Mission Pack 1: Missions 1-4 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  Carl had always hated any math more complicated than a split of loot from a job. He piloted by gut and let the computers handle the fiddly bits with numbers. But there was an answer to one question he needed: how long did he have before he couldn’t make his drop on time. The nameless weasel who’d given him the box and paid him had insisted that late was as good as never delivered. That meant that the ship out there waiting was on a tight deadline. Get to the coordinates and astral depth any later than 5:00PM, November 21 Earth Standard, and that ship would be gone.

  It was 3:21PM. Less than two hours away. Planetary rotation kept it from being much past daybreak locally, but Earth Standard didn’t care about local sunlight. The box was as light as the client had claimed, made from some advanced plastic composite without any locking mechanism visible. Whatever was inside was probably a lot of trouble, as were the nameless weasel and whoever was paying him the other half of his 50,000. But whatever was inside was also probably pretty damned valuable—maybe even worth more than the 25,000 even accounting for whatever trouble it brought with it.

  Carl made an executive decision. He nudged one of the glass-eyed azrins watching holovids with Mort. “Hey, got a comm I can borrow?”

  He’d guessed well, and this Yrris understood English. “Sensor station, door before the cockpit.”

  “Thanks,” Carl replied, patting the azrin on the shoulder as he left the viewing room. Sometimes a vague, offhanded request with no context could get people to agree to pretty stupid things.

  Carl settled himself into the seat at the sensor station. It took a couple minutes to reset the language to English, but it was a variant of a computer system used across half of ARGO space, so Carl muddled his way through it. Relays, proxies, and ghost comm IDs didn’t fall under Carl’s list of skills. He settled for opening an account on a local omni exchange under a false name and residence, then began his text-only message.

  AGRO patrol. I hav loyal message. Smuggel ship wait on border. Much wanted. I am loyal, no criminal. You find, keep Meyang saif. Love For Meyang!

  Cross-referencing with his own datapad, Carl attached the coordinates and astral depth the nameless weasel had provided. Hopefully the false ID and crummy spelling and grammar would convince the garrison busybodies that it was a local ratting someone out. They’d never believe that whoever sent the message was innocent, but that made it all the more likely they’d send someone to check it out.

  Carl reset the comm panel to azrin and headed back to see who won the Battle of Waterloo.

  # # #

  It was approaching noon local time when Roddy caught Carl on the comm.

  “Boss, we got a problem,” Roddy said. Carl could hear the nerves in his voice. Either that laaku wasn’t drunk enough, or something was going badly.

  Carl looked around the room at his azrin hosts; none of them were paying attention. “Dump it. Line’s clear enough.”

  “You remember those Harmony Bay bastards?” Roddy asked.

  “How could I forget them?” Carl replied, covering his non-comm ear with a hand to block out the noise of the Yrris’ latest selection, a pre-ARGO laaku martial arts vid. “Not every day someone comes that close to dusting us.”

  “The Bradbury just entered orbit around Meyang.”

  “That’s…” Carl struggled for a word. “…ominous. How much of a signature have we got on the ground?”

  “This comm is about the only thing running right now,” Roddy replied. “I even opened the Mobius up and turned off life support. We’ll be scrubbing local air through the filters for weeks, but our EM signature is zilch.”

  “Good call,” Carl said. “We can hang tight until the crew gets back, wait for them to be on the other side of the planet, then—”

  “Is that Eight Fists, No Waiting I hear in the background?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Roddy said. “Haven’t seen that since I was a kid.” The comm clicked and went silent. Two minutes later, the laaku was parking himself between two of Mriy’s cousins, buying a welcome by sharing from his six-pack of Earth’s Preferred.

  Carl stewed and watched the laaku join his wizard in thrall to the holovid. Under normal circumstances, he’d have been all for leaking some coolant pressure over a few hours of mindless holovid action. It was early laaku holovid, so the quality was low, but the action was top notch. Unfortunately, there was too much action in real life hanging over him for Carl to let loose. It came as a relief when the Yrris hunting pack arrived back. Everyone went outside to witness the return.

