In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) Page 16

  “Perhaps we should discuss your galactic infamy another time, Captain,” he said, carrying another URA jacket and a Vel.

  “We cut the power and took care of the guards when we got here,” Jase added, glancing at the sergeant’s stripes on his jacket. “It seems I outrank you.”

  “Just don’t expect me to salute you,” I said switching back to gelslugs, then I pulled on the army jacket and shouldered the assault gun as we hurried down the ramp. Two guards lay unconscious and bound in the shadows, waiting for Hadley.

  “The Merak Star’s buttoned up, Skipper,” Jase said. “There’s no easy way in.”

  “Let’s hope their bridge crew didn’t take a close look at those guards,” I said, then Jase and I followed the guards’ patrol route across the landing apron, strolling at a leisurely pace while Izin slipped away into the darkness to sneak along the cliff tops. By the time we neared the freighter, he was waiting for us behind the landing strut nearest the bow airlock.

  I activated the airlock intercom, with Jase in view behind me, “Hey, open up. I have to use your communicator.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” a young crewman answered.

  “The power’s out at the cable station. I’ve got to get a repair crew down here before the Cyclops lands.”

  “No one’s allowed on board.”

  “No one but us,” I said sharply.

  “Use the cable car.”

  “I can’t abandon my post. Look, all I want to do is send a message. We’ll be on board for two minutes.”

  “I have my orders.”

  “And I have mine!” I said feigning irritation. “I want to speak to Captain Nazari!”

  “He’s … unavailable.”

  “Let me make this real simple. The Governor will have Nazari throw you in the brig when he finds out you delayed the transfer. It’s all on your head!”

  The junior officer hesitated. “We don’t need power from the cable station to do the transfer.”

  “Rix has a meeting with the Governor. Do you expect him to bumble around in the dark?”

  “I don’t know about any meeting.”

  “You’re wasting my time!” I snapped. “Get someone up there who knows what’s going on, right now!”

  There was a long pause this time, then the young officer relented. “Leave your gun outside.”

  I tossed my Vel to Jase in clear view of the comm panel and held up my empty hands. “Satisfied?”

  The outer hatch unlocked with a click, then I placed my hand over the thumbnail sized optical sensor and nodded to Jase. He stepped forward and shot the airlock’s interior sensor with his Vel before entering, then Izin darted up into the airlock after him.

  “What happened to the ‘lock sensor?” the watch officer asked as I stepped into the airlock.

  “How should I know, it’s your ship,” I said as Izin hurried to the hatch control panel.

  Jase handed my Vel back to me as the outer hatch closed.

  “I can’t see you,” the officer said with growing anxiety.

  “Where’s the sensor?”

  “Above you.”

  “Oh yeah, the round thing,” I said peering up at the shattered device, sparking with electricity. “It looks OK from this side.”

  When the inner hatch opened, Izin darted through with his long barreled shredder in hand to secure the companionway. Fortunately for the crew, it was empty. The kid on the bridge hadn’t had the sense to send anyone down to check us as we boarded.

  “Izin, take engineering. Jase, get the bridge. I’ll clear crew quarters.”

  I figured most of the crew would either be catching up on sack time or relaxing in the mess. In a guarded port with hatches sealed, not expecting boarders, they’d be unarmed. That only left the young watch officer on the bridge for Jase and hopefully no one in engineering for Izin, who was quietly reloading his shredder with highly lethal shattershot.

  “We agreed to take them alive,” I said.

  “–if possible,” Jase added.

  “If I’m going to commit an act of piracy, Captain, I intend to be the last tamph standing.”

  “Hmm.” I couldn’t blame him for being cautious. “OK, but no kill shots.”

  “If you insist, Captain,” Izin said.

  It wasn’t much of a concession. Shattershot would take a man’s leg off and with Hadley unable to take Izin’s victims to hospital until we were gone, there was a good chance they’d bleed to death.

  “Remember, they’re just spacers,” I said, suspecting the crew were merely hired hands with no idea what they were really involved in.

