Doomed Cargo

by Ian Cannon

Havilok paused with his feet rooted to the ground, thinking. He finally said, “I am not interested in political dissent. My business is elsewhere.”

  “Sometimes men of power must play the game of leverage.” Quarlidious assured wickedly, “And you are in the game.”

  Havilok bit back, “I’m a military man, Senator.”

  “True. Would you like to remain a military man?”

  Havilok gave him a cutting glare. Yes he would, by Gods!

  Quarlidious said, “Then what choice do you have?”

  Havilok sat down across from him and swam inside a moment of silence. He said, “You have a proposition.”

  “This document lays out incompetencies in the Menuit-B security regime.”

  Havilok gave him a grim look.

  Quarlidious said in a reassuring tone, “They come directly from Senator Torian’s office. It allowed for oversights in the security perimeter that should never have existed. One might say, the Menuit-B destruction was a product of Torian’s regulatory leadership, not your actions.”

  Havilok heard himself go—Hmm.

  Quarlidious continued, “I’ve studied the holo-image. It was a privateer, an RX-one-one-one cargo vessel. An older ship, not very common. It would be easy to hunt.”

  “So?”

  “Deploy your security wing, find this enemy of the state and bring them in. Their arrest would go far in the Omicron senate. But their testimony would go even further.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It would expose exactly how they were able to penetrate the Menuit-B defenses, and in turn expose Torian’s lackluster security protocols. He would share your shame, perhaps bear its brunt.”

  Havilok interlaced his fingers, squeezing. “Torian will smell the ruse, pluck it out.”

  Havilok sensed another grin. “Not if he were preoccupied.”

  “And how do we accomplish that?”

  “We flush him from the capitol altogether.”

  Havilok squinted at him. “How?”

  “We see to it that he joins you on the mission.”

  Now Havilok grinned skeptically. “He’d never.”

  “He would.”

  “How?”

  “We use the document’s very damning properties as leverage …” Quarlidious leaned forward into the light showing a squared face rimmed in dark facial hair and deep, black eyes, and said, “and we force his hand.”

  Chapter Five

  Fexx Pol, their Pendulosi friend’s face showed over the holopad with his permanent mutton chop facial protrusions and spotted bald head shimmering in the signal.

  “Tawny and Ben, back in my shop so soon. And needing a tow taxi? What’re you guys doing to my ship, eh?” he said with his usual gruff smile.

  “We need repairs,” Ben said flatly. “Let’s just start with the inner-warp.”

  “Start?”

  “Yeah, but check the operation harness and auxiliaries, too. Oh, and the internal systems.”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Uh,” Ben said, “and the external.”

  “External, okay.”

  Ben smiled wanly. “And micro breeching.”

  Fexx blurted a hearty laugh. “Might just be worth getting a new ship.”

  “Never,” Ben said.

  “Right, well bring REX around to slip seven. But do me a favor before entering my bay.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Leave stupid and reckless out there, deal?”

  Ben gave him a cross look and said, “Fine …” then way under his breath, “you Pendulosi bear.”

  Fexx heard and laughed again before his face fizzled away.

  Oficium came near through the viewport with that big invisibly black field of planet Speculos looming behind it. Tawny and Ben had flagged an inner-warp taxi service to collect them at their position. Otherwise they’d have overheated their velocity coils which would have melted the coolant lines to their inner-warp generators, blown out the speed vortex system, in turn damaging their standard combustion thrust controls and yadda yadda yadda. Long story short, they’d be into Fexx for even more than they already were. The price of a taxi tug was cheap insurance.

  As they detached from the taxi and scooted toward hub 129, they exchanged a serious look. Tawny said, “Now?”

  Ben nodded, “Yep.”

  She initiated a hail and another face holoformed into view—a broad, pale yellow face with a perfectly square jaw and head sitting on absolutely no neck, small, intelligent eyes and wide features. The face said in its low, guttural tone, “I am here.”

  Ben greeted, “Tub’Num. Our ETA to the Guild is one hour.”

  “Then good. He always is there at same time. It is routine. You will have security access to Guild private wing, but for ten minute only. Must be in out with speed.”

