In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) Page 15

  Analysis.

  After what seemed an unusually long delay, my threading responded as best it could:

  NEUROLOGICAL AREA EFFECT WEAPON, TYPE UNKNOWN.

  My biological senses were out, giving my threading nothing to amplify. No hearing, no sight, no touch. All my addled mind could do was fall back on its training, requesting a mode switch.

  Bionetic receptors to direct input.

  My listener wasn’t as effective without my body’s auditory inputs, but it was all I had. I now heard the click of metal on metal through the monotonous tone, the sound of heavy boots approaching across the cable car’s metal deck. My threading automatically analyzed the sound and fed its conclusion into my mind.

  KRAILO-NIS HUMANOID CONTACT, 74% PROBABILITY.

  It was the alien who’d tracked me from the Nisk colony to the bait trap! He must have seen me board the Loport cable car and set an ambush at the Lone Peak tower.

  PHYSICAL MOVEMENT DETECTED.

  I still felt nothing, but my bionetic receptors were sensing my body being dragged off the cable car.

  Restore physical, disable safeties.

  It was going to hurt – it might not even work – but if I stayed like this, I was sure to wake up with no options, if I woke up at all.

  40% FUNCTIONING POSSIBLE.

  That was low. Against Earth-tech nerve pulses with revival safeties off, my threading could get me much more, but the alien had hit me with something that had really scrambled my senses.

  Suppress twitch response. Activate restore.

  My threading tried kick starting my body while preventing involuntary muscle movements that would warn the alien I was coming out of it. The ringing grew louder as bionetic controllers released a massive blast of adrenalin, spiking my metabolic rate and blood glucose levels. Neurotransmitters flooded through my body while bioelectrical impulses shocked unresponsive muscles to life. To my captor, I appeared as lifeless as ever, while inside, partial feeling returned.

  My head exploded with pain, wiping away the white fog as I felt myself being dragged face down from the cable car. Realizing he couldn’t see my face, I pushed my eyes half open, trying to focus. Blurry metal boots passed in and out of view as he pulled me across the maintenance platform. When we reached the edge, he released me and touched his wrist, then a narrow metal walkway extended to the maintenance platform from an oval shaped airlock suspended in empty blue sky a few meters away.

  I tensed feeble muscles, then spun on my hip and clumsily kicked out at his legs. It was a weak blow, but it caught him by surprise, knocking him forward off the platform. With lightning fast reflexes, his hand snapped out and caught the stealth ship’s walkway. He swung like a pendulum as his helmeted head turned to me, then I slammed the back of my boot onto his gloved fingertips. The alien lost his grip, reached for the walkway with his other hand, but missed and fell. Halfway to the ground, his boots glowed in the fading light, slowing his fall, letting him land unharmed – not the result I’d hoped for. He immediately launched himself in a tech-assisted jump onto the tower and began scrambling up the narrow ladder back to the maintenance platform.

  “Tough bastard,” I slurred, starting to drag myself back toward the cable car. He’d manipulated the controls, forcing it to stop, but a bar light over the door was filling, counting down the seconds until it continued on its way.

  “Clear doors,” a synthesized female voice ordered, “the car is leaving the platform.”

  I forced rubbery arms and legs to push myself across the platform. As I neared the gondola, the door slid shut and it glided away, carrying Jase and Izin – both still unconscious – with it. I crawled to the edge of the platform and looked down. The humanoid was already more than halfway up the tower. I drew my P-50 with semi-paralyzed fingers and fired several poorly aimed shots. The first few gelslugs went wide, another bounced off the tower near his shoulder, then by luck alone one glanced harmlessly off his helmet. He immediately swung around the tower and continued climbing using its metal framework for cover. He was climbing so fast, he’d reach the platform long before the next cable car arrived. I rolled onto my back, then with fumbling fingers ejected the gelslug magazine from my gun and replaced it with armor piercing hardtips. When I finally got the lethal ammo loaded and rolled back to the edge, the tower below was deserted. I turned and aimed at end of the platform, waiting for him to show himself, then large metal boots crashed down either side of me. Before I could lift my gun, he snatched it out of my hand.

