Prodigal (Tales of the Acheron Book 1)

by Rick Partlow

  Maybe it would be better to just let go, she thought, to let her mind slip into the darkness and maybe not wake up again.

  No. Too simple. Without the pain, what am I?

  The sky was turning a deeper blue, and for a moment she thought it was the darkness closing in on her brain until she realized that it was the atmosphere thinning with their ascent. The other ship still pursued them, a persistent, winking red on the sensor display, but they were putting distance between them thanks to a quirk of trajectories. The Gatling laser was a powerful weapon, but at the hundreds of kilometers that separated them now, the pulses wouldn’t retain the energy to penetrate their armor.

  Blue turned to black so quickly that Sandi thought she’d faded out for a few minutes, and she wished for her own set of interface jacks so she could plug in and distract her mind from the pressure on her physical body. That was why Ash was still in control despite the punishing acceleration that was taking them into orbit in minutes: the cushion of the interface, reaching through the strain and discomfort and right into his brain.

  The plasma drive had taken over from the turbojets, now that they were far enough up to avoid the thermal blooming that could have consumed them in the thicker atmosphere. The whine of turbines had turned into a distant rumble of vibration running through the hull with a gentle, familiar assurance that seemed somehow disconnected from the pressure still pushing her into the gel-packed folds of the acceleration couch.

  Farther away now, farther up the gravity well, she could see it on the display. Nearly far enough…

  “Transition,” she hissed, barely able to speak.

  “Where?” He croaked hoarsely, eyes distant and not looking at her, lost in the interface.

  “Anywhere.”

  Just a few minutes more. There’d been no attempt to contact them by Civilian or Fleet Traffic Control, no warnings for an illegal flight plan, not a single word or computer signal. They could have been alone on an uncharted world except for the unrelenting pursuit of the white ship. It was like the war, she realized, like engaging the enemy far from friendly lines, away from any help or support.

  Sometimes you couldn’t fight. Sometimes you had to run and live to fight another day.

  There was a feeling that wasn’t quite a feeling, a sensation like something had crawled over your grave, and reality shredded, what was on the other side significant only in its differences. The fierce pressure of acceleration faded into a stable one gravity, pulling her towards the deck rather than backwards into her seat, and Sandi sucked down her first full breath in long minutes.

  Ash yanked the ‘face jacks from his sockets and turned to her, face white and slick with sweat.

  “We’re heading for Inferno,” he informed her, voice surprisingly calm given that he looked as if he was going into shock. “Tell me a story, Sandi.”

  Chapter Four

  “I was looking in this woman’s eyes,” Sandi said, sipping at a bulb of water, “and she was telling me that her son had been killed in the crossfire between La Sombra and the Rif, and I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I went out there to be a pilot, because no one legitimate would let me fly for them, but I couldn’t run guns to criminals and keep thinking it wasn’t any of my business.”

  “What’s a ‘Rif,’ anyway?” Ash asked her, his arms braced on the fold-down table of the ship’s tiny galley, his own water bottle sitting on it, forgotten.

  “They’re one of the smaller cartels,” she explained, “operating off a world they call Tangier. Since they’re small, the bigger syndicates like La Sombra are always trying to grab up their assets, like the settlement on Asiento.”

  He watched her eyes turn downwards and he knew she was struggling to keep it together long enough to get the story out. He knew too much about her, he thought. Too much to ever feel comfortable or safe with her.

  “So, after Asiento,” Sandi went on, “I went to the Captain of the freighter I was crewing and I told him I wanted out. I told him I couldn’t do it anymore, that I wanted to use the pay I’d accrued to buy a slot on one of their ships heading for Belial or wherever, just out of the Pirate Worlds.”

  “Let me guess,” Ash interrupted. “It wasn’t that simple.” He wanted to ask how the hell she could have been stupid enough to get involved with the cartels in the first place, but he clamped down on the words before they could make their way out. It wouldn’t help the situation, plus he already had an idea of the why.

