“You looked up my service record.”
The captain shrugs. “Cade Korbin is infamous. The Dramos Incident almost started another war.”
I grunt and shrug.
A smirk lights up the captain’s face. “You’re bitter. That’s understandable. But what you did... it was a mistake.”
“I saved an innocent Coalition citizen.”
“One life that almost cost millions. You must be bad at math, Mr. Korbin.”
The Marines pull my arms behind my back and lock shockcuffs around my wrists.
“Let’s go,” one of them says, and shoves me roughly forward, guiding me around the captain and her entourage. I stumble.
A sharp trilling sound comes from the direction of my cockpit. I glance back and see Furball standing on the rim, all puffed up and looking tough. His fur is sticking out straight to make him look twice his normal size.
“I see you’ve met the locals,” the captain says.
One of the Marines takes aim with his rifle.
But before I can object, the captain does. She pushes the rifle down.
“At ease. They’re not dangerous.”
At that, the Furball shrinks back down to his normal size. He hops down from the cockpit and comes waddling over.
“You can take him back down,” I suggest.
“Can’t do that,” the captain says. “It’s yours.”
I glare at the captain. “What do you mean it’s mine?”
“You fed it, right?”
“Well... yeah.”
“So it bonded to you. Marked you with its pheromones so it would remember where to find food again. We call them Gumballs, because they stick to you like one. If we try to separate it now, it’ll just spend the rest of its life wandering the jungles trying to find you. It’ll probably starve to death. Or get eaten. It’s your call.”
“A Gumball,” I say dryly. “Can’t I just take a shower to clean off its scent?”
“Sure, but it will still remember yours.”
“Great. How long do they live?”
“About fifty standard years is the average. Some as long as sixty-five.”
“Fantastic.”
“I’ll see what I can do for your ship, but no promises. It looks like hell,” the captain says as the Marine who bound my wrists pokes me with his rifle to get me moving again.
Furball waddles along beside me, glancing up periodically, as if to make sure that I’m okay.
I’m just peachy. I’ve lost two ships. My real name is now publicly known and associated with at least two of my aliases. And I’m two different kinds of wanted across the Alliance.
Rajesh Mohinari is really doing his damnedest to make this personal.
Chapter 26
Three Hours Later...
I’ve been sitting in a holding cell aboard this destroyer for a lot longer than I’d hoped. No one has come to see me since the Marines escorted me here, and no food has been brought to my cell, either. Whoever this captain is, apparently no one taught her the basic rules of hospitality.
I’m sitting on my cot with my back propped against the bulkhead. Furball is rolled up in my lap, looking like his namesake, and chirring contentedly. Now that I know I’m basically stuck with the little guy, I should probably give him a name.
“Hey, Furball.” One big blue eye cracks open. I notice that it’s flecked with starry silver specks, like a constellation of stars adrift in a deep blue sea. “What do you think I should call you?”
Chirr-up!
“Cheer up. Yeah, you’re always looking on the bright side, aren’t you?”
“Brightside. Bright. Brighten? How about that? Sounds like a name to me.”
Chirr-up.
“Bry for short.”
Before he can respond to that, someone comes striding into view of my cell. I’m surprised to see that it’s the captain herself. And this time she’s not accompanied by any guards. The bars of my cage rattle open, and she steps inside.
“Any news about my ship?” I ask.
“My crew chief tells me it could take him a week to fix it, and it’d cost almost as much as buying a whole new interceptor. You’d be better off junking it and doing just that.”
“It has sentimental value.”
The captain snorts and shakes her head. “I can’t devote the resources to it. You’ll have to fix it yourself, but I don’t have any ships big enough that I can spare to carry it out of here.”
“So you’re going to keep it as salvage.”
“I don’t see that I have a choice.”
“And me?”
“You are another matter. You are a Coalition citizen, so I can take you to the nearest spaceport and you can figure out the rest from there.”
“Will you hold onto my ship for me?”
The captain frowns at me.
“I’ll come back for it.”
“I don’t see how. You don’t even know who I am, let alone what ship you’re on.”
“I’ll figure it out eventually. You could say that finding people is my job.”
The captain gives in with a sigh. “I’ll hold it for two months, not a day more than that. We’ll have returned to charted space by then, so it should be easier to track us down.”
“Thank you.” I’m actually surprised she agreed.
“You’re lucky, Korbin. If you were any other man with an open warrant for murder, I’d have left you to rot in the jungle.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because I know who you are. Sixteen years ago, a man named Cade Korbin saved my brother’s life.”
“What was his name?”
“Lieutenant Nolan Thorn.”
That name clicks into place, stirring old memories to life. I was into my sixth year with the Paladins. He was my CO on an assignment in the neutral zone. You’d think a demilitarized region of space wouldn’t have armed special forces lurking around every bush, but that’s where most of my ops were. Nolan Thorn was leading a platoon of us on Margrave. We were undercover, hunting for raiders with suspected ties to the Alliance. We had a line on the gang leader and were there to put him down. A proxy war to keep us on our toes. Lieutenant Thorn got captured, and we decided to bust him out of the raiders’ fortress before he could be killed for an anarchist political statement. The rescue failed, two of our guys got killed, and I got caught behind enemy lines. Long story short, I shot my way out and dragged Lieutenant Thorn out with me.
