“You’d better hope that doesn’t occur to the captain,” Rick warned. “If he starts talking about taking me back, I might need to derail the discussion with a suitable distraction.”
The eyes were back on him now, all hint of speculation gone.
“Returning to 3428 is a death sentence for me.” Rick saw no reason to hide the fact. He wanted to make it very clear that he had nothing to lose. “I’ll help you out,” he offered with a nod at the shuttle, “but I need your support in return.”
“Why were your people looking for you?”
Rick sighed. “I defended myself – a little too well – against someone who felt I shouldn’t be involved with a certain young woman.”
The young man looked at him for a moment, the beginnings of a grin forming. “That’s a story I can understand,” he muttered with a glance over his shoulder. “Let’s go see the old man.”
They resumed their course to the bridge, ignoring the surprised faces of crewmembers as they passed in the main companionway.
“We don’t carry enough reactant to make it back to your planet anyway,” the young Tauhentan advised. “G’Maj always buys enough to cover our trip plus eleven percent. Anything more is a waste. Foxlight II runs on the good stuff but the half-life for high-yield reactant is only a few months.”
“Why eleven, exactly?”
“It’s the EOQ, the economic order quantity, for the Benthic/3428 run,” the young man replied, sounding as though it were the most obvious of facts. He saw the lack of comprehension on Rick’s face. “Look, when we order the reactant, there’s a handling charge from the vendor. We also consider how much we plan to use and what sort of safety factor we want to allow for. Add in the expected loss from degradation of the stored fuel and you get the exact amount needed to minimize our economic…”
“So, long story short,” Rick interjected, “we’re past the point of no return?”
“Yeah.”
They walked into the bridge and everyone turned to stare. If being a stranger wasn’t enough, Rick was also wearing a full extra-vehicular-activity suit. He’d found it shortly after the shuttle had landed inside the Foxlight II. He disliked the cold of the shuttle bay and the suit kept him warm enough to sleep.
He’d also wanted to keep open the possibility of hiding on the outside of the ship, as needed.
Only one of the bridge crew was wearing an EVA suit, the rest were in insulated overalls. Their suits were attached to the wall beside their stations, splayed open so their owners could back into them and close up on a moment’s notice.
A Tauhentan, late middle-aged and tending toward the pear shape common to older men of his species, turned a disapproving eye on Rick’s young companion. “N’Mid,” he growled, “what did I tell you about bringing pets on board?”
Rick realised N’Mid was too nervous to handle the situation. He was on the verge of saying We found him in one of the shuttles. The inevitable Who is we? would then follow and the man sitting at the navigation panel would become involved. He couldn’t see much more than that but it was enough to know he’d better speak up.
“N’Mid caught me coming out of your shuttle bay,” Rick declared.
“And what were you doing in there?”
“Hiding?”
“Any idea what happens when you get shoved out an airlock during distortion travel?” the captain asked sharply.
“Not really.”
“Hmmm.” The captain nodded, looking over at the bridge windows. “Me neither,” he said in mild surprise. “Though Q’Is over there seems eager to find out.” He nodded at the suited crewman at the sensor and comms station. “Says he needs to crawl out to the hull later today and fix part of our array.”
Rick had been the second most senior engineer on the Canal and he understood the science behind a distortion envelope. “If he stays on the hull,” he ventured, “he should be fine. If you toss him out, though…”
The captain chuckled.
Rick saw a way to add some value to his presence. “I’m an engineer; I could go out there with Q’Is.” He looked over at the suited Tauhentan. “What’s broken?”
Q’Is ran his fingers over the central control surface. “Not sure yet,” he muttered. “Our sensors are dead, but… Yes, we can still send out-going messages.”
The navigator leaned over, frowning at the screen. “’No time like the present?’” he blurted. What the hells kind of test message is that? And why a drop burst? We could just emit a ping to test the array…”
The hairs on the back of Rick’s neck began to tingle a half second before the knowledge hit. “It’s an attack!” he shouted.
Everyone forgot about the exchange between the two officers and turned to stare at Rick in surprise.
The captain chuckled. “Settle down, Sonny. We’re not going to space you, if that’s what has you so desperate…”
“No, Captain,” Rick cut him off. “It really is an attack; we’re about to get hit from starboard with medium L.A. rounds.” He jabbed his finger at the bank of windows on the captain’s right. “Right there!” His helmet snapped shut.
The captain frowned. “Even if I believed you, which I…”
Rick dropped to the floor and activated the suit’s magnetic docking plates just as a vicious hail of linearly accelerated projectiles blasted their way through the thin fabric of the bridge.
From the starboard side.
Rick was terrified. Until the atmosphere of the bridge finished venting, he couldn’t release the suit’s docking plates. If rounds were about to strike him, he wouldn’t have a lot of options. The navigator flew past him, just inches above his visor and slammed into one of the starboard windows, pulled there by the violently escaping air.
Acting as a fluid hammer, the hapless Tauhentan’s body caused a localized pressure spike, forcing his body through the fabric of the ship and turning a small collection of holes into a single, body-sized opening.
