She smiled faintly. “Let’s just get going, before I shove my ‘nice’ right into your gut.”
“Just keep your eyes pointed at the deck and try not to look at the lights, okay?”
The two walked out of the alcove and proceeded down the wide promenade. As Shawn had instructed, Melissa kept her eyes focused on the floor a few feet in front of her. Unfortunately, the lights from the casino were reflecting off the polished silver and alabaster deck and into her eyes. She felt herself getting lightheaded and slumped against Shawn as the two ambled toward the lift. Before reaching the door, he put a strong arm around her waist and held her upright as he activated the elevator. Within seconds the door opened, and he had to practically drag her inside with him. She flopped against the lift wall, using both hands to brace herself on a nearby handrail for support.
“How is it that you’re not as affected as I am by those damn things?”
He smiled. “I suppose I am, just not as much as you are.”
“But you don’t look like you feel as awful as I do.”
“That’s because I wasn’t looking at the lights.”
She regarded him through half-opened eyes. “Seems rather implausible, if you ask me. They’re quite distracting.”
“I suppose they are…if that’s something that distracts you.”
She closed her eyes and smiled, still balancing on the arm rail for support. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you were staring at me the whole time, and that’s what caused you to be distracted.”
“You’ve got quite the ego sometimes,” Shawn snickered. “And actually, no, I wasn’t looking at you. I was looking at my watch. It has small radar compass that stops me from hitting things when I’m not paying attention to my surroundings.”
She opened her eyes and scowled at the commander. “Really?”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I did notice that you have a pretty nice figure underneath that OSI badge.”
“I’m not sure anything will help me feel better at this point. I just want the headache to go away.”
Shawn slipped the small dermoscope out of his pocket once more. He waved it over her temple, and the pained look on her face quickly melted away. “I can’t use this on you for another twelve hours. It might cause irreparable damage to your nervous system.”
She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Commander. I understand.”
A computerized voice sounded inside the lift. “Please state your destination.”
“Deck two,” Shawn said, remembering Melissa’s intended destination. It was a long way down to the lower levels from their current position in the main toroid body of the station. Hopefully she would feel better by the time they arrived.
She laughed quietly. “You know, this suits you.”
He gave her a quizzical look. “Meaning what?”
“The service, Sector Command.”
“Oh, really?” he replied dryly.
“It’s just that sometimes you sound more like an officer and less like a—”
“Space hauler?” he snapped.
The inflection of his words caught Melissa by surprise. She thought back to their initial meeting with Captain Krif, and had a recollection of something for which she’d never actually apologized to Shawn. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he dismissed, examining a spot of dust on the top of the lift’s control panel. “I’ve heard worse.”
Something in her wanted to reach out to him, but Melissa found herself glued firmly in place. Unable to gather the courage to move toward him, she relegated herself to pondering anything she could say to make amends for the things that had hurt him in the past. “This will all be over soon. I’m sure of it. We’ll find my father and—” Shawn turned to her, and she stammered briefly before continuing. “Then you can go back to living a quiet and peaceful life on Minos.” She turned from his scrutiny and looked at the closed lift doors. “No more Sector Command, no more secrets, and no more Agent Graves.” She cast her eyes sideways to see if she could discern Shawn’s thoughts on the matter. Instead, she noticed that his gaze fell to the floor.
“Yeah,” Shawn replied slowly.
She breathed a short sigh of frustration. “Well, let’s not throw a party about it, okay? We have some work to do here before we head out of the system.”
“What kind of work, exactly?” he asked. “You never really did tell me what we’re doing here.”
“I have some questions for one of the proprietors. His…shop is on one of the lower decks.”
Shawn grunted. “You mean he’s an informant?”
“His name came up in the OSI database as a less than credible source. However, Toyotomi thinks some of the information this person has will lead us in the right direction.”
Shawn was puzzled. “I never heard him say anything about this while we were on Persephone.”
