Star Crossed

by C. Gockel

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked, taking advantage of the fact that the three men or aliens had paused to return fire with the two police officers.

  “I need to take one of them alive,” Thorn replied. “The cops complicate things a bit, though.”

  “Do tell,” Miala said, and felt a sudden absurd impulse to laugh. Jerem had been kidnapped, the dregs of the galaxy were shooting at them, and her house had been burned to the ground, but somehow she hadn’t felt so alive in years. Maybe it was just standing here shoulder to shoulder with Thorn, feeling the muscles of his back shift as he returned their attackers’ fire. On the way over to the spaceport he’d discarded the proper suit jacket and now wore a close-fitting, short-sleeved black knit shirt that did marvelous things for his biceps. That’s a hell of a thing to be thinking about at a time like this, she reflected, but she grinned anyway. It was hard not to feel invincible when Eryk Thorn had your back.

  Then the mercenary lifted his gun once again, and Miala saw the largest of their three attackers slump to the concrete floor of the landing pad. Two to go. Of course, she still had no idea what Thorn was going to do about the cops, but she supposed that, as always, he had some sort of plan up his sleeve.

  The kidnappers’ goons began to fire even more wildly, with great enthusiasm if not much accuracy. Thorn stoically waited out the volley in the shelter of the pillar, then got off another deadly shot as the two attackers who were left met with a fresh assault from the two police officers. This time the man caught the pulse bolt square in the neck, and he pitched forward over the prone form of his fallen companion. A few more erratic shots from the one assailant remaining flew in their direction, but he’d obviously decided that he didn’t have much going for him, outflanked and outnumbered as he was. A quavering plea emerged from the shadows where he’d been hiding.

  “Don’t shoot—I give up!”

  “Step out here,” Thorn ordered. “Hands where I can see them.”

  A nondescript-looking human male, probably around thirty standard, emerged from the corridor where he’d been lurking. He held his hands up at shoulder height, his gaze darting nervously from Thorn, who walked out from behind the pillar with his pistol still leveled at the man’s chest, to the hiding place of the two RilSec officers.

  “Stop right there,” came a crisp, business-like voice, and Miala turned to see the police, a man and a woman, come out from behind their packing crate. It was the man who had spoken.

  Only the slightest movement of Thorn’s dark eyes showed that he acknowledged their presence. Miala remained silent. She was certainly out of her league here, and she figured the best thing to do would be to wait and see what, if anything, the mercenary needed from her.

  He continued to hold his gun on the man who had surrendered. “Who are you working for?”

  The man went a sickly yellowish color. “I—I can’t tell you that.”

  “Sir, I’ll have to ask you to lower your weapon,” the RilSec officer said. He wore civilian clothing, but the gleaming badge affixed to his collar was enough to identify him. Not a regular beat cop, obviously.

  His partner, a strikingly beautiful woman probably a year or so older than Miala, came up behind him. “I’m sorry, but this is our jurisdiction. We can get this hashed out when you all come in to make your statements.”

  “Sorry,” said Thorn, “but the only statement I’m concerned with is the one I’m going to get from him.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of their captive, who looked positively miserable.

  Miala almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

  The male police officer didn’t seem particularly concerned. Lanky and tall, with a face Miala would have called pleasant rather than handsome, he smiled and said, “Around these parts, we take a dim view of those who take the law into their own hands, Captain Marr...or should I say Eryk Thorn?”

  Miala couldn’t help letting out a little gasp of shock at the officer’s words, even though Thorn didn’t blink. “‘Captain Marr’ is fine,” he replied. “This man has information I need. I don’t think you’ll be able to get it out of him in time.”

  “Time for what?” asked the female cop, her green eyes narrowing slightly. Even with her plain synth-silk shirt smudged with dirt and her hair starting to slip out of the clasp that held it away from her face, she had the sort of looks that would stop most men in their tracks.

