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

by Benjamin Douglas

  Mulligan frowned at him, her cheeks growing red again.

  “Let’s not take sides here, Adams,” Lucas said. “Stay focused. We need a core. He’s our point-man. And he’s trapped under that fortress. Any ideas?”

  In the street below, both sides seemed to have retreated under a ceasefire. Men from the Amsel Brothers’ side had begun to load up the fallen onto hover-trolleys.

  “I got one,” Caspar said. “But you’re really gonna hate it.”

  “Try me.”

  She nodded at Mulligan. “You said they throw bodies in there too, right? Like, to get rid of them or whatever?”

  “Yeah. Sick, I know. But it’s cheaper than hauling them up to space them, there are so many abandoned tunnels.”

  “Caspar,” Lucas said, an edge to his voice. “Please tell me you aren’t thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

  “In the words of my fearless captain,” she said, “I don’t like this any more than you. But do you have a better idea?”

  “How did I know using logic with you would come back to bite me in the end?”

  “It’s the munitions.” She fingered the handle of her pistol. “Makes me unpredictable.”

  “Hmph.”

  “What are we doing?” Mulligan said.

  “I guess we’re getting in,” Lucas said. “Dead or alive.”

  —

  Twenty minutes later they had scaled down the opposite side of the building and were hiding in Amsel territory, waiting for the opportune moment. A couple of boys drove a hover-trolley past, already full. But another stopped a few meters off to pick up some of the bodies strewn along the street.

  “Now!” Caspar whispered. They all sprang from the shadows and dove onto the ground, quick to lie still before anyone noticed their decided not-dead-ness.

  The next few minutes were some of the longest of Lucas’ life. Longer maybe even than his combat command tests. Because at some point, as he lay waiting in the cold darkness, it dawned on him that, should they fail, he really didn’t know what would happen. Would they be killed outright? Gunned down in the street, like the opposition? Imprisoned? Tortured? Would their deaths get back to the Fleet? What would happen to the Fairfax? Ambassador Taurius? How would that affect the Summit? The weight of all that rested on dumb, blind luck bore down on him like the weight of the distant stone ceiling.

  Here in the crucible, it turned out that failure wasn’t his biggest fear, after all. Not certainty of failure, anyway. But the unknown.

  Lost in his thoughts, he almost flinched when the body collector kicked him in the thigh. Thankfully he was lying facedown, so the kid couldn’t have seen the surprise on his face. One person took him by the feet, and another by the hands, and he was tossed up to land on a pile of corpses.

  Just don’t think about it, he told himself.

  They were hauled up the street toward the feet of the colossal stone wall. Lucas lay still, unmoving, but managed to squint to see as the boys paused to check some credentials, then brought them through a tall, shining gate. It sealed behind them, the buzz of electricity reinforcing the metal. They were in.

  Well, almost.

  “Stinks,” one of the bodyhaulers said.

  “So hold your nose,” another replied.

  The smell was getting stronger. Lucas bit his tongue to hold back bile. Hadn’t these corpses been living men just twenty minutes ago? How could they already have begun to stink like—

  Realization washed over him as the cart came to a stop. The smell wasn’t coming from the cart. It was coming from the Grotto.

  The cart began to tilt. Lucas alternated between breathing through his nose—which was nearly unbearable—and breathing through his mouth, which didn’t help much, as he kept imagining the molecules of decay swarming around and landing on his cheeks, his tongue. He gagged, but the sound was lost in the shuffling of bodies as they all slid, Lucas with them, from the cart and down through a gaping hole in the stone floor. Darkness enveloped him as he fell, landing with a soft thud. Then another thud, and another, as bodies landed on top of him.

  When the sounds stopped, he tried to shift his weight—and had a moment of panic. The weight of the bodies on top of him pressed him still, made it difficult to breath and nearly impossible to move. Perhaps their rouse had worked too well, and they now were to join the bodies in the Grotto forever.

  Then the sound of muffled voices came from overhead. Not the bodyhaulers; friendly voices. The weight seemed to lessen.