She smirked, still not looking at him. “You weren’t with me the entire time we were in Toyo’s house.”
He gave her a distrustful hum. “Anything else you want to tell me about what you and Katashi did when I wasn’t looking?”
She shook her head slowly. “At this point, it’s none of your business, Lieutenant Commander.”
“So we’re back to titles, I take it?”
Melissa said nothing as the lift slowly came to a halt. As Shawn pondered what on Third Earth he’d done to upset her this time, the doors silently parted and Melissa strode confidently out into the passageway. She turned first to the left, then to the right before heading off in her chosen direction.
“You do know where you’re going, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” she replied matter-of-factly. “It’s right over here.” They turned a sharp, dimly lit corner and came to a screeching halt at a dead end in the passageway.
“Well, if you were looking to get nowhere fast, then I’d say you were spot-on,” Shawn joked.
Melissa turned to him and scowled, not at all amused with his humor. She walked to the offending wall and ran a hand over its smooth, unblemished surface. “I don’t understand,” she said under her breath. “It was supposed to be here.” Reaching into the bag she’d slung over her shoulder before leaving Sylvia’s Delight, she began to riffle through its contents.
“What was supposed to be here?”
“Honestly, I don’t really know,” she said, continuing to hunt through her bag until she’d found what she was looking for. She pulled out a small, silver tablet, slightly larger than her palm, and held it out toward the wall.
“What is that, a compass or a map?”
Melissa shrugged as she waved the device at the door. “It’s a little of both, actually. It’s a scanner, set to a specific frequency.”
“What does it look for?”
She dismissed his inquiry as if it were a minor annoyance. “It looks for what I tell it to look for, and what I was led to believe would be here.”
Shawn folded his arms and leaned against the corridor wall. “And that is what, exactly?”
Melissa waved her arm high above her head, trying to reach the topmost portion of the wall. “A very specific type of radia—”
“Don’t move,” a bass voice rang out from behind them.
Shawn watched as Melissa, a few paces in front of him, abruptly stopped her scan of the wall.
“Turn around slowly,” another equally commanding voice said, distinct enough in pitch to indicate that it was certainly a second interloper.
“I thought you said not to move,” Shawn replied jovially, still looking at Melissa’s back. “I can either stand still or turn around, but I can’t do both at the same time.”
He felt the distinct jab of a rifle muzzle in his lower back, a feeling he’d become exceedingly tired of over the last several days.
“Don’t get smart, human. Do as I say. Now!”
Shawn watched as Melissa slowly turned to face him. She then nodded in the direction
over his shoulder, and only then did he start to turn to face the originators of the commands.
Before Shawn stood two lumbering Erkelians, each fully armed with enough firepower to easily dispatch both him and Melissa quite efficiently. Vaguely humanoid in appearance, save for their piggish nose and three-inch-long tusklike teeth extending up from their lower jaws, each stood about eight feet tall, with every square inch of visible skin bristling with needle-fine hair. The wider of the two, the one on Shawn’s immediate left, held a low-yield exodisintegrator, a fairly nasty weapon that would cause a great deal of tissue damage with even a glancing blow. The other Erkelian held two standard blasters, one in each of his clawed hands. Shawn didn’t recognize the model of weapons, but assumed they weren’t simple pellet guns.
“State your business here,” the one with the disintegrator asked slowly.
“We’re lost,” Melissa said with a nervous smile. “My husband and I must have made a wrong turn down that last passageway. He’s always doing that, you know? Human men, right? I swear, they’d get lost in a wet paper bag. If you could just tell us how—”
“Silence!” the creature yelled.
After a tense moment, the Erkelian with the two blasters grunted a laugh. “You were right,” he began, not averting his flame-red eyes from Melissa. “Human women do have a tendency to talk too much.”
“Of course I was right, you moron,” the fatter one bellowed as he poked his thumb toward his own chest. “That’s why I’m in charge.”
