Darklanding Omnibus Books 10-12: Hunter, Diver Down, Empire (Darklanding Omnis Book 4)

by Scott Moon

  Thaddeus gave his deputy and his pig-dog a nod that instructed them to get in the submarine. Dickles and Quark were already inside. Thad followed, pausing at the top of the ladder. This wasn’t his first go-round with the criminal underworld on Darklanding. He hoped it would be his last. If they had Proletan en route, then money was no object and they wanted blood.

  He dropped into the hatch, then stood to pull it closed.

  "No man can cheat ShadEcon! P. C. Dickles will pay or he will die!"

  Thaddeus looked at Sharn and his goons. Cameras and light crews surrounded them. This had officially become a freak show. He raised both fists, then both middle fingers.

  Sharn and his team of killers stared in stunned disbelief.

  Thaddeus closed the hatch. “Dickles, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Deep

  “Dive! We need to find some A99 exotic ore ASAP,” Thad shouted.

  “Don’t rush me. We have to run a system check. Everyone strap in. Last time I tried this, I nearly died,” Dickles said.

  “That’s the truth,” Quark said, sweating profusely as he went through the co-pilot checklist.

  “You muchly should have mentioned this before we began.” Mast twisted himself into the seat that was tall enough for an Unglok, but poorly situated. Cramped spaces and oddly-placed controls seemed to be the theme of this sub’s design.

  “Snort, snort, snort.” Maximus tried to get comfortable under one of the chairs.

  Outside, the ShadEcon goons started banging on the hull with clubs. Someone tried to open the hatch with a crowbar. Thad realized it wasn’t locked and held it closed from the inside.

  He leaned into his work, testing his grip on the door wheel. Hours of flipping tractor tires and climbing ropes was paying off, but there were limits. “These guys are strong as hell.”

  “What did you do up there?” Dickles asked.

  "I gave your buddy, Sharn, the finger,” Thaddeus said.

  Dickles made a horrible noise that caused Maximus to perk up. “Oh, God. I think I'm going to puke.”

  Maximus huffed and pawed the grated metal floor as if to say, “I’ll eat it.”

  “I’m taking us down to five meters to get your friends off my ship.”

  “Can’t...wait,” Thad grunted. About a minute later, the pressure eased as the goons elected to swim rather than drown. He stepped down from the ladder to the hatch and shook out his hands. His shoulders and arms were on fire from the battle of wills.

  “Actually, I gave him two middle fingers. He didn't seem pleased, especially since it was on camera and the entire incident was probably being broadcast live to everyone in Darklanding, and possibly the entire Wilok system." Thaddeus checked gauges and controls, familiarizing himself with the submarine. At first, everything seemed strange and misplaced. After a few moments, he was able to turn on external monitors.

  What he saw alarmed him.

  Sharn’s “military trained” commandos were already in the water with their scuba sleds. Each of the devices had a propeller that whirred to life as they gave chase. Six men in deep-water diving gear sped after the submarine.

  “Dickles, are you seeing monitor three? We have bogies inbound. I'm not sure what they intend to do, but I bet it's unpleasant," Thaddeus said.

  “All I wanted to do was supervise a mine, break new ground on a raw planet, and see what secrets were in the rock. If it wasn't for that idiot Cornelius Vandersun and the man's granddaughter flying that ship out of the cave system, I’d be happy as a pig in…”

  "It looks like they have bundles of explosives," Thaddeus said. "They're trying to get close enough to stick them on our hull. How fast can you dive?"

  "That's a good question. A better question is, how fast can I dive without killing all of us," Dickles said.

  “How far can we sink?” Quark asked rhetorically. “All the way to the bottom!”

  The scuba sleds came hard and fast, almost as though they had planned this since before they sold the submarine to Dickles. Thaddeus watched them with grim fascination. As a soldier, he admired the precision of their formation and the aggressiveness of their tactics.

  Two raced downward to block the sub from descending. Lights from the sleds and the submarine slashed through darkness like the deep void of space.

  Dickles steered through them.

