A Fistful of Credits: Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 5)

by Chris Kennedy

  McCloud watched one of the monitors, looking for tell-tale coding that showed someone had hacked the system. She was momentarily mesmerized by the text; it was hypnotic, and she couldn’t help but look for patterns. Then the screens went black for a moment, and her brain staggered to a stop.

  Nothing.

  McCloud remembered an old space rat who had talked about having “gremlins” in the tech that caused it to go into this rampant state of disorder. It had been like a virus to the system, but less malevolent because it just happened on certain routes or going through magnetic fields. She knew they weren’t far from a known mag field, but found it unlikely they would have stopped in the center of one. The shielding on the vessel would have kept the interference at bay in any event. It didn’t seem possible, but she wasn’t ready to rule anything out, especially when the alternative was sabotage.

  “Diggs, this really isn’t the time,” McCloud whispered.

  She called his name a few times, but knew it was pointless. She knew Diggs wouldn’t abandon her. Her heart knocked against her sternum loudly enough to block any other noise.

  It had to be that jackass newbie, Stephens. He was probably a plant from one of the other guilds that wanted the information they carried. At least Diggs would still be alive, wherever he was—whomever Stephens worked for wouldn’t be able to get the information implanted in his brain if he weren’t.

  The Information Guild had been experimenting with Human information transport. Each member of every transport crew had a small chip implanted in his or her brain. The information nanites it held were wrapped in live-cell membranes that would prevent them from degrading in the cerebral fluid. The tech required a constant electrical charge, which the brain supplied. The information was uploaded anonymously at regular docking checks they were all required to have; like a checkup with lots of noise and sharp pain. It meant the information could be carried by any one of them.

  McCloud turned around in the dark underbelly, the lack of light now ominous. The monitor that served as a repeater for the backup system flickered back to green and drew her attention. The face of the monitor showed a blinking cursor where the last code had been typed.

  /end.

  Shitshitshit.

  There was no telling what had been added to the code before that final execute command. She knew she hadn’t typed “/end” before handing the job to Stephens, and as the systems still seemed to be on emergency power, it must not have been to run the systems. No, someone had typed a command that, if it had been allowed to run, would likely have wiped the system and killed the crew.

  Thankfully, Stephens likely didn’t realize the system was only coded for her, instead of all the crewmembers, and it would take her DNA to wipe the logs. Only commanders had the ability to completely wipe a system, though any crewmember could activate a wipe that would, on the surface, clear both buffer and codes. The added precaution included an additional nanite in her brain that transmitted a secure code every few hours.

  Her gravity boots made more noise than she would have liked, but she didn’t want to take them off as they were the only thing keeping her upright in the lack of gravity. However, even with the lightest tread she could manage, her boots sounded like a machine’s gears scraping together. A shiver ran up her spine; she would have to remove the boots if she wanted to be able to maneuver without announcing her every step.

  She unlatched them, left them with the gear she had tied around the rail, and pushed off with as much speed as she could muster to get to the cockpit of the ship. The amplified effect of the noise of her movement made the trip seem longer. When she pulled herself through the airlock, the main control room was empty. The tiny green screen blinked at her as though surprised by her presence.

  It was petty to be annoyed at the machinery for something so silly. McCloud shook it off and flew across the floor to the panel beneath it. It popped open from a quick tap on the metal cover. She knew it opened if you hit it in the right spot, but still, it seemed too easy.

  Then, she saw why—cables hung out as though they were the dead tentacles of the now-dismantled circuit. The wire from the touch board to the system hung loose with mauled edges; although the other wire allowed inputs to go to the screen, the commands went no further.

  She had to reconnect it.

  McCloud shifted under the navigation station, hooked her legs around the seat, and leaned back against the cabinet. The flat panels pressed the sweat that had begun to crawl down her spine against her back. She tapped her head back against the cabinetry behind her in time with her thoughts. Where could she get the cabling needed?

