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

  “Giran?”

  He grunted. “Three hundred and … forty six thousand Earth years.”

  The answer surprised me, being much less than I’d expected. It was obvious from his ship that the Kesarn were far ahead of Human Civilization, yet extragalactic travel was normally accessible only to much older species. In cosmic terms, the Kesarn and humanity were almost peers on the lower rungs of the galactic ladder.

  “Cross-species kidnapping is prohibited by the Access Treaty,” I said.

  “I’m not subject to your Access Treaty.”

  My Access Treaty? Every species in the Milky Way was subject to the Treaty. None were excluded, no matter how young or old, not even primitive civilizations who knew nothing of its existence. Observer civilizations had ensured for eons there were no exceptions, certainly not a species whose existence was measured in mere hundreds of thousands of years. Even the Matarons, who were twice as old as the Kesarn, couldn’t opt out. Only the Intruders, who had evolved far beyond the galactic disk, had evaded its reach – ultimately to their detriment – but Gern Vrate was from the Perseus Arm. Galactic law applied to him as much as it did to me.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Nowhere you’ve ever heard of.”

  “Try me.”

  “No more talk, human,” he said sharply.

  I wanted to press him further, but couldn’t risk being silenced again by his neural-blocker, not if I hoped to escape. On the fishbowl wall, the horizon line of the galactic ecliptic had fallen behind where Vrate stood, indicating we’d left the disk behind.

  I wondered, even if I could escape, where would I go?

  The spear-shaped gray blur surrounding Vrate’s ship vanished, revealing a great black void, broken only by isolated misty pearls of light. It took me a moment to realize they were globular clusters, orbiting high above the galaxy in halo space, while dimmer points of light marked distant galaxies. Behind us lay the Milky Way with its distinctive glowing bar at the center of a vast whirlpool of light isolated amid an infinite night. At that distance and perspective, I couldn’t tell where human space was located, so tiny was it against the vastness of the galaxy.

  Gern Vrate lifted his hands off the two control spheres, paying no attention to the spectacular panorama behind us. He massaged his palms without turning, visibly relaxing.

  “Why are we stopping?” I asked.

  “I need to rest.” He stretched his thick neck, showing signs of fatigue.

  “No autonav, huh?”

  “The ship can fly only when I’m part of it,” he said simply.

  “Suppose you have to sleep?”

  “I stop.”

  “That’s not too smart.”

  “As if you would know.”

  “Hey, even human ships fly themselves!”

  “It’s the price we pay.”

  “The price for what?”

  “For what we are.” He pointed to a feeble, red point of light directly ahead. “That is our destination.”

  Without instruments, I had no way of knowing how far it was. “Looks close.”

  “Ten light giran.”

  At that distance, it could only be a solitary star thrown from the galaxy by a cosmic quirk of fate. Considering how far we’d come in such a short time, we could have covered the remaining distance in a matter of seconds. So why rest now?

  “Are you just leaving me here?”

  “Yes,” he said, marching down the ramp from his piloting platform.

  “You could at least put me in a cabin where I could get some sleep.”

  “There’s only one sleep pod on this ship.”

  “Suppose you have company?”

  He stopped in front of me. “I travel alone.”

  I nodded, feigning sympathy. “No friends, huh?”

  “I am Kesarn.”

  “I take it you’re the aloof loners of the galaxy?”

  Vrate studied me like I was a bug. “You humans have no concept of individualism. Compared to us, you are a docile herd species.”

  “I’ve been called a lot of things, but that’s the first time I’ve ever been compared to a cow!” The Tau Cetins were herbivorous avians who considered humans to be an aggressive hunter-predator species. I guess it depended on your perspective. “So, do you want to tell this docile herd creature what’s waiting up ahead?”

  “You ask a lot of questions for a condemned prisoner,” he said, then strode out into the corridor.

  His footsteps receded as I fixed my eyes on the solitary star ahead, wondering what interest I could possibly hold for its inhabitants.

