aaron nodded. “That’s exactly what I think.”
Further discussion was interrupted by Russell’s sudden return. He carried the Patterson at his side. He stepped inside the doors and looked expectantly at Aaron.
“Break it down, please,” Aaron said.
Russell looked confused, but he moved over to a small portable table and quickly broke the gun down into its many small pieces. “Okay. Now what?”
“Anything unusual?” Aaron asked.
“Unusual?” Russell repeated, obviously confused.
Kyle and Susan moved closer and began sifting through the small pieces.
“What’s that?” Susan asked, pointing to a tiny piece of metal that was smaller than her pinky fingernail.
Kyle reached out and flipped it over. He and Russell both leaned in close and examined it. “This might be your tracker,” Kyle said.
“Tracker?” Russell repeated.
“Benjamin Dunn gave me that gun. He had it waiting for me when I got there,” Aaron said. “Eric took it with him when he left the ship, and our kidnappers somehow managed to find him.”
Russell took a deep breath and looked back to the small piece of metal. “Oh,” he said simply.
“Surely something this small couldn’t create a wormhole to send a message through,” Susan said, still looking at the small piece of metal.
“No,” Kyle said, “it definitely couldn’t create a wormhole, but it probably wouldn’t need to.”
“Explain,” Susan said, more of a command than a request.
“My father has some things similar to this. It wouldn’t need to create a wormhole—it could piggyback on ours when we’re underway.”
“And when we’re planetside?” Aaron asked.
“Well, then it could use the system’s own communication satellites. It’s even easier when we’re in-system,” Kyle replied.
“Son of a bitch,” Eric said, staring at the metal. “You mean they found me because I took that gun?”
“It’s beginning to look that way,” Aaron said.
“We can’t let Dunn get away with this,” Thomas said. He was normally stoic, but his face was carved up with anger now. “We should head that way, right now!”
There was a buzz of whispered conversations.
“No,” Aaron said loudly, cutting through the conversations and causing an immediate silence. Every face turned to look at him.
“We can’t let Dunn get away with this,” Thomas said again, rather emphatically. “You’re not getting scared, are you?” He and Eric were both pumped up and ready for a fight.
Aaron turned his hard gaze on Thomas and after a moment Thomas dropped his eyes. “Use your fucking head,” Aaron said coolly. “If Dunn set us up, then whoever he did it for will probably expect us to go to Pocal. I wouldn’t be surprised if a small army was keeping watch over Dunn. And I don’t mean his people . . . I mean the people who kidnapped you. You fancy meeting up with them again?”
After a moment, both Eric and Thomas shook their heads.
“There will come a time and opportunity for us to get Dunn, but it’s not right now.”
“What do we do with it?” Russell asked, pointing to the small table.
“Out the airlock with it,” Aaron replied.
“Just the tracker, or the rest of the Patterson as well?”
Aaron snorted. “Just the tracker. Please reassemble the gun and put it back with the others.”
Russell nodded, picked up the tracker, and then disappeared out through the doors.
“So what now?” Eve demanded. “Where do we go from here?”
“We need to change our course,” Susan said.
Aaron nodded. “Once the tracker’s out the airlock, we can drop to normal space and then . . .” he paused, unsure of what would happen then. He would need to get in touch with Locke again. Somehow, Dunn had been on the lookout for them; he had to see if there was a bounty on their heads that he didn’t know about. It was the only thing that made sense to him. If Dunn was actively working for what remained of the Commonwealth intelligence groups, then there would have been a hundred soldiers waiting for the Long Shot when it returned from Bathia. Best guess was that Dunn was just an informant. He probably didn’t want to get too involved, so he sent Aaron away with a way of tracking him.
At the moment, there were more important things, like where they went from here.
“Secardus is several weeks away,” Adam said. “It’s not quite the opposite direction, but close enough. Plus, there’s a lot of criminal activity in that system.”
“Great. We’ll fit right in,” Jessica said in a jovial tone.
“Uh,” Eric said, interrupting. “What about us?”
“What about you?”
“Well, are you going to drop us off somewhere?”
Aaron watched the two, trying to decide what to do with them.
“Perhaps you’d let us rejoin this merry, little crew?” Thomas asked. His eyes studied Aaron carefully. “We screwed up and you could say we paid a hell of a price for it. Would you allow us back in?”
“Are you sure that you even want to come back?” Aaron asked. “You’re less likely to get a second chance or leniency again.”
Thomas looked to Eric, who simply shrugged. “We wouldn’t assault you, if that’s what you’re asking,” Thomas said, “but we would appreciate the benefit of the doubt. We won’t always behave exactly as you’d want, but we’ll do our best.”
Aaron casually glanced to Susan and she shrugged. He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but at least she hadn’t picked up any obvious deception in the two. Instead of answering Thomas, Aaron glanced around at the other members of his crew. “Opinions?”
There was surprise on some of the faces, but Eve spoke up. “Give them another chance. If they screw up, then flush them out the airlock.”
“Hey, now!” Thomas said, turning in surprise at Eve’s harsh words, but she was smiling at him, and after a moment, he smiled back. “Let’s not even play like that, please.”
“Welcome back, gentlemen,” Aaron said. “This is your second chance. There will not be a third. Got it?”
Both men nodded.
Epilogue
Lieutenant Ian Nelson sat in the small hotel room and waited while his comm gear connec
ted through to Gamma Crucis. It wasn’t an actual live connection, rather his message would be recorded when it was received and then he would be given his orders. He didn’t expect to hear anything back until at least tomorrow.
There was a small beep and Nelson sat up a bit straighter.
“This is Lieutenant Ian Nelson of the Commonwealth Alliance with a priority one message for Senator Long.” He paused and swallowed hard. “It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that the mission has failed. Colonel William Stone, Major Emma Cooke, Captain Terra Bowe, and Lieutenant Quinton Hymire have all died in the line of duty. We captured several members of Colonel Walker’s crew nearly a week ago, but were unable to get any useful intel from them. Colonel Stone sent me to the spaceport in Nettin City to check for our targets. While I was there a local crime lord was killed in Marin Aldabia and the whole planet seems to have been locked down. I was forced to remain there for five days. Upon returning to Marin Aldabia, I found our base destroyed and the place crawling with security. I discovered that two bodies were found in the building rubble and that two others were found shot to death in a local hotel room. I can only surmise that Colonel Walker or some of his group were discovered and somehow managed to kill my fellow soldiers. I have verified the identities of the four bodies and there can be no doubt that the previously listed soldiers are dead. I have been unable to uncover a clue on where Colonel Walker and the others may have gone. However, the tracker is no longer broadcasting, so I request permission to go to Pocal III and maintain surveillance on the informant, Dunn. Please respond with farther instructions. Out.”
Nelson pushed a button and the recording stopped. He slumped and appeared to age ten years. He was only twenty-seven years old, but he had seen a lot in that short time. He had fought on the losing side of a war and seen his home planet decimated. There was precious little hope left in him. Now that his friends were dead, he felt cold inside, cold and alone. If only he had been here, perhaps his friends and fellow soldiers would still be alive.
Kill Shot: A Remnant of the Commonwealth, Book Two Page 25
