In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) Read online

  “Unless that’s not all there is to see.”

  An Orie accented voice sounded in the bridge without any visual feed. “Transfer magclamp control to deck panels.”

  Jase gave me a quizzical look.

  “Do it.”

  With a shrug, he gave our guests local control of the deck locking system, then I secure linked to Izin in the Silver Lining. “Izin, there’s a bunch of guys in fighting suits in the cargo holds forward of you. You’re about to have company.”

  “I’ll be ready, Captain.” Izin didn’t need to elaborate. The first Orie merc to set foot in the aft cargo hold wouldn’t live long enough to warn the others, even if he was wearing an armored fighting suit.

  “If they find the Lining,” I said to Jase, “get back there fast and get out with Izin.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find out why they blinded us.”

  “I’m not leaving without you, Skipper.”

  “You may have no choice,” I said, then went down to the cargo deck and zero-g.

  When the elevator door slid open, I heard the hollow click of armored magboots echoing through the passages, signaling at least one guard was patrolling in a fighting suit. There was no sign of him, so I floated silently along the corridor, past the cargo hold’s main pressure door to a small emergency access hatch on the starboard side. The safety lock indicated the cargo deck was now fully pressurized, so I eased the half height hatch open a little. The lights were dimmed and the base of the alien-tech tower partly obscured the hatchway from the rest of the deck. Way over in hold three, Orie mercs wearing gray and black shadow fatigues had climbed out of their fighting suits and were maglocking them to the deck in front of the drop ship. The suit’s clamshell torsos were cracked open down the side as they stood with parade ground precision in a straight line. As each fighting suit was locked down, its operator floated into the drop ship, returning moments later wearing a JAG-40 and a utility belt. Once armed, they returned to their fighting suits and began field stripping and cleaning them.

  I was about to move in for a closer look at the tower when Domar Trask emerged from the drop ship with Stina Kron and Julkka Olen, all wearing shadow fatigues. They kicked off from the drop ship and glided in a line through the three cargo holds to the forward bulkhead’s pressure door. Before they got too close, I pulled my hatch back, leaving only a crack to watch them through. Trask rolled expertly, landing his boots on the bulkhead, then pulled the hatch open for Kron and Olen to glide through without stopping. Once they were clear, he somersaulted boots first after them, pulling the door closed behind him, as comfortable in microgravity as any man I’d seen.

  Once Trask and his two lieutenants were gone, I slipped into the cargo hold and floated through the shadows to the tower’s circular base. It was flat except for a small lip around the outer edge and three squat cylindrical silver legs evenly spaced halfway in. A narrow shaft at the center ran up through the middle of the tower, quickly disappearing into darkness. I touched the silver legs curiously, finding them extremely cold. The threaded contact sensors in my fingertips measured the heat drain and flashed an immediate warning.

  HYPERCONDUCTIVE METAL, TYPE UNKNOWN.

  Whatever it was, it shed heat faster than any known substance while the material surrounding the legs was comfortably warm, giving my contact sensors another mystery to solve with equally disappointing results.

  SUPERINSULATIVE MATERIAL, TYPE UNKNOWN.

  Whatever the tower’s purpose, it was built to handle high energy with great efficiency.

  Soft footfalls sounded close, so quiet I hadn’t noticed them approach. Whoever he was, the tower had hidden him from my sniffer. The footsteps weren’t the metal click of magboots, but the soft scraping of civilian gripshoes. When he was close, a panel door unlocked in the tower’s side followed by the muffled clatter of precision instruments. I guessed he was an engineer or a scientist, not a grunt, making him an easy target for abduction and questioning. And with the Orie mercs way over on the far side of hold three, I could take him down without being seen.

  Using the superconductive legs as anchors, I pulled myself to the edge of the tower’s base and listened to the scientist working nearby, oblivious of my presence. I stole a glance around the edge, finding an open gray maintenance door obstructed my view of him. Only the edge of his back was visible, clothed in a dark green coverall.

