A Star Rising (The Star Scout Saga Book 1)

by GARY DARBY

  “Not until we can do something about TJ,” Shanon replied with an emphatic jab of her finger towards Sami.

  Dason nodded in agreement. “And we need to find out more of what we’re up against. So, no rough stuff, nothing that could get TJ hurt until we know the odds, understood?”

  “Spoilsport,” Sami replied.

  “Let’s go,” Dason ordered. Nase and Sami scooted off towards the ship's aft section while Shanon and Dason headed for the vessel’s forward compartments.

  Every few meters, the metal channel had small, slatted ventilation openings. Dason hoped that they could use those to spy on their kidnappers.

  After several minutes of hunched-over silent treading through the conduit, they heard low, muted voices coming through the next vent.

  Kneeling, Dason peered through the slits and could see enough of the female’s face and upper body to know it was Bianca. She stood in the center of what appeared to be the ship’s medical infirmary.

  “She’ll be out when we rendezvous,” Dason heard her say. “Makes it easier to ship her across. You and Mula check on the Torther Ape. Make sure that hatch is sealed tight.”

  Someone mumbled assent, and a tall man crossed the room to the doorway. A few seconds later Bianca followed. Dason signed to Shanon to stay put.

  They waited several minutes before Dason eased the hatch up. With his head and shoulders over the edge, he peered into the tiny dispensary. On a narrow ship’s bunk lay a sleeping TJ.

  Dason pulled his feet under him, grasped the opening’s lip with both hands and dropped without a sound to the sick bay floor. He crept over to TJ, keeping a wary eye on the door.

  Several strands of her ash-blond hair hid the flesh-colored InstaHeal cream that covered a small wound on her forehead. Other than that and being unconscious she seemed unhurt.

  Giving TJ’s shoulder a last pat in parting, Dason used a small stool to give him some added height and reached up to grab Shanon’s outstretched hands. With her help, he pulled himself up into the overhead passageway.

  “Well?” Shanon demanded in a whisper.

  “No good,” Dason whispered back. “I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to bring her around any time soon.”

  “We can’t just leave her!”

  “Shanon, that little sick bay is for the simplest of medical needs. If she’s in a deep stun-gun sleep, to wake her, you know as well as I do that we would need a facility with neural restorers and nerve fiber regeneration medicines.

  “We don't have those, so the next best thing is for her to sleep it off. Besides, if we move her, it won't take them long to figure out that they've got stowaways.”

  With a reassuring touch to her arm, he uttered softly, “She’s better off in the dispensary for now. And it looks like they’re taking care of her. Why else would they give her medical aid?”

  Shanon’s grave expression said she wasn’t all that sure of Dason’s argument, but she gave a half-hearted shrug and answered flatly, “Okay.”

  After reseating the access hatch, Dason and Shanon continued forward, peering and listening through the ventilation slits they found. They didn’t see or hear anyone else until reaching the ship’s most forward part, which housed the piloting and navigation spaces.

  Peering through a vent, Dason could see several astro-nav consoles spread around the room in a broad arc.

  Bianca sat in a grav-seat. She reached out to touch a compuscreen in several places, no doubt monitoring the ship’s various operating systems.

  Dason and Shanon crouched, not daring to make a sound. Watching Bianca, Dason had the impression of a very confident and competent individual. He shook his head to himself.

  The young woman did not meet his mental picture of a renegade poacher. Criminals were supposed to look mean and nasty—certainly not good-looking.

  After a few minutes, the outlaw ran her fingers over the controls before rising and leaving the room.

  For a few minutes, Dason and Shanon sat in silence in the semi dark, taking shallow breaths. Only the muffled clicks from the electronics on the bridge broke the quiet.

  Shanon whispered, “I don’t think she’s coming back anytime soon. I’m going down there. Check out the pilot console. Might even be able to determine the ship’s course and destination.”

  “Hey,” Dason protested, “this isn’t a scouter, you know. You’ve never flown a vessel this size before.”

  Shanon gave Dason a frank stare. “Says who?”

