Starship Fairfax: Books 1-3 Omnibus - The Kuiper Chronicles: The Lunar Gambit, The Hidden Prophet, The Neptune Contingency

by Benjamin Douglas

  His face fell a little. “Ah, me? Well, ya know. Keeping busy.” He seemed to notice Lucas. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Oh, him? He’s, um…” She fumbled for a moment. “He’s my first mate. You know, hauling cargo these days.”

  Lucas cringed. They’d agreed to the cargo-ship cover story beforehand. But he had hoped to maintain chain-of-command.

  “Yeah?” Max looked him up and down. “Not much on him, is there? Good with his hands?” He nudged her with his elbow and she nearly fell over, laughing with him. Max’s laugh was big and bawdy, drawing the attention of onlookers.

  “With my mind, actually,” Lucas said. “I’m the brains of the operation.” He tried to smile convincingly.

  “Huh.” Max scratched the back of his head and helped steady Mulligan. “He talks funny.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Mulligan said. “Max, I’m glad I ran into you. Is Darren around? I need to see him, right away.”

  A cloud passed over Max’s face.

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said, all his bravado shutting down. He glanced about, as if to see if anyone was listening.

  “Would they?” Caspar interjected, nodding up the street. An orderly procession of young men in deep red uniforms was approaching. Lucas squinted at the insignias they bore, and cursed under his breath.

  As if pirates and the mafia weren’t enough to deal with.

  Chapter 8

  “Might we want to vacate the street?” Lucas said to Mulligan. “Ah… Sir?”

  “Follow me.” Max turned his hulking back on them and parted through the foot-traffic to a storefront, then dodged around and disappeared into an alley. They joined him there and pressed their backs to the wall, watching from out of sight as the procession approached.

  Mulligan frowned. “Who’re they? Never saw a get-up like that in Rust before.”

  “No.” Max was grim. “New outfit, in a manner of speaking. Outsiders. Brought in from on high.”

  “Not exactly a mafia outfit,” Lucas said. “The Arms of the Sons.”

  Mulligan’s eyes grew wide with recognition. The Arms of the Sons were a specialized military training force known system-wide for their skill and ruthlessness.

  “That means a True Son must be here,” Lucas said.

  “Really?” Caspar scoffed. “Do you want to consult the game guide to confirm?”

  “What are you two talking about?” Adams asked.

  “It’s from a game, Adams.” Caspar gestured in the air. “The Jupiter Wars. You’ve never played?”

  “Some of us spend our time working.”

  The men in red passed the entrance to the alley, and Caspar lowered her voice.

  “In The Jupiter Wars, the Arms of the Sons isn’t just a special ops force. It’s a cadet-training program for the most secretive, specialized black-ops force in the Empire—the Sons of Jupiter. According to the game, wherever you find a squad of the Arms, you’ll find at least one True Son—an SOJ operative—usually working undercover.”

  “But it’s a game?” he asked.

  “Not just a game,” Lucas said. “It was blacklisted in the Empire as soon as it came out. And the developers disappeared. Not a word from them in a decade. Coincidence?”

  Caspar shrugged. “I don’t think the fact that the Empire didn’t like the Arms being featured in a kids’ game means there’s a super-secret super-spy camped out with every group of men marching around in red. In my experience, those in power are perfectly happy to let drones and us grunts duke out their battles for them these days.”

  “What are they doing here?” Mulligan said, looking at Max. He bobbed his head around, considering.

  “Dunno. Looking for recruits? That’s what some of the boys think. Dragon was talkin’ about tryin’ to join.”

  “They wouldn’t recruit here,” Lucas said. Max seemed to hover a little closer, a little taller. “No offense, I mean. They just tend to stick to places with… er, places like…”

  “Was that in your game, too?” Max growled.

  Lucas swallowed a lump in his throat. His arms felt like jelly. “Yeah… nevermind.”

  “Max,” Mulligan said. “I’m serious. I need to talk to Darren. Do you know anyone else who might know where he is?”