  Beyond the access panel, the trunk of the tower hid us from the Ories. With growing confidence, I eased myself forward, preparing to swing around the panel door, disable him with a paralyzing blow and drag him to the galley storeroom for a private conversation.

  The scientist finished his task, straightening as he prepared to close the maintenance panel. I tensed, about to launch myself at him when I realized something was wrong. There was a fluidity in his back as he straightened that didn’t seem right. There were too many joints and it curved in an unnatural way. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as an unusually thin – inhuman – hand wrapped long, skinny fingers around the door’s edge. I pushed myself back as the alien hand closed the panel door, revealing dark penetrating eyes and a long triangular reptilian head.

  A Mataron head!

  I dragged myself back toward the center of the tower – heart pounding! – listening for any sign he’d seen me. Tools clicked as he carefully returned them to his kit, oblivious to my presence, then his gripshoes scuffed the deck as thin reptilian fingers wrapped around the side of the tower. He was headed my way!

  Pushing down on one of the superconductors, I launched myself away from the deck as the Mataron ambled around the base of the tower. Just as his fingers dropped, I caught the protruding lip of the tower base and cart wheeled over, gripping hard to slow myself, knowing contact between my boots and the tower would ring like a clash of cymbals. My thighs absorbed the impact silently, then my hands fought white knuckled to prevent my body rebounding away from the tower.

  Even in the shadows, the Orie mercs would have seen me if they’d looked my way, but they were focused on servicing their fighting suits. Below me, the soft scraping of the Mataron’s gripshoes marked his progress past the tower base to the other side. Any thought of taking him prisoner was gone. Fighting any Mataron hand to hand was a bad idea, even a scientist unfamiliar with microgravity. Whoever he was, he moved like a common planet hugger, but that meant nothing. Not every member of the Mataron Guard, or even the Black Sauria, were zero-g trained. Our reptilian nemesis might have been seven hundred thousand years ahead of us technologically, but they needed microgravity training every bit as much as we did – something this ambling snakehead clearly lacked.

  The scientist opened an access panel on the other side of the tower and began working again, my signal to slip back over the edge and wait. My mind raced as I floated high above the deck, trying to understand why a snakehead and a bunch of human mercs were working together. No, not working together. The Ories weren’t helping the Mataron, they were guarding him! He was Trask’s technical expert, the one Anya had mentioned on Novo Pantanal, the one she’d never been allowed to meet.

  He was why they’d killed the cargo hold’s sensors, so we wouldn’t know a snakehead was aboard. Did that make this tower Mataron-tech? If so, it was unlike anything I’d seen them produce and I’d seen as much snakehead gear as anyone alive. Even more strange was the idea that a Mataron would cooperate with humans. They were xenophobes who instinctively despised anyone not of their race – particularly humans. They were members of the Forum out of necessity, because they feared the consequences of not joining, not from any desire to partner with other species. The Tau Cetins had said the Matarons had been cozying up to them. Now I wondered if that had been a ruse to lull the TCs while the snakeheads plotted a punitive strike against us?

  When the reptilian scientist closed the second panel and padded off alongside the tower, I pushed down toward the hyperconductors, then glided silently back to the emergency access hatch. Once in t
he corridor, I resealed the hatch and headed back up to the bridge. To my surprise Jase was gone. All four screens were hissing static and Domar Trask and his two blonde bookends were studying the flight consoles with puzzled looks.

  When Trask saw me, he aimed his JAG-40 my way. “One of my men is missing. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “No,” I said, but Izin might. “What was he doing?”

  “Routine ship search.” Trask nodded to the static filled view screens. “Why are they down?”

  Jase must have sabotaged them when he saw Trask coming. “They were working when I left. What did you touch?”

  My listener detected footsteps approaching in the corridor outside, but with no line of sight, my sniffer couldn’t identify who it was.

  Trask gave me a suspicious look. “Why’d you go into Acheron Station?”

  “I’ve never been to a Drake base before,” I said as a man stepped into the hatchway behind me letting my sniffer get its first look and begin pattern matching.

  “Curious enough to carry stun grenades,” Trask said suspiciously.

