by Rick Partlow
“Where the hell did you get it?” He wondered, inanely
“You know that roll of Tradenotes you were hiding in the utility locker?” She asked, shooting a look at him over her shoulder. “Hope you weren’t saving it for Christmas. They may allow non-lethal weapons on this place, but they sure as hell aren’t cheap.”
“That guy,” Ash tried to say, panting a little. He wasn’t in bad shape; he had a lot of time to hit the gym and the running track back on Anansi. But the combination of fear, adrenalin and shock made him feel like he’d just finished running a marathon. “He wasn’t Patrol…”
“No shit.” He couldn’t see Sandi’s sneer, but he could hear it in her voice.
The lights were getting brighter and the crowds were getting thicker, and he could tell they were close to the main drag. They had to slow their pace to weave between groups of tourists, some of them wobbling in obvious intoxication.
“That was the bounty hunter,” she hissed quietly in his ear as a slow jog turned into a fast walk and she tried to hide the sonic weapon against her body. “The same one that was here last time, the same one that strafed us on Anansi.”
“How did he know we’d be here?” Ash wished he had the question back as soon as he’d asked it, especially after the pitying look Sandi gave him. “You were right,” he said before she could. “Someone in the Patrol sold us out.”
There was an emptiness in his gut, a gone feeling like the one he’d had when his ship was going down on the Tahni colony world during the war, powerless and out of control.
“What the hell do we do now?” The words a helpless moan that he barely recognized as his own voice.
“I have one idea,” Sandi said, shaking her head. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Chapter Six
“Oh Lord, I don’t like this,” Ash muttered in Sandi’s ear as they slowly stepped down the belly ramp of the Acheron. Sandi had to agree there was a lot not to like. She didn’t like it at all, and it had been her idea.
It was early morning in Dominica, and the primary star rising over the city stained its sandstone walls a deep, blood red. The city gates were open, the packed dirt and sand of the road running out of the gates and then winding up a set of switchbacks to the plateau where they’d established the spaceport. Clouds of dust were just now beginning to dissipate from the trucks that had driven up those switchbacks to meet them.
Two of them were disgorging armed men, all of them dressed in khaki utility fatigues and carrying locally-fabricated carbines. They were arraying themselves in a semicircle around the belly ramp, weapons pointed toward Ash and Sandi. The last vehicle was a flatbed, with a pintle-mounted assault cannon affixed to it, crewed by another of the khaki-clad troops behind its splinter shield, its yawning muzzle pointed at a spot near the rear of the Acheron, ready to blast the ship if it tried to take off.
“Seems like overkill,” Sandi commented as the leader of the troops stepped out of the pack towards her.
He towered over her by twenty centimeters, having grown up in the lighter gravity here on La Hondonada, his depilated head gleaming slightly with reflected sunlight. His face was hard and etched with lines that spoke less of age and more of a life lived hard.
“Perhaps,” the tall man said, thumbs hooked casually in his gunbelt, “we simply could not believe you’d be stupid enough to come back here without it being some sort of trick.”
“You got my message, Jordi,” she said, spreading her hands. “I wanted out, and when I couldn’t get out, I panicked. I made a mistake. I want to make it right, if you’ll let me.” She motioned towards Ash. “At the very least, I don’t want to drag down an old friend who was only trying to help me.”
Jordi Abdullah regarded her for a long moment with cold, hard eyes, and she felt a trickle of sweat down her back that had nothing to do with the high desert temperatures. Then he seemed to come to a decision. He waved at one of the trucks.
“Get in,” he told them. “Let’s talk somewhere more comfortable.”
The ride down into Dominica was bumpy, silent and profoundly uncomfortable. Ash turned to her as they cleared the city gates, looking as if he were about to say something, but she shook her head. Jordi sat beside them, as engaging and conversational as a stone edifice, and she didn’t want to do anything that might worsen his mood.
