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

  “Not if I can help it. I’ve had some bad luck. I needed money. This job came up, so I took it. They said nothing about going into the Acheron.”

  “And Gwandoya?”

  “He jumped me a year ago,” I replied. “We were competitors. It didn’t end well for him.”

  “So, you gave him that face.”

  “You know Gwandoya?”

  “We sit at the same table. He thinks that makes us equals. He’s mistaken.”

  His tone told me there would be a reckoning between them one day, no doubt when Gwandoya least expected it. I relaxed a little. If I crossed my brother, that was one thing, but I knew he wouldn’t let Gwandoya murder me. That was personal.

  “He doesn’t know we’re brothers?” I asked.

  “He’d have tried to kill me by now if he did, as revenge against you.”

  “How’d you know I was here?”

  “I saw you,” he said simply.

  “On the station?”

  “Before that.”

  Before Acheron Station? I searched my memory, wondering where he could have seen me. “I don’t understand.”

  “When you were on Hardfall.”

  “You were on Hardfall?” Was he working with Governor Metzler?

  “At Loport,” he added.

  There was only one way he could have seen me there. “You were on the Cyclops!”

  “I knew it was you as soon as you set foot on the Merak Star’s cargo ramp, when you met Anya and Trask.”

  “What were you doing on the Cyclops?”

  There was a clatter of metal on metal as my P-50 skated across deck plates to my feet. “You’ll need this.”

  I retrieved my gun, holstering it as I climbed unsteadily to my feet. “Canopus, what were you doing on the Cyclops?”

  “You always were slow, little brother. Still are, even after all these years.”

  I realized there was only one way he could know about the Merak Star, the alien-tech smuggling, the gun running and about my meeting with Anya and Trask on Hardfall.

  “You’re Rix!”

  “You don’t think those dimwitted Drakes could have put this together, do you?”

  He stepped closer, letting the feeble light from the entrance catch his face, revealing a curved black metal skull plate that enclosed the top of his head and wrapped down over where his eyes should have been to his nose. Instead of human eyes, a large optronic sensor was mounted in the center of his metal enclosed forehead. Other sensor nodes were evident around the skull plate, although their purpose was disguised.

  When he saw the shocked look on my face, he said, “Like you, Sirius, I have enemies. They left me for dead, eyes burned out, crippled. Their mistake was not killing me when they had the chance.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Cybernetics suit me.” He smiled grimly. “I spent four years hunting them down. Killed them all. Took their ship, their crew, everything they had.”

  “And the name?”

  “Regoran for vengeance,” he said simply. “It describes my present, with no link to my past.”

  Regor II was over three hundred light years from Earth, inhabited by a minor humanoid civilization in diplomatic contact with Earth, but not a species I’d ever dealt with. “I didn’t know you spoke Regoran.”

  “I know enough not to insult them. They take ‘rhiix’ very seriously,” he said, pronouncing Rix as they would, “as do I.” He motioned to the optronic sensor. “And I named the ship after this.”

  “Cyclops!” I whispered. I’d thought the ship had been named for the massive single weapon on its bow, but now I realized it was a sign of my brother’s dark humor and his defiance at the horror that had been inflicted upon him.

  Disfigured, lost among the Brotherhood with an alien name, it was little wonder there’d been no trace of him for twenty years. A lot could happen in that time, perhaps enough to make him an enemy of the entire human race.

  “There’s a Mataron on the Merak Star,” I said.

  “Yes, an arrogant bastard named Inok a’Rtor.” The Mataron’s name rolled off his tongue with a familiarity that told me he was no stranger to their language. It was almost enough to convince me he was a traitor willingly collaborating with the enemy.

  “How’d you get involved with the Matarons?” As soon as I said it, I knew it sounded more like an interrogation than simple curiosity.

  “You ask a lot of questions for a freighter captain down on his luck, Sirius,” he said suspiciously.

