In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) Page 12

  The Exchange was small, just four terminals on the ground floor offering Society underwritten contracts, mostly off world fetch and deliver type deals, but as this was high threat space close to the Acheron, the completion bonuses were sky high. Most were sponsored by the Union colonial administration, although a few were put up by local farmer co-ops desperate for spare parts. Some were many months old, indicating few traders visited the planet, which in itself helped drive up prices. Hardfall might have been the place to come for fast money, but only for those few willing to run the Drake gauntlet.

  A quick search of actives found no inbound or outbound consignments for the Merak Star. It had been a long shot, hoping Nazari had picked up side contracts revealing where he’d come from or where he was headed. Whoever he was working for, they were paying him well enough to prevent him from moonlighting. As far as the Society was concerned, the Merak Star wasn’t even in Outer Draconis. She was supposed to be doing monotony runs in Ursa Major for colonial governments and blue chips. According to the Society – who auto-tracked ship transponders – the only trade ship in port or even to have landed in over seven months was the Silver Lining. The only way Nazari could have got down without the Society knowing was if the Merak Star had her transponder off, something genuine URA surface batteries would never have allowed. If they hadn’t blasted the Merak Star out of the sky for hiding her identity, there was a good chance they’d turn the same blind eye toward the Cyclops when she got here.

  My last task was to check the threat advisories, looking for specifics on the Cyclops. There was no ship known by that name, but there was a phantom who matched her description, who was blamed for every ship that inexplicably vanished near the Acheron. She was only known of at all because a handful of modern freighters with fast bubble had escaped before she’d got within weapons range. Nothing was known of her captain, only a dozen guesses as to his name, none of which were Rix. Whoever he was, he liked his privacy, not easy to keep in his line of work, but at least that explained why my threading had no matches on him or his ship.

  With more questions than answers, I retrieved my gun and stepped out onto the street. My DNA sniffer had barely begun area-scanning when four men converged on me at once. Two grabbed my arms while the others pressed guns into my ribs from both sides, giving me no chance.

  “Give us an excuse, spacer,” one of the men said with a distinctly Ardenan accent as he pulled my P-50 from its holster. He was dressed in Faller street clothes, but his height and build showed no sign of genetic adaptation to the local gravity.

  They pulled my hands behind my back and snapped restraints on my wrists as a small solar powered three wheeler pulled up in front of us. Its rear cargo door popped up, then they threw me inside, slamming the door shut behind me. In complete darkness, I felt the vehicle pull away from the curb and begin swerving through Citadel’s narrow streets, certain I’d made a good first impression on someone.

  They hung me by my wrists from force clamps inside a shadowy cold storage room, surrounded by enormous carcasses rendered microbe free by irradiation. To avoid freezing to death, I performed leg lifts and had my threading trigger muscle tremors, but it was a losing battle. By early evening, my shoulders were straining under the heavy gravity and a layer of frost had formed across my face as cold clawed my body. I’d started thinking it was only a matter of time before I’d be as frozen as the carcasses around me when the cold room’s metal door swung open.

  A small machine with four articulated legs riding on ball rollers stepped over the door seal and trundled in. It was followed by a tall, slender man and one of the thugs who’d bundled me into the three wheeler outside the Society’s office. As they crossed the room, the rollerbot was careful to remain close to the tall man at all times. It wasn’t until it stopped below my dangling feet, immediately reducing the strain on my shoulders, that I realized why. It was equipped with a personal acceleration field, reducing ambient gravity to something fractionally less than Earth Normal. Such devices were extravagances on any world and certainly unexpected on a place as remote as Hardfall. Whoever my visitor was, he had no intention of going native anytime soon, of enduring years of discomfort to build muscle and bone density the old fashioned way.

  My guest studied me with a curiosity colder than the freezing air while I stared blankly at the floor, feigning hypothermia.

  “This is Sirius Kade?” My visitor asked.

  “Yeah Gov’nor, that’s him.”