She glanced out the window and saw children staring at them curiously as the trucks passed. The adults pretended not to notice, going about their business and sneaking glances over their shoulders as they guided mule-drawn wagons loaded down with wheat, barley or corn. Sandi shook her head at the mules, bemused even if she understood the principle: animals could reproduce and be fed without bringing in spare parts or producing complicated electronics or mining ore. It always made her feel like she’d taken a step back in time into some early-20th Century European village; only the little anachronisms ruined it, like the ubiquitous ‘links and the transmission tower that rose up from the largest building in town, where the cartel had their headquarters.
The whole place looked like the ass end of some fringe colony, the worst parts of an Earth-like world where people who couldn’t cut it in a bigger city squatted in squalor. But the truth was, this was the garden-spot of the planet, an island of temperance near the northern pole of a continent that ranged from a climate that reminded her of southern Utah here in Dominica to something more akin to Death Valley down in the south. If there’d been nicer climes on the world, that’s where they would have built their city…and if there’d been nicer climes, the cartel would never have been able to lay claim to the planet at all.
The trucks squealed to a halt in front of the sprawling, two-story adobe structure and Sandi’s door was jerked open by a lean, wiry little man with stringy, black hair tucked under his floppy, uniform hat.
“Out.” His face and his tone were both neutral, like a worker bored with the daily routine.
Only a half dozen of the troops escorted them inside, with Jordi in the lead. Functionaries greeted him genially as they made their way into the broad, double doors and through the well-lit hallways past what looked more than anything like business offices at some Corporate Council subsidiary firm in the outer colonies.
“This isn’t like I imagined it,” Ash said and she shot him a dirty look, wishing he’d keep his mouth shut.
Jordi just chuckled, however, glancing back at the Fleet pilot.
“I like to call it maintaining an air of respectability,” he said. “Hence the uniforms.” He motioned toward the guards. “People become what they think they are, Commander Carpenter. If you reinforce the notion that we’re all a bunch of Pirate World criminals, then that’s how your employees will act, and you won’t be able to trust them when they’re out of your sight.”
He eyed Sandi with an accusatory glare and she shrank beneath his icy regard. She looked down at the floor and kept walking, very aware that just because Jordi liked to think of himself as a businessman didn’t mean he was afraid to get his hands dirty.
They climbed a broad, curving staircase of polished granite, following Jordi out of the general offices and up into what she knew were his personal quarters. She’d never been up those stairs, had been warned against trespassing on the upper floor at all, and she wondered if it was a good sign that they were being brought up there. Surely Jordi wouldn’t want to make a mess where he lived…
The doors up here were thick wood, and they were closed as a rule, though she did see servants wandering in and out of what were probably bedrooms. Jordi brought them to what looked like a sun room, with couches and tables and a small bar all gathered around open windows three meters across and stretching from floor to ceiling. The rising sun shone through them, bathing the room in a golden, welcoming glow.
“Sit down,” Jordi told her and Ash, motioning to one of the sofas.
He fell into a cushioned divan across from them, while the guards fanned out around the room without having to be told.
; “Ms. Hollande,” Jordi began, his hands folded in his lap, “you present me a problem. You’ve defied me, stolen from me, tried to blackmail me. In most cases, this would be a fatal course of action.” He tilted his head toward her, his expression almost sad. “I’m a reasonable man, and I don’t believe I’m cruel. Ostentatious displays of cruelty are bad for business, but a man in my position can’t afford to be perceived as weak. My safest course of action would be to have you both publicly executed, record it and broadcast it wideband in every one of the systems I control.”
Sandi felt her mouth go dry. That was pretty much what Ash had suggested was going to happen if they did this; the only reason he’d gone along with it was that running seemed hopeless and he hadn’t quite been able to let go of the idea of going back to his normal life.
Jordi smiled broadly, possibly at her obvious discomfort.