  McCloud froze. She had it—the circuits from the cockpit ran through the cabinets and flooring; she could use the cabling from the main control terminal to operate the back-up console.

  She eyed the open hatch she had used moments earlier. It would be difficult to be quiet once she started taking apart panels and flooring. McCloud needed to find the other two crewmembers, but knew they were all living on borrowed time if she didn’t get the system operational.

  With a quick jerk of her chin and a snarl at nothing, McCloud crawled forward, braced herself, and shut the hatch. The old hinges screamed, and she wondered if anyone had ever closed the door before. The primary control center could be jettisoned as an escape module in a last-ditch effort for survival. It only had a limited oxygen supply—less now that the ship’s airflow systems had been running at minimum capacity since the malfunction.

  Fuck it. Since the sabotage.

  Admitting it pissed her off. McCloud slid her feet beneath the anchoring clips and strained as she pushed the lever until it sealed. Sweat dripped off her and floated around her head like raindrops frozen in time. She shifted away from the door, shut the circular access hatch in the floor that led to the level below, and spun the locking wheel. Nothing short of a massive explosion was going to crack that seal. She’d be dead if that happened and doubted she’d be concerned with lack of air at that point.

  McCloud crawled back under the interface and pulled a tiny blade out of the sensor board casing. Diggs had taken most of the tools from the tool kit into the dungeon when the ones there had worn out.

  McCloud set about dismantling the cover on the primary console. Within the console, she found the wire she needed and popped the panels necessary to trace it. It took longer than she had hoped, but eventually, the cable led her to a large relay box.

  She sighed a bit too much carbon dioxide in relief and reminded herself to take slow, even breaths. She disconnected the wire at the relay box and began taking the box apart. By the time she was done dismantling the relay so she could get to where the wire needed to be inserted, there were bits of wires, casings, and various paneling parts floating around her and wedged in the gridded flooring; she had removed everything she considered non-essential.

  Rewiring the backup should be fairly easy now, though, as most of the panels were already open. McCloud reinserted the primary wire and ran it over to the backup system. Removing the severed link, she made the final connection and almost cried when the board lit up.

  McCloud pulled herself up to the keyboard, punched in a command, and then sighed as the auxiliary systems finally kicked on and filtered air pumped through the primary ventilation system. She could feel it humming to life under her.

  She wrapped the core system in insulation and paneling, then removed a high-voltage wire from the flooring with the help of the gloves in the kit. Removing the insulation from the wire, McCloud wound it around the outside of the cabinet, grinning at the image of Stephens grabbing it. That would serve him. It was an old-tech trap, but it would have to do.

  She grabbed the small knife as her only weapon and steeled herself to open the hatch. She needed to find the treasonous bastard who had taken down her ship and crewmate. Before she could turn the wheel more than once, the system beeped, and she turned to see a number of alerts in angry red letting. They had unidentified vessels incoming.

 
Of course they did.

  McCloud had to hope their full shields would be back up before the other ships arrived, but it took a while for the system to reload after a full drop. No matter the outcome, she still needed to take back her goddamn ship, and she wasn’t going to wait any longer.

  She spun open the lock on the circular access hatch, but it slammed into her before she could grab it, and her pitiful blade slipped through her fingers and floated up toward the ceiling. McCloud bounced off the bulkhead, stunned, then found herself being pulled down the ladder with an arm wrapped around her chest, squeezing her lungs so no air was left. Reaching the next deck, a hand went over her mouth while the other arm continued to pin her arms to her side.

  “Don’t scream.” Stephens’ voice was a sharp hiss, and she tried to bite his hand or bash his face with her head, but he had her at an angle where she couldn’t.

  “You can’t scream, because if you do, he’ll find us.” Stephens’s voice was more a growl than words, but his words gave her pause. He took it as assent, but didn’t uncover her mouth. Instead, he drew her into an open storage area, releasing her mouth to pull the door shut behind them. This one, of course, didn’t make a sound on its well-oiled hinges.

