The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  Blue’s ears filled with the whine of the rifle’s capacitors charged and ready to fire “You gamble a lot on a few words over a half-eaten plate of food,” said Sinclair.

  “It’s how I roll, Jimmy boy. You’ll soon learn.”

  “Ah, wheesht. You’re talking rank nonsense, Blue. Our ship will be guarded day and night, and I’ll report your threats to the captain of the Exuberance.”

  “So? There’s no law against making threats.”

  “Except ship’s law. I already told Captain Klagg you were trouble, and you just confirmed it. All he has to do is unclamp your ship while we’re in the white of hyperspace and apply a little extra spin. All perfectly legal if he thinks you’re a danger. And when your shiny ball brushes against the hyperspace discontinuity bubble…Don’t risk it, Blue. Stay alive, and perhaps we’ll share a bowl of cheesy chips and gravy when all this has blown over.”

  She reached the end of the passageway and heaved a sigh of relief. No CASPers waited around the turn to drill her full of hollow points, and Sinclair hadn’t sliced her torso in two with that freaking laser.

  All in all, things had turned out well.

  She allowed momentum to gently kiss her against the bulkhead before turning ’round to face the man with a laser trained on her chest.

  “I’d like that, Jimmy. After I have my Raknar back.”

  “Jamie, not Jimmy, you unhinged bint.”

  Blue projected a radiant smile at the other captain. “Goodbye,” she said. “Keep safe.”

  Sinclair screwed his face up in disgust.

  But she hadn’t been directing her words at him.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 9

  The rubber sphincter relaxed and Senior Rating Shalzak landed with a tail-twisting plop into a holding box of fruit peelings, beer, shredded napkins, and the half-eaten remains of the captain’s food. From his position clinging to the slings on the inside of Captain Blue’s thick greatcoat, the conversation between the two humans had been muffled, but the elSha engineer distinctly recalled the brown slime coating his claws was called gravy. At least the captain’s food was fresh. The disgusting chamber reeked of putrid decay mixed with the tang of cleansing chemicals that clearly weren’t doing their job.

  “Did you pass unharmed through the garbage pump?” Shalzak enquired of the other two members of his team, their heads bobbing on this sea of filth.

  “You’re such a hypocrite, Shalzak.”

  “I’d hoped for a better welcome, Li-Urj,” Shalzak replied to the junior male, “but I expect little decorum or sense from one as young as yourself.”

  “Li-Urj’s right,” added Onyi, which was disappointing, as Shalzak had thought better of her. “You always tell us never to volunteer, and yet here you are, Senior Rating. Where’s Hyuuo anyway?”

  “Indisposed. Now kindly allow me to assess our situation so I can form an appropriate strategy.”

  The youngsters continued to articulate their disrespect, but Shalzak ignored them. This was an important mission. Dangerous too. Bubbles began to appear on the slurry’s surface. Shalzak joined the lighter elements of floating garbage as they began to circulate in a vortex pattern.

  Beneath the surface – his tail flicking to keep him afloat – he could feel the current building from the rotating blades that would slice food waste and the elSha infiltration team alike into more slurry.

  Interesting…the spinning blades were moving up to meet them. He speculated it would make several passes to be sure that tough materials, such as spines and seed cases, were cut up finely. It’s how he’d design this system.

  Judging by the current’s increase…30 seconds before we’re killed. Say 20 seconds to be on the safe side. Now, do I disable the entire system with an EM pulse or…or…?

  “What in oblivion do you think you are doing?” he shouted at the young fools. Wearing a crown of coffee grounds, Onyi was standing on all fours on a raft of fries and cheese, while that buffoon Li-Urj perched on her back, aiming his laser cutter at the recycler hopper’s wall.

  “Stop it!” shouted Shalzak.

  “Will you shut up, grand sire?” whispered Onyi. “There are humans up above.”

