Prodigal (Tales of the Acheron Book 1)

by Rick Partlow

  “That’s not our problem,” he reminded her, opening the hatch.

  Both sides of the lock were pressurized, so it didn’t need to cycle; both doors slid aside at once and they ducked through into the docking bay of the lighter. Across the open cargo bay, they could see the airlock hatch for the cargo shuttle, nestled in the docking notch on the opposite side of the hull. It had been jammed full on the way back from the planet, with both the huge missiles stuffed into its hold, but now it was half empty, with one of the Planet-Killers attached to a jury-rigged hard-point on the outer hull of the lighter. Ash thought Brunner would have mounted both the weapons outside the ship if she could have, but there hadn’t been time to construct more than the one launch point before they’d left Tangier. An armed guard still stood outside the hatch, as one had since they’d left Peboan, and Ash tried not to stare at him.

  He could tell the ship was approaching Transition by the buzz of activity as they passed through it on the way to the bridge. Even people with no duties were finding a good place to observe what was going to happen; he saw a squad of Brunner’s ground troops huddled in the break room, strapped into chairs arrayed around a 2-D display screen, waiting with an almost jovial sense of expectation. They reminded him of Attack Command missile cutter crews before their first mission, before they really understood what war was all about.

  But these guys know what war is, he reminded himself. They’ve just been losing for so long, this is as close as they’ve come to a victory.

  The atmosphere on the bridge was a bit more sedate, but not by much. Brunner was almost beaming, smiling as broadly as she probably ever had, he guessed. Captain Red Arrow wore a piratical grin himself, strapped into his command chair, surrounded by obsolete flat-panel OLED screens. Ash shook his head, remembering Fleet ships with haptic hologram control projections that surrounded the bridge crews, nearly hiding them from view. This seemed more natural, somehow, even if it was prompted by lack of spare parts rather than nostalgia.

  “I’m glad you two are here,” Brunner said as they stepped through the hatchway. One of Red Arrow’s bridge officers spared them a suspicious glance, but the rest ignored them. “Grab a seat and strap in. We’re about to drop out of T-space.”

  The bridge area of the lighter was as slapped-together and makeshift as anything else he’d seen on the ship, and he could see control stations and acceleration couches and displays from at least a half dozen different ship models, civilian and military, cobbled together against the bare duralloy of interior hull supports without even the cosmetic covering of a bulkhead. The crew at those stations seemed as motley as their equipment, wearing mismatched bits of military and Corporate Council uniforms, some from designs a century old, along with the vat-grown leather that was stereotypical spacer gear.

  Seven bridge officers were strapped into the horseshoe-configured bridge stations, and Brunner sat on the throne of the one extra seat behind the Captain’s position, but there were a pair of fold down jump seats at the rear of the bridge, and they buckled into the restraints quickly, seeing the clock counting down under a minute on one of the screens.

  “Preparing for Transition,” the navigator reported. He was a tall man, born to lower gravity, with the facial tattoos of a Belter. “Everything’s green. Any problems?”

  The casual question received a series of head-shakes and negative grunts from the engineering technicians and the ship’s XO, who was monitoring the Teller-Fox warp unit. It offended Ash’s professional sensibilities after so many years in the Fleet, but he figured most of the crew on this ship hadn’t ever been in the military or, if they had, it had been long before he was born.

  “Do it,” Red Arrow ordered.

  There was a lurch somewhere in the fabric of reality that Ash felt in his soul, and then the Nothingness that couldn’t even be seen fractured into the familiar view of a world slightly too near its star, a world of much brown and too little green and blue and negligible amounts of white high in the highest mountains. On one of those high mountain plateaus, passing below them now on the day side of La Hondonada, was Dominica and the main base for La Sombra.

  Ash felt his stomach flip-flop as the gravity field faded away in the absence of another set of physical laws that made it possible, but his seat restraints held him in place. Sandi grabbed his hand and he sensed the anxiety in her grip.

  The lighter’s communications specialist glanced back at Brunner and nodded.