  Thorn, however, wasn’t most men. Barely giving her a glance, he said only, “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “Oh, yes, it does,” said the male officer. “Engaging in a firefight on Rilsport public property? Piloting a ship here under a false I.D.? And we haven’t yet begun to discuss what happened to Ms. Fels’ house.”

  For a second Miala wondered how the hell the cop could have figured out who she was. But she realized if he had guessed at Thorn’s true identity, then he must have been investigating the case thoroughly enough that he’d begun to make some disturbing connections.

  “You forgot one,” Thorn answered. His expression never changed, but Miala caught the sudden glint in his dark eyes and thought, Uh-oh...

  “What’s that?” the cop asked.

  “Assaulting a police officer,” the mercenary replied. From a clip on his belt, he suddenly grasped a small device only a few centimeters square. Before Miala could even blink, a thin, self-propelled line shot out and wrapped itself around both the RilSec officer and his partner, pulling them against each other and continuing to wrap itself around them until they were securely bound, their guns caught uselessly at their sides. Thorn stepped up to them, retrieved the weapons, and gave them a quick shove. Unable to balance, they toppled over, with the female cop pinned beneath her bulkier partner.

  Miala heard the woman gasp, and the other RilSec officer grunted and uttered a breathless curse—he’d probably had the wind knocked out of him.

  “You kids have fun,” Thorn said. “I’ve got work to do.” And with that he pointed his pistol at the surviving attacker. “You. You got a vehicle?”

  “Out—out back,” the man faltered, staring down at the trussed-up forms of the police officers. He looked as if he would have dearly preferred for them to come out ahead in this particular confrontation.

  “Let’s go,” the mercenary commanded, and the man led them down the corridor, away from the two fallen RilSec cops. All Miala could do was glance over her shoulder and mouth “I’m sorry” before hurrying after Thorn. Neither one of them looked particularly thrilled with her...not that she could blame them.

  Whatever happens, she thought, as she trotted after Eryk Thorn and his captive, I have a funny feeling I’m not going to be welcome on Nova Angeles for much longer...

  “If you ever tell one person at the station about this, I’m going to give you hell for the rest of your natural life,” Jessa gritted, after struggling against the slender but impossibly strong line that bound the two of them together.

  The movement of her body against his was distracting, to say the least. Creel forced himself to take a breath, then another. About the last thing he needed right now was for certain parts of his anatomy to signal her that he might be enjoying this far more than she was. Once he thought he had things more or less in order, Creel replied, “You think I want to brag about how I got outmaneuvered by Eryk Thorn?”

  “I don’t know,” she shot back. “This kind of story could keep you in free drinks for quite a while, couldn’t it?”

  Well, he had to admit that could be true, but he wasn’t about to tell Jessa that. Besides, what really mattered right now was getting free somehow so they could try to catch up with their elusive quarry. “I won’t say a thing,” Creel told her. “Let’s just try to see if we can get out of this thing. Maybe if I slip out of the top loop—”

  And he attempted to slide downward, hoping that maybe his bonds would hold tight around her as he shifted his body weight. Unfortunately, all he accomplished was to come dangerously close to dislocating his shoulder. He stopped before it popped comple
tely out of joint, but he knew that particular ploy wasn’t going to work.

  “Let me try,” Jessa offered. “I’m smaller than you are.” She wriggled again, struggling first to free her shoulders and then her legs, but nothing seemed to work. After a minute she stopped and made a disgusted sound. “Well, this is getting ridiculous.”

  “We’ll have to cut it,” Creel said.

  “With what?” Jessa asked, managing to sound both worried and scornful. “I’m afraid I’m fresh out of molecular blades and laser cutters.”

  “There’s got to be something sharp around here we can use,” he said, eyes scanning the deserted hangar. Then his gaze rested on the two dead men at the entrance to the hallway. “Maybe one of them’s got something.”

  A good four or five meters separated them, and since they couldn’t walk, he and Jessa were forced to hitch themselves along the grimy concrete until they finally reached the inert forms of the two dead men.

  Jessa made a sound of muffled disgust.