  “… sign of the captain?”

  “I’m here!” he said. His face was mashed against rough fabric—a pantleg? He turned his head and found a small cavity of air, took a deep, shuddering breath, and called again. “I’m right here!”

  The weight lessened again, and he found he was able to move somewhat. A few more seconds of wriggling on his part and shifting on theirs, and the space opened above him. Dim light revealed a rocky ceiling with a small hole bored in the top, where they had entered, and a dark figure silhouetted directly above him.

  “Caspar—that you?” he said.

  “Morning, Sir. Thought you might like a hand. Unless you’d prefer to stay down there… cozy.”

  She grimaced on the last word.

  “Tempting,” he said. “But I think I’ll join the rest of you. Help me up, will you?”

  Adams and Mulligan appeared beside her. They moved a couple more corpses and managed to pull Lucas up to join them.

  They appeared to be sitting on a pile of bodies that took most of the space in a tall, round cavern. Caspar was shining a flashlight beam along the base of the walls, and stopped when it found a tunnel.

  “Shall we?” Lucas said. He struggled to his feet, but found it nearly impossible to keep his balance on the pile. Instead, the four of them tumbled down the pile as best they could, sometimes on backs, sometimes on bellies, and met again at the tunnel entrance.

  “Brings new meaning to the term ‘body surfing,’ doesn’t it?” Caspar said.

  “Let’s agree never to talk about that ever again,” Mulligan said.

  “Suits me,” Adams said.

  Lucas brought up his own light and shined it down the tunnel. It stretched on in the distance, then curved gradually to the right.

  “Think it’ll take us where we need to go?” he asked no one in particular.

  “I think it’ll get us away from here,” Caspar said.

  Lucas nodded. “Right. Take the rear, Lieutenant. Mulligan, with me. Let’s find us a jailbird.”

  Chapter 10

  The Grotto was, perhaps, a deceptive moniker for the sprawling, stinking array of tunnels that permeated the underbelly of Rust. Catacombs might have been a better descriptor, given the sheer volume of death and decay. The air was heavy with it, and with a damp, weighty humidity. Moisture rolled down the cavern walls.

  The tunnel they had followed from the first large cavern soon began to split off into myriad options, one for nearly every direction. Lucas wished their comps could be synced to the Ceres network; a map, even a compass, would have been appreciated. But they couldn’t risk detection. They did their best to keep heading away from the city, toward the massive stone wall overhead—heading beneath the old mafia fortress.

  They did well enough.

  As the floor of the tunnel they had chosen gradually rose in elevation, they left behind the muggy, humid air into which they had descended. The stone walls began to dry. Lucas stopped, running a scan on the comp he wore on his forearm. He held up his hand and the others paused behind him.

  A finger to his lips, he turned and showed them the results. Lifeforms ahead—most likely people. They now had to be silent as the grave through which they were plodding.

  He pointed at Adams and gestured ahead, with himself. At Caspar, the rear. Mulligan was too precious an asset to risk on point anymore; she had to be protected until they made their contact. He and Adams advanced, pistols forward, one on either side of the tunnel.

  The ground gr
ew smoother, and the walls and ceiling made right angles. To their left and right they saw hollows carved out, housing long, stone boxes. Tombs, Lucas wondered? They didn’t stop to find out.

  A faint, blue glow emanated from the passage ahead. They turned a corner and found a shielded door closing off their way.

  “That’s about right,” Adams muttered.

  To the right, a console was built into the stone wall. Lucas gestured for Caspar and Mulligan to join him, then approached.

  He recognized some of the symbology on the display screen from their brief visit to the vehicle registry. If this was Amsel territory, that meant the Brothers ran the registry, too. Or at least they had a few hours ago. He supposed that might have changed by now, given the Holubs’ aggressive tactics and powerful friends.

  Caspar sighed through her nose. “I don’t suppose we can just log in as your friend again, can we? Since he’s imprisoned and all.”

