I ran for the dock. The town looked to be deserted. The buildings were covered in light brown sand and metal barriers covered all the windows and doors. I ran past domed buildings, ones which ended in sharp points, some square and others circular. Each building was designed with the idea of familiarity and comfort to any visiting species. The bistro I dined in, or lack thereof before things got tense, was constructed when the first human scheduled a visit to Karth. The actual surface of the planet was a desert—all sand and rock. There may have been plant life, maybe something reminiscent of cacti on Earth, but none within view. The biggest problem for me was the humid weather and bright sunlight, which left me sweating and panting after about a hundred steps. I’m in pretty good shape, but the heavy atmosphere from the gases surrounding the planet caused my lungs to argue with me. I imagined my lungs saying, ‘this is why you should carry an oxygen mask with you’. My body begged me to stop and rest, but I pushed harder.
I saw bodies when I was about halfway to the docks. They weren’t humanoid or alien—they were the security droids, all of them scattered on the ground. Claw marks covered their metallic bodies and wires hung from limbs. I couldn’t guess how many of them were there. Plasma burns striped the ground, but not the droids. Using my bionic eye I scanned over the area. The plasma fire was consistent with the type of rifle the droids were equipped with. Could the killer seriously tear these machines apart that easily, alone, through those blasts? I continued with caution.
By the time I reached the large, gray walls separating the world from the starships, my clothes were damp with sweat, which also burned my eyes. A crowd of aliens were pounding and screaming on the sealed doors. I couldn’t recognize most of the aliens by their appearances. A few of them were half my size with silver spiky hair and long arms hanging down to the ground. A handful of others wore thick white robes that covered their entire bodies, but their bare feet looked soft and round, almost like a suction cup. Their fingers ended in the same shape. I also caught glimpses of a family—two adults and a child, their skin light brown and textured with lines crossing over each other. A Karthan announcement repeated over the loud speaker. The aliens must have been outside the buildings before the security measures had activated. I couldn’t translate the entire announcement through all the noise, but it basically said the doors were sealed due to criminal action on the planet.
This was a lost cause. Even using my bionic eye I could detect dozens of different weapon signatures. I dropped to the ground, exhausted from the thick air and frustrated at the sight in front of me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next.
“They all swarm the gates like insects, don’t they?” The deep, raspy voice startled me.
I jumped to my feet and spun to find a . . . well . . . a lion. He looked enough like one, except he stood on two feet like a human would. A radiant brown mane surrounded his head and his flat, wide nose ended in triangular nostrils. We stared at each other and goose bumps crawled up my arms and legs when his humanoid round eyes contracted into slits, the irises colored gold. He produced a sly smile, which showed white teeth formed into sharp points. He wore form fitting armor the color of dull silver. Held at his side was the long, metallic case the Karthan droid mentioned.
“For a Leondren, you speak English well enough,” I said I felt my heart beat against my chest a little faster, but I remained outwardly calm. He bowed to me.
“I am humbled by your knowledge of my race.”
We both assessed each other. Every second that passed, the crowd at the doors grew louder. My fingers twitched and the hand around my gun tightened its hold. My legs argued for movement, but I forced myself to stay still.
“So . . . are you looking to get off this rock like the rest of the . . . what did you call them . . . insects?”
“I am. My job here has been completed,” he replied. His composure was calm, his smile warm and welcome. It made my stomach churn.
“And that job was? Do you mind me asking?”
“I do not,” he said. “I am proficient in silencing individuals who step over their bounds.” He talked as if he were boasting about his job. The hairs on the back of my neck stood erect. Despite the Karthans hiring me to apprehend him, the Leondren seemed conversational. Why not push the discussion further?
“You’re an assassin,” I suggested.
“I suppose your kind would give it that title, yes.”
His composure, his mane hovering in the soft wind, he looked like he could crush a stone in the palm of his hand. Would I even have time to raise my revolver? I could only assume that the Karthans were sending more security forces this way, so maybe I just needed to keep him busy until then.