  When Vrate returned, he offered me a fist sized cube with a thin tube extending from the top.

  “This will sustain you,” he said as the pressure field released my arms, letting me reach for it.

  I took a sip, gagged on the bitter liquid and spat it out, spraying his boots. “I thought you had to deliver me alive, not poison me!”

  “One container will keep you alive for a week,” he said glancing disdainfully at the spittle on his boots.

  “Do I have a week?”

  “That is not my concern.”

  He touched his helmet at ear height, causing his dark visor split into two horizontal slices that slid apart revealing his face for the first time. He had light brown skin, large round eyes beneath a prominent brow and a flat nose with a single nostril. He was the same species as the frozen alien I’d seen on the Merak Star!

  “You’re Kesarn?” I asked surprised, wondering how any Drake could ever have captured one of his race.

  “Drink!” he ordered, then strode up the short ramp to the circular platform.

  I glanced down at the alien food substitute uncertainly. It tasted like acid, but I needed my strength, so I took a breath and gulped it down, then tossed the cube away in disgust when I’d finished. “Argh!”

  When I looked up, Vrate was studying me from the piloting platform. “Your survival instinct is strong, human. Many species would not have drunk.”

  “You actually like that stuff?”

  “It tastes like doongpa!”

  “It sure does!” I agreed. Whatever doongpa was, I now considered it to be the vilest tasting substance in the galaxy.

  Vrate turned and placed his hands on the control spheres at his hips. Almost immediately, the stretched biconal bubble appeared around us, sending us hurtling toward the solitary halo star.

  “I’ve seen your kind before,” I said.

  “That, I doubt! We are rarely seen and never by the likes of you.”

  “No, really. I’d recognize your ugly face anywhere.” I hoped an insult might draw him out, but he simply ignored me. “They must be paying you well, to go to all this trouble.”

  “You would think that.”

  “You don’t like us much, do you?”

  “You are what you are.”

  “A docile herd creature?”

  “Talkative.”

  The bubble vanished, revealing a small red orb a quarter the size of Earth’s sun. Whatever gravitational cataclysm had ejected the red dwarf star from the galaxy had also stripped it of planets, hurling it toward the emptiness of intergalactic space. Whoever Gern Vrate was delivering me to, they couldn’t be inhabitants of this system. The solitary star was nothing more than a rendezvous point far enough outside the Milky Way that it was beyond the gaze of those who enforced galactic law.

  Vrate waited while his ship searched nearby space, then when three markers appeared on the fishbowl wall to starboard, he nosed his ship toward them. Considering the speed the Kesarn ship was capable of, it took a surprisingly long time for the contacts to resolve into dark hulled ships. Indistinguishable at first, they slowly grew in size as we crept up on them, taking on a flattened teardrop shape marked by ridges running bow to stern. I knew at a glance what they were – snakehead armored cruisers, Ortarn class.

  “You’re selling me to the Matarons?” I asked incredulously. “I thought you weren’t a bounty
hunter.”

  “I’m not,” he replied, his eyes fixed on the three ships floating in line ahead formation still some distance away.

  We slid in astern of them with a caution that showed Vrate didn’t trust the Matarons any more than I did. He matched their velocity while keeping his distance, then Kesarn script began appearing below each ship, identifying them in ever more detail.

  “You’re scanning them?”

  Vrate acknowledged my question with a distracted grunt.

  “They can’t see us, can they?” I asked, knowing Mataron cruisers wouldn’t just sit there and let themselves be scanned, unless they knew nothing about it.

  “Not yet.”

  The Matarons might have been militaristic xenophobes, but they were also hundreds of thousands of years ahead of the Kesarn. There was no way Vrate should have been able to sneak up and scan them without being detected. “I know humans are slow learners and all, but how can you hide from them?”

  “Easily.”

  “You obviously don’t trust them, so why are you doing their dirty work for them?”

  “I don’t trust anyone.” He lifted his hands off the two control spheres. The Mataron ships immediately broke formation, circled toward us at high speed and took up firing positions forty five degrees apart. “Now they see us.”

