by T. R. Harris
Peanut and the others were on the bridge, crowding the forward viewport, watching the planet grow larger by the minute. They were only moments from entering the atmosphere, their first location already locked into the nav computer.
“Let’s just hope I’m not blowing smoke,” Peanut said. “But if I’m wrong, then it would go against all laws of probability.”
“And if not on Annadin,” said Tim Robertson, “then there are ninety-nine other worlds in the Zone to check out.”
Gill smiled at his friend and teammate. “Now that’s the positive attitude I like. Better than that of Captain Cain—the old sourpuss.”
Riyad continued with his briefing. “Since Annadin was the site of the most recent flare-up between empires, I’m expecting most salvage operations on the planet have packed up and left, at least temporarily,” he said. “The more operations taking place, the better the chance of pirates being in the area.”
“I thought you said all pirate activity had stopped,” said Toby Wills.
“I said that more for Adam’s benefit than as a fact,” Riyad admitted. “I pay more attention to such things than he does.”
“You mean there are pirates in the area?”
“There are, but that’s why I picked Annadin. If any place is free of major pirate activity, it will be here. Relax, my friends. We are in a single small ship, not a freighter. Even if pirates are in the area, we are too small for them to bother with.”
For the next several minutes, Riyad busied himself with landing procedures. The small town he’d selected was in a mountain range bisecting the central continent, with terrain that didn’t allow for a spaceport of any size. According to the Galactic Library, the town once had a population of twenty-five thousand that supported a pair of banks and a decent-sized commercial district. Riyad reasoned that without a spaceport, the residents of the town of Lasvic would have been unable to escape Kracion’s attack leaving everything they had in the hamlet, including their slowly decaying bodies.
Fortunately, during his previous expeditions, he’d found that bodies weren’t as prevalent as one would expect. Most people fled the cities with their families before the attack, so their corpses would be found in out of the way places like caves, basements or underground bunkers. Unfortunately, the radiation still penetrated most shelters, and for those who did survive the initial neutron attacks, they later starved to death in their hideaways. The result was that the streets of Annadin—as well as on the other Dead Worlds—weren’t strewn with rotting corpses numbering in the billions.
The Charlie H. was small enough to land just about anywhere, even without a spaceport. Riyad set the ship down in a central park, now covered in black dirt rather than grass and dotted with hideously shaped stalks of former trees giving the scene the look of a set from an old black and white horror movie. The park was in the middle of the commercial district, and according to the maps, was within walking distance of the banks. The team was dressed in environmental suits and out the airlock almost before the landing smoke dissipated.
Riyad could tell that at one time, the community of Lasvic must have been idyllic. There were majestic, snow-capped mountains surrounding the wide central river valley and the remnants of now-dead forests were everywhere. Everything was now grey, brown or black, contrasting with the stark white of the snow at the higher elevations. Riyad could see from the expressions of the SEALs that the reality of the Dead Worlds was much more impactful than were the stories. The idea of dropping down to a dead world and scooping up the discarded wealth of the former natives was an alluring idea. Seeing it in action took some getting used to. Here was an entire planet with only the basic forms of life surviving, including some hardy vegetation near the poles. Otherwise, it was stark and depressing, exacerbated by the unnatural quiet, broken only by the sound of a distant river and the swirling of the wind. No birds sang or insects buzzed. For Peanut and his friends, this was their first exposure to what Hell would be like in real life.
“Let’s get this over with,” Peanut announced solemnly through his intercom.
He set off toward the nearest bank, carrying a supply of explosives in a satchel over his shoulder. If there were anything SEALs knew how to handle, it was explosives. If money were in the banks, it would be in vaults requiring forced entry. They came prepared.
As it was on most civilized worlds in the galaxy—at least those that cater to Humanoid life—there was a familiarity with what they saw, even though non-Humans had built everything. But most advanced mammals had the same wants, needs and desires, and with basically the same physical form, their structures were very similar. The result was the four Humans strolling down a normal-looking street lined with shops, all of which still had product on display. The team was encouraged. The natives didn’t have time to take anything with them, nor had they come back afterward. Neither had any salvagers, as far as they could tell.
To their surprise, they found the front door to the first bank unlocked. Uneasy about what they might find inside, the team nervously entered. To their relief, no bodies littered lobby area.
“All right, spread out,” Peanut said. “Check teller drawers—if they have them—and find the main vault. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
Rather than a long counter of teller stations, the interior of the bank was divided into private cages, with a quick count showing twelve placed in the large room. Riyad entered one and went to a central kiosk. A computer screen jutted from a counter. He moved behind the table and looked for a drawer of some kind. He feared that the bank was built like the one in Balamar, with all transactions done through remote access to an underground vault. However, Riyad had enough experience with how things operated in the galaxy to know that was unusual, the result of the heightened security requirements for the facility on Liave-3. In a peaceful community like Lasvic, there should be no need for such precautions.
