by Piers Platt
“Ship’s clear. This one’s the captain,” a voice said. “She was waiting for Bravo Team when they came in, hit them with some nail gun.”
“Casualties?”
“Two. Cracked ribs, and a punctured arm. They’ll live, once we’re able to get the screws out.”
“Other crew?”
“Pilot’s up on the bridge. He went down without a fight.”
“Any damage to the ship?”
“No.”
“Good. Lock them in one of the cabins, under guard. I want to be back in transit in five minutes.”
“You got it.”
Muir felt herself lifted by the elbows, and deposited on shaking legs. The men facing her all wore full-face masks – except for one, who wore a set of blue coveralls. The rest were dressed in black spacesuits, the lightweight, low-profile kind favored by zero-g racers. She shook her head.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Your ship,” the man in blue coveralls told her, cocking his head to one side.
“If you steal this ship, people will die,” Muir said. “There’s a downed ship on Olympus right now, and we’re the only ones who can get them out.”
The man chuckled. “What a coincidence. We happen to be headed to Olympus ourselves.”
Chapter 22
Kuda kept the pistol pointed directly at Brondi. Shep stood up, and Falken saw that he, too was carrying a handgun – he gestured at Ed with it.
“Move, old man. Come over here where I can keep an eye on you.”
Ed stood and hurried over to the table. The brothers’ demeanor had shifted completely – gone were the jovial, thrill-seeking tourists. Falken looked in their eyes and saw nothing but cold, cruel resolve.
I’ve seen that look before. These guys could have come straight out of Archos’ crew.
Then, slowly, realization dawned on Falken.
“You,” he said, pointing at Kuda. “You’re the ones who crashed the Ecolympus.”
“Easy, Falken,” Shep warned. “You got us this far. Don’t go getting angry and causing a scene.”
“If everyone stays cool, this will all be over soon,” Kuda promised. “Cooperate and you live. Cause trouble?” He shrugged, glancing at the pistol in his hand meaningfully. “Don’t cause trouble.”
“What do you want?” Brondi asked.
“They’re here for our research,” Luthena said. “They want to steal our findings.”
“But we’ll be publishing them,” Brondi said. “They’ll be public before the year’s out.”
Kuda shook his head. “If we get our hands on the data first, we can start monetizing it first. We’ll have the patent on the treatment.”
“… and you can prevent the findings from going public at all. Whoever patents the first treatment that successfully delays the effects of aging will make trillions,” Falken said, sighing.
“Bingo,” Shep agreed.
“We don’t know if it will work or not,” Luthena told him. “We haven’t done any clinical trials, it’s all theoretical still.”
Shep shrugged. “You’re close. That’s all that matters.”
I’m not liking our odds right now, Falken thought, glancing around the room. This is a major crime, and we’re all witnesses to it.
“What’s the plan?” he asked. “You take the data, hijack the Liberty Belle, and make your escape?”
“We’ll tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it,” Shep said.
“What happens to us?” Falken asked.
“Quit asking questions,” Kuda told him. “Just shut up and wait.”
Ed cleared his throat. “I have money,” he said.
“Didn’t I just say to shut the fuck up?” Kuda asked him.
Ed held his hands up. “My net worth is several billion dollars, counting company equity,” he continued, his voice shaking with fear. “I’ll see that you’re rewarded handsomely if you can guarantee my safety.”
Falken raised an eyebrow. Several billion? All this time I was worrying about him, and he was just a rich coward. And meanwhile, the brothers had me completely fooled with their frat boy routine.
Shep and Kuda shared a look. “We might be able to make a deal,” Kuda said.
“How about you make a deal guaranteeing the safety of all of us,” Vina told Ed.
The older man ignored her. “We have a deal?” Ed asked.
“‘We might,’ I said,” Kuda repeated. “Now just sit tight.”
One of the vidscreens flashed, and Falken saw that the Adrenaline Junkies were trying to make contact with the research center again.
“That’s a call from the other ship,” Falken said.
“I see it,” Kuda told him. “Give me the controller.”
Falken passed it to him, carefully.
“You’re going to talk to them, Falken,” Kuda told him, taking the device. “No video, just audio. And if you mention a word of this to them, I’ll shoot you, and then I’ll shoot Vina, too. Got it?”
“Okay,” Falken said, keeping his voice level.
Kuda pressed a button on the controller, and a voice icon appeared on the screen.
“Research center,” Falken said.
“Hey, it’s Quiss and Hylie. Is your feed jacked up? I’m not getting visual.”
“Really?” Falken asked. “Must be a malfunctioning camera over here. I’ll let Luthena and Brondi know. What’s up, Quiss?”
“Just checking in,” Quiss said. “How’s your wounded guest doing?”
“Better,” Falken said. “He’s stabilized now. Is the Liberty Belle on station yet?”
“Any minute, brother, any minute. Listen, we’re going to suspend our tours this afternoon until you guys have transferred over safely and are back up in space. We don’t want to stir up the hornet’s nest, you know?”
“I appreciate it, Quiss. Anything else?”
“That’s it for now,” Quiss said.
