No Surrender

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The little robot went south.

  Behind her, Kal could see Tim riding his own tractor—following her precisely.

  For minutes, they moved in silence.

  Only the sound of the suit’s regulator filled Kal’s ears.

  Then, just above the communications module amidships, Kal spotted the kind of airlock she was looking for.

  Taking a small computer tool from her suit belt—a restricted item that was CAF issue only—Kal plugged into the emergency airlock’s computer and gingerly negotiated an opening with the airlock’s tiny-minded control interface. It took minutes to convince the emergency lock’s control that it didn’t need to alert the command module as to what was going on, then the outer airlock doors slowly slid open.

  Kal’s suit lamps illuminated the interior.

  “Here goes nothing,” Kal said to herself, stepping into the orifice and standing on the wall of the airlock.

  “A little help, please?” said a voice in her suit’s helmet radio.

  Kal reached down and—bracing her boots on the rim of the lock—heaved mightily until Tim was standing in the lock with her.

  Once inside the airlock—tractors secured—Kal ordered the outer doors sealed and teased open the inner doors with the same lock-crack computer she’d used on the outside.

  The inner doors opened into relative darkness.

  The air of the communications module was cold and smelled of ozone, with wires, tubes, and electronics running every which way.

  Kal and Tim floated gently, careful not to tweak anything that looked fragile. Eventually, they found one of the smallish maintenance passageways that honeycombed the ship, and both she and Tim left their suits secured at the passageway entrance before penetrating more deeply into the Broadbill’s interior.

  Their goal was to find a specific, tiny cabin that the manifest on Gulliver’s wafer drive had said would be vacant for the duration of the voyage. If Gulliver was correct, Kal and Tim could hide there until the same people who had made off with previous Tremonton shipments, also came for the Broadbill.

  If they could identify the thieves, or even find a way to stow away aboard whatever ship the thieves were using, it would put Kal very close to the source of the trouble.

  It would also put both herself and Tim in far more danger than she’d have preferred.

  But Gulliver’s instructions had been quite specific.

  And since Kal was dependent on the man—as her only source of seemingly reliable information—she was obliged to go along.

  If Gulliver was wrong, and nothing happened during the Broadbill’s voyage, then there was no harm done, and Kal would have to figure out a secondary plan.

  If Gulliver was right ...

  Kal considered her youthful companion who had not, so far as Kal knew, ever had to use a weapon in anger.

  She sighed. Would it cost them in a pinch?

  They floated across an empty corridor.

  It took moments of agony for the near-illegal device in Kal’s gloved hands to talk the door’s control mechanism into opening. Then, it only opened halfway, and began to close again almost immediately. The motors whined loudly as one fought against the other.

  “Shit,” Kal said. “You first.”

  “With the door half open, I am not sure I can fit,” Tim said.

  “Go!” Kal slapped Tim hard on his back, and he dove in—grunting as he had to worm past the narrowing opening.

  Kal disconnected the lock-pick and darted through just before the door resumed normal operational mode, and slapped shut.

  It was pitch black.

  “Lights,” Tim said.

  Overheads popped on.

  The single-bunk cabin was about the size of a modest walk-in closet.

  Kal and Tim stared at each other.

  It was going to be an interesting trip.

  Chapter 9

  “How many dead, Pitman?” Karl Berd said to his first officer as Garth Pitman entered the bridge.

  “One, plus some injuries.”

  Berd grimaced and stood up, stretching his back. He detested having to deal with unexpected problems. And this particular trip had experienced more than its fair share.

  The Broadbill was supposed to have been an easy poach job.

  So much for false promises.

  “Who do you think is doing this?” Pitman asked, standing at parade rest. “A roughneck out for revenge, or somebody else?”

  “No,” Berd said, “the deck rats we occasionally run into are far too self-preserving for direct action like this. It must be something else. I wonder ...”

