by C N Samson
Rheinborne nearly tripped over the luggage that lay scattered about. Hurgompo had just thrown everything inside.
Kassyrinx made annoyed twittering sounds as he started to sort out their belongings. He stopped and took a seat on the couch when an alert chime sounded and the room lights flashed blue, the signal for imminent departure.
Valicia and Rheinborne sat beside each other. He stifled the urge to put his arm around her, something he had always done whenever—
That’s all in the past, he reminded himself, and directed his gaze out the starboard window. Though nominally aware of when the ship exited the docking structure and flew out into space, the fact of their departure didn’t fully register with him until he heard Kassyrinx reprimand Hurgompo for dumping the luggage all over the floor.
“Yes, now just pick it up and stack it neatly,” the sidhreen said. Hurgompo trumpeted in protest but did as he was told.
The room lights flashed amber, accompanied by the chime. The view out the window became an indistinct blur as the ship burst into hyperspace. Several seconds later, the blackness of space returned.
“Random jump complete,” came the voice of Captain Drummond over the shipwide comm. “Primary jump commencing now.”
There was another amber flash and chime, and the outside view melted into a smear of gray. The ship was now immersed in hyperspace.
The lounge door slid aside. Drummond stepped into the room and said, “We’re on course for Arctareen. Our stardrive is an L 6.5, so travel time will be thirty-nine standard hours. Oh, and please don’t blame your friend for the, ah, incident back at the station. He was simply trying to help me obtain my just due.”
Kassyrinx made a trilling sound and cast a glance at Hurgompo, who flipped up his trunk.
Tahla entered the lounge. “Hey, so, is everyone all right? What a bunch of craziness back there, yeah?”
“Definitely crazy,” said Rheinborne. “But it worked.”
“We should comm-link now before we forget,” Valicia said. She told Drummond and Tahla the sync code and the sectac frequency; the two of them adjusted their modules appropriately.
The captain clapped his hands together. “Right, well, let’s get you all settled in. There are only three cabins available, so I assume you two will want to share?”
Rheinborne thought the man was talking about Kassyrinx and Hurgompo, then realized he meant Valicia and himself. The two of them began speaking at the same time.
“Valicia, can I just—”
“Blake, could we have—”
Kassyrinx emitted a sharp whistle that cut them off. “Please work that out among yourselves. But if the good captain could show us to our quarters now?”
“Certainly,” Drummond said. “This way, gentlefolks.”
After the captain and the two aliens had left, Rheinborne turned to speak to Valicia but saw Tahla sitting cross-legged on the couch. He coughed pointedly.
“Are you two a couple?” the young woman asked with a sly grin.
“We used to be,” Valicia replied before Rheinborne could answer.
“If things are a little complicated right now, maybe one of you could go into cryo? We have pods. Oh, or maybe Miss Parzo could bunk with me.”
Valicia nodded. “I think that’d be a better idea. And please, it’s just Valicia.”
“Great!” Tahla slid off the couch. “Give me a minute or two, I just have to move a few things around.” She hurried out of the lounge.
As soon as the young engineer had gone, Rheinborne asked Valicia what she had wanted to say.
“No, you go first,” Valicia said.
Rheinborne leaned close to her. “Gwynne told me the truth about your module.” He tapped the side of his head.
“He’s already made me aware that you know,” she replied.
“Who else knows?”
“Only Kassyrinx and Captain Drummond.”
“Oh, they do. I see.” Rheinborne was about to say that Gwynne had lied to him, but then remembered that the DSI man had qualified his statement with the phrase on this ship.
“There’s something I’ve been waiting to discuss with you,” Valicia said. “Your hints about our past relationship haven’t gone unnoticed. But for your sake, we should keep things strictly professional from now on.”
Rheinborne mechanically repeated her words. “My sake. Professional.” It was as if a massive bulkhead had slammed down between them.
“I also know that you’ve read my file. Do you recall anything about a husband or children?”
“No, but I assumed it’s because you didn’t tell Gwynne everything.”
