Fatal Blade (Decker's War#3) (7 page)

“Aye, aye, Captain, sir.”  He tossed off a mock salute.  “I’ll head to the armory for a few bits and pieces I can use to thoroughly booby trap
Phoenix
.  This might actually get entertaining.”

Whistling tunelessly, he left the bridge on his quest, already mentally building the contraptions he’d attach on the various airlocks.  This was the kind of work he enjoyed.

Talyn shook her head, then headed aft to the small hangar deck.  Decker had the strangest notions when it came to fun.

***

The hangar deck hatch slammed shut behind Zack, cutting them off from the ship’s interior, and he felt unaccountably cheerless at the thought of leaving
Phoenix
unattended.   He’d become rather fond of the little ship.

Talyn’s voice rang out from the ancient-looking shuttle.

“Ready?”

“As ready as she’ll ever be.  No one’s getting on board without finding at least one nasty little Easter egg.  The systems are down to minimal, and the non-essentials are in hibernation.  We can bring them up from the shuttle on the way back so she’ll be ready to go.  You had your long commune with the AI?”

“It’s been thoroughly briefed.”

“Then I guess we can head out to the enchanted land of Andoth.”

Decker climbed aboard and strapped himself into the right-hand seat beside Talyn, examining the cockpit while he did so.

“Looks well aged.  I hope that’s only on the surface.  Oh well, off we go then, driver.”

“Would you like to ‘drive’ instead?”

“No, no.”  He waved his hands at the controls.  “I believe we’ve already had this discussion.  Driving is for swabbies.”

“I suppose you could always put on a pressure suit and spacewalk your way to the surface.”

“Only if I’m on jump pay, which I’m not.”

The shuttle’s rear ramp closed up, sealing the agents inside.  At Talyn’s command, the hangar deck depressurized to the flashing of a red warning light.  When the strobe stopped, the main doors opened, exposing a broad swath of stars.

Talyn gently nudged the small craft free of the sloop using only maneuvering thrusters, then turned on the main drives.

“Hangar door’s closed again,” Decker reported, glancing at the visual of a rapidly receding
Phoenix
and then at the tactical readout.  “Her emcon’s tight and her albedo is almost zero.”

“Told you.  Absent naval grade sensors, a ship thief would have to be very lucky if he comes near enough to find her.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of corruption.  Naval-grade gear goes walkabout all the time.  Some of it ends up on ships with bad intentions.  Then, guys like me have to go sort them out; a good time will be had by all; the end.”

She looked at him quizzically.

“Did you just have a stroke or something?”

“No.  I’m not comfortable leaving the ship with no one aboard.  It’s a Marine thing.  We like to know our ride will still be there, ready to extract us after a drop.”

“There’s the AI.”

“It’s a computer code, not a someone.”

“Don’t tell it that.  You might hurt its feelings.”

“Now who’s being strange?  Caring about a machine just because someone programmed it to sound like you?  Pay attention to your driving instead; if we land anywhere other than at the bottom of the equatorial chasm, we won’t have a fun time.  You need enough air pressure to have a fun time.”

“Right, so why don’t you do your job as second fiddle and give the Yavan spaceport a call?”

“Second fiddling for the mistress, aye.”  Decker scanned for the expected beacon, and when he found it, he locked in.

“We have a positive link with the relay at the surface.  They’re transmitting approach and landing instructions automatically.”

“How nice: no inconvenient questions from a bored controller.  My kind of place.”

They flew in silence for almost an hour, the dun-colored, desolate looking planet growing rapidly on the main screen.  Decker pointed at a dark slash near the equator.

“That’s where we want to go, in case you forgot.  Yavan is somewhere at the bottom of it.”

“To quote a Marine of my acquaintance, it looks like fun, fun, fun.”

“Everyone’s a comedian,” he grumbled.  “Try not to add to the collection of dents on the hull and I’ll be happy.”

Talyn brought the shuttle to a hover just above the fissure, and they got their first glimpse of Andoth’s settled area.  They expected the darkness, but not the thousands and thousands of distant lights scattered along the bottom for hundreds of kilometers in either direction.

“It’s almost ten klicks down, Hera.”  A touch of awe escaped his normal self-control.

“Does it make you feel small, big boy?”

“Nah, but I can see why you wanted to leave
Phoenix
in orbit.  Trying to fly a sloop out of there when someone’s on your ass wouldn’t be ideal, not least for my nerves.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”  She shook her head at the thought.  “They mustn’t get much sunlight down there.”