  There was a hullabaloo, with all the Yrrises celebrating Mriy’s nephew and his pack of ringers. When Carl saw the size of the azrins who’d gone with him and then considered who Mriy had dragged along, he realized she probably never stood a chance. The elk was a dead elk. It looked stupid, colored up like some cave painting. Its neck lolled and was clearly broken. Carl’s stomach was just as glad that it wasn’t drenched in blood.

  Carl pulled Seerii aside as the initial jubilation died down. “So, Mriy loses. Can we go round up her pack and get out of here?”

  “She might not forgive you,” Seerii replied, keeping her voice low. “But you should take her from here when she returns. By law she is welcome. By all other measures, she is not.”

  “We just wait here?” Carl asked. “How long should they be?”

  “There is no way to be sure, but they should have been tracking the winning pack. Not long, I imagine.”

  Seerii was right, but for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t long before two snow-rollers thundered into the base camp, pulling up beside the Yinnak. There were two occupants in each, which by Carl’s simple math, put them one pack member short. “Where’s Mriy?” he shouted over the noise of the combustion engines, before someone cut power to them.

  “We ran into rebels hiding out in the hunting grounds,” Tanny replied, hopping down from the snow-roller. She wasn’t wearing any boots.

  “We’ve got to go after her,” Esper added. She wasn’t wearing boots either, and there was blood at her wrists.

  “The hell happened to you girls?” Carl asked.

  “We got captured,” Tanny said. “They’re not exactly pro-human, if you know what I—is your hair blue?”

  Carl’s face froze. “That bastard! He said he fixed it.” Carl looked at the backs of his hands—brown. He squinted and pushed an eyebrow into his field of view—brown. He tried holding his datapad up as a mirror, but the black surface didn’t deal well with color in reflections.

  “Quit it,” Esper scolded. “Those rebels have Mriy. She was holding one of them off to cover our escape. She said they won’t kill her, but she needs us to rescue her.”

  “Roddy, fire up the engines,” Carl said. “Everyone else, get on board. Seerii, I’d love to say it’s been nice, but your planet is a shithole and its inhabitants have been pissing me off since I got here.”

  “How dare you—” Seerii snarled, flexing her claws.

  Mort put a warning hand on her arm as he passed by. “Wouldn’t try that,” he cautioned.

  “What about that Harmony Bay ship?” Roddy asked.

  Esper’s eyes went wide. “What Harmony Bay ship?”

  “We’ll worry about the Bradbury if we have to,” Carl said. “I don’t believe in coincidences, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get lucky once in a while. We’re finding Mriy and getting the hell out of this system.”

  They didn’t have much to retrieve before lifting off. Mort had brought a few personal effects that he refused to depart without, but that was the bulk of it. They were closing up the ship minutes later.

  “Wait,” Auzuma shouted as the cargo ramp went up. Roddy hit the control button and stopped it. “Give this to Esper.” He handed Roddy a book in Jiara script. The title just said: Book.

  “Will do,” Roddy replied and closed the bay door.

  # # #

  Tracks led from the burned-out ruin of the rebel compound. One set were azrin footprints, ano
ther the twin lines left by snow-rollers. Mriy followed the latter. Though there was little chance of the rebels coming back for her, Mriy didn’t want to wait for rescue. She had enough fat on her to weather the cold without winter gear; under the daytime sun, it was even refreshing. The wind whipped a dusting of snow from the ground. Tiny crystals of ice caught in her fur and froze there.

  Years of training as a hunter, a warrior, and a Silver League fighter went into simply keeping her balance as she set down one foot, then the other. That two-step repetition was all she needed to follow the tracks. They would hate her at the Yrris clanhold. Hrykii would mock her. Yariy would gloat. Seerii would send her away. And she would go. And she would not return. Never return.

  One foot. Other foot.

  It had been foolhardy to return and try to wrest her old position back.

  One foot. Other foot.

  But Esper, Tanny, and Auzuma had gotten away. Or at least she hoped they had.

  One foot. Other foot.

  She caught the scent of a hare on the wind. In daydream, she would catch it, crush it between clawless fingers, tear at its flesh with her incisors, carefully avoiding the tender, bloody holes in her mouth.

  One foot. Snow.

