by Rachel Aukes
“I hope that’s not the case.” Throttle took a seat, leaned back, and steepled her fingers. “What do you know about what’s happening on Free Station?”
He pursed his lips. “You’ve always been one to cut straight to the chase. I like that about you. And today, that’s an especially good trait to have because if what I’ve been hearing is true, you don’t want to be out in the open any more than you have to.”
She leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
Mutt eyed her. “I hear that Anna East has declared open season on the Peacekeepers.”
Throttle scowled. “I knew it. She’s behind the disappearances.”
“All I know is what my friends back on Jade-8 told me. They said that last week East broadcast a speech across Jade-8 from wherever she was hiding. She mentioned that the days of the Peacekeepers were coming to an end. She went on with ramblings to the effect that the Ross system was going to be a Jader system, whatever the hell that means.”
She thought through scenarios. “Is East trying to wipe out all non-Jaders? Or does she think that the Jaders can take over the system? That would explain why she’s the one behind the attack on Free Station, but even if she could take down Free Station, she wouldn’t stand a chance against Hiraeth. Hiraethians outnumber Jaders twenty to one, if not more.”
“Assuming all the Hiraeth colonies band together. Most of us barons are barely on speaking terms. My nickname may be ‘Mutt,’ but most of the barons I’ve met are the real mongrels,” he said.
“Maybe she’s counting on the colonies not banding together. Then maybe she’d have a chance, but it would still be a long shot. She must have another angle she’s working.”
Mutt shrugged. “She organized her entire pirate fleet, so it’s safe to say that whatever she has planned, she’s placing all her chips on her bet. It might not be a good time to be a Peacekeeper.”
“Well, this confirms my suspicions that Anna East is behind what’s happening on Free Station.” Throttle pushed herself up, and a smile built upon her lips. “Good. Then I know exactly where I can find her.”
Mutt’s brows rose. “If you’ve been listening to what I’ve been telling you, you’d know you should stay as far away from Free Station as you possibly can. There’s no telling if there’re even any Peacekeepers left alive up there.”
Throttle leveled a stoic gaze upon the baron. “East has killed even more of your people than she has mine. I know we both want East to face justice.”
“True. But I’m just not willing to die just to introduce her to her maker.”
“The longer she lives, the more people die by her and her pirates’ hands.” Throttle tilted her head toward him. “Well, thanks for the information. I’d appreciate it if you hear anything else, you could pass it along. My wrist-comm is dead, so you can only reach me at the Javelin.”
“I’ll do that. Don’t get yourself killed. You’re the only Peacekeeper I can count on to see things my way.”
“Mutt, in all the time I’ve known you, I’ve never once seen things your way.”
He smirked. “I’m hopeful.”
She headed to the door, opened it, and called back to Mutt, “I’ll see you around.”
Throttle returned to the clinic, using the drive to process Mutt’s words. Along the way, she stopped at a small café that emanated aromas of spices that made her mouth water. She left with a half-dozen containers. She carried four into the clinic, leaving one with Roderick at the front desk.
The nurse opened the container and took a deep inhalation. “Pad Thai. My favorite. Thanks. Oh, and your friend has been moved to the second floor. Room twelve.”
Throttle continued on her way, climbing a flight of stairs and hunting down the recovery room that held Punch. It was easy to find since Finn was standing guard at the open doorway. She handed him a container and then glanced in to see the marshal at rest.
“How’s he doing?” she asked.
“Surgery only took a half hour or so. Then he was moved up here, but he hasn’t wakened yet,” Finn answered.
“Take a break and eat,” she said as her attention focused on the doctor walking toward them.
Throttle handed Aubree a container that she smelled without opening. “Ah, you stopped at Zesty Basil’s on your way here. You remembered my favorite.”
“Our favorite,” Throttle corrected. “It’s one of the things I’ve missed about Canaan.”
