It was hard to put everything he had learned about his life out of his mind, to ignore the fatigue that was made worse by starting recovery from radiation sickness. He focused on finding out more about the shipment.
He wasn't willing to simply hand over all the information to the Thadd authorities. There wasn't much chance of them taking action against a corporation like Regent Galactic. He didn't know what he'd do with the information either, he just needed it.
Frost met him just a few steps inside the Samson. “Captain, do you know how much this is costing us? That fruit shipment Regent let us keep was a bonus, a huge bonus if we sold it in the right port. And paying us out of your own pocket? What the hell for? If you had just waited a few hours you could have let Thadd Search and Rescue take care of it and maybe we'd be out a job, but you could have paid the crew half of what that fifteen mil job would have paid and we'd have all stayed on.”
“There are people in that compartment who would have died if we didn't start helping. I met them, I treated them myself. I saw hundreds, a couple thousand bodies, just laying on the deck or in bunks. They started dying off when people started hoarding food a couple weeks ago.”
“That happens out here, you know that. Whole crews with a burnout, no way to get anywhere fast enough starving on their own ships. Anyone can walk down the wrong alley and get taken by slavers, end up on a ship like this, just cause you're seeing it for the first time doesn't make this special. Doesn't mean we have to jump in and be heroes.”
“I've done a lot of things that would make me a criminal in any port, taken a few lives I wish I hadn't, but I couldn't walk away from what I saw in there. Have you seen it for yourself? Have you gone and helped back there?”
“No, I've been minding your ship Captain. That's my job. I do it, I get a share, that's how it works.”
“Well you don't have to be on the bridge now, so get your ass down that catwalk and do something useful.”
“No, and you won't cut me out neither.”
“I'll not only cut you out, I'll put you to our aft and hit the thrusters.”
“You're goin' soft.”
“Your choice, go help or get off.” Captain Valance said as he turned towards the brig.
Frost stood there looking down the hall for a moment then turned and started walking towards the cargo train.
Captain Valance punched his security code into the panel beside the thick brig door. Beyond it was a small compartment with two barred cells. Burke sat up on the edge of his bunk and smiled. “The hero of the day pays me a visit. Frost tells me you're handing out fruit and emergency rations.”
“I am, but that's nothing you have to worry about. I need two files decrypted, and you're the only man on board with the know how.”
“Your problem. If we're not dropping these cargo containers off with Regent Galactic, I know we're not getting paid. I don't work for free Captain.”
“You won't be working for free, I'll pay you the same share right out of my pocket. Just do it, run whatever custom software you've got and crack these files.” Captain Valance said as he took a data chip out of his arm command unit and offered it to Burke through the bars.
“Out of your own pocket,” he said, looking back with scepticism.
“The whole crew knows I'll be paying them. I can't go back on my word or they'll turn.”
“You'll let me out of the brig?”
“I will.”
“Lead the way.”
Captain Valance entered the lock code on the shielded security panel and the cell door popped open with a loud click. He let Burke lead the way to the bridge, walking just a couple steps beside him. His patience was completely frayed, and he couldn't wait to get Burke off his ship one way or another.
“Sir, Frost is here and we have a problem.” Stephanie said through his communicator.
“Go ahead.”
“His vacsuit wasn't sealed when he got here. I guess the smell hit him. He tossed his dinner across the deck and passed out.”
“Now who's going soft?” Valance whispered to himself.
“Sorry sir? I didn't catch that.”
“Nothing, just seal his vacsuit up, roll him out of the way and make sure he's all right. He'll be on his feet soon..”
“My pleasure sir,” Stephanie replied, he could hear her smiling through the comm.
They arrived at the bridge and Burke sat down at the communications station. Christie was helping with the efforts in the cargo train and Silver was covering communications from the navigation station.
Captain Valance sat down beside him, took his vacsuit head piece off and stared at him. It was a calm, expectant, steady gaze.
“You're going to watch me work this?” Burke said peevishly.
“The only reason why this would make you nervous is if you're about to do something wrong or have already screwed me on something, so work the problem.”
He put the data chip on the console and started checking the encryption. After a minute he nodded to himself. “Should take about five minutes to crack. This file comes from a system I'm familiar with.”
Captain Valance nodded slowly.
Silver was rubbing his shaved head with his hand slowly, from front to back, looking worried in a way only he could. Ashley started to turn in her seat to face the communications station behind her but he stopped her, whispering some warning that no one else caught. Finn was working nearby checking hull stress and quietly minding his own business. The communications station to his left was the last place he wanted to look, in fact he went out of his way to avoid it.
“Okay, the software is working through it.”
“Good,” was all the Captain said, still staring at Burke, who was slowly turning red as he tried to focus on the comm station.
Finn watched the chronometer at his engineering station as the Captain stared at the communications officer. He couldn't help but glance over for a few seconds. The Captain didn't move a millimetre, when he blinked it was a leisurely act. He stared at the communications officer like he was his property to treat however he liked.