“Okay,” Falken said. “I better sign off and get everyone ready. Oh, and Quiss?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks again for everything. It was a real help to us,” Falken said, “knowing that you were keeping such a close eye on things down here—”
Kuda cut the connection, and slammed the butt of his pistol into the back of Falken’s head. Falken grunted and shook his head, wincing at the pain.
“Test me like that again, and it’ll be the last thing you do,” Kuda snarled.
* * *
Quiss frowned and shut the communications link off. Across the map table from him, Hylie frowned too, swiveling slowly in her captain’s chair.
“Did he just hang up on you?” she asked.
“Maybe?” Quiss asked. “I know they’ve had a rough go of it, but … that was a little odd.”
“You’d be stressed out, too,” Hylie said.
“I would, sure,” Quiss said. “But this is Falken we’re talking about.”
The ship’s computer sounded a gentle alarm. Hylie turned and looked down at the nearest display, and then glanced up through the cockpit window. “Can’t see ‘em yet, but the Liberty Belle just arrived,” she said. She switched channels on the radio, and then pressed down on a button.
“Liberty Belle, Adrenaline Junkies, over.”
Quiss walked over to the captain’s station, standing behind her to peer out the viewport. “They’re a few minutes late,” he said.
Hylie pressed the button again. “Liberty Belle, this is Adrenaline Junkies, over.”
The radio remained quiet. In the distance, they saw a small white-gray dot of a ship appear from out of the dark of the star field, decelerating as it moved toward the atmosphere of Olympus.
“Maybe they called the research center first,” Quiss guessed.
“Could be.”
On a hunch, Hylie tapped a command into her computer. The heads-up display over the cockpit window traced a red outline around the Liberty Belle, and then their view of the ship expanded, the sensors zooming in
on the ship.
“What the fuck is that?” Hylie asked, sitting up straighter in her chair. Instinctively, her fingers took hold of the ship’s steering controls.
“They’re … towing something? Another ship?” Quiss shook his head. “What’s going on, Hylie?”
Hylie lit the ship’s engines. “I don’t know, but I don’t like this at all.”
On the display in front of them, a section of the ship being towed flashed briefly, like a camera bulb had gone off along the hull.
“What was that?” Quiss asked.
Hylie threw power to the ship’s engines, swerving hard away from the Liberty Belle and the other ship.
“Hylie?!” Quiss asked, grabbing a hand-grip on the ceiling to steady himself as the ship lurched.
“Warning: space debris detected,” the ship’s computer said. “Collision imminent.”
“That’s not space debris,” Hylie said, gritting her teeth as she jerked the ship through another tight turn. “They shot a goddamn missile at us.”
* * *
Auresh watched as the tourist ship dropped into a steep dive toward the planet’s atmosphere.
“They’re evading,” one of the crewmembers on the bridge reported. “Missile’s got a good lock, though.”
Cadellium leaned forward, staring at the vidscreen intensely. “Can they dodge it?”
“They can try,” Auresh said. “Kind of pointless, though. Just delays the inevitable.”
On the vidscreen, the missile closed with the Adrenaline Junkies. Suddenly, the missile exploded, throwing shrapnel in a wide arc through space. Auresh saw the ship shudder, and its engines flicker off.
“There we go,” Auresh said. “Give me a damage assessment.”
“Direct hit on the aft quarter,” a crewmember said. “Computer model says eighty to ninety percent of core systems should be damaged or offline.”
“Will they survive?” Cadellium asked Auresh.
“Not unless they bail out,” Auresh said. He held up a hand, silencing Cadellium’s follow-up question. “Distress beacon?” he asked.
A crewmember nodded. “Yeah, it’s already active.”
“Send the signal,” Auresh commanded.
“CGS Extremis, this is Liberty Belle,” Captain Muir’s voice emanated from the bridge’s speakers. In the recording, her tone was brusque – Auresh’s men had had to force the speech from her at gunpoint.
“This is the CGS Extremis,” they heard Commander Jiyake reply.
“Roger, we have arrived at Olympus – beginning rescue operations now. You may be picking up an emergency beacon signal from the Adrenaline Junkies – they tell me they’re having some sort of electrical problems. Just disregard the signal.”
“CGS Extremis, roger,” Jiyake replied. “Can you keep us posted on the status of the rescue?”
“Gotta go,” the recording of Muir said, abruptly. “Liberty Belle out.”
Cadellium raised an eyebrow. “That last recording wasn’t quite right. She’ll find that strange, no?”
“The less time we spend trying to maintain the charade, the better,” Auresh told him. “They can’t come investigate, anyway.”
On the bridge vidscreen, Auresh saw a pair of life rafts detach from the dark, drifting hull of the Adrenaline Junkies’ craft.
“Get me the research center on the radio,” he said. “And prepare for descent.”
* * *
Hylie took a deep breath, and then let it out. Through the life raft’s narrow porthole, she watched as the wreck of her ship disappeared into the distance, spinning slowly as it leaked what remained of its internal air supply.
“Captain Hylie?”
She turned away from the window and unbuckled her safety belt, floating upward in the raft’s micro-gravity. “Yeah?”
The guest, a younger woman, looked close to tears. “Are we going to die out here?”