“Fortunately for you both, however,” he went on, “I have a task which presents itself that not only requires people of your talents and training, but also is tangentially related to the offense you committed against me.” He touched a control on his ‘link and spoke into the pickup. “Bring me the file.”
A woman stepped into the sun room, dressed conservatively in earth tones, in what might have been considered business attire out here. She carried a tablet, long obsolete on Earth or most of her colonies, but cheap and virtually indestructible; the Pirate Worlds didn’t waste anything but human life, since it was the only commodity that came cheaply out here.
Jordi took the tablet from her and held up the screen so they both could see it. An image of a man’s face took up most of the display---a boy, really. He couldn’t have been more than twenty Standard years old, perhaps younger, with long, pale-blond hair tied into a pony tail and peach fuzz on his cheeks where he was trying to grow a beard without much success. His eyes were a light blue that was nearly white, and there was a softness to his pasty face that had nothing to do with its structure and everything to do with a life lived sheltered from hardship.
“This is Adam Krieger,” Jordi told them. “You may be familiar with his father, Wilhelm Krieger…the Admiral.”
He didn’t have to elaborate; Admiral Krieger was the one who’d been selling weapons to La Sombra.
“Little Adam,” Jordi went on, sneering at the image, “fancies himself a disaffected youth, rebelling against the military, the Commonwealth, and just about everything else his father represents. He had an appointment to the Academy, but he dropped out after his Freshman year and spent all his money on passage to one of the colonies…to live the ‘simple’ life.” He snorted derisively. “He was raised in Amsterdam, the silly shit. People who’ve never lived the simple life are always so eager to experience it.”
“This kid got into trouble?” Ash assumed. Sandi just sighed, not bothering to glare at him.
Jordi smiled genially. Sandi was beginning to worry that Ash would think Jordi was actually a reasonable, pleasant person.
“Of course he did,” Jordi confirmed. “He began talking to the wrong people, and once they found out who his father was, they sold him out. The Rif scooped him up a few weeks ago, and they’re trying to use him to co-opt his father’s services away from us.”
“They have him on Tangier?” Sandi asked, her stomach falling away as she realized just what Jordi wanted them to do.
Jordi scrolled through the screens in the tablet’s display and showed them the tactical layout of a walled city, built on the shore of a huge, inland sea.
“Right in the heart of Cape Spartel, with round the clock rotations of armed guards, and anti-aerospacecraft batteries ringed all around the capital.”
“You’re planning on sending a raid into that?” Ash asked, voice thick with disbelief. Unspoken, Sandi knew, was the added “you’re planning on sending us in a raid into that?”
Jordi sniffed, as if he could detect the fear in the question.
“As tempting as it might be to dispose of both of you in such a glorious manner,” he said drily, “no, I don’t intend on wasting our best chance out of spite. Rif is always on the lookout for armed ships, and for jacked pilots to fly them, and right now, the whole extent of their aerospace forces consists of two armed landers, a freighter with weapons pods badly welded onto her and an old VTOL flyer that someone rigged a grenade launcher to.”
“The Acheron doesn’t have any weapons, Mr. Abdullah,” Ash reminded him quietly.
“Yet,” Jordi corrected him, raising a finger. “Weapons, we have a-plenty, Commander.”
“We’re going to go try to get hired by the Rif?” Sandi asked cautiously.
“You aren’t going to try, Ms. Hollande,” he replied with a coldly dangerous tone, his eyes fixing her with a hard glare. “You are going to get hired, and then you are going to become trusted employees. And then you’re going to do what you do best, you backstabbing little bitch.” The words were hot with an anger he hadn’t allowed himself to show before, and she swallowed hard, half-convinced he was going to change his mind and have her shot. “You’re going to betray them. You’re going to get that boy, and you’re going to bring him to me.”