  The ground rushed up and slammed into Mriy. The powder cushioned her fall. Her breath melted a tiny area around her mouth and nose. Blood stained the snow.

  # # #

  Tanny took the pilot’s chair, adjusting it mid-flight and complaining all the while about what Carl and Roddy had done to it in the three days she’d been gone. Carl had offered to fly, since Tanny was half-frozen, wounded, and didn’t have any boots. In typical marine fashion, she’d brushed those concerns aside as inconsequential to the mission.

  “How far is it?” Carl asked. He stood behind the copilot’s seat, where Esper had taken position, watching out the forward window as the Mobius flew with its nose angled down for better visibility.

  “Not far,” Tanny replied.

  Esper pointed. “I recognize that hilltop. We camped within sight of it the first night. But we just took off.” She was chewing on some of Mort’s leftover sushi after healing her wrists.

  “There’s a reason they build these things,” Carl said. “Walking long distances outdoors is for animals. Just ask Roddy about Phabian; you can live there your whole life without setting foot outdoors. That retrovert stuff is bullshit.”

  Esper held a hand over her mouth as they ducked over hills and mountains with the ship’s attitude and altitude making it appear they were going to crash any second. She was still new to this whole business. Motion sickness was something she was going to have to learn to deal with.

  “There it is,” Esper said. To her credit, she’d kept her eyes open when shutting them would have made the effects go away. After all, none of the G-forces were overcoming the ship’s gravity.

  A plume of smoke rose through the trees. “I’ll man the guns,” Carl said. “Esper, take Mort to the cargo bay. We might need unconventional firepower, and you might need to heal Mriy, depending on what kind of shape she’s in.”

  “What if they’re not willing to negotiate?” Tanny asked.

  “With Mort?” Carl scoffed.

  “Right,” Tanny replied. A failed negotiation with the ship’s wizard wasn’t something one walked away from.

  But all their preparations were in vain, except for Esper’s. The camp was burned and abandoned. Tracks led off deeper into the mountains, and if they had wanted to, the Mobius could have hunted them down. But the crew spread out along the compound and found what they were looking for.

  Mriy had collapsed in the snow, less than a kilometer down the trail left by the snow-roller escape. It was Kubu’s nose that found her; the white of her fur made her nearly invisible. When Tanny rolled her over to check her vitals, they noticed the blood. There were gashes on her sides and face, and all along her arms. What drew attention their were the bloody tips of each finger and the red all around her muzzle. Her eyes fluttered open, then shut tight against the glare.

  “Get her something to eat,” Esper ordered, putting her hands on Mriy’s chest. But Mriy shook her head. In obvious pain, she opened her mouth and showed the raw sockets where her canine teeth had been pulled. “Oh Lord!”

  “Mort, levitate her and be gentle about it,” Carl ordered. “We’ll get this sorted out in the Black Ocean. We’ve got a ship up there that’s getting closer by the second.”

  # # #

  “The Bradbury is closing on us.”

  Carl swore under his breath. “How long to break atmosphere?”

  With a quick check of the scanners, Tanny shook her head. “We’re not winning this race.”

  Carl ran down the hall to the common room. “Mort! What are the prospects of astral from atmosphere?”

  The grizzled wizard hung an eyebrow low as he scratched his chin. “I don’t like that prospect one bit. Rather get boarded and roll up my sleeves for the fight.”

  At that moment, Esper backed out of Mriy’s quarters, shutting the door softly behind her. “She’s in bad shape. If she was human, I think she might have died already. I gave her a trickle of healing, just enough to stop the bleeding. But she’s in no shape to eat anything right now.”

  Carl held up a hand. “Great. You keep on that. We’ll figure something out once we get away from the—”

  “No!”

  Carl blinked.

  Esper stood toe to toe with him. “Harmony Bay is the leading medical supplier in the galaxy. The Bradbury will have better medical staff than anyone planetside or most of the colonies we visit. I can’t magic Mriy up new teeth or claws. She needs a med bay.”

  Carl shook his head and headed for the cockpit. “I don’t have time for this right now. We’ll get Mriy to a med facility… maybe Sindra III. She’s tough. She’ll pull through.”

