Prodigal (Tales of the Acheron Book 1)

by Rick Partlow

  “Jordi needs this to succeed as much as we do,” Ash insisted. “Sure, it’s risky, but he can’t just be writing us off.”

  “He wants us to get the kid,” she admitted. “But you can bet your ass we’re not his only option, or even his best one. If I know him, he’ll have someone on the inside. You and me, we’re a distraction, and an expendable one. Whether we get the job done or get killed, he still wins.”

  Ash appeared to think about it, but she recognized the stubborn set to his face and sighed in resignation even before he spoke.

  “I’m not going to run,” he declared. “You and I are going to do this. We’re going to get this Adam Krieger and deliver him, because there’s no other choice. And after we do, after they clear my name and take the bounty off our heads, I’m going to drop you off on Loki or Sylvanus or somewhere, and that’s it. We’re square, and I don’t want to ever hear from you again.”

  She nodded, unable to respond. She’d expected the words, and she knew she deserved them, but that didn’t make them hurt less.

  “I’m not angry,” he told her, reaching out a hand to cover hers. She nearly flinched away from it. “Honest. You were scared and desperate and you did what you had to do, and I don’t blame you. But like you said, a long time ago, we’re not good for each other, except as friends, and we can’t seem to just be friends.” He let his hand slip off. “Let’s just get this done and put it behind us.”

  He pushed himself up out of the pilot’s chair and headed out of the cockpit. She watched him go, wishing he was angry, wishing he did blame her. Because she knew Jordi, and there was no way he was going to let them get out of this alive.

  Chapter Seven

  Cape Spartel was large as Pirate World cities went; it would have passed as a medium sized town on Aphrodite or Sylvanus, and looked as if it housed a population in the mid tens of thousands. Sandi had never been there before but it looked much like any other Pirate World capital she’d seen, differing only in the details. The city walls were granite here, mined from quarries in the hills nearby, and it was on the shores of a sprawling inland sea they called Lake Tislit.

  It was mid-winter here and half the lake was frozen; Sandi felt like she was half frozen herself. She pulled the collar of her jacket up around her ears and shivered as she stepped away from the open shuttle bus they’d taken from the landing field into the city. It was the only way they’d let visitors inside the walls; you had to be searched and scanned before you boarded the vehicle. Not for firearms; she and Ash both wore handguns holstered at their waists. No, they were searching for explosives, bioweapons, data penetration modules, homing beacons for remotely launched weapons, anything that one of the other cartels might use to attack them.

  The paranoia had started even earlier, when they’d been haled just after Transition into the system and warned not to deviate from the landing pattern they were being sent or they’d be fired on from orbital missile platforms. More weapons platforms were arrayed around the city walls, mostly coil guns and missile launchers, cheap and simple yet effective against all but military spacecraft.

  Maybe paranoid isn’t the right word, she considered. This is the Pirate Worlds after all, and everyone is out to get you.

  “The driver said it was this way.” Ash was leaning close to her ear to be heard over the harsh, cold wind coming off Lake Tislit, and she could still barely make out what he was saying.

  She followed him, letting his taller, broader frame block the wind for her, and tried to watch their six. You didn’t want to be walking around with blinders on in the Pirate Worlds; Ash hadn’t learned that lesson, and she didn’t want him to learn it the hard way.

  The other passengers from the bus were drifting along parallel to their direction, an assorted gaggle of drifter trash, outlaws, smugglers and mercenaries of the usual stripe that gravitated to places like Tangier. Their clothes were a mixture of ship-fabricated flash and utilitarian work clothes and fatigues, and the only universal was the fact that they all carried guns. Hers dragged at her right hip with unfamiliar weight, forced on her by Jordi to help her and Ash fit in. Mercenaries, even mercenary pilots, never went anywhere in the Worlds unarmed.

  The civilians, though, the locals she saw laboring in the streets, buried under layers of jackets and scarves and hats thick enough that she couldn’t tell if they were male or female, none of them seemed to be armed. She wondered if the cartel’s enforcers discouraged it, the way she’d seen in Dominica, or if guns were just too expensive for the average worker to afford here. She watched three bundled figures shoveling gravel into a pothole from a manually-operated wheel-barrow and guessed it was the latter.