  “I don’t suppose so, no.” Mulligan was searching the screen, her brow knotted. If this system was running on the hexashield grid, too—and Lucas had no reason to think it wasn’t—then their chances of figuring out how to get by without being noticed were nil.

  “Do you hear… ?” Caspar looked around, searching. Then she grabbed Lucas by the arm and lifted up his comp. He swallowed a lump. A large group of lifeforms was moving up the tunnel, quickly, from behind them. They would be trapped against the door.

  A second later he heard the unmistakable sound of men running in formation.

  He looked around, frantic. The bare walls offered no aid.

  “You think they brought drinks, Captain?”

  “Stow it, Adams.” Lucas raced back around the corner, half-expecting to find a bevy of blaster-rifle muzzles, but the troupe hadn’t reached them just yet. Nothing back here but those ominous stone sarcophagi…

  “This way!” he hissed at the others.

  By the time Caspar, Adams, and Mulligan had rejoined him, he’d already managed to shove the heavy lid of one of the stone boxes to the side. They watched him for a moment in confusion, then each raced to their own box. He leapt across the tunnel to Caspar and shoved the lid aside.

  “Do you want a hand?” He laced his fingers together for her to step on. She snorted and pulled herself up, ignoring him. He shrugged and turned to see Mulligan dropping inside her own stone box. Adams was wheezing as he tried and failed to crawl into his. Sighing, Lucas grabbed the man and gave him a shove.

  “Much obliged,” the engineer said, rolling into the sarcophagus. Lucas grunted and ran back to his own.

  His heart pounded in his ears as he tumbled into the box. He felt the telltale snap of bone beneath him, and silently apologized to the poor soul for desecrating their remains. A panicked search, and his fingers found purchase in grooves etched into the underside of the lid. He slid it back into place over himself, grunting.

  Not a moment too soon. The sound of running grew loud and immediate; the troupe was passing them now, he knew it. He risked a glance at his comp to confirm.

  And swallowed another lump. Pair after pair of little red dots rushed by, each one probably armed to the teeth. He wondered what had happened inside to cause their hurry. Were they Amsel Brothers forces rushing in to contain some threat? Or maybe they were with the Holubs, an assailing force. An all-out mafia war wasn’t something he’d hoped they would have to deal with, but he wondered if they might slip in and out with everyone distracted.

  A sneeze welled up in his nose and he bit the blades of his tongue, forcing it back down. The stone coffin was filled with dust. He did his best not to think of what it had come from.

  A new horror occurred to him. What if this was a full-scale invasion force, one that might take an hour or more to march past in two columns? Would he and his crew have enough air in their coffins to survive? He supposed he could shift the lid back out of place, but he knew the grating sound of stone on stone was bound to be noticed. And if an army pinned them down here in this tunnel, it would all end alarmingly soon.

  He tried to force his body to breathe slower, to need less air. It seemed to need more, and more quickly. He shut his comp down and closed his eyes, bit his lips together, tried to empty his mind and stave off panic. His heart thundered in his ears, beating in tandem with the footfalls outside. He blew his air out through pursed lips, sucked in more as through a straw.

  And coughed.

  The dust raced into his throat and coated the back of his tongue. He gagged, coughing and spitting, and sneezed violently. In the numb aftershock, he heard a near-perfect silence. This was it. They had heard him, they had stopped, and they were about to open the tomb and put a blasting charge through his body. He steeled himself and waited.

  And nothing happened. When he finally heard the scrape of stone, it wasn’t his lid moving. They were checking another coffin, he realized. They would find Caspar, or Mulligan, or Adams, and shoot them because he had sneezed.

  Not if he had anything to say about it.

  He checked that his blasting pistol was armed, leaned up with his shoulder against the lid, and shoved it away, springing up and whipping his gun out to take aim.

  His trigger finger hesitated. It was Caspar. Alone. No soldiers surrounded her. He frowned, called up his comp, and saw that they had all passed through the door and left them alone.

  Through the still open door.

  They pulled the lids from the other coffins and helped Adams and Mulligan out, then resumed their formation and passed through.

