Sabercat (Tommy Reilly Chronicles Book 1)

by T. L. Knighton

  Tommy's smile never changed as far as anyone looking could tell, but Tommy knew it was different. Now it was genuine.

  "Well, I can't say precisely who, mind you. However, there are parties who are very interested in you."

  Tommy knew Hatcher's smile was more genuine now as well. He loved the idea of acceptance, and here was someone from one of the right families to actually offer it.

  "Do I know who these parties are?" Hatcher asked.

  Tommy gave a slight shrug and said, "You may, though I'm not at liberty to divulge any information on them, you understand."

  Hatcher nodded. "Of course," he replied. "Is now a good time?"

  "I'm afraid not. I just stopped by to hopefully set up an appointment next week. Maybe over supper?" Tommy replied.

  "I understand. Next week would be fine. Thursday local? Say around six?"

  Tommy nodded. "That would be fine."

  Hatcher seemed to be considering for a moment, then said, "Why didn't you just call though?"

  "I didn't have your number," Tommy said matter-of-factly. "And, of course, there was no reason to ask anyone what it was since I very much doubt any of them knew it. However, everyone knows where you live."

  Hatcher nodded. "Understood. I'll see you Thursday then?"

  Tommy nodded and gave a brief bow. "Of course."

  ** ** **

  As Tommy sat down in the transport, hovering just a few inches off of the ground, Harley asked, "So?"

  Tommy shut the door and sighed. "Yeah, we're gold. Pass the word."

  Harley nodded as the car pulled forward.

  "Is everything going to be ready in time?" Tommy asked.

  Again, Harley nodded. "Yeah, we're ahead of schedule at this point. Good call on getting rolling before you heard from Igor's boys."

  It was Tommy's turn to nod. He really didn't feel like talking. Being that close to Hatcher put him in a foul mood. Having to pretend he was the old him didn't help either.

  "Relax," Harley said, as if he could read Tommy's mind. "You did what had to be done. Just like everyone else."

  Tommy sighed. "Yeah, I guess so."

  The pair rode in silence as the transport pulled up to the entrance of the port. They exited the vehicle and made their way to Sabercat.

  Once in the cargo bay, the anxious crew – minus Cody – looked at them expectantly.

  "We're go," Tommy said.

  "Good," Michelle said with uncharacteristic passion.

  "You're that up on the job?" Harley asked.

  The young woman nodded; her pale face stern. "I do not like this Hatcher man, and I do not like this idea of colonies not being able to decide for themselves."

  "I understand," Tommy said.

  "I do not think you do, Captain. I mean no offense, but you do not," she said, her French accent thickening as she got more agitated. "I have been somewhere that I had no choice. I had someone deciding everything for me. It was bad for me, but this? This is the same thing on a planetary scale."

  "Easy," Harley said, "I don't like this stuff either, but let's not get carried away. What you went through was a horror, but Ararat isn't even close to those horrors."

  "Ararat is not the only colony," Adele chimed in, more fury in her normally laid back demeanor. "Babylon, Simeon, New Baghdad, and a lot of other places treat people far worse from what I have heard."

  Tommy took a deep breath. He knew they were right, and it bugged him. There was a lot of wrong in the universe, but they were just one ship. "They probably do. But we're here to do what we can to fix it. It's all I can do. At least for now."

  Adele and Michelle's demeanor softened somewhat as the pilot said, "We know, Captain. We know this is not your way. We do not hold you accountable for what your family, or any other Clans, have done."

  "Well, I suppose I do," he said, then turned and walked toward his cabin.

  Footsteps followed him, but he couldn't be bothered to turn until he was in the crew quarters section of the ship.

  As he turned, he saw Dianne right behind him.

  "What?" he snapped.

  "It's not your fault," she said. "It's not my fault either. We're not responsible for the actions of our parents."

  Tommy chuckled mirthlessly. "Your father is a saint. Of course you don't have anything to feel guilty about."

