Valyien Boxed Set 1

by James David Victor

  “Who?” Eliard said innocently. “My name is Captain Landers, and my ship is named the May Bell.”

  His attempt was not fooling the guard, however. “Yeah, right. Just follow me, Martin—you and your accomplice here.”

  “Who, me?” Cassandra did a very convincing job of looking affronted. “I have no idea who this man is. I was just in there buying a watch!”

  The guard’s face was impassive. “Really. Hands up. Now.”

  “I’ll take this to the highest court!” Eliard crowed, putting on the air of an affronted merchant.

  “You do that, sir. We’ll see what Armcore has to say about that.” The guard gestured with his rifle and Eliard looked at the semi-circle of guns one more time. Could he reach his pistol in time? Not before they’d filled him with burning plasma, no doubt. Dammit. I seem to be standing at the wrong end of a lot of guns recently, Eliard thought. Ever since we picked up Cassandra, in fact. He felt a burr of annoyance as he complied.

  At a nod from the burly senior officer, they were frisked and both of their blaster pistols were confiscated, along with a handheld stunner from Cassandra, and a stiletto knife from Eliard.

  “Be careful with that. It’s a family heirloom!” El glowered at the security guard, who put it away in his pack. That, at least, was true.

  “This way.” They were shoved down the avenue toward a set of metal stairs, with security guards training guns at their backs and in front of them.

  Get a plan. I have to get a plan, Eliard thought. He still had his wrist communicator. Could he discretely open a channel to Val and Irie? Although he wasn’t entirely certain that an angry Duergar would make his situation that much better. His eyes tracked the guards around them in the slightly more confined space. If they bunched up a bit more, they wouldn’t have space to draw their weapons… he thought as he slowed his steps. They turned at the nearest landing, and the stairwell opened to reveal the larger halls and vaults that comprised the underside of the platforms. It was like walking into a mechanical cave system, with the hisses of steam and the buzzes of electrical noise as the prisoners saw tall walls of apartments hanging over balconies filled with smaller docked ships.

  They must be subaquatic, El thought, seeing the closed-petal doors that they faced. The captain tried not to think of the leagues of water just a few meters outside.

  “Where are you taking us?” Cassandra said indignantly. “When my embassy hears about this, you will all lose your jobs!”

  “Just keep moving.” The senior indicated the end of their stairwell, where a white hover-van had already pulled up, with the back doors unfolding to reveal a small cell.

  Oh crap, El thought as they rounded the last landing. Now or never… He tried to catch Cassandra’s eye, but she was too busy being shoved by her own guard as El forcefully slipped on one of the steps, entangling his foot with one of the guards behind him, and folded into a roll.

  “Hugh!” he heard the grunt of surprise and pain from the man in front of him, and then felt the whumpf of pain as his own shoulder impacted on the hard metal stairs below. He was rolling, his ears ringing, but the impacts were less painful and more squishy, quite frankly, as he rolled through the bodies of the security guards like a bowling ball.

  He groaned when he finally came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, in front of the security hover-van. This might not have been my finest hour. He jump-pushed himself back to his feet, spinning around to connect a solid boot with a rising security officer’s helmet.

  “Ow!” He hopped back as his foot rang with pain. Cassandra had already relieved one of the fallen guards of their gun and was struggling to her feet as something clicked behind them both.

  Oh crap, the captain thought.

  “Get in the van, El, or you’re going to be seeing the world through a new hole in that empty head of yours,” he heard a voice say. A familiar voice.

  “Trader Hogan?” the captain said uncertainly. I thought he died on Charylla. In front of him, Cassandra had spun around but quickly froze when she must have seen the number of guns pointing at her.

  “Yeah, I still got my boys with me. You surprised to see us again, El?” the little trader sneered at him in his throaty voice. “Drop it, sister,” he barked at Cassandra. “And get in.”

  Sullenly, Cassandra dropped the stolen blaster onto one of the prostate bodies of the guards below and held up her hands as they were corralled into the back of the hover-van. There was a thump from the rear doors and the swish of the driver’s compartment as Hogan and his three lackeys got in the front.