The pair entered Punch’s room, where Finn had eaten half his rice dish already. Throttle wasted no time digging into her meal. She and her crew had spent the better part of a year on Free Station, the home of the galaxy’s most boring food. Breakfast options included oatmeal and protein bars. Snack options consisted of protein bars and carbohydrate bars. Lunch and dinner options included mystery casseroles and more protein bars. Throttle had often wondered if the high drop-out rate of new recruits was linked to the food.
She didn’t spend time savoring her meal. She was starving and had her next bite ready in her chopsticks as she chewed.
“Are they starving you up there?” Aubree asked.
Finn answered for Throttle, which she appreciated since her mouth was full. “Remember the meal bars on the Gabriela?”
Aubree gave a dramatic shiver. “I still have nightmares.”
“Those were delicious compared to the wood pulp we eat on Free Station,” Finn said.
Throttle had swallowed her last bite when she noticed Punch begin to stir. She set the container aside and walked over to the bed.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Throttle said drily.
He eyed her briefly before looking around the room, frowning. “Where am I?”
“You’re at the New Canaan Medical Clinic, and you’re lucky to be alive,” Aubree said as she stepped forward and examined the screen displaying Punch’s vitals.
“Marshal Punch Durand, meet Aubree King, the head doctor here and the person who saved your life.”
“Thank you.” He stopped to take a slow breath before continuing, “I feel better already.”
“That’s the painkillers talking,” Aubree said. “I injected you with a full dose of rehabilitators right after surgery. You’ll be sore for at least a week, but you should be able to walk within a few hours.”
He tried to push himself up and winced. “I don’t have time to lie around.”
Aubree pressed him back. “You don’t have a choice. You had a ruptured appendix that was hours away from killing you.”
“No wonder my gut’s been hurting so bad,” Punch said.
“As I said before, you’re lucky to be alive,” Aubree said.
“He’s lucky I didn’t shoot him,” Finn added, then eyed Punch. “The only reason I didn’t pull the trigger is that I didn’t see a gun in your hand and thought you were a beggar hitting us up. Why did you sneak up on us like that?”
“Sorry about that,” Punch said and then looked at Throttle, and she could see his pupils were moving in and out of focus.
“You mean hitting us with an EMP?” Throttle asked. “Yeah, I’m a bit curious about why you fried all our electronics.”
“It’s the Jaders.” He spoke slowly, with long pauses to breathe. “They’re monitoring everyone connected to the Atlas net. They’re watching and listening in on everyone. I couldn’t let them see me. There was no other way to help you without them seeing me. Now that you’re off the grid, they won’t be able to find you.”
Throttle frowned. “Why are they tracking us?”
“They’re taking out anyone they know they can’t turn. East has hired Jaders throughout the system to start taking out all the marshals.”
Throttle’s blood ran cold. New Canaan was filled with Jaders. She and Finn might be off the communications grid, but she still had two crew members sitting on the tarmac just outside town. She spun to Aubree. “Do you still have your wrist-comm?”
Aubree nodded. “It’s in my office downstairs.”
“Call Sylvian and tell her tha
t their Atlas chips are compromised. Tell her to put the ship under immediate lockdown and to figure out how to disable their chips as soon as possible.”
“O-Okay,” Aubree said and ran from the room.
Throttle eyed Finn, who’d grown pale. “You’d better get back to the ship and protect Sylvian and Eddy.”
He gave a hasty nod before bolting out of the room.
Throttle took a deep breath and turned back to Punch. “How do you know that the Jaders hacked Atlas? And talk fast because I need to get back to my ship.”
“They hadn’t yet when I escaped, but when comms went down from Free Station, I had to assume they were successful.”
“What happened? I need to know everything.”
His eyes closed for a moment before he spoke. “The Jaders. They had an inside guy. Pete Antonov, also known as Skully Pete and captain of the Bendix.”
Throttle winced. “A marshal? You know that for sure?”