The remaining air was quickly drained and Rick was able to release the mag plates holding him to the floor. The throbbing in his temples began to subside now that he’d be able to react to incoming rounds.
Fourteen seconds didn’t add up to an eternity, but it was certainly enough to avoid eternity.
N’Mid was near the captain, his arms and legs wrapped around the supports of a workstation. His eyes were shut and he worked his mouth convulsively as the saliva boiled off the moist tissues and exhausted through his nose, joining the gasses evaporating from his lungs.
Mercifully, he lost consciousness just as the first nitrogen bubbles formed in his bloodstream. His body slumped over and fell to the floor as he died.
Rick saw the shielding officer, her face in agony as her mouth gaped open, spewing blood and tissue onto the deck plating. She’d tried to hold her breath when the atmo started draining and she’d taken a round in the leg and failed to reach her suit in time. After the navigator had widened the hull breach, she’d stood no chance and her lungs had burst.
The terror in her eyes faded as Rick stared back helplessly. He caught movement to his right and turned to see a large suit closing around the captain who must have remembered not to hold his breath. He couldn’t warn him and he couldn’t save him either, because he had no weapon. As the plates locked into place around his limbs and torso, two rounds punched through the center of mass but the holes were smaller than those caused by medium-caliber L.A. projectiles.
The captain held his left hand over the closely spaced holes, drawing a sidearm with his right. He fired three rounds, off to Rick’s left, before a third round drilled straight through the center of the old man’s visor.
Rick turned to find Q’Is, the officer who’d been suited from the start, holding his left hand to his own torso, his weapon lying on the deck. If ever he’d had doubts that Q’Is had been the inside man for this ambush, they were as dead as the rest of the crew.
Any minute now, the rival smugglers, Q’Is’ new partners, would be boarding the sh
ip. They’d already pushed the distortion envelopes of the two vessels together and now they would cut their way in. They’d kill the crew and take the cargo.
The value of a full hold of spicewood was beyond imagining. The Foxlight II was a cheap bauble next to such wealth, and a damaged one at that. Chances were good they would simply leave her in distortion, letting her drop out on her own when the reactant finally ran out.
As soon as Q’Is dealt with the immediate imperative of a breached suit, he’d notice Rick. It didn’t take pre-cog to know what would happen then.
Rick raced over, diving to grab the pistol dropped by Q’Is in his haste to seal his suit. He rolled to aim up at the traitor’s torso and fired two rounds into the thoracic region.
Rick rolled to his knees, knowing the smuggler was about to call for help, using the suit’s com link to the ship’s systems. He took careful aim and put a third round between the man’s eyes as he fell.
Sliding the weapon into an empty clasp at his hip, Rick ran around the perimeter of the bridge, closing up the three remaining suits. He backed up to a section of empty wall space and re-activated the magnetic plates.
Now he was just one of four closed suits hanging, unused, on the wall.
A lateral jarring motion told him that the attackers were alongside, and it wasn’t long before the killing began again. Though the bridge atmosphere was gone, the rest of the vessel had not been hit and the sound of weapons fire was carried through the bulkhead behind Rick and into the air of his suit.
He had considered going out to fight the attackers but they would almost certainly come with overwhelming force and he knew how small this smuggling crew was. Even with his abilities, it would have been a lost battle before it had even begun.
He decided to do what he could to protect his people instead. Though his life on 3428 had been less than ideal, he still had relatives and friends on that world and he didn’t want them found by whoever was taking this ship.
Using his suit, he activated a heads-up display of the vessel’s systems, resetting his display from Tauhentan to Dheema. He entered the logs of the unfortunate navigator and downloaded the course to the helmet-mounted systems.
Then, leaving the current course and destination in effect, he altered any mention of his home world. Giving fictional coordinates to any reference that involved 3428. Then he did a global search of all storage systems on the vessel, scrubbing out the planetary designation from every single record, logs, invoices and contracts.
It was easier than expected. No doubt the captain had been wary of the data falling into the hands of competitors and he’d kept it all tagged with a burn reference.
Even the simple numeric designator would have been a risk. Rick’s own ancestors had found the world in the ancient Imperial database. A vague reference to spicewood even appeared in the entry and it would have been enough to bring the entire Republic down on the inhabitants of the Canal.
Shortly after Rick completed his scrubbing of the files, two armed and suited forms walked into the bridge from the aft airlock. After a quick look around the room, they moved over to the body of their dead co-conspirator.
One of them looked over at the other and, after a brief pause, the second man punched a fist into the raised palm of the other, perhaps celebrating the increased shares resulting from Q’Is’ death.
The second raider turned to the console and placed a small device directly on the screen. A red light flashed, slowly changing color to green, then a steady blue. He retrieved the device and slid it into a compartment at the front of his suit.
With that done, the two simply turned and left. Rick let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and turned his thoughts to what would come next. It was unlikely they’d return to the bridge, having already come to collect either Q’Is or, if he was dead, his navigation records. Their only other interest in this ship was its cargo and they were probably already transferring that. If he stayed here, in his suit, for the next few hours, he’d soon have the ship to himself.
