by R. A. Nargi
The voice was deep and resonant, but it had a mocking tone to it.
“Son of a bitch,” Ana-Zhi said, sitting up. “No way.”
“Come in, Freya. We’re not interrupting your breakfast, are we?”
“Who is that?” I asked Ana-Zhi.
She punched a button to open the frequency and said, “The biggest asshole in the universe: Agon Qualt.”
The voice bellowed in laughter. “Guilty as charged. Is that the dulcet tones of my fair lady, I’m hearing? Miss Ana-Zhi Agrada?”
“What the fuck do you want, Qualt?”
“Ah, it is Miss Agrada. I recognize that voice anywhere, and you know I always have a soft spot in my trousers for you, darling.”
“Charming. I’ll ask one more time. What do you want?”
“What do I want? I think the better question is what do you want?”
“I don’t have time for your games, Qualt.”
“Exactly my point, Ana-Zhi. Exactly my point. We are both running out of time. According to my handy-dandy chronograph here, we’ve got just a little more than forty-eight hours before those wrigglies shut the door on us. That ain’t a lot of time. Not a lot of time, at all.”
Ana-Zhi didn’t say anything, but that didn’t stop Qualt. He kept blabbering on.
“What I have for you, darling, is a proposition.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“What say you pay me a visit at the Vostok here and the two of us have a little confab?”
“Are you high, Qualt?”
“Maybe high on you, sweet cheeks.”
“Okay, I’m signing off. Have a good life.”
“C’mon, A.Z., just hear me out.”
“There is no way I would ever set foot on your garbage scow of a ship.”
“No need to get personal, A.Z. We’re all friends here.”
“We are not friends, Qualt. Goodbye.”
“Hey! Hey! Hey! Okay, you want to get down to brass tacks. I respect that. I really do. What I am proposing is that we join forces. Split the commission fifty-fifty.”
I watched as Ana-Zhi seemed to consider the proposition.
“How could that work?” she asked. “Only one party can leave with the Kryrk.”
“That’s true enough, darling. But what I’m offering is a way we can both win. We work together, find the Kryrk, and share the commission. The alternative is that the clock runs out and neither of us got what we came for, ergo we will only leave with the minimum compensation. If your deal was anything like ours, that’s like an order of magnitude less than we could get by working together. Just the thought of that makes my left nutsack all warm and tingly. So what do you say, A.Z.?”
“I say that you’re one lazy son of a bitch, Qualt. Do your own work, don’t be trying to piggy-back on my shit. We’re out of here, and if I catch you following us, I’m likely to lay an ion lance right between your own sweet cheeks. Got it?”
“Promises, promises. Suit yourself, darling. I just wanted to give you a chance.”
Ana-Zhi didn’t respond. She just cut the transmission instead.
“Asshole,” she muttered.
“You’re telling me,” Galish said.
“Who is that guy?” I asked.
“Agon Qualt. Mercenary salvage captain. Doesn’t care much who he works for. That’s why he got hooked up with the Mayir.”
“And he really thought we’d join forces?”
“No, he’s not that dumb. I don’t know what he’s playing at, but something’s brewing. Hap, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“And go where? The kid suggested we return to Yueld’s orbit.”
“I don’t give a shit where we go. Just put half a moon between us and them. You got it?”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
She paused in thought. “On second thought, belay that.”
“What?”
“Head back to that airstrip in Maridu,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“We’re going to drop off Murroux.”
“I don’t understand—”
“We have enough to worry about. Let the Batalarians deal with him.”
“But he’s in bad shape,” I said. “We can’t just drop him off.”
“I checked on him. He’s going to be okay. If we have time, we’ll come back for him on our way home.” Ana-Zhi turned to Galish. “Get going.”
I tried to sway her again, but Ana-Zhi had made up her mind.
“Junior, how about you check to see how the princess is doing.”
Again, I bristled at being an errand boy, but I was curious about Chiraine’s progress, so I left the bridge and walked down to the engineering bay.
Chiraine was awake and locked in concentration, studying her workstation’s display. I didn’t want to say anything to distract her.
Finally, she said, “Can I help you?”
The tone of voice wasn’t exactly respectful.
“I don’t know if you saw, but the Mayir ship made contact with us.”
“Is that what the commotion was about?”
I nodded. “They wanted to team up. Split the commission.”
“I hope Ana-Zhi told them to screw themselves.” She kept her eyes locked on her datapad.
A weird feeling hit me like a shiver. “Ana-Zhi?” I asked nonchalantly. “What makes you think that she was doing the negotiating?”
Chiraine froze, not looking at me. She didn’t say anything for several moments. Then she did something on her datapad that took about thirty seconds. When she was done, she slowly turned her chair around to face me.
“I just disabled the ship’s recording.”
“What? Why? That was part of our contract with the Shima.”
“I had to,” she said. “Because I know the truth.”
“Know what truth?” My stomach was queasy.
“I know you’re not Sean Beck.”
10
“What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
“You look just like him, you sound just like him, but you’re not him. What are you, some advanced sim?”