Hylie shook her head. “No, no. Both this raft and the one Quiss is in have enough air, food, and water to last for more than a week. When we bailed out of the ship, that automatically turned on an emergency beacon. The beacon sent a distress signal to Harrison’s Waypoint, where you guys first flew in from.”
“Oh,” she said, relieved. “That was only a few hours away.”
“Right,” Hylie said, smiling at the other guests in the raft. “I’m sure they’re already getting another ship ready to send our way. We just have to hang out until they get here and pick us up, is all.”
“What happened?” the woman asked.
Hylie frowned. The last thing they need to hear is somebody shot at us. “Uh, I’m not sure. I think something malfunctioned in our power core, and started a chain reaction that knocked out the ship’s engines and life support. Again, I’m truly sorry for the scare, and the inconvenience.” I hope Quiss has enough sense not to tell his raft what happened, either.
“What about the ship that came to rescue those folks down on the surface?” one of the men asked. “Couldn’t they pick us up?”
“They may be on the surface a while,” Hylie lied. “And they’re trying to rescue folks that are in a much more desperate situation. We’re better off getting our own rescue, I think.”
“Nothing to worry about, then?” he asked.
“Nope,” she smiled. “Nothing at all.”
Unless those bastards decide to come finish us off.
Chapter 23
On the vidscreen in the research center’s lounge, the radio call icon flashed.
“The Liberty Belle is here,” Falken said, eyeing Kuda and his handgun warily. “They’re hailing us.”
“About time,” Shep muttered.
Kuda pointed the controller at the screen, answering the call.
“Ground team, this is Starfarer,” a gruff voice said.
That’s not Captain Muir, Falken thought, a pit settling into his stomach.
“This is ground team,” Kuda replied. “We have control of the research center.”
“Roger,” the new voice replied. “Report.”
“Six hostages, one of them injured,” Kuda said. “No injuries on ground team. Research center data archives intact. Awaiting instructions.”
“How many dragons are at the center?”
Kuda frowned. “None. They released them all several months ago, according to the scientists here.”
“Then you need to acquire some new ones, don’t you?” the voice asked.
“Yeah, we do,” Kuda agreed.
“We’ll remain in orbit until you’ve secured them,” the voice told them.
“What’s the status of the other tourist ship?” Shep asked, speaking for the first time.
“Neutralized,” the voice replied. “Now get to work.” With an abrupt click, the line went dead.
Falken’s eyes narrowed. “Your friends shot down Hylie and Quiss?”
“Not your concern, Falken,” Shep said.
“The Adrenaline Junkies saved me,” Falken insisted. “If it wasn’t for them, none of us would have made it off the Ecolympus.”
“I’ll be sure to thank any survivors on our way out,” Shep sneered. He pointed at Brondi and Luthena. “Stand up. You’re going to catch us some dragons. A male and a female, preferably.”
“You’re thinking of breeding them? That’s a terrible idea,” Luthena said. “None of the specimens we had under observation here ever showed any interest in mating while in captivity.”
“When we want your scientific opinion, we’ll ask for it,” Shep told her.
“They’re dangerous enough to handle as it is,” Brondi continued. “But males and females kept in close proximity to one another tend to become extra aggressive.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Shep said, exasperated. “You’re going to help us, or I’m going to start shooting your friends here. Got it?”
“What happens to us after you take the dragons?” Falken asked.
“We leave you here,” Kuda said.
“You’re not going to
kill us?” Vina asked.
“Assuming everyone cooperates – including helping to catch the dragons – then we’ll just leave you here for the next rescue ship to find,” Kuda said. “Now let’s get going.”
Luthena and Brondi shared a look. “We have proxies in storage that we can use,” Luthena said. “It’s the safest way to handle the capture.”
Brondi nodded. “I can dust off the sensory displacement pods, and get them warmed up.”
“How many proxies?” Shep asked.
“Four, last I checked,” Luthena said. “So we better hope that’s enough.”
Falken rose slowly to his feet. “I’ll go, too. You’re going to need help.”
“That we will,” Brondi agreed.
Kuda’s eyes narrowed. “And I’ll be your fourth man.”
Falken shook his head. “No. You’re too inexperienced around dragons. You’ll just increase the likelihood that we lose the proxies.”
“That wasn’t a question,” Kuda said. “I’m not letting the three of you out of my sight. I’m coming, end of story.”
“You’ll just have to make sure you do it right the first time, Falken,” Shep warned. “‘Cause if not, you’ll be going out there in your own skin to finish the job.”
* * *
Vina watched as Falken pulled his arm through the body suit’s sleeve, the thin fabric stretching.
“It’s too small,” she said.
“It’s the biggest suit they had,” Falken said, shrugging it over his shoulders.
Across the room, Luthena and Kuda were tugging their own suits on – Kuda had handed his weapon to Shep for safekeeping. Brondi flitted between the displacement pods, checking hoses and power cords that were covered in a thin layer of dust.
“Falken, you better take unit five,” he said. “Four’s got a leaky air hose.”
“Got it,” Falken said. He stepped over to the unit and swung the lid open, then accessed a settings menu on the control panel.