  With muted agreement, Jase took the elevator up to the bridge, Izin headed aft toward the energy plant and I moved into crew country. After passing through two pressure doors, I heard the pounding beat and wailing sopranos of Indosync blasting down the companionway. What passed for music on the Merak Star was popular in the Republic, but it was an earsplitting assault on the senses to Union ears. It came blaring from an open hatch that led into the ship’s exercise room. Two heavily muscled pan-Afros and a lean Indo-Asian were sweating hard, pumping pressure field resistors as I stepped through the hatch. They looked up surprised as I bounced gelslugs off their heads, then used the Vel to blast their sound system. With peace and quiet restored to the Merak Star, I continued on through the galley to the ship’s sleeping quarters.

  Izin’s voice sounded in my earpiece, “Engineering is secure, Captain.”

  “Keep it locked down,” I said, then pushed open the hatch to the last sleeping compartment.

  Inside was a large lounge and office in one. Knowing only the Captain would rate such luxury, I crept toward an open inner door, hearing snoring coming from within. It was Nazari, lying flat on his back on a double bunk, feet still on the floor, a stimhaler in one hand and an empty glass in the other. I slapped his face, but he was so stimmed out, he continued snoring oblivious to my presence.

  “Bridge is clear, Skipper,” Jase said, “but the navlog’s encrypted.”

  It’s what we’d come for. I wanted to know who and where the Merak Star was delivering its alien-tech cargo to. “Did you get the watch officer?”

  “Yeah, he’s alive. He nearly died of fright when I stuck this Vel in his face.”

  “Ask him who can access the log?”

  After a moment, Jase replied, “He says only the captain knows the combination.”

  Nazari lay with his mouth open snoring like a man who could sleep through an Indosync beat fest. If I couldn’t revive him before the Cyclops arrived, capturing the Merak Star would have been for nothing.

  While Izin arranged for cargobots to carry the three stunned crewman and Nazari down to the cargo hold, I went up to the bridge. It was a large triangular compartment with the officer’s acceleration couches and command consoles facing the base of the triangle where four screens were mounted two by two. Jase had one of his fraggers leveled at a swarthy Cali watch officer with a wiry physique and shifty eyes.

  “What access do we have?”

  “Everything except the log and weapons,” Jase replied.

  I turned to the young officer. “Did Nazari have the log access key memorized or written down?”

  He gave me a sullen look. “Uncle Naz keeps his secrets up here,” he said, tapping his temple.

  “You’re Nazari’s nephew?”

  He nodded slowly. “I am Mouad.”

  I activated my communicator. “Izin.”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Nazari has the log key memorized. Revive him. I’ll be down soon.”

  I’d been careful to avoid racking up a body count of flunkies and hired muscle, but I needed access to the Merak Star’s log fast and if Nazari was anything other than agreeable, I’d let Izin loose on him.

  I turned back to Mouad. “Where’d you go after Novo Pantanal?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Uncle Naz tells me nothing.”

  “What about the screens?” I asked, pointing at the
quad display. “You must have seen something up there?”

  Mouad shrugged. “We meet ships in space.”

  “Drake ships?”

  “All kinds,” he said evasively.

  “Where are the Drake’s getting the alien-tech from?”

  “What alien-tech?” Mouad asked innocently.

  “The stuff you got on Novo Pantanal. Where’d it come from?”

  He shrugged. “A box is a box. It’s all the same to me.”

  “He’s lying,” Jase said, aiming at the young officer’s head. “Want me to take off his ear?” He was bluffing, but Mouad didn’t know that.

  “My uncle tells me nothing!” Mouad said, raising his hands. “He makes me sit here while he sleeps!” He pointed to the sensor console. “If that light flashes, I call him. That’s it!” His voice was filled with fear, his body cringed, yet his eyes were more calculating than afraid.

  “Captain,” Izin’s voice crackled in my ear, slightly distorted by the ship’s decks separating us. “I’ve given Nazari an analeptic booster from sickbay. He’s regaining consciousness.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Jase motioned with his fragger for Mouad to move, then we went down to the cargo deck where a groggy Nazari was sitting up. Izin had bound and blindfolded the other three crewmen who now lay unconscious alongside a stack of munitions containers. On the far side of the hold, the cargo door had been opened to the ground, waiting for Hadley’s ATV.

