Quantum Predation (Argonauts Book 4)

by Isaac Hooke

  “Well, I’m going to hold you to the promise you made when we first signed you as a client,” Rade said. “And that was: we were allowed to take on other jobs, at my discretion. That latter part is key. My discretion. Besides, maybe this incident is related to a Phant. You never know.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “And yet there’s always a chance,” Rade said. “Because we all know that Phants can easily hide within any machine, even the AI core of a starship.” Hiding in AIs wasn’t possible on all ships, of course. Most United Systems warships had had their AI cores shielded since the First Alien War; the Argonaut itself had a shielded core.

  “Fine,” Surus said. “Will you at least let me continue with my originally planned rendezvous?”

  “With the Green in this system?” Rade asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Surus said.

  “I can do that,” Rade said. “After we pick up the client from Talan, we’ll swing past the asteroid we were tracking earlier. You can have your meeting, and then we’ll reverse course to the Slipstream and continue toward the Kenyan colony.”

  “Thank you,” Surus said.

  “You weren’t expecting this Green to give you any leads in person, were you?” Rade said.

  “No,” Surus said. “I planned it as more of a perfunctory meeting than anything else, mostly to confirm that the Phant is properly performing his duty.”

  “You’ve started to distrust the other Greens, haven’t you?” Rade said. “After our last mission...”

  “Yes,” Surus said. “I was surprised by what Azen did. Injecting a retrovirus into a candidate for empress so that he could take control of her once she succeeded the throne. I have to keep close tabs on the other Greens in this sector. I’m not sure who I can trust anymore.”

  “Neither am I,” Rade said pointedly.

  “You can trust me,” Surus said.

  “Can I?”

  She smiled for the first time since the meeting began. “If you can’t trust me, then who can you trust?”

  “My men,” Rade said. “Shaw.”

  “We’ve been through three missions together,” Surus said. “We fought together in the First Alien War.”

  “I know,” Rade said. “But that doesn’t mean I really know who you are. You keep to yourself in the quarters I assigned you. Harlequin visits with you the most, and even he tells me he feels he doesn’t really know you. I’m not surprised he voted against continuing to have you as a client.”

  “I asked him about that,” Surus said. “He told me he didn’t do it out of any mistrust of me, or my motives. He did it because he felt dropping me as a client would be safer for the crew, because of the nature of the missions I take you all on.”

  “Yes,” Rade said. “Exactly. This is another reason why I need to accept this mission. We need something easy for once. A bit of a break for my men.”

  “I have already agreed to allow this,” Surus said. “If you don’t mind, I would like to return to my quarters.”

  Rade frowned. “Whether you agreed or not, I was going to take the mission. I told you: my company, my ship.”

  “Yes,” Surus said. “I ask again, may I return to my quarters?”

  “You may,” Rade said.

  With that she got up and left.

  Rade stared at the hatch behind her.

  He was starting to wonder if it was a bad idea to continue with her as a client. If she was going to be so intractable, forcing him to fight for every side mission, he wasn’t sure she was worth the trouble.

  All he had to do was remind himself of how important it was to hunt down those rogue Phants remaining in their region of space, and just how dangerous to humanity they really were.

  He sighed.

  She’s going to be our client for many years to come, most likely. If we survive that long.

  I’m just going to have to deal with it.

  two

  Half an hour out from Talan station Rade heard the familiar ding that told him money had been received in his account. He pulled up the bank interface on his Implant. It was the ten K deposit.

  So far, so good.

  Fret tapped in a few minutes later. “We’re receiving the required orbital pattern from the station’s Space Traffic Control. Looks like they want us to take up a position two kilometers from their port side, twenty degrees inclination.”

  “Relay the information to Shaw,” Rade replied.

  She would have to account for the planet’s gravity while coming up with her orbital vector. Talan orbited a Venus type greenhouse world that the Asiatic Alliance was in the process of terraforming. Judging from the severe acid rain down there, it looked like they had a few more centuries to go.