  The other four circled like sharks, constantly leaving Thad's effective surveillance area.

  Mast’s voice went up an octave, sounding nearly human. “I am not thinking I like this better than flying. No, I am not!"

  Dickles grunted. “One of them is on us."

  Thaddeus moved the camera joystick until he saw one of the scuba sleds getting towed by another. Where is the other diver? “You're not wrong. It's time to take evasive maneuvers if you can."

  Dickles twisted the controls hard to the left. The submarine went into a barrel roll. Maximus tumbled around the cabin until Thaddeus reached out and grabbed him. One of Mast’s long arms stretched across the entire cabin to help. The three of them shouted, grunted, and snorted.

  Dickles pulled up, rolled the patched-together submarine to the right, then dropped like a stone. Metal groaned as the pressure increased. Lights flickered. Thad saw water on the floor of the cabin and didn’t know where it came from. Had it spilled in before he closed the hatch or was the hull leaking?

  “I’m cutting the lights,” Dickles said. “The divers can’t come down this far. I don’t want to give them a target if they have torpedoes or something.”

  “Good call,” Thad said. “I should’ve thought of that. Where is the gauge for hull integrity?”

  “I put tape over it so I don’t look at it. We will know if the hull loses integrity.”

  Maximus whined plaintively, probably sensing their imminent death.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Show

  Dixie sat on the barstool with one leg crossed over the other. She absently rubbed it with one hand, a move calculated to drive her admirers crazy. Her bright red fingernails traced the curve of her thigh from knee to hip, crossing over the rather high hem of her sheer mini-skirt. Several men who couldn’t afford to hire a girl sat with half-empty drinks, watching silently, leaning forward like she had them on a string.

  She flattened her palm and slid it back to her knee. Men sat back in their seats, red-faced and frustrated but unable to stop watching. The trick was to make it look like she didn’t realize she was doing it; like she was just an absent-minded woman sitting at the bar looking gorgeous and dreaming of a man to come and take her away from all this.

  Pierre pushed a shot glass toward her.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he asked.

  She took the drink, smiling coyly as she put it to her lips. Pushing her ample bosom forward, she swiveled on the chair until she faced the room. Back to Pierre, front to her fans, she was glad she had returned to the Mother Lode.

  Her girls were doing decent business despite the crashing economy. Leslie had worked them like dogs during her absence, causing a lot of complaining the moment Dixie returned from Melborn. None of this mattered.

  Everything was about to change. What she was doing was a gamble, the biggest gamble of her life, but worth it even if she wound up working the floor herself when it was over. It’d been a while since she had to take a man upstairs and separate him from his hard-earned money. Not all the memories were pleasant. Most were just pushed back where she didn’t think about them. What hurt the most was when she liked her customers and felt betrayed when they moved on to other girls.

  “Where is Thaddeus?” she asked.

  Pierre didn’t answer.

  She looked over her shoulder, lifting her shoulder to her chin in the cutest pose possible. She batted her eyes. “Yoohoo? Pierre? I asked you, where is the sheriff?”

  Pierre stared over her head at one of five video screens on the far wall. “Looks like he’s somewhere making friends.”

  She followed hi
s gaze and saw Sheriff Thaddeus Fry, big as life on the screen, giving someone two middle fingers.

  Dixie smiled at Thad’s antics, then frowned as he disappeared into some shabby watercraft. The camera view moved to a small, sleazy man giving a long boring speech.

  “Wow, it doesn’t look good for Dickles. I didn’t realize he was a gambler, or whatever. How the hell did he get into that kind of debt with ShadEcon?” Pierre asked.

  “Since when do those assholes take over the vid network?” Dixie asked.

  Pierre wiped the counter of his bar with a white towel, half-watching the video diatribe. “Hasn’t happened for years. A while back, some guy got crosswise with ShadEcon and they showed his public beating. Every now and then, they hacked into the normal broadcasts to show the poor sucker in a cage living on bread and water. Then, it stopped. No one ever figured out if the guy lived or died.”