“Listen,” Shawn said, raising his arms and stepping a foot closer to the lead Erkelian. “If you could just tell us—”
“I said shut up and don’t move!” The creature plunged the barrels of his rifle into Shawn’s stomach, temporarily knocking the wind from the commander’s lungs.
Shawn doubled over, and Melissa was instantly on her knees and at his side.
“I’m not screwing around with you, human. I said shut your mouth!”
Shawn looked up to the large creature from his position on the floor. “No problem,” he offered through ragged breaths.
“What should we do with them, Ja-Dawn?” the pistol-packing one asked of his comrade.
“The only thing we can do, Ra-Lore: we take ‘em to the Master.”
The smaller one, called Ra-Lore, sneered at Melissa. “Oh, good. I can’t wait to see what he’ll do to them.”
“Yeah,” Ja-Dawn said, his exodisintegrator rifle still pointed dangerously at Shawn. “These humans might have had a quicker death with us.”
The smaller one stepped closer to Melissa, who involuntarily stood up and shuffled closer to Shawn. The creature stuck out a purple tongue that slithered between his two tusks as he licked his lips luridly. “Oh, I hope it’s very, very slow. I do hate quick torture.”
“Mind your place, Ra,” Ja-Dawn said sternly, grabbing the smaller man’s shoulder and tugging him away from Melissa.
Shawn recognized the distinction immediately. ‘Ja’ was the Erkelian equivalent to supervisor, where ‘Ra’ was understood to be a lower-ranking subordinate. Shawn had little experience with Erkelians, and he hoped it would be a long time until he had to deal with them again. They were known as fierce tacticians, shrewd business creatures, and skilled traders who had plied the commercial trade lanes while humans were still learning how to navigate the oceans of Old Earth.
The last time Shawn had been in the company of Erkelians, he’d been forced to watch as they stole the cargo he was transporting to Jacques De Lorme. It had been either that or become the main course at their next feast.
“Bind them,” Ja-Dawn snickered as he cocked his rifle. “Just stand as clear as you can. If they get out of line, I want an excuse to blast them.”
Ra-Lore twirled the blasters around his clawed fingers before expertly slipping the weapons into their respective holsters at his side. “With pleasure, Ja.”
*
With the cold steel of the magnetic handcuffs wrapped firmly around Shawn’s wrists, Ra-Lore inspected the manacles to make sure the prisoners had no chance of escape. Once he was satisfied, he reached under his jacket lapel and tapped a hidden transmitter. A grinding noise could be heard beyond the walls of the dead-end corridor in which they were standing. Suddenly, the nondescript wall Melissa had been scanning opened up lengthwise to reveal a dark chamber beyond.
Ra-Lore prodded Shawn in the back once more as Ja-Dawn withdrew a single blaster from his side. “In there, you two. Move.”
“It’s dark,” Melissa offered. “I can’t see where I’m going.”
“Too bad for you, human,” Ja-Dawn said as he prodded Melissa into moving farther inside the compartment. “The master prefers it dark, although I admit I’d much rather see what he’s going to do to in full, vivid color.”
After about twenty paces into the space, the door closed behind them, leaving the four cloaked in total darkness.
“Can I help you?” a voice called calmly from the void.
In a vain effort to continue playing the last card Melissa had drawn, Shawn attempted to feign ignorance. “We’re lost.”
The incorporeal voice laughed slowly, almost maniacally. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe that, do you Captain Kestrel?”
In the blackness, Shawn hoped the look of surprise that crossed his face was well-concealed. “You know me?”
Again, the voice laughed slowly before it spoke. “I would say that I’ve…heard of you.”
Melissa let out an exasperated sigh. “Is there anyone in this galaxy you haven’t offended, Captain?”
Irritated at the remark, Shawn turned to where he thought Melissa was standing. “Who said I offended him? I don’t even know who is speaking.”
“And you,” the voice now seemed directed at Melissa. “I’m afraid your name escapes me.”
“As does yours,” she remarked sardonically.
