Flight of the Javelin: The Complete Series: A Space Opera Box Set

by Rachel Aukes

  “I don’t care about Free Station. You can have it. What I care about are the five hundred and sixty-three Peacekeepers that you intend to murder. Let them go. They don’t need to die,” Chief said.

  “Ah, but they do. It wouldn’t make much sense for Free Station to be destroyed suddenly with no one at home. Their deaths are what makes a good sap story for East to bring to the Consortium.”

  Chief narrowed his gaze. “You really think the Consortium will buy that shit-story that sounds more like something a little kid or a drunk would come up with. Which one are you?”

  Pete shrugged. “You know, Chief. I don’t care if the Consortium buys her story or not. That’s her grand scheme, not mine. If anything, her plan cuts the amount of traffic through Ross. Less traffic means less opportunity to raid ships and crews. Nah, my plan was simple. I took the job to get into Free Station. My crew and I are now the richest, best-armed pirates in the system, maybe even in the galaxy.”

  “You make it sound like you control your fate. You’re as much under Anna East’s thumb as every other Jader. She tells you which ships to loot, and she tells you how much of that loot you get to keep. She makes you do jobs, like pretend to be a marshal, to get her what she wants.”

  “I’m getting what I want, too,” Pete added brusquely.

  “Sure you are. But have you thought about what will happen if East is successful with—what did you call it—her grand scheme?”

  Pete frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Chief took a step forward. “I mean, if East convinces the Consortium to allow the Ross system to be a self-governing system, then East will need to appear legit. She’d never be able to govern an entire system with skeletons in her closet.” Chief’s features relaxed and he grinned. “That’s it! That’s what you’re doing through the Atlas computer you set up on the dock. I admit, the importance of a naive Bayse router didn’t make sense for the longest time, but now it makes perfect sense. You want to use the router to cleanse Anna East’s records—and no doubt all Jader records.”

  Pete’s features went lax for a moment before he recovered. “It doesn’t matter that you know. It’s not like you’ll live to tell anyone about it. Getting rid of you and the other marshals is what I care about. But yeah, we’ll all be legit, for a time anyway. Even if more Peacekeepers arrive, they won’t be able to hound my crew and me.”

  “Until you raid the next ship,” Chief added.

  “You gave yourself away, Chief,” Pete said. His expression resembled that of a cat that’d just caught a plump mouse. “How’d you know about the naive Bayse router?”

  Chief motioned to the camera screens behind him.

  Pete’s smile widened. “Ah, but I never mentioned it by name. You couldn’t know unless you sent in one of your spies to steal it. I don’t know how you managed it, but I know you’re behind its disappearance. You’re going to tell me where it is, Chief.”

  Chief’s brow rose and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you going to open this door then? Is that what you’re going to do, Pete? Ah, but you can’t, can you, because only I can open the door.”

  Pete’s features gave away a hint of annoyance.

  Chief waved him off. “I can see why you want a naive Bayse router. There are a lot of Jaders out there, and a whole lot of them have criminal records. Though it won’t help you and your crew.”

  Chief paused to allow time for Pete to process the words.

  “What do you mean?” Pete finally asked.

  “Simple. It won’t matter that your and your crew’s records will be clean, you won’t get a chance to benefit from having a clean slate. It all goes back to Anna East’s skeletons. She’ll need to bury the truth as to what’s happening here on Free Station, which means anyone tied to it will be silenced. Permanently.”

  “You think she’d do that, boss?” the man to Pete’s left said. He had two black eyes and a crooked nose, which made him Pete’s punching bag from earlier.

  “No, and don’t listen to him,” Pete spat and then shot a look at Chief. “He’s just trying to get to us.”

  “I heard the Gallic Lady’s crew disappeared after doing a side job for East,” the man to Pete’s right whispered, but his words came clearly through the speakers into the comm center.

  Pete glared at his two men. “Leave me. Now.”