  “It’s hooked up to the mic for your ‘link,” the slight, pale-skinned woman told her. “I’m bouncing it off one of their satellites, so you should reach anyone with a ‘link on the planet.”

  Brunner paused for a moment, perhaps savoring it, or maybe gathering her thoughts.

  “My name is Lena Brunner and I’m second in command of the business interest you know as the Rif.” Her voice was calm and coldly professional, but Ash saw in her eyes the glint of satisfaction, the look of someone used to the taste of the boot who was finally getting the chance to put their own foot on someone else’s throat.

  “La Sombra has been trying to violently annex our holdings on Asiento for years now. Jordi Abdullah has attacked our shipments and stolen or destroyed them, killed our crews and put the innocent people who happen to work for us in danger. This ends today. For a demonstration of what will happen to the city of Dominica if it doesn’t end, I invite all of you to take a close look at your moon.”

  She made a cutting motion to the commo tech and the woman touched a control on her board before nodding to Brunner that the transmission had ceased.

  “They have a missile defense station on their moon, don’t they?” Brunner asked the Captain. Ash could see the moon in the corner display, a crescent of light, barely more than a captured asteroid, about the size of Deimos or Phobos, Mars’ satellites.

  “I have a lidar bounce from it,” Red Arrow confirmed. He dragged his fingers across one of the screens at his station. “Targeting.”

  “Fire when ready,” she instructed, the words almost a snarl.

  Captain Red Arrow dragged another icon into place, then touched a control.

  “Launching missile.”

  The whole ship rocked with the separation of so much mass, maneuvering thrusters kicking the Planet-Killer free of the lighter before its own drives took over. It streaked towards the small moon at nearly twenty gravities of acceleration on flames brighter than the primary star on the main viewscreen.

  “We have incoming missile fire from the planet’s surface,” the Captain announced. “And there are half a dozen bogies launching from the main landing field; I’m thinking armed shuttles.”

  “How long till their missiles hit us?” Brunner wanted to know.

  The Captain consulted the readout again before answering. “Maybe thirty minutes.”

  “Plenty of time.” Brunner dismissed the danger with a negligent wave of her hand.

  Ash squirmed in his seat. She was probably right…they were in one of the LaGrangian points between La Hondonada and her moon, and it was going to take a lot more time under thrust for missiles fired from the ground to reach them than it was for their missile to reach its target. They were even too far away for effective fire from a ground-based defense laser, probably. But if La Sombra happened to have any ships in orbit, or on cislunar patrol, they wouldn’t spot them until they fired up their drive or launched a spread of missiles and, by then, it might be too late.

  The minutes crawled by, and each one that passed without them detecting any other threats, Ash began to relax just a bit more. He could tell that wasn’t the case with Sandi. She was tensed up, grinding her teeth with frustration.

  “Couldn’t we jump out a few light seconds and watch the explosion from a bit safer distance?” She asked tightly.

  Brunner glanced over at her, clearly amused.

  “There’s more to this than firing a warning shot,” she explained with something that might have been a combination of patience and condescension. “We’re send
ing a message, and not being scared of anything they can throw at us is part of the message.”

  Sandi didn’t reply, and she also didn’t seem any less keyed up. She still held Ash’s hand and he winced at the tightness of her grip.

  “There’s a reply coming in from Dominica,” the communications tech reported. “The signal ID says it’s Jordi Abdullah.”

  Brunner’s eyebrow rose; she obviously hadn’t expected that.

  “Put him on,” she ordered. She was acting casual about it, but Ash could tell that was for the sake of the crew. Apparently, the message she was sending wasn’t just to the enemy.

  The sight of Jordi Abdullah’s long, hard-edged face raised hackles on the back of Ash’s neck. He’d had this idea, somewhere deep down, that as long as he didn’t see the cartel boss again, he could pretend that he didn’t exist, that they’d never made the deal for Adam. He could tell from the pressure on his hand that it was having a similar effect on Sandi.

  “Shit,” she muttered, low enough he was sure no one else heard it.