  A holographic image of a triangular reptilian face appeared directly ahead of Vrate. I normally couldn’t tell one snakehead from another, but this one wore a thin black circlet around the top of his head and an ornate black uniform with a chest scabbard holding a ritual blade. I’d only ever seen one other Mataron dressed like that. He’d been a high ranking commander of the shadowy Black Sauria organization, but surely this couldn’t be him. Not out here.

  “Identify yourself, Kesarn!” the Mataron Commander snapped, angry that Vrate had gotten so close without being detected.

  “Gern Vrate. You are Hazrik a’Gitor?”

  “I am.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been wrong, but it might be the last. Hazrik was the same Mataron who’d sworn a year ago to have my head. Thanks to Vrate, he was about to get his wish.

  “I have the prisoner,” Vrate announced.

  The Mataron’s anger began to abate. “We nearly destroyed you!”

  “If you had, you would not get the human.”

  “Do not be so careless approaching Mataron warships in future.”

  “I am never careless and it was not my defenses that were penetrated.”

  The Mataron emitted a low sound, a sign of anger, confirming Vrate had a genius for irritating everyone he came in contact with, even the snakehead he worked for.

  “Reveal yourself next time, or you will not be so lucky.”

  “There’ll be no next time. Do you have the information?”

  “Yes.”

  “Transmit it now.”

  “Not until Sirius Kade is in my possession.”

  “He is here,” Vrate said, motioning toward me.

  My image must have become visible to Hazrik, because he leaned forward studying me closely. “I told you we would meet again.”

  “And here I thought all snakeheads were liars,” I replied lightly.

  “My daughter waits for you on Kif-atah. You murdered her husband, now you will die by her hand, my gift to her.”

  “That’ll give me plenty of time to kill you and escape,” I said, relieved to discover I wasn’t going to die today.

  “You will be on the Mataron homeworld in three weeks,” Hazrik said, “and you will not escape.”

  Knowing roughly how fast Mataron ships were, three weeks to Kif-atah put us approximately twenty two thousand light years from Mapped Space. It was a long way for the Black Sauria commander to come just to capture me, and he’d brought three top of the line cruisers with him as escorts. I knew he wanted me dead, but that seemed like overkill, even for a vengeful snakehead.

  “Transmit the data,” Vrate said.

  “I will send a transport to collect Kade. When he is aboard, you will have your payment.”

  Vrate hesitated, but realized he had no choice. “Agreed.”

  Hazrik’s triangular face vanished, then I said, “You can’t trust him.”

  “But I can trust you?”

  “I saved your life on Hardfall.”

  “You almost got me killed trying to escape,” he said as a small transport emerged from Hazrik’s cruiser and glided toward us.

  “As soon as you hand me over, he’ll cheat you.”

  “Betray the Kesarn once, never deal with us again. He knows that.”

  While the Mataron transport maneuvered to dock, Vrate reached over his shoulder for his gun and leveled it at me. The pressure field pinning me to the bulkhead dropped, then he motioned me to the passageway.

  “I will shoot if you try anything.”

  “And risk disappointing Hazrik’s daughter?” I said, stepping through the doorway.

  “Her feelings are not my concern.”

  “I don’t suppose we can make a deal?” I said, starting along the short corridor leading to the airlock.

  “No.”

  “What’s this information Hazrik has? Maybe, I could help you?”

  “You can’t even help yourself,” he said, irritated by my stalling tactics.

  “I can put you in touch with people who could help you, like the Tau Cetins.”

  “I trust them even less than I trust you or the Matarons!”

  I took several more steps, then turned to face him. “How about…”

  I swept my hand with ultra-reflexed speed at his gun, caught the thick barrel and pushed it wide as he fired. Before he could wrestle the gun free, I kicked him in the abdomen, but his healsuit absorbed the blow, then Vrate threw a jab at my head with his free hand. I ducked, trying to twist the weapon out of his hand as he grunted in pain, but not from anything I’d done. Realizing his wounds from Hardfall hadn’t fully healed, I threw myself at him, slamming my elbow into his chest, aiming for where the bonecrusher had held him in its jaws.