  He frowned at the screen. “That Sharn guy looks a lot like the man they beat and put in a cage. What a spectacle. Totally humiliating.”

  “That was Sharn’s younger brother—the one they caged,” a man at the end of the bar said. “Too bad for Dickles. I heard he was an odd duck, but harmless. I hope they don’t catch him.”

  Dixie slid off her stool. Her observers gasped at the sight of her lingerie and catcalled her, which warmed her heart. She still had it. Driving the boys wild never got old.

  She leaned across the bar, grabbed the remote control, and clicked on it like it owed her money. “Your vid screens are broken. I can’t change the channel.”

  Pierre shook his head. “When ShadEcon hacks the vid networks, they hack all of them. You’ll have to leave the Wilok System if you want to watch something else before they’re done.”

  “So annoying. What’s the point?”

  “They are going to make an example of Dickles so everyone pays their loans before Darklanding goes belly up,” Pierre said. “You don’t owe them money, do you?”

  “I most certainly do not!”

  ***

  Shaunte reached the top of the stairs and knew something was wrong. The obnoxious music machine wasn’t playing. All the televisions were on the same channel with a rapt Mother Lode audience staring at them. She smoothed the front of her blouse and slacks just in case Thad was down there ready to look up and fall in love again, for the tenth or twentieth time.

  She saw him on the screen, big as life, giving her the bird.

  “What the hell are you doing, Thaddeus Fry?” she muttered, realizing he was flipping off whoever was running the camera.

  The saloon reeked of stale sweat, cheap booze, and smoke. She had to watch her step, because Dixie’s girls had developed a habit of leaving trails of clothing up to their rooms, which were on the floor just below hers.

  Every few steps, she glanced at the screen. Thad closed the hatch on a submarine just before several heavily-muscled men tried to open it. A minute later, they were being dragged underwater.

  She went to the bar and rapped her knuckles on the imitation wood to get Pierre’s attention. “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in reports. What’d I miss?”

  Pierre slung his towel over his shoulder. “You’re doing secret deals you won’t talk about. Dixie’s doing secret deals she won’t talk about. Thaddeus is pissing off the ShadEcon again.”

  Shaunte cursed.

  “Language!” Dixie said. “I thought you were a proper lady.”

  Shaunte ignored the woman, though she was curious about what Pierre was talking about. Dixie was the best madam the Mother Lode had ever had, but also a shrewd businesswoman. Or had been until her greenhouse was burned down and her tigi empire collapsed.

  “What did he do this time?” Shaunte asked.

  “I think the question you need answered is, what did P. C. Dickles do,” Pierre said. “I’m going to the backroom to roll out another keg.”

  Shaunte stared at the vid screens as an incredibly annoying man ranted and raved about paying debts and doing the right thing. Then, it hit her. “Wait, is that a submarine they just took underwater?”

  Dixie rolled her eyes, then tossed her thick blonde hair. “It’s so unfair that blondes get stereotyped as clueless broads. Yes, Miss Shaunte, it’s a submarine. That’s what they do. Go underwater.”

  “Watch it, Dixie. I know it’s a submarine. I just didn’t know we had one on Darklanding. Did that idiot buy one from ShadEcon? He can’t afford that,” Shaunte said.

  “He took out a loan. Now they want him to pay it back,” Dixie said. “It’s all very tedious. You should tell Thad to shut them down.”

  The volume increased, despite Dixie’s attempts to turn the videos off. Sharn, the ShadEcon officer, went on an epic rant about what happened to people who didn’t pay what they owed.

  “You can all thank P. C. Dickles for ruining our faith in Darklanding. As of now, all debts extended to businesses and individuals of Darklanding are due. Pay your debts, or there will be consequences,” Sharn said.

  The screens winked out.

  “Hmmph,” Dixie snorted as she crossed her arms. “He’s bigger on the screen than he is in real life.”

  Shaunte had been thinking the same thing.

  “How much did they say he owed?” Shaunte asked.

  Dixie answered. “One million, three hundred thousand credits on a bad business venture.”