“I have neither. It’s because I can’t afford them. Not now, or ever.”
Rheinborne wrinkled his brow. “What do you—”
“Okay, ready!” Tahla announced, popping back into the room.
No one spoke for a long moment.
Tahla arched an eyebrow. “Is there something—”
“Actually,” said Rheinborne, “I think I’d like to go into cryo.”
A LITTLE WHILE LATER, Rheinborne sat upright in the first of four pods in the ship’s cryo-bay. He was clad only in black sensor-wear; nearby, Kassyrinx watched as Tahla made adjustments on the pod’s control panel.
“I appreciate the way that you and your friends extricated us from the situation on Widgner,” the sidhreen said. “But I have to point out, you most likely broke the Guild’s rules.”
“We did not,” Tahla answered, moving over to a wall-mounted console. “Some slight bending, if anything. All right, Blake, go ahead and lie down.”
Rheinborne did so. He stared at the ceiling, wondering if anyone believed that he was going under in order to be well-rested for the next mission. The truth was, of course, that he felt he could no longer be around Valicia any more than was necessary.
“The Guild rules do state,” said Kassyrinx, “that anyone harming a member shall be subject to sanctions. But your friends intentionally put themselves into harm’s way.”
“Oh, pish on that!” Tahla said lightly. “If Sovie or Mava want to file a complaint, let them. Running pod diagnostic now.”
A faint vibration hummed through the gel bed that Rheinborne lay upon. When it stopped, Tahla said, “All good and green.”
“Have a pleasant stay in cryonic suspension, Mr. Rheinborne!” Kassyrinx called.
“Yeah, see you real soon!” Rheinborne replied.
Tahla appeared above him. She looked over her shoulder, then leaned down into the pod. “Things are a little weird between you and Vee right now, I’m guessing?” she said.
“No, it’s just that—”
“Hey, I understand, we see it all the time. Husband goes under to get away from his wife’s nagging, wife goes under because she can’t stand the husband’s snoring....”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“I’ll ask her about it myself. We’ve got plenty of time to chat. Anyway, have a nice night!” Tahla lowered the pod’s transparent canopy, clicked it into place.
“Wait! Hold on!” Rheinborne knocked on the inside of the canopy. Tahla waved and winked, then he couldn’t see her anymore as a white mist flooded the pod. The aerosol sedative worked as soon as Rheinborne breathed it in, and he fell asleep within seconds.
CHAPTER 20
IN THE LANGENSBERN Grand Nebula Hotel, Norland reclined on a plush couch in a business-class room, a capsule of halcymox between his teeth. The past couple of days had been incredibly stressful, what with dealing with the Ormond situation and waiting to see if his Widgner plan would work. He sorely needed a diversion.
He bit down and inhaled the sharp, bitter vapor that escaped the ruptured capsule. A sense of warm pleasure spread through him, chasing the tension from his muscles.
Emlyn appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, wearing nothing but a half-transparent robe. A wide smile appeared on his face, but vanished a second later when he received a text note on his ECM from Prester.
“What’s wrong?” Emlyn aske
d.
Norland spat out the remains of the capsule.
“The beacon’s been activated,” he said, the tension returning. “I have to go.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Norland entered Prester’s office, having taken the time to change first. Prester’s news, though, had given him a sense of vindication. His idea had been to bribe the commander of the Widgner station to wait for Valicia to arrive, secretly install a GSN beacon on whatever ship she hired, then provide the beacon frequency. There was a risk that the commander would have an attack of ethics, but fortunately his greed had won out and he had gone through with the plan.
“About time,” Prester said. A star map appeared on the office’s wall screen, with a yellow dot labeled “Libertine” crawling along a vector line.
“Is that the ship she’s on?” asked Norland.
“Obviously, it is.” Prester went on to say that the station commander squeezed a little more money out of him, claiming that he had to pay extra people in order to execute the plan. “The ship made one jump, then another in the direction of the Hatagur system. Does that look right to you?”