  “Just when this day couldn’t get any better,” El muttered.

  The security van was clearly stolen, as were the white uniforms that Hogan and his goons wore, all of them ill-fitting and looking about as professional as a costume party. El and Cassandra sat in the back of the featureless white cell on two steel benches, opposite each other. A small grill separated them from the van’s front cab, through which El could see the people he had thought were dead.

  They weren’t shackled or manacled, but with no weapons and no features to their environment, El realized that he might as well be. He tapped as discretely as he could on his wrist communicator but got no response.

  “The van is probably running shielding,” Cassandra whispered to him under her breath.

  Through the grill, El could see the bald head of the small and vicious Hogan, crenelated with its nubs of sub-quantum transponders. He was a good foot and a half shorter than the heavy bodyguards that sat on either side of him.

  Might as well say hello. El cleared his throat. “Well, thank you for racing to my rescue, Hogan. What a pleasant surprise!” he said, knowing that his good humors had always annoyed the hell out of the man that had been his boss.

  “Pleasant for who, me?” Hogan laughed as the hover-car sped through the subaquatic halls and corridors of the Mela platform, going to who-knows-where, the captain thought.

  “How’s, uh, business?” El tried again.

  “Half of my stock is scattered across the Trader’s Belt, along with some of my best ships, if that’s what you mean, Eliard?” the little man drawled. “And a little birdy tells me that it’s all your fault. You called Armcore in.”

  “What? Why on earth would I do that!?” El sputtered.

  “You remember Merriman, don’t you?” Hogan spat. “He told me everything. How you stole from Armcore, how Armcore came looking for you, and took the opportunity to do what they’ve been wanting to do for generations now: attack the Belt.”

  Merriman, that worm. El shared a dark look with Cassandra. After stealing—liberating, he thought—Alpha, he had fled to the only place in near space that he had thought he could hide: the pleasure cruiser of Maximillus Merriman, a fellow disgraced noble. But Merriman had sold him out to Armcore, and now, it seemed, had repeated his good manners by selling him out to Trader Hogan as well.

  “So… It’s gone…?” El said warily. Did Armcore really destroy the Trader’s Belt? He had known that they always hated the Trader’s Belt of non-aligned merchants, guilds, smugglers, and pirates, but to kick that hornets’ nest? That was a large step.

  “No, course it isn’t, you idiot! Just a bit burned up, that’s all. We’ll rebuild. We have before and will again. And the Coalition knows that they can’t afford to lose a place like the Belt,” Hogan mused.

  He was right in that at least, El agreed. Having a non-aligned, barely-legal province had turned out to be useful both against and for the Coalition and Armcore for a long time now. Just every now and again, the Coalition gets to flex its muscles and put the Belt back into its place, he supposed. And he was the excuse for that.

  “You have to understand, Hogan, that I had nothing to do with what Armcore did to your stock…”

  “Gleesonian crap, Martin,” Hogan snapped as they whirred around a corner. “But I’ve had enough of your excuses now. You still owe me the twenty thousand credits, remember?”

  Really? El could have screame
d. We’re going to go over that again? It was Hogan’s contention that he owed him ten thousand credits for a delivery not delivered, and had doubled the price for the inconvenience. Which was ridiculous. The captain scowled. He had never failed to deliver it, he had stolen it. Two entirely different things. The delivery, a small storage case worth of something, still sat in one of the ship’s lockers as far as he was aware. With all of this business with Armcore and the hybrid alien intelligence, he hadn’t had the opportunity to try and pick the digital lock yet!

  “Well, Hogan, if you get me back to my ship, I am sure that we can renegotiate some very generous terms for you…” El said. As much as he was scared, and as deeply as he knew that Trader Hogan was one of the vilest godfathers of the Belt worlds, he at least felt a little better trying to bargain for his life with him rather than with Armcore or any Mela security guard.