  “I want to know what kind of mess the Consortium’s got me into.”

  “The kind that pays well.”

  “Not well enough to be executed.”

  “Then don’t get caught,” he said coldly. “The Mataron’s a technical advisor, a renegade. Trask told me he’s wanted by his own people. I don’t know where Trask found him. Don’t care.”

  “So it’s Mataron equipment?”

  “No,” he said with certainty.

  “You know what’ll happen if you’re caught stealing alien-tech?”

  “We pulled the tower off an abandoned station. It hadn’t been used in thousands of years. It was more like salvage than theft, and no one saw us.”

  An Observer ship could have been watching and he’d never know, yet the Tau Cetins hadn’t questioned me about it, so maybe he’d gotten away with it.

  “What about the other alien-tech, the stuff before Hardfall?”

  My brother stiffened. “How do you know about that if you only replaced Nazari for the Hardfall transfer?”

  “The Consortium told me there’d been other alien-tech shipments. Obviously, that hadn’t required tearing the insides out of the Merak Star.”

  He nodded slowly, trying to decide if he could trust me. “I don’t know where they get it from.”

  “The Matarons? They’re your supplier?’

  He nodded. “We’ve done a few pick-ups from them, all arranged by Inok a’Rtor.”

  A cold chill ran down my spine. Stealing alien technology would drag humanity into an Access Treaty violation and whatever the Mataron involvement was, they’d make sure we were left holding the bag when the Forum powers came calling.

  “If the Matarons are helping you, they’re playing you.”

  “Not me. Trask. He’s the customer. I’m just the middle man.”

  Suddenly, it made sense. The snakeheads were using the Brotherhood to secretly deliver stolen alien-tech to the Consortium, ensuring there was no way to tie them into the deal.

  “What’s Trask up to?”

  He smiled evasively. “He’s making the Brotherhood very wealthy. And the richer we get, the more powerful I become.” He leaned forward, studying my face with his bulging robotic eye. “I thought you’d look older.”

  I would have, if not for the EIS genetic engineering which had dramatically slowed my aging rate. The optronic sensor wired to his brain would have told him I looked barely thirty, even though my chronological age was forty eight.

  Sidestepping explaining my appearance, I said, “With what you know, Earth Navy would offer you a deal. You could start again.”

  “As what? Captain of a space barge living on scraps!” he snapped scornfully. “My ambitions reach far higher than that, little brother.” There was a dark finality to his words, then he seemed to brighten for a moment. “I could use a mediocre pilot, one that would have to learn to stop asking so many questions.”

  It was more than an offer. It was a promise to eliminate my troubles with Gwandoya and elevate me into the higher ranks of the Brotherhood. If that was the cost of reconciling with my brother, it was too high a price. He saw from the look on my face it was an offer I couldn’t accept.

  “Guess not,” he said, genuinely disappointed. “The Cyclops is docked at Delta Zero Nine. Stay out of the transit tubes. Use the backbone crawlway. My crew’s expecting you. I’ll drop you in the Duranis System in a few weeks. You can catch a ride out from there.”

  “Duranis?” It w
asn’t anywhere I’d been before.

  “I’m headed that way. There’s not much there. It’s kind of a temporary transit hub.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “You can’t get out on the Merak Star, not now,” he warned. “The Brotherhood are crewing it for Trask.”

  “I’ve got more than a hundred ships to choose from,” I said with a grin. “I’ll be fine.” Either I was getting out on the Silver Lining or I wasn’t getting out at all, but he didn’t need to know that.

  He gave me curious look, wondering how I was going to escape Acheron Station. “Suit yourself, little brother.” He stepped forward and hugged me once, then released me. “Canopus is brighter than Sirius, once you leave Earth.”

  “Not from here it isn’t.”

  “Maybe when this is over, I’ll move to Outer Carina,” he said with a crooked grin, knowing it was where his namesake was brightest. “I don’t know … Canopus Rix? … Has a ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “You’ll be the terror of the space lanes,” I said, knowing we were almost certainly enemies and one day, one of us may be forced to kill the other.

