Smuggler Queen

by Tim C. Taylor

  Andrus sighed. Lily had never heard a mechanoid do that before. “I know it’s difficult for someone of your limited intellect to keep up, but I am an AI, not a robot.”

  “Whatever, metal head. You’re smart, though. Smarter than me. Right?”

  “Indubitably.”

  “Then you’ve already worked out that we’ll be back soon. Your boss needs us, which means this is the beginning of a long and intimate relationship, Andrus. Think on that.”

  Lily enjoyed the sight of the floating android shuddering with revulsion. It was her first win since stepping off Ghost Shark, and boy did it taste good!

  * * *

  “Khallini didn’t literally know your mother. Did he?”

  Fitz gave nothing away. He squatted in front of Lily as she steered the raft downriver from the methane waterfall.

  She left him to his silence in which he was processing Khallini’s weird insinuation. It sounded too bizarre to take seriously, but it was clearly troubling him.

  “Ma had a reputation in her youth,” he volunteered once they’d moored on the bank. “She was unconventional. Double-crossing too.”

  They walked down the methane riverbank toward the rendezvous they’d arranged with Ghost Shark, but Fitz would say no more on the topic.

  By the time they’d climbed the ladder into the luxury yacht and boosted for orbit, the captain was back to his usual irrepressible humor, telling tales of how the two of them had engaged Khallini in a battle of wills against dark sorcery—a version in which he had the decency to promote Lily into a far more active participant than she’d been at the time.

  He acted as if he’d forgotten the memories he’d stirred in Khallini.

  But Lily knew better.

  For the first time since she’d met him, she sensed that Fitz felt lost.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2: Green Fish

  Abandoned Research Station, Orbiting Omicron-San

  When the many races of the Exiles arrived in the Perseus Arm, three thousand years previously, the Zhoogenes immediately singled out the humans and labelled them extremists.

  They weren’t wrong.

  More than the other Exiled races, humans supplied the main drive to seek out truths in the realms of science, political ideology, religion, and so much more that took root in the earliest colonies of the Far Reach Federation. That was despite the Exiles having to overcome many existential crises. Even in this largely uninhabited sector of the galaxy, establishing new communities in a hostile universe was hard. Once the first rash of crises was over, the truth-seeking impulse grew ever stronger.

  New orthodoxies formed, only to be torn down by revisionist uprisings that replaced the old assumptions with new doctrines and dogma. They, in turn, would fall to the criticism of the future.

  It wasn’t that the existing Perseid civilizations lacked these drives. Just that none were so extreme as humans.

  Initially, the nonhuman Exiles defended their human allies. Without the humans and their monomaniacal obsessions, none of them would have escaped the Orion Spur. Over many centuries, they slowly came round to the Zhoogene way of thinking. It wasn’t that humans were evil people, as such, just that they could be, well…a little hard to handle sometimes.

  The quartet of long-abandoned research facilities orbiting the poison world of Omicron-San exemplified many aspects of this human extremism.

  In the last millennium, a radical political movement had burst onto the scene. Its well-received populist slogans had left it bloated with funds and supporters, but it lacked the ideological underpinnings to know what it should be radical about.

  A faction of this group had looked into Earth’s past and found the answer in socialism. They argued that the reason no society had ever freed itself from poverty and the curse of labor exploitation was because they had always lacked freely available, unlimited, and portable power generation. Infinite power for all; that had always been the missing pre-requisite for the socialist dream.

  The solution was to be the quantum bias generator.

  This was the scientific breakthrough that would deliver the social transformation of the galaxy.

  In great secrecy—to ensure only they could control the bias generator’s development and rollout—the organization channeled their funds into four research stations orbiting the third planet in the Omicron system. In size, composition, and the star it orbited, Omicron-San was nearly identical to Earth. But this world had taken a different path, becoming a hellish nightmare, lashed by the hurricane storms that raged in its sulfuric acid clouds.