  Jase whistled as he ran his eye over the vast array of weapons stowed in the hold. “They’re giving all this to the Drakes?”

  “There’s more in the other holds,” Izin said. “Naval guns, shields, combat vehicles.”

  “The Drakes will outgun the navy at this rate,” I said, kneeling beside the Merak Star’s captain. “Nazari, can you hear me?”

  His half opened eyes looked as if he was surfacing from a deep, stim-induced dream, then as he realized where he was, surprise spread across his face. “How’d … I get … here?”

  “I control your ship,” I said. “If you want to get out of here alive, tell me the log access code.”

  “Log?” He looked at me with genuine confusion. “Don’t … understand.”

  “Your ship’s log is encrypted. What is the key?”

  “Don’t know.”

  His brain was obviously so stim-soaked, he couldn’t think straight. “Nazari, how do you access your ship’s log?”

  He smiled sourly. “Not me … Con … sort’m …”

  “You work for the Consortium, but the log is your responsibility.”

  “I haven’t … been Captain … since … they took over.”

  “If you’re not in charge, who is?”

  His head turned slowly, looking around. When his eyes settled on his nephew, he nodded weakly. “Him.”

  I glanced at Mouad, confused. “Your nephew’s in charge?”

  “Ne-phew?” Nazari’s face twisted in revulsion. “He’s not … my–”

  A silver shard flashed past my shoulder, slicing through Nazari’s throat. Blood spurted from the wound as I instinctively rolled sideways and another metal shard cut the air where I’d been only a moment before. I came up on one knee, P-50 drawn, as Jase went down from an elbow to the head and his fragger went skidding across the deck. Mouad – or whoever he was – dived after it, scooped it up and fired at Izin, but the little tamph was too fast. He darted sideways in a blur of speed, then brought his shredder up with an instinctive intention to eliminate Mouad as a threat.

  “Don’t kill him, Izin!” I yelled desperately. “I need him alive!”

  Izin shifted his aim, sparing Mouad’s life, then fired. The shattershot broke into a torrent of tiny, rapidly spinning slivers the moment they left the barrel, severing Mouad’s arm between wrist and elbow. His severed hand still holding Jase’s gun fell onto the deck, then Mouad clamped his good hand over the bleeding stump to stop the flow and ran for the open cargo door.

  “My shot!” I declared, knowing if Izin fired again, Mouad would bleed out before I could question him.

  Izin kept the fleeing watch officer in his sights, but didn’t fire, while I put two gelslugs into Mouad’s spine. He fell forward under the twin hammer blows, rolling down the ramp as Izin and I ran after him. When we reached the open cargo hatch, Mouad was lying on his back at the foot of the ramp, wheezing from the air knocked out of his lungs. Sweat was beading heavily on his face and the whites of his eyes were turning a sickly yellow. I aimed my P-50 at him as my threading interpreted the signs and flashed an alert into my mind.

  WARNING : KANOZON-7 METABOLIC ACCELERATOR DETECTED!

  K-7 was a banned drug, giving a tremendous burst to physical strength and endurance while suppressing all moral constraints. The PFA military had invented it, but abandoned it when they discovered it turned disciplined troops into paranoid psychopaths. High on K-7, he was likely to kick me so hard he’d break both our legs without blinking.

  “Who are you?” I demanded

  “Mouad,” he said, giggling in a crazy breathless way.

  “Why is the Consortium shipping guns to the Brotherhood?”

  “You’re about to find out!” he said, jabbing his blood soaked thumb into his jaw.

  I grabbed Izin with my free hand, lifting him off the deck, and dived sideways behind the ship’s bulkhead as Mouad’s body exploded. Shrapnel, bloodied flesh and bone fragments showered the cargo hold as we landed together.

  After a moment, Izin glanced at my arm pinning his chest to the deck. “Thank you, Captain. You can release me now.”

  I rolled off him, then stepped back to the open cargo door. The explosion had torn Mouad’s body apart, but barely dented the heavy cargo door.

