by T. R. Harris
Copernicus Smith was another story. He had worked for a super-secret agency of the Human government as a deep-cover spy, using the legend as a starship repairman to gain valuable intel on the various criminal cartels operating within the Kidis Frontier. Even though it was just a cover, Coop was a very good mechanic, and he parlayed his reputation as a less-than-reputable character to find work repairing cartel starships that no honest company would touch. It was a pretty good gig, until he got the assignment to blackmail Adam and Riyad into stealing a newly discovered alien artifact. One thing lead to another and his next assignment involved selling the two Humans to the Klin as a means of tracking the aliens to one of their hidden Colony Ships. The mission was a success—sort of--but that was another story.
While on Earth after the Klin war—and counting all the money he and Sherri didn’t have—Coop began to put out feelers for mechanic work, eventually landing the job at the Incus research facility. It didn’t pay well and the facility was located in the middle of nowhere. But they were desperate. He and Sherri were required to live aboard the station, which suited them fine. They didn’t have anywhere else to go…which wasn’t exactly true.
By then Adam had taken possession of the huge Klin Colony Ship and offered them a place to stay. But considering the added cost of running the station with them aboard, as well as the fact that Coop and Adam would be in the same place, Sherri encouraged her current boyfriend to take the job on the distant research station. She was looking for a break, a new start without all the drama.
Of course, that was before they discovered what the scientists were researching on the station. Dark matter collectors and generators; pretty fascinating stuff, especially when she got wind of the money the Incus—and their brains, the Gracilians—where being offered for the technology. And when the aliens turned down all the offers that’s when they heard from Maris-Kliss. If the Gracilians weren’t interested in letting this wondrous new technology out to the galaxy, then Sherri and Coop would help MK do it. It only seemed right. And for three-quarters of a million credits, why not?
Everything had gone smoothly, up until they were in space and bolting back to the galaxy. Then two hours out from the station, the engines shut down for the first time. After that, it was almost every two hours like clockwork. Coop figured he’d gotten a total of twenty hours sleep during the eighteen days before they met up with the MK starship, after that, maybe another six hours or so. He was like the walking dead when he and Sherri entered a CW comm cafe to rent a station.
Continuous Wormhole communications was all the rage these days. Having been invented by the Klin ten years before, it allowed for instantaneous links between stations for up to an hour, before the natural movement of the galaxy broke the connection. But that was much better than how it used to be. The technology was still spreading across the galaxy, with nearly every starship equipped with the system. However, it wasn’t as widespread on the planets of the Kidis Frontier. Sure, large land-based centers had CW comms, but homes seldom did; it was far too expensive. So, in every community there were CW cafes set up where individuals could rent time to make interstellar calls. Being as far out along the outer trim of the galaxy, there weren’t a lot of cafes on Navior, with just a handful in the city of Prannis.
“The system is down,” the native clerk announced as soon as the Humans walked in.
Sherri shook her head. She had a good idea why. Although separating the dark matter components had worked on the gravity drive, it didn’t help with their CW comm. The system was affected more by subtle changes in the curvature of space around the ship, something dark matter played havoc with. The system remained down during the entire trip from the station to Navior. And now it appeared the DMC was also affecting local CW comms.
“Is there another facility nearby?” she asked, curious how far the influence reached.
“Three ribbons to the north…but they are down as well. This happens sometimes.”
“How long ago did your system go down?”
“About two local hours ago.” That confirmed it. That was about the time they landed.
“Are your normal comm links still working?” Coop asked the clerk.
“Yes.”
“May we make a link to a CW facility in a nearby city? It’s very important that we complete our communications.”
“We have an affiliated facility in Annador.”
“Where is that?”
“Fifty miles to the east.”
Coop’s embedded translation device converted the local units of distant into miles. That wasn’t too far, although they had very little money for a fifty-mile trip and to make the calls they needed to.
“Can you check with them to see if their system is active?”
The clerk did and it was; a moment later Sherri and Coop were rushing down the streets of Prannis heading for the tube-train station and the cheapest fare they could find to Annador.
On the train, Sherri grew more nervous. They had at least four links to make, each to powerful entities located throughout the galaxy, and that was assuming they could reach them. That would cost money, and depending on the length of the negotiations, even more. And then they had to return to Prannis and the ship. It was going to be tight.
They arrived in Annador by mid-afternoon and found the CW café. They would be charged by the link, not the time. CW links could only last an hour at the most, so whether they talked for ten minutes or an hour, it was the same cost. They entered a secure comm booth and Coop programmed in the first coordinates. They would keep the links to audio only, not only to protect their identity, but also to save money. Audio links cost less that video comms.