  Their destination loomed large ahead of them, the first business visitors would encounter coming into the city from the shuttle bus stop, and also the brightest and gaudiest. Even in the dull grey of a cloudy afternoon, the light from the two-dimensional advertising animations that lined the upper walls of the building glared like a searchlight. Writhing silhouettes against kaleidoscope backgrounds, grinding against one another, vertically and they were dancing, and then rotating horizontally and they might have been having sex, yet nothing else had changed but the orientation.

  The Chambre Verte, that’s what the sign flashed at them without amendment, as if the name itself was enough of an explanation. Or maybe they didn’t bother to explain, she thought, because where the hell else were you going to go?

  A double-entrance formed a sort of airlock to shut out the wind and the flurries of snow that wafted in on it, and ten other people squeezed inside the little space along with her and Ash, and she cursed as she was pushed against him by the shoulder of the next man in line. Then the inner door opened in a wash of warm air and she sighed at the increase in temperature and the decrease in pressure as she stumbled inside.

  The interior of the Chambre Verte was oddly incongruous with its flashy and sensual exterior; the lower floor seemed more of a homey, family tavern, with earth tones and a fire in the hearth and a bar crafted of real wood. Low-top tables were arrayed on the floor around it, half of them unoccupied at the moment, and human waiters and waitresses circulated among them dressed in matching outfits that consisted of little more than tight, black shorts. Sandi observed, with a jaundiced eye, that many of them really needed to be wearing more clothes; cosmetic surgery apparently wasn’t a thing out here.

  A spiral staircase wound to the upper floor, and she could hear a pulsebeat of music filtering down it, she assumed from a dance floor. If there was a brothel here, and she had to think there was, it was also upstairs, and she thought it was a welcome change from the usual colonial pattern of putting the sex, drugs and dancing out front and the quiet dining and drinking somewhere far in the rear.

  Most of the spacers who’d bussed in with them headed up the stairs, drawn by the temptations of the flesh, but she and Ash found an empty booth along the wall by the bar and settled into it. Neither of them spoke, just taking the time to unfasten their jackets and shake melted snow off their collars. There hadn’t been much speaking on the flight to Tangier from La Hondonada, either; Ash had managed to be in his cabin whenever she was out in the galley or the cockpit, venturing out when she was asleep. She’d considered pretending to be asleep and ambushing him, but in the end, she’d respected his desire to be alone. When they had happened to be awake and in the same room, they’d kept the conversation to business, and she’d respected that, too.

  A pair of wait-staff walked over to their booth, a man and a woman, their broad smiles matching. The man was too skinny and too pale, his chest sagging, while the female was too young to be parading around in nothing but shorts for lecherous spacers.

  “Good afternoon, sir, ma’am,” the man said pleasantly. “Do you have a preference for your server?”

  “Male or female?” The woman---girl, really---amended with a bright smile that showed teeth that could have used straightening.

  Ash looked to her helplessly, eyes widening. She snorted amu
sement.

  “You can stay, honey,” she said to the girl, mostly because she didn’t feel like looking at the man’s sub-par body for that long. He didn’t seem too devastated by it, just trundled off to the next table and left the girl standing there primly, a tablet cradled in her hands.

  “What would you like?” She asked. “We have real beef, chicken and pork, farm-raised, as well as soy steaks and burgers.” She smiled shyly…or at least an imitation of shyness. “Also, you can order a companion or companions for the night, and a room.” She looked between them. “We can provide companions for both or either of you, or you could share one…”

  “Just bring me whatever beer you have on tap,” Ash interrupted, visibly embarrassed. Then his eyes lit up and Sandi thought it was because he finally realized what she’d said about the available food. “And chicken,” he added. “Fried, if you can do that. With whatever kind of fried potatoes you can make.”

  “I don’t know how you eat that shit,” Sandi murmured, shaking her head. “Give me a strip steak, medium, baked potato with butter, and vegetables.” She hesitated. “And a glass of water.”