  Max’s mood didn’t improve. “Might talk to Sharky, I guess. If you have to. But Angie, what’s the big deal? Come out with us tonight. You can even bring your weird friends. Relax, have some fun while you’re here! You don’t need to go and see him.”

  She smiled a little sadly and rested a hand on his beefy arm. “I appreciate the sentiment, Max. But I really do need to see him. Take me to Sharky?”

  He sighed, nodded, and led them away from the procession.

  —

  Sharky ran a small-time pub and coffee house down one of the myriad side streets. Lucas stopped trying to keep track of where they were about halfway; there were just too many twists and turns. Rust seemed to sprawl on endlessly, which he knew to be patently false, as the entire hab was contained within a cave. Must have been some cave, he reasoned.

  “Angie, baby!” Sharky met them at the front door, tattooed arms enveloping Mulligan.

  “Sure seems to have a lot of these friends,” Caspar muttered to Lucas.

  “Popular kid, I guess.”

  They were led to the back of the pub and ushered through a door of hanging glass beads into a tight, quiet room. Red, padded booths lined the walls. They sat at Sharky’s invitation—all except Max, who made his excuses to Mulligan and slipped away.

  “Now, then.” Sharky sipped black coffee from an ancient looking ceramic mug. Lucas lifted his own to his nose and inhaled. It was richer than anything he’d had in the Colonies. Coffee from old earth? His took a sip and his eyes watered. “What can I do ya for?”

  “I’m looking for Darren,” Mulligan said.

  “Of course you are. What if he couldn’t be found?”

  “Can he be?”

  Sharky took another sip and sat back, considering her. “Maybe. But is it worth the risk?” He pursed his lips.

  “Sharky, c’mon.” She leaned in. “This isn’t some kind of feel-good reunion I’m looking for. I need to see him, it’s important. It’s bigger than me.”

  “Oh, is it?” Now he eyed her companions in turn. “What’ve you gotten yourself mixed up in, Angie? You can’t feed me the same line you gave old Maxie. The Angie I knew wouldn’t have been happy hauling freight, not in a million years. No.” His cold eyes settled on Lucas. “Something’s up.”

  She reached a hand out to rest on his forearm. “Alright, look. Can we talk? I mean, just the two of us?” She glanced nonchalantly toward the corner behind him. Lucas followed and spotted a tiny bead of a camera.

  After a brief silence, Sharky got up. Lucas and the others began to shift, but Mulligan put her hand out. “Wait here. Please?”

  She followed Sharky out through the glass beads.

  “I don’t like it,” Caspar muttered. “All these shady friends and none of them know who she’s rolling with? We’re in a pressure cooker, Sir. Whole thing is gearing up to blow.”

  Lucas grimaced. He wished she wouldn’t call him ‘Sir’—and hoped the surveillance hadn’t picked it up. “What about you, Adams?” he said. “Any fresh ideas?”

  “Not my cup of tea, Sir.” Lucas winced again. “Give me a working engine and a set of coordinates, I’ll set your course straight. Give me a bunch of fopheads who dance around whispering secrets in back-alleys, and I’ll kindly let the lot of you sort it out yourselves, please and thank you.”

  Lucas snorted. He was coming to appreciate his engineer’s grating tendency to say exactly what he thought.

  They sipped their coffees in silence for a few moments. Mulligan reappeared looking anxious and exhausted. From over her shoulder, Sharky’s face was ashen, his jaw set like stone.

  “Don’t come back,” he said through gritted teeth, then disappeared around the corner.

  �
�I take it that went well,” Caspar said.

  Mulligan tilted her head. “As well as could be, all things considered.” She joined them at their booth. “So, what do you want to hear first: the bad news? Or the really, really bad news?”

  “Shoot,” Lucas said.

  “Bad news is there’s been some kind of shake-up in the status quo around here. Apparently one of the younger families—the Holubs—felt they weren’t getting the respect they deserved from the establishment. So, they staged something of a coup by bringing some new friends planet-side.”

  “The Arms,” Lucas muttered.

  She nodded. “Which, I’m sure you can guess, not everyone else was real happy about. There’s been a lot of resistance. It hasn’t broken out into a full-on war just yet, but Sharky says things have been escalating fast. Which brings us to the bad part.”