Flushing Game
Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic
“He’s leaving but I still haven’t identified his replacement,” Nid reported, the sounds of passengers and announcements automatically filtered out by his earpiece. “Do I follow him or stay here?”
Graadt leaned out the side door of the eight-passenger carrier, hovering just outside the railing. A safety strap dangled behind him, unused, from the ceiling. He preferred to rely on his sense of balance and his reflexes to keep from falling out. The safety harness could get in his way or prevent him from reacting quickly enough to an unexpected variable.
He peered through the crowd, leaning forward just a fraction as he spotted the target. “Stay at the station and try to identify the next watcher.” Graadt ordered. “I have our man in sight. Krorian, black hair, green overalls, scar on left cheek.”
“Acknowledged.”
Graadt looked down at his wrist pad and touched the thermal signature of the enemy agent. He sub-vocalized a command and a targeting reticule appeared over the signature. The pad was linked to an over-eye camera and earpiece attached to Graadt’s headband. “Kaans,” he shouted toward the cockpit, “keep us alongside him.”
He risked a break in observation to open a weapons chest, pulling out a scatter-stun launcher. He stepped back to the open door, letting the reticule guide him back to the target. He let out a relieved breath as he confirmed the target.
The target had failed to make contact with G’Mal because the Foxlight II was overdue. Their scheduled docking port had just been released to another vessel but Orbital Control had no updates on the ship’s new arrival time.
As far as Graadt was concerned, it was the best possible scenario. He didn’t care if he met the smuggler; he wanted the Human agent and this Krorian cat’s-paw might just lead them straight to him.
If he didn’t, well, Nid was still at the tether station working to identify the next watcher.
It also solved the problem Graadt had been mulling over: should he follow the enemy agent or just grab him and start an aggressive interrogation? Now, with two targets, he could afford to do both. He’d follow this one in the hopes that he might be on his way to report in.
If that didn’t put meat in the pot, they’d grab the watcher in the station and start peeling the skin from his back.
The target ignored the cabs at the pick-up zone, continuing down the pedway to where the rail shops began. The only reason rail shops didn’t crowd out the cabs was the absence of protective railings to hold the rickety structures.
The Krorian moved into the steady pedestrian flow, ignoring the calls of the shop owners.
“Fornication!” Graadt grabbed the overhead handle and leaned out the door, angling his body to seek a gap between the unlicensed structures. “Kaans, I lost the signature. I can’t see past these gods damned shanties.”
The carrier lifted but he shook his head. “He must be too close to the shops. I still can’t see him. I need to get in there.”
“Hang on,” Kaans yelled.
The carrier swiveled around, bringing the nose into the back of the shops, tearing three of them from their dubious moorings. The shops, along with their owners, fell onto their counterparts on the next level, smashing them loose as well.
As the carrier swiveled back to bring the door near the railing, Kaans let out a whoop of delight. “We ought to get a cut of the setup tax when we pull a stunt like that!”
At least twenty shops had been destroyed before the avalanche petered out, deflected by a cleverly constructed, angled shop roof eight levels down. The Company would be sending out a tax adjuster within hours. His mission would be to map the empty slots so it would be easier to know whom to squeeze for a setup tax as new shops sprang up.
Graadt couldn’t care less about getting a cut of the tax. He was too focused on timing his jump to hear his pilot. He backed away from the opening, slinging the scatter-stun launcher over his shoulder.
Aiming for a slight gap in the crowd of gawkers who were gazing down at the chaos, he hit the doorway at a dead run, launching himself backward like a high jumper.
His head found the gap and his shoulders widened the opening, spinning the onlookers out of his way as his body rotated. He compacted into a ball, slamming to a stop against the legs of a heavy-set Dactari in an expensive tunic.
Graadt stood, looking down at the pureblood example of his own species. Designed as a military race, the Dactari had no genetic tendency toward weight gain, so it took indulgence on a nearly heroic scale for one of them to get to this state.
The Dactari began an angry tirade but stopped short as Graadt slapped him hard and shoved him back into the crowd. The vast majority of those now watching him were anything but Dactari and he heard an undercurrent of approval in the crowd.
He scanned the faces, looking for the scar, but he doubted his target would hang around. That was the thought that kept the chase alive. He shouldn’t be looking for a face; he should be looking for the backs of heads.
After a shop crash like Kaans had just caused, all eyes were turned to the tragedy. It was like watching a ship fail orbit – you just couldn’t turn your eyes away.
Unless you were using the confusion to slip away.
After breaking contact, the heat signature was lost. He had to acquire his target the old-fashioned way. He pushed his way through the crowd, scanning for movement, and he spotted a head of black hair above a green collar, moving toward a zone of medium-wealth housing. All around the head were the faces of people moving in Graadt’s direction.
He pushed clear of the press and unslung his launcher. Like most Stoners, Graadt had high testosterone levels and he was prone to escalation when stressed. Losing his prey and the risk of death from his leap had filled him with adrenaline and now he forgot about trying to follow his enemy.
Now he wanted to give aggressive interrogation a shot.
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