  “We’ve entered the specified orbital pattern,” Tahoe reported in later from the bridge. Rade was still in his office, and had left his best friend and first officer in charge of the conn.

  “Good,” Rade said. “I want you to join Harlequin in a shuttle to pick up Batindo.”

  “You got it, boss,” Tahoe said. “Any chance I can make a quick detour to the Nova Dynamics outlet while I’m there? I heard they have quite the collection of used combat robots. Maybe I can find us a bargain.”

  “Sorry, Tahoe,” Rade said. “Surus is pissed enough about this whole operation as it is. Let’s not try to further aggravate her. Besides, I haven’t received confirmation of my combat robot license renewal yet this year. Even if you find a robot you like, they’ll never let you buy a new one when they see our license has expired.”

  “We can use the license Surus has,” Tahoe said.

  “As I told you, the alien is regally pissed,” Rade said. “Now isn’t the time to go asking her any favors. Go to the station, pick up Batindo, and come straight back.”

  “All right,” Tahoe said. “Don’t need a pissed off alien on my case. It’s times like this where I’m very glad I’m not the one interfacing with the client. It’s probably not too different from dealing with a bossy lieutenant commander like in the old days, is it?”

  “Not very, no,” Rade said.

  “The alien lieutenant commander from hell,” Tahoe said.

  “Sounds about right,” Rade said. “Rade out.”

  He disconnected.

  Harlequin and Tahoe took one of the Dragonfly shuttles to Talan station and returned in forty-five minutes with Batindo aboard.

  Rade was waiting in the hangar bay airlock with Shaw to greet the client. Besides the fact that she was the biggest shareholder of the ship, having borrowed against the equity in her parents’ farm to help finance the purchase, she was also his partner in life, and he wanted her there to meet this man he had taken on as a client. Her female intuition often sensed things about people that Rade did not.

  When the hangar pressurized after the shuttle docked, Rade opened the inner hatch of the airlock and stepped inside with Shaw.

  The ramp of the Dragonfly shuttle was folding open at that very moment. Tahoe stepped outside. The muscular Navajo cast his gaze throughout the bay, taking in everything around him. Even though this was a friendly ship, Tahoe’s training would make it hard to let his guard down. Probably a good thing. His movements reminded Rade almost of a bear protecting its cub: tense, with a hint that he was ready to spring forward and attack at a moment’s notice. If Rade had been the one retrieving the client, he probably would have behaved the same way.

  Batindo came down shortly afterward. He couldn’t have been more of Tahoe’s opposite, both in terms of looks and body language. He had a round, dark face, and diminutive stature. Wattle underneath his chin shook as he walked. His stride was self-absorbed, almost imperious. He carried a walking staff in his right hand, taller than him, ending in a thick wooden globe. He wore what could best be described as a mix of traditional and modern Kenyan clothing: over a dress suit a long, red and black checkered blanket hung from his shoulders. Around his neck were three flashy golden chains where a tie should have been. His corncob-styled hair was dyed a brig
ht red, matching the color of the blanket. His dress shoes seemed slightly sandal-like, in that there were cuts for his feet to “breathe.”

  Batindo seemed completely at ease, and yet he held his head high as he stepped into the hangar. Like he ranked above everyone on that vessel, and they were lucky he deigned to honor them with his presence.

  His eyes swiveled toward Rade, but then immediately locked onto Shaw beside him, and remained there as the man walked forward. He tripped on the deck where two connecting panels formed a slight indention, forcing Tahoe to catch him.

  “Release me you brute!” Batindo said.

  When Tahoe did so, Batindo rubbed at the spot on his blanket where Tahoe had touched him. “You dirty my shuka!”

  “Uh, okay,” Tahoe said.

  Batindo turned once more toward Rade and Shaw and smiled widely. “Mr. Rade Galaal?”

  “That’s what my public profile says…” Rade said.

  Batindo nodded. He focused his attention entirely on Shaw once more.