  She opened the grill and with Dason’s help dropped to the floor. Without making a sound, she moved from one station to another. After checking the last console, she put both elbows on the silvery surface and ran her hands through her hair before glancing up at Dason.

  “They’re all locked down,” she whispered. “I can’t bring anything up.”

  Motioning to her, Dason anxiously said, “You tried, now shimmy up here before we get caught.”

  A few moments later, Shanon was back in the conduit and the ventilation grill was reset. “What now?” she asked.

  “We head back. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

  The two made their way to their rendezvous point where Nase and Sami waited. “We checked on TJ,” Dason began, “she’s still out but okay.

  “We overheard the poacher called Bianca say something about a spacer-to-spacer transfer of the XTs and TJ, too. I think the get-together is going to be pretty soon. What did you find?”

  “No one in engineering, it’s on full-automatic,” Sami replied. “Didn’t see much else, because of a couple of lowlifes in the area.”

  “The armory?” Dason asked.

  “Empty,” Nase replied. “They must still be wearing their firearms.”

  Dason eyed Nase with a puzzled expression before he turned to Shanon. “Was Bianca wearing a weapon?”

  Shanon nodded slowly, “Yes, I believe so, though it was kinda hard to see through the vent.”

  Dason scratched at his head, his eyebrows furrowing. “Why haven’t they stored their weapons? There’s no reason to carry charged weapons on your own ship.”

  Nase thoughtfully replied, “Doesn’t make sense. One discharge on the right setting, instant hole in the ship and you’re breathing some pretty thin stuff.”

  “Energy weapons say you mean business,” Shanon expressed soberly. “What on this ship would be so dangerous that they need to carry L-guns?”

  “Us,” Sami answered in a cocky voice. “They know we’re bad.”

  “No, Sami,” Shanon replied in a patient tone. “Do you really think they’d just let us go crawling around in their service ducts that hold the circuitry to the power, navigation, and engineering controls if they knew we were here?”

  “Okay, if not us, then each other,” Sami insisted. “No love lost between outlaws. Sleep with one eye open and one hand on your weapon’s fire button.”

  No one spoke while each considered the question. Rubbing a hand over his chin, Nase said, “Possible, but I don’t think so. Shanon is right. I think it’s a mongoose-and-cobra scenario.”

  “Huh?” Sami sputtered. “What does that mean? Haven’t seen any mongooses, or, uh, mongeeses—whatever, on this grungy bucket, or cobras either.”

  Nase shook his head and explained. “Cobras and mongoose are adversarial predators, venom versus razor-sharp teeth, striking distance versus lightning speed.

  “If the poachers know we’re aboard, they know that our weapons are all but nonexistent, and we have limited technical capabilities for this type of spacecraft. To them, we’re neither cobra nor mongoose.”

  Irritated at Nase’s somewhat patronizing manner, Sami retorted, “For a highfalutin blue blood you sure got a lot of trivia in that rich-kid head of yours.”

  Nase’s eyes grew hard. “Listen, who and what I am is nobody’s business but my own, and not yours. Got it, amigo?”

  Sami leaned toward Nase, his mouth tight, his neck muscles quivering. “Maybe I make it my business—”

/>   Dason looked from Nase to Sami, mouth open. Nase’s sudden flare of temper and his scathing reply caught him off-guard. He had never witnessed Nase so close to losing his composure.

  “Stop!” he ordered. “This is not the time or place for this.”

  He pushed them apart with a hard shove to their chests. “The enemy is out there, not in here. And this doesn’t help TJ one bit.”

  Dason pulled Nase around to face him and not Sami. “Go on, I’m listening.”

  With a stony face, Nase continued, “In simple terms, they’re wearing weapons, not because of our threat; they’re wearing weapons because of another, greater danger.”

  Dason nodded as he grasped Nase’s point. “They’re armed because they think they have a cobra aboard.”

  Sami piped up. “Wait. They’re out shipping a cobra? But an L-gun is way overkill. Just whack the thing a couple times with a real long, big stick.”

  “No, no,” Dason answered. “Not a literal cobra, Sami, they’ve got something on board that’s so dangerous that they’re willing to take a chance on a weapon discharge in a small ship. And I think I know what it is.”