  Tawny said, “That’s what we do, Tubs.” She leaned forward and added, “Thank you, friend.”

  “Yes. You no start trouble. You in and out, yes?”

  “Of course,” she said flashing her conniving, little grin and slapping a plasma power clip into her pistol and stuffing it down in her holster.

  Tubs nodded nervously as his holo-image blinked away.

  Ben looked at her, the corners of his lips turned down. He said, “No trouble.”

  She just snickered at him and left the cockpit.

  The floxa-cinogen drip was running low. It was time to recharge the electronic pump attached to the back of his neck feeding the drug into his skin and keeping him the tinniest bit altered all day. But that new Lexxian female from the Zyndo twin planets was undulating to the groaning sounds of his Iotian homeworld. He didn’t want to miss this. Perhaps a few minutes wouldn’t hurt.

  So Sympto lounged back on the couch up in the Guilder’s Mix VIP room as he normally did, sucking on his hookah pipe with those thick, horribly lubricous lips, dripping with the self-indulgence that only he was capable. The song ended and so did the dance, and he was already feeling the lack of cinogen in his blood stream. Time to go to his private quarters, get some more.

  He snaked out of the couch and moved across the observation deck over Guilders Mix’s cavernous interior below and stepped out into the rear passage. Immediately, one of the security officers met him. It was one of Tub’Num’s men, a Tremusian. Tub’Num only hired his fellow Tremusians. Best all around security folk in the system.

  “Mr. Sympto, a holocall.” He handed him a pad.

  Sympto took it and waved the security guard away with a flick of his narrow wrist and emitted the image cone. He stopped in the hallway suddenly, forcing himself to hide his reaction of horror. It was Benjar Dash’s 3-D holo-image looking up at him with no real discernable expression on his face. Sympto forced a huge smile and said, “Benjar—is good to see you, yes!” He could only hope this call was not about Sympto’s betrayal and double-cross, which had almost gotten Tawny killed and Benjar executed.

  “I’m a little surprised to hear you say that, Sympto,” Ben’s voice was flat, unemotional. Sympto couldn’t read him. It made him guess at the reason for the call. It prickled his skin.

  “And why?” he said still feigning ignorance and moving down the hallway.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Ben said making him react with a flinch. “I’m the one with questions. You’re the one with answers.”

  Now feigning innocence, “What I do?”

  “See—there you go, asking questions. What’d I just say?”

  Sympto cleared his throat refusing to look nervous. “Okay, you ask, I tell.”

  Ben said, “You and Rogan made a deal for the Orbin payoff. A million yield. That’s our money, Sympto. ”

  Yep—Benjar knew, and he was pissed. At least that wife of his wasn’t on the call. Tawny flubbin’ Dash. Crazy woman. Mean as hells, too.

  Sympto said, “I not do that, Benjar.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I promise. I not see Rogan for many cycles.” He turned a corner in the hallway and headed towa
rd his private stateroom.

  “Yeah, you said that last time. We have reason to believe you’re still lying.”

  Sympto now pretended to get impatient flicking a wrist at him through the holo-imager. “Not true. I do nothing of the sort.”

  “Don’t play stupid,” Ben said.

  “You blame me for nothing, Benjar. I will get irritated with you, I will,” he said pointing a finger at him in righteous indignation.

  “I blame you for leading us into an ambush,” Ben said. That was a pure accusation of seriously illegal behavior, especially among Guild members.

  Sympto came to his door and stopped. “Benjar, do not forget who you are talking to,” he warned with malice.

  “And who’s that?” Ben said.

  He said with large pretentiousness, “I am Sympto, liaison of the Guild. You want to work for me and for Guild? You remember where you stand, Benjar Dash!”

  “Or what?”

  Sympto threw open the door to his room and stormed inside threatening, “It will be the blacklist for you. And work in transpo, you can kiss goodbye.”

  “Oh, is that so?” came a completely different voice. It wasn’t on the holocomm. It was in his stateroom.