“I got close enough to Pete on the Bendix to be able to tell you that his collection of skulls is no rumor.”
She grimaced.
“My thoughts exactly,” Punch said before grimacing. “Would you believe that? He was able to slip through all of the Atlas background checks.”
Throttle guffawed. “We gave one of Anna East’s pirate captains direct access to Atlas.”
“Yeah. Well, I saw Cat with Pete after he caught me, so she’s also in on it. Who knows how many others they have on the inside?”
Throttle frowned. “How do you know you can trust me?”
Punch chuckled and then winced. “Come on. I knew there was no way you’d ever team up with East, not with how bad she and her brother screwed you over when you first arrived.”
“Good point, but how do I know I can trust you? Pete’s and Cat’s ELTs went offline, and they’re on East’s team. Your ELT went offline…”
“Pete fried my chip and ELT so no one could rescue me.”
“Or you took your ELT offline so Chief couldn’t track you. Then you hit bad luck and ran into a street gang and got yourself beat up.” Even as she said the words, Throttle didn’t believe them. While she didn’t fully trust Punch, if he’d been on East’s payroll, he would’ve shot her instead of frying her chips with an EMP.
Punch swallowed before speaking. “I walked myself right into a trap. I found the Bendix docked at Jade-8, and spacewalked to check it out. I saw Pete in a cabin. He was tied up and had a bloody nose. I didn’t see anyone else, so I boarded it to get him out of there. But wouldn’t you know, as soon as I went to untie him, he sucker-punched me. The bastard’s got one hell of a right hook.”
He rolled his tongue against his cheek. “By the time I could see straight, his guys were on me, and I was the one tied up. He seemed to think that Chief was onto him, so for the next two days, I had the pleasure of him using me as a punching bag, trying to find out what I knew. Once he came to accept that I knew nothing, he tossed me into the recycler. The only reason I’m still alive is that the recycler was down for maintenance and I was able to crawl up another shaft to get out.” He closed his eyes and took a long breath. “Pete thinks I’m dead, and I don’t plan to show him otherwise until I’m up close and personal.”
Throttle cocked her head. “It sounds like you don’t plan on staying hidden for long.”
“Not a chance. The only good that came out of my time on board the Bendix was that Pete assumed I was a dead man walking and shared some of his and East’s plans that he was so proud of.”
“And what’d you learn?” she asked.
“Enough to know that the sooner we stop them, the better. I can’t trust anyone else right now, which means it’s up to you and me to invade Free Station and take it back from the Jaders. I’m going in after Chief no matter what. Are you in?”
Throttle gave his words careful consideration before she answered, “It won’t be the first time I’ve had to break into a place to save my people.”
Punch chuckled. “It won’t be the first time I’ve broken into Free Station.”
Chapter Ten
Chief sat before the computer array and watched as Jader pirates spread out from the docking bay on level six to levels seven, eight, and nine. There were maybe one hundred pirates—meaning his Peacekeepers easily outnumbered them five to one—a number that did no good with all the Peacekeepers locked within their quarters, which Chief had done for their protection.
His actions to protect his people might have killed them all.
Not everyone was locked in a room. But unfortunately, most specialists didn’t carry weapons while in the comfort of Free Station, so any who weren’t locked in rooms likely had no way to defend themselves. That was a policy Chief would change the moment this attack was over.
He’d prepared for a variety of attacks against Free Station. Most of the scenarios were software attacks, not dissimilar to the one that had taken Free Station. He’d just never planned on having his proverbial head cut off first. In all scenarios, Chief remained a viable leader on the table. Anna East’s pirates had taken Free Station far too easily simply by cutting off both Chief and the comm center from the rest of the station at the same time. Their plan wasn’t brilliant by any means, but it’d proved to be wholly effective. He’d never considered the size of his Achilles’ heel until East showed him. He realized now it had been hubris on his part to make that assumption. Every Peacekeeper in the Ross system now faced the repercussions of his mistake.