  “Wait!” Mulligan called. Lucas turned and saw that she had stopped at the console on the outside. “They’re logged in!”

  “What are the odds?” Caspar said.

  Lucas shrugged. “Can you find him?”

  Mulligan’s fingers flew as she stared at the screen, calling up submenus. “Yeah, I think so—hang on a sec…” She opened a data port in her comp, pulled out a connection, and plugged into the console. “I’ve got him. Downloading a map now, then we’ll go get him.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Lucas rubbed his nose and spit dust from his mouth.

  “Captain,” Adams said, stretching his back, “with all due respect, if this plan involves playing with any more corpses on our way, I’d like to request permission to sit it out.”

  Caspar shook her head. She was pacing, her pistol drawn.

  Lucas took point again as Mulligan unplugged and came back to the group. “Let’s just try not to join them.”

  —

  Mulligan’s map led them down a series of blue-lit passages, up a spiral stairwell, and then through a labyrinthine arrangement of labs and medical rooms. Lucas kept his scanner running, but they didn’t pass a single lifeform. Odd, he thought. Unless there had been an evacuation. Or a massacre. His jaw set grimly at the thought.

  Another long passage, another stairwell, and they came to a long hallway flanked by steel bars. Holding cells. Mulligan stopped.

  “This is it,” she breathed.

  Lucas squinted ahead into the dimly lit space. He didn’t see anyone. He checked his comp. Nothing.

  “You sure?” Caspar asked. She started advancing down the passage, pistol raised.

  Mulligan nodded. “His name’s right here.” She gestured at the map on her comp. “He’s registered… three cells down. On the left.”

  Lucas joined Caspar, moving toward the cell. The door was open. He stepped inside, checking the corners. The others followed.

  “Is your friend a ghost, Private?” he said. A long, bare bench lined the far wall. A ratty-looking blanket sat on one end, folded neatly. That was it. There was no one in the cell. “It’s empty.”

  The door slammed behind them. Lucas whirled, ready to fire, but found a wall of blaster rifles aimed at them from the other side of the bars. He recognized the uniformed suits of the Amsel Brothers’ men. One of them stood in the center, with no weapon, his hands in his pockets. His purple hair was slicked back tight to his scalp. He smirked and met Lucas’ eyes.


  “No,” he said. “It’s not.”

  Chapter 11

  Lucas’ feet hurt. They practically begged him to sit down on the bench, maybe swing his legs up and let them rest, elevated. He wouldn’t give his captors the satisfaction. He stood in the middle of the cell, facing the armed guards. When he couldn’t bear to stand still any longer, he paced. It had been going on for hours. He didn’t care. A low thrum reverberated in his ears—his own blood. It had echoed there ever since the moment he had panicked in the crypt in the wall. Something had changed down there. Something had woken up inside of him. For once in his life, he wasn’t thinking anymore. He wasn’t scheming some grand escape plot that hinged on a dozen calculated variables and clever rouses. He was just angry.

  All his life, he had seen something he wanted, figured out how to leverage his best assets while sidestepping his weaknesses, and get it. It had worked when he was a child. It had worked in the academy. It had worked on the Fairfax, excepting combat command sims. But this mission had shot his whole perception of self to pieces.

  He hadn’t wanted to sneak into a mafia prison. He hadn’t wanted to track down Mulligan’s dubious contact. He hadn’t wanted to come to Ceres. He hadn’t wanted the Fairfax to get totaled. He hadn’t wanted Taurius to be kidnapped, or Captain Harris to be killed. He hadn’t wanted…

  Now that he thought on it, he wasn’t sure he could in honesty remember when the last time was that he had actually wanted something. Had he even wanted the command post of first officer? Or to pass his academy tests at all? Or to join the Fleet in the first place? He tried in vain to search his feelings; he found they were hollow. The expectations and desires and commands of others weighed him down like the bodies he had been buried under just a short time ago. When was the last time he’d wanted something—really wanted anything?

  He wanted out from under the bodies.