  Esper followed him to the cockpit. A comm came in just as he settled into the copilot’s chair. “Vessel Mobius, this is Captain Yasmira Dominguez of the Bradbury. You are in possession of property that belongs to us. Cut your engines and prepare for docking.”

  The ship shook gently. Tanny twisted the flight yoke left and right, but the Mobius didn’t maneuver. “Shit. They locked on a tractor beam.”

  Carl reached for the comm, but Esper leaned past and put a hand over it. “Hand over their thingy, the one we were supposed to deliver.”

  “If I’d have known it was them, I never would have taken the job.”

  Esper raised her voice. “That doesn’t matter. Give it back and bargain for them to fix up Mriy.”

  Tanny pulled her hand away. “It’s a nice thought, but we can’t trust them.”

  “I thought Captain Carl Ramsey could talk his way out of anything. Huh?”

  He met her glare, and she must have seen something there, because the bluster drained from her in an instant. Not taking his eyes off hers, Carl reached out and powered down the engines. “Yeah. I can.”

  # # #

  They always underestimated her hearing. Days spent planetside had sensitized Mriy to the various noises on the ship. Before the hunt, her ears had learned to ignore the droning of the holovid, arguments in the common room, and Mort’s snoring. It was the key to staying sane in close quarters aboard ship. But hunting brought back that sharpness of ear that listened for cracking of twigs and the sudden change in birdsong that signaled a predator’s presence. Even through the door of her quarters, she could strain and make out every word of the argument in the cockpit. God’s favorite niece was going to convince Carl to surrender so that Harmony Bay could treat Mriy’s wounds.

  The wonderful thing about every part of Mriy’s body hurting was that nothing she did could make her feel worse. Pains would shift and vie for attention, but overall the effect was the same. With a grunt of effort, she sat up. From there it was easy. A few shuffling steps to the door. A ginger grasp to turn the handle. A shoulder to shove it open.

  Mort stood waiting in the common room, staff in hand. “Ega
ds! Are you delirious? Get back to bed. You’re in no condition to—”

  “Must. Stop. Carl.”

  Mort played the old fool much of the time, but he was not. Instead of arguing with her, he offered his shoulder and helped Mriy’s faltering footsteps up to the cockpit.

  The argument over whether to surrender continued as they approached. The hum of engines died away. “Yeah, I can,” Carl said with typical smugness. He thought himself without peer. He thought he could lie away any trouble.

  Had Mriy not been just like him with similar blind faith in her prowess? “Don’t. Not worth… it.” Speaking with missing teeth, she sounded like a child. She wiped at her mouth and found blood on the back of her hand.

  “Good heavens! Mriy, what are you doing up?”

  Mriy shrugged aside Esper’s attention and put her face close to Carl’s. “No.”

  To his credit, Carl didn’t shy or look away, not even when Mriy parted her lips to let him see the bloody wreck left from the rebels’ handiwork. “You sure about this? These bastards have the tech to fix you… real teeth, real claws, good-as-new fixed.”

  There was a nagging temptation. A good half of Carl’s schemes worked out. He might be able to convince them to patch her up, to let them all go unharmed—though probably without payment. From the bits and pieces, she had gathered there was something Carl owed them, but that wasn’t the point. The question was whether she could ask them to stand in the line of fire for her… again. “Not. Worth. Don’t trust.”

  Tanny cleared her throat. “Well, that’s just peachy, but we’re still caught in their tractor beam.”

  “Esper, get Mriy back to bed. Mort, think you can disrupt that tractor beam without killing off half the ship’s systems?”

  “No, but I may be able to do one better. Let them drag us close.” Mort pushed past Esper and Mriy, staff tapping along the ground as he strode back to the common room.

  Carl called after him. “I hope you know what you’re doing!”

  “Of course he does,” Esper muttered, so softly that she probably didn’t expect even Mriy to have heard her.

  Mort began his chanting. Whatever language he used, the earring that translated every other language in the galaxy threw its hands up in despair. The light changed in the common room. Though it took a great effort to crane her neck, Mriy peered up through the domed ceiling to watch astral gray replace the black and stars of realspace. The sight had never failed to unnerve her, but this time she was too weary to care.