Norland nodded. “There’s only one colonized planet out there. Some city-domes along the coastal areas, but it’s mostly empty now. Lots of desert and canyons where she could have hidden the tech.”
“Why not on the others, like the gas planet or the methane world?”
“It’d be too much trouble to recover. She’d leave it on a world where she could easily find it again.”
“If you’re confident about that, then we’ll take off within the hour.”
That surprised Norland. “We?”
“Once we have the Chythex artifact, I want to personally hand it over to Briggston.”
“Don’t you have to stay here and run things?”
Prester ran a hand over his face. “My people can handle my business.” He swiped on his desktop. The wall screen now displayed a map that depicted the location of Dalajur, relative to the Hatagur system and to the Widgner station. “Even though we’re closer, their ship is faster. But if we crack on, we’ll get there while they’re still searching. Now go and get your damn ship ready, would you?”
CHAPTER 21
RHEINBORNE OPENED HIS eyes to find the cryo-pod’s canopy thrown back, and Tahla standing over him.
“Wake it and shake it!” she said, helping him sit up. “Here’s a cube and a drink for you.”
“Thanks.” Rheinborne accepted the drink-bulb, sucked down some of the rehydration liquid, then ate the chemical-tasting food cube in two bites. He washed it down with the rest of the bulb’s contents. “Did I miss anything exciting?”
“Just the mission briefing, which was anything but,” Tahla said.
Rheinborne yawned, his head still full of sleep fog.
Tahla giggled. “Yeah, my thoughts exactly! But anyway, Uncle Angus wants the rest of us to sit in while he goes over the plan with you, so no need to rush.”
“What’s our location?”
“Five hours from the planet. Your vitals are good and green, so come join us when you’re all fresh. Your suitcase is right over there.” She pointed to a nearby table.
Rheinborne thanked the girl again. She assisted as he climbed out of the pod, then departed to give him privacy while he readied himself.
Half an hour later, he entered the crew lounge. He wore a new shirt and pants, but the same boots and jacket. He saw that Tahla was dressed in a blue flight suit and a dark yellow jacket, while Valicia’s outfit was that of a desert explorer: a tan vest over a loose white shirt, and greenish-brown pants. Hurgompo and Kassyrinx had on the same clothes as before.
The two aliens greeted Rheinborne, but Valicia merely acknowledged him with a nod.
“Good to have you back with us, Blake,” Drummond said. He strutted before the assembled group, like a general addressing his troops. Behind him, the image of a yellow-white star filled the lounge’s viewscreen.
“Given that our objective is to recover a Chythex artifact, and that the word itself means ‘star-keeper’ in the sidhreen language, such will be the official designation of the mission.”
“What, Project Chythex?” asked Rheinborne, taking a seat on the couch.
“No,” said Drummond. “Operation Star-Keeper.”
Rheinborne laughed. “Oh, come on! This isn’t exactly the liberation of Treilath.”
“Well then, what would you prefer to call it?”
“Anything but that.”
Drummond folded his arms. “Call it what you will, then. Are you ready to hear the plan?”
“By all means,” said Rheinborne.
“Very well. Some background first. The star Hatagur was already ancient when humanity arrived.”
The viewscreen shifted to the image of a brown, rocky planet.
“Arctareen, third planet in the system, was colonized shortly before—”
“Could you just tell us where the artifact is, and how we find it?” Rheinborne interrupted.
Drummond shot him an annoyed look. “I’m getting to that, thank you. Now, after the Chythex withdrew and the planet was resettled, scientists discovered that Hatagur had already begun to die and that the process of stellar death was already affecting Arctareen’s climate. The planet would continue to warm over the centuries until the surface became uninhabitable.”
“And then everyone either left the planet, or went to live in domes. The end,” said Rheinborne.
“Ah, I see you already know the story,” Drummond said, sounding a little miffed.