  Shanon snapped her fingers. “An XT!”

  “You got it,” Dason affirmed. “Bianca ordered one of her crew to check on something called a Torther Ape, and to make sure the hatch was tight because they didn’t want the beast loose. That’s the threat.”

  “So, what’s a Torther Ape?” Sami asked.

  Dason glanced from novice to novice. “Anyone?”

  Shanon shook her head. “Nothing comes to mind.”

  Nase shook his head no, too.

  “Don’t look at me,” Sami muttered to Dason. “I asked the question first.”

  “Looks like we’re all drawing a blank,” Dason observed.

  “Could be a new species,” Shanon offered. “After all, Star Scout Command alone adds an average of ten new species per day to the Extraterrestrial Galactica.”

  Dason shook his head in exasperation. “There are too many species to remember. So we could be up against a new XT species, of which we have zero knowledge.”

  Sami spoke up. “And why is that such a bad thing?”

  “Because, Sami,” Dason made clear, “if we commandeer this ship, that means we get the ape too. It would be good to know what we’re dealing with; don’t you think?”

  “No problem,” Sami returned. “You said the thing’s sealed in a cargo hold. Leave it there and leave it alone. Simple.”

  “And what if it gets loose?” Nase asked. “What then?”

  Sami opened his mouth to answer but closed it with a grimace.

  “So,” Shanon began in a taut tone, “one of us needs to find the beast and see what we’re dealing with.”

  “And before the linkup,” Dason stressed, “because that will be the best time to hit them. They’ll be preoccupied with maneuvering and getting the XTs ready to transship.”

  “They might even be working alone,” Nase remarked.

  Noting the eager look on his teammates, Dason mused aloud, “If we picked them off one by one we might be able to capture the ship. Get on the ship’s communicator—maybe contact the nearest Star Scout unit or Navy ship.”

  “Yes,” Shanon agreed, “but one of us still needs to get a look at that ape.”

  Sami looked around and asked, “Which one of us?”

  Dason smiled and patted Sami on the shoulder. “Isn’t this what you signed up for, to explore new worlds, to—”

  “You betcha,” Sami retorted, shaking Dason’s hand off. “Worlds, explore new worlds, Thorne. Not skulking around some poacher’s rust bucket of a spaceship looking for some hopped-up monkey on steroids.”

  “Okay, Sami, calm down,” Dason replied. “On second thought, it would be best with two of us.”

  He fixed his eyes on Nase. “You up to it?”

  Nase gave Dason a quick nod. “Sure.”

  “Good. Shanon, you and Sami give us a little time to work aft, then head for the sick bay. If the poachers start to match in with the incoming ship, well, use your best judgment on what to do with TJ.

  “If we’re lucky, we’ll be back before that happens. Everyone okay with that?”

  The three nodded in agreement, to which Dason replied, “All right, let’s go.”

  Dason and Nase started moving aft. Dason spoke in a low voice to Nase, “If I were this craft’s captain, I would have that thing in the ship’s furthermost recesses.”

  “I agree,” Nase acknowledged. “Minimize the danger, lower the risk to your crew.”

  For several minutes, they navigated the narrow ways until they reached the aft cargo holds. Dason gazed through a metal grill but couldn’t tell if he looked into an empty cargo space or not.

  He pressed the inset button that released the hatch’s seating mechanism and watched as it swung away before poking his head into the compartment. A small extraterrestrial creature lay in a stex-glass chamber in the cubicle’s far corner.

  Dason slid his legs through the opening and dropped catlike to the metal deck. Almost on tiptoes he walked over to the XT and peered at the steel blue creature.

  Its silvery puff-ball tail covered a small, foxlike nose. The front two of its six legs twitched like the little mammalian was trying to dig a hole in the thin padding.

  Dason let out his breath and murmured, “What the—”

  “What’s wrong?” Nase whispered.

  Dason waved a hand at the animal. “It’s a Splena Hund.”

  “Really?” Nase responded.

  “Yeah,” Dason replied. “You know, before we took off, I found a Gallor Mountain Sheep in another hold, and now we have a Splena Hund. What do you make of that?”

