Tritium Gambit (Max and Miranda Book 1) (11 page)

“
Are you okay?” I called below me. I glanced at my arm and saw the tissue that the spider had torn into was already healed.

“
No,” came a disgruntled voice below me. She sounded fine to me, at least faring better than I was with the metal bugs.

I carefully slid down the hole until I couldn’t feel anything below me. I kept my feet and back braced on the wall while I shined a light downward. Eight feet down, Miranda glared up at me.

I dropped the remaining distance and landed on my feet. The ground was smooth, flat, and polished like marble. Other than the hole, the ceiling was also flat and polished.

“
What the hell happened?” Miranda asked as she rose to her feet.

“
Spiders.”

“
You let me fall because of some spiders?” She brushed off her butt. “That’s going to leave a bruise.”

I shrugged. “They were kind of creepy—they had red eyes.”

“
They also have a venomous bite that could knock out a bull rhinoceros,” said a man from the shadows. “Raise your hands so that I can see them, unless you’d like to be dematerialized by an antimatter blast.”

“
Who are you?” I asked, realizing I was not tired after my arm self-healed because of the metabolism boost pills. In my mind, I measured the distance to this person, measured the odds of surviving an antimatter blast from here. Self-healing has its limits, and that weapon definitely represented one of them.

“
Hands in the air, or Miranda gets the first blast.”

I slowly raised my hands, but Miranda had other ideas. She growled and marched right toward him.

“
Don’t make me destroy you,” the man warned.

She slapped the shadowy figure in the face. “We were worried about you. We were trying to save you…”

He backhanded her with enough force that she landed at my feet. “And it turns out you were wrong,” he said.

Lights came on in what turned out to be a room, and I blinked as I tried to adjust to the brightness. When my vision cleared, I saw Tyler standing with a large chrome pistol pointed at Miranda.

His graying hair was now closely cropped, and he wore black leather pants and a black leather vest over a long-sleeve black cloth shirt. I thought it likely the pants and shirt were insulated with some form of armor. He also wore heavy combat boots, which made me wonder what jungle he planned to walk through. He had shaved the stubble from his face.

The room looked like a giant workshop. Tables were arranged neatly in rows, and shelves along the walls held metallic parts and tools. The lighting appeared to be standard florescent shop lights, but I knew they were actually Virrean Fusion-Lit brand bulbs. Sure, they flickered a little when you turned them on, but they were the most natural light in the universe without going outside. Expensive for a workshop, I thought.

“
What did you do with my little helpers?” Tyler asked. “They should have been along by now.”

“
They wanted to play, and so I gave them a ball.”

Comprehension dawned on him immediately. “You EMP’d them?”

“
Just a little.”

“
Tyler, why are you pointing a gun at us?” Miranda asked.

“
I’m actually pointing it at you, sweetheart, because I think that’s the best way to control Max here.” Tyler pushed a button on his watch and it gave a small beep of confirmation. “If I miss his multiple hearts and just shoot Max in the arm or something, he’ll just regenerate it—but you won’t be that lucky.” Then I noticed the red laser dot on Miranda’s forehead. He wasn’t likely to miss by much. “I had hoped to take Max without involving you. I like you, and I wanted you to live. Unfortunately, that’s not how things worked out.”

Miranda scowled. “This isn’t over yet.”

“
I’m sorry, but it is,” he said.

Two shiny black humanoid robots entered the room from behind Tyler. Their heads had a dozen glowing blue eyes arranged to see in different directions. They had two arms, each equipped with guns on the wrists, and four fingered hands. Their metallic legs resembled a dog’s hind legs.

Tyler didn’t take his eyes off Miranda as he spoke to the robots. “Detain them and strip them of weapons.”

“
Confirmed,” the robots said in unison as they walked toward us.

The machines zip tied our hands efficiently and uncomfortably, then quickly stripped us of anything that might have been construed as a weapon or that they couldn’t identify. They even took my graviton bars and my ring, which pissed me off. Each of the items they took disappeared into a compartment that opened in their chest.

Miranda’s face was bright red. “Tyler, why are you doing this?”

“
Tritium.”

“
What?” I asked.

“
Any fool can get all the Deuterium they want. It’s practically as easy to acquire as hydrogen, but Tritium is a different matter. On this planet, humans have only produced about five hundred pounds of it since they learned to use it in controlled nuclear fusion, not that they have the process completely right. However, interstellar travel requires tons of Tritium, and I’ve located a source willing to sell it to me—and the price was right.”

“
You sold out?” Miranda asked. “What about your oath as an agent to serve and protect?”

He scowled at her. “I have served and I have protected. Now it’s time to enjoy my retirement.”

“
Wait! What price?” I asked. “What price was right?”

“
On our last mission, when I took a bullet made of depleted uranium for you…” He gripped his shoulder. “I thought I was going to die, but then you saved me using that amazing blood of yours. It hurt like hell, but I survived. A month later I heard about this vast pool of Tritium on Zeta-Terra that nobody had been able to get, and when I found out who has it, I realized that I could offer something nobody else could: you.”