Jordi pushed himself to his feet and stared out the window. You could see the top of the plateau from here, and Sandi spotted a heavy flatbed truck pulled up beside the Acheron, a crane mounted on the flatbed with its loading straps wrapped around a dull grey cylinder that hung off the end of the truck by a good ten meters. Other equipment was clustered around the weapons assembly and the small, far-away figures of workers were doing something to the underside of the ship.
Sandi saw Ash wince and knew how he must feel. The ship was his baby, and someone else was performing surgery on her.
“Admiral Krieger has been a wonderful source of trade goods and weapons for our own forces, but his price has been…” Jordi shrugged. “…exorbitant. Once we have control of his wayward offspring, well, I imagine we might be able to renegotiate.”
He turned back to Ash and Sandi. “They’re installing a proton cannon on your cutter, by the way. It probably costs more than your ship, so take good care of it; I’m going to want it back. And just in case you get any smart ideas when you leave here,” he cocked his head at them significantly, “we’re putting an interlock into the targeting computer we’ve installed; it won’t arm the cannon anywhere in this system.”
“Jordi,” Sandi began, trying to be extremely careful how she phrased the question, “if we’re supposed to gain their trust enough to get the kid…” She trailed off. “What I mean is, once they have an armed ship, isn’t La Sombra going to be their prime target?”
The crime boss laughed, jabbing a finger at her and shaking his head.
“Sandi, Sandi, Sandi,” he said, like she was a recalcitrant child, “even when you’re following orders, you’re still plotting and scheming.” He eyed Ash sidelong. “She’s a user, this one is, Carpenter. You should watch out for her.”
Sandi felt a familiar pain at the look Ash gave her, but she knew she deserved it.
“Yes, yes,” Jordi went on, “I anticipated they might use you two and the ship against our interests. It’s worth it in the long run. Anything they steal, we can steal back. Anything they destroy, we can replace.” He shrugged. “Including people, I suppose. But,” the word was emphatic, “only if you do your job. If you bring me the kid, all is forgiven, and I’ll even arrange with my friends in the Patrol to clear up the little misunderstanding you have with them. If you don’t…” The expression on his face could have been called a grin, in the same way the look a lion gave a gazelle before she dug into his haunches could be called a grin. “If you don’t, you’d better hope you died trying.”
***
“Of all the things I thought I might do with this boat,” Ash mused, running through the status screens on the Acheron’s control board, “sticking an illegal military weapon on her and hiring out as a mercenary for a Pirate World cartel wasn’t one of them.”
Sandi blew out a breath and s
tared at his back. She was standing behind him, doing a status check of her own on the maintenance display at the rear of the cockpit. They were due to take off in a few hours, just as soon as Jordi’s techs finished re-routing the power feeds to the ship’s reactor and replaced the outer hull plates, and she wanted to make sure they hadn’t fucked up any of the computer commands when they were inputting their weapons interlocks.
She wanted to tell him again that she was sorry, but it would have sounded insincere.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said instead. He glanced back at her, cocking an eyebrow. “We can just go off to the Periphery together,” she said it softly, in case any of the techs was nearby. “The Commonwealth is a big place; people just disappear off the map all the time.”
Ash laid his head back against the rest on his acceleration couch and closed his eyes, looking somewhere between thoughtful and exhausted.
“It would mean losing everything,” he said, eyes still closed. “I’d be giving up my career, my pension, not to mention living my whole life looking over my shoulder, worried that some Patrol Inspector or bounty hunter was going to figure out who I was and arrest me.” He opened his eyes, shrugging. “Or that one of the cartel informants would find me and put a round into the back of my head.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “you could die or go to a reformery at some point, someday. But if we do this…” She toed the foot control for his acceleration couch and powered it around to face her. “There’s a reason he’s offering this as a way out for me, Ash. It’s a suicide mission, and he knows it. Rif is going to guard this Adam kid like he’s the fucking President of the Commonwealth, and they’re not going to let a couple of nobodies they just hired get anywhere near him. Eventually, we’re going to have to try anyway, and when we do, they’ll kill us.”