  “I was not aware that you had such beautiful servants,” Batindo said.

  “Batindo, this is Shaw Chopra,” Rade said. “The astrogator of the Argonaut. And its biggest shareholder.”

  “My apologies!” Batindo said. “I was not expecting, well, let me just say, someone of your caliber. I assumed the crew was filled with mercenaries and other ex-military types, you understand.”

  He reached for Shaw’s hand and she allowed him to take it. He began lifting it to his lips.

  “I’m actually ex-military.” Shaw smiled sweetly.

  Batindo froze before he could kiss her hand. Then he looked up and smiled feebly. He released her hand as if he had been stung. It wasn’t her words so much that had gotten to the man, Rade suspected, but her tone. Soft, yet subtly threatening.

  “You have prepared quarters for me, I assume?” Batindo said.

  Rade nodded. “Two of my men have given up their stateroom for you.” That would be Lui and Harlequin, who had agreed to temporarily quarter in the cargo hold with Surus. “Tahoe will escort you.”

  “Thank you,” Batindo said. “I am sure you have many stories to tell me. Of the days you spent in the military. Of the clients you’ve taken on since then. I look forward to hearing them all in the days to come.”

  Rade forced a smile. “For sure.”

  When Batindo was gone, Rade glanced at Shaw.

  “I don’t like him,” she said.

  “Should we keep him as a client?” Rade said.

  Shaw shrugged. “Who am I to go against your decision? Let him stay. The boys could use some laughs. Besides, Kitale colony might actually be in danger.”

  “We could always go there on our own,” Rade said. “To check up on the place, and leave him here.”

  “He could prove useful passing certain checkpoints on the way to the Kenyan outpost,” Shaw said. “His diplomatic status will open some doors I’m sure. Or Gates, to be precise.”

  “All right,” Rade said. “He stays.”

  Rade had the Argonaut fly to the asteroid it had been tracking before he received the call from Batindo, and Surus took a shuttle down to the surface, where she conducted her secretive meeting with the Green, who had arrived in a Marauder class ship similar to the Argonaut. She returned to the ship and then Rade gave the order to proceed toward Kitale.

  The next week and a half of the journey proved relatively uneventful. Batindo did his best to boss around the crew, but failed miserably for the most part. At first Rade had given him free reign of the Argonaut, but when he started coming aboard the bridge unannounced, Rade posted a Centurion robot with strict instructions to bar his entry. So then Batindo would wander around to other parts of the ship, like engineering. TJ was on duty there, and didn’t take kindly to the man, leaving him with a black eye.

  When Rade called TJ to his office to discipline him—mostly at the insistence of Batindo—TJ told him the man had “blabbed his mouth off constantly, distracting me from the engine upgrades I was working on. I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t shut up, boss. He left me no choice but to deck him a good one, so I could actually get some work done.”

  Rade decided he wasn’t going to dock TJ any pay, because essentially the loyal crew member had done the right thing. And TJ could have severely injured the man—a black eye was nothing. Rade instead told TJ to report to Tahoe.

  “Tell him I sent you,” Rade told TJ. “And that he is to see to it that you perform a thousand push ups within the span of an hour.”

  From the way TJ’s eyes glinted, Rade knew that TJ was looking forward to the impromptu PT, and in fact viewed it as a challenge.

  Though Rade had assigned a Centurion with a chef program to his quarters, Batindo often invited himself to the wardroom and bothered the men while they ate. He seemed to love the sound of his own voice. When he had first boarded, he had told Rade he looked forward to hearing all of their stories. Well, it seemed Batindo had meant that he wanted to regale the crew with stories of his heroic adventures at the Kenyan consulate instead, the highlights of which included his sexual liaisons with the wife of the director of station security, and harboring Kenyans who had committed various crimes aboard the station.

  It took five days to reach the Slipstream to the adjacent system, and another three to reach the Nyiki system, a time span that couldn’t have passed too soon.