  “Enough!” he said in a deep voice.

  I rolled over and kicked my leg up, driving the toe of my boot into his back and catching his ankle as he stumbled forward, but he tucked and rolled gracefully over me, coming easily to his feet.

  “You recover fast for a human,” he said in stilted Unionspeak.

  “What do you want?”

  “Information.”

  “What kind of information.”

  “Not from you human, for you.”

  He was trading me for information? “You’re a bounty hunter?”

  He grunted in disgust. “I’m a tracer.”

  I sat up slowly, feeling the numbness beginning to fade. “What’s that?”

  “I find what others cannot.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “I am Gern Vrate.”

  “Never heard of you.”

  “I am Kesarn.”

  “From the Orion Arm?” I asked, forcing myself to stand on wobbly legs.

  “No.” He ran a disdainful eye over my P-50 before tossing it onto the platform behind him. “I am from what you call the Perseus Arm.”

  That was over five thousand light years away, far beyond the edge of Mapped Space. I’d certainly never been there and was unlikely to ever reach it. “You’ve come a long way just to kidnap me.”

  “I’m not here for you,” he said motioning me toward the walkway.

  I ignored his order, gauging the distance to the next cable car now climbing to the platform. “How’d you track me?” I asked, stalling for time.

  “I scanned your navigation system. Easy to do if I can get close enough.” He reached over his shoulder, retrieved the bulky weapon he’d used near the bait trap and aimed it at me one-handed. “Don’t make me use this.”

  “You won’t shoot. You want to trade me.”

  “You only need to be alive, not whole.”

  A persuasive argument if ever I’d heard one. I started hobbling toward the walkway, accentuating my unsteadiness, watching the cable car approaching behind him. I figured he’d made the last car stop at the tower, but the next one showed no sign of slowing.

  At the edge of the platform, I feigned a stumble and dropped to one knee. “I’ll fall.”

  Vrate aimed at my legs. “Crawl.”

  “I can’t,” I said as the cable car reached the platform.

  Gern Vrate stepped forward, reaching for my jacket collar. I caught his wrist, dragging him forward and tripping him with my outstretched leg. He fell onto his face, then I threw myself at my gun, scooped it off the deck and leapt into the air at the cable car as a blast from Vrate’s weapon flashed behind me. The gondola’s door was shut, but the landing skids underneath should have been an easy ultra-reflexed jump, only I was still battling the after effects of being stunned. My hand narrowly missed the skid, then I was falling, sailing beyond Lone Peak’s ragged cliffs toward the plain far below. A wall of weathered rock flashed past, then a powerful hand caught my gun belt. I twisted, trying to shoot Vrate over my shoulder, but he struck my hand with the butt of his gun, sending my P-50 spinning away into the air beside us, then the base of his boots glowed brightly, slowing us both.

  “You don’t give up easy, do you?” I said.

  “Kesarn never give up.”

  Vrate planted his two big boots wide apart as we landed, absorbing the shock with his powerful legs, then he dropped me on the ground and kicked me in the stomach, sending me flying.

  I landed on my back, ga
sping for air. “What was that for?”

  “You are beginning to irritate me.”

  Vrate strode toward me, then wrapped a thin metallic strip around my wrists. I felt cold metal form a tight bracelet, then my arms went numb. Before I knew it, he slapped another strip around my ankles, paralyzing my legs.

  “I don’t suppose we can make a deal?” I asked as he stepped back.

  Vrate ignored me as he walked a short distance out from the cliff, then touched a dark control surface on his forearm.

  “Are you carrying me back? It’s a long climb, even for you.”

  Night was descending, rapidly reducing visibility. My sniffer could already reach out further than I could see. It began warning of a contact at the edge of its range, approaching from the south west, something it hadn’t scanned before. Whatever it was, it had spotted us from a long way off and was coming in fast. My gun wasn’t far away, but it would do me no good while I was wrapped in Kesarn restraints. Vrate had secured his weapon in his back harness while his attention was fixed upon the sky, following something I couldn’t see.