  Stephens pushed her across the room ahead of him and, with a shove, let her go. Lacking her gravity boots, she floated across the space until she hit the back wall and latched onto a pipe. He started to turn away but thought better of it.

  “Commander, it isn’t what you’re thinking,” Stephens said as he raised a hand. Though his hand was palm out, she caught a glimpse of bloody knuckles. “The CHENG has information he’s planning to sell to a mercenary group or one of the other guilds. He jumped me when I went to check the systems.”

  “Why the hell should I believe you?” she hissed. “I’ve known Diggs for years.” She didn’t buy his story. If she could stay calm, maybe she could get him talking. If he dropped his guard, she would cold-cock his arrogant ass, assuming she could find something with which to do so. When she struck, she’d make sure he didn’t get up anytime soon.

  “Look,” Stephens said, ducking his head to the side to peek into the corridor, “I know you hate me for some reason. Maybe it’s that mercenary man-hater bullshit the guilds train women in, I don’t know or care. Just don’t screw us over by letting that monster kill us both.”

  “You seem to think I’m an idiot and betrayer. Diggs has been the best CHENG I could have hoped for, not to mention the reason I’m alive today. He’s saved me from scavengers, attacks, and my own stupidity more times than you can count. You, on the other hand—you’re just another damned southern recruit foisted on us by the guild. Not one working brain between the lot of you hicks. I’d be better off with a Selroth; at least it would be cleaner. Gods know I’m sick of scraping you bastards off my ship!” She hissed the words at him. So much for her plan to stay calm.

  “Scraping us off? What the hell is that supposed to mean? I’m busy trying to keep us both alive.”

  “Then look to yourself because it always seems to be asshats like you that come here to cause problems and die. I don’t need to weld another hole closed or send another casualty report because you can’t secure your damn tether. I think they must teach you all to have death wishes.”

  She spared a thought for the last two crewmen before Stephens. Roberts had drifted off into space trying to repair some loose shielding. Mirra had been the idiot who had tried to kill herself in the command center and shot a hole in the cockpit’s ceiling. Southern idiots, both of them.

  “Are you telling me the last couple of recruits died, and you didn’t find it odd?”

  McCloud stared at him. Her upper lip lifted into a curl, and her eyes narrowed.

  “Not after the first one, Jim Macky, tried to kill me. His dumb ass vented the bridge, and he ejected with our one life pod. Diggs shot it down, and we never got a new one.”

  “Wow,” Stephens sighed. “Either you don’t see the connection or you’re just too stubborn to. Either way, it doesn’t matter; I just need to keep you alive and get the information to port.”

  Not for the first time, she bemoaned the policy of not allowing weaponry inside the ship. It would have been nice to blast a hole through the pity that seemed to envelop Stephens’ face.

  It was common knowledge that laser weapons weren’t allowed, not just because of the suicidal recruit, but to prevent mutinies. It was pointless to worry about it, though—mutinies were uncommon because of the strict screening process for recruits and the secretive way their cargo was transferred. The information couldn’t be hijacked.

  “Commander, I am a highly-trained agent put on this ship specifically for this mission. The CHENG has been seen associating with outliers and has made a deal with them. I’m here to stop him.”

  “Do you have any proof? You’re asking me to trust your word, and I don’t know you, Newbie. I know Diggs.”

  McCloud fought her hammering heart and tried to slow her breathing. Her anger stiffened her spine until it could have withstood a missile strike without bending. She looked at Stephens and estimated the time it would take her to cross the room and slam his head into the bulkhead.

  A sound in the passageway drew Stephens’s attention, and McCloud grabbed a multi-tool from the holster on the bulkhead. It didn’t carry a large charge, but it might be enough to knock Stephens out. It fit perfectly inside her hand. Before she could maneuver, though, the door swung open and, with a clash of metal and a bestial roar, Diggs raged his way in and dove at Stephens.

