In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (19 page)

Gern Vrate lay breathing shallowly at my feet.
Dark blood stained his body armor, but miraculously, he was still alive. He turned
toward the creature, surprised it was dead, as green phosphorescence oozed from
his suit and spread along every tear, into every open wound, wrapping him in
glowing green threads.

“I guess it takes a lot to kill a Kesarn,” I said,
surveying his wounds.

“More than a human.”

I had to admire that, he was almost dead and still
throwing insults. “Don’t thank me for saving your life.”

He sat up coughing as fluorescence ran up his neck,
defying gravity and entering bloody fractures in his helmet, then incredibly, he
got to his feet.

“How come you’re not dead?” I asked.

“The suit.”

“It’s not very good armor! You’re a mess!”

“Not armor. Kesarn healsuit,” he staggered a short
distance, barely able to walk, then reached down and picked up his gun. Weakly,
he turned and aimed it at me.

“Are you out of your freaking Kesarn mind?” I
yelled. “I just saved your worthless life!”

“Your fault ... you jumped.”

I raised my gun, aimed at his chest and fired, but
my gun clicked empty. I’d drained the magazine when I’d fired into the bonecrusher’s
mouth!

“My ship … that way,” he said, nodding out toward
the plain.

“No.”

“Yes.” He aimed at my right leg and touched his
gun’s firing surface. Sparks exploded from the weapon’s side where the
bonecrusher had damaged it.

I quickly reached into my pocket, pulled out another
mag and reloaded. “Now, do you want to tell me why you’re tracking me?” I said,
raising my gun, finding I was suddenly alone.

I turned, searching for any sign of him, scarcely
able to believe he could even walk, let alone run. Even my bionetic sensors, boosted
to their limits, could find only a few drops of alien blood leading out into
the plain, showing the way he’d gone. I DNA-locked the sample, gaining
mankind’s first ever genetic code from the Perseus Arm, but decided not to risk
following the trail and getting too close to his ship’s weapons.

Suspecting I hadn’t seen the last of the big
Kesarn, I retreated toward Lone Peak. There was a solitary flashing light high
up on the summit marking the way up. When I reached the cliffs below the safety
beacon, I found an old metal ladder bolted to the rock face. It had originally been
built to provide a safe haven for anyone stranded in the open on the way to
Loport, before the cable car system had been constructed. There were many such
safe havens dotted across the plains, because only humans – and one crippled Kesarn
– could climb ladders on Hardfall.

I holstered my P-50 and started up the rickety
ladder, hoping Gern Vrate’s recovery would be a long one. Whatever his motives,
I had no desire to find out why I was wanted in the Perseus Arm!

* * * *

Loport cable station’s lights were out when
I stepped off the gondola several hours after sunset. The dark silhouette of
the
Merak Star
could be seen by starlight a few hundred meters away. For
a moment, I heard nothing but the creaking of suspension cables and the hum of
the gondola as it moved away, then a voice sounded from the darkness.

“What happened to you, Skipper?” Jase asked,
holstering his twin fraggers as he emerged from the darkness wearing a URA
jacket and carrying a Vel penetrator slung over his shoulder. “Something hit
us, then we woke up and you were gone.”

“It seems I’m wanted in the Perseus Arm.”

“Edge of the galaxy Perseus Arm?”

“Yeah, that one,” I said as Izin appeared at the
top of the ramp.

“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?”