Learning the Hard Way 2

by H. P. Caledon

  Goodbye, Rainer. If any god is on your side, you’ll never see me again. You’ll just have to live with the knowledge that I fucked you.

  It’s okay, though. I have another errand to run. An errand called Mike.

  It doesn’t matter that you were filled with lies, Mike, you should never have doubted my word, never have betrayed me.

  A mercenary... should have known you can’t trust a merc!

  Keelan felt trapped and alone on the big ship, but the worst part was that he didn’t know whether they had set after him yet or not. Mike had told him that they would call for backup, but Keelan had no idea how fast it could get there. The vessel had to be flagged as stolen, and if he was called up by a Spec Edit, then a status control with vocal recognition would expose him. Mike’s explanation of what would happen next wasn’t too reassuring, either—he’d simply be shot at until the ship drifted dead in space or exploded. Unless he just gave up.

  Keelan had so far found the gadgets that needed to be removed, deactivated, or in other ways decommissioned to allow him to hide and disappear at the frequency border as the signals overlapped each other. Right then, he was a ghost ship.

  The negative thoughts depressed him, so he went sightseeing on the ship to think about something else. A little further down the hall from the cockpit, Keelan found a common room. He leaned against the frame and took in the mess.

  “Damn, boys, no one brought their mother, huh.”

  Other than the mess, there was a big VID, a soft seating arrangement, and two tables with chairs. One of the tables was a tasarik table.

  “Tasarik. Anyone want to play?” Keelan looked around the empty room. “Now, now, not all of you at once.”

  He turned and headed further down the hall. A small canteen was diagonally across from the living room. He went to stand at the counter, dividing the kitchen and seating area.

  “Chef, what’s today’s special? Okay, give me one of those.” Keelan made his way around the counter. He sighed and opened the fridge. “Ew, ew, more ew, not even fit for animals, disgu—hey, pudding.”

  With a half empty bowl of pudding in one hand and a spoon in the other, Keelan continued his tour of the ship. He found a room and looked around for a number or a name. He found a name, saluted it with the spoon, and went inside.

  “Let’s size you up.” Keelan placed the pudding on the desk. “Because I need fresh clothes!” Full of hope, he pulled out a t-shirt and held it up. “Midget,” he mumbled and tossed the shirt back into the closet.

  Taking a seat by the desk, he swung his feet up and enjoyed a few more spoonfuls. He’d had better, but after having lived on protein waffles, chicken, and funky stew for so long, it was wonderful. His gaze landed on a memo-pad.

  “What is this?” He began reading and laughed. “Champ, if you only dated two weeks and go on a long haul, do you really think she’s gonna wait because you send her poetry full of spelling errors? Damn, even I spell better than that.”

  Keelan put the note down and rummaged through the drawers. The third drawer held the gold—a picture frame.

  “Wow.” Keelan grimaced. “Hope she’s sweet.” He placed the picture back in the drawer and ate the rest of his pudding before moving onto the next room.

  There, too, he searched the occupant’s clothes first.

  “Tell me, are guards supposed to be tiny?” he exclaimed and tossed the clothes back into the closet again. A box on the top shelf caught his attention, and he brought it with him to the desk. In it were several photos, so Keelan sat and looked through them. Most were of a quite attractive middle-aged woman who smiled a lot, judging by the wrinkles around her eyes. There were a lot of children—several looked like her. In a few of the pictures, a balding man appeared, holding the woman. They looked happy.

  Keelan glanced at the door and got up to see who the room belonged to. The ID on the door showed the same guy as with the woman.

  “What are you doing in this business? You should be at home with her,” Keelan muttered and put the photos back into the box before putting it back in its place. He then moved onto the next room, and without being able to explain why, he found it educational to look through their personal belongings and look at photos of families and lovers. He had never looked at people with badges like that.

