Salvage Conquest

by Chris Kennedy

  * * *

  Almost faster than she could follow, the doctor whisked her off to the med bay and plopped her onto an exam table. Captain Tinbrak leaned against a nearby wall, the tightness in his shoulders belying the faux-relaxed posture. Bek’ah lay back on the table with her arms folded beneath her head, looking at a monitor beside her as the doctor positioned a scanner over her left knee. The scanner gave a loud BEEEEP, and the doctor looked over her shoulder at the captain with a smile.

  “It’s encoded, but it’s a very rudimentary cypher,” the disheveled woman said. “I should be able to crack it within an hour or two.”

  “That makes sense,” Bek’ah muttered. “Dax is a pretty rudimentary being, the calico-furred bastard.” The idea of something being implanted in her body without her permission grated on her, and she swore if she ever found herself back on Tideb, she and Corvan Dax would have a very pointed discussion. With the points in question living at the tips of her fingers.

  “Come to the bridge when you get it figured out,” Tinbrak said. He looked at Bek’ah. “You. Come with me.” Not waiting for her to reply, he turned and walked off.

  Bek’ah sat up and slid off the table, her soft, toeless shoes carrying her across the cold metal floor without a sound. She caught up to the captain as he turned right out of the med bay. “Where are we going?”

  “Didn’t you listen, kid? I just told the doc I’d be on the bridge.”

  “Kid? I’m probably older than you, Captain. And why would you take me to the bridge? I’m not a pilot.”

  “It’s a figure of speech, kid. And I want you on the bridge so I can keep an eye on you and that seventy-five-thousand-credit kneecap of yours.”

  “Ignore him,” the human woman who’d served as her guard/escort said, falling into step beside Bek’ah. “The captain has a thing for Earth vids from almost a hundred centuries ago. Nobody knows what he’s talking about half the time.”

  “Eighty centuries, thank you very much,” the captain said, not breaking stride. He waved a hand at the door in front of him, and it whooshed open.

  “Did he need to do that?” Bek’ah asked under her breath.

  “Not a bit. He saw it in a vid and thought it looked cool. Kinda like the vest. None of us have the heart to tell him the truth,” the woman replied, her voice equally low.

  “I can hear you,” the captain called back over his shoulder as he stepped onto the bridge.

  Bek’ah looked around the bridge. Everyone around her was busy tending to an instrument panel or display of some sort. Her human escort had peeled off to take a seat before a display as soon as they entered. In addition to the captain and the human he called “Mare,” the bridge crew consisted of two Pikith, a Lormell sitting at a wide panel beside the female Pikith, and a Rincah watching a display and absently sipping a drink. They all seemed competent, or at least confident, and Captain Tinbrak’s eyes flicked over all of them as he watched the main front viewscreen, split between a real-time display of the space around them and a deep-space radar that showed a dozen green blips scattered through the region.

  “What kind of weapons does your ship carry?” she asked the captain. “I didn’t notice many guns when I saw it in the dock on Tideb.”

  “You mean when you snuck onboard,” Tinbrack corrected with a lazy grin, then held up a hand. “Don’t get all uptight, I’m just teasing. We’re not a fighter, not by a long shot. We have a couple of lasers fore and aft, but just enough to convince the bad guys we’re not a pushover.”

  “What about missiles?”

  “Nothing to speak of,” Tinbrak said, but something about his reply tweaked Bek’ah’s internal lie detector. He wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t being completely truthful, either. She let it go. If a stowaway started asking questions about her ship’s defense measures, she likely wouldn’t be very forthcoming, either.

  “So you count on your charm to keep scum like the Gritloth from taking your ship and everyone on board?” Her tone was as arch as her eyebrow, but the captain just grinned at her some more.

  “Charm, wit, and the fastest ship in three galaxies,” he said. “All the space that other freighters our size use for missiles and guns and the power plants to use them, the Sniper dedicates to more thrust. Our main engine is fine-tuned enough to drive a ship twice her size at three times the top speed, and our secondary engine has more juice than most ships our size get from their mains.”

  “How do you manage that?” Bek’ah asked, honestly fascinated now.