  We have a mutual understanding. El considered his options. And that would be a shared love of getting filthy rich. All he would have to do would be to convince Trader Hogan that he was worth far more alive than dead.

  “How generous can you be right now, Captain, with half of the known galaxy trying to track you and your ship down?” Trader Hogan laughed. It was a cruel laugh. “I lost over a million credits in that Armcore attack, and then there’s the loss of earnings, the compensation, interest…”

  “Oh, come on!” El burst out. This was crazy.

  “So I have decided to call in my debt with you early, Martin. It’s no longer standing at ten thousand, or a million credits.” Trader Hogan said smoothly. “We’re now talking your ship, and without you and your crew in it.”

  “You can’t take the Mercury,” El hissed. It was his. Or rather, it was his father’s prized racing yacht, retro-fit by the best mechanic in Coalition space (Irie Hanson) to be a sleek raiding boat. It was also the love of Eliard’s life.

  “Really? We’ll see about that.” Hogan laughed as the hover-van screamed to a halt and the prisoners were thrown against the grill.

  “Look, Hogan, I promise we can work something out!” El said, suddenly desperate. “We’ve got a big deal going down, a really profitable one…” He thought about the mission to break into Armcore Headquarters, talk to Ponos. Surely there had to be some way to turn that into a profitable venture?

  “I don’t want to hear your schemes and fancies anymore, El,” Hogan said as he and the others slid out of the cab.

  “What’s he going to do?” Cassandra looked at the captain in alarm.

  “I don’t know,” El said, a second before the rear of the van hissed open, and the burly guards were charging them, waving their guns in their faces and grabbing their arms and legs.

  El and Cassandra fought, obviously. They kicked and screamed and bucked, but the guards were too strong as they dragged them from the back of the van and held them down on the cold metal floor, now full of bruises. They were in some out of the way loading bay of the Mela platform. Other hover-machines were parked here and there, collecting rust and grease. The hiss of steam and heavy machinery could be heard around them.

  “Hogan, you can’t do this. I’ve got one million Coalition credits coming to me, straight from House Archival!” he begged, remembering the deal he had made with Agent Simmons. The guards knelt on him, crushing the air of him. At least they weren’t punching him anymore.

  “Really?” Hogan mused. “Isn’t that a coincidence. I watched my home get blown up by Armcore battleships, Martin.” Hogan’s eyes flared in rage. “Too bad you haven’t got a million Coalition credits right now in front of you, right?”

  “But I can get them. We can get them, me and my crew and the Mercury…” El gasped under the weight of the two thugs in stolen Mela security outfits.

  “Too late, Martin. You had your chance. You blew it.” With a nod, they were hauled to their feet and shoved back up a small metal gantry with a wire-mesh floor.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” El hazarded a look behind him. It was one of the rose-petal airlocks. They are going to throw us out of the airlock? He thought in alarm, turning back to fight the thugs as Cassandra fought beside him.

  But with a painful thump and a cruel laugh, El’s face connected with a heavy fist and he saw stars and lost balance. There was the bleep and screech of metal opening behind them and then he felt the electric tingle as his body passed through an energy field—and into the heavy wet of the Mela ocean.

  5

  Hacked Ticket

  “Captain? Captain!” Irie tried the ship’s communication array one more time, but, just like all her attempts with their wrist communicators to reach Eliard, it resulted in blank static.

  Frack. She cursed the controls once more, as she heard the pounding steps of the Duergar behind her. He was getting, as he called it, ‘tetchy,’ which was not an idea that filled her with confidence. Tetchy Duergars had been known to start wars, or at least to end them.

  “Something is wrong,” Val muttered, his voice like crushed rocks.

  As much as Irie didn’t want to admit it, she had to agree. “I think you’re right. Maybe Armcore found them?”

  Val growled, reaching for his large meson rifle, what would be a cannon to any smaller humanoid. “We’ll see how long they can keep them for…” He grinned savagely.