  The men hit the wall in a mass of snarls and flailing limbs. Diggs’s meaty fists grabbed the younger man and wrapped a huge arm around his neck like some of the snakes she had seen in the wilder areas of Earth. Bone snapped, and McCloud watched Stephens flail until the smaller man passed out. His boots held him in place once Diggs let go. He looked like he was sleeping standing up near the wall, but there was no further movement. Red dripped from a cut near his mouth and red droplets floated in the air around him.

  “Cloud, you good?” Diggs panted as he took a step back from the unconscious major. He started rummaging in the gear locker and pulled out an old harness.

  “Yeah,” She fought the urge to yell at the big man and clap him on the shoulder. “Off taking a nap, were ya?”

  Diggs grinned at her, and she saw bloody teeth and several purple bruises around his ears and eyes.

  “You could say that,” He rubbed his hand under his nose, and it came away bloody. “You couldn’t say it was by choice, though. Little bastard snuck up on me and hit me with a grav-boot.”

  McCloud nodded. That would explain how Stephens was able to overcome him.

  “Well, truss him up. We’ve got incoming,” she indicated the unconscious major with her chin.

  “I amped the distress beacon to max when the system dropped so it would scream as soon as we got things back up,” Diggs said with a shrug. “Why don’t you go up and make sure they can dock while I take care of the traitor? We can give them Stephens to take with ‘em.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said, nodding to Diggs, but what Stephens had said nagged at her as if she were missing something important.

  Diggs nodded back and reached for some extension lines. As he moved, she saw his nails and fingers were blackened more than normal from the work he did below-decks. The skin on his neck was flushed as though sunburnt.

  McCloud used the doorframe to propel herself from the room toward the cockpit. Sweat drifted off her despite the steady flow of air around her. She reached the ladder and launched herself into the cockpit like a rocket. Footsteps on the grating sounded behind her.

  Her heart was racing but not from exertion. Diggs had been shocked by electricity. Badly. She recognized the blackened marks and flush.

  The cockpit was more of a mess than she had left it. She swatted a bit of floating debris away and took stock: the panel was slightly out of place, but the wire was still attached and there were obvious scorch marks on t
he metal.

  She pushed away from the access hatch and over toward the lockers. She needed gravity boots, but the lockers were empty. Her heart hammered in her ears, and she fought the panic that sought to unfocus her.

  “Looks like you have a choice to make, Cloud.”

  Diggs had followed behind her a lot faster than she would have given him credit for. She turned to face him; his top half poked up through the access hatch, and he held the rim of the opening as he watched her.

  “You let those ships send people onboard, or I knock you out and do it anyways,” he threatened, scratching his beard with his charred fingers. “I would prefer if you let this go smoothly. You can say Stephens overcame you. No one would have a hard time believing it, and then we can go on as we always have.”

  As we always have, he said. McCloud heard the conversation with Stephens again in her head. She had bought every lie Diggs fed her. He told her about the attempted murder by venting. She saw Roberts float away; she had found the unlatched harness and had made assumptions based on the recruit’s inexperience. Diggs had saved her; she hadn’t lied about that to Stephens—he’d pulled her from a merchant ship that was taking her to sell to one of the less-savory outfits who liked to deal in Human flesh. Credits could buy anything in this galaxy, from all appearances…including a formerly-loyal Chief Engineer.

  Maybe she was blind or stupid. Maybe she had always been.

  McCloud looked at the stranger wearing the face of her friend and wondered how any of it was possible. It was so crazy, she expected to wake up at the console or sick in her rack; she didn’t want to believe what her senses told her. She didn’t reply; she just stood looking at him, her mouth agape, but no words came out.

  “Well, almost the way we’ve always done it, anyway,” Diggs added when her silence continued. “We’ll have to train another recruit when the guild takes Stephens’ head.” Diggs jutted his chin in the general direction of where they had left Stephens. “I strung him up in case he comes to, though I think I broke his collarbone. Pain should keep him out for a good while.”