  Helplessly, Shalzak watched as Li-Urj cut a rectangular outline through the wall and shot a grappling tool against an undamaged patch of metal above his new exit. Onyi climbed on his back, her head projecting forward over his shoulder, and together they swung against the wall. Onyi’s head made an effective battering ram, pushing aside the metal and opening a gap. They jumped through, out of sight.

  “Shift your tail, grand sire!”

  Cheeky scamps! Shalzak had no choice but to follow the pair through their makeshift portal.

  Ouch! The edge burned his scales as he clambered over and fell through the cavity beyond, landing on his tail. The youngsters were up ahead, shining their flashlights on this inner space.

  “That wall you cut through could have opened onto hard vacuum,” Shalzak shouted at them.

  “Really?” sneered Li-Urj. “I don’t think so.”

  “Stop showing off in front of Onyi,” Shalzak snapped as he scurried to join the others. “You’re not impressing anyone, and Captain Blue gave me a job to do. We need to do it, and we won’t if you ignore my instructions.”

  “No one’s impressing anyone right now,” said Onyi. “Let’s take a moment to get something straight. This is not your kind of thing at all, Shalzak. Why are you here in place of Senior Rating Hyuuo?”

  “Because Captain Blue herself begged me to replace him.” Shalzak shook with anger when the other two began laughing. “It’s true! Hyuuo is holed up in Midnight Sun’s infirmary undergoing repairs to all eight of his kidneys, which have suffered sudden and critical failure.”

  “More likely you begged the lieutenant to put you in his place,” said Li-Urj.

  “No. It makes sense,” said Onyi. “I saw Hyuuo accept a drinking challenge from one of the human marines.”

  “Not Trooper Juliana Keiko?” asked Li-Urj, incredulously. “She has a score to settle with Hyuuo.”

  Onyi circled her tail in confirmation. “Hyuuo is a show-off idiot,” she said. “Humans are the biological equivalent of black holes. Whatever toxic crud they push into their maws, they just grow stronger. And the CASPer marines are worst of all. Sometimes I worry that the humans will coalesce into a giant infestation that will absorb all biomass in the Union.”

  “Then they authorize your salary and contract payments,” said Shalzak, “and everything’s all right.”

  The other two stopped complaining about the humans.

  Ahh…right on schedule. The youngsters jerked their legs out in shock when a beam of light caught them. It was just a maintenance bot, come to correct the fault they’d caused in the garbage system. The perfect opportunity to demonstrate his authority.

  The two raised their laser cutters as weapons.

  “Put those down this instant,” Shalzak snapped. “We need that bot to report that everything’s just fine, not raise the alarm by taking it off line. Captain Blue was eager to impress upon me the need to remain undiscovered by the Scorpion humans.”

  The bot flattened itself to squeeze past a point where the cavity narrowed.

  “What will it do to us?” asked Onyi. Not an unreasonable question, thought Shalzak. The girl showed far more signs of intelligence than the boy, who wanted to shoot his laser at everything.

  “I imagine it will disable you and return you for analysis,” Shalzak replied, “or kill you and return your corpse for analysis. But I won’t let that happen.”

  The bot emerged from the constriction and drew itself erect, laser barrels deploying from its torso.

  “Li-Urj, stay in the light,” Shalzak ordered. “And for the sake of all our souls, do not aggravate it. Onyi, with me.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked nervously but did as he instructed and moved out of the bot’s search beam.

  If the other elSha weren’t there, Shalzak
would have sighed with relief because, as he had hoped, the bot showed no sign of following her. In the bot’s mind, problems were stacked and resolved one-by-one. It would deal with Onyi in good time.

  Shalzak wouldn’t give it the chance.

  “Follow my instructions,” he told the girl. “Do exactly what I tell you, and we’ll soon have this bot recruited to our purpose.”

  “What about me?” said Li-Urj, his voice shaking as the bot extended a multi-sensor probe and ran it along his back, trying to analyze just what kind of pest it had encountered.

  “You have the easy task,” Shalzak replied as he and Onyi used their combined strength to open the bot’s access panel. “Try not to die while we disable the machine. Perhaps you could sing a distracting song?”

