Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  “Our apologies. We’ll be there soon.”

  Ethan’s cheeks bulged with a testy reply, but he held himself in check. By now his instincts were all screaming at him. Something about this mission wasn’t adding up. Why order a freelancer to bring in a cargo of stasis tubes when one of the registered trading companies could do the same thing for less money? The mission rep had told him it was because of the high risk of piracy around Losk. That had made sense at the time—Losk was, after all, home to more criminals than law-abiding citizens. But that’s exactly why it’s an unlikely location for a research lab. Why put your lab in the middle of a smugglers’ den?

  Ethan unbuckled his flight restraints and stood up. It was time to get a closer look at his cargo.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ethan stalked through a narrow aisle in the cargo bay, passing a critical eye over the neatly stacked rows of blue plastiform crates. Each of them was marked in neon red with the words FRAGILE and THIS SIDE UP with arrows pointing. More text read: DO NOT OPEN. CONTENTS THE PROPERTY OF MEDI-CELL TECHNOLOGIES.

  Medi-cell. Ethan had never heard of them until he’d accepted this mission. He reached the end of the rows of cargo crates and stared at the one sitting at eye in front of him. There were three more sitting below it. The entire cargo was one hundred and eleven crates. The one in front of him glowed with the number 23.

  “All right twenty-three, let’s see what you’re hiding.” He stepped up to the crate’s control panel and keyed it to open. The keypad beeped out an error tone, and the word locked appeared on the display. Ethan frowned. Why lock crates full of empty stasis tubes?

  He cast about the cargo hold, looking for something he could use to force the crate open. Beside the rear loading ramp was a utility locker where he kept useful things like cutting beams. Walking up to it, he opened the locker with a swish of his wrist over the keypad. Reaching inside, he grabbed the long-barreled cutting beam and slung it over his shoulder. He armed the rifle and checked its charge on his way back. The charge was low, but enough to cut open a plastiform crate.

  As soon as he reached the crate he pulled himself up on top of it and scrutinized the seals. Here’s hoping these crates aren’t stuffed with explosives, he thought as he raised the butt of the cutting beam to his shoulder and took aim. His finger tightened on the trigger and a brilliant golden beam erupted from the barrel with a hiss. He made a quick swipe across the hinges and they disappeared with an acrid curl of smoke. Another swipe for the locking mechanism and Ethan slung the cutting beam over his back. “Time to see what we have here,” he said to himself. Stepping back off the crate onto the one behind it, he slowly lifted the freshly-liberated cover of crate number twenty-three.

  Inside, he saw the familiar blue-tinted transpiranium of a stasis tube. The tube was dark inside, but from the light in the cargo hold he could tell that it was empty. The cargo was exactly what he’d been expecting it to be.

  “I guess they’re above board after all.”

  Ethan’s calves began to burn, and he shifted his weight for a more comfortable position. The heavy cutting beam chose that moment to swing off his back and drop precipitously toward the transpiranium cover of the stasis tube. Ethan cursed and dropped the crate lid to steady the beam weapon. The lid fell inside the crate with a thunk of plastiform hitting transpiranium. At least it wasn’t the crack of duranium, he thought as he shortened the shoulder strap on the cutting beam.

  Ethan reached inside the crate to lift the lid out again. As he did so, he noticed that the corner of the crate cover had somehow disappeared, passing through the transpiranium cover of the stasis tube as if it were some sort of ghostly apparition.

  What?

  That was when he realized the trick. The crates were holo-shielded. Whatever was inside of them wasn’t what he was seeing at all—that was just a clever holo projection to mask the real contents.

  Ethan reached through the projection with a sick feeling of trepidation. To his surprise, what he felt on the other side was exactly what it looked like. There was the cold, smooth, cylindrical transpiranium of the stasis tube cover, the slightly warmer, angular surface of the duranium frame … and the beveled out buttons of the control panel. Ethan’s fingers stopped questing there. Why would anyone hide a stasis tube with a projection of another one? It seemed like the stupidest ploy imaginable.