  “Lena.” Jordi smiled broadly, his tone genial. “It’s been too long. We should really get together and discuss things face-to-face. Why don’t you hop on a shuttle and we can meet right now?”

  “Are we live or is this prerecorded?” Brunner asked the commo tech, her voice low and tight.

  “Live, ma’am. Do you want to respond?”

  At Brunner’s nod, the tech swiped her finger over a control, then gave a thumbs-up.

  “The last time we sat down to talk, Jordi,” Brunner reminded him, her voice full of barely-restrained anger, “your hired killers wound up assassinating my mother.”

  There was a delay of a few seconds as the signal traveled down to the planet and his reply came back, and Ash could see the shift in his expression from affected casual indifference to a sneer of disdain.

  “This isn’t a business for the meek and mild, girl. You play rough with people like me, you should expect exactly the kind of response that your mother got.”

  Brunner’s eyes flickered off to the side, where the countdown for the missile strike was reaching zero.

  “And if you keep fucking with us, Jordi, this is the response that’s going to drop into your lap.”

  The white hemisphere of thermonuclear fire erupted from a section of the moon that had been in shadow and, for a moment, hundreds of square kilometers lit up like a second sun had risen. Ash knew that what appeared to be one explosion was actually the ignition of multiple fusion warheads simultaneously, but from this distance it seemed like the whole side of the moon had simply caught fire. The defense batteries had covered a wide swathe of the South Polar Region, and in one second, the whole area was wiped from existence.

  “Get us out of here, Captain.” Brunner was smiling with what might have been satisfaction.

  “Transitioning,” Red Arrow announced.

  Ash felt the shift, the twisting of perspective that he’d experienced so many times before, the one that most people would never feel. Gravity returned and seat restraints were unsnapped and Sandi slowly released her grip on his hand, her breath settling back to normal.

  “Was it worth it, ma’am?” Captain Red Arrow asked Brunner. At her look, he shrugged and waved expansively. “Now we just have the one.”

  She considered it for a moment, her elbows on her seat’s armrests, her hands pressed together in front of her.

  “If we play this smart, Captain,” she told him, “we’ll only need the one.”

  ***

  The guard eyed Sandi doubtfully as she approached the cabin, but he moved aside and let her by with a hesitant nod. She paused to knock politely before she twisted the locking lever and pulled the hatch open. Adam Krieger didn’t stand when she entered, but he did pull the Virtual Reality goggles off his head, tossing them down on the cot next to him.

  He nodded to her. “I’m surprised they let you in,” he said.

  Sandi pushed the hatch shut behind her, stepping in and sitting down on the cot beside him, hands folded in her lap.

  “I told Brunner I wanted to check on you after what happened back on Peboan,” she explained. “She’s in a pretty good mood right now, so…” She waved a hand. “Here I am. She said I could have a few minutes.”

  “Are you okay? I mean, you got shot while we were down there. The last time I saw you, they were taking you into the med bay.”

  She nodded. “It hurt, but it wasn’t serious. How’s your head?”

  “The medic said I had a mild concussion.” His fingers brushed at the right side of his head unconsciously. “I was dizzy and had a headache for a few hours, but I’m better now.” He hesitated and Sandi wondered if he was worried about the missiles. “That guy who I saw visiting you when you were in medical…” He trailed off, then blurted out the question. “Is that your boyfriend?”

  Sandi almost laughed. It took every ounce of self-control she had not to crack a smile. The forlorn look on Adam’s face helped to keep her own expression serious. The kid was young and lonely; of course he was attracted to the only female who’d been nice to him.

  “Yes, he is,” she said solemnly, and realizing with a little start that yes, after all these years, he really was. “We’ve known each other since the Service Academy. He wants to help get you out of this, too. He’s a good guy.”

  Adam let out an almost imperceptible sigh.

  “So these missiles you guys stole,” he said, working down his list of priorities, she thought with inner amusement. “I heard they blew one up.”

  “On an uninhabited moon,” she told him, hoping her voice hadn’t sounded as defensive to him as it had inside her head. Mostly uninhabited. She wasn’t going to cry about whatever La Sombra techs might have been working on the defense station there.