  “I already am,” he replied with a hint of the same bravado he’d shown after beating me zero-g racing through Freya’s cavernous holds. “Don’t come back, Sirius, this is no place for you.” There was a menace in his tone that revealed he also suspected we were enemies.

  “I couldn’t find my way back, even if I wanted to.” If I knew how to get back to Acheron Station, I’d return with an Earth Navy fleet and obliterate it.

  He walked to the cell door and turned to me one last time. “Give me two minutes,” he said, then vanished into the corridor outside.

  Rapid footsteps echoed away from my cell as my brother disappeared into the station’s maze of passageways, then I crept out into a dimly lit corridor lined with identical cell doors. Halfway along the corridor, I found the jailer lying in a pool of his own blood with his throat cut. He undoubtedly deserved it, but it reminded me again of what my brother was capable of. He’d always been good with a gun, but the knife was something new, a skill he’d acquired after we lost contact.

  I stepped over the jailer’s corpse and hurried along the corridor to the station’s spine where a transit tube access point and a maintenance crawlway hatch were located. I realized I didn’t know which way to go, up or down? Suddenly, the hiss of microthrusters signaled the arrival of a high speed transit capsule, then the tube’s airtight doors slid open revealing two armored fighting suits standing inside, identical to those worn by Trask’s men.

  Backing away, I drew my P-50, knowing I had little chance against two armored battle units. They marched robotically out of the transit capsule in perfect synchronization, a head taller than me and several tons heavier. My bionetic memory identified them as OA-5’s, obsolete Union Regular Army orbital assault suits. They mounted a weapon on each arm, were covered in ablative flak armor and according to the rotating schematic projected into my mind, had a tiny weak spot at the back, above the thruster pack. Considering I was already in their sights, I had no chance of flanking them for a shot.

  “Don’t move,” the lead fighting suit ordered in a strangely synthesized voice, “Captain.”

  Captain?

  Both suits cracked open along the clamshell seams running down the side of their torsos, then a tamph head leaned out of the first suit.

  “Izin!” I said surprised.

  “The second suit is for you, Captain. It’s slaved to this unit. I’ll release it to you, once you’re inside.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Gwandoya’s been boasting on the station-net for several hours about how he’s going to have you repeatedly beaten in the slave arena before burning you alive. Once we knew you were marked for the arena it was a simple matter to locate the prison. I’m surprised you managed to escape, Captain.”

  “I had incentive,” I said, climbing into the second fighting suit. “Where’d you get these things?”

  “Trask’s men were over confident,” he said before sliding back into his suit and sealing up.

  Once inside, I took a moment to familiarize myself with the controls. I’d done three days of suit orientation with the URA years ago, then hadn’t touched one since. The main lesson the instructor had stressed was to let the suit do the work. Most of the controls were at my fingertips, inside the hand spaces, while the large spherical head space was all screen, except for the padding behind my head. The curved display in front of my face was splattered with blood and a flashing indicator warned of a microleak behind my neck, exactly where the heat exchanger regulating suit temperature was located. Somehow, Izin had found and exploited the suit’s only weakness and clearly, the OA-5’s auto-patcher hadn’t been able to fully seal the hole made by his weapon.

  Izin’s synthesized voice sounded inside the suit’s head space. “Releasing control to you, Captain.”

  I remembered the instructor’s words: ‘thumb-lock to seal’, but couldn’t remember which of the five thumb points did the job. I tapped one experimentally, heard the suit’s thruster begin to power-up, then fearing I was about to be launched into the ceiling, tapped it again to shut it down.

  “Perhaps I should initiate suit command functions,” Izin suggested. “Sealing you now.”

  My fighting suit slowly clamshelled shut around me, then pressure field sensors activated, allowing the suit to read my every movement, turning it from a rigid sarcophagus into responsive armored skin.