Burke at one time stretched, then tried to look at the Captain but turned back to his station. He even said; “Wow, you can cut the tension with a knife,” chuckling nervously.
Nothing broke the Captain's focus. Burke settled and just stared for another full minute before he spun towards Jake. “What? What do you want! I'm doing what you told me!”
“I don't trust you Burke. I can't leave you alone with my ships computer for a second, not one second,” Captain Valance said quietly.
“So you just stare at me like some robot? Some God damned simple machine?” Burke yelled in his face.
“How are you going to betray me Burke?”
“What?”
“When you leave this ship and walk into that big port what are you going to do? What will you take with you? What will you steal from me if I just let you go?”
Burke just sat there, looking back at the Captain on the verge of panic.
“Are you hiding something from me?”
“What the hell are you talking about? You've lost it!”
“That's it, you're hiding something. Tell me.”
“What would I hide? There's nothing!” He blubbered.
“Step away from the console Burke,” Captain Valance said with no inflection in his tone. “We're going to the brig, we'll finish this conversation there, where there's no one looking on.”
Burke stared at him, his face turning a new shade of red, eyes starting to tear up. “No,” he croaked.
“What is it Burke? There's something you're not telling me. Something I need that you have.”
His nose was running, chin quivering. “There's nothing-”
Jake Valance twitched his sidearm out of its holster and punched Burke out of his chair. He fell to the deck and scrambled back up to his knees. Before he could catch his balance the barrel of the Captain's gun was against his forehead and the sound of the safety t
urning off was the loudest thing in the room.
“What is it Burke? What are you hiding?” He was so quiet you could barely hear him. “Tell me.”
“I'm s-sorry, I'm s-so so s-sorry. We got a t-transmission, just o-over a year ago, it was a w-woman, v-voice m-m-matched your earliest s-security f-footage.” Burke blubbered.
“Go on.”
“S-she said she n-needed help, w-was t-trapped on V-Van P-Purius.”
“Why didn't I get the message?”
“Y-you w-were hunting s-someone down. Thought it could w-wait. By the time y-you got back s-someone b-b-backtracked it and deleted it in our s-system.”
“And you thought I'd kill you for it!” Valance shouted. Everyone on the bridge jumped. Most of the ship could hear it. He kicked Burke in the side and pressed him down onto the deck with his boot on his shoulder.
Captain Valance leaned down and pressed the barrel to Burke's temple. The communications console beeped and Jake smiled, seeing the decryption was complete. “I don't need you anymore Burke.”
The man let out a small cry, shaking on the floor. Quaking with fear, he wet himself.
“If I let you live today will I regret it?”
Burke's eyes went wide. “N-no!”
“You know I can hunt you down. You've seen me do it a hundred times.”
“M-more, m-more than a h-hundred!” He yelled. Quieting to a whisper he continued. “I know, you can trust m-me.”
Captain Valance put his sidearm back into its holster and took his foot off Burke's back. “You're confined to quarters. Go clean yourself up and pack your things.”
Burke scurried off the bridge, and Captain Valance sat down in his command chair slowly. He just stared out of the small transparesteel slit for several minutes. Everyone else was dead quiet, trying their best to seem like they had something to do at their station. The silence went on for a very long time.
Ashley eventually looked over her shoulder at him expecting to see the furious man of moments ago. He looked bone tired, just staring off towards the front of the bridge.
“How did you know sir?” Asked Silver, who didn't turn around.
“In the first few seconds of staring at him, I knew. I didn't know what it was, but he was hiding something.”
He brought the decrypted information up on a small holoprojector in his command chair and looked it over. It was the manifest. After examining it for a few minutes he ran his hand down his face and sighed. “In the five years I've been taking bounties, hunting down what people lost or had stolen no one has asked me why I do it,” he said to no one in particular.
“I thought it was just what you did,” Ashley said. “you're so good at it.”
“I don't remember anything before then. I woke up on this ship. It was registered to my name, this command unit and most of the other things you see with me were in a pack. The security footage of me being pulled out of a stasis tube just like the ones in the cargo train told me I had a daughter named Alice. She has a friend named Bernice. For a while I thought she might be her mother. They had to leave me because they were on the run from something.”
Everyone on the bridge had turned towards him. Stephanie, who had been standing in the doorway and listening, came in and sat down at the weapons station. She looked as tired as the Captain felt.
He went on. “I do this because I needed to gather credits, improve the ship so when I found out where she was, or picked up a trail somehow I could pay my crew to stay aboard and help me find her. I thought if I built a reputation big enough she wouldn't have trouble tracking me down. In the meantime I kept moving, looking while I picked up one job after another. My freighter Captains look for her as they move along the trade lines.”
“Did what you learn help?” Asked Ashley.
Captain Valance nodded slowly. “For the first time in years I have a place to start. There's something else. Today I met a nafalli who gave me a lead to my old life. There's only one problem; they're in opposite directions.” He shook his head and continued to look through the manifest, finally finding the nafalli who he had been helping. They didn't keep many details; approximate age, size, weight, but at the bottom he found what they had been earmarked for.