  His biggest problem was that he so far hadn’t had any luck finding clothes he could fit. He’d found a new toothbrush, a few shavers and shaving cream, socks, and three pairs of vacuum packed briefs. He didn’t have any high hopes for the last room in the hall, but he still placed his empty pudding bowl and findings on the desk before opening the closet. To his relief, he’d finally found clothes that fit.

  He tossed the extra uniforms on the bed because he certainly wouldn’t be needing those. When it turned out that the only clothes other than the uniforms were nothing more than two pairs of pants and four shirts, he turned toward the bed and scowled at the uniforms.

  He growled his displeasure and grabbed a shirt to remove the emblems, which turned out to be a bigger job than he’d initially thought. In his attempt, he ended up with the shirt in front of him, and he got a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

  “What the hell?” He positioned himself in front of the mirror. His reflection smiled lopsidedly at him before he stripped his clothes and put on the uniform. He stared at his reflection while a rough plan took form. Only one detail needed his attention.

  “You need a haircut, sister!”

  Keelan dropped the bowl off in the kitchen before he took the long and warm shower he hadn’t had time for in prison. Shaved and trimmed, he almost looked like a prison guard. He ran his hands through his short hair. Personal grooming in prison was a blade to the wisps, but a trimmer certainly helped make the overall look more uniform. Happy with the result, he packed away the rest.

  That left him about a month and a half to research the details on his preliminary plan and find his role.

  The first stop on his journey was Motáll.

  Chapter Five

  Keelan blindly reached for his mug and took a sip.

  “Oh, hell no!” he exclaimed and shuddered before he put the mug of cold coffee down and stared at the screen again. He’d sat by the computer in the cockpit most of the day. Four days of searching for passwords, logins, and captain’s codes had finally paid off, and he now had access to the entire network. He could even see their progress in perusing him. Or lack of progress, by the looks of it.

  He’d also found his own details and was surprised to see that he was no longer a medium security prisoner.

  Due to several murders during his stay in Delta Zeich and the extremely daring escape and theft of one of the United Systems Prison transport’s vessels. Bounty: 50.000 credits. Deliver prisoner to Irgang. Proceed with caution.

  If they caught him again, he would end up in a maximum-security facility.

  “Shit!” Keelan stared at the screen for what felt like minutes while contemplating just how far he’d go to not get caught again. There were possibilities and options. There always would be, but one. He’d promised himself.

  In an attempt to not remember a time he’d tried to forget ever since, he got up and went to the kitchen for a fresh batch of coffee. He then returned to the cockpit and the chair he’d sat on all day.

  “Well, Mike, your turn.”

  Keelan looked up the details regarding Mike’s release and where he’d flown to, but it was a dead end. It just said that he’d been picked up... along with another prisoner?

  “Who could that be, since there’re no transfer papers or even an ID?” Keelan muttered. He dismissed it as unimportant and focused on Mike. He was actually surprised at how many of the high-profilers Mike had a hand in bringing in. Mike’s military records were also available from the database, and it showed that Mike had had a long and admirable career.

  “Then you should know terms like honor and being a man of his word!” Keelan sneered at the screen. “Let’s see who you collected with.”
r />   He continued his search and found information about a crew. Two faces looked familiar.

  “Brad Dorsey, that pimple!”

  Keelan left the computer to get more coffee but was inadvertently reminded of his first meeting with the guy. It was after an episode in the first juvenile detention Keelan had been in. The majority of the memories about his escape were still foggy, but he did remember that he’d never been more terrified. And that the weak sun of Verion four had shown itself on the sky twice before he’d collapsed from exhaustion in the pathways of the Mining-steps.

  Brad Dorsey was the man they had sent to track him for the first murder he’d ever committed, plus one serious case of bodily harm. Keelan didn’t count that murder as his first—there was too much confusion about the whole thing. He hadn’t been himself. He’d been a scared kid that no one helped. He’d been so scared that he didn’t shy away from using any means in order to survive. That made it self-defense, not murder.