“I remember,” I say. “If he’s your brother, you must Captain Ellie Thorn.”
She neither confirms, nor denies my guess.
“After this, we’re even,” she says.
“I didn’t even know there was a score.”
“There is always a score,” Captain Thorn says while glancing behind her.
“Fine, then after I get my ship back, we’re even,” I suggest.
“As I said, you have two months. Put the date on your calendar.” She glances behind her again.
“Expecting someone?” I ask.
“You have half a million credits on your head, dead or alive,” she replies. “And as far as authorities in the Alliance are concerned, you’re murdering scum. Icing you would be easy to square away with anyone’s conscience.”
“You think one of your crew might try something?”
“I think the sooner I get you off my ship, the better for both of us.”
Chirr-up! Bry says.
A wry grin touches the captain’s lips. “Of course, with a bodyguard like him, you might not have anything to worry about.”
The captain turns to leave.
“When?” I call after her.
“Excuse me?”
“When are you getting me off your ship?”
“I’m afraid that’s need to know.”
A Marine comes into my cell, draws his sidearm, and flicks the setting to stun while I watch.
“Hey, what—” I’m halfway out of my cot before he pulls the trigger and I collapse in a
jittering heap.
“Safe travels, Mr. Korbin,” Captain Thorn says.
Fighting through the wracking waves of electrical shocks and the creeping weight of sedatives pumping into my system, I catch a glimpse of Bry flying into a yipping frenzy. He leaps off the cot to attack the Marine, who reacts by taking a step back and shooting the furball with another stun dart. Bry hits the deck beside the cot with a sound like a pillow hitting a wall.
And then my eyes slam shut, and it’s lights out for me.
PART 3: THE JOB
Chapter 27
When I wake up, I’m lying on a proper bed, facing a viewport.
Startled, I sit up quickly.
Bry chitters nervously.
I glance at him. He’s curled up at the foot of the bed, peeking through his fur with one big blue eye.
I turn my head to look out the viewport. There is a barren brown rock of a planet below me. No atmosphere as far as I can tell, but there are some collections of silvery structures down there with ships flitting to and fro. Probably mining outposts.
Looking the other way, I see the rest of my room. Everything is jammed together in the same space: a sink next to my bed, a toilet in a cubicle on the other side. A holoscreen above the foot of the bed, a shower down by the door, a tiny couch opposite the shower, and a holo projector on the coffee table in front of it. The pack with my gear is on the couch, minus my gun and the inflatable survival pod.
It looks like Captain Thorn got me off her ship, but where the hell did she drop me?
I feel around on my forehead. The holoband isn’t there.
Sitting up, I prop my back against the bulkhead and pat my pockets. A moment later, I find the holoband in a zippered pocket on my thigh. Pulling it out, I slide it over my forehead and power it on to connect to the net and check my location.
Adagio Station orbiting Cresta in the Crestan System. It’s pretty remote. Just this mining world and this station. Nothing else of use in the entire system.
I’m smack on the edge of Coalition Space, but still fifty-two light years from Terra Novus. Wherever I was, Captain Thorn said it was over a hundred light years from Terra Novus, so she took me to a midpoint somewhere between the two.
But that means I’ve been unconscious for... my neuralink runs the math absently. Coalition ships with the newer FTL drives all fly at about half a light-year per hour. That means it took at least fifty hours to get me here. Two days give or take.
But the date on my holoband says that a whole week has passed. The captain must have put me and Bry in stasis while she attended to other business first.
Of course, now there is no way to pinpoint the ring world I was on. Over a hundred light years from Terra Novus is pretty vague, and now I have no way of knowing exactly how long it took to get here, so that doesn’t give me a fix on its location, either.
What the hell is the Coalition doing out there? Why so much secrecy?
Maybe I don’t want to know.
My mind switches to more pressing matters. I check what name is registered to the room where I’m staying. A Lieutenant Morgan paid for the room. But he only paid for two hours, one of which is up. Pay by the hour. Nice establishment.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and start searching my name and aliases on the net to see which ones have been blown and which ones might be safe to use. The warrant for my arrest lists three faces and sets of ID: mine, Roman’s, and Lee’s, but no other aliases appear to have been listed. Good. The contract Mohinari put on me has the same info.
That makes life a bit easier. I’ll just switch to another alias and be on my way. What’s a face I haven’t used in a while? Standing up, I walk two steps to the sink and stare at my appearance in the mirror.
My real face stares back at me—not Lee Corvus’s face, which I was last wearing. That means that someone removed my biomask. Since they didn’t also remove half my face in the process, I have to assume they used one of the laborious, time-consuming methods that preserve both the wearer and the mask itself. I really hope it’s in that pack with the rest of my stuff. Biomasks are hard to come by and exorbitantly expensive.