  “Aren’t you a little short to be operating one of these things?”

  “I can reach the controls. The pressure fields do the rest,” he said as his suit came to life.

  “Can anyone hear us talking?”

  “No, Captain,” he replied as his armored robot turned to face me. “These suits have secure tactical communications.”

  “Have they found the Lining?”

  “Not yet, but with two of Trask’s men missing, we had to move her out of the Merak Star.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “I don’t believe so. They still haven’t got the internal sensors working and I fuse-locked access to hold four. They were cutting through when we left. I expect they were surprised to discover the hold was depressurized.”

  A nasty surprise, no doubt. “So how do we get out of here?”

  “We take the transit tube six kilometers then walk.”

  My brother had said to stay out of the tube, but he wasn’t to know I’d be riding it in an armored fighting suit, so I followed Izin into the capsule without protest. It accelerated briefly, then braked to let three drunken Drakes and a station engineer squeeze aboard. We rode together as one of the drunks leaned against my suit for support, causing his face to loom large on my headscreen.

  He belched, then rapped on my suit’s head armor. “Hey! What’s it like in there? Can you see me?”

  I ignored him, then the capsule stopped, letting the drunks stumble off in search of more ways to blow the last of their stolen credits while the technician studied Izin’s suit.

  “They’re OA-5 mark twos aren’t they?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Izin replied, trying to terminate the conversation.

  “That’s what they are all right. The thruster controls have a habit of freezing at high altitude.”

  “I’ll remember that, next time I jump from orbit,” Izin said.

  The engineer ran a professional eye over the bulky thruster pack, craning his neck to get a better look. “If you bring them down to maintenance, I can insulate the controllers for you. It’ll take about an hour. Should raise your drop ceiling to–” He stopped mid sentence, standing on his toes to study the rear of the suit above the thruster pack. “Hey, there’s a tiny hole back here. The auto-seals on these old models always were a bit iffy.” He reached up and touched the microleak, then studied his fingertips, finding them smeared red. “Is that blood?”

  Izin’s arm snapped up, slamming the fighting suit’s
elbow into the engineer’s face, sending him flying into the elevator wall. The tech’s limp body crumpled like a rag doll to the floor as Izin resumed waiting for us to reach our destination.

  “That’s one way to end a boring conversation,” I said to myself.

  When the elevator door opened, the people waiting to enter peered curiously in at the unconscious engineer. Making no effort to explain, Izin marched out through the crowd as if he owned the place, forcing everyone in his path to scatter.

  Following close behind, I said, “I don’t recognize this level.”

  “The cross-arm the Merak Star is docked at is now heavily guarded,” Izin said. “They’re searching for Jase and me. In any event, the Silver Lining is not docked at an airlock.”

  “How are we getting aboard?”

  “We’re going to jump.”

  “Izin, this thing isn’t airtight!”

  “Neither suit is. Unfortunately, shooting through the heat sink was the only way to penetrate their armor.”

  “How’d you find the weak spot?”

  “Superior amphibian eyesight.”

  Crippling a combat suit in a darkened cargo hold without the benefit of my bionetic encyclopedia to draw on was impressive, but leaping a pair of leaky suits through hard vacuum was nuts.

  “Do we have enough atmo for the jump?”

  “I do,” he replied. “You may have to hold your breath.”

  It was tamph humor as he knew as well as me that holding my breath was useless when cells started popping.

  “That’s your plan?”

  “Air supply is not the problem, Captain. Power is. These suits are not designed for autonomous space flight and their power cells are already somewhat depleted.”

  “How far are we jumping?”

  “Fifteen hundred meters, the distance between cross-arms.”

  Izin stopped at a large security door, lowered his right arm and blasted the lock with his rapid fire suppressor, then kicked the door in. A cool white mist billowed out as several nearby station hands looked at us in surprise.