  Governor? Union mandated colonies usually elected one of their own to run things, but their accents told me they were both from Ardenus. Offworld appointees were only sent to restore worlds riven by corruption and incompetence, but I doubted that was the case here. My DNA sniffer tried pattern matching them, but couldn’t identify the Governor. His muscle man was Stas Riscani, a URA deserter facing five years in the stockade once the Union army got their hands on him.

  “What do we know about him?” the Governor asked.

  “He’s a local trader. Second generation. Seems genuine.”

  “He wouldn’t be watching Loport or running searches on the Merak Star and the Cyclops if he were genuine!” the Governor declared irritably.

  The Society were obsessively secretive about their member’s activities. The only way he could have known what searches I’d run was if he had the Exchange bugged, which was a flat out breach of the Union Colonial Charter – something no genuine Union administrator would ever break.

  The fake Governor stepped toward me causing the little rollerbot to readjust its position. “Why are you here, Kade?”

  I maintained my frozen stare on the floor, hoping he’d believe I was close to an icy death.

  “You left him in here too long!” the Governor snapped.

  “He’s not dead,” Riscani said, stepping forward and shaking me by the knee. “Hey! Kade! Wake up!”

  “What do you know about the Merak Star and the Cyclops?” the Governor demanded.

  When I didn’t answer, Riscani produced a short rod shaped stun-jabber and shoved it into my side. For a moment, my body tensed from the charge, then I relaxed.

  “My name is Rykard Metzler. I’m the Governor of this colony. The only way you’re getting out of here is by answering my questions. Now tell me, who are you working for?”

  “Nazari,” I wheezed.

  “You work for Captain Nazari?” Metzler asked surprised.

  “He owes … me money.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “His … stim … dealer.”

  Anger swept over Metzler’s face. “I knew we couldn’t trust that Cali stimhead! We should have used our own people! What do you know about the Cyclops?”

  “Nazari … making deliveries … Don’t want … trouble … just money.”

  “He don’t know nothing,” Riscani said dismissively.

  “Maybe …” Metzler said warily, unconvinced by my act.

  “Want me to shove him in the food processor?”

  “No, the Society knows he’s here. We don’t want them asking questions. Not now, not this close.”

  “So he’s bait then?”

  “Yeah. Where are the other two?”

  “Back at their ship. My people are watching them.”

  “Grab them when they come out looking for him,” Metzler said. “And have the garrison target their vessel in case they try to run.”

  “We could use their ship, Gov’nor,” Riscani suggested.

  “Hmm … OK, capture it intact. I’ll tell the Society it was impounded for charging weapons in a no fire zone. Prepare fake sensor logs in case they want proof.”

  “We’ll need a crew.”

  “Some of the those Drake scum might want a pardon. If not, I’ll send for a crew from Hades City.”

  Riscani nodded. “When do you want us to dump Kade?”

  “Tonight,” Metzler said, stepping back, drawing the little rollerbot after him. “He won’t be the first offworlder to underestimate the danger of the fl
atlands.”

  Sometime after midnight, Stas Riscani and his three musclemen snapped restraints on my wrists and ankles and carried me up to the rooftop where they loaded me into an aging cargo lifter. It had two vectoring thrusters mounted high above the fuselage, a small one seat cockpit up front and a tiny swivel mounted tail thruster for maneuvering. Both side doors had been removed, making it windy and noisy in flight, and the cargo deck stank of manure and was stained with blood, nonhuman blood according to my threading.

  We flew briefly above Citadel’s rooftops, then once clear of the cliffs, power glided toward the southern plains. Soon we were skimming low rolling grasslands, then just as the colony’s lights receded to the horizon, the lifter slowed, coming to a hover above an abandoned bait trap. Its massive door hung by a twisted hinge, while inside the rusting square cage were the bleached bones of a long dead tankosaur. It was a first generation trap, abandoned because it lacked the required strength and was too far from Citadel to tow the catch back safely.