Hettinger took a seat but remained near the door as though he could, in some way, protect the Chief. The marshal had his photon rifle, but it did little good with the pair locked up behind a sealed permaglass door. Anna East’s goons stood on the other side of the door, waiting for Chief and Hettinger to make a move. Chief could open the door at any time, but he wouldn’t. He knew the outcome if he did. The pirates outside the door could spray shots into the room the second he opened the door. He and Hettinger were essentially in a kill box.
Instead, Chief waited for East to make the next move. He’d covered the camera in the room with tape and had used his knife to rip out the microphone. He’d blurred the glass door with the only thing they had in abundance: blood from the corpses lying in the room with them.
Rigor mortis had begun to set in, but fortunately, the bodies had not yet begun to stink. They didn’t smell pleasant by any means, but he knew from experience the smell would get far, far worse in the days ahead. Though, without water or food, he also knew that the stench in his glass tomb was the least of their worries.
To keep his mind from wandering into the dark, he watched everything Free Station’s cameras saw. The Jaders would miss something along the way, and Chief would use their mistake against them. He searched for Anna East, but he hadn’t seen the crime czar since she’d spoken with him. He knew she’d be nearby, likely on either the same level as the communications center or down one level where the command center and officer wing were located. Level nine, the highest level on Free Station, housed all the technical control centers for the station, from communications to navigation to environmentals. East could do a lot of damage with just a few keystrokes on one of those systems, but it was also the most difficult level to get to.
But she could do even greater damage from the command center deep within level eight. Chief spent much of his time in the command center with his staff, where they could monitor and control all activities taking place on the station, including the station itself. The video feeds from the communications center could be displayed in the command center, and he could broadcast to the entire station from there as well. He assumed Anna East was there, especially since the cameras to that room were offline.
After all, Anna knew all this because Chief had personally shown Pete Antonov most of Free Station’s secrets.
Currently, Chief focused on the camera feed from the main docking bay. The small beeps with each camera shift had become barely noticeable background noise. He watched Marshal Pete Antonov step out of the a
irlock of the Bendix, the pirate ship that had attacked the Chinese seed ship, which meant that Pete Antonov was none other than Skully Pete, a notoriously vicious Jader pirate. There’d been no images of Skully Pete on the Atlas net because anyone who came across him didn’t survive the encounter. The rumor was the pirate had earned the nickname by taking the heads of anyone who went against him.
Chief had no idea if the rumors were true, not that it mattered. In his time, he’d learned that rumors tended to drive emotion and action far better than facts. It was why he’d leveraged emotions often in getting things done. Some of his actions would not be condoned by GP Central, but they never pursued proceedings against him or his Peacekeepers. The results spoke for themselves, and that was all GP Central cared about.
Pete Antonov was flanked by two crew members as he strode toward the computer array that had been hardwired to network cables in the station’s walls. Chief selected the audio feed to unmute at the docking bay so he could listen as well as watch. Pete spent several minutes at the array, a frown emerging as he worked. He stepped back and walked to the Rabbit that he’d brought with him when he came to Chief to join up as a marshal. Chief wondered what poor soul had lost their life to Pete when he’d taken the small ship. Worse, Chief wondered how many more poor souls would suffer at the hands of Skully Pete and Anna East.
Ten minutes later, Pete emerged from his ship, fuming. One of his crew was nursing a bloody nose. Pete returned to the computer array and continued to work, though his growing impatience caused him to hit the menu options, making enough noise to be heard over the audio feed.
Chief leaned closer. “Interesting.”
“What’s that, sir?” Marshal Hettinger asked.
“Something’s not going according to their plan,” Chief said. “We can only hope it’s something that works in our favor.”
The marshal rolled his chair until he was next to Chief.
Pete hit the computer, and the entire array rattled. He pulled out a handheld radio and spoke. “I’ve looked everywhere for it. The router. It’s missing.”