  “What do you know about propulsion systems?” the captain asked.

  “Not much, just what I’ve picked up living near a spaceport.”

  “Okay, then I won’t call Tilikk to explain things. He’s a genius, but like most geniuses, he tends to go a little deeper into the details than most normal beings can follow. Let’s just say that my chief engineer and his crew of Smilps are some of the brightest minds I’ve ever seen, and I’m really lucky to have them.”

  “And you won’t have them for long if we don’t get another paying gig,” the Pikith navigator said over her shoulder. “This run for Minz is barely covering the credit we’re spending getting to Verlin.”

  Tinbrak sighed. “Yeah, Timsif, I know it’s been a couple lean trips in a row.” He gave a pointed look at Bek’ah’s knee. “That’s why I’m hoping this new thing I just heard about will pan out. Might be enough to keep us in credit for the next year if things go well.”

  “And if they don’t go well?” Timsif asked. “Then we’re probably going to regret not selling your stowaway to the Gritloth.”

  “We don’t do business with slavers,” the captain said, and the lazy posture he’d affected since Bek’ah met him was gone. He leaned forward, half-rising out of his chair. “I don’t have many hard and fast rules, and I’ve broken most of the ones I do have at least twice. But not that one. No slavers. Ever.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” the Pikith female replied, turning her attention back to her instruments.

  “Might want to keep that fixed firmly in your mind, Captain,” the Rincah said. Bek’ah looked over and saw a red light blinking on his panel. “We’ve got incoming comm from a Gritloth ship.”

  “Put it up on the screen, Mr. Harmbo,” the captain said. He gave Bek’ah a raised eyebrow. “If you stand over next to Harmbo at the comm panel, you won’t be visible to the camera.”

  She hurried over to the Rincah, who stood to give her his seat. She nodded and hopped up onto the cushion, her feet curled under her. She had to concentrate to keep her claws out of the upholstery. All the furniture on Tedib was made with self-healing fabrics, but she wasn’t sure this ship had been built with her particular species in mind.

  The radar image disappeared from the screen, replaced by the image of a smiling Gritloth in an expensive suit of clothes. The orange-skinned being had large black eyes with no pupils, making it very difficult to see where he was looking at any time. She recognized him at once—he was the boss she’d seen in Corvan Dax’s club more than once. He always traveled with at least four bodyguards, usually other Gritloth or Rincah, and a bevy of the most beautiful females of several species. She always thought he saw them more as accessories than companions. He had one other defining characteristic that she could recall: Dax was terrified of him.

  “Captain Tinbrak, I presume?” the Gritloth said, a thin smile stretching across his razor-sharp features.

  “That’s right,” the captain replied. “And who might you be, sir?”

  “I am Puneet Vashindo, President of the Gritloth Salvage and Trading Company. We have reason to believe you may have unwittingly picked up a package of ours on Tideb. I wanted to give you an opportunity to return it to us. There is a substantial reward attached.”

  “It must be a pretty important package,” Tinbrak said, his voice mild, “for you to have hailed every ship leaving Tideb within the past two days searching for it.”

  “Oh, not so much trouble as all that,” the slaver said, his voice un
ctuous. “We have a tracker in the package that allows us to find it wherever it should go. It’s more a sentimental value than anything, really.”

  “Well, we didn’t pick anything up on Tedib, Mr. Vashindo. It was unfortunately a drop-off only stop for us. I’d hoped to pick up some cargo, but we have pressing business in another system that kept us from taking on any freight. So your tracker must be mistaken.”

  “I assure you it is not,” the Gritloth said, his voice hardening. He seemed to catch himself, and softened his tone. “If you would allow us to board with a small shuttle, we could scan the hold closely, find the package, bring it back over to our ship, and be gone before you know it. We’ll even pay you a small fee for your trouble. In addition to the reward, of course.”

  “How much was that reward again?” the captain asked.

  “One hundred thousand credit. Plus an additional ten thousand for delaying your trip to Verlin. Of course, if we’re wrong and the package isn’t on board, we’ll give you the ten thousand for your trouble.”