  “Bringing your ship down?”

  Vrate kept his fingers touching his arm control. I couldn’t tell if he was piloting the ship remotely or merely feeding it instructions, but it kept him busy as the large creature, still no more than a shadow, appeared in the distance.

  “Having an invisible ship must make the kidnapping business very profitable,” I said.

  “It’s for infiltration,” he said absently, “not that we do that anymore.”

  Infiltration of what? “Maybe if you told me what you were looking for–?”

  “I’ve found what I’m looking for!” Vrate snapped as he watched his invisible ship glide toward the ground.

  When it landed, he hoisted me over his shoulder and started out onto the plain. In the distance, the lights of Hadley’s Retreat were just coming on, and further away and much higher, Citadel’s lights were also visible.

  “We going far?” I asked as my listener picked up a distant pounding on the ground and the contact marker floating in my mind’s eye turned from orange to red. Whatever had us in its sights, my bionetics had decided it was time to get out of the way.

  “Further than you’ve ever been,” he said.

  “I’ve travelled a lot.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Considering you’re from Perseus, a place no human has ever been, you know my language well.” His command of Unionspeak was impressive, considering it was a physical impossibility for some of our Orion Arm neighbors.

  “We know many languages.”

  “Met many humans?”

  Vrate grunted. “You’re the first.”

  “How am I doing so far? Making a good first impression?”

  “No.”

  My infrared optics illuminated a dark red blur of daunting size heading straight for us.

  “And here I thought we were getting along so well.”

  Vrate’s helmeted head turned toward me, puzzled why I would think such a thing. “The Kesarn do not like idle chatter.”

  “That’s a pity, because I have one more question?”

  Vrate grunted irritably. “What?”

  “How’s your hearing?”

  “Why?”

  The dark mass was now as big as a house and charging at us like a Rigosian swamp bull protecting its young! “Well if your hearing was as good as mine,” it was almost on top of us, “you’d know to … look left.”

  Vrate glanced to the left as the bonecrusher surged out of the darkness. He threw me to the side, freeing his hands so he could reach over his shoulder for his gun, but the massive creature scooped him up in its jaws before he got to it. The huge six legged beast lifted him off the ground, trying to crush him as it slowed. It tossed its head back and forth, shaking him like a rag doll. For a moment, I thought he was already dead, then I saw he had an arm free and was reaching for his gun as his legs kicked vainly against the beast’s enormous jaw.

  “Vrate!” I yelled, unable to move my legs or arms. “Free me!”

  “No,” he wheezed, giving up on his gun and clawing with his free hand at the bonecrusher’s eyes.

  “We’ll both die!”

  “No!” he declared obstinately.

  The bonecrusher lifted its head high, then threw Vrate’s body down hard. For a moment, he lay motionless then he reached up for the gun strapped to his back. He got it free just as the bonecrusher scooped him up, sending his gun spinning off into the darkness. It lifted its head high as it tried snapping him in two.

  “I can save you!”

  The metal bands binding my wrists and ankles dropped away, instantly restoring feeling to my arms and legs. I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled to where my P-50 lay. Its armor piercing hardtips wouldn’t be enough to kill the huge creature pounding Gern Vrate to death, but they might tickle it enough to let him go. I glanced at the cliff face, knowing if I started climbing now, I’d be out of reach by the time the bonecrusher finished with him and came looking for me. Leaving him was the smart thing to do, but I saw the giant creature hurl him onto the ground again, then incredibly he stirred, broken but still alive.

  “Damn it,” I said, then ran toward the bonecrusher as it scooped Vrate’s shattered body up to finish him off.

  Twenty meters from the creature, I fired high, aiming above its deeply recessed eyes, fearful of hitting Vrate if I went too low. The armor piercing slug ricocheted off its immense skull, but had so little effect the bonecrusher hardly reacted. I fired twice more as I ran to them, hitting its bone-plate covered chest and its knee, but it simply ignored me. When I was almost alongside, Vrate lay pinned in its jaws, now completely helpless.

  “Stupid human!” he wheezed. “You made it angry!”