  Unless the real one isn’t empty.

  Dread seized him with that thought. What could be hiding inside a stasis tube? Ethan fumbled blindly with the control panel. He had a few stasis tubes on board the Atton for long journeys and the occasional medical emergency. Ethan tried visualizing the control panel. Then he entered the standard wake sequence.

  There came a beep-beep-beep of warning, followed by a hiss; then he felt the rush of icy air on his face as the real stasis tube opened behind the fake one and the transpiranium cover rose wraith-like from the holo projection. Ethan reached inside the crate with a trembling hand …

  His fingers seized soft, icy flesh, and he heard a girlish gasp. Then a young woman sat up, and he saw that he was clutching her naked breast, and he promptly recoiled from her. She turned to look up at him with wide, frightened eyes that were a rare, startling violet color. “Wh-where am I?” she asked, her teeth chattering.

  Her eyes had a glazed, faraway look, and her pouting lips were blue from the cold of stasis. She hadn’t realized that she was naked yet.

  Ethan gaped at her, staring for more reasons than one. He’d unwittingly transported live cargo! Who was this woman? What was she doing here? Were all the other crates filled with people? And more importantly, what were the so-called researchers who had ordered them delivered to Losk going to do with them now that they’d arrived? A dozen lurid possibilities rushed in to fill those blanks. This woman was one of over a hundred slaves. Given her unusual beauty, she was probably destined to become a playgirl.

  “Who are you?” she asked, shivering. Then she seemed to finally notice her nakedness, and she crossed her arms over her chest. The fake hologram of an empty stasis tube still preserved the bottom half of her modesty. Her gaze passed over him quickly, and Ethan imagined seeing himself for the first time through her eyes—disheveled salt and pepper hair, patched and worn flight suit, overgrown stubble darkening his cheeks, gun belt strapped to his waist—he must have looked exactly like the ex-con that he was.

  Her eyes hardened. “Where’s your boss, grub?”

  Ethan felt a hot flush of rage at the insult, but he clamped down on it to deal with the more immediate concern. The woman’s refined accent and the condescension that bled so easily into her voice gave him the impression that she came from money. Maybe she was abducted, he thought.

  The comm piece in Ethan’s ear trilled, and he answered it. “Ortane here.”

  “Captain Ortane, this is Director Kross from Medi-cell Technologies. We are at the rendezvous point and ready to begin transferring the cargo. Please open your hold to begin unloading.”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  “Don’t keep us waiting.”

  “Sure,” he replied, and promptly shut down the connection.

  “Was that him?” the woman sitting in front of him demanded.

  “Who?”

  “Your boss,” she said slowly, enunciating each word carefully as if he wouldn’t understand her otherwise.

  “I’m my own boss, thanks.”

  She quirked a dark eyebrow at that. “Must be nice.”

  “Yea, sometimes. Look, I was chartered to deliver over a hundred empty stasis tubes to Losk. You want to tell me what the frek you’re doing in one of them?”

  “So you’re the help.”

  Ethan took umbrage at that. “The help? Well, isn’t someone a princess.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be going outside to meet someone, Mr. I’m-my-own-boss?”

  “Name’s Ethan.”

  “Alara.”

  “All right, Alara, you really want me to hand you over to them?”


  “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

  “You don’t listen very well. They told me these stasis tubes were empty. I’m guessing they didn’t lie about that and then lock and shield the contents with holograms just for fun. Whatever they’re planning to do with you, you don’t want to be around for it.”

  Despite her defiant attitude, the woman’s pale face blanched a few shades closer to white. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  Ethan reached for her hands and stood up, pulling her to her feet. Now she was standing fully naked before him—skinny waist, wide hips, ample bosom and derriere …

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Never seen a naked girl before?”

  He looked away. “Get out of there.”

  She stepped out of the crate and up onto the one where he was. With that, he shut her stasis tube and lifted the lid of the crate back into place. That done, he jumped down off the stack of crates to the deck. After just a moment’s hesitation, Alara jumped down beside him. He saw her wince as her feet hit the deck, and he regretted not offering to help her down.