“You silence people, even when they’re defenseless? Can you justify murder when a man’s back is turned?”
“When the price is right, I can justify anything,” he said, a soft purr emanating from his throat. His voice was cold, as if he didn’t care for anyone. I swallowed hard but tried to look calm.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Granak,” he replied. “And I already know your name, Daniel Quinn.”
That didn’t surprise me.
“Well, Granak, what happens next? Your contract here is done. I know you killed Damon Derringer, but what about me? How do I fit into all this?”
To my surprise, Granak laughed.
“I will not be killing you, Daniel Quinn. At least, not yet.” He turned toward the crowd and walked away from me.
That was it? Not yet?
I pointed my revolver at his back.
“Granak! You aren’t going anywhere. Stop right there or I’ll open fire.”
He stopped and looked over his shoulder at me, the smile on his face never faltering. He regarded me, then the crowd of aliens at the dock.
“If you miss your mark, Captain, you’ll kill one of these helpless insects.”
I hesitated. That was all the time he needed. Granak reached into his pocket and pulled out some kind of mechanical sphere. My bionic eye acted instinctively and scanned it. A sonic detonator.
I fired a direct plasma blast, thinking I could hit him before he threw it, but he let go as the shot hit him in the upper back. I watched as the sphere traveled toward the crowd. My breath stuck in my throat. They were all about to die. Maybe there was no hope, but that didn’t stop me from screaming at them.
“Everybody down! Detonator!”
The device exploded just before making impact. A violent shockwave erupted from the source of the explosion, hitting me like a shuttlecraft. My eye flashed static, my eardrums blew out, and it felt like all oxygen was forced out of me, my lungs and body burning with the need for air. The ground came up and hit me. I couldn’t hear a damn thing except a high pitch ringing, and when I touched my ears I felt blood. I opened my human eye, though blurry, and watched as Granak walked through the aftermath. He stepped on bodies, or what was left of them, as he strode toward his escape, his hulking mass taking his time and surveying his work.
All I could think about was the number of aliens he killed and his careless attitude toward life. I pushed myself up to pursue him, but fell in a dizzy haze before I could take a single step. All I could do was watch as his ship, nothing but a giant blurry spot to me, took off into space.
Meanwhile, a voice in my head kept asking, What the flux am I supposed to do now?
Two
“You have sustained hearing loss, Captain. There will be bruising on various parts of your body from being flung by the explosion and your ankle has been sprained, but otherwise all injuries are minimal.”
We were back inside the bistro. I couldn’t hear the medical droid speak, obviously, but a screen on its chest flashed the diagnosis to me. I nodded to him as I jammed my fingers in my ears, attempting to clear out a blockage that wasn’t there. Inside my head a battle raged between a solid high pitch noise and a constant ringing.
Shortly after the explosion and Granak’s escape, Tress came to inves
tigate and found me lying on the ground with blood oozing from my ears. He helped me walk back into town, which I had to admit was impressive, especially considering I threatened his life less than an hour earlier. I later learned that only two other aliens survived, though both were missing appendages, while I got away with a twisted ankle, a few cuts and bruises, and the hearing loss.
Tress didn’t understand the concept of hearing loss, and as such he felt it necessary to blabber on about how sorry he was for the position he put me in. The medical droid was kind enough to type out Tress’s apology to me, though I wasn’t terribly interested. All I could think about was how fluxing stupid I was for landing on this forsaken rock of a planet.
Two disposal droids were bagging Damon’s body. The image of him being shot replayed in my head, and as it did I noticed things. Both Tress and Damon came looking for me, but Granak only killed Damon. At first I thought the barriers stopped him from killing Tress, but if that’s the case Granak wouldn’t have told me his job was completed. Didn’t Damon say something about their planets being in the same solar system? If that’s true, Damon was marked before he even left his home planet.