  The girl nodded and padded off, tapping controls on the tablet as she went, sending their order back to the kitchen.

  “No tequila?” Ash asked, sounding surprised.

  She shrugged. “I’m thinking maybe I should cut back.”

  She wasn’t sure when she’d decided that…it might have been just then.

  “I think that’s her,” Ash said suddenly, eyes flickering towards the bar.

  Sandi followed his gaze and saw a very large, very intimidating looking woman pacing up to the bar, followed by two men and a woman dressed in armored vests and strapped with what were either large handguns or compact submachine guns. The woman was young, Sandi thought, assuming she’d been born here in the Pirate Worlds, where anti-aging treatments were a fantasy as unobtainable as dragon’s blood. She couldn’t have been older than her twenties, but the little lines around her eyes and mouth told a story of stress and responsibility and growing up on a hard, cold world. She wore her pale, blond hair cut short, and it made her square jaw look even larger and more imposing.

  “Geno,” she called to the bartender, and the wizened older man scurried up quickly as he noticed her.

  “Yes, Ms. Brunner?” He asked. “What can I get you?”

  “Bourbon, Geno,” she told him. “Three fingers. And whatever they want,” she added, waving back at her bodyguards.

  Sandi turned back to Ash and nodded. The guards were ordering their drinks when the two of them approached the woman. One of the guards, a tall, ebon-skinned, older man with a bushy beard, spotted them and put a hand on his weapon, eyes narrowing.

  Sandi stopped short, hands held out, palms-up as the other two guards stepped in front of their employer in a protective circle.

  “Ms. Brunner,” she spoke, projecting her voice past the guards, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt. “Could we have a minute of your time?”

  “You know me,” Brunner said, cocking her head at them curiously. “I don’t know you.”

  “I’m Sandrine Hollande.” Sandi restrained an impulse to extend a hand. “This is Ashton Carpenter. We came in on the Acheron just an hour ago. We’d heard you were the person to talk to about getting a job with Rif.”

  “You heard that, did you?” Brunner’s hands were on her hips. “And why would I be interested in hiring another pair of ragged drifters?” She laughed, a surprisingly melodic sound. “There’s not exactly a shortage of those around here.”

  Sandi shared a look with Ash, hoping the briefing Jordi had given them about Brunner was accurate.

  “The Acheron is a refitted military cutter,” she explained. “She has a military-grade proton cannon and the targeting systems to use it. And we’re both former Fleet Attack Command pilots.” She pulled back the hair around her temples with the brush of her fingers on either side of her face, and displayed the input jacks. “We have the combat wetware to go with the jacks,” she assured the other woman. “Does that sound like something you might be interested in?”

  Brunner pushed past her guards, patting the oldest one on the arm in a calming motion, and stepped up to Sandi. She was a good eight centimeters taller than the pilot and stared down at her, blue eyes locked with brown. Sandi was fairly certain that the broad-shouldered, muscular woman could break her in half if she wanted, guards or no guards.

  “You’re both former Fleet pilots,” she said softly, “with your own starship, armed with military weapons. What the hell are you doing in the Worlds?”

  Sandi was about to launch into a carefully-prepared and rehearsed story about Post-Traumatic Stress and disaffected veterans and how they didn’t want to haul cargo for a living when Ash broke in.

  “We’re both wanted for murder by the Patrol,” he confessed. “We have the ship, but the weapons are stolen and illegal as hell and the Corporate Council tariffs are so high we couldn’t make a legitimate living with it even if we wanted to.”

  Sandi nodded slowly. It was all true, which would undoubtedly make it easier to keep straight in their heads. Maybe Ash wasn’t such a naïve straight-arrow, after all.

  “So why me?” Brunner asked. “Why the Rif? We’re not exactly the biggest dogs in this yard.”

  “We need a job, ma’am,” Sandi said. “We need somewhere to hang our heads without worrying about the Patrol and bounty hunters. We’ve heard that you need ships and pilots, that you’re willing to pay. It seemed simpler than going somewhere like Thunderhead and trying to haggle with the Sung Brothers when they have enough ships that they don’t really need us.”