  “Val, we’re talking about an entire platform full of people—guards, mercenaries, and who knows what else. Need I remind you that we still need to make it past the orbital satellites and out of here? We don’t want to cause a major disturbance on a Coalition home world!”

  Val just grunted and shrugged. Such things weren’t much of a priority to a Duergar, she saw.

  Phzt! There was a bleep from the ship’s console behind her, and she turned to see an electronic message scrolling across one of the screens.

  CODED MESSAGE RECEIVED. SECURITY CONTROLS BYPASSED. MESSAGE DOWNLOADING IN 3…2...1. Received!

  “Oh, great.” Irie knew that there were only a few servers capable of overcoming a ship’s weak AI to force messages into their system. It would have to be the Mela infrastructure computers, or Armcore, or something Coalition-sanctified. Clenching her teeth in annoyance, she clicked the buttons under the screen to see what it was they had sent them.

  And then she stopped, her face puzzled as the digital light of the words played across her face.

  “What is it? The captain?” Val grunted from the steps up to the cockpit of the Mercury.

  “No, it’s schematics. Plans.” Irie frowned. She was looking through a collection of highly technical documents showing both the internal layout of a building—a very large building, from the looks of it—as well as the layout of a sensor grid around the outside of it.

  This is an artificial moon, she thought, looking at the vaguely hexagonal shape that rotated on the black field, and around it was a sea of satellites and drone sensors, from which extended dotted red lines to form an almost impenetrable net around the station. But not entirely impenetrable, she noticed, the red dotted lines flashing green in a seemingly random rhythm as the system had to manage the energy field load or else start blowing their generators.

  She swiped her way into the station schematics, finding that large areas were blanked out. The plans did not give any details as to what were in those areas, but the plans did show that the station contained galleries wide enough for spaceships to fly straight into and dock with a huge variety of loading platforms. There appeared to be processing and manufacturing areas, as well as layers and layers of barracks and training grounds.

  “Oh, crap,” she whispered when she saw the logo on one of the documents that the Mercury had been sent. It was Armcore.

  “What is it?” Val repeated.

  “We’ve just been sent a map to Armcore Prime. No, a map of Armcore Prime,” Irie confirmed. “Along with shift rotations and even some security codes.” Her fingers tapped the edge of the console nervously. “Whatever the captain and Cassandra have been up to in there, they don’t seem to be playing things quiet
ly…”

  “A new job,” Val said in a pleased manner. “I, for one, will be glad to get off of this planet, and go somewhere where I can use my gun freely!”

  “Well, I’m not sure that Armcore Prime will let you walk around with a gun any more than Mela did,” Irie muttered, but the transmission had given her an idea. It had been sent through sub-quantum protocols, with a high level of sophistication that could download direct into the Mercury Blade’s navigational computer. It made her think of how the Mela platform’s navigational computers were probably the largest anywhere nearby. If she could find a way to hack into them, she might be able to boost the signal to the captain.

  I could find out where they were.

  “What are you doing now?” Val glowered. “We have to go searching for the captain!”

  “You go,” she said in annoyance. “I have an idea how to find him.” She realized a few seconds too late that that was the last thing she should have advised the Duergar to do as he angrily seized his heavy metal shod mace and stalked toward the hatchway door.

  “But don’t start a riot!” she called after him. The hatchway hissed open and the gunner climbed out.

  “Dammit!” she said again, turning back to the computer to try and find a way to locate the captain, and quickly. She knew that there had to be a way. There was always a way, and she could speak to machines in the same way that others might speak to plants. The only thing different about Irie Hanson was that most of the time, the machines responded.

  There. She knew that every ship, upon being allowed to board the Mela platforms, would have to accept an electronic ‘ticket,’ a small piece of code that Mela central computers ‘gave’ to each ship so that they wouldn’t be classed as a hostile. This was a standard procedure and operated in the same way that data-cookies registered precisely where you had visited inside the data-space. Within just a few moments, she had found the electronic ticket and was starting to break it open to find a way to reverse-hack back into Mela computers.