There was a drawer, and Riyad opened it. To his relief—and joy—he found a series of trays containing Juirean credits of various color denominations. JCs were a little smaller than credit cards and color-coded. The credits were of a hybrid composite material that made them virtually indestructible, including from high levels of radiation. The chips still needed to be decontaminated, but it would be safe to put a large supply of them in a tumbler with the de-con foam, and a half-hour later, they’d be ready to go.
“I’ve got credits here!” a voice called out in his helmet.
“Me, too! Bonanza!” said another. “How about the vault?”
“There’s a locked door back here. It leads further into the building. Bring up the charges, Peanut.”
Riyad quickly cleaned out the drawer, placing the loose chips in a sack he wore on his utility belt. He made a quick count as he did so: about a thousand JCs. It was a good start. He wouldn’t be able to take them aboard the ship until they were either stored in a container or de-conned. But he just wanted to have them with him. The practice was a throwback to his pirating days when it was good to take a few smaller items with them in case they had to ditch the main treasure along the way. It was better to have something than nothing.
By the time Riyad got to the door in question, Peanut already had set a small charge on the locking mechanism and was stepping away for cover. It wasn’t a powerful explosive, just enough to break open the lock.
“Fire in the hole!” Peanut announced moments before he triggered the explosion. The door drifted open on squeaky hinges.
As expected, this wasn’t the entrance to the vault, but it did lead to it. The huge safe was secured with a familiar-looking grey metal door and a complex locking mechanism. Peanut stepped up to the door and tried opening it, on the off chance it had been left open. It was locked.
After studying the door for a few minutes, the SEALs set to work, placing a series of five charges at key points on the door. Then they returned to the lobby area. This explosion would be much more powerful than the other.
Unable to cover their ears throu
gh their helmets, the sound was muffled somewhat, even though it was still pretty loud.
Before the smoke cleared, the team was back in the corridor leading to the vault.
The door was a mangled mess, sitting cockeyed in the opening, with most of it off the hinges. It took some effort by all four super-strong Humans to get the door to move. Next time they would bring crowbars.
Peanut was the first into the vault. Riyad couldn’t make out the interior too well from the residual smoke trapped inside. But he did hear Peanut whistle.
“Holy shit! You guys ain’t gonna believe this!”
As the smoke cleared, the four men stood mesmerized, staring at neat stacks of Juirean credits in plastic holders. The back wall of the tiny vault was full of them, blue ones, green ones, and even a fair amount of the high-denomination red ones. Riyad stepped up to the chips and ran a Geiger Counter over them. To his delight, they showed no sign of radioactive contamination, having been protected by the airtight walls and door of the vault. Even so, he knew the air outside still carried trace amounts of radioactivity, although it was mainly the soil that held most of the contamination these days.
“Next time, let’s bring sealed containers,” Riyad suggested. “If we can get the credits back to the ship without too much exposure to the air, we may not have to de-con them.”
“What I like most about what you just said was: Next time,” said Tim. “Just think how many vaults there are just like this one on the planet. I’ve made a quick count. There are almost half a million credits in this room alone. Not a lot by big-city standards, but big enough for little Lasvic. And there’s another bank in town.”
To an outsider, it would have appeared silly for four, middle-aged men to celebrate as they did for the next few minutes, hugging and slapping backs. This was their first bank in the first small town they tried. And they still had jewelry stores and other businesses to check out. Riyad could already see a multi-million credit take just from this one town. This was a game-changer, a way for not only he but Adam and Sherri as well, to escape L-3 and possibly return to Earth. After all, money had a way of making a lot of problems disappear.
For Riyad Tarazi, he was no longer a simple merchant, selling and renting out salvage equipment. He was now a full-time salvager and on his way to making a friggin’ fortune.
As quickly as the high of success arrived, it faded just as fast, but only by a little.
As the team walked to the next bank, they passed several retail stores, although none were exclusively jewelry stores. They entered a few, finding all the cash drawers empty and the selection of jewelry and precious gems to be lacking. And it wasn’t that the merchandise had already taken. It was that it didn’t exist in any great quantity in the first place. That’s when Riyad realized expensive ornamentation—such as they were searching for—was subjective and varied from species to species, culture to culture. As it turned out, he natives of Annadin weren’t that into personal decoration. Even their fashion sense lacked style, as evidenced by the clothing still hanging in the stores. That was fine, Riyad thought. They would only take cash from the planet, which was preferred. To be worth anything, jewelry had to be converted into cash first. Cash, however, was already cash.
The second bank was a larger version of the first, which made the men salivate with anticipation, imagining the fortune awaiting them inside; however, Riyad got a sense of foreboding when there were no Juirean credits left in the cash drawers at the kiosks. The SEALs turned their attention to the vault they found at the rear of the building, keeping their concerns to themselves. It was too early to panic.
To their delight, the heavy metal door wasn’t locked, but when they opened it, they got the shock of their lives.