The first link was to the Fazon company, the largest manufacturer of cold fusion reactors in the galaxy. They had heard of this new dark matter energy source and had contacted the Gracilians, before receiving the same summary rejection as MK. However, they weren’t as aggressive as the weapons maker. That was why Copernicus and Sherri would concentrate on energy companies, although they had to contact Xan-fi. They made the long-barrel weapons, the result of an agreement reach centuries ago between them and Maris-Kliss. MK would make handguns, Xan-fi larger weapons. The accommodation worked well on the surface, yet both companies were anxious to infringe upon the territory of the other. The other major weapons companies were on Earth and Incus. Neither of them honored any agreement with their competitors.
As it turned out, the contact links they had for the prospective bidders were private numbers and answered immediately. The companies knew the potential for dark matter technology and were anxious to speak with the two thieves.
Sherri nearly peed her pants when the first offer was made by Fazon. Coop didn’t believe his ears and asked twice for clarification before acknowledging the bid. Thirty million Juirean credits—and this was just the opening salvo. And they were going to turn the DMC over to MK for a measly three-quarters-of-a-million credits….
They knew they couldn’t accept the first offer; that would have been foolish. So, they essentially placed the Fazon rep on hold and used another link to contact the next name on the list.
An hour later, Coop was still on the line and Sherri was getting frustrated, not with Coop, but with the fact that here she was counting pennies as they were negotiating what was now a sixty-million credit deal. The irony didn’t escape her.
It was obvious now that they couldn’t conclude the negotiations with the credits they had available. If they did they could be leaving millions on the table, all for the lack of a few hundred credits in their pocket. Sherri called it quits, telling Coop they had to get back to the ship and find something—anything—they could sell to come up with the thousand credits she estimated they would need to complete the negotiations.
With four very angry and desperate bidders insisting on an answer, Copernicus and Sherri apologized profusely, saying they would call back in a few hours, six at the most. They left the café and returned to the tube-train station, returning
to Prannis with barely twelve Juirean credits in their pocket.
The spaceport was small and therefore had a series of blast baffles in the field so more ships could be packed in closer. The pair of overwhelmed and exhausted Humans made their way through the maze toward their stolen ship, almost too tired to realize how close they were to making the score of a lifetime. They needed money, even if they had to sell the ship’s fuel module to get it.
They turned a corner and entered the pad-section where the ship was kept. Or at least they thought it was the right place. Coop checked the number on his ticket; it matched the huge alien numbers on the concrete blast wall. This was the place…but the ship was gone.
In a panic, the pair ran to the control center and the alien on duty. He was a native Naviorean, a bulky creature with brown skin, eyes on stalks and a tail.
“Where is the ship in stall forty-four?” Coop barked at the alien.
The native recoiled from the intensity of the question, frowned and then checked his logs. “It received permission to lift sixty-eight minutes ago.”
“Who requested the lift?”
“I cannot reveal that—”
Copernicus had the native by the collar and pulled over the counter before he could finish his sentence. Although the alien was taller, he bent like a reed in the wind when Coop leaned in closer. “Answer me!”
“You should not be doing this, Human. It is against protocol.”
“That was my ship and I did not give permission for it to be taken.”
“I differ. The ship is registered to the Incus government, not to you.”
Coop tightened his grip on the alien’s collar, causing him to choke and barely able to breath. “Don’t play games with me. Who took it?”
“The Cartel,” the clerk confessed. “The Cartel ordered it taken.”
“Which one?”
“The Gradis. They are strong on Navior. When they make a request, we oblige. It is what is done here. Please do not kill me.”
Copernicus released him. He knew how ingrained the Gradis Cartel was on the planet. He couldn’t blame the clerk.
“I know several of the leaders of the Cartel,” Coop told the native. “Who gave the order?”
The alien hesitated.
“A little late to be coy; answer me.”
“It was Frandon, Frandon G’Bur. He leads the Cartel.”
Coop took a step back.
“Do you know him?” Sherri asked.
“I did, once. He was just a mid-level soldier at the time, headstrong, but smart. He leads the Cartel now?” he asked the clerk.
The alien nodded emphatically.
“Where did they take the ship?”
“I am sorry, Human, but the Cartel does not file flight plans. I have no knowledge.”
“Is their headquarters still in Vansis?”
“Yes.”
Coop turned to Sherri. “I know the landing field there; I’ve been there a dozen times. There would be no reason to take the ship off planet. That’s probably where they took it.”
He turned back to the nervous native. “You would be wise not to mention any of this conversation to anyone. Besides the fact that you’ve revealed confidential Cartel information to us, we will also come back and rip your body to shreds if we find you have alerted the Cartel to what we’ve said. You know we can do it.”
“I know of Humans. I will be quiet. You came, saw your ship was gone, and then left. You will leave, will you not?”
Coop smiled. “As soon as you give us all the credits you have on you, plus the location of your transport. We will be borrowing it for a while. Any objections?”
There were none.
63
“Still nothing?” Adam said, frustrated. It had been eight days since he left the Colony Ship and still no hits on the facial-recognition CW search.