  Dorsey had followed him for two to three days before Keelan escaped him and got himself straightened out. That was the day he swore never to let that happen again—never to use that as a way out again.

  But Dorsey had caught up to him after a few months. In an attempt to get off of the dangerous streets of Red Turf, Keelan had run into trouble at a bar. He’d been caught stealing, and two men wanted to teach him a lesson. He did learn something, but not what they had in mind.

  Noise and loud voices from the spectators to the fight was what had gotten Dorsey’s attention. And there he’d found Keelan, standing over a dead guy while the other one tried to crawl away. Keelan had taken a beating so severe that only stubbornness kept him from going down. That, and the fact that Dorsey came his way.

  Keelan’s first thought had been to run, but he knew that it would only tap the last flimsy amount of energy he had left. He was fatigued, and no matter what he’d done, the result would have been the same. Dorsey fixated Keelan’s arms and led him back to his ship. The only thing that stood really clear about the fight and following capture was Dorsey’s comment afterward. “And they say two against one is an unfair fight.”

  Keelan shook his head to get rid of the memory and pick up the slack on finding information in Mike.

  The other recognizable face had to be the guy Dorsey had flown with back, then. Further scrutiny of the face revealed that he wasn’t, and it irritated Keelan that he couldn’t place the man.

  Instead of wasting any more time on it, he searched the case that had Mike thrown in jail—the murder of Carl Claiborne’s nephew. The guy from before showed up in that file, too, but with a lot more information. Even a name.

  “Cecil Hallett?” Keelan muttered and thought for a minute to see if that helped him figure out who the guy was. Nothing, so he continued reading. But his frustrations grew because he couldn’t place the guy, and everything he learned didn’t bring him any closer to an answer.

  “Time?”

  “Eleven forty-seven.”

  Keelan counted the hours and found that he’d sat by the screen for more than seven hours. In that time, he’d done nothing but read, drink coffee, and eaten a portion of the worst stew ever. His body hurt from inactivity, so Keelan got up and walked the ship to see if he could get some blood flowing. It wasn’t enough, though. His legs had been inactive for so long that he really needed to warm them through, or he’d end up as crippled as he had felt after isolation.

  He started jogging through the halls and ended up sprinting through them, making quick and radical turns. He pushed his body to the max before slowing down and forcing himself to jog slowly for another ten minutes.

  A shower and another portion of the horrible stew later, and he was ready for more screen work.

  “Okay, Cecil Hallett is a mercenary,” Keelan mumbled and opened his file in a new window. Then he gaped at the screen. “Under investigation?” Keelan read more but became confused when more and more names popped up in conjunction with the case. “Who are they?” he exclaimed irritated and opened their files as they were mentioned. “Weapons smuggling, kidnapping, murder, selling slaves... breaking in free individuals? My, my, Cecil... oops, that wasn’t Cecil, that was a new file... Pierre... Panata? I’m lost!”

  Keelan sighed heavily and closed some of the files again. He just had to find Mike.

  “And Mike is picked up from prison but not by a prison transport. Mike worked with Cecil, but Cecil is under investigation? And connected with a bunch of sinister guys... wonder if Mike was sprung to get to Cecil?”

  Keelan sat back and sipped his coffee while contemplating his theory, which admittedly had a few big holes. Keelan leafed through some more information and found some notes about Mike’s arrest, Cecil’s eye-witness account, and a description of an ambush that had killed most of the mercenaries on the team. Except for Cecil and Mike.

  Details from Mike’s lessons in Delta stood clear in Keelan’s head, and some of it seemed strange. Keelan’s brain fired off a connection, and he quickly reopened Pierre’s file and read it again.

  “Mike, you naïve, little fool! If you knew this, then you’d go after Cecil. So that’s what I’ll do,” Keelan growled and looked for the guy’s last known whereabouts which he cross-referenced with several databases. It took more than a few attempts, since the system wasn’t exactly user-friendly to a guy at his level.