  She smiled softly, and Tommy felt his anger dissipating. "He wasn't always, you know. He and your mother were good friends and allies, once upon a time."

  "What happened?"

  She stepped over to the hatch to his quarters and opened it for him. "My mother."

  His raised eyebrow beckoned her to continue as he stepped through the hatch and made his way to his usual seat at the table in his quarters.

  "He met Mom, and she was a true believer. She argued with him day and night about how people should be treated, what the role of the government was, all that. Dad said that he started off calling her a witch, and that continued despite him falling for her. He figured no one could be lectured on how horrible they were and fall in love with the lecturer without a spell being cast or something."

  Tommy smiled, hoping to offer some comfort to her. He knew her mother had to be a sore subject considering everything that had transpired.

  "Any way," she continued, "he started shifting his positions. Eventually, she started believing the shift was legitimate and was willing to consider his offer of dinner. The rest, as they say, is history."

  He considered for a moment, then said, "So he was just another of the Clans before?"

  "So he tells me. It's why he told me not to be so hard on you back in school. He said, 'I guess people can change, and I hope he follows my path and not his mothers.'"

  Tommy felt the corners of his mouth turn up involuntarily. "I might have taken a different route, but I like to think I ended up in the same destination. I do find it a little funny that he didn't believe people could change, but he had."

  "His philosophy was close to yours. People don't change, situations change people," she said. "Now stop acting like you have to personally atone for everything any of the Clans has ever done."

  He nodded. She was right, and he knew it. He was getting tired of this self-pity crap. He needed to get his head straight, otherwise they would all be in a world of pain.

  ** ** **

  Cody was less than pleased with what he had to work with, but it could have been far worse. The garage was large enough for the heavy lift to fit inside and still leave plenty of room for tools and equipment, he had semi-skilled help that at least knew enough to follow instructions, and he wasn't cramped in a crate. Still, he was having to work with second-rate equipment…so, kind of like home.

  "Johnny?" the engineer called. "Grab me the cutter, will ya?"

  The young man, lean and dark-skinned from years in Ararat's sun, opened a drawer and pulled out the molecular cutter and walked over to Cody. "Do you have to?"

  The engineer nodded. "If this puppy is going to do what we need it, yep."

  "But…my baby," Johnny pleaded.

  "Don't think of it as cutting up your beloved. Think of it as an upgrade."

  The younger man chuckled mirthlessly. "Doesn't help."

  "Yeah, I know, but we got to do what we got to do."

  Johnny nodded and said, "Yeah, but what else."

  "The winch and hydraulics should be here later today, and we'll have to fab up a few things here in house. Assuming the fabbers work."

  "They work," the other man said defensively.

  Cody looked at him and smiled, "I figured. So, let's get to work so we can make this puppy all that she can be." He didn't mean to ruffle the other man's feathers, but he'd grown to be skeptical that everything in the galaxy just worked. Far too many times, it didn't. Especially when it was vital that it did.

  "You sure you know what you're doing, though? I mean, my baby…"

  The engineer sighed. "Look, I was four classes short of a degree in transport engineering from MIT, so yeah, I
know what I'm doing."

  The younger man cocked his head and asked, "Four classes, huh? Which four?"

  "A lit, macroeconomics, a history, and a gender studies course."

  After a brief moment, Cody continued, "I kind of wanted to take the lit, econ, and history. Prison getting me out of the gender studies, though? Maybe I got the better end of the deal after all."

  ** ** **

  Tommy sat at his usual table at Ringo's, a couple fingers of allegedly Irish whiskey in the glass sitting before him. Frankly, he was sick of drinking, but appearances had to be maintained, and he needed to be seen. A lot.

  Tomorrow he'd have dinner with Hatcher, pretending to be the dutiful son the would-be dictator thought Tommy was. Luckily, the gossip vids hadn't gotten hold of the break between the Reilly clan and Tommy. Funny how he now saw it as lucky when a few weeks earlier, it was an annoyance.