  “He can’t pay that, and frankly, there is no way that piece of junk submarine is worth that. I could bring a team of engineers to Darklanding and have them build me one for less.”

  “Maybe you should have done that earlier,” Dixie said.

  “Where have you been, Miss Dixie?”

  Dixie mounted her stool with such calculated casualness that the men arguing over what the recent video message meant turned to watch her instead. “Oh, here and there. A girl has to do what a girl has to do.”

  “Another tigi operation, huh?” Shaunte guessed.

  “Oh, Miss Shaunte, that’s not a very good guess. Why would I beat a dead horse? Been there done that. Wouldn’t work twice. Too many other humans know what the Ungloks will pay for tigi now. Sooner or later, everyone will have a recipe,” Dixie said.

  “I see.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  Shaunte crossed her arms. “You lie like a rug.”

  “I lied on a bear skin rug once, naked. The photographer said he was going to make me famous, but he didn’t,” Dixie said, winking at her admirers.

  “I will find out what you’re up to,” Shaunte said.

  Dixie leaned toward her. “Oh, honey, I know you will. But I’ll find out what you’ve been scheming first.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Down the Drain

  “We’re as deep into the mines as we can go,” Dickles said. “The tunnels are too narrow after this.”

  Thad checked his notes against the three-dimensional maps they had been updating since evading the scuba sleds. “We can travel horizontally…explore for a bit.”

  “There is a reason the water has not drained from the mines,” Mast said. “The Vandersun ship released rivers and lakes into the caverns. Now we must release the water into the plains, and canyons, and foothills.”

  “That’d be great. Too late to save yours truly from a mob of armed thugs, but fantastic for the company. Let’s find some A99 before we worry about saving the world,” Dickles said.

  “We should do both, is what I am thinking.”

  Thaddeus interrupted. “Slow down. Radar shows the passage gets really narrow up ahead.” He looked at the camera view. A white beam of light glared off underwater rocks and disturbed sediment. He saw the shadow of a support beam. “Looks like we’re leaving the old mine. The passage ahead is natural.”

  “Millions of gallons of water can do amazing things. Lots of pressure. When…if…it drains, we better not be down here. There will be a number of collapses,” Dickles said.

  “I agree,” Mast said.

  “Snort.”

  “I’m sorry I dragged you into t
his,” Dickles said.

  Thad waved away the comment. “You didn’t. We came and pushed our way onto your ship.”

  No one spoke for a long time. They maneuvered through passages, often backing up and moving forward to achieve the proper angle. Thad thought, but didn’t say, it would be a lot easier to get into these tight spaces than to get out.

  The area was rich with exotic minerals. Beams of white light thrust from the front of the sub into the darkness, transforming passages that appeared haunted into wonderlands of color. If the mines could be reopened and excavation crews put in place, SagCon would be back in business.

  “Most of this will be covered when the inevitable collapses happen. Water is holding up the roof of this area. Water pressure made it and lack of water pressure will bring it down. But we’ll know where to look,” Dickles said. “We need to get beyond these minerals, find a place sterile enough for A99.”

  Quark stared at the vid screens, eyes full of wonder. “Amazing. I can’t believe the complexity of these catacombs.”

  The sub moved slowly forward, creeping down, then up, maintaining the same depth.

  Mast pointed at the end of a promising tunnel. “We should place an explosive charge there. Blow that obstruction and much will be healed in the heart of Ungwilook. All this water will flow toward its destiny.”

  “What do you think, Dickles? You’re the expert. Are Mast’s instincts correct?” Thad asked.

  “Probably. From what we’ve surveyed on this voyage, I think this probably is a critical juncture. This water isn’t meant to be here. Where it will go is unpredictable, and a potential disaster for someone. We’ll come back after we find a load of A99 to get ShadEcon off our backs.”

  “Your back,” Mast said.

  “That’s what I meant,” Dickles admitted.

  “Coming back will muchly take too long and will be too dangerous,” Mast said. “We must set the explosives on a timer, then continue our search. It will be perfectly safe as long as we are back at the dock before the drainage begins.”