  “Come on, we have to hide you somewhere,” Ethan said, starting down the aisle. As they walked he heard a little whimper from her, and that provoked another stab of guilt.

  “Are you hurt?” He stopped, but resisted the urge to turn around and look at her again.

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  “There’s so many of them … are they all carrying stasis tubes?”

  “Yea…” Ethan started down the aisle again. He tried not to dwell on that. It was a gamble that whoever had hired him wouldn’t notice one of the crates had been opened. If he opened them all and rescued everyone, he had a good idea about what would happen next.

  “How are you going to sleep at night knowing you delivered over a hundred innocent people to whatever netherworld is waiting for them here?”

  Ethan whirled around and stabbed a finger between her naked breasts. “Look, kiddie, saving you is better than nothing. Where would I hide a hundred naked girls?”

  Her eyes narrowed sharply, and Ethan’s comm piece trilled again, interrupting them. He reached to his ear to answer it.

  “What’s taking so long, Captain Ortane?”

  “In case you didn’t notice, you had me set down in the middle of a swamp. The loading ramp is full of krak and the mechanism is jammed. I’m busy diagnosing the problem.”

  “Make it quick or we’ll open it ourselves.”

  “Give me five minutes,” Ethan said.

  “You’ve got four, Kross out.”

  “Come on,” Ethan said, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her up to the internal doors of the cargo bay. He swiped his wrist across the door scanner and the doors opened with a swish. As soon as they were through, Ethan took a sharp right turn and they walked down a short corridor before fetching up against a sealed door.

  “What’s this, your closet?”

  “No,” Ethan said, opening the door with another swipe of his wrist. The lights came on automatically, only to die and then come back flickering, “It’s my quarters,” he said as he walked inside the messy room. He didn’t usually mind the mess, but with a rare female visitor, suddenly he noticed everything as if looking through her eyes. Dirty laundry lay scattered across the deck; muddy boots sat in one corner; empty beer bottles lay wherever they had rolled to most recently; and his bedsheets lay in a tangled mess on the bed. Ethan headed straight for his actual closet, saying, “Don’t mind the mess.”

  “You live like this?” Alara asked.

  He opened his closet with a shrug and pulled out a jumpsuit several sizes too large for her. He bunched it up and tossed it at her. The jumpsuit landed at her feet. “Put this on and lie low in here. I’ll be back for you as soon as I finish dealing with my employers.”

  She picked up the jumpsuit and immediately began putting it on. “Thank you,” she managed. “What are you going to do?”

  “Pretend like nothing’s wrong and find a way to blast free of this quagmire before anyone finds out you’re missing,” he said.

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  He turned to her with a grim smile. “It’ll work.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Ethan watched the scientists traipsing through his ship, adding a fresh layer of mud to the deck. He wasn’t sure how they expected anyone to believe they were the academics they claimed to be. All of them were unusually big, burly men, wearing a mishmash of camo-painted combat armor with guns and ammo strapped to their thighs and waists. Ethan could see more glowing and pulsing tattoos than clean skin. One man stood leaning against the entrance, arms crossed, cloaked in shadows. He was the only one who wasn’t over-sized, but somehow he looked more dangerous than the others. He had briefly introduced himself as Director Kross before taking up his sentinel stance at the top of the ship’s loading ramp. No tattoos glowed on his skin, but his eyes shone a bright blue—either from cosmetic contacts or some type of ocular enhancements.

  The men unloading the cargo used grav guns to avoid over-flexing their exaggerated brawn. Ethan watched them effortlessly levitating the crates out onto grav sleds waiting to ferry the cargo safely across the muddy brown swamp where the Atton had sunk a few irrevocable feet into the muck. Ethan frowned out the back of his cargo hold, his gaze getting momentarily lost in the maze of glossy black tree trunks around the clearing.

  As the loading crew got down to the last few dozen crates, he strode over to Mr. Kross. “Nice doing business with you, Director.”