“Probably none at all.  Artificial light twenty-four seven.  Shall we?”

“Have you locked in the actual spaceport beacon, not the surface relay?”

“Do I love Shrehari ale?”

Without answering, she banked the shuttle towards the source of the transmission and began shedding altitude.  Soon, they dropped below the rim of the chasm and began descending into eternal darkness, passing helpful, brightly lit markers set on the walls at regular intervals.

The lights on the bottom grew in size and began to separate into individual sources, revealing a broken, nightmarish landscape that somehow had sprouted a carpet of human structures.

“Not exactly pretty, is it?”  He grunted.  “It must be profitable, though; Yavan doesn’t look like just a two-bit mining town.  That spaceport tarmac can probably take half a dozen standard transports with room to spare for nervous helmsmen.”

Decker switched a side screen to the overhead view and was rewarded by the sight of a thin thread of lavender sky high above them.

“It would definitely have been a bitch to lift off in
Phoenix
if someone wanted to keep us down there,” he said.

Talyn brought the shuttle down in an increasingly shallow glide, aiming the nose at a yellow circle outlined by flashing lights near a single story building at the edge of the tarmac.  When they were directly above the landing spot, she killed all forward momentum and gently touched down.  The markers immediately stopped flashing.

“We’re here,” she announced, unfastening her seat restraints.

“So I noticed, but thanks for making sure.  I suppose we should visit the port master first and pay our fees.  This doesn’t look like the kind of place that’ll open a tab.”

“Indeed.”  She rose and stretched to the extent possible in the confines of the cockpit.  “Lock and load?”

Decker pulled out his blaster and fed a copper disc into the ignition chamber, checking the battery’s charge at the same time.

“Lock and load.”

EIGHT

The air was cold and thin and tasted like a mixture of flint, metal and old lubricants.  Sounds, continually amplified by echoing back and forth across the chasm, fed an insistent hum of human activity under the harsh glare of a thousand different lights.  Yavan lived in an eternal night, yet the only stars in its sky were the flashing beacons rising up on either side of the rift.

“Charming,” Decker murmured, scanning his surroundings while Talyn sealed up the shuttle.  “Exactly the kind of place I wouldn’t choose for shore leave.  Your brain thinks it’s past midnight, and yet it’s what?  Late afternoon, local time?”

He jerked his chin at the hubbub around one of the large transports loading battered containers.

“I bet we’ll want to be inside something soundproofed when that thing takes off.”

“No doubt,” Talyn agreed.  Looking upwards, she shivered slightly.  “Boy am I ever glad we left
Phoenix
in orbit.”

“At this point, I’m with you one hundred percent.”  He jerked a thumb at the single story building.  “Shall we go see how extortionate their landing fees are before they send a couple of goons after us?”

From somewhere several kilometers southwest of Yavan, a dull roar reverberated and they saw a streak of light climb upwards.

“Headed for another settlement?  There’s no ship in orbit other than ours.”  They began walking towards the larger of two doors opening out onto a cracked concrete path.  “Did you bring some money?  I think I forgot my wallet on the ship.”

“Then you’ll have to watch me drink once we hit the local saloon.”

“Evil woman.”

“You know, that could also have been an unmanned pod hauling refined ore into orbit for a ship that’s on its way.”

“Makes sense.”  He pulled the scarred door open and stepped into a dingy waiting room.

Devoid of life but filled with tired looking chairs and benches that appeared to have been scrounged from a crashed starship, it suffered under anemic lighting and walls shaded a lovely institutional green.

“Over there, I’d say.”  Decker pointed at a faded sign directing visitors to the port administrator.

They entered an office overgrown with computer consoles, data tablets and other bureaucratic junk Zack couldn’t be bothered to identify.  Its sole inhabitant, an overweight woman wearing creased gray coveralls glanced up at them with a sad, bulldog face.  Her skin beneath an unruly mop of red-tinted hair had the pallor of someone who regularly skipped her turn under the solar lamps, a necessity when you lived in perpetual gloom.

“You the shuttle on pad four?”  She had the voice of a drinker and smoker, two of the four recreational activities usually favored on places like Andoth, the others being gambling and whoring.

“That’s our shuttle, yes,” Talyn replied.

“One thousand a day, no discount for partial days.  How long are you staying?”

“Three, four days maybe.  Perhaps less.”

“Okay,” the woman nodded, “I’ll put you down for three days.  If you leave earlier, I’ll refund you for any full thirty hour period not taken.”