  “Last seen on Silliton?” Keelan tried to recall a map to know where he was compared to that planet. He was too close to Motáll, plus Silliton’s security was far stricter than Motáll’s. He wouldn’t be able to get a landing clearance there.

  “So, three days from Motáll and far away from Silliton. I can’t board a ferry without my retinas being scanned, so I’ll have to find a freighter.”

  The bag was packed, the prison transport locked down for landing, and Keelan’s hair was impeccably guard-like. He sat in the cockpit wearing the uniform and stared at the many instruments while his palms sweated like crazy. The tower on Motáll had believed his story about wreck fragments hitting and destroying the vessels antennas, so they approved a window to land on the repair docks. Had they not believed it, they would have asked for the ship’s information and discovered that it was wanted and flown by a wanted lifer. The risk of them already knowing and letting him land to a dock full of lawmen was still there, so he had to make a run for it as soon as the vessel touched down. That was also why he’d chosen to land after dark.

  But first, he had to complete the landing. A prison transporter was something of a task. Other than being big, it was also a heavy ship to maneuver—even with all the help he got from the computer.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw the vessel hover above the plot before just dropping.

  But the landing went okay, he guessed. Nothing was destroyed, but it definitely wasn’t pretty. The tower didn’t seem to think so either, because they immediately asked if anyone was hurt.

  “No, everyone is fine,” Keelan answered, then left the cockpit and collected his bag on the way to the ramp. He closed it off behind him and sauntered toward the city while he kept an eye out for activity around the prison transport.

  He sighed in relief as he left the spaceport and no one had approached the vessel, but he kept an eye out for any suspicious people around him. Finally, he found a public toilet where he changed his clothes, but he kept the uniform for a while still.

  Time was against him, and he thought it safest to get off planet as fast as possible. But he’d never been on Motáll before, and he didn’t know the spaceport or the surrounding city even though he’d studied a map of it. All he knew of Motáll was that it was a step up from Verion four, which put it as the second most criminal and second poorest planet in the United Systems. Except for Reeds, but since it wasn’t a planet but a huge space station, it didn’t count.

  Mike had told him of the planets to get lost on, and Motáll was one of them, even though people still had to be careful about transportation, as many scanned retinas or needed fingerprint ID. Si
nce he’d just left the prison transporter in the repair dock right next to the freight docks, he had to find his way around the border between the two.

  On the other hand, he really didn’t mind the walk after having been cooped up in prison and a skip. Counting back, it was almost a year since he’d breathed fresh air. Cryo, holding, and prison, it all added up. He smiled and shouldered his bag before making his way into the city, and in the direction he thought the freight docks were.

  He only made three stops. First, to rob a man so wasted, that he didn’t even notice, second to buy a news update, and third to buy himself a cup of soup. He read the news while eating his soup, but he didn’t finish, as he noticed he had a woman’s attention. Being remembered at a soup bar was not something that would aid his escape, so he slipped out while she looked the other way.

  He’d walked another hour before he noticed changes in his surroundings. The feeling associated with the change was one he remembered from when he crossed onto Red Turf on Verion four. It was like knowing that people no longer just glance your way once in a while, but that people studied you. That you were being divided into a new kind of class—hunter or pray. If you were fifteen, you usually ended up the pray—especially on Mr. Rick’s territory.

  Keelan stopped a shiver from going through him, squared his shoulders, and continued in the direction he was heading.

  “Hey, baby, want some company?” a woman asked as he passed her.

  “That wasn’t the plan.” Keelan kept walking.

  “You look like someone who could use it.”

  “Really?” He stopped and turned so he would have his back to the wall and thus be able to see in all directions. “Do you know the fastest way to the freight docks?”

  “Do you have a place for us there?” she asked, smiling, and stepped a bit closer.

  “Do you know the way?”

  “Yeah. What do you have in mind?” She looked skeptical. “I’m not up for group action.”