  Neither man looked happy, but they did as they were told. They left Pete alone on the other side of the glass door. Chief forced himself to stay focused on Pete. If Chief glanced in Hettinger’s direction, the pirate would surely remember there were two men in the comm center or, worse, suspect that Chief’s goading was part of a plan.

  Pete’s frown remained. “East needs me more than I need her, and she knows that. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything.”

  “She needed you to get access to Free Station, and she still needs you to give her a clean record. Soon, she’ll have no need for you. Until then, she’ll just keep having you do all the hard work so she can come in and claim all the credit.”

  Pete glared.

  “Oh, you think you’re partners?” Chief chuckled. “You’re even dumber than I thought.”

  Pete’s face darkened. “Your skull is going to be a nice addition to my collection.”

  Chief lowered his hands. “Then do it.”

  At the code phrase, Hettinger opened the door. Pete bore a moment of surprise before Hettinger swung around and shot him squarely in the chest. The pirate fell. Chief didn’t hesitate before taking a knee by Pete and grabbing the handheld radio. When Pete groaned, Chief frowned. He yanked up Pete’s shirt to see the pirate was wearing an armored vest.

  Hettinger stepped out and handed Chief a rifle before sucking in a deep breath. “Finally, fresh air.”

  Chief jumped to his feet. “We have to hurry.”

  “Hey. Stop!” a man called out.

  Chief swung around and fired. His shot went wide, but it was enough to send the pair of pirates scurrying around the bend in the hallway.

  The pair of Peacekeepers sprinted away from the pirates. Hettinger fired randomly behind them as they ran. The heat from the pirate’s return fire singed Chief’s ear. Ahead of them, the hallway ended at the lifts, which Chief noted were again operational. He barreled toward the open elevator, even though he knew Jaders were likely closing in on him through each of the two hallways that branched out from the hallway leading from the lift.

  Chief fired to his left and to his right the instant he stepped into the open area. Jaders to his left were still at a distance but sprinting toward the pair. They fired at nearly the same time Chief had fired, and he felt pain in his left forearm, as though someone had shoved a sharp icicle through it. He ignored the pain and toppled into the lift, with Hettinger on his heels.

  The moment they were inside, Chief lunged for the controls. He dropped his rifle and hit the red emergency button at the same time he pressed the Close button. Pain shot through his arm at the movement, but he didn’t let go until the doors closed.

  The sounds of pounding fists and blaster fire hitting the other side of the door gave him chills. The sounds of the two men’s panting filled the space. Chief flipped open the panel with all the buttons to reveal a screen and a handprint reader. He placed his hand over the reader.

  When it flashed green, relief filled him. Anna East had not figured out how to disable his access, which meant he could at least slow down Anna East’s plunder of Free Station. Atlas was integrated with every system on Free Station, but several of the safety and emergency systems overrode Atlas commands. He entered commands on the screen to put the elevator in lockdown mode.

  Smoke flitted through the seams in the lift doors, and Chief knew the Jaders were firing nonstop at the door in their efforts to gain entry. It was futile—all doors were built to retain atmospheric pressure during hull breaches. Photon rifles would eventually burn through, but Chief and Hettinger would be long gone before that happened.

  He took a deep breath.
“We’re safe for now, but we need to keep moving.” He looked over at Hettinger and went cold.

  The marshal was leaning against the far wall, holding his gut where a blaster had caught him. A second shot had nicked the man’s shoulder, but he didn’t seem to notice. Somehow, he still managed to keep his rifle leveled at the open wall of the lift toward the low-gravity pole.

  “Damn it,” Chief muttered and rushed to the young man.

  “S’okay, Chief,” Hettinger said, wobbly.

  Chief helped him to the floor. “Stay with me, Dean. We’ll get you patched up.”

  “At least the air smells better here.” Hettinger winced and grunted, then began to moan.