  Caspar suppressed a chuckle. “Yeah, so far, so good.”

  “Holubs have the upper hand right now, thanks to the Arms, but they’re struggling to keep power. The other families have friends off-world, too. The Amsel Brothers, they have family all the way back on Earth. So, there’s a trade embargo. Even on used scrap. Getting a core and getting out of here with it…” She finished by shaking her head.

  Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose. “We didn’t have any trouble getting down here.”

  “Embargo wasn’t being enforced yet. They were still bringing down a few transports loaded with their new friends. Now? Apparently the whole icy ball is on lock-down.”

  Caspar cursed colorfully.

  “That was the really, really bad news, right?” Lucas said.

  “Well, depends on whether our priority is getting off Ceres alive, or getting a core.”

  “No point leaving without the core,” Adams muttered. “We’d still be dead in the water on the border. Pirates and scum would gut us within the month, guaranteed.”

  Mulligan nodded, looking nauseous. “The embargo and the tensions in the families only make it that much more imperative that we get to my contact. He’s our only hope of getting what we need.”

  “But?” Caspar asked.

  Mulligan looked down at her hands. “But… he’s currently being detained. By the Amsel Brothers. For colluding with the Holubs.” She looked up, cringing.

  Lucas had a feeling he knew where this was going, and he didn’t like it. “Mull, are you sure he can get us a core?”

  She sat a little taller. “Absolutely. He has contacts everywhere you need them.”

  “Sounds like the market’s under a nasty squeeze, though,” Caspar said. “Do these contacts fear him?”

  “Better. They respect him.”

  “Hm.”

  Lucas ran a hand over his face. A flash of memory stung him like a wasp—Captain Harris in the same gesture. What would the old war-dog do if he were here?

  “Do we know where they’re keeping him?”

  “They would have stuffed him in the Grotto. It’s an old, cordoned-off section of mining tunnels beneath Rust. It’s where they put people they want to, ah, disappear.”

  Caspar furrowed her brow. “Doesn’t the mafia usually make people disappear by sending them to swim with the fishes?”

  “I didn’t say everyone they put in the Grotto is alive.”

  Lucas grimaced at the thought of plunging into a massive tomb to find Mulligan’s friend. But a plan had begun to form.

  “Alright,” he said. “How do we get in?”

  “No idea,” Mulligan said. “So far as I know, no one gets in unless they’re, you know, invited. So to speak.”

  “Ok.” Lucas stood.

  Caspar looked at him askance. “Is this council of war over? I thought we were just getting started.”

  “We’ve talked enough,” he said. “I need to see the Grotto.”

  They passed through the beads and back out through the pub, Adams muttering something about not having a chance to get a real drink.

  Chapter 9

  The tour of Rust continued. They made their way past another dozen streets of bars, vendors, and gambling holes. The shadows lengthened. Lights grew more scarce. Storefronts got cheaper and uglier the further they went. It seemed they were travelling to the core of the city, and that the core was rotten.

  After an hour of walking, they spotted another procession in red—or maybe the same one from before, having arrived at its destination—and dodged into another alley, this one far darker and more foul-smelling than the last.

  The Arms force halted another intersection down, then dispersed into the bars and shops on either side of the street. Lucas frowned.

  “What’re they doing?”

  “Heading in for a nightcap?” Caspar said.

  Shouts, cries, and the smashing of glass followed. The men in red emerged bearing tables, portraits, bar stools, and other assorted pieces of furniture and décor. They began to pile them up in a line that stretched across the street, blocking off the intersection.

  “Are you serious?” Mulligan muttered. “A barricade? Of that crap? Won’t a couple of blaster-rifles just blow it all away?”

  “It’s not about keeping people out by force,” Lucas said. “It’s a line in the sand. They’re marking their territory, daring whoever’s on the other side to cross it.”

  “Then the real fun begins,” Caspar said grimly.

  “Well, who’s on the other side is the Amsel Brothers,” Mulligan said. “And the Grotto. And Dar—and my contact.”