“No.”
“A clone?”
“Kind of.” I couldn’t lie any more. Not to her. “I’m his son.”
“Jannigan Beck?”
“Yeah, guilty as charged.”
“Then it’s true,” she said.
“What’s true?”
“The rumors…about your father.” She trailed off, hesitant.
“What rumors?”
“Your father’s dead, isn’t he?”
I was dumbstruck.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so cold.”
“How did you know?”
“There’s been a lot of talk over the years. Speculation. Gossip. I didn’t know what to believe. Then seeing you, here on the ship…”
“You knew I couldn’t be him. Is that what you’re saying?”
Chiraine glanced down, too uncomfortable to meet my gaze.
“I get it. I guess I’m not as good an actor as I thought.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said quickly. “I swear. I know you were probably in a tough position with the Shima.”
“Yeah, they demanded that Sean Beck run this mission personally.”
“Does the crew know?”
“Yes, of course. They all work together a lot. This is actually my first mission.”
“Is that why you don’t leave the ship?”
“Yeah, it was part of my deal. I never wanted to come on this thing. My uncle kind of forced me to. But our arrangement was that I’d stay on board. Maybe run a few things from here.”
“Well, I think you are doing great,” she said.
“Am I? Am I really? One crew member’s dead. Nearly all the rest injured. And nothing to show for it.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “Check this out.” She beckoned me over to her workstation.
“What’s that?”
“Th
at’s the location of the Kryrk. We found it!”
The Kryrk was in a vault on the colossal mechanized orbiting space station Bandala. I recognized the name, not because of any briefing, but because I remembered that Bandala was where my father died seven years ago. Ana-Zhi had confirmed it yesterday when we spoke about my father. I still wanted to know more. But first I had to clear up some things.
I called the entire crew to the bridge.
“Two things. Both important,” I announced.
“No, we do not have pornography on the ship,” Hap Galish said with a straight face. “And, no, you cannot borrow mine.”
“Listen,” I said. “The Shima’s logs have been disabled. We don’t have to worry about what we’re saying anymore.”
“What happened?” Ana-Zhi asked. “You grow some balls over breakfast?”
I ignored her and said, “Chiraine knows who I am. We’re not playing games anymore. And you know what? It’s a huge relief.”
“It’s a huge relief to me too, junior,” Ana-Zhi said. “You were doing a piss-poor job pretending to be captain. I mean, it was downright painful.”
Chiraine said, “I know, right? Anyway, don’t worry. I won’t say anything to the Shima.”
“You better not, if you know what’s good for you, missy,” Ana-Zhi said.
“What’s the second important thing, pray tell?” Obarral asked.
“I’ve located the Kryrk,” Chiraine said with a smile of satisfaction.
“Unbelievable!” Galish said. “Just when I was beginning to think she was a waste of oxygen.”
“Where is it, girl?” Obarral asked.
“Bandala.”
Immediately there was a lot of excited talk and the crew peppered Chiraine with questions. But not everyone was pleased with the discovery. Specifically Ana-Zhi and Yates.
They both had been part of the ill-fated mission seven years ago. Ana-Zhi had been confined to the MedBed because of an earlier mishap, but Yates had ventured inside Bandala with my father. He barely made it out alive. And needless to say, he was not eager to return there.
“It’s not worth it,” he said, echoing what Ana-Zhi had told me privately. “The place is a deathtrap. And it’s still hot, with all kinds of active security measures. Even with a platoon of rangers, you wouldn’t make it through there alive.”
“Just tell them what you know, Yates,” Ana-Zhi said. She was sucking on a leptic stick, probably trying to clear her head.
Yates rather sullenly complied. He explained that Bandala was a space station, a rough cube, over one and a half kilometers on every side.
“That’s big,” Obarral said. “And I know big.”
“Yeah, you don’t realize exactly just how big, until you are inside.”
“You mentioned active security measures,” Galish said. “How do you get inside?”
“That part is easy. There are several good-sized landing decks. Beacons. The whole deal. And once you land, you’ll find plenty of artificial gravity.”
“At that scale?” Chiraine looked skeptical.
“Don’t ask me how it works,” Yates said. “It just works.”
“So what was this place’s purpose?” I asked. “Do we know?”
“Part storehouse, part orbital battle station. We don’t really know for sure.”
“Actually, we do,” said Chiraine. “At least we believe we do.”
Ana-Zhi raised one eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
Chiraine took over the narrative. “There are actually a lot of records that reference Bandala. I’ve researched it extensively.”
“Well goody for you,” Galish sneered. “How about enlightening us?”
“That’s what she’s trying to do,” I said. “Sorry, Chiraine, continue.”
“Bandala was constructed in 1671 by the Sky Reavers as an autonomous orbital fortress and treasure vault. At that point, their war with the Ptomeans was ramping up and the Yueldians were worried that if the Ptomeans conquered the planet, the treasures the Yueldians had collected would all be lost.”
“So what?” Galish said. “Easy come, easy go.”
“Not to the Sky Reavers. Their plunder was much more than merely treasure.”