If I knew I was going to die, but I had to find someone, how would I pass on my information? Find a partner to deliver the message I couldn’t. But Tress didn’t know anything, unless he was lying to me. Then I remembered the faint energy signature coming from behind him.
“Tress,” I tried to say, but not hearing my own voice was jarring. I must have screamed at him, because he jumped as I spoke. I grabbed his hips and spun him around in a circle, then reached into his waistband and pulled out a metal, rectangular object.
An electronic memory drive. Damon Derringer you smart son of a bitch, I thought.
Tress screamed out something, but I couldn’t even read human lips, let alone alien ones. I pointed toward the medical droid and typed on the keyboard.
“This drive can record and contain memories and files. I use something similar to record logs on my ship. Damon must have known someone was following him,” I said. Tress’s eyes turned pale blue, but I didn’t know what that meant. I reminded myself to ask Al what the color combinations within Restrans’ eyes meant.
The droids finished the containment process for Damon’s corpse. They loaded him onto a large hover bed and the droid closest to me turned and spoke to the medical one.
“Where would you like the body?” The words on the screen said to me.
“Um, come again?” I typed.
“You are the only other human on the planet, Captain. You are granted all rights to the corpse and are required to transport it off Karth.”
“Flux.” What the hell was I supposed to do with a corpse on my ship? I didn’t know this man or where he came from. What were the Karthans going to do about the various remains of aliens around the docking gate? Call their native planets and request a pick up?
“We do not understand your use of language, Captain. If you are unable or unwilling to remove the corpse, we do have the option of vaporizing it.”
I nearly said yes just to have it finished, but my conscience took over. This man traveled far to find me, and to leave him on this barren rock would be a disgrace to whatever legacy he may have held back home. But maybe his memory drive would tell me where he came from. Would it be such a bad thing to return his body to his family?
“No,” I typed. “I’ll take him. Deliver him to the Kestrel Belle, docking platform thirty.”
“Yes, Captain. In regards to the Leondren, we are still willing to hold our terms of the contract.”
“Forget it,” I said. “That lunatic spent no effort killing a dozen aliens at the dock. Just pay me the original fee.”
“His attack on our dock escalated our need to capture him,” the droid typed. “If you will pursue and apprehend the Leondren, we will not only pay you $3 million Earth dollars, but we will submit favorable Starcade ratings to your account.”
“Ratings . . . as in plural?” The Starcade is an intergalactic bulletin board for mercenaries, rogues, and anyone trying to work outside the law. It’s a simple system where you apply for a job and, depending on your rating and reputation, you’re either hired or you’re not. Often times I was looked over because of my low rating. Give me a smuggling or courier job and I had no problems getting it done, but a lot of Starcade jobs required assassinations, signs of violence, and outright murder. I wasn’t comfortable with that, and I lost a lot of job opportunities because of it.
If the Karthans were willing to make this new deal, I wouldn’t just have a ton of money to spend on the Belle and myself, but my Starcade rating could rise high enough to earn me better jobs with better pay. How could I turn that down?
But I would have to face Granak again. If another face off situation arose, did I have any chance of winning? For all I knew he was halfway across the solar system by now, on his way to a new job and target.
“I agree,” I typed. “But I want an advance of my original payment.”
The Karthans agreed. Now I had the money I was originally promised, with more on the way provided I take down Granak. If I never saw him again, it would be no different to me. Something in the back of my mind told me we would meet again, though.
An hour passed as my cargo was loaded. The medical droid was able to manufacture a serum compatible with human biology and the ringing in my ears slowly faded, but was replaced by bleeps and bloops of the computer in front of me. I could hear Tress muttering something, too. But my hearing wasn’t completely restored, and everything sounded as if it came from across the room.
The Karthans cleaned up the mess Granak left behind while I checked over my weapon and armor, and signed the new contract for the Karthans.
“Captain Quinn,” the bistro’s service droid announced. “Your cargo has been successfully loaded and your ship has been cleared for departure.”