  “Hm.” Lucas rubbed his chin. “Those boys with the Brothers?” He nodded at a group of armed men approaching the newly erected barrier from the other side. They wore no uniforms, but appeared uniform in their purpose, lining up along the pile of junk and lifting blaster rifles to their shoulders.

  Mulligan cursed.

  “Get down!” Caspar shoved Lucas to the ground by his shoulder, then pulled Mulligan down with her. Adams followed. A moment later, the Brothers’ forces opened fire.

  Wood cracked and splintered, sending sharp missiles every which way. Sulfur from melted stone filled the air. Lucas coughed, his cheek pressed against the cold, muddy cobblestone of the alley, and lifted his head, shielding his face with his arm. He squinted.

  The armed men ended their sustained blasting assault on the barricade, having effectively reduced it to a line of ash, and, as one, stepped over that line.

  “C’mon!” Lucas grunted, pushing himself up and leaping back further into the darkness.

  “What??” Mulligan turned, half her face slick with mud from the ground, the other half crimson. “We’re running, not helping?”

  “Helping who?” Caspar gestured out toward the street. “Exactly which gang of anti-Kuiper thugs are you proposing we join, and which do we shoot?”

  Mulligan growled, exasperated, but followed them down the alley. They reached the end, and Lucas spotted a rusty metal ladder in the darkness. It led straight up the wall on the Amsel Brothers’ side.

  “Caspar, ladies first.”

  She grunted and tested the ladder, then began the climb. Adams followed. Lucas stopped Mulligan for a moment at the bottom.

  “Which side?” he whispered.

  “Sir?”

  “Which side are your people? I need to know what’s going on down here—all of it—if you expect me to trust you, Mulligan.”

  She swallowed, then looked him in the eye.

  “I never worked for the families, Sir. Not directly. You have my word.”

  “But you have an opinion—a conviction—about this conflict.”

  She sighed through her nose. “Things were never too good under the establishment, Sir. I’ve seen things… I shouldn’t have had to see. Coming back and seeing what’s happening, I can’t help but feel like maybe things are about to change for the better. Like maybe the Holubs have the right idea.”

  He regarded her for a moment, wondering what her childhood had been like. His had been comfortable enough, he supposed. But even he felt like he knew better than to think tha
t ousting one corrupt criminal organization in favor of another would create any real, lasting change.

  “Mulligan,” he said. “I have to ask. Are you here with them, or are you here with the Fleet?”

  Her back straightened. “Sir, I am with the Fleet.”

  “Good. Then no matter what happens, I need you to remember whose orders you take, and why we’re here—ok?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He followed her up the ladder. It was ill-kept and unpleasant to touch, but it held their weight. The sounds of blaster fire soon erupted from the street below. Mulligan stopped once to turn and look. Lucas tapped her on the heel, and she continued to climb.

  The ladder took them up several stories. Lucas wondered absentmindedly how they’d augmented the natural Ceres gravity to make it feel so ‘normal’—so terran. The habs in the Colonies used a combination of spinning stations, artificial gravity simulators, and good old-fashioned mag boots. He had the capability for the latter—they all did—but he didn’t seem to need them. He reached the top and heaved himself over onto a nondescript rooftop.

  “Don’t worry,” Caspar said to Mulligan. “It wasn’t a one-sided fight. Arms got their shots off, too. I expect the coup is long from over.”

  Mulligan gazed down grimly over the edge, surveying the results of the melee. “No,” she said. “Whatever this is, it won’t be over for a while.”

  She led them to the far side of the roof, then pointed out a towering building that seemed to lean out over the edge of Rust, thrust from the bare rock of the cavern’s wall.

  “That’s headquarters for the Brothers,” she explained.

  “Cozy,” Caspar said.

  “And what about the Grotto,” Lucas said. “Where’s the entrance?”

  Mulligan nodded at the tower. “Underneath headquarters.”

  Lucas swore.

  “Are you serious?” Adams wheezed, still catching his breath from the climb. “It’s not enough that you want us to break your boyfriend out of jail for who knows what sort of seditious nonsense—you want us to waltz into the bosses’ lair to do it?”