  “Senior Rating Shalzak,” whispered Onyi a few seconds later, “shouldn’t we tell Li-Urj that we’ve already disabled the capacitors that feed the bot’s lasers?”

  He regarded the girl, and her head tilted in amusement. Suddenly he felt 150 years younger. And without Hyuuo, the possibilities for mischief were boundless. “I don’t think he needs to know just yet, eh?”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 10

  Inside the transparent flex-tube, Zarbi held up five legs and used them to count down to release.

  5…4…3…2…1…

  The tube detached from the Arashi Nova, and Jenkins slithered over its hull to get a closer look at the liquid sealant that oozed over the disk cut into the Scorpions’ ship. The glare of hyperspace was almost blinding, but he was sure he could see no bubbles, no gush of venting atmosphere. The seal was good.

  His engineer’s instincts yelled at him to do more, to glue on the emergency sealing patches in the pouch clipped to his spacesuit, but to do so would be to leave a clue that the Scorpions might see when they dropped back into normal space.

  He told himself to relax. Everything would be fine, because he and Zarbi had built in all the redundancy they needed on the inside of the hull. The access point they’d drilled into the ship led to an exhaust valve for overpressure in the plasma torch engine. The Scorpions would never look there, and so long as Arashi’s torch wasn’t lit – which it wouldn’t be while the ship was clamped to the Exuberance – the hidden workspace inside would remain unobserved. Ready for their return to continue their work during the next transition through hyperspace.

  So long as the torch wasn’t lit…

  Jenkins used the formidable view to distract himself from that thought.

  Humans saw hyperspace as a formless white, but to a Jeha, hyperspace consisted of pulsing energies vibrating in directions orthogonal to space-time. The thrashing ripples of hyperspace scared the hell out of Jenkins, but it was mesmerizing in its terrible beauty.

  More importantly, human senses could see nothing in hyperspace. Nothing at all. Not that anyone would feel the need to go looking for a Jeha crawling over a starship’s hull during hyperspace transition, but that human limitation had given Jenkins great comfort while he’d worked to bend Arashi Nova’s controls systems to his will.

  “Careful!” he yelled, not that hyperspace allowed radio comms to Zarbi. The silly youngling was proving inept at retracting the tube back into the safety of Detritus-2 and had allowed the tube to swing out from the Exuberance’s hull.

  If it touched the perimeter of the discontinuity bubble…

  Jenkins curled in horror at what that would do.

  He secured a safety line to the Arashi and sprang off the hull to avert disaster.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11

  “I hear bad rumors about you, Captain Blue. Threats of violence being made.” The Maki captain of the UTS Exuberance scrambled up the chair bolted to the floor of Midnight Sun’s senior wardroom and flicked his split tail up at Blue in what she assumed was an obscene gesture.

  “I’m currently carrying over six thousand paying passengers,” the Maki told her, “and twice that number of livestock. Amongst that number will be con artists, shady dealers, assassins, and individuals of disreputable races such as yours. It’s to be expected. Plying the trade routes is not a life for infants or the easily offended. But you humans in your entropy-cursed combat armor, forever jumping around, blasting holes in corridors, and terrifying paying customers – you’re bad for business.”

  The Exuberance’s Captain Klagg glared at her out of his two huge eyes. The alien’s unannounced visit to Midnight Sun was clearly meant to intimidate, but with those giant eyes, the four-legged creature looked more like an anime lemur. She wanted to feed Captain Cuteness chopped banana and a saucer of milk. The four looming Besquith Klagg had brought with him were doing a much better job of intimidation.

  “UTS Exuberance is part of Red Star Shipping Corporation,” the alien continued. “Second largest in the Union. Just think about that for a moment, Captain. If the corporation acquired a reputation for allowing mayhem in its ships, it would be ruined. We have more than enough money to hire every mercenary company on this vessel – of which there are many – and destroy you.”

  “I’m an innocent victim of slander,” insisted Blue.