  As the door opened, he turned and looked. He always looked. It's not like there was much else to do.

  The person who entered was yet another of Hatcher's goons. There were already nearly a dozen littered among the various tables.

  Raising the glass, Tommy drained the contents, then motioned Walker for another.

  The barkeep nodded.

  After a few moments, Tiffany approached with a glass on a tray. Tommy found himself amused had him getting sick of alcohol, something twenty-year-old him never thought was humanly possible. Then again, actually having to drink kind of takes the fun out of it.

  Tiffany grabbed his empty, then put a small, square napkin in front of him. Scribed on the white piece of paper was a message. I switched you to tea to keep up appearances.

  The young man smiled. Walker is good at this, he thought. Someday, he was going to have to find out the man's story, because Tommy was willing to bet a lot of money that it would be as entertaining as anything on vid.

  A quick sip revealed it was sweet, just like he'd grown up with in Atlanta. Most of the human settled universe brewed their tea, then chilled it for iced tea. That made it difficult to dissolve any kind of sweetener in it, leaving an unpalatable mess in Tommy's opinion.

  The part of the world still called the South felt differently. There, you add sugar or whatever sweetener you wanted immediately after brewing, while the tea was still hot, and let it dissolve completely.

  Walker apparently adhered to the Southern school of tea brewing, something Tommy was thankful for as he took another sip and released a contented sigh. Oh yeah, that was the stuff.

  Again, the door opened, only this time it wasn't one of Hatcher's boys.

  Instead, it was a lean man with long, stringy red hair and a pockmarked face. The guy looked like he'd grown up on worlds where Ararat or Jericho would be considered resort communities. Harley might have used the phrase, "rode hard and put away wet" when describing the dude.

  Luckily, he was also the very man Tommy was waiting for.

  The man strode toward him and nodded. Holding out a data chip, he said, "I think you're waiting for this?"

  Tommy nodded in return, but remained silent. It wasn't until he took the chip from the other man that he spoke. "Thanks."

  A sly grin answered as the man turned and walked away.

  Putting the chip in his pocket, Tommy took another sip of his tea. He was starting to enjoy himself on this job.

  ** ** **

  Roscoe watched the feed from his people tailing Tommy Reilly and tried to place the lean redhead. He'd never seen the other man before, and the data chip was troubling, since he didn't know what was on it.

  In his line of work, it wasn't what you knew that got you, but what you didn't.

  "Who is that? Anyone know him?" Roscoe asked. Unlike some people, he didn't mind admitting he didn't know things. He figured it gave him a bit of gravitas when he claimed he actually did know what he was talking about other times.

  All around the room, heads shook negative, which was worrisome. While Roscoe was a recent transplant to Ararat, some of these people knew who every significant person in Wyattsville was, and more than a few of the insignificant folks. The same went for Hatcher City.

  Yet this guy walks in and no one knew anything? He really didn't like it.

  "Run his face through every database we can access. I want to know everything about this guy within forty-eight hours, and I damn well better have his name within twenty-four. Understood?" he barked.

  Each and every voice echoed their affirmative and Roscoe went back to studying Reilly.

  The Earther looked entirely too comfortable, almost smug. For someone raised in one of the Clans, that shouldn't be surprising, but Reilly hadn't really presented that side of himself too often. That meant whatever was on that data chip was something he thought was big.

  Roscoe was damn sure he needed to find out what that was. He hoped finding out who this mystery man was might offer some hint.

  Especially since his hacker had exactly zero luck getting into Sabercat's network.

  Chapter 11

  The rich mahogany door swung open, revealing Hatcher's man servant resplendent in black tails and white gloves, almost a perfect match for his black hair mostly gone silver. "Good evening, Captain Reilly. Mister Hatcher is awaiting you in the parlor," he said in a thick but genuine British accent.