  “They still have the other one, right? And you’re okay with that?”

  Sandi winced at the question, at the doubt and accusations in the boy’s voice, mostly because they echoed the accusations she’d been hurling silently at herself since the theft.

  “No, I’m not,” she admitted. “But your father had a deal with Jordi Abdullah, the head of the La Sombra cartel, to sell the missiles to him. Trust me when I say that would have been even worse.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going to do anything about it?” Adam’s voice was righteously indignant in the way that only the young can manage without sounding hypocritical.

  “It’s too well guarded here on the ship.” She shrugged helplessly.

  “You have guns, don’t you?”

  She bit back the sharp retort that was on the tip of her tongue and forced herself to be patient. He’s just a kid.

  “You don’t want to start a gunfight inside a ship in T-space. It’s a good way to make yourself one with the universe, if you get my meaning. We’ll figure something out when we get back.”

  “I know you think the Rif isn’t as bad as that other cartel, and that Jordi you were talking about,” Adam said, spearing her with that same accusatory stare. “But they kidnapped me right out of the hostel on Aphrodite, and they killed some of the local cops on the way out. They’re not good people, and they’ll kill me, too, if I don’t do what they want.”

  She put a hand on his arm, squeezing with reassurance.

  “We won’t let that happen. We’re going to get you out, and we’re going to make sure no one uses that other missile, too.”

  “Why?” He wondered. “Why are you doing this for me?”

  She felt a stab of guilt at the thought of telling him the truth, that they’d been sent by Jordi to yank him out of one prison and put him in another, that they were selling him out to save their own lives. But she abruptly realized that she had no intention of doing that, and hadn’t for some time.

  When had that happened? They’d never talked about it, never made any decision she could remember. She’d just known, somehow, that Ash wouldn’t do it, and neither could she.

  “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not v
ery proud of,” she confessed to Adam, and herself, “a lot of things I wish I could go back and change. But that’s a trap; you can’t change what you’ve done, and wishing you could is just an excuse to not ever do anything different.”

  He nodded slowly, seeming to understand.

  “Thanks for trying to help me,” he said earnestly. “You’re one of the good guys.”

  She chuckled at that, pushing herself up from the cot and moving back to the door. She knocked on it to get the guard to let her out.

  “I’m trying to be,” she told him. The door swung open and she waved as she stepped out.

  God, I’m trying to be.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Carlos Borges boomed, neither needing nor asking for any artificial amplification despite the crowd, “the Rif is back!”

  The cheers were loud and sincere, if a bit drunken for this early in the night. The audience was primed with liberal amounts of free-flowing liquor and warmed just enough by the outdoor heaters surrounding the open courtyard to keep them comfortable without making them drowsy. Sandi edged closer to the gas heater and slightly away from Borges and his painfully loud voice. She’d been virtually ignored after the opening toasts that had announced she and Ash as the guests of honor. The two of them had been afforded seats at the long table near the front of the gathering, where the massive cartel boss stood leaning against the polished, wooden surface and regarding his followers with a glow of satisfaction.

  No one was seated now, not with Borges giving his blustering keynote. Applause kept him from speaking for another few seconds, and he had to raise his hands to quiet down the crowd of what looked to be nearly three hundred people crammed into the courtyard behind his house. Sandi didn’t know who they all were, presumably business owners and local government officials and maybe his senior employees, but they were liking what they were hearing.

  “Sitting in that hangar,” he went on when the crowd quieted down enough to speak, pointing demonstratively at the huge, sheet-metal structure barely visible above the western wall, gleaming in the floodlights a kilometer away, “is the weapon that has brought us the respect we deserve, that has given notice to Jordi Abdullah and his army of thugs that they will no longer be able to take what is rightfully ours!” More cheers, even louder this time, and they took longer to settle down. “Our technicians have inspected it and found it to be fully operational, and tomorrow morning, it will be mounted on one of our cargo shuttles and kept in a secure and secret location somewhere in this system, ready to be called upon if needed.”