  “Deruda, the Captain,” Sandi related, “he told me that there were only two ways to leave La Sombra: plata o plomo was how he put it. Gold or lead, it means, but the gist is that you can either buy your way out or die.”

  She snorted a humorless laugh, squeezing the bulb of water so hard that the plastic creaked. “The latter didn’t appeal to me, and I couldn’t afford the former. He suggested that if I didn’t want to pilot a cargo shuttle anymore, I could earn my way as a netdiver.” She shrugged. “I suck at it, I’ve had no training at all and our implant wetware isn’t really suited for it, but I said sure, because what the hell else could I say.”

  “He took someone he knew didn’t want to be there,” Ash summarized in wonder at this Captain Deruda’s stupidity, “and stuck them in the place where the cartel keeps their sensitive data?”

  Her lip curled in a snarl. “By the time we made it back to La Hondonada, I’d found it, the thing I thought would make them let me go.” She shrugged. “And maybe get me a ship of my own, or at least enough money to buy my way onto one.”

  Yeah, he thought but refrained from saying, because blackmailing a cartel is such a brilliant idea that’s sure to solve all your problems. He stayed quiet, giving her a look that he hoped encouraged her to continue.

  “I used the Tradenotes I had saved up to bribe a crew of independent smugglers to let me ride with them back to Kanesh.” She took another drink of water, swirling it around like her mouth had become dry from the talking. “From there, I managed to sign on as a netdiver on a ship heading to Belial, and then use the little bit of money that paid to hitch a ride to Anansi.” She glanced up at him with guilt in her eyes. “I didn’t want to involve you in all this, but I didn’t have the money to go anywhere else, and if I stayed on Belial, La Sombra would have found me eventually.”

  “What is it?” Ash demanded, feeling a flash of impatience at her contrition. He wasn’t sure if it was genuine, but he was damn sure it hadn’t stopped her from trying to steal his ship. “What did you take?”

  She looked as if she was still internally debating whether she should tell him or not, and Ash was about to remind her that they’d tried to kill him already and hadn’t cared whether or not he knew why, but she finally gave in.

  “La Sombra has better weapons than the other cartels,” Sandi explained. “It’s one of the reasons they’ve expanded so quickly, and it’s why the others hate and fear them. I knew they must have a connection in the Commonwealth, either in the military or the Patrol or maybe the Corporate Council, someone selling them the guns. I ran a search through the databanks, trying to get a line on who it was.”

  “I assume you found them,” Ash commented drily. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “You didn’t use to be such a smartass,” Sandi muttered. “Their source is a high-ranking officer in logistics and procurement, an admiral named Krieger.”

  “Shit,” Ash breathed, eyes going wide. “An admiral? And a flag officer in logistic and procurement’s got to have a lot of political connections that’ll cover his ass.”

  “I guess Jordi thinks so, too,” she said with a shrug. At his confused frown, she clarified. “Jordi Abdullah is the boss of La Sombra. I contacted him from Belial, trying to get him to let me go, and maybe give me enough money to get set up somewhere, in exchange for the data I’d siphoned. Instead, he sent that guy after me.”

  “The guy on the ship?” Ash deduced. “Who is he?”

  “A fucking bounty hunter,” she fairly spat the words. “I don’t know hi
s name, but I know he works for La Sombra, and he showed up on Kanesh gunning for me. I barely got out ahead of him, and he wasn’t shy about collateral damage. He’s the main reason I didn’t want to drag you into this.”

  “I’m in now,” Ash said in grim resignation. “Nothing we can do about that. We’re heading for 82 Eridani right now; we could be at Inferno in seventy hours. I still know some people there; I could get us an interview with the Criminal Investigations Division, present them the evidence you found.”

  “This Krieger is a fucking Admiral, Ash,” she reminded him. “A flag officer with political connections isn’t going to sweat an accusation from a disgraced former war hero who’s been working for criminals, no matter how compelling some computer file looks. It could be faked, as far as they’re concerned.”