Feeling weary, I plant both my hands on the sink and stare at myself in the mirror for a moment. Clear brown eyes peer back at me. I see the dark wavy black hair that I dyed and grew out to look like Roman and Lee. Cade Korbin has golden brown hair and usually wears it military short. Listen to me talking about myself in third person. That’s what happens when you go around changing identities as often as your socks.
A wry smile curves my lips. There is a scar above the upper one from where it was split years ago. I have a high forehead. Two vertical creases in my cheeks that flank my mouth. A dimple in my chin. A square jaw. A scar below one eye, and a slightly crooked nose from being broken one too many times. Chronologically, I look to be about thirty-five standard years old, but my actual age is forty-seven.
Though, I suppose I look a bit older with a day’s worth of black stubble covering the lower half of my face. It grew out while I was on that ring world. The stubble should be brown, but it’s dyed black, the same as my hair.
And it should be a lot more than just stubble by now. It’s been a week since I was marooned on Bry’s homeworld, so I should be rocking a bushy black beard at this point. Captain Thorn definitely kept me in stasis after that Marine stunned me.
Maybe stasis was safer. Or easier. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter. I’m alive, and I’m out of that festering jungle.
But now what?
No ship. No gun. And no disguise. I guess I’d better check on that last one.
I hurry over to the survival pack, zip it open and rummage through the gear.
Found it.
Right on top, beneath my thermal belt and jacket.
It’s transparent and thin. Holes for my nose, mouth, and eyes. I go back to the mirror and carefully paste it over my face. The mask is synthetic, not technically alive, and it draws its power from my metabolism, so there is no need for charging or a power supply. The mask goes on easily. A tingly sensation washes over my face as the mask starts flowing over my face, smoothing out the air gaps, making holes to let my beard through, and digging through my pores with metabolic filaments to draw energy from the ATP in my cells.
As soon as the mask is properly seated, I use it to set my appearance to one of my other aliases: Erin Thul.
In seconds, my face morphs into a completely different one. It’s amazing what playing with light and shadow can do to change the angles and shape of a face. Now my face is rounder, less gaunt. My pores are smaller, and there are no discolorations from sun damage. My skin is lighter, less tanned. No more scars. My nose is straight and now it looks smaller to fit my new face. My forehead even appears to be sloping. My eyebrows are fuller, but still black to match my hair.
Erin Thul’s hair is supposed to be black, so I don’t have to change anything other than to shave and give it a trim to match the style in Erin’s ID dossier.
A mental command to my vocal modulator changes my voice to his. Now for the eyes. I have retinal implants. Cyborg tech, but in my case it’s not because my eyes weren’t working right or because I needed corrective surgery to fix my vision. No, in this case, it’s to fool a retinal scan and match the eye color of any alias I choose.
My brown eyes shimmer, then swirl into bright hazel ones with flecks of gold.
Things are taking shape.
Going back to my survival gear, I pull out a grooming kit, find the clipper drone and shaving cream.
Going back to the mirror, I activate the drone. It hovers up above my head, and I send it an image of Erin Thul for a reference of how I’d like it to cut my hair.
It sets to work, hovering around me with bright green lasers zapping out periodically to cut my hair into the new style.
Bry starts yipping. He’s sitting up, looking alarmed.
“Don’t worry, buddy. It’s safe.”
Chirr...
He sounds do
ubtful. Then again, the last time he saw a laser I was using my pistol to kill the monster trying to eat him.
While the drone is busy, I wash my face in the sink and put on the shaving cream. I wait five seconds while it fizzes against my new face. Then I wash it off and run a hand appreciatively along my cheek.
Smooth as a baby’s backside.
The clipper drone is still busy. I try to hold still to make the job faster.
While I wait, I start checking my comms with my holoband. There is a message from an unknown sender in Roman’s inbox. A matching one in Lee’s.
A frown touches my lips and I feel my brow tense.
Rather than access those inboxes directly, I use my safe account to check them. All the messages from my various aliases get forwarded to another account that’s untraceable.
I check Roman’s message first.
It’s a holovid. I open it up and let it play on my holoband.
My ship, the Cloven Hammer appears. The air freezes in my chest. My whole body grows cold, and my heart starts pounding.
The Hammer is parked outside on a landing pad overlooking a thundering waterfall of glacial melt water. Spiky black razor trees and flickering fields of red sparkflowers contrast sharply with the dirty white patches of melting snow around them. I recognize the vegetation instantly. This is Terra Novus. A fair way south of Liberty City if the melting snow is anything to go by.
Whoever is taking the video starts toward my ship. The camera bobs as they walk.
The person walks up the boarding ramp, turns the camera to look at the name glowing on the ID panel on the side of the ship: Cloven Hammer and below it, my ship’s SID code: IAS-105-24R-7Z6. Now there can be no doubt that this particular Type-7 corvette is mine.
I hear the telltale zip. And then a bright arc of yellow piss goes steaming out to hit the side of my ship.
My blood starts to boil.
The stream stops. Fly zips up.
And then a scrambled voice says: “Drop the contract or next time I’ll be pissing on your grave.”
The Bounty Hunter (Cade Korbin Chronicles Book 1) Page 11