  The work would be dangerous, but the researchers were convinced they were on the cusp of a new future. The project team at Omicron-San would be revered for thousands of years to come. Everyone knew it. They spoke of little else.

  Yet dangers abounded.

  Each orbital consisted of a central cylinder that spun about its axis. Four gravity modules connected to the central hub by kilometer-long tethers. These four orbitals were widely dispersed around the planet in case of catastrophe.

  Station Gamma exploded when first powering up. But the survivors persevered, clawing their way along the path that would take quantum bias from theoretical concept to practical reality.

  Two years into the project, a factional coup devastated the parent movement.

  The scheduled Omicron resupply ships never set off.

  The technicians all starved to death.

  Omicron-San was an unwanted world in a dead system, but rumors that something had taken place there spread, grew, and eventually convinced a wave of salvage rats to investigate.

  Valuable salvage was stripped quickly. Reaction mass, fuel pellets, conventional power generators, and medical gear went first. Data cores were stripped, though selling them was more difficult, and they were soon lost.

  Salvage teams had a poor reputation, but they weren’t savages. The corpses of the technicians were fired at the planet below, and a few solemn worlds spoken, commending the souls of whoever the hell they’d been.

  After the salvage rats left, no one visited the silent orbitals of Omicron-San for over a thousand years. Automated systems kept the three surviving stations spinning through the vacuum at a constant 67 seconds per revolution. Year after year. Century after century.

  Then a political historian researched the ancient movement and speculated on what the mysterious project could have been that so much money was sunk into it. His speculations were way off the mark, but others dug deeper until they came up with logs of numerous support missions sent to Omicron-San. They drew the connections.

  And now, salvage rats had returned.

  “Orion’s tits! I think I found it.”

  Still holding the laser cutter, Green Fish backflipped in excitement. She landed perfectly, which wasn’t difficult in the minimal-gee.

  “Cut that out,” Sinofar snapped on principle, but she sounded as delighted as Green Fish. That was the way Sinofar was—tough as old space boots one instant, borderline indulgent the next—ever since the day and night she’d spent in her cabin with Bronze on the journey to Eiylah-Bremah.

  Green Fish decided not to push her luck by pointing out to Sinofar that ‘cutting that out’ was exactly what she had been doing.

  From the outside, Green Fish could see Sinofar’s HUD light up with a drawing of the quantum bias field generator they’d been sent to acquire. It resembled a perforated exhaust pipe bent at one end into a J-shape.

  Sinofar thrust her head inside the hole Green Fish had cut through the hexagonal equipment bank. “That’s our baby,” she said. “Good work.”

  The praise made Green Fish radiate with joy, which was embarrassing.

  Join the Militia and…strip dark tech from abandoned space stations. When she’d been forced into the Militia, she’d thought it would be a career of riot control, intimidation, and protecting the privileged. If she’d known how it would turn out, maybe she’d have signed up willingly.

  After a few moments work
with a micro-plasma torch, Sinofar yanked the field generator out and held it aloft.

  Green Fish figured the chance of this junk pipe changing anything other than their credit balances was about zero point fuck all.

  But it was fun to imagine this compartment at the height of its operational use a dozen centuries ago.

  At the center of the hexagonal base, she’d cut into a ring that had once held something now long gone. Three devices that resembled particle cannons were suspended overhead, aimed at this missing element. They were three-meter-long tubes that terminated with lenses like a camera. In place of a gun breech, each cannon had a box peppered with data ports and plugged into fat power cables that draped onto the deck, their power source liberated a millennium ago.

  Back in its day, this room must have been electrified with hope. To believe you were part of something huge, something wonderful—very few people had that privilege.

  “We’ve got company,” Zan Fey commed. “I see two humanoids. I’m exiting the main cylinder for Grav Unit 3, and they are in pursuit. They appear unarmed. Get out here and show them the error of their ways.”