  Ash tossed the argument around in his head, trying to come up with a good, logical way to counter it…and couldn’t. Sandi and he were both Medal of Honor winners from their actions at the Battle for Mars, but that had been early in the war, and they’d both thought it was mostly for propaganda purposes, to try to put a better spin on the ass-kicking the Commonwealth had taken at Mars. When he’d gone down on that Tahni colony world and Sandi had broken regs and disobeyed orders to come back and get him, they’d used up every ounce of political capital they’d acquired with those medals to keep her from being court-martialed and sent to a military prison for the balance of the war. She’d sat out the last two years as a functionary at a desk job, stripped of her flight certificate, and that would be the first thing anyone saw when she walked in the room.

  “We could send the data to CID anonymously,” he mused, but then shook his head. “But that wouldn’t do anything to get the cartel off your back.” He winced. “Off our back.”

  “Nothing is going to get them off our back,” she said glumly. “That’s not how they work. The only way out is to run far enough away that it costs them too much to follow.”

  He slapped a palm down on the table suddenly and sharply and Sandi jumped at the noise and motion.

  “I can’t accept that.” He was trying his best not to yell, but it was hard. “I’m not just going to roll over and die because some asshole crime boss knows my name. I’m in the fucking Commonwealth Space Fleet, Sandi, and they aren’t going to chase me out of it.”

  She nodded slowly, then raised her hands, palm up.

  “There’s still a way out for you,” she told him, her voice rising with a glimmer of hope. “Land on Inferno, get out, and take a transport back to Anansi. Report your ship stolen when you get there. You have insurance on it, right?”

  Ash went silent. That plan made all kinds of sense. He’d be out of it, Sandi would at least be able to get someplace safe, and the insurance would pay off his loans. True, he’d have to start all over, try to find another ship surplus, but that didn’t seem so bad right now. Except…

  “This Admiral Krieger might be able to keep CID from taking us seriously,” he allowed, “but he wouldn’t be able to bulldoze the Patrol. If we can get the Patrol involved, they’ll give you witness protection, set you up somewhere safe. Before we give up on your being able to come out of this clean, we need to at least set up a meet with the Patrol.”

  “I’ll just march right down to their local HQ in Tartarus,” Sandi offered, in a tone biting with sarcasm. “I’ll explain how I’ve been knowingly transporting guns and drugs and how maybe I can point them in the right direction to take down an Admiral, and they’ll say ‘Oh yeah, let us take a few months or years to pursue that investigation. Meanwhile, you’re here and you’ve just confessed, so here’s a ten-year prison sentence for your trouble.”

  “You don’t walk in anywhere,” Ash corrected her. “I do. We can contact the Patrol headquarters at 82 Eridani and set up a meeting with an investigator someplace like Belial, in public. We can still get you out of this, Sandi. We can still get this Krieger asshole what he deserves.”

  “It won’t work,” she told him with morose certainty. “Krieger’s a scumbag, but he’s not a unicorn. If they take him down, he’ll just get replaced. They’d be more likely to cut him a deal for what he knows, and that still wouldn’t get La Sombra off my trail.”

  “Wow,” he murmured, regarding her with undisguised pity, “you’ve gotten really good at giving up.”

  That brought a flare of anger, and he thought maybe that’s what he’d been aiming for.

  “Fuck you, Ash,” she snapped, coming out of her seat and leaning across the table toward him. “You haven’t seen the things I have, sitting on your ass comfortable at your desk, feeling sorry for yourself because your fucking life is boring.”

  “Fine,” he assented, shrugging. “Give up if you want, but I’m not. Give me the data, I’ll set up the meet with the Patrol.” He smirked at her. “You can take my place, sitting on your ass and feeling sorry for yourself.”

  He headed back toward the cockpit, intending to record the message he’d send once they reached 82 Eridani.

  “You should just let me go,” she warned him, so quietly he had to turn back to hear her. “This is probably your last chance.”

  “That’s the problem, Sandi,” he admitted, smiling sadly. “I’ve never been that good at letting you go.”