  Sympto halted as if he’d run smack dab into an invisible wall, looking forward with eyes of horror. He knew that voice. A slinky figure stepped toward him from the dark with a plasma blaster leveled at his face. He knew it.

  Tawny flubbin’ Dash.

  Sympto opened his mouth, inhaled and screamed. She bolted to his door and slammed it shut spinning him all the way around and making him drop the holopad. No, she hadn’t been on the comm. She’d been waiting for him in his room. Now his enormously oversized Iotian ears shriveled up into their skull pouches—thup, thup—in a show of sudden, heart-stopping panic.

  She said, “Shut up, Sympto!”

  His mouth collapsed, everything silenced.

  Ben’s 3-D head grinned up from the floor. “So?”

  “Okay, okay, tell you anything I will!” he stuttered and stammered.

  Ben said, “You can’t tell us anything we don’t already know, Sympto.”

  “Where Rogan is?” he said, hands all the way up.

  “He’s dead. We killed him,” Ben said sharply. A lie.

  “You kill Rogan?” he said with his voice rising an octave.

  “That’s right. And now we come for you.”

  Sympto eyed Tawny closely. She didn’t look like she’d come for fun and games. She had vengeance in her eyes. He said with tiny words, “To kill?”

  “Absolutely,” Ben said.

  He backed against a large piece of furniture knocking a bubble lamp over. “Please, I not do again. Trust Sympto, yes?”

  “Ha!” Tawny blurted stepping forward.

  Ben said, “Prove it, then.”

  “Prove how?”

  “We want your top job. We want your top pay. And we want it right now, or it’s bye bye Sympto.” Ben’s words cut like razors.

  He stuttered, “It is consigned to another.”

  “To who?”

  “To Vekter Ramm it is.”

  “Vekter, huh. Bad dude. Well, that’s too bad, Sympto. We want it, and you’re going to give it.”

  Sympto started to shrink at the knees as he pleaded, “Benjar, please!”

  Ben’s gaze through the holo-image drifted over to Tawny. He said, grinning, “She’s looking awfully itchy, ain’t she?”

  Sympto’s eyes followed. He said, “Itchy, yes.”

  “Does she look angry, too?”

  He cried, “Angry, yes.”

  “How about deadly—is she looking pretty deadly today, Sympto?”

  “Deadly—uh-huh. Yes, deadly.”

  “So what’ll it be?”

  Sympto swallowed hard moving that oversized adam’s apple way up and way down in his scrawny throat. He conceded, “I give to you. High yield. Neutral space. Easy drop.”

  “Then do it.”

  “Now?” he bawled.

  Tawny thrust the muzzle of her gun at him making him throw his hands up and gasp, “Okay, okay.” He pulled up his administrator’s smart pad. His bird-boned little fingers flew across it momentarily, and he hit a final touch button saying, “Is done.”

  Ben’s image waited for the transfer. Then waited some more. The silence became excruciating. Sympto started to sob. The job docket transferred to REX’s computer and Ben finally said, “That’s a real good boy, Sympto. Tawny, are we done?”

  Tawny’s gaze slid down and she shook her head disappointed. “He didn’t pee himself, babe,” she said.

  “Hmm, really?” Ben said, vaguely impressed. “Maybe he’s all out. Or maybe we weren’t creative enough. Get creative, baby. You can do it.”

  Tawny smiled wide with glee and shoved the blaster into its holster. Sympto showed relief. Then, she reached behind and unsheathed a broad-bladed Omicron skinner knife letting its chromium blade twinkle under the dim light. Sympto’s eyes widened. She lunged at him going airborne and came down on top of him over the armoire. The sharp edge pressed against that ugly, bulbous adam’s apple, and Sympto went—gluk!

  “Okay—let’s make one thing clear, Sympto,” she sneered. “You double cross us like that again and the Guild won’t be enough to save your scruff narse. We’ll burn this whole operation to the ground coming after you. And when we’re done carving you into Molosian slug bait, they won’t find anything. Not one pathetic, little hair. It’ll be like you never even were. Got it? Got it?”

  His eyes blinked, rolled into his head, and he said with hardly any voice at all, “I—I—I got it, yes!”