  “Roger that,” Sinofar acknowledged.

  “Shouldn’t we have told the boss we’ve got the prize?” asked Green Fish.

  “Our priority in these situations is to eliminate all opposition. Until then, everything else is a distraction. Activate your blaster and watch my six. We shall proceed to Grav Unit 3.”

  Hard-as-boots Sinofar was back in the saddle. Green Fish took a moment to spray sticky threads on the prize and attach it to the back of her suit. Then she hurried after the senior crewman.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3: Tavistock Fitzwilliam

  Ghost Shark, Jump Space

  Fitz had taken Ghost Shark out to four times the planetary radius above Hundra-7 before forming a rift tunnel and jumping through. Phantom had jumped at 1.1 in a pinch. Most private traffic jumped between 2 and 3. He told his crew he was jumping so far out from the gravity well because he was still testing out the luxury yacht they’d tactically acquired from Eiylah-Bremah’s late dictator. But the real reason had nothing to do with safety. Fitz needed to clear his head.

  That damned space wizard they’d left behind on the planet had Fitz buzzing with a whole new set of worries. And he wasn’t about to admit to his crew or Khallini how troubled he was.

  Capture Nyluga-Ree!

  The idea was preposterous.

  He could rescue his mislaid Viking without the assistance of that smock-clad, old prune.

  But then there was the money…

  Khallini had paid a fortune for the information Fitz had delivered on the ancient ship dug out of Rho-Torkis. The deal was even sweeter because Fitz had already won a reprieve from Nyluga-Ree by giving her the same intel.

  When they’d discussed the fee for kidnapping the Nyluga, Fitz had asked for three times the credits he’d just been paid. Khallini had agreed without hesitation, which showed what chump change this was to the sorcerer. Not to Fitz, though.

  With that amount, maybe they could hide out the coming troubles. He could even start paying his crew a salary, an awkward topic he couldn’t put off forever.

  He took the thumb-sized communication device from his jacket and gave it a click. Just a simple on then off.

  Somewhere out there in the galaxy, a twinned device would register that simple communication.

  Click! I’m still here.

  That was all it meant. But it meant a lot.

  His own device clicked back. Instantly, his fears about Khallini and Nyluga-Ree melted away to a level he could forget.

  It was a tiny sound, something you would ignore as the honest noise of a working starship unless you were listening for it.

  Izza was out there. In this moment. Connected to him via the little boxes in their hands.

  They clicked to each other most days, leaving it at that.

  He hoped she was thinking of him now because she was all he could think of.

  What was she doing? Where?

  She could be walking down one of Phantom’s passageways, eating with the crew, or trying to teach Lynx some manners. He closed his eyes and pictured her. Whatever she was doing, in his mind’s eye, she was doing it naked. And it was strenuous activity that bathed her in a sweat sheen that dripped over lush contours. Azhanti! They’d been apart for too long.

  He shifted the device to voice mode, praying she was able and willing to respond in kind.

  “Busy?” he asked when the voice comm mode indicator lit up.

  “Very. But you got two mikes.”

  “Okay.” His desire for her was a drug. He always needed more, so he held the device in front of him and switched to video mode.

  She did the same. A holographic view of his wife’s face projected in front of him. She was inside a helmet. He couldn’t see where she was, just her face. And she looked troubled.

  “Are you in space?” he asked.

  “Yes. Salvage operation on an abandoned research orbital. Turned out it wasn’t as abandoned as advertised. I’m okay for the moment. Verlys will sort things out.”

  Fitz wasn’t so sure. Izza’s breathing sounded heavy to him, but the sound from inside a helmet was always intimate.

  “Was there something in particular you wanted to talk about?” she asked.

  “Lord Khallini paid up for the data you unearthed. He also mentioned he knew my mother.”

  “Your mother? You must have misunderstood.”

  Fitz shook his head. He’d replayed that conversation too many times to have gotten it wrong. “His words were: ‘You remind me of your mother.’”