  Rade was on the bridge when the Argonaut emerged from the jump Gate in the target system. He had his tactical display active in the upper right of his vision.

  “Lui, tell me what we’re looking at,” Rade said.

  “We’re looking at a double binary star system,” Lui said. The Asian American was in charge of the ops station. “We have a red subgiant and blue dwarf orbiting one another. And revolving around them are two more stars, about sixty million kilometers away, the same distance from our own sun to Mercury: a yellow main sequence, and a bright giant. Planets have formed around the four of them, the first starting a billion kilometers from the combined barycenter, and proceeding outward to five billion kilometers. There is an uncharted Slipstream on the far side of the system. No outgoing Gate. Like most pioneer outposts on the edge of known space, the system appears relatively dead. There isn’t any mining activity on any of the asteroids or planetoids. Nor any ship traffic.”

  “Not very self-sufficient then, are they?” Rade commented.

  “Suppose not,” Lui replied. “Kitale colony resides on the closest planet to the double binary barycenter. I am detecting signs of habitation: what appear to be several colony domes grouped close together. They’re all intact. Though, this is odd: there don’t seem to be any defenses. Ordinarily for a colony like this you’d see a starship of some kind in orbit, or at least an orbital defense platform, or maybe some surface-to-air defenses. But there’s nothing.”

  “What about the comm nodes linking them to the InterGalNet?” Rade asked. “Are they still active by the Gate?”

  “The comm nodes are active, yes,” Lui said. “And according to the pings, they’ve continued to pass in and out of the system, transferring data between this system and the rest of the galaxy. They definitely aren’t the source of the communication failure. And as far as I can tell, the nodes are still sending and transmitting data to Kitale.”

  “Get Bender to help you spy on those packets,” Rade said. “I want to know exactly what they’re sending and receiving. “Meanwhile, Fret, send the station a standard hail.”

  “Will do,” Fret said. “I should have an answer in three hours.”

  Rade had been ignoring a flashing notification in the lower right of his display. It was Batindo, attempting to tap in.

  Rade finally picked up, voice only. “What is it?”

  “The AI tells me we have arrived in Nyiki,” Batindo said. “Is the colony still intact?”

  “As far as we can tell, it is,” Rade said. “Though there are no defenses of any kind. No ships, no orbital defense platforms.”

  “Hmm.
Very odd,” Batindo said. “According to the records, they had one defense platform. It should be in a geosynchronous orbit above the dome cluster.”

  “Well it’s not there anymore,” Rade said. “Communications are still active, apparently. The comm nodes are sending data to and from the colony.”

  “Have you hailed them?” Batindo asked.

  “We have,” Rade said. “My communicator tells me we should have a response in three hours.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Batindo said. “If they haven’t replied before, why would they suddenly start now?”

  “I don’t know,” Rade said. “You’d be surprised at the difference a ship in the neighborhood can make.”

  “We shall see,” Batindo said. “In the interim, please set a course for Kitale. I expect we will have to pay a visit with the local governor and ask him in person why he isn’t responding to official Kenyan government communication requests.”

  “I’ll have my astrogator set a course,” Rade said.

  “Ah, your astrogator!” Batindo said. “Say hello to her for me, would you?”

  “Sure thing,” Rade said.

  “And what about that other woman I have seen walking in the halls occasionally?” Batindo said. “When do I get to meet her? Whenever I attempt to speak with her, she always runs away and locks herself away in the cargo hold.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” Rade said.

  “Why?” Batindo said.

  “She doesn’t like strangers,” Rade said.

  Batindo was silent for several seconds. “I’ve never met a woman who didn’t like me.”

  “She’s not a woman,” Rade said.

  “Ah,” Batindo said. “One of those, is she? I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll only say this once, Batindo,” Rade said. “For your own good, drop the matter. Forget about her. And don’t try to talk to her again.”

  “I can’t promise that I won’t...” Batindo said.

  “It’s your life,” Rade warned him. “I’ll set a course for Kitale and let you know if anything new comes up.”