  Berd sat down and continued to brood. Whoever was running around in his ship was definitely not a run-of-the-mill freebooter. It was possible that this was somebody with military experience. Maybe an ex-CAF soldier?

  Berd detested the idea. Just as he detested the Conflux itself. To him, the supposed freedom of the Conflux was just a patina of lies. The super-wealthy technocrats who controlled or sat on the Assembly permitted just enough upward mobility to keep the masses from revolting, but nothing more.

  The Ambit League—though harsh in its methods—offered the best chance Berd could see of transforming human society into something he might call civilized.

  In the era of interstellar travel, it was obscene that people still had to dig like dogs in the trash for even the basic necessities. The only thing keeping the status quo from collapsing was ignorance, fear, and the mercenary hoard known as the Conflux Armed Forces.

  That a CAF troop might be loose in his ship, killing off his crew ...

  Berd stopped and thumped a fist loudly into his chair’s headrest.

  “The CAF pigs strangle us with the blockade,” Berd said, “and now we may face one of their own running around this ship. Continue to collect what salvage you can, Pitman, but put every available person we have on alert for this woman. Continue to search and re-search every compartment. Turn every closet inside out. She can’t hide forever.”

  “We might use the one we already caught,” Pitman suggested.

  “Yes, we might. But he’s refused to talk. And while I am willing to resort to extreme measures, I would like to be sure we haven’t exhausted our other options first. I am not a cruel man, Pitman.”

  “I’m sorry if I implied that you were, sir,” Pitman said.

  Berd looked at his first officer. They’d not known each other for a terribly long time. The Ambit League—in its current, fractured form—tended to move its personnel around a lot. So as to avoid attachments that might turn into vulnerabilities later.

  So far as Berd knew, Pitman was as dedicated to the League cause as any other man. But there was a flavor to Pitman that Berd couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something feral ...

  No matter. To beat the Conflux, feral was sometimes necessary.

  “Go,” Pitman said, slowly sitting back down in the chair.

  Pitman tipped his head, and left the bridge.

  Chapter 10

  Like a lot of merchantmen, Berin Ogden was young.

  Also like a lot of merchantmen, Berin had the tourist bug. Still wearing his shipsuit, replete with identifier patches, he stuck out like the foreigner that he was—wandering wide-eyed through the hula-hoop of Viking Station’s kilometers-long bazaar. Flush with cash notes from his ship’s paymaster, he nosed idly through the shops and the pubs, a bulb of mildly-fizzing alcoholic drink in one hand, and a crumpled bazaar directory in the other.

  The sounds of hooting men and raunchy music drew him into one of the bazaar’s dance clubs, where a lovely but not-so-young lady quickly attached herself to his arm. The woman’s eyes were as deep and inviting as her cleavage, and before long, Berin was swiping his paycard for both their drinks, culminating in a stumbled rush back to the Broadbill’s tertiary gangway.

  It was against Captain’s orders to bring a local onboard; Berin would get ass-chewed if anyone saw her. Luckily, the tertiary hatch was deserted and he knew how to mug the tertiary�
�s security—he’d seen the second mate from propulsion do it more than once—so they had no trouble passing through the gate.

  Once inside, Berin took her through several maintenance hatchways until they emptied into the corridor which held the door to Berin’s closet-like crew cabin. He giggled tipsily as she ran her hands over his shipsuit, teasing at the frontal zipper and murmuring impatience.

  Once inside, sex was abrupt. With Berin greedily pawing at his guest’s delightfully bronzed flesh. Her scanty outfit fell away with the brush of a hand, and they kissed sloppily as they fell into his bunk, bodies rubbing.

  Berin cried out with alarm, as his youth betrayed him at that point.

  Rather than be angry, Berin’s guest just laughed. She wiped ejaculate from her stomach and pulled him the rest of the way out of his shipsuit, making promises about being able to coax a second wind into his sail.