“Does it? It seems to me that you knew right where to find me, so I can only assume you knew who it was that you were looking for.”
“You know what they say about assumptions?” she asked smartly.
“I do, but as you can see, I’m not on the receiving end of the punishment for discovering this… sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary,” Shawn scoffed. “I can’t see a damn thing in here. Do you think you could turn on a few lights?”
“Oh, I’m afraid not, Captain. It might alert someone to this location. You see, I keep the power consumption in this space to a bare minimum to avoid arousing suspicion. It just wouldn’t do to alert the station security that we were down here under less than legal circumstances.”
“Hey, I didn’t see anything,” Shawn replied honestly. “Believe me. I’m in here and I can’t see a damn thing. Do you think we can just let bygones be bygones? I’ll say I didn’t see you, you can say you didn’t see me, and we’ll call it even. Okay?”
The voiced laughed slowly once more. “You surprise me, Captain. You are far less witty than De Lorme mentioned.”
“Oh, you know Jack?” Shawn asked with the thickest amount of sarcasm he could muster.
“You can say that.”
Shawn allowed for a slight silence to enter the compartment, waiting to see if Melissa had any remarks on the subject. When she remained still, he decided to continue. “Jack and I aren’t exactly on the friendliest of terms. So if you two are, then let’s just get right to the point. What do you want?”
“I had everything I wanted,” the voice said. “Except now, it seems the privacy I worked so hard to obtain has been compromised. So you see…you’ve actually taken something from me.”
“I have, huh?” Shawn replied flatly.
“Yes, Captain. You have,” the voice said, and there was no mistaking the menace it conveyed. “And I intend to get it back.”
Suddenly there was a flurry of movement at Shawn’s side as a rush of air passed his face; he felt himself falling forward, but couldn’t tell if he were being pushed or pulled. He instinctively tried to throw his arms out
in front of him, not knowing what he would land on, but they were still securely fastened behind his back. In a maneuver that, had the lights been on, would have looked quite comical, he slammed his shoulder into the cold metal of the deck with a resounding thud. Shawn managed to lift his head up in time for the compartment to be bathed in a flash of light, probably from Ra’s blaster. He staggered to his feet, but was kicked in the shin, then punched in the face before he went down once more.
“Melissa!” he called out from the floor in desperation. There was no response.
After a moment of silence, he could hear the telltale signs of a struggle coming from somewhere behind him. There was the crash of something metallic against the cold floor, then another blast, this time from the distinctive exodisintegrator rifle. Again, the entire space momentarily lit up in blue light, but Shawn’s eyes had become too accustomed to the dark, and the flash nearly blinded him. He heard what sounded like a grunt, followed by a muffled cry from Melissa and then another blast of a pistol.
Silence reigned in the room for a terrifying moment as Shawn wiggled about the deck. He shuffled his feet until he came to a soft form on the floor of the compartment. It was either a duffle bag full of old laundry, or a dead body. He lightly kicked at it, looking for a sign of life. There was none.
He pivoted, getting to his knees and leaning in to get a closer inspection in the darkness, but before he could make out any details the overhead lights came on, bathing the space in the brilliant white light of the Darus Station’s built-in halogens. Shawn whirled to face off against where the menacing voice had come from, squinting his eyes tightly in the process in an attempt to filter the light now assaulting them.
At first, he could only make out an ill-defined blob standing beside another darker form about half the first figure’s height. As his eyes became more focused, he saw that the second shape was a man sitting in a rather expensive-looking chair, and the figure standing beside him was Melissa, disruptor pistol in hand and pointed directly at the seated man’s head. Still feeling the hit he’d received to his face—and trying to figure out what had just happened—Shawn shook his head slowly and craned his head around to see both Ra and Ja, their bodies in various poses of agony—hopefully dead—and sprawled out on the unforgiving floor. Melissa must have been wearing the spectral lenses she’d demonstrated in the Rhea’s observation lounge. There was no other explanation for what had just happened.
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