“Thirty hours?”

“Standard Andoth day, not that we notice it much down here.  That’ll be three thousand – cash.  For an extra two hundred a day, you can buy enhanced security services.”

Decker tilted his head to the side, crossed his arms and studied the woman quizzically.

“What happens if we don’t buy enhanced security?”

She shrugged.

“Then I can’t guarantee that nothing whatsoever will happen to your shuttle.  This is a rough place.”

“So you’re offering a protection racket, is that it?”

“Just looking out for visitors to our beautiful spaceport, sir.”

“I’ll bet.”  He nodded at Talyn, signaling that she should add an extra two hundred a day to their landing fees.

A malicious look of triumph in the woman’s piggish eyes confirmed Decker’s guess that it was a racket.  If they hadn’t paid up, they might have found all sorts of problems when they returned to the spaceport.  When she put the three thousand in a lock box and pocketed the other six hundred, he locked eyes with her.

“I expect to find not so much as a strange fingerprint on our shuttle.”

“Come on, Ser Whate,” his companion said, turning to leave, “we have a contract to hunt up.”

Zack, still looking at the woman, saw a flash of interest replace the malice in her eyes.

“Let me guess,” he said, “for a fee, you can hook us up with folks looking to shift cargo, no questions asked.”

“Maybe.”  She began fiddling with a stylus, flipping it between her thick fingers.  “Tell me what you offer and I can pass the word.”

Decker looked over his shoulder at Talyn, eyebrows raised in question.  She gave him a quick nod.

“Free-trader, five thousand tons; we look at cash, not bills of lading and we land wherever there’s a flat piece of ground big enough for our ship.  We can take care of ourselves and keep under the Navy’s sensors.”

“Five hundred up front and a thousand when I have a contact for you.”  When she saw his hesitation, she chuckled.  “If you’re the kind who runs high-value cargo, no questions asked, it’ll be money well spent.”

Talyn handed over another five hundred creds, glad that the black ops fund was paying for all this, with no questions asked.

“I’m Triane Lyde, by the way,” she said, pocketing the money with practiced ease.

“Pasek,” Talyn replied, then pointed at her companion, “and he’s Whate.  Our ship is
Phoenix
.  Got any recommendations for a place to stay?”

“Sure.”  Lyde’s smile perked up enough to warn both agents they were about to be directed to an establishment that gave her generous kickbacks.  “The Andoth Paradise is the best place in Yavan.  Got all the amenities: food, clean beds, casino, and brothel.  You name it, they offer it.”

Her wink made it clear the Andoth Paradise was prepared to offer more than what it advertised openly, provided the payment was right.

“Sure.”  Decker shrugged.  “Provided they have Shrehari ale, I’m happy.”

“Then the Paradise is your place, Ser Whate.  When you leave here, turn right and head towards downtown.  It’s about a kilometer away.  You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.”  Zack nodded.  “We’ll see you tomorrow then.”

After they’d gone, Triane Lyde touched her console and called up one of her contacts.  Spacers trolling for cargo who were that free with bribes and didn’t bother haggling were unusual enough to warrant attention.

***

“You know what I like most about this job?” Decker glanced at his partner, walking beside him along the dusty road.  “It’s all the lovely, hard-working, honest folks you meet along the way.”

“Cynic.”  She jabbed her elbow into his rock-hard side.

“Just a student of human nature, Sera Pasek,” he replied with an affected air of innocence, “alternating between amazement and despair.  Mostly despair.”

“Feeling the years creeping up on you, Zack?”

“No, but I see that we’re creeping up on one of the more garish displays of frontier tastelessness I’ve seen in a long time.”

They had come around a bend in the road that skirted a warehouse complex and got their first glimpse of Yavan’s outskirts which, being close to the spaceport, aimed to provide any and all entertainment money could buy.

“Garishness to make up for the scarcity of decent offerings?”  Talyn grimaced.  “I confess to being both underwhelmed and a little nauseous, especially considering that without daylight, this little display is on continuously.”

“Welcome to Andoth.  You chose the destination, remember?”

“If we’re going to trace the Garonne rebels’ supply chain, it’s only second to Kilia in this sector.”

“And last in sanitation.”  He sniffed the air, a disgusted expression twisting his features.  “I’m going to guess they didn’t spend a lot of time and money putting in a modern sewage system.”

“Not much air movement at the bottom of a rift this deep, I suppose.”

“Open air septic dumps don’t help.”  He pointed at a large, circular vat by the side of the road with biohazard signs on it.