The room was filled with the slowly decaying remains of a couple of dozen corpses strewn about the floor in a twisted mass of agony. Apparently, when Kracion’s attack came, some of the natives sought refuge in the secure and highly shielded vault to protect them from the radiation. It worked—to a point—because the dead didn’t have the tell-tale signs of radiation poisoning. Rather, some had died from starvation. But there was more to the story. After finding that the food and water supply in the town was contaminated, several of the natives returned to the vault and set about eating their companions. This didn’t go over very well for the victims. The last few hours in the vault must have been even more horrific than before, as native fought native for the right to survive. In the end, dried blood now covered the floor and even a few of the bodies had died while still in the throes of combat.
After a few moments of staring at the horrific scene, the team moved farther into the large vault looking for the cash. There was some, but not much. Someone—and not salvagers—had already raided this particular vault. Even so, they were still batting .500 when it came to finding money in the banks.
“There’s still a few credits left,” he said to the dejected SEALs. “And we have hundreds of other towns to check out. Let’s not get discouraged.”
“It’s just that we started with such a bang,” said Peanut, unable to hide his disappointment. “I should have known it was too good to be true. And without any jewelry…” He let the sentence trail off.
“It’s not a problem, Peanut,” said Toby. “As Riyad said, we still have a lot more places to check—like the whole friggin’ planet. And really, all we need is one decent-sized bank with all the money still inside and we’re set. Already, we have almost a million credits, and we’re just getting started.”
“You’re right,” Peanut agreed through a weak smile. “Let’s get back to the ship and get this money cleaned enough so we can take it aboard. And then let’s go find ourselves another bank to rob.”
“Hoorah!” the men called out, albeit without a lot of enthusiasm.
For the most part, they would hold their disappointment until they’d checked out more locations on Annadin, while reminding themselves that there was another ninety-nine dead worlds in the Zone. They still had a viable plan, although just not as viable as it once seemed.
8
The conference eventually got underway at Capt. Cain’s Bar & Grill, much to the chagrin of the residents of coastal Balamar. Lan Road outside the bar was closed to thru traffic and rerouted two blocks further inland. Pedestrian traffic was also restricted, having to be screened by security personnel and only allowed to pass on the other side of the street. The practice impacted several of the businesses nearby, creating even more discontent.
Adam was disgusted—but not surprised—with how things started. Even before the conference began, there was a major negotiating session to determine the size of each delegation. They settled on the odd number of nineteen people each. And then they moved to the security guards. That number was twenty from each empire. The number was so high because each station had to be manned by a member of each race—Human and Juirean—to ensure the integrity of both. It seemed stupid to Adam, but who was he to complain? He was getting paid, and already the crowd in the center of his bar was wolfing down drinks and munching on his food. The Humans jumped at the chance to have fresh barbeque off his outside grill, and even the Juireans took a liking to it, harking back to their primal past as carnivores. For too long, they’d subsisted on processed food stock. Having the real thing was a delight, although Adam could anticipate bouts indigestion since the aliens weren’t used to eating real meat.
It seemed odd that Adam felt more of a kinship with the Juirean Quid-Elder Quanin than he did to the Human delegation. Here were the most Humans he’d seen in one place for over two years; one would think he’d gravitate to them. But these were bureaucrats and State Department officials, with only a spattering of military personnel thrown in. And their attitude toward him and Sherri could be described as cool. They knew their reputation and Adam got the sense they were intimidated, expecting the two famous Humans to insert themselves into the proceedings somehow. The officials agreed to meet at Cain’s because there was a Human connection with the loca
tion. Some appeared to be having second thoughts.
The Human delegation was led by a rather stunning woman named Jeanne Euker. She was a roving Ambassador with the Union State Department, and although she was in her early fifties, her smooth skin, long black hair, and piercing blue eyes defied her age. She exuded intensity and seriousness that would be respected by the Juireans, who were themselves intense and serious.
Before the conference, Adam explained how his bar wasn’t set-up for such an event, but no one would listen. Now it was apparent he was right. He had no long conference tables, only round ones for dining. These were now set up in two long rows with the inner edges of each table touching. The Humans sat on one side while the Juireans sat along the other row. Ambassador Euker and Councilmember Quanin sat in the middle facing each other. Two large roll-down monitor screens were hung from the ceiling at the end of each row and electronic technicians set up equipment for the displays. Within the main conference room, four sets of guards stood at the front and rear of the bar, looking outward, wary of any threats.
Adam and Sherri were begrudgingly given seats at the end of the Human row near the bar. In other parts of the bar, staff still worked, including two aliens cooking on the outside grill, along with four more in the kitchen. Kaylor and Jym were behind the long bar, keeping the delegations hydrated with a combination of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Adam was surprised to see the Juireans had no restriction on drinking on the job, potentially setting up some interesting negotiations as the day wore on.
Adam didn’t know if a coin toss decided who would go first, but it seemed appropriate when Quanin opened the proceedings.