“She’s right,” Yates said. “To the Yueldians, the items they stole were totems of sorts. They signified the power that the Sky Reavers had usurped from their enemies. This wasn’t some symbolic power. To the Yueldians, it was real.”
“Exactly,” Chiraine said. “If they lost these totems, the Yueldians believed that they would weaken and be crushed by their enemies.”
“That’s what happened, didn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes, ultimately the Ptomeans did prevail, but it turned out that they had no interest in seizing what the Sky Reavers had plundered.”
“Ironic,” I said.
“Yeah, well. That’s why Bandala is still around and intact.”
“Tell me more about the defenses,” I said to Yates.
He rubbed his eyes. “There’s not much to tell. We got nailed within an hour of entering the fortress. Security drones, blast traps, scrubbers, guardian bots, prowlers—you name it. Fortunately the Tabarroh Crystal wasn’t too far in. But even so… Are you sure you want to be talking about this, Jannigan?”
I nodded. “Go on. It’s important.”
“Well, your dad held off the bots so I could escape. He sacrificed himself for me. And for the mission.”
“How did you locate the Tabarroh Crystal?” Chiraine asked.
“Sean knew the location—right from the start. He never told the rest of us how he knew. I always assumed that the Dodelan Alliance provided that data.”
Chiraine seemed very interested in this particular detail. “What about you, Ana-Zhi? Did Beck ever confide in you?”
Ana-Zhi eyed the other woman warily. “About the Tabarroh Crystal? No.” She took another hit of her leptic. “But I agree with Yates. It would be suicide to go back inside Bandala.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell her, Chiraine.”
“I still need to do a bit more work, but I might have discovered how to shut down the security grid.”
After we dropped Murroux off—something I still felt bad about—Galish set a course for Bandala. Chiraine and I returned to her workstation in the engineering bay.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked.
She tapped her biklode resonator. “There is a lot of data in A419, including what looks to be control protocols for Bandala.”
“That’s good, right?” Galish asked.
“Yes, but the problem is that all that information is heavily encrypted—as you can imagine.”
“Then how do you even know it’s the right data?” I asked.
“The indexes aren’t encrypted. I know what’s there: controls for the security grid, the storage location of the Kryrk. I just can’t read it. Yet. But give me time.” She began to usher me out of the bay.
“How much time? We’ve got less than two days before the end of the mission.”
“It’s not going to go any faster with you hovering over me. Scoot!”
After leaving Chiraine, I made my way to the main hold. No one was there. I slumped down in one of the flight seats and stared out a porthole into space. The stars glittered like gems against an impossibly-black background.
I couldn’t stop thinking of my dad and his last mission into Bandala. There were still so many unanswered questions. How did he know that the Tabarroh Crystal was on Bandala? According to Chiraine, there were at least a dozen other Yueldian treasure vaults around the system.
It might have been possible for the Dodelan Alliance to have obtained the location of the Tabarroh Crystal. The Shima weren’t the only ones employing an army of researchers to comb through data extracted from the Ambit. But something about this didn’t feel right.
And why wasn’t my dad more cautious about entering Bandala? It wasn’t like him to be ca
ught unawares—about anything—let alone the defenses of an orbital fortress on a hostile world.
I thought I knew Sean Beck as well as anyone. After my mom died, it was just me and him—for sixteen years. True, most of that time he was away on missions, but we talked a lot. He drilled into me what he expected. He talked a lot about the Beck legacy—what we stood for. He trained me, educated me, and pushed me—hard. And I tried to keep up, I really did. But I could never shake the feeling—no, the belief—that I wasn’t living up to his standards.
But here on this ship—in his shoes—I had a little better understanding of what he had to go through. The stress, the danger, the life and death decisions. And he had been running Beck Salvage, going on missions, risking everything for over twenty-five years. That must have worn him down.
But not enough to make a stupid mistake. I didn’t believe that. Not for one minute.
At some point I must have dozed off and started dreaming about stupid stuff. Lir’s horses. Playing whisper ball when I was a kid with Dahr and Cappy. Mr. Jeris and his magical cabinet of goodies.
My dreams were interrupted by the ship’s klaxons blaring loudly. Red alert. We were under attack.
I raced to the bridge. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the Faiurae. I don’t know what the hell has gotten into them, but they just fired on us.”
“What?”
The Rhya had imposed strict rules on each expedition they allowed into the Fountain. Interfering with another party was forbidden. Attacking another expedition had serious consequences. And everyone adhered to those rules. You did not want to piss off the Rhya. That’s why it was inconceivable that the Faiurae were blasting hyper-V arrays at us. But I saw it for myself.
“Can you shoot?” Ana-Zhi asked me.
“I think so.”
“Good. We’re down a gunner. You’ve just been promoted. Get down there.”
As I ran to the gun turret on the other side of the ship, I took a deep breath and tried to remember what I knew about operating an ion lance. Like everything else on the Freya, the weaponry was a few generations out of date. This Lektor model III ion lance didn’t belong on an expeditionary vessel. It belonged in a museum.