  Frustration burned at Chief. As a marshal assigned to a security detail, Chief knew Hettinger carried a basic med kit containing a couple of bandages and a coagulant. But Chief knew that nothing short of immediate surgery by a skilled doctor would be enough to save the young Peacekeeper. If he had access to a complete med kit, he could’ve at least have given Dean an opioid to help with the pain. Instead, he had to watch a young man’s life end far too early and with far too much pain.

  Hettinger clutched Chief’s shirt. “I don’t want to be like those guys in the comm center. I don’t want to die. Please, Chief, I don’t want to die.” Tears filled his eyes.

  Wincing, Chief wrapped his left arm around Hettinger’s shoulders. He relieved Hettinger of his rifle and kept it aimed at the pole, the one area where any Jaders locked in the accessibility row with him could reach them from above or below. He murmured, “It’s going to be okay,” to the man whose courage had not wavered since the Jaders invaded Free Station. For his actions, Hettinger was a hero in Chief’s eyes. He’d seen death too many times and knew that the final minutes of a mortally wounded Peacekeeper’s life were often the most honest, the most human.

  Even as the smoke put a haze in the air, Chief didn’t move as he held Hettinger’s slumped body. No sounds were coming from above, below, or the sides, which meant that he was lucky to have initiated lockdown with no Jaders in the accessible areas around the lift. Hettinger’s moans grew quieter until he made no more sounds.

  Chief checked the young man’s pulse and found none. He pressed his forehead to Hettinger’s and closed his eyes. “May you suffer no more.”

  The thick, bitter air prickled Chief’s throat. He pulled away and coughed. The heat was building near the door, and Chief saw a glowing pinprick expanding at the center of the door.

  In a rush, he went to Hettinger’s gun belt, snapped free a spare rifle battery, and pocketed it. He grabbed both rifles and slung them across his back. He went to the edge of the lift that opened to the pole and looked up and down to verify that he was alone. He reached out with his uninjured arm and wrapped himself around the pole. He slid down two levels, fumbling, then dropped hard onto the platform at the level he needed. A massive jolt of pain shot through his injured arm. He winced.

  He unslung one of the rifles and edged off the platform and before two doors. One door opened to a primary hallway like the one Chief and Hettinger had run through to get onto the lift. The other door was painted red with the word EMERGENCY printed in large white letters. This was one of the doors that existed for the sole purpose of easing evacuations of the station, and therefore, anyone could access it, even during a lockdown. It also meant the door to the hallway would have the same letters printed high on it, signaling an exit route. Chief hoped that the Jader pirates hadn’t yet realized that any emergency door remained unlocked, or else his escape would be short-lived.

  He assumed someone would figure it out soon enough, which meant he had a very small window to get what he needed and find a place to hide and coordinate a counterattack. He swung open the red door, raising his rifle as soon as he did. When only silence greeted him, he stepped through and pulled the door closed behind him. If there were any way to bar the door closed, he would’ve done it, but emergency doors had been built sturdily and simply, with nothing more complicated than a single bar handle on each side. He couldn’t shoot the handle off with a photon rifle, so he turned and ran through the cylindrical tunnel that curved like a coiled snake. At equal intervals along each curve was an escape pod capable of holding fifty people. He ran past each one.

  His arm throbbed, and his chest couldn’t get enough air. He couldn’t help the former, and too many years behind a desk had caused the latter. He continued to push himself, unwilling to slow down and risk making Dean Hettinger’s death meaningless.

  He could feel the floor incline in his aching muscles. The emergency tunnel wrapped around Free Station like a corkscrew, making escape pods accessible to anyone within two floors. Every time he ran by a red door, he held his rifle higher, but he’d yet to come across friend or foe.

  He hadn’t come across any ejected escape pods, which meant, as far as he knew, all of his people were still on Free Station, and he hoped they were all safely locked in their rooms rather than standing before pirates. Though he already knew not all of them had made it behind locked doors in time. He’d watched from the comm center as his security detail was decimated. He’d seen over twenty marshals slaughtered and twice that many specialists forced to labor for Anna East’s Jaders.