  Nase lay on his belly with his head and shoulders sagging into the cargo space. “They’re somewhat rare,” he offered. “And there is a small market for them in off-world zoos and private parks.”

  He frowned before saying, “But they’re not the real exotic XTs you’d think that poachers would be after.”

  “So why have those aboard?” Dason wondered. “Seems like a big risk for a small payoff.”

  Nase didn’t answer and his brow furrowed while he thought. Then he asked, “What if they were using them to cover for other, more lucrative and unlawful activity?”

  Dason glanced back at the star animal. “You’re saying that they’re trying to appear like legitimate XT traders, whereas in reality they’re shipping illegal animals, or perhaps something else that’s against the law.”

  “Possible,” Nase answered.

  “So why were they in the preserve? To capture a few legal XTs?” Dason asked.

  “No,” Nase stated. “Wouldn’t be worth the risk. They were after something much more valuable.”

  “Something like a Torther Ape?” Dason inquired.

  “That would be my guess,” Nase replied. “You said that Bianca specifically wanted that XT checked.”

  “Something you do with your most valuable cargo,” Dason mused.

  “And often,” Nase added meaningfully.

  Dason looked up at his companion. “You’re right. We need to move faster and find that ape. Crawling through the ducts takes too long, let’s go out the hatch.”

  “You sure?” Nase questioned. “We could trip an alarm, not to mention run into a poacher in the passageway.”

  “I know it’s taking a chance,” Dason acknowledged. “With luck, whoever is monitoring the hold will think it’s a routine check when the hatch opens.”

  He went to the metal door and listened. No noises came from the other side. He waved a hand toward Nase. “It’s clear, jump down.”

  A second later, Nase dropped to the floor and reset the vent grill. Gesturing to the hatch door, Dason asked, “If the bells and whistles go off, you know what to do, right?”

  “Run,” Nase replied without hesitation.

  “And fast,” Dason stressed.

  He pressed on the door pad and stood aside as the door slid into th
e bulkhead. He poked his head out and scanned the short transverse passageway.

  Empty.

  With a wave, Dason motioned for Nase to come out. Nase pressed the reseal button and together they crossed to the hatchway on the opposite side of the passageway.

  Dason opened the hatch to find that the compartment’s deck had thick white padding covering the floor and halfway up the sides.

  He stepped in—only to dive back out. “Close it!” he rasped in a fierce whisper as he flew through the hatchway.

  Nase punched the reseal pad and turned to Dason with a questioning expression. “Alger’s Python,” Dason gasped, “coiled near the door.”

  Nase’s look turned to disgust, and he helped Dason up. Dason swallowed while saying, “I realize it’s a worm, but it still gives me the heebie jeebies.”

  “With good reason,” Nase answered. “How many worms are four meters long, ambush their prey and feed on their still alive quarry through six segmented mouths?”

  They made their way to a new hatch, and without speaking, drew their field knives. Nase reached up and ran his hand over the release pad. The door slid open, and the two peered inside. Hunched over, with its back to them sat a large, shaggy-haired creature with huge, accordion-like ears.

  Nase grabbed Dason’s arm and pulled him back before hitting the reseal button. “That’s the—”

  “XT we were after in the preserve,” Dason finished for him.

  He glanced at Nase. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes,” Nase replied, “their Torther Ape and our Xee are one and the same.”

  They both jumped when a loud voice blared out, “All hands. Stand by for space dock and transfer.”

  Dason and Nase snapped their heads up. “Too soon,” Nase stated. “We’re not ready.”

  “I know, I know,” Dason almost yelled.

  Just then, Dason heard Shanon speak through his earpiece. “Dason, we’ve got a big problem.”

  “I’m listening,” Dason replied.

  “She’s gone. TJ’s not in the infirmary.”

  “What!?”

  “They’ve got her, Dason,” Shanon asserted with a catch in her voice. “They’ve taken her, and we don’t know where!”

  Dason turned to Nase. “They must have just moved her. But why? The link-up with the other ship can't be complete. We didn’t do any maneuvering at all.”