“You signed up for the Corps.  Don’t complain when you’re sent to exotic places.”

“I only signed up once, and they kicked me out after my twenty.  The second time I re-upped it wasn’t voluntary.  You shanghaied me, sweetheart, remember?”

***

The Andoth Paradise, three tiers of mismatched, stacked containers unified by a paint scheme that offended even Decker’s plebian tastes, gradually emerged from behind pulsating lights.

“I think we’re here,” Decker remarked, staring at the building.  “Frontier recycling at its best.  If this is the finest Yavan has to offer, I’d hate to see the lesser places.”

“It’s the best that pays our spaceport friend backhanders, not necessarily the local equivalent of a five-star hotel.”  Talyn shook her head.  “If we wanted to live in the lap of luxury, we wouldn’t be in this line of business.”

“As I keep reminding you, I’m not exactly in this line of business by choice.”

He stepped onto the wide veranda and pushed the swinging doors aside, allowing a blast of music spiced by the tang of fried food to assault his senses.

They entered what seemed to be a combination of main lobby, eatery, and bar.  To one side, men and women, under the influence of who knew what spirits or pharmaceuticals danced to an irregular rhythm beneath lights pulsating at a frequency almost purposely designed to trigger fits.

Decker blinked a few times, trying to chase afterimages from his protesting retinas.

“Charming.”  He turned towards the other end of the vast room and homed in on a corner well equipped with individual booths and seemingly beyond the typhoon of light and noise devastating the dance floor.

“This way, I think.”

A few meters from the first table, he felt a soft tingle on his exposed skin and the noise level suddenly dropped to no more than a soft background murmur.

“Sound curtain.”  Zack nodded with approval.  “This layout’s not as dumb as it looks.  It might be tolerable after all.”

“Let’s sample the food before we declare the place tolerable, shall we?”

“Ale, then food.”  Decker slid into a booth built to cut off the worst of the flashing lights.  Moments later, a tiny holographic waiter emerged from the tabletop and smiled at him ingratiatingly.

“What may I offer?”  It asked in a squeaky voice.

“Shrehari Ale,” he glanced at Talyn, who nodded, “twice.  What’s the special of the day?”

“Our famous Paradise stew made with the finest vat-grown beef on the planet.”

Zack snorted.

“Doesn’t sound like much of a stretch.”

“I can assure the good sir that we do not stretch our stew with non-meat ingredients.”  The hologram sounded hilariously prim.  “This is the finest eating establishment in Yavan.”

“Two servings of your stew then,” Talyn quickly said, afraid Decker might engage in a lengthy discussion with a computer program just to see how far he could take things before it broke down into an endless loop.

The hologram bowed and vanished, leaving the two operatives to study their surroundings in silence.  Discussing the mission at a table that could sprout an AI waiter on its own wasn’t a good idea.

“You think we might find a profitable run?”  He finally asked, figuring that it couldn’t hurt to play his role to the hilt.

“Stuff the Navy doesn’t like to see shipped comes through here for a reason,” Talyn replied, “and that’s where the money is.  We need a few good contracts. Otherwise, we won’t be able to pay off the mortgage on the ship and when that happens…”

“Yeah, we get the kind of financial counseling that usually ends up being fatal.”

A human waiter who, by his looks, wouldn’t have been out of place among the Confederacy of the Howling Stars, appeared with a tray holding two mugs of frothy purplish liquid and two steaming bowls of a chunky, brown substance, along with several slices of dark bread.

“Ten for the drinks, another twenty for the stews.”  He said by way of greeting after placing the tray carefully on the table.

Decker pulled three ten cred chips from his jacket’s inner pocket and dropped them into the man’s open palm.

“Any chance of getting a room?”

“Sure.  Fifty a night.  See Wim over by the bar when you’re ready.”  With a last nod, he left them to their meal.

Decker took a tentative sip and swished it over his taste buds before swallowing.

“Not the worst I’ve ever had, but far from the best,” he concluded.  “At least they have the stuff, and it’s genuine from over the border, not imitation.”

“Maybe this place has direct or semi-direct links with the Empire, even if it’s just importing booze.”

“Most places along the Rim do.”  He took a healthier swig.  “There’s money in some of the stuff the Imperials make.  Why do you think I carry a Shrehari blaster?”

“To tenderize the meat in this stew?”  She began chewing on a hunk of vat-grown beef.  “I’m glad we’re having the best Andoth can offer.”