  I fired at the creature’s eye, but its head was moving so fast, all I managed to do was chip a piece of bone off its skull.

  “Lower,” Vrate ordered.

  It took me a moment to realize what he meant. He could see my weapon wasn’t powerful enough to kill the bonecrusher, only him. “No!”

  “Don’t miss!”

  Vrate’s armor covered head turned to me, waiting for the kill shot, then the bonecrusher reared up and threw him down onto the ground with tremendous force, trying to break every bone in his body. I darted forward, switching to full auto as I reached Vrate’s body. The creature roared above its shattered prey, then I emptied my P-50 into the roof of its open mouth. The hardtips cut up through soft flesh, shattering its tiny brain, then the bonecrusher froze in confusion, staring blankly ahead before collapsing to the ground.

  Gern Vrate lay breathing shallowly at my feet. Dark blood stained his body armor, but miraculously, he was still alive. He turned toward the creature, surprised it was dead, as green phosphorescence oozed from his suit and spread along every tear, into every open wound, wrapping him in glowing green threads.

  “I guess it takes a lot to kill a Kesarn,” I said, surveying his wounds.

  “More than a human.”

  I had to admire that, he was almost dead and still throwing insults. “Don’t thank me for saving your life.”

  He sat up coughing as fluorescence ran up his neck, defying gravity and entering bloody fractures in his helmet, then incredibly, he got to his feet.

  “How come you’re not dead?” I asked.

  “The suit.”

  “It’s not very good armor! You’re a mess!”

  “Not armor. Kesarn healsuit,” he staggered a short distance, barely able to walk, then reached down and picked up his gun. Weakly, he turned and aimed it at me.

  “Are you out of your freaking Kesarn mind?” I yelled. “I just saved your worthless life!”

  “Your fault … you jumped.”

  I raised my gun, aimed at his chest and fired, but my gun clicked empty. I’d drained the magazine when I’d fired into the bonecrusher’s mouth!

  “My ship … that way,” he said, nodding out toward the plain
.

  “No.”

  “Yes.” He aimed at my right leg and touched his gun’s firing surface. Sparks exploded from the weapon’s side where the bonecrusher had damaged it.

  I quickly reached into my pocket, pulled out another mag and reloaded. “Now, do you want to tell me why you’re tracking me?” I said, raising my gun, finding I was suddenly alone.

  I turned, searching for any sign of him, scarcely able to believe he could even walk, let alone run. Even my bionetic sensors, boosted to their limits, could find only a few drops of alien blood leading out into the plain, showing the way he’d gone. I DNA-locked the sample, gaining mankind’s first ever genetic code from the Perseus Arm, but decided not to risk following the trail and getting too close to his ship’s weapons.

  Suspecting I hadn’t seen the last of the big Kesarn, I retreated toward Lone Peak. There was a solitary flashing light high up on the summit marking the way up. When I reached the cliffs below the safety beacon, I found an old metal ladder bolted to the rock face. It had originally been built to provide a safe haven for anyone stranded in the open on the way to Loport, before the cable car system had been constructed. There were many such safe havens dotted across the plains, because only humans – and one crippled Kesarn – could climb ladders on Hardfall.

  I holstered my P-50 and started up the rickety ladder, hoping Gern Vrate’s recovery would be a long one. Whatever his motives, I had no desire to find out why I was wanted in the Perseus Arm!

  Loport cable station’s lights were out when I stepped off the gondola several hours after sunset. The dark silhouette of the Merak Star could be seen by starlight a few hundred meters away. For a moment, I heard nothing but the creaking of suspension cables and the hum of the gondola as it moved away, then a voice sounded from the darkness.

  “What happened to you, Skipper?” Jase asked, holstering his twin fraggers as he emerged from the darkness wearing a URA jacket and carrying a Vel penetrator slung over his shoulder. “Something hit us, then we woke up and you were gone.”

  “It seems I’m wanted in the Perseus Arm.”

  “Edge of the galaxy Perseus Arm?”

  “Yeah, that one,” I said as Izin appeared at the top of the ramp.