  She got off him and slipped the knife back into its sheath.

  From the floor, Ben’s holo-projection said, “How’d we do?”

  She looked down again with a satisfied half grin. “Yep, that did it, babe.”

  “Good job. Now, tell the scrub to have a nice day and let’s go. We got a job to do.”

  She waved at Sympto who was now down on his knees and said, “Have a nice day, scrub. Gotta run.”

  She grabbed the holopad and hit the hallway in a sprint. Ben’s head said, “Now wasn’t that better than a boring old head shot?”

  She giggled at him and said, “Yeah—that was pretty awesome.”

  “See? Diplomacy, love.”

  They studied the job docket over the holotable in REX’s main hub. It was a multi-port job that would see them making eight deliveries in all.The holomap projected the solar twins in their constant orbital dance with their planetary children weaving in and through each other, the entire display creating a delicate function of crisscrossing paths and figure eights. Their own hypothetical course braided through the projection, twinkling gold, with the numerical specifics of their co-ordinate sets hovering in 3-D columns.

  Tawny and Ben were tasked with delivering maintenance equipment and good stores to refugee colonies and displacement camps across the entire solar twin system. Most of them were in the nonpartisan controlled space routes, way out toward the edges of system space where most of the planets were far enough away from their respective star to be uninhabited, but rich in ores. That meant no Imperium and no Cabal. Which in turn meant no drama.

  They grinned at each other triumphantly. This was going to be an easy job, like taking candy from a baby. Or more to the point, it would be like taking Sympto’s top job from Sympto. Plus the take was huge. A hundred a fifty thousand yield bits. Not bad.

  Pointing out the first stop in their path, Ben said, “Okay, looks like Molos is first.”

  Tawny said, “Always wanted to go to Molos.” She actually hadn’t, but for this job she’d go anywhere and do almost anything.

  Chapter Six

  Controlled Space

  Trade Lanes

  The Planet Molos

  REX zipped into Molos space. The planet emerged from the cosmic depths showing an ever-growing orb of rich yellows, deep ochers and forest green, all threaded together by broad bands of oc
ean and cloud. Many considered Molos the “Origin Planet.” It was theorized that all of life originated in her ebbing bosom and spread across the many planets of the solar twins. Her ecosystems were the richest known, many of them cross-pollinating into swaths of unusual and bountiful life. The Imperium as well as the Cabal considered Molos off limits, both sides respecting her bounty enough to leave her out of the war. It had always struck the system’s multi-layered science community as ironic, that a planet with the most highly abundant life in the system never evolved an intellectually advanced specie. Nevertheless, with endless herds of Molosian dragon buffalo, seas of Molosian shark species, and entire continents of Molosian rain forest carnivores, there were no alien colonies in place, no military bases. Therefore, it made a wonderful place to construct an orbiting refugee colony.

  Haven Crest slowly came into view. It was a sprawling collection of tunnels and docking junctures with hubs and social centers placed abundantly throughout. The station had a modular construction with each of its hubs, nodes and annexes having been added over time taking on a big tangle of right-angles and crane platforms. Nothing matched. The whole place looked rigged as they restructured passage ducts from differing hardware—a Zyndo-Paxxis science orbiter to fit the junction mains of an Omicron station cupola, or big, garish offload bays of an Imperium substation slapped onto the operation decks of an Orbinii Helios rig. Station administration was lucky to get funding for reworked hardware, much less new parts. Haven Crest’s constant need of maintenance and repair, like all refugee colonies, created a steady market system for the Guild and black market haulers. They came and went at a constant rate.

  “Slowing to approach speed, zeroing in on relative rotation,” Ben said as they neared the structure. Haven Crest had a relatively low orbit caught between the planet’s tug and the nearest moon’s pull, Dalos. Between the two bodies, it matched Dalos’s orbit offering a constant beam of reflected solar light for the photovoltaic louvers to catch. They were enormous, bright solar collectors that jutted in and out, and to and fro from wherever they could safely assemble them. While Dalos glowered above the station at distance, the Molosian skies frothed and boiled below.