  They were his people, and he was responsible for them. He’d see them freed.

  The escape pod he sought was at the highest part of the corkscrew tunnel. He was fighting for air and weak from going too long without water. His breaths were staccato bombs to his ears. By the time he reached the top, he was wheezing for breath and slowed to a walk to keep from tripping over his own feet.

  The escape pod waited at the tunnel’s end. It was half the size of the other pods and of a different design. While all the other pods were meant to drop immediately into Hiraeth’s orbit before automatically setting a landing course on the rocky planet, this pod could be flown as a ship of its own—albeit a poorly handling ship.

  Chief placed his hand over the scanner, and the pod door opened. He stepped inside and strode past the dozen seats lining his left and right, stopping only to open the med kit on the wall and pull out a bandage. He closed the kit and walked to the front of the escape pod and climbed through an oval-shaped opening to the cockpit. Once inside, he set both rifles on the floor and collapsed onto the copilot’s seat, which was the seat reserved for the director of the Galactic Peacekeepers for the Ross system—his seat.

  He examined his left forearm. The shot had gone through, leaving charred black skin around the entry and exit wounds. There was very little blood, as the beam had cauterized the injury. It throbbed with pain. Every movement brought a sting. That he could still somewhat use his fingers meant that the shot hadn’t cut through the tendons. He was still functional, but he knew the pain would cause him to favor the arm, which would slow his movement when he didn’t have time to move slow.

  The pain would only get worse. As he healed—assuming he could get proper medical care in time to keep his arm—the pain would become sheer agony as seared nerve endings were replaced with sensitive new nerves. He unraveled the white bandage. It had antibiotics, decontaminators, and a mild analgesic weaved through its fibers. The painkillers would do very little to numb the pain that radiated through his forearm. He gingerly started wrapping the bandage around his arm. When the chemicals touched the damaged area, it felt like acid corroding his skin, causing his visual field to narrow. He hissed and held his arm to his chest until the blaze dulled to smoldering embers, still painful, but he could sense the world around him again. He gazed out the viewscreen toward the desert brown and icy white world of Hiraeth that filled up much of his sight picture.

  It’d be so easy to launch the escape pod. He could fly to safety—assuming his ship wasn’t noticed and shot out of orbit first. But to escape would be to abandon over five hundred people depending on him to help them. Escape wasn’t why he’d come to that pod.

  He closed his eyes and savored the peaceful sense of security for a long moment. Then he opened
his eyes, reached low and to his right, and placed his hand over a scanner. An electronic chime sounded behind his head, followed by the whoosh of a door. He spun his seat around to where a small compartment now stood open. A warm glow illuminated the contents, and he reached inside and pulled out the extra pistol and a little black box. He left the Atlas tablet—powering it on would only give away his position. He slid the handgun into his waistband and the box into his chest pocket.

  He went to stand. His legs protested, and he had to pull himself to his feet. He took one last deep breath, grabbed the rifles, and stepped out of the cockpit.

  “Chief Roux, I know you can hear me.”

  Anna East’s voice chilled Chief through and through. He scrambled for the handheld radio he’d taken from Pete.

  “Don’t ignore me, Chief.” She had the audacity to sound indignant.

  He lifted the radio to respond, then paused. He had nothing to say to East. Not yet. He slid it back onto his belt.

  “You killed two of my men. You’ll pay for that. I will find you. There’s nowhere you can hide from me.”

  East spoke in a singsong, taunting manner that made Chief recoil. He turned down the volume and strode from the escape pod. He waited for the door to close behind him before he broke into a jog, then a run down the coiled corridor. He’d left no evidence that he’d been on the pod, no proof that he’d been in the tunnel. He’d made it about midway through before he stopped at an escape pod. He stepped inside. Unlike the executive pod, all the other pods had their doors open at all times to make evacuation more efficient as well as to allow them to leverage the station’s environmentals rather than run off their own, limited systems.