  “That’s…a lot of credit,” Tinbrak said, and Bek’ah’s heart leapt into her throat. He wouldn’t turn her over to those scum. Would he? She felt a heavy hand on her shoulder and looked up into the placid eyes of the Rincah communications officer Harmbo. He smiled at her and patted her softly on the back.

  “Don’t worry,” the thick-bodied being whispered.

  “Unfortunately, we are on a very tight timeline, and since I am certain that we picked up nothing at Tideb, we’ll just be on our way. Good day, Mr. Vashindo.”

  “Captain, wait!” the Gritloth said, and Tinbrak paused with his hand over the control panel set into the arm of his chair.

  Just as the slaver opened his mouth to speak, the door to the bridge whooshed open and Dr. Skarper rushed in. “Captain,” she called the second she crossed the threshold. “I’ve decoded the chip we found in the stowaway’s knee. It’s coordinates and a passcode. And there’s something else you should know—there’s a tracker built in. It’s highly likely the Gritloth will be close behind us, if they aren’t already…oh.” Her words trailed off as she looked at the screen. “Shit.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” the captain replied.

  “It seems there has been a miscommunication, Captain,” Vashindo said. “We have missiles locked on. Prepare to be boarded. I hope your stupid pride was worth a hundred thousand credit, because now it just cost you that, plus your ship. But don’t worry. Some of your crew looks very fit. They should fetch a fine price.”

  The captain pressed a button on the arm of his command chair, and the image on the screen winked out. “Timsif, evasive maneuvers, now. Harmbo, get the comm signals scrambled so we can’t be tracked that way, and see if you can block out the signal coming from our new passenger’s knee. Tenkor, time to throw some distractions out there for those missiles.”

  The crew sprang into action. Bek’ah shot out of the chair, and the thick-bodied Rincah sat down and immediately began tapping away at the display. Bek’ah latched onto a handhold in a blank section of bulkhead and watched the beings flow together like a well-oiled machine. The vacuum of space and the faux gravity on the ship meant she didn’t feel the acceleration as they began evasive maneuvers, but there was a low thrumming that vibrated through the decks as the engine spun up to full power and beyond.

  “Prepare to roll right and launch chaff,” the Pikith male, presumably Tenkor, called out. Bek’ah focused her attention on the radar display, where the large Gritloth ship was currently disgorging fighters into nearby space, trying to hem them in. Suddenly the screen filled with new radar signatures, dozens of fighters filling the space between them and the Gritloth, zipping this way and that like firewasps in a sugar factory.

  “Where did those ships come from?” Bek’ah asked. “And what the Hells is that?” She pointed to the screen, where a huge ship had materialized. It was the size of a heavy battlecruiser, and it popped into being right in the center of a mass of fighters.

  “Mr. Harmbo, a little noise, if you will?” the captain asked, his voice as calm as if he was asking a waiter for a dessert menu.

  “Aye aye, sir,” the Rincah replied, tapping away at his panel. “Missile lock tone broadcast across all frequencies we detected from the Gritloth ship.”

  “Well done, Harm,” the captain said. “Timsif, I think we’ve caused enough confusion. Are you ready to punch it?”

  “Affirmative, captain.” Bek’ah’s head whirled. This crew, so relaxed and jovial moments before, had snapped into a deadly efficiency the second they were presented with danger.

  “Fire main engines at full, Timsif. Tenkor, get on the fore laser cannons and plow the road.”

  “On it,” the two Pikith replied in unison. Tenkor snickered, then pressed a few buttons on his control panel. A small display slid up from his panel, and a pair of joysticks with red triggers mounted atop the handles rose from underneath.

  “Let’s rock and roll,” the purple-skinned weapons officer said with a whoop. He reached forward and took the joysticks in his hands, and Bek’ah could see just enough over his shoulder to watch a quartet of fighters disappear from his viewscreen in flashes of red laser fire.

  “Shields at ninety percent, captain,” the Lormell officer called from their display. “We have missile launch.”