Valicia got up and went to the screen. “I jettisoned the sample container over the planet’s equatorial region,” she said. “I disabled the container’s transponder, but attached a locator unit to the artifact’s carrying case. It only has a five mile range, so we’ll have to fly close enough to pick up the signal.”
She swiped on the planet’s image, rotated it several degrees, then tapped on a spot to zoom in. The view was now that of a terrain map, showing a landscape of canyons and valleys. “This is the area where I sent the container to land. It’s far from any cities or settlements, so it shouldn’t have been found by anyone.”
“What if it has, though?” asked Tahla.
“Then we take back!” Hurgompo said, curling his trunk like a fist.
“Or we negotiate,” Tahla said.
“That’s not our business, Tahla,” Drummond said. “We are here in a support and transport capacity only.”
The girl huffed in surprise. “Wait, I’m going too, aren’t I?”
All eyes turned to Valicia. After an awkward silence, she said, “This is actually a—”
“I don’t mind if she comes along,” Rheinborne said.
Valicia gazed at him, then shrugged. “Then she’ll be your responsibility.”
Tahla cast a hopeful look at her uncle.
Drummond cleared his throat. “Well, if you limit yourself to observational and non-confrontational activities, you may go.”
“Oh, juicy!” Tahla said, clapping her hands in delight.
Hurgompo raised his trunk. “Captain, you have weapons?”
“Why, yes we do, in fact. You’re welcome to them.”
The hrulaphan trumpeted joyfully. Tahla hugged his broad form and laughed.
A LITTLE OVER FOUR hours later, the Libertine came into orbit around Arctareen. There was no space traffic control, and only a few operational satellites.
The ship descended through the atmosphere and flew in a search pattern over the rough, cracked surface of the planet. Rheinborne and Valicia stood in the cockpit behind Captain Drummond and Tahla, both of whom occupied seats at the ship’s control console.
Valicia had narrowed the possible position of the container to a region of about ten miles in diameter. Still, it took over ninety minutes for the sensors to report a hit on the locator signal. The ping was faint and they lost it after a few seconds, but it was enough to give them approximate landing coordinates.
“Odd,” Drum
mond said, “It was there, then gone again.”
“Maybe the signal bounced,” Tahla suggested.
The captain pursed his lips. “Could be,” he said. “Worth a look, in any case.”
RHEINBORNE AND THE others gathered in the ship’s cargo bay. The loading ramp lowered to the ground, and a blast of hot, dusty air swept inside. Drummond had reported the surface conditions before landing, and they had prepared themselves as best they could. Everyone except Hurgompo wore breathing masks and eye protection. The hrulaphan had a thick scarf wrapped around his head, covering his mouth, but his eyes and ears were exposed.
“Good hunting, everyone,” Drummond said over Rheinborne’s ECM. The captain had volunteered to remain behind to watch the ship and to provide help if required.
Tahla led the way down the ramp. She carried a spherical ASU and wore its control pad on her wrist.
Rheinborne went next, equipped with his messenger bag and a black-bladed combat knife that Drummond had lent him. Kassyrinx carried the group’s water, food, and other supplies.
Hurgompo was armed with a broadsword that Drummond had provided. Valicia brought up the rear, wearing her backpack and armed with a Heskel-3S automatic rifle. Rheinborne had watched her handle the weapon with practiced ease but hadn’t asked how she had acquired the experience. He also hadn’t asked how the captain had come to possess an ancient sword.
The Libertine was parked on a barren plain of orange-brown stone. Heavy buttes and broad mesas rose up in the hazy distance, and a line of dark mountains brooded on the horizon.
At the bottom of the ramp, Tahla released the Aerial Surveillance Unit, which measured one foot in diameter. As it rose into the air, her fingers tapped the control pad, entering pre-set commands for it to search for the Chythex component’s locator signal. The ball-shaped drone hovered and pivoted, sweeping its eye in all directions. It paused, and a beep sounded from the pad.
“Signal lock!” Tahla announced.
The ASU glided away at a leisurely speed to the southeast. The group set off, following the drone.