  Berin was smiling sheepishly—but with renewed enthusiasm—when she slapped him hard on the neck with her left hand.

  At once, his tongue turned to rubber and the room lost focus.

  “What did ... you ...”

  Berin was dead before he got a fourth word out.

  The assassin spun one of the rings on her left hand until the small hypodermic inside it retracted. Quickly placing her victim’s body into one of his own lockers, she removed one of his clean shipsuits and slid into it, removing the wig on her head and swiping out the colored contact lenses from her eyes. A sanitary cloth from the tiny room’s single sink did away with the makeup on her face, leaving the assassin a decidedly older, sterner version of herself. Still beautiful, but hard. The kind of hardness bred by a hard life.

  From her purse the assassin extracted the few tools she knew she would need—each of these going into a different, zippered suit pocket.

  The maintenance hatches took her back—and past—the way she’d come, to the centrally-aligned series of lift cars that traveled up and down the Broadbill’s spine. Berin’s keys, now attached to the assassin’s belt via one of his elastic lanyards, got her a quick ride through the ship’s considerable length, until she was able to enter the cargo hold. Checking to be sure the hold wasn’t in vacuum, she again used Berin’s keys, this time to gain access to the holdmaster’s office.

  “Everyone’s on station,” said the middle-aged holdmaster’s mate, eyeing his visitor from behind his desk.

  The assassin matter-of-factly pulled out a tiny pistol and shot the mate through the temple, her weapon barely making a pop as her second victim went limp over his desk, blood noodling from the tiny hole in his skull. She retrieved the mate’s keys—discarding Berin’s now superfluous set—and used them to enter the cargo hold itself. Several stories high and twice as big around, the hold was packed with plastic and metal geometric shapes, all colors and all sizes.

  The woman knew from experience what to look for, and where.

  When she’d confirmed that the Broadbill was carrying the kind of cargo she and her associates desired, she went back into the holdmaster’s office and, shoving the dead mate aside, set up a point-to-point link through the Broadbill’s communications umbilical with Viking Station.

  “We’ve been waiting to hear from you,” said a digitally-corroded male voice.

  “Sorry I’m tardy, Yangis.”

  “Did you have any trouble getting in?”

  The woman laughed. “Do I ever?”

  Now the man named Yangis laughed. “That’s our girl.”

  “They’ve got at least twenty units on this ship. Probably more, once we properly inventory her.”

  “Excellent. How many crew are still aboard?”

  “Wait one.”

  The woman used the holdmaster’s computer to do a quick count on keys which were still known to be aboard.

  “Fifteen, though I can’t be sure of their location.”

  “No matter. Arbai, you’ve done an excellent job, as always. You know what to do next.”

  “Just make sure you and yours are ready when I extend the cargo gangway.”

  “I leave the command module to your delicate skillset, my dear.”

  “Copy that. I’ll see you when you get there.”

  Arbai cut the secure connection.

  Using the holdmaster’s mate’s keys to re-enter the lift car, she plunged back through the length of the ship, getting off at the foyer to the command center. The keys got her through the outer door, then the inner door, and nobody seemed to notice as she entered the nerve center of the Broadbill, looking for all the world like just another one of its crew.

  Eventually a watch officer looked up.

  “Can I help you, miss?”

  Arbai stopped. The officer was a young woman with junior merchant command studs on her shoulder. She floated from her chair near the middle of the complex. Screens and holographic projections decorated the space between them.

  Arbai smiled.

  “Don’t get up, the holdmaster just sent me to tell you that he’s got trouble with the seal on bay door three.”

  “Really? We didn’t detect it here.”

  “He figured that, otherwise you’d have done something about it already. He wanted me to make sure you knew.”

  “We’ll have to recall some of the engineers from station leave,” the officer said, her brow furrowing with concern as she walked to one of the in-wall displays and began hitting keys to bring up the ship’s roster.