  Tommy nodded his understanding and stepped through the doorway, his hands clasped behind him. He'd dressed much more relaxed than the servant, with a red button-up shirt and brown pants, looking every bit the dressed down heir to one of the Clans. The only thing that felt amiss was the lack of his Capella on his hip, but Ararat rules were still rules, and he'd have been picked up walking around with a weapon strapped to him.

  "This way, sir," the servant said with barely a sniff, Tommy in tow.

  The parlor, as it was called, was more of a study. Books—honest to God books, with paper and everything—lined a legion of shelves on every wall. Two large, comfortable looking leather chairs sat next to one another, only a small table between them, looking out at a magnificently tended garden.

  To the left of the door, Hatcher stood at bar, a decanter in hand and an amber-looking liquid pouring out of it into a second glass. "I understand you're an Irish whiskey man. Is that right?"

  Repressing a sigh, Tommy smiled and said, "Absolutely. So long as it's a good one." He was sick of whiskey at this point. Not for good, but he needed a break from the drink. The tea had helped, but it came a little later than he wanted. Unfortunately, he couldn't let Hatcher know that since it would give him more information that Tommy wanted the odious sycophant to have.

  "How about a thirty-year-old Jameson?"

  Now a more genuine smile crossed his lips. This became a horse of a different color. "Oh, that'll do," he replied.

  "I thought it might," Hatcher said, offering him one of the glasses.

  Tommy took a sip and fought the urge to sigh. People fought and killed for wealth for a reason. Money, in and of itself, was meaningless. No one wanted a pile of money just for the sake of doing nothing with it.

  Instead, money represented different things to different people. For some, it was security. Knowing they had it meant they wouldn't be in trouble if they needed money later. For others, it bought things. Love, comfort, friendship, whatever—and make no mistake, while money may not be able to buy you love, it can buy you something very close to it. Regardless, people want what money represents to them.

  For Tommy, it was luxury and always had been, and this whiskey was the epitome of luxury to him. Smooth like velvet brushed on the thighs of vestal virgins with only the slightest hint of a burn on the way down his throat.

  Oh, he'd missed this.

  What he didn't miss, however, was the cost of luxury. For example, he'd have to associate with people like Hatcher on a regular basis and actually pretend to like them for an indefinite period.

  "How is it?" the other man asked.

  "Heavenly," Tommy answered sincerely.

  "I thought you'd like it. Some of
the best on the planet. Do you have any idea how hard it is to import?"

  Tommy chuckled softly.

  Hatcher had the decency to look slightly abashed. "Did I just ask that? Of course you do. After all, you're in the business."

  "Precisely," Tommy said, adding just a bit of condescension that was both surprisingly easy and surprisingly satisfying.

  "Well, you know that it costs a great deal on Earth, so getting it out here in the hinterlands is chafing impossible. The company doesn't like to export off-world, then there are the inherent risks for off-world shipping, making it harder to make a profit so that no one wants to risk this kind of money."

  "And yet, you did."

  Hatcher smiled. "Men of vision often have to take risks, don't you agree?"

  Though he hated to admit it, Hatcher was right on this. "Of course. What greatness can be achieved without risk?"

  "Exactly," Hatcher replied.

  With that, a bell sounded and the man servant stepped into the parlor. "Dinner is served."

  The two men carried their glassed through the door and down the hallway to a small, cozy dining room. The walls were covered in a rich, indigenous wood paneling. On the ceiling was a mural depicting the settling of Ararat, complete with a heroic-looking Hatcher.

  The table was also a dark wood, probably also indigenous since Tommy couldn't place it, with two matching chairs. The place settings appeared to be some kind of high-end china with a silver cover and gold flatware.

  Hatcher took a seat, so Tommy took the opposite.

  The servant removed the two covers and revealed a roasted chicken with some kind of vegetables on the side.

  "So," Hatcher said, taking his flatware and digging into the chicken, "what are your plans? How much longer will you be on Ararat?"

  Tommy took fork and knife in hand and cut off a piece of chicken. "I lined up a load yesterday, and it should be getting on board right about now, so I'll be heading out later tonight unfortunately."