“
So you’ve been killing innocent people to lure me here?” I asked.

Tyler smiled. “No, no. You see, the Wendigo don’t have technology, and so I had to go talk to their king in person.”

“
The Wendigo?” Miranda asked. “Who are they?”

“
They wouldn’t have taught you about them in the Academy,” Tyler said. “Long ago the Alliance attempted to make an outpost on that planet. The Wendigo crushed it.”

“
And you wanted to make a deal with them?” I asked.

“
The king was receptive to my proposal, but he asked for payment to let me leave his planet alive. That’s the reason I had to bring his son to this planet. Otherwise negotiations would have been over right there with my immediate demise. The king’s offer was really one I couldn’t refuse.”

“
What were you thinking?” Miranda asked.

“
Don’t worry. I’m perfectly safe in this cave. Fortunately, Wendigo are not too fond of swimming, and so he stays out of here. However, he’s another reason I carry this little baby.” He nodded in the direction of his antimatter pistol. “It’s good for more than killing agents. After this deal, I’ll be off to retirement and the Service can have their fun dealing with the Wendigo.”

“
Handheld antimatter weapons are banned,” Miranda pointed out.

“
It can be hard to play by the rules, which is a big reason the Service is going to have their work cut out for them with the Wendigo. Oh, I expect they’ll win, but it’ll be costly—and I’ll be gone. Anyway, the Wendigo turned out to be a convenient way to lure you here, but that was just luck. I had other plans of trying to get you alone, but things have worked out for the best.”

“
I still don’t get it. Why would the Wendigo want my blood? They can already regenerate, right?”

He frowned. “I’m truly sorry, Max,” he said. “It’s not pleasant, I admit. It might be the worst possible fate one can suffer.”

“
You’re going to give me laxatives and then make me watch
Barney and Friends
until I die?”

“
Wendigo are always hungry, and you’re the meal that doesn’t end—and you’ll make the king stronger than any other Wendigo.”

I felt sick when I realized what he had in mind. I was going to have chunks bitten off of me for as long as I lived, which would be a long time if the king didn’t get carried away and bite off my head. I realized with some sadness that my best hope might be to provoke Tyler into blasting me in the head or chest with the antimatter pistol. If that failed, I might have to starve myself, but that would take time, time filled with unimaginable pain. I shuddered. Then I realized the robots hadn’t taken my metabolism boost pills. I wasn’t going to live through this—that wasn’t an option. I needed to find a way to get Miranda out, and then I could down the whole bottle and then nothing could stop me from starving.

“
Master, where would you like the confiscated items?” one of the robots asked.

“
Leave their items in my quarters. Take the prisoners to the ship’s containment area. We’ll leave at midnight.”

A robot grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly into a hallway. I glanced back at Miranda, who looked angry. I knew this was my fault. I should have checked out the cave first and kept a com link to call for backup. This wasn’t the first time that I screwed up and my partner paid for it.

“
I’m sorry,” I whispered back to her. “I should have come alone.”

She looked confused. “Sorry? This isn’t your fault. He wasn’t supposed to be on the mission, and we should have tied him up and flown him back the moment we knew.”

“
I know, but I was suspicious even as we left the command center.”

The robot shook me. “Cease communication. My orders are to drill a hole in the female if you do not comply.”

“
That’s sort of harsh,” Miranda said.

The robot next to her held out a finger that spouted a small spinning drill bit.

“
Okay, okay,” she said. “I get it.”

The machines dragged us to an elevator that took us deeper into the Earth. When we emerged from the elevator, we were in a giant room with a spaceship in the middle.

The ship was bright red with orange flames painted on the sides, some alien markings that I couldn’t make out on the sides as well. The craft was about forty feet long with a glass cockpit connected by a slender neck to a thicker body. The shape resembled a giant flaming goose.

“
The Phoenix 5000?” Miranda asked. “Tyler took it?”

I heard the spinning of a drill bit.

“
Oh, right. Shutting up,” she said.

I noticed some black scars in places and gestured to them silently. A faded Stellar Command symbol on the side had been partially sandblasted off.

The ship was obviously stolen and, by the looks of the burns, it had seen some action. Either Tyler was in a dogfight or he took it from the repair dock. I realized that the ship might not even be fully functional.

“
Our briefing originally listed this ship’s disappearance in the report of the ping, connecting this ship possibly with an energy signature measured here,” she whispered.

“
What?” I whispered back.

“
When I first read our brief, it said a Phoenix 5000 had been stolen, but then the brief changed and the information was gone. Wendy said there were no missing Phoenix 5000s.”

“
Did you check who changed the brief?” I asked.

“
I did, but it had been hacked. There wasn’t a trace of who modified the brief to remove this information. Tyler must have erased it.” The robot’s drill buzzed again and Miranda quit speaking and stared straight ahead as we were dragged along.