  “What?” Creel asked, fighting a sudden stab of alarm.

  “Nothing,” she replied. “Except that I’m sitting in a pool of blood. Lovely.”

  “I’m sure the department will reimburse you for those pants,” he said. “Can you reach into any of their pockets?”

  “Maybe. I think I’ve got a little more movement below my elbow than you do. Hang on.” Creel could feel his bonds cut more closely into his skin as Jessa strained to get her fingers moving freely enough to reach into the closer of the dead men’s pockets. He winced but made no sound—no point in distracting her.

  “I think I have something,” she said, after a few agonizing seconds. “Can you shift this way just a little more?”

  In reply he hitched himself a few centimeters closer to the body of the dead alien. Again the thin, unyielding line cut into his flesh. Creel knew if he hadn’t been wearing long sleeves, the mercenary’s evil rope probably would have broken his skin.

  Another agonizing second, and Jessa said, “Got it. Nice little pocket m-blade. Hang on.” Then came the low-level hum of a molecular blade, and suddenly one coil of the line that bound them was cut, then another. Creel flexed his fingers as the blood began to return to his hands. Within a moment they were free.

  He stood, but didn’t offer to help Jessa up—he got the feeling any such gesture would have been rebuffed. After shutting off the m-blade, she rose as well, brushing at her hopelessly begrimed pants.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  Well, that was a good question. For a few seconds Creel looked past Jessa to the arrowhead shape of the mercenary’s vessel. Although he itched to get inside it, he knew that Thorn must have safeguards in place to keep unwanted intruders away from his precious ship.

  “Let’s take a look outside,” he answered, even though by now Thorn, his captive, and Mia Felaris were probably kilometers away.

  Sure enough, after they had emerged from the short corridor that led out of the landing pad, all that met their eyes was the stretch of tarmac which backed up to the bay. No vehicle, no sign of the mercenary and his companions. A cool breeze, smelling of salt and night air, ruffled at his hair.

  “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” Jessa inquired. Although only a few dim sconces illuminated the exit from the docking bay, Creel didn’t have any trouble recognizing the wry look she gave him.

  “Of course not,” he replied. “Let’s take a closer look at our dead friends, shall we?”

  It turned out that they carried no identification—typical. What was the point of being a hired goon if you made yourself easy to track down? They both were packing holdout guns, along with an assortment of m-blades and old-fashioned plain composite cutlery, but neither he nor Jessa could find anything that gave the slightest clue as to who they were or where they had come from.

  Creel wanted to swear, but decided that wouldn’t do him any good. Besides, he didn’t want Jessa to know how stymied he currently felt, how outmaneuvered and outmatched. True, he’d been bested by Eryk Thorn, which wasn’t exactly the same as having some local street punk outsmart you, but—

  “Hey, what’s this?” Jessa asked suddenly.

  “What’s what?” Creel responded, forcing himself to snap out of the unexpected bout of self-pity.

  “Probably nothing, but this guy’s got a bunch of sand and what looks like some broken shells caught in the soles of his boots. Maybe the lab could get something out of it.”

  Frowning, Creel crouched down next to Jessa and looked where she was pointing. Sure enough, the heavy grid pattern of the man’s boot tread was caked with pale sand and larger specks of iridescent reddish material that definitely appeared to be bits of shell. Well, it was a start, anyway.

  At that moment, the sound of approaching sirens assaulted his ears. Their backup had arrived—far too late, naturally.

  “Tell you what,” Jessa said, giving him a tired grin, “you get to do all the explaining on this one.”

  Thanks a lot, Creel thought, but he managed to smile back at her. It seemed a small price to pay, considering that they’d gone up against the fearsome Eryk Thorn and lived to tell the tale.

  Somehow he doubted the man Thorn had captured would enjoy the same fate.

  “I swear I don’t know anything!” the man gasped, his pale, bloodshot eyes almost round with fear.