He said it aloud; “General purpose test subject for research and development.”
“Sorry sir?” Stephanie asked.
He scrolled down through several different profiles, some in stasis tubes, some in the non-human section of the cargo train. “They're all slated to be test subjects. Some for specific initiatives and others for general purpose. That's what Regent Galactic would be doing with them if we made this delivery.”
“Thank God we found them,” Ashley said.
Jake switched to the navigation file and started checking the logs. “Sorry Ash, you're forgetting. We were the bad guys. It's our job to deliver these people back to the labs. So none of you have to ask, I'm not going to make that delivery. I'd rather pay all your shares than see that happen. I'm sick of being the ultimate bearer of bad news.”
“So am I, I'll pass on my share,” Stephanie said quietly.
Captain Valance looked at her. She looked back at him with a weary, relieved smile. “I'm going back to the cargo train, I have to make sure things stay together until we get help from Search and Rescue,” he said quietly as he started to stand.
“Captain, you look like you're about to fall down,” Stephanie said quietly.
“That's what stims are for. Besides, I can't lay down while everyone else is working their asses off for a cause I chose.”
“I'm right behind you sir.”
Return To Thadd
When the Samson emerged from hyperspace they were greeted by half the system defence fleet. At the head of the various carriers, destroyers and smaller vessels were five Search and Rescue cruisers fitted for everything from vessel rescue to planetary evacuation. Two of them had reported from neighbouring systems.
The hand off was professional and quick. One craft docked with the Samson briefly to drop off several specialists, including a pilot, engineers and combat medics. The engineers got to work at inspecting the connection between the Samson and the cargo train to ensure it was ready to detach and reattach directly to one of the rescue vessels. The medics headed straight to the back while the pilot headed for the bridge.
The commanding officer walked straight into the rear cargo container and announced that everyone should relax and sit down while they attached the cargo train to a rescue ship. She ordered the Samson's crew members out of the container and when they were back in the Samson's hold, Ashley and Silver were guided through detaching from the cargo train properly and carefully. They didn't need the help, but after so many hours on the bridge it was good to have someone making sure everything went by the numbers.
Within ten minutes the Samson was clear and the primary rescue vessel, nearly two kilometres long on its own, had docked with the cargo train. Dozens of medics, engineers and rescue technicians were at work, carefully evacuating the occupants as soon as it was safe.
As the shuttle that dropped off the first group of rescue officers was loading up and getting ready to detach from the Samson, the commanding officer stepped onto the bridge and saluted Captain Valance. “Major Patricia Del'Marr of Thadd Search and Rescue.”
“Captain Jake Valance of the Samson. How is it going over there?”
“No further losses, though we're tracking five dead for every person we were able to rescue. You were just in time.”
“I'm glad we got to it at all. I'll have a report for your branch of the military in a few hours. I'm still gathering data.”
“Thank you Captain but I'd like to invite you and your crew to rest for at least ten hours before debriefing. You've all done the impossible with the number of people you had. Our medics were impressed with the quality of care you managed to provide.”
“Thank you Major, who do I report to when we're rested up?”
“You'll be contacted. Until then,
please have your navigation team release the helm. We'll have you dock with the TRF Peter.”
“Consider it done.”
“Goodbye Captain, and good work,” the Major congratulated with a smile before leaving the bridge.
After the shuttle detached the Samson was guided to the TRF Peter and docked there. Captain Valance leaned back in his chair, sighing in relief.
“A good day Captain.” Ramirez said from behind. He and Price were both standing there, filthy, tired but pleased with themselves.
He turned his chair to face them. “I couldn't be more proud of everyone who lent a hand. We saved thousands of lives today. Speaking of which, did Oomal and Loori get in touch with their children?”
“Their eldest daughter, she's on a trade expedition about four days away. She's on her way to pick up her parents. They wanted me to thank you for them.” Ramirez said with a grin. “Several others are going to hitch a ride back home with her.”
“That's something. It's time we got some rack time. If we're light on crew in a few hours don't panic. I knew we'd lose some people when I decided to take us in the right direction.”
“I know we're losing Frost, he woke up and wasn't too impressed. He and Burke were already on their way off the ship to catch a transport when I was on my way to the bridge. Burke wouldn't even look at me when I asked what was going on.”
“Well, that's trouble out our airlock. I had words with Burke, he didn't like what I had to say.”
“Sir, I'd just like you to know that I'll be staying on board. I've never seen a mercenary ship that would give up a large payday in favour of helping others,” Price said. He was still in his native form and the fibres extending down from his cheek bones to the bottom of his small jaw waggled as he spoke. The fine, soft appearance of them combined with his dark green eyes were eerily appealing.
“Thank you Agameg, I'm looking to make a habit of it. I'll be more careful in picking and choosing our jobs. I'm done with doing everything and anything we're assigned. I've already transferred the pay everyone would have gotten it if we had completed this job, but from here on out this is a salary ship. There may be bonuses but everyone will be getting a regular payday.”
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