  ***

  Reality unfolded around the Acheron in jagged shards of coherent light, reassembling itself gradually into the greens, browns and blues of Inferno, the second planet out from 82 Eridani. Eden, Inferno’s fairer sister out at the third orbit from the star, ranged from arctic to temperate to subtropical. Inferno’s climate ranged from jungle to desert to uninhabitable, which was why the Commonwealth military owned the world; it had been home to the Space Fleet Headquarters for over a century, and was the official home for all military training, so that all servicemen and women across the Cluster could share in the misery.

  Jacked into the interface, Ash felt the broadcasts from the traffic control and security systems washing over the ship like the surf, and struggled to separate them into coherent messages that his mind could process. Sandi was beside him in the cockpit, but he wasn’t counting on her for help with commo, since the two of them hadn’t done much communication the last couple days in Transition Space. He’d gone from angry to frustrated, and she’d started with hopeless, travelled from there to angry and finally settled in at sullen and resentful.

  What the hell does she have to be resentful about? He thought, sorting through traffic control routing orders and passing them on to the ship’s navigational computer. I’m the one who had my whole life hijacked.

  “Independent starship Acheron,” a man’s voice came over the frequency out of Port Security, surprising him. It was a real person, not a simulation or a recording and, given that there were hundreds of ships Transitioning into and out of the 82 Eridani system at any one time, to get the attention of a real human was rare. “This is Tartarus Security, please respond.”

  “Ash,” Sandi spoke up and he pulled out of the interface enough to see her leaning forward at her station, staring at the sensor display, “something’s up. There are four assault shuttles heading this way at maybe three gravities’ acceleration.”

  His eyes narrowed and he dove back into his connection to the ship’s systems, gently pulling apart the spaghetti-clumps of sensor input to find the four bits of data streaming through the rest. There they were, their trajectory unmistakable, silvery daggers glittering in the dark between Inferno and its moon.

  “Tartarus Security,” he said, trying not to give voice to the panic he was beginning to feel, “this is the independent starship Acheron, ICHS45907A. Is there a problem?”

  “Acheron, you are instructed to switch your ship’s systems over to remote piloting from this frequency and surrender control immediately. Failure to comply will result in immediate destruction.”

  “What the fuck?” Ash blurted. “Tartarus Security? What’s going on? Tartarus Security? Come in?”

  “They got to them,” Sandi told him with pa
ranoid certainty. “Krieger got to them; he found out about this ship. La Sombra warned him about this ship and he got to them before we could get here.”

  “Tartarus Security, please come in!” Ash said again, insistent to the point of desperation. “There’s some kind of mistake!”

  “They’ll be in energy weapons range in about two minutes,” Sandi informed him tautly. “Assuming they don’t use missiles.” She seemed nervous, but he noticed a self-satisfied undertone to her voice, like she just couldn’t wait to say “I told you so.”

  Two minutes.

  No time to debate or explain in two minutes, they’d just ignore him until he did what they wanted. If he’d had a modern ship, with up-to-date control systems straight out of a factory, they wouldn’t have even bothered to ask, just read the registration numbers off the computer and taken control without so much as a by-your-leave. But the Acheron was slapped together from wartime surplus and held together by spit and good wishes. Military ships didn’t generally come with always-on remote piloting systems because that was just one more electronic vulnerability that the enemy could seize on.

  Wait a second, he thought, no time to explain unless I use the explanation I already have recorded.

  Working through the interface because it was quicker, Ash negotiated a connection to the message server for the Commonwealth Patrol satellite office in Tartarus. The Patrol was the primary law enforcement arm of the Commonwealth government, although they were woefully inadequate to the job. There simply wasn’t enough money to hire all the personnel and build all the ships to adequately enforce Commonwealth law in all the settled systems. But they were what he had to work with, and he’d recorded a message detailing what had happened to Sandi and him and asking them to send an agent to meet them in the bar of the Canis Major lounge on the Belial space station in 120 hours. He’d picked that place because it was famous and the only one he knew, by reputation, with the added bonus that it should be packed with people.