  “How did you know?” Izin asked.

  “His eyes. He was juiced on K-7. That stuff will make anyone crazy – crazy enough to trigger a detonator implanted in their jaw. ”

  “It would appear the Consortium like their hitmen to be young and psychopathic,” Izin said. “A formidable combination.”

  Jase sat up slowly, blinking, holding the side of his head. “Whew! Never saw that coming.”

  Izin and I returned to where Nazari lay dead in a pool of his own blood.

  “You are fortunate he wanted Nazari dead more than you, Captain” Izin observed.

  He was right. If Mouad had gone for me first, I’d be dead on the floor instead of the Cali smuggler. The metallic blade intended for me had struck the bulkhead behind Nazari’s corpse and fallen to the deck. It was three centimeters long, razor sharp with a flared tail that expanded after firing, giving stability through the air and extra cutting power. There’d been one hidden beneath the skin of each of Mouad’s forearms.

  I retrieved the blade from the bulkhead, turning it over in my fingers.

  “What is it?” Jase asked.

  “A subcutaneous flechette.” An assassin’s weapon. It was lightly smeared with Mouad’s own blood as it had cut its way out of his arm.

  Jase winced. “What kind of sick freak uses a weapon like that?”

  Izin peered at it curiously. “Ingenious.”

  “So Nazari wasn’t the boss? Beady eyes was!” Jase said, picking his shredder up by the barrel and shaking Mouad’s severed hand from it.

  “Nazari flew the ship,” I said, “Mouad gave the orders.”

  “I guess that’s it then,” Jase said. “No Mouad, no log.”

  “We still have the navlog – and we have Izin!” I said glancing at the little tamph. “You’ll have to break the encryption before the Cyclops gets here.”

  “It’s unlikely I can do that in the time available, Captain,” Izin said warily.

  “Then you better get started. We’ll clean up the mess down here.”

  “We will?” Jase asked, glancing at the blood splattered cargo deck with revulsion.

  “You know I like a taut ship,” I said, enjoying the worried look on his face, then added, “Those bots must have a scrubber function.”
/>
  Relief washed over his face. “Yeah, scrubber bots! That’ll work!”

  For an Orie trained gunslinger, he was surprisingly squeamish at the sight of the splattered remains of a psychopathic Consortium hitman.

  Hadley arrived in his ATV as the cargobots finished cleaning the last of Mouad’s remains from the deck and the ground outside surrounding the cargo ramp. The Prairie Runner had come across from the vehicle hoist with its lights off so spotters on Citadel didn’t see it. When Hadley strode up the ramp with two of his men, he couldn’t help but be impressed with the quantity of armaments stowed in the Merak Star’s cargo hold.

  “So this is where the Drakes get their weapons from,” he said, recalling the sporadic raids the colony had endured before the first URA batteries had been set up.

  “Not for much longer,” I promised.

  He looked pleased, then motioned for his men to load Nazari’s body, cocooned in cargo wrap, and the other prisoners into the Prairie Runner. “Considering what they’ve been doing,” he said bitterly, “I’m inclined to dump them on the flatlands.”

  “Then you’d be no better than Metzler.”

  “Now why’d you have to go spoil my fun!” Hadley replied as Izin entered the cargo hold and hurried to us.

  “I need the Silver Lining’s processing core to access the Merak Star’s navlog, Captain. I’ve made a copy,” he said, holding up a data chip.

  “How long?”

  “A few days, maybe a week.”

  “All we need is the last drop off location.” I was certain the alien-tech delivery point was the key to whatever the Drakes and the Consortium were up to.

  “The log is protected by a multiplex-encryptor,” Izin said. “It’s broken into randomized, individually coded blocks. I have to break each block separately until I find the one we’re looking for.”

  It wasn’t military grade encryption, but it was more sophisticated than any mere smuggler needed.

  Izin turned to Hadley. “I need to get back to the Silver Lining as soon as possible.”

  Hadley nodded. “I’ll drop you at the Hiport hoist before dawn.”

  “We’ll meet you at the Retreat in the morning,” I said to Hadley.