  “Would you rather I gunned down a bunch of drunks with bad fashion sense?”

  “You attract a lot of attention for a smuggler.” He glanced at the screens thoughtfully. “If that’s all you are.”

  My sniffer got a match and flashed a warning, but it was already too late. I’d made a fatal error coming back to the bridge. I’d only done it because I thought Jase was waiting for me and I couldn’t leave without him. My mistake for being soft.

  “You done wit’ him?” a basso voice demanded behind me.

  Trask considered his options and nodded. “Yeah, done.”

  From the bridge hatchway, Gwandoya let me have it with a brain scrambler on full power. I never saw his face, his stun gun or even the deck as it raced to meet my face.

  The scrambler’s effect lifted slowly as heavy footsteps, slamming hatches and tortured screams haunted me like a nightmare. When I opened my eyes, I discovered I lay in a dark cell illuminated by a grimy slit window set high in an ovoid hatch. Occasionally shadows obscured the window as guards and their prisoners passed outside while the screams continued unabated. As my eyes focused, I realized the filthy cell lacked furniture or water and had only a small drainage hole in one corner decorated with feces.

  The stark metallic clunk of a locking bolt sliding back rang through the cell, then the door swung in on rusty hinges and two men entered. The shorter one wore a gun holstered at his hip, carried a pain baton in one hand and a slender no-doze stimrod in the other. He jabbed me in the shoulder with the rod, ignoring the fact I was already conscious, forcing me fully awake.

  The taller one leaned forward, studying me with hate filled eyes. “Sirius Kade! I been waiting for you!” Gwandoya declared in his distinctive Afro-east accent. He rubbed the melted flesh on the side of his face. “You did this to me. You cost me my ship. Now Gwandoya take payment in full.”

  I pushed myself into a sitting position, back against the cold metal wall. “I’ll give you ten credits for the ship, but the face was an improvement.”

  “Silence slave!” the gravel voiced jailer shouted, jabbing me with the pain baton, forcing my body to convulse uncontrollably. When he pulled the baton back, he asked, “Do you want him matched or unmatched?”

  “Unmatched,” Gwandoya said. “Fight him every day, but he no die. Not yet.”

  “I won’t be able to stop them killing him, not if they’re fighting for their freedom. Once he’s down, they’ll finish him.”

  “If he die, they die.”

  “He’ll need patch ups. That’ll cost money.”

  “Do what you have to. Gwandoya leave Acheron in ten days. I kill him then.”

  “Ten days in the pit?” the jailer said doubtfully. “There won’t be much left of him.”

  “There better be,” Gwandoya said menacingly, “or you will take his place.”

  The jailer grunted uncomfortably, then threw a metal anklet at my feet. “Put that on, slave.”

  There was a tiny flashing green light on one side and a miniature power pack on the other. It was a tracking device with a stunner that would paralyze me if I tried to escape the Drake dungeon. I left it where it was.

  “He doesn’t know where he is,” the jailer said. “Thinks he still has a life. We’ll break him of that.”

  “No. Let him resist,” Gwandoya said. “It will make his time in the arena more entertaining.”

  The jailer shrugged indifferently. “I’ve seen his kind before. They never last.”

  “Feed him well. Give him strength to resist.”

  “Do you want anything special in the arena?”

  “Corrosives.”

  “If they throw acid in his eyes,” the jailer said apprehensively, “he won’t be able to keep fighting.”

  “If they blind him, take out their eyes. Burn him, burn his skin, but not his eyes!” Gwandoya said, rubbing his hideous plasma burn absently.

  “I’ll warn them,” the jailer said uncertainly.

  “Have they found his crew?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They die in front of him.” Gwandoya studied me, savoring what was to come. “You will beg for death before Gwandoya is done with you, Kade.”

  “Don’t count on it,” I said. If they let me keep my strength and it was anything like a fair fight, he’d be the one doing the begging.

  Gwandoya grunted. “Who will he fight first?”