  Klagg waved her quiet with his tail. “Disturb the peace, and I’ll kill every one of your people. As for you,” he brought his tail ends to a single point and aimed it at Blue, “I’ll embalm your severed head and mount it on the wall of my senior wardroom to remind my officers of the need to stay forever vigilant against the most disruptive species of the Union. Such as yours.”

  “I swear on my honor, Captain Klagg. We have no intention of causing the slightest trouble.”

  “I hope for your sake you’re speaking truthfully.” The alien captain calmed a little and snapped a paw at one of his Besquith heavies. “To show there are no hard feelings, I have a gift for you.”

  The Besquith handed Blue something wrapped in heavy cloth.

  Blue unwrapped it. It was the severed head of a MinSha, her compound eyes replaced with two gleaming jewels.

  “That is Major Ykk’Sh’Sh,” Klagg explained. “She was the last mercenary officer who disturbed the peace on my ship. Her head has been in our officers’ wardroom for twenty years, and I think it’s time for a change of decoration. You have an exotically shaped head, Captain Blue. Just give me an excuse to have it stuffed.”

  “I thank you for your gift,” Blue replied. “I shall take its message under advisement. However, as I’ve explained, I’m entirely innocent of these baseless accusations. You won’t hear so much as a coarse word from one of my personnel while we’re on your ship, let alone gunfire and violence.”

  Klagg gave a parting snarl and departed with his Besquith escort.

  Blue sealed the door behind them and established a comm link. “Come in, Sun.”

  “Here, Captain. Bay 82 approach secure. Assault teams two, four, and five in position. Breach teams ready. Teams one and three ready within ninety seconds. The Arashi Nova will be ours within minutes.”

  “Stand down, Major. Abort the attack.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Blue worried about her sister sometimes. She didn’t question the change of plan, just got on with calling it off. Which was just as well for all their sakes, but maybe Sun needed loosening up a little.

  She gave her older sister a few moments to stand down her assault teams before volunteering an explanation. “Captain Klagg popped over to the ship to discuss unconventional interior decoration.” Blue sighed. “We’re going to need a new strategy.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 12

  When Captain Blue passed him with her escort, Jenkins strained to keep calm and walk along the Exuberance passageway without speeding up.

  He needed to see the captain with his own eyes, to feel her vibrations with his own antennae. It was a weakness, he supposed, and he restricted himself to a single contact between hyperspace transitions. Nonetheless, he took great courage from knowing that Midnight Sun had not abandoned him, and that the captain hadn’t done anything foolish eno
ugh to get herself killed.

  Wearing as he did the uniform of a steward serving on the pleasure cruiser Vortex of Abandon, it was a harmless exercise, because his disguise was absolute to all humans.

  What the captain didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Or him.

  Yet she had a distressing capacity for the unexpected, and a stab of foreboding curled the edges of his carapace when the captain slowed and half-turned her head his way.

  “Do you have anything for me?” she asked.

  Jenkins tried to ignore the fear rippling his segments and waved his antennae irritably. “You’re mistaken, human person. I’ve never encountered you before. Your species convinces itself that you can distinguish between Jeha individuals, when the truth is that we all look the same to you.”

  “Sorry, Jenkins, but I can’t agree. I’d recognize my personnel anywhere. Errr…Jenkins? Are you okay?”

  Why did I ever volunteer for this? Jenkins found himself in the humiliating position of having fully curled his body into a protective cylinder. I’m an engineer, not an adventurer.

  “Courage, Jenkins,” said the captain. She walked back and placed a palm on him. He knew the gesture was meant to be supportive, but the contact of the slimy flesh only tightened his body further. “We humans possess a secret trait,” she said, coming in close and whispering – which added more fuel to his embarrassing threat response. “It’s not something we advertise, but we develop a psychic connection to those who are important to us, whatever their species. No human but me would recognize you.”

  “Are you teasing me, Captain?”

  She bared her teeth in a smile. “Yes. Relax. I have pattern recognition augments. Very expensive. Very rare. And I’m very proud of you and your bravery, Jenkins.”