  Brunner’s gaze was as careful and calculating as the security scan at the port, and Sandi thought for a long, horrible moment that the woman had seen through their charade and was going to order them shot and dumped in the sea. She was vaguely aware that the people scattered around the bar and the dining room were staring at them, but she ignored the attention, focused entirely on Brunner’s reaction.

  “I’m torn,” the Rif enforcer admitted, “between two old sayings involving horses, one about how you should beware Greeks bearing gifts and the other about looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Sandi didn’t have a response that wouldn’t have sounded smartassed, so she kept her mouth shut. Ash did not.

  “Give us a shot,” he suggested, his tone amazingly calm, given that she assumed he was just as scared as she was. “Send us on a job, let us prove ourselves to you.” He shrugged. “What do you have to lose?”

  Brunner stepped up only centimeters away from Ash, looking at him eye to eye despite his height, probably massing about the same as well. He met her gaze unflinching, and there was a shift in the set of her eyes, a subtle softening that loosened the breath a bit in Sandi’s chest.

  “All right,” Brunner acceded, giving a short, sharp nod. “As you say, what have I got to lose?” She stepped back to the bar and retrieved her drink, tossing it back casually. “There is a little operation we’ve been kicking around, something we haven’t had the pilots or the guns to spare to pull off. I’m warning you ahead of time, it’s more likely to get you killed than get you a job. You might want to rethink heading off to the Sung Brothers and taking less money.”

  “We don’t just want to be hired help,” Ash told her. “We want a place to belong. Where do you want us, and what do you want done?”

  Sandi had to stop herself from staring at him. Ash had never been a coward, of course---you didn’t receive a Medal of Valor for being a coward, even if it had been mostly political. But there was a big difference between being brave behind the controls of an attack boat and being brave face to face with people who could kill you with impunity and not lose a minute’s sleep over it. In person, he’d been quiet, reserved, always willing to let her take the lead.

  When had he got so ballsy?

  “There’s a hangar on the other side of the landing field,” Brunner said, indicating the di
rection with a nod. “Meet me there at midnight local time. I’ll introduce you to the others.”

  “What others?” Sandi wondered.

  “This job…” She paused, brow furrowing. “Sorry, is it Ms. Hollande? Or do you prefer to go by your military rank?” The question was asked with a bit of a sneer, Sandi thought.

  “Just ‘Hollande’ is fine,” she said, keeping the resentment out of her voice. “I haven’t been in the military in quite some time.”

  “Well, Hollande, this job requires a ground force as well as a ship and pilots.” There was something decidedly unfriendly present in the smile that spread across Brunner’s face, and Sandi had the feeling that the malice wasn’t directed at her or Ash. “And for something this close to a suicide mission, I think I have the perfect team.”

  ***

  Ash tried not to let his hand stray too near his gun, feeling the eyes of the guards on his back as he and Sandi were escorted into the sheet metal hangar through an open entrance big enough to fit a taxiing shuttle. The walls of the hangar broke the wind, but not much else; it was bitterly cold at night and the ever-present mist in the air hung in the flaring lights of hangar and penetrated through to his bones.

  There were a pair of old, patched-together orbital shuttles in the hangar, the welds where armor had been cobbled onto key hardpoints painfully visible under the ceiling lights. Gatling laser turrets swelled from dorsal mounts like ugly tumors and the birds had an ungainly, awkward appearance that made the Acheron seem svelte and predatory by comparison. Ash felt his lip curl in a reflexive sneer of distaste for a job poorly done…and then felt a jab in the ribs from Sandi’s elbow through his jacket.

  I never was much of a poker player, he admitted to himself. That was why he’d gone with the truth when that Brunner woman had asked why they were here; he couldn’t have sold it otherwise.

  She’d intimidated the hell out of him, and he wasn’t afraid to say it. That someone as young as her could hold a position of such responsibility in a Pirate World cartel either meant that she was smart, or ruthless, or both. She was waiting for them between the two shuttles along with a small cluster of other people, gathered close as if they were huddled for warmth.