  Riscani pulled my P-50 from his pocket and fired repeatedly through an open side door. “Some folks beg for one round, so they don’t have to live through it,” he yelled over the roar of the thrusters, glancing at me quizzically. When I said nothing, Riscani shrugged, “Suit yourself, Kade.” He fired several more shots then tossed the gun out, watching it clatter through the bait trap’s metal bars to the artificially smooth rock floor below.

  One of the guards moved to the rear of the fuselage where he pulled back a tarpaulin covering an old quad-bike. He activated its four ground effectors, floated it forward to an open door then shut it back down. Another of the guards switched power packs, then tried starting the quad-bike himself. This time it whirred weakly, unable to lift itself off the deck. The pilot, who’d been watching over his shoulder, dropped the cargo lifter close to the ground, then the two guards pushed the quad-bike over the edge and watched it crash onto the rock flats below.

  “You hired it this afternoon,” Riscani explained, producing my vault key. “Paid for it with this.” He slid the key into my pocket, shaking his head with mock sadness. “When will you spacers learn? This ain’t no place for joy riding!” He laughed, then motioned for the others to drag me to the edge.

  With my face hanging over the side, Riscani unlocked my restraints while I lay as limp and helpless as when they’d first removed me from the cool room.

  “You could try hiking back to Citadel,” he said. “You might even make it, if you’re lucky.”

  One of his companions laughed. “There ain’t no one that lucky, Stas.”

  Riscani stepped back with the restraints to let his companions throw me out onto the ground. As their weight shifted, I twisted suddenly, spearing my knuckles into the throat of the guard to my left. He fell back choking, then before the others knew what was happening, I whipped my arm back, crashing my elbow into the forehead of the guard to my right. He reeled away, stunned, blood welling from the split skin above his eyes.

  The third guard launched himself at me, but I rolled onto my back and caught him with my heel and hands and catapulted him over my head through the side door. The guard caught the landing skid as he fell and swung beneath the cargo lifter as I jumped to my feet only to find myself staring into the business end of a short barreled shellgun. It fired armor piercing, exploding shells ideal for taking down the heaviest beasts on Hardfall and making a mess of any human.

  “You don’t fight like no spacer,” Riscani said, glancing at his companions. One was turning blue from lack of air, another lay unconscious with blood smearing his face while the third desperately clawed his way back up into the lifter. “Maybe the Gov’nor’s right, you’re not what you appear to be.”

  “I just don’t like walking,” I said taking a step toward him.

  Riscani raised his gun to eye height in an unmistakable warning. “The Gov’nor wants it to look like an accident, but I’ll finish you here Kade, right now, and dump your body down south where it’ll never get found. Makes no difference to me. You get eaten all the same.”

  “What’s Hardfall to a bunch of Ardenans?”

  He gave me a sour look. “Nothing! I hate this stinking place, but it pays better than the army.”

  “When Earth Navy finds out what’s going on here, they’ll burn you to the ground.”

  “We’re ready for them,” he said with surprising confidence.

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  “There ain’t a navy ship within five hundred light years could stand up against our defenses.”

  It was more than an idle boast. The colony’s eight armored turrets could be hiding enough firepower to knock out a frigate before it ever got within range, but why would anyone want to fortify an isolated outpost like Hardfall? Its proximity to the Acheron made it attractive to smugglers and Drakes, but no one else.

  Riscani nodded toward the open door. “Jump!”

  I glanced down at the ground, hesitating.

  “Or I’ll blast you out the door,” Riscani added malevolently. “Your choice!”

  I moved to the edge, stepped down onto the skid and dropped lightly to the ground.

  Riscani looked out across the plains, searching for movement. “They can smell you already, Kade,” he yelled from the open door as the lifter climbed away. “You don’t have long!” He grinned as the aircraft turned away toward Citadel’s distant lights.