  The man’s glowing blue eyes found Ethan’s face and he nodded slowly. He reached into his belt and produced a sol transfer cube. Ethan placed it against the underside of his wrist, and the cube blinked with a warm green light as sols were transferred to the account linked to the identichip implanted in his wrist. A second later the light vanished and the cube went dark. Ethan saw a transaction report flash up before his eyes.

  All 2,000 sols had been transferred to his account.

  “That concludes our business together,” Kross said in a silken voice as he took the cube back from Ethan.

  “Guess it does. You have any idea how I can get my ship out of here? This mud hole must have a spaceport with a working tug.”

  “Not a public port, no, but I can call our facility if you’d like. We do happen to have a tug of sorts.”

  Ethan considered that for just a moment before smiling and shaking his head. “I don’t want to make you go to any trouble. I’ll try one more time on my own first.”

  Kross shrugged. “Suit yourself.” With that, he turned and began walking down the loading ramp.

  Ethan decided that a combination of grav lifts and his ship’s main thrusters would probably be enough to blast away from Losk. He’d have to be quick to avoid crashing through the trees at the edge of the clearing, but better to brave some tricky flying than to give Kross a reason to linger. Ethan wasn’t sure how long it would take him and his men to figure out that one of their slave girls was missing, but he didn’t want to be around when it happened.

  Halfway down the ramp Kross stopped and reached up to his ear as if to answer a comm call. Ethan hung back in the shadows and strained his ears to listen in. He couldn’t hear a word, but then Kross turned to look back up at the Atton, and Ethan began to read the man’s lips—something he’d learned to do while doing time on Etaris. Knowing what the man fifty feet away from you was planning to do before he did it was a survival skill when you lived and worked with murderers and thieves.

  Yes, sir … No, no trouble … seems reliable, but … With that, Kross’s eyes found his. Ethan smiled and waved, as if oblivious. All right, Brondi … Yes, sir. I’ll ask him. Kross out.

  Brondi? Ethan hoped he’d read that word wrong. Names were tricky to read from a person’s lips. “Big Brainy” Brondi was the last person Ethan wanted to cross paths with. The diminutive crime lord ran the largest criminal organization in Dark Space. Even fleet patrollers were afraid of him.

&nb
sp; Kross started back up the loading ramp, and Ethan stepped out of the shadows to greet him. “Forget something?” he asked as Kross drew near.

  The man shook his head, and a lock of over-long, straight black hair parted from his forehead to reveal an ugly scar. “I have another job for you. Interested?”

  Ethan pretended to be. “Maybe, what’s the job?”

  “Hoi!” someone called out from the grav sleds, interrupting their conversation.

  Kross turned and Ethan looked past him to see a man standing on top of a stack of crates aboard one of the grav sleds, holding up the cover of the one Ethan had sliced open. Ethan’s breath froze in his chest.

  “What are you doing?” Kross yelled. “Can’t you read? DO NOT OPEN. That’s what it says!”

  “This one was open already!”

  “Frek it,” Ethan muttered. And with that, he lunged toward the director and gave him a mighty shove that sent the man tumbling down the loading ramp.

  The others began boiling from the grav sleds below. Ethan drew his sidearm and snapped off a few shots. One of the bigger men fell, clutching a smoking hole in his armor, and Ethan slapped the door and ramp controls. The cargo bay doors began to seal with a lethargic groan. Not waiting to see the director get back up, he ducked and ran as fast as he could for the inner doors of the cargo hold. Ripper rifles started up behind him, and shells began plinking off the outer doors with deafening fury. A few shots made it inside and ricocheted off the bulkheads. Ethan reached the inner doors and waved his wrist across the scanner, parting them with a swish.

  Casting a quick look back the way he’d come, he was just in time to see someone dive in through the outer doors. The man fired off a burst from his ripper rifle, and pain tore into Ethan’s right leg. He bit back a scream and hurried through the inner bay doors, locking them behind him.

  To his left he heard another door swish open, and he spun around to see Alara aiming a plasma pistol at his head.

  “It’s me!” he gritted out.