  “Have you heard from her? From Mama Zi’Alfu?”

  “No.”

  Fitz grimaced. Ma was a noxious topic he liked to keep buried deep beneath the surface of his mind. “Izza, would you be so kind as to pay a visit to your mother-in-law? I want to understand the connection. Khallini wouldn’t have mentioned it lightly, and my instinct says it’s important, however nonsensical it appears at the moment.”

  Her beautiful eyes rolled low to look at something below her. Her face pinched with worry, but she fixed her gaze back on the camera’s focus spot. “You and your damned instincts. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, the more annoying they are, the more accurate they’ll be. Your gift of foresight is far stronger than you admit to yourself, Tavistock.”

  Fitz adopted a wounded expression. Izza didn’t want to visit his mother, but he knew she would do it anyway.

  Suddenly, Izza gasped in shock. Fear tightened her face. “Bylzak! I’m being shot at.”

  “I’ll go. Be safe.” Fitz reached for the device to switch it off.

  “Not yet. You’re my human rogue, Fitzy. Tell me you haven’t forgotten.”

  “You own my heart, my lady. Forever. You know that.”

  “I do, but I still need to hear it. I’ll be in touch. Stay alive, Tavistock. I have plans for you. Out.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 4: Izza Zan Fey

  Abandoned Research Station, Orbiting Omicron-San

  Izza fired two bolts at the pursuers climbing the tether after her.

  She missed.

  Aiming was difficult on the disk she was riding up to Grav Unit 3. That it worked at all was surprising, but the ride was jerky to say the least. She hit the red button to bring it to a stop. Then she undid the strap around her chest and knelt on the platform, cupping her blaster’s grip in both gauntleted hands. She hated gunfights in gloves, but this was the life she’d chosen. With knees pushed up against the platform’s rim, she leaned out with her blaster ready.

  They were waiting for her. And there were three of them now!

  The vacuum lit with brilliant flashes as blaster fire headed her way.

  She managed to squeeze off just one shot before a bolt slammed into the platform’s base. The shock kicked through her, and she pivoted on her knees and fell forward. Still taking fire, she rammed her toes into the rim and u
sed them to pull herself back behind the cover of the disk.

  She hit the stud to reactivate the platform’s motion while comming her team. “Our new friends are playing dirty. Shoot on sight.”

  “Copy that,” Sinofar replied. “We’ll get to you, boss. But we’re having to fight our way out.”

  “Dammit.” Izza allowed herself a few seconds of cursing. She’d let herself get distracted, and Sinofar hadn’t been her usual paranoid self lately. She should never have listened to Fitz when he suggested they split up.

  No matter. Next time, they would do better.

  Sparks flew from the motor that moved the platform along the tether. Although the platform was still wobbling and jerking, she realized it was no longer advancing up the line to the grav unit.

  More bolts slammed into the metal beneath her feet, warping the material with their intense heat. One more bolt, and it would be her internal organs that were melting. She cued an evasive maneuver program in the thrust pack wrapped around her chest and readied to spring off the disk.

  “Here comes backup,” announced Fregg, who had remained on Phantom with Lynx.

  Izza’s first instinct was to order Fregg to keep back, knowing that with her inept flying, Phantom’s logistics manager was as likely to ram the central cylinder as do anything halfway useful.

  Another bolt hit the disk from below, blowing off the front half and shattering it into dozen pieces. This is getting desperate…

  “Hit ’em, Fregg,” she said.

  Phantom was a hot spark streaming across the star field just above the haze of Omicron-San’s atmosphere. The spark grew quickly. Too quickly.

  “You’re coming in too fast,” she whispered.

  Brilliant green dashes lanced out of the spacecraft’s nose and the turrets on the upper and lower hull. The barrage crossed the gap too fast for the eye to track and lashed the vicinity of the space station with blaster cannon fire.