  “The big Tanosian’s ready. I had him slated to kill three spacers we couldn’t ransom, or there’s Girok.”

  “The Tanosian will do.”

  “He’s good with an acid whip.”

  Gwandoya tried smiling, but his melted face made it look like a grimace. “You were a fool for coming here, Kade,” he said, then walked out with the jailer close behind.

  The metal hatch slammed shut, plunging the cell into near darkness again. My eyes settled on the slave anklet’s feeble green indicator light blinking monotonously beside me as the no-doze coursing through my body revived me, negating any need for bionetic tricks to recover my strength. After several hours, the locking bolt slid back and the cell door creaked open.

  I expected the jailer, come to throw me into the arena for my first beating, but instead a dark silhouette stepped into the cell. He had an athletic physique, wore light weight black body armor and had a pistol holstered at his right hip. In his left hand was a straight bladed charge knife dripping with blood and still sparking with tiny electrical flashes. He flicked blood from the knife, switched the weapon off with his thumb, then slid it into a scabbard at his left hip.

  Leaving the cell door ajar, my visitor advanced a few paces, studying me in silence. There was something strangely familiar about him, his movements, his bearing, but my sniffer couldn’t find a match and it was too dark to see his face.

  “Quite a mess you’ve got yourself in, little brother.”

  His hushed words came like a thunderclap from the darkness. It was a voice I hadn’t heard in more than twenty years, a voice I never thought I’d hear again. For a moment, I was too shocked to speak.

  “Don’t tell me they’ve cut your tongue out already!” he said.

  “Canopus?” I wheezed, surprised at the hoarseness of my own voice.

  “I haven’t used that name in a long time,” he said slowly. “I hear you still call yourself Sirius, but then you always were his favorite.”

  It had been our father’s idea. He’d called me Sirius, my brother Canopus, after the two brightest stars in Earth’s sky. How else would a navigator, who’d crossed every light year of Mapped Space, name his sons? Only later, when my brother and father began to fight, did the fact Canopus was the second brightest star begin to anger my brother. He came to believe in our father’s eyes, it meant he was second best.

  “Canopus is brighter,” I said. “Its true brightness is hidden by distance.”

  “Hmph! A navigator’s explanatio
n,” he said bitterly, “but then you always were the better pilot.”

  “You won the fights.”

  “I was two years older and I cheated.”

  He’d always used his size against me and fought dirty, although this was the first time he’d ever admitted it. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “I brought a ship in here–”

  “No!” he snapped. “I know all about the Merak Star! What I don’t understand is what you’re doing here!”

  He knew? How could he know?

  For a moment I considered telling him the truth, that I was an EIS deep cover agent and there was a Mataron scientist aboard the Merak Star, then I caught myself. If he already knew everything, then maybe he knew about the snakehead, which made him the enemy. I remembered how hard he could be, how calculating, certain if he were the enemy, he was far more dangerous than Gwandoya or Trask. We might have grown up together on the old Freya, plodding from one dead-end outpost to another, both suffering under the harsh discipline of a father who cared more about his ship than his sons, but that had been a lifetime ago. He might have been my brother back then, but now we were strangers.

  “I didn’t plan on coming here,” I said. “A Drake navigator, a woman, she forced me–”

  “Yes, Anya Krol,” he said, cutting me off. “I know how you got here.” He took a few more steps into the prison cell. “What really happened to Nazari?”

  “He fried his brain with stims.”

  “What type of stims?”

  It had been a long time since I’d read between the lines with my brother. He wasn’t asking for information – he already knew the answer. He wanted confirmation I was telling the truth. I tried to remember what kind of stimhaler Nazari had been using. All I could recall was that it had been dark red in color. That narrowed it down to three choices.

  “Crimson Sky,” I guessed, suspecting Nazari’s tastes leaned more toward psychedelic dream states than sensory or sexual enhancement. “I had to clean up the mess.”

  My brother showed no sign as to whether I’d guessed right. We’d had our disagreements, but I’d rarely lied to him. Deception was a skill I learned much later. “So you’re working for the Consortium now?”