  The healsuit was tough, but it wasn’t armor. The breastplate flexed under the impact, causing Vrate to stagger back holding his chest with his free hand, never letting go of his gun with the other. Before he could recover, I kicked him again, aiming for his thigh where the bonecrusher had bitten down on his legs. Vrate stumbled back, wrenching the gun barrel out of my hand as he dropped to his knees in pain, proving no matter how good his healsuit was, bone needed time to knit, even Kesarn bone.

  I dived sideways as he fired from his knees, sending a white blast flashing past me. He followed me with his gun, forcing me to dive through an open hatchway onto a small landing as he fired again. I bounced off the far bulkhead and fell down steep, narrow metal grill stairs to the deck below where I lay momentarily stunned as Vrate staggered onto the landing above. He aimed down at me as I scrambled away behind storage containers, then his heavy boots sounded on the stairs as he came after me.

  From the far side of the compartment, a static electric hiss filled the air, throwing flickering yellow light and sharp shadows toward me. I couldn’t see the source as I crawled between containers, looking for a way out.

  “There’s nowhere to run, human,” Vrate declared as he landed on the deck. He fired once, shattering a container’s contents behind me, then made a short tech-assisted jump over the containers, landing in front of me and aiming his bulky weapon at my head. “It didn’t have to be this way,” he said as the yellow flickering light played over his healsuit.

  I glanced toward the light source, a white metal hemisphere floating in the center of the chamber – the twin of the alien-tech device I’d seen loaded aboard the Merak Star on Novo Pantanal. A brilliant yellow beam emanated from the flat cylinder protruding from its base and poured into a dish shaped receptor in the deck.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  He adjusted a control on his weapon. “It’s set to stun. You will not see me again.”

  “What is that?�
��

  “No more talk!” Vrate said, extending his arm to fire.

  Suddenly I knew why he’d brought me out here, far beyond the gaze of any Observer civilization, and it wasn’t for the reason he thought!

  “It’s not me they’re after! It’s you!”

  He hesitated. “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you, I’ve seen your kind before!” I pointed to the hemisphere floating at the heart of Vrate’s ship. “And that thing! Whatever it is!”

  “Impossible.”

  “I can prove it!”

  “How?”

  “In my pocket!” I said reaching toward a sealed section inside my flight jacket.

  “No tricks,” he said, ready to fire, but letting me proceed.

  I retrieved the rectangular plate I’d taken from the frozen Kesarn on the Merak Star and tossed it to Vrate, who caught it one handed. “I took that off one of your people. He was in cryostasis alongside one of those things,” I said, nodding toward the hemisphere.

  He turned it over suspiciously, studying it. “He was alive?”

  “Frozen. His life signs were low, but he was definitely alive.”

  “This could be a fake, a copy,” Vrate said, lifting the control plate, comparing it to an identical device on his wrist, the same device he’d used to remotely pilot his ship.

  “That’s your language! Humans don’t know your language!”

  Vrate glanced at the control plate once more, then slid it into his pocket. “Do you know why he was alive?”

  It was a trick question, but I had no idea what the trick was. “No. For questioning maybe?”

  He stared at me, deep in thought, then slowly lowered his weapon. “I believe you.”

  “You do?” I asked surprised.

  “He was alive because the siphon cannot exist without him,” Vrate said, his mood changed. “You could not know that.”

  “You’re right! I didn’t! And I still don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  He motioned toward the hemisphere. “That is a dark energy siphon, my ship’s power source.”

  “Dark energy?” I turned to the Kesarn machine with renewed interest. “Really?”

  “It taps into the force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.”

  “I’ve heard of it.” Dark energy made up seventy percent of the total mass-energy content of the universe. “I just never knew it could be harnessed.”