“Correct, and the Gracilians report that negotiations have resumed as of yesterday,” Jym reported.
“They have? How?” Adam asked.
“Unknown, yet obviously not by video link.”
“That’s it! Jym, you’re a genius. They’re not broadcasting with video,” Adam said. “They would try to remain anonymous and broadcast by audio only. Can you create a program that will search for words and phrases instead of video images?”
“Yes, but that will generate magnitudes of additional hits.”
“Search for Human English only and include words like dark matter, collector, Aris, negotiations, I’ll work on more.”
“I can do that. But out of trillions of conversations, there will still be hundreds, even thousands of hits.”
“How about by region? Can you isolate it to just the Kidis?”
“That I cannot do, not until I get the results. Then I can define each by location.”
“Good, write your program and then rerun the data from yesterday. You haven’t dumped the data yet, have you?”
“I was preparing to. It will take me a couple of hours to work this through. I will link with you when I get the initial results.”
Jym got back to Adam three hours later, and he was right. There were fourteen thousand results, although none mentioned the Aris or Sherri and Copernicus together. There were a lot of hits identifying people named Sherri, but none with enough of the other terms to be considered in the final batch.
Adam had added the phrase cut a deal in the search terms, something he figured would be distinctly Human when discussing business negotiations. He was right. There were fourteen hundred references. It seemed there were a lot of Humans out in the galaxy trying to cut deals.
In the end, Jym and Adam weeded the fourteen thousand down to six hundred eighty. From there, Jym was able to screen by comm district. They eliminated all but those coming from the Kidis Frontier, leaving one hundred nine. From here they began to look at the individual results, and the ones that sounded the most like what was being negotiated.
With the locations pinpointed, Adam then compared these to the proximity to the research station. One stood out from the others.
“Navior…what do we know about it?” Adam asked.
Both he and Jym had the planet called up in the galactic internet called the Library.
“The Gradis Cartel runs the planet,” Jym said. “Believed to be the headquarters, although they are diversified throughout the Frontier.”
“Coop used to work for the Gradis. He would know the planet.”
“Does he intend to sell the collector to the Cartel?”
“I don’t know. All they would do is turn around and sell it to someone else. I don’t see why Sherri and Coop would want to involve a middleman.”
“Middleman?”
“Someone to get in between them and all the money they could make. That would cost them millions if they did. They’ll want to go direct.”
“How far are you from Navior?” Jym asked.
Adam did some quick calculations. “I can be there in about nine hours. Where’s Kaylor?”
“He left Formil five days ago with a new power module. He should be in the Frontier in three more days. He’s on his way but may not be able to provide much support should you needed it, not in nine hours.”
“I’ll be fine. He’s just a backup anyway. Keep him on track. It sounds like the negotiations are still going, so we may have time to stop them.”
Jym beamed on the screen. “We have found them!” he exclaimed.
“Possibly,” Adam said. “Let’s just hope we’re not too late.”
64
To Sherri and Coop’s amazement, the spaceport operator had six hundred eighty JCs on him. That was a lot of money for a native to be carrying around. Coop figured he got paid five hundred for letting the Cartel take the starship.
They drove the native’s car to another city two hundred miles to the west, one with a sub-orbital transportation hub. They couldn’t very well drive halfway around the planet, not in the time they had. They would ditch the car and take a quick hop to the Cartel-r
ich city of Vansis.
Copernicus had considered trying to sell the car for some quick money but that wasn’t possible on Navior. One would think that a planet rife with illegal cartels would be a cesspool of crime and debauchery. But that wasn’t the case. With so many Cartel members within the population, it wasn’t wise to steal a car, rob a house or even mug a person for fear of a Cartel member being the victim. That wouldn’t be a healthy thing to do. So instead, Copernicus and Sherri opened the windows in the transport, and under the cover of night, pushed it into a lake not far from the spaceport.
In the terminal, they took turns catching some sleep waiting for the midnight jump to Vansis. The flight was only twenty minutes from liftoff to touchdown, just enough time for them to go through half a dozen plans for reacquiring the dark matter collector—and then to reject them all. They had no idea what they would be up against, so any initial plans were just speculation, even wishful thinking.
The Cartel had its own spaceport, but the commercial flight landed at the municipal facility twenty miles away. They needed another car yet had no qualifying identification with which to rent one. So, they entered a transport cab and instructed the driver to take them to the sprawling complex where the leader of the Gradis Cartel lived.
Copernicus had been there several times before, although never in the actual living quarters. At the time he was active, he had been something of a novelty—a Human working for the Cartel. As a result, he was often challenged to not-so-friendly fighting matches among the enforcers of the syndicate, testing to see if the rumors of the short, pink creatures were true. It didn’t pay for Coop to reveal too much, just enough to earn their respect. After all, he was a mechanic, not a warrior. He gave them a show and then humbly returned to his tasks.