  “Dammit,” Captain Tinbrak replied. “I thought they’d skip the missiles if they wanted her alive badly enough. Guess I was wrong. Tenkor, this would be a good time to tell me you have another surprise up your sleeve.”

  “I do, but it’s going to cost you a bottle of that Earth bourbon you’ve got stashed in your cabin,” the Pikith gunner replied.

  “Get us out of this without hull damage and it’s yours,” the captain replied.

  “Done and done, sir,” Tenkor replied, letting go of his left-hand joystick just long enough to lean forward and smack a red button on his panel. Bek’ah watched in amazement as every radar signature save the Sniper’s and the Gritloth ship’s winked out of existence at once. All the fighters, the half dozen missiles streaking toward them, and the battlecruiser—all gone in the blink of an eye.

  “What was that?” she asked, looking down at the Rinkah sitting beside her.

  Harmbo chuckled, his voice a rumbly grunting thing. “That was Tenkor’s modification to my radar decoys—an EMP generator. When Timsif banked us hard, I fired two dozen decoy globes about a hundred centimeters in diameter from the bottom of the ship. They were programmed to mimic the radar signature of fighters, and when they were far enough away from the Sniper, to link together to form up into a decoy battlecruiser.”

  “So there were no fighters?”

  “Not even one,” he said with a nod. “It was all electronic signatures and scramblers to make it look to the Gritloth’s instruments like they were suddenly in a firefight. Then when Tenkor took out a few of their fighters, they believed the illusion even more. Nobody uses their viewscreens in a space battle. It’s too confusing, and most beings can’t process all the information coming at them. So everyone trusts their instruments. We can’t fight our way out of a wet paper bag, but we can make almost anyone think we’re a lot bigger and badder than we are.”

  “Like arching your back and fluffing out your fur before a fight to make yourself look bigger. Makes sense. But then what stopped the missiles?”

  “Each decoy had a little something extra wired in—a networked EMP web generator. When Tenk hit the red button, each transmitter fired off an EMP, with overlapping fields that acted as a force multiplier. Because each pulse built on the one before it in a wave, the resulting blast had much more power than any of the decoys could create on their own.”

  “Frying the missiles and the real fighters,” Bek’ah concluded.

  “Exactly,” Captain Tinbrak chimed in. “And since we’re the fastest ship in a dozen star systems, we’re already out of range of any more missiles, and we should be able to reach the nearest gate well in advance of th
e Gritloth, even if they don’t stop to pick up their drifting fighters. Now we just need to figure out where we’re going to get away from your slaver friends.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you, Captain,” the doctor said from where she stood by a far bulkhead. She’d remained silent through the brief engagement with the Gritloth, but now stepped forward. “The coordinates in the chip on Bek’ah’s knee are to something the Gritloth have designated as ‘The Vault.’ It appears to be an asteroid in the far outreaches of the Gleekum system.”

  “The Vault, huh?” Captain Tinbrak said, scratching his chin. A wide grin spread across his face as he looked around the bridge, nodding. “Well, the kind of things beings keep in vaults are exactly the kind of things we would be very interested in. Doctor, please share those coordinates with Timsif. Let’s go see what the Gritloth are keeping locked away.”

  * * *

  “Well, that doesn’t look like much,” the communications officer, Hrambo, said as the image of an asteroid appeared on the bridge screen.

  Bek’ah had to admit she agreed with him. Even as asteroids went, it wasn’t much. Not that she’d ever done much space travel, just a few quick jaunts up to dance on a party barge Dax rented out to big customers now and then. But this? This was just a big hunk of cold rock floating through space, without even a rudimentary atmosphere to make it look appealing. What the Hells could the Gritloth have stashed way out here that would be worth cutting her open and hiding the data inside her?

  “Anything on the scans, Doc?” Captain Tinbrak asked. Doctor Skarper sat at one of the command stations on the bridge, her perpetually frizzy hair once again escaping its braid to form an auburn halo around her head. With no one in sick bay, the science officer had taken up her post on the bridge, running environmental systems on the ship during their trek through the gate to the Gleekum system, and now she ran long-range scans of the asteroid in hopes of locating this mysterious “Vault.”