  After Thorn had commandeered the hired goons’ vehicle, the three of them had blown out of the spaceport with just enough haste to put a good distance between them and the two police officers they’d left behind, but not so fast that they’d be likely to attract any undue attention. The car was a large, six-seat enclosed model, new enough to be unobtrusive but certainly not flashy in any way.

  Thorn piloted it to an area largely dominated by warehouses about two kilometers from the ’port, at which time he’d hauled his hapless captive outside and into the cozy intimacy afforded by a locker unit guarded by a simple code that Miala was able to hack in only a few minutes. Just great, she thought, after Thorn instructed her to circumvent the lock. Now we can add breaking and entering to the list of charges we’re racking up...

  She hadn’t bothered to argue, though. The pasty-faced man they’d taken hostage was their only link to finding Jerem, and it wasn’t as if the owner of the warehouse was using it at this particular time, anyway. Actually, it didn’t look as if it had been used in a long time. All the packing cases around them had a liberal coating of fine gray dust.

  Their captive sat on one of those cases now, literally shaking in his boots, his hands bound behind him with more thin cable. He looked as if he were about to expire of fright. Whoever had taken Jerem, Miala didn’t think much of the caliber of people he’d hired to do it.

  “Come on, now,” Thorn said, crossing his arms and lifting an eyebrow. “You mean to tell me you don’t know anything about where they’re holding the boy?”

  The boy. No mention of her son’s name. She recalled the conversation she’d had with Thorn about how he had to stay focused, how he could only think of Jerem as an asset to be reacquired. If he allowed himself to get emotionally involved, Eryk Thorn might lose the edge that made him what he was.

  Still, that recollection didn’t make it any easier for her to listen to the mercenary discussing their son in such a dispassionate way.

  “No!” the captive said. “I never heard anything—Korvan just hired me from the street here, said it would be easy money, that I just had to go with those other two to take out someone at the spaceport—”

  “Korvan, eh?” Thorn replied. “So he’s your employer? He from Nova Angeles?”

  The man licked his lips and shot a beseeching stare in Miala’s direction. Just thinking of her son in the hands of men such as these made it easy enough for her to harden her mouth and give him a narrow look in return. He gulped and immediately glanced away.

  “No,” the man said. “He’s a Stacian.”

  “Ah,” said Thorn, and glanced over at Miala.

>   Well, that made sense. This whole thing had felt a little too personal, and if the late, unlamented Murgan had been related to the kidnapper, then she supposed it made sense that he had struck out at her by taking the thing she valued the most. In this instance, however, that desire for a more intimate revenge could end up biting this Korvan in his big yellow ass, because by taking Jerem he’d unwittingly pulled Eryk Thorn into the plot.

  As she stared at Thorn, he smiled suddenly. A sudden hum caught her attention, and she watched with some trepidation as he pulled a small but very efficient-looking molecular blade from his pants pocket.

  Even from where she sat, Miala could see the lump in their captive’s throat give a convulsive movement as he stared back at the mercenary.

  “You know, it’s too bad you didn’t hear anything worthwhile,” Thorn said, his tone so casual that Miala knew something very, very bad was about to happen. “If you don’t actually use those ears of yours, then maybe I should just get rid of them for you.” And he brought the blade up against the man’s right ear, near the top where it connected to the skull. A few drops of blood, almost black in the dimly lit warehouse, began to well up as the blade touched flesh.

  “I swear I don’t know!” the man shrieked. “I swear I don’t! Nobody told me—” And then he broke off into a sort of inarticulate gargling screech as Thorn continued to press down.

  Bile rising in her throat, Miala looked away. She knew they didn’t have time for anything more humane, but that didn’t mean she could coolly sit there and watch as Eryk Thorn tortured another living being.

  “I don’t believe you,” Thorn said, still in that off-hand tone. “Right now you’ve just got a big cut here. Not much of anything, really. But I could make it worse—” The m-blade begin to make a high-pitched whining noise, as if it had suddenly met more resistance than mere skin and flesh. Probably it had begun to cut into cartilage.