  I clambered over the fallen door into the giant cage, recovered my P-50 and checked the ammo counter. It was empty. I holstered my gun, becoming aware of how eerily quiet and empty the flatlands were at night. A soft light came from the stars above, partly obscured by the impenetrably black depths of the Acheron Abyss, while far to the north, Citadel floated like a glowing island above the dark plains. A point of light close to Citadel marked Hiport’s location, although Hadley’s Retreat and Loport were both hidden from sight, too low and far away to be seen. I could have hiked back to the city in a day, but Riscani was right, trying to get there on foot would be suicide. My best chance was to stay with the cage and hope Jase and Izin found me in the morning.

  I cranked my listener to high gain and my infrared optics to maximum as a distant howl came rolling in across the plain. Sometime later, I spotted a thermal ghost slinking through long grass, working its way toward me.

  I soon discovered it wasn’t alone.

  Prowling apparitions crept toward the ruined bait trap while I searched desperately for a weapon. In spite of having been abandoned for more than a century, the cage was still strong enough to provide protection on three sides forcing any attacker to come in over the broken door. Some cage bars were rusting, others were bent from having been charged by creatures larger than a tankosaur, while several bars in the wrecked door rattled loosely but wouldn’t twist free.

  Frustrated, I retreated to the enormous skeleton in the middle of the cage. Its ribs were thicker than my chest and twice my height, jutting from a spine composed of immense anvil-like bones. They were too heavy for me to lift in Hardfall’s oppressive gravity, but eventually I found a small joint-bone that had the makings of an adequate hammer. I lugged it to the broken cage door watched by a lone sawtooth perched on its haunches off to the right and a pair of four legged nightstalkers creeping through the long grass further out. Most dangerous of all, a few knee-high infrared blurs hopped in the distance with growing agitation. Most of the fleshripper pack were sleeping, but my alien scent was drifting their way, rousing them from their slumber.

  The hulking sawtooth gave off a lazy howl as it sniffed the air, forcing me to act. I drove my bone hammer into the ruined cage door, shattering the night with a thunderous crack that startled the skittish nightstalkers. They scampered off into the darkness while the big shouldered sawtooth just sat watching me through the grass.

  I lifted the hammer again, smashing the twisted bars until one broke free. It clattered onto the rock floor noisily, then several blows later, a second bar came loose. I dropped the hammer and carried my makeshi
ft spears back into the cage. They were heavy polysteel tubes with blunt ends incapable of piercing tough hide, but were as long as medieval pikes, giving me reach.

  I took cover behind the tankosaur skeleton, hoping I could hide there until help came, but the sawtooth stood on his muscled forearms and started toward me. The infrared orbs of its eyes glowed brightly above a blockish snout sniffing uncertainly as it savored my scent. Even though we were in sight of the colony, it had little knowledge of humans. Colonists either kept well clear of the plain’s predators or dispatched them with armor piercing slugs, giving Hardfall’s monsters no chance to learn to fear men.

  After resting one of my metal bars against the tankosaur’s skeleton, I held the other ready as the sawtooth approached. It paused at the edge of the grass, studying the artificially smooth rock base and the unfamiliar cage. The creature seemed strangely misshapen with large powerful shoulders, muscular forelegs and short rear legs for balance. Its head was square with broad jaws lined with thick, yellow teeth. It wasn’t armored like a tankosaur, but its hide was tough and its teeth could tear bone plate from flesh with a flick of its head.

  Sniffing tentatively, it started forward again, shifting its angular head slowly from side to side as it neared the cage, never taking its recessed eyes off me. It hesitated at the fallen door, confused by its strangeness and by my alien scent, but like every predator roaming Hardfall’s dry plains, it was racked by a hunger that overcame any fear. It pawed the trap door warily, causing it to clatter noisily against the rock, then bent its forelegs and leapt over the door, landing fully inside the cage.

  Now its demeanor changed, from prowler to killer.

  The sawtooth’s head dropped slightly as its eyes bored into me, its lips curling back to reveal serrated teeth in a snarl dripping with saliva. When it saw I wasn’t easily flushed from my hiding place, it moved forward growling constantly, never letting me out of its sight. When only the tankosaur skeleton separated us, the creature opened its wide mouth and gave out a ferocious roar, then seemed puzzled that I refused to run.