“It’s about time,” I muttered as I stood. Tress followed suit. Stars above. I didn’t even think about him, but obviously I couldn’t leave him stranded. I still felt guilt over threatening his life. But maybe I could make it up to him. Damon mentioned Tress lived in the same solar system, so I could drop him off on his home planet on the way.
“Doratu no ja!” I said sternly to him. Listen to me! Finding the right words to say in his language took me a while, but I managed to roughly say, “You follow my rules on ship. You lock door to your room if there is trouble. You leave ship if we need to abandon. Understand?”
He nodded his head violently.
“Ta!” Yes.
Get a grip Daniel, I thought. He’s a frightened teenage Restran. It’s not like he’s a cold, ruthless, assassin who seems to befriend you only to betray you later.
Oh wait, that was my last passenger.
The docking gate was ruined when we approached it. Entire sections of the surrounding wall were missing, cut out in the shape of Granak’s sonic shockwave. I walked past it and wondered whether the ground I stepped on was actually dirt or dusted remains of the fallen aliens. Somewhere in dock, a number of ships were now up for grabs without a pilot to captain them. The thought nearly brought me to tears. Being a captain myself, I was affectionate of my ship.
I found her right where I left her; the Kestrel Belle. The model was an antique design—only a handful of Kestrel class cruisers remained afloat in space—but she was nimble and quick. She resembled her namesake, the falcon. The bow ended in a sharp point, which faced downward like a beak, the midsection was elongated and smooth, and the wings curved outward with the slingspace turbines attached at their backs. Her color was supposed to be dull silver, but various sections on the belly and starboard wing were bronze-colored plates that had been fused to the original hull to repair damage.
Two carrier droids that prepared Damon’s body hovered down the ramp to my cargo bay.
“Cargo is secure, Captain,” the one on the right said with a faint sound of Karthan language still audible behind the droid’s voice. “Don’t
forget our agreement. Deliver the Leondren criminal to us, dead or alive.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I told them.
When I stepped onto my ship, all the stress and worry of the day slowly evaporated. I was home. The Belle was a three-deck ship. The cargo bay was the size of a miniature warehouse and was the only way to get on or off the ship. Technically there was an escape hatch outside the bridge, but I could never get the fluxing thing open. The ladder at the end of the cargo bay led to the second deck of the ship, which held a very empty and cobwebbed armory. From there you could gain access to the third deck, engineering, and the first deck with the bridge and crew quarters.
I made checking the cargo my first order of business. The Karthans surprised me with the research they conducted on our species. Damon’s remains were placed in a crude coffin built with some type of sandstone. Belts and braces latched it firmly in place. The Karthans were a damn mysterious people, but they knew what they were doing and they treated their visitors with respect.
Everything was set. With Tress and me onboard, I pushed up the lever to the bay doors. The mechanisms creaked and moaned as the door closed. The natural lighting and humidity of Karth disappeared, replaced with the Belle’s artificial life support systems.
Tress followed me as I climbed the ladder’s cold metal rungs. Deck plates clanked as we walked across them into the second deck. From there we climbed the stairs and walked down the corridor towards the bridge. I stopped at the first door on my left and tapped it with my knuckles.
“This here will be where you stay,” I said to Tress. As my hearing improved, my Restran language flowed more smoothly than before. “There are a handful of beds. Choose whichever one you want.”
The familiar sounds and smells of the Belle made me smile as I left Tress to inspect his new quarters. I walked through the small arch onto the bridge and closed the door. It was the size of a large closet with three chairs and stations. The left station was used for tactical and security purposes like weapons and shields. The right was main operations where maps were reviewed, courses were evaluated, and engineering and other ship statistics were calculated. The center station was for navigation—my station—though the two consoles that surrounded it also connected functionality with tactical and operations. In front of the chair was a silver globe; a navigational sphere or navsphere as I came to call it, which controlled the ship.
Antagonize (From the Logs of Daniel Quinn Book 2) Page 2