  Arbai drifted further into the command module, which didn’t seem to alarm any of the other five watch officers sitting at their various stations. Reaching to her left breast pocket, she pulled out a tiny device like a diver’s nose plug and inserted it into her nostrils. Then she reached into the shipsuit’s right breast pocket and removed two glass phials, gripping them in either palm.

  “I’m sorry,” Arbai said to them all.

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing personal. Just business.”

  Before anyone in the room could say or do anything else, Arbai pitched the phials in opposite directions, smashing them against the bulkheads. Several officers began to move, but not before a sickly-sour smell filled the room. All six of the watch went limp where they were, the respiratory nerve agent making them twitch as signals between brain and body became disrupted.

  Arbai breathed through her nose while she counted ninety seconds—the deadly nerve agent’s active lifespan. At one hundred and twenty seconds, she allowed herself to circle the command module, checking everyone for vitals and, satisfied that all were dead, settling herself at one of the master control stations.

  The menus for the cargo bay’s gangway were simple enough to find, and easier to operate. Within three minutes, a tube had been extended out to mate with Viking Station’s bulky commerce deck. The command module remained intensely quiet throughout the entire operation, only a gentle whisper coming from the air cycle vents.

  When next the command center’s inner door opened, eight men and five women entered, each of them wearing filters on their noses similar to Arbai’s.

  The tallest of the men grinned, surveying the dead around him, then reached up and removed his filter, taking a deep whiff.

  “You know there’s always the danger of trace contamination,” Arbai said, smirking at her boss.

  “Live dangerously, or don’t live at all,” Yangis said. “Let’s get these unfortunates out of here and fire up for departure.”

  Yangis’s crew fanned out immediately, two people per body, and began to get the Broadbill’s former bridge crew evacuated.

  Yangis settled himself at a control station next to Arbai’s.

  “Was he a nice boy?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That lad you picked up, the one we eyed out for you. Was he nice?”

  “I’m not sure how to take that question,” Arbai said, frowning.

  “Take it any way you like,” Yangis said.

  “If you mean sexually, he was as clumsy as any young man can be.”

  �
�Worse than me when we first met?”

  “No, he wasn’t nearly that bad. Compared to you, he was a pro.”

  Yangis’s laughter boomed through the command module.

  “Leave it to my ex-wife to bust my balls for me!”

  “You don’t pay me to be gentle, dear.”

  “No, no I don’t. Now get that hard ass of yours down to propulsion. I’ve got several more people coming aboard in maintenance coveralls, and I want you to make sure they don’t have any trouble when they get down to the drive assembly.”

  Arbai mock-saluted and stood, feeling her ex-husband’s hand pat her rump before she went to the command module doors, and exited.

  As with previous jobs on merchant ships like the Broadbill, everything else proved academic. Arbai wondered why more ships—more companies—hadn’t learned better; lax protocol, lax training, weak security measures at entry points, skeleton staffing while in port. Typical, typical, typical. It was like they were begging for piracy. Though pirate was not the word Arbai would have used to describe herself. She was a trained professional, and very good at what she did. Had there been any money in it, she might have even stayed in the CAF. Lucky for her, she’d met Yangis, and when they’d both gotten out of uniform, gone into business for themselves.

  A very select, very exclusive kind of business.

  When the Broadbill broke dock without warning, there was the usual wailing from traffic control. Yangis ignored it, and Arbai watched from one of the portals in the crew module as the merchant ship spun away from Viking Station and flew into the blackness of space.

  Chapter 11

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Broadbill had left dock without proper authorization from Viking Station control.

  As soon as Kal felt the gee of acceleration assert itself, she knew what was up.

  “You can’t be serious,” Tim said as he watched Kal get her pistol out of her shoulder holster, remove and check the magazine, then slap the magazine back in place.

  “I’m dead serious. Whoever has been taking these Tremonton shipments? Their ambition just leveled up. Now they’re taking a whole cradle ship. The Broadbill is officially under new management.”