Galen's Way: A Starquest 4th Age Adventure

by Richard Paolinelli

  “What are you doing?” Cassandra asked.

  “Scan these,” he replied. “Confirm there is enough DNA to register on a trace scan from orbit even after this place goes up.”

  “There is, barely,” she replied. “Toss in that ratty old shirt in the corner and you’ll definitely have enough.”

  He collected the shirt, tossed everything into a bag along with an old crystal paperweight to give the package enough weight to sink. The he stepped back outside, walked to the edge of the pad and tossed the bundle down into the remains of Vedastus’ torn-up ship below. Then he went back inside the keep for the final time.

  “You going to look for that chip with the twenty million on it?” Cassandra asked.

  “I doubt he wasted any time transferring the slips into his private accounts,” Galen replied as he started wiring up every field charge Vedastus had and tied in a remote trigger that would detonate them all plus every mine in orbit above. It would take searchers weeks to go through the debris and all they would find is just enough traces to make them assume every living person down here had perished.

  By that time Galen and the Tempest would be far away from Nammu. As he set the final charge, Galen found himself hoping he’d know what the hell he was going to do next by then. He dashed out to the Tempest and boarded through the cargo hatch, closing it behind him. Stripping off the soaked jacket, he made his made along the length of the ship toward the four sleeper pods.

  He paused just long enough to make sure they were secure and that the vital signs of the sleepers were in the safe range. He tried not looking into the pods any longer than he had to.

  “That’s quite the harem you’ve collected, Galen,” Cassandra chimed in. “You know Vedastus was right about one thing, you never see an ugly princess do you?”

  “You really want to be reprogrammed as thermal regulator, Cass?”

  He heard a slight chuckle at the old threat, but nothing more was said. His gaze lingered on the face of Princess Rhiannon. She looked serene enough. If she did have any dreams now they should be peaceful, he thought, with that demon device no longer plugged into her subconscious. He envied her that. It had been many cycles since he’d been subjected to the Jakamal, and he still had nightmares from the experience.

  * * * * *

  The Tempest lifted off the pad and punched through the storm just as day broke on the surface below. Galen had deactivated the sensors so the mines would not be triggered when the ship took the passage back through to orbit.

  Galen let the ship drift away from the planet. He did not want to use the engines, that would leave a trace, and he needed to remain close enough to send the signal to trigger the destruction of Vedastus’ hideout.

  “Why don’t we just blow the place and go now?” Cassandra asked.

  “Because I wasn’t expected to arrive here and make the rescue attempt for another day and a half,” Galen explained. “If it goes up too early, Harmool might get suspicious. If it goes up as scheduled, he might just relax and take his time confirming what happened out here. When they get out here and find my DNA among the remains, they’ll relax even more. And we need all the time we can get to sort out what to do.”

  “Why not just go to Taygeta and give everything to the Chancellor?” she suggested. “I’m sure he’d be very interested to know he was being set up as a kidnapper.”

  “On the word of a wanted smuggler and that of a now dead smuggler?” Galen scoffed. “Harmool would laugh off any allegation, and I’d be charged with kidnapping seeing as how I now conveniently have all of the evidence aboard that they’d need to convict me.”

  Galen sat back in the pilot’s seat and considered the problem. For the most part he remained up on the flight deck, not being comfortable with the idea of try to sleep in his bunk with four practically-naked women sleeping a few feet away. Not that he got much sleep anyway.

  He still hadn’t sorted out a clear path forward a day and a half later when it came time to trigger the cataclysm on Nammu. The shroud of rock and debris was blown clear of the planet, giving the first unobstructed view of the world in decades. The fireball from the keep was clearly visible from their position, the explosion blasting a clearing in the perpetual cloud cover. The debris cloud itself reached all the way up into the very edge of the planet’s atmosphere.

  “Set course for Farinier, Cass,” he ordered. “And get us there as fast as you can.”

  “Farinier?” she seemed surprised. “That’s kind of the back end of the middle of nowhere, isn’t it? Why are we going there?”

  “Because it’s the last place anyone would think to be looking for kidnapped princesses,” he replied as the engines kicked in and they left Nammu far behind.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  If ever some ambitious soul were to attempt to rank all of the habitable planets in the galaxy they would likely put Farinier dead last on such a list.

  It wasn’t that it was inhospitable in any way of course. It wasn’t an arid desert planet or even a frozen wasteland from pole to pole. It was just a very plain, extremely boring planet that nothing exciting ever happened on. Nor was it a place that many people wanted to call home. No one hardly ever immigrated to Farinier. Most of those born to this particular world couldn’t wait to catch the next ship out of the system when they came of legal age.

  But those that did stay actually loved the place. Better still, they loved the fact that it was so out of the way that it didn’t attract much in the way of space traffic. All they wanted was to be left alone to work their farms, harvest their crops, and fish the waters during the day before settling in for the night in their homes.

  Not long ago, they figured out a perfect way to secure their chosen way of life while still meeting the taxing expectations that came along with being a member body of the Alliance. Scattered across the globe were several non-descript buildings, each containing roughly four dozen storage lockers. Each locker had a code that was set by anyone who happened by and wanted to place something, or several somethings, within them. There were no security cameras set up, no guard stationed nearby at any of these buildings. You just loaded the locker, closed the door, slipped in your credit chip, had the reasonable fee deducted, picked the security code, and you were done. None of the locals ever got curious about what was in those lockers. They didn’t want to know. They just wanted the payment so they could pay the planetary duty to the Alliance without have a tax collector sniffing around and getting into their business.

  It became a favorite option among smugglers and mercs, when you needed something stashed far from prying eyes—or when you wanted to leave something for someone to collect later but could not, or did not, want to be present for the exchange —to conduct such business on Farinier.

  Galen deliberately selected the dark side of the planet to search for a suitable set of lockers, further decreasing the chances that anyone would see the Tempest arrive or depart. He would use separate locations for the task, just to play it safe. Cassandra pinged several locations and found suitable lockers for what Galen had in mind.

  The Tempest settled down on a small pad near one such location. His ship’s landing lights serving as the only light within miles. Cassandra opened the cargo hatch while he loaded the first sleeping tube onto the cart he’d ‘borrowed’ from Vedastus’ keep. Cassandra has scanned the pods to confirm the identities of the occupants inside each one.

  This one belonged to Winsella Ellaneiri, daughter of Pepin, who ruled Caletos as First Prime. He couldn’t do anything about her state of undress, nor could he remove the Jakamal headset without waking her up. That was the last thing he intended to do.

  He rolled the cart down the ramp and across the pad to the building. Each locker door had two lights, one on each side of its designation number. A lit red light meant the locker was being used. A lit green light meant the locker was available. He headed for the nearest green light and tabbed the control to open the door.

  Galen pushed the pod into the locker
and set it upright in the middle of the room. The tube had a fully charged battery, but he went ahead and plugged it into the building’s power supply just to be safe. Rolling the empty cart back out, he tabbed the door closed, locked it, and went through the process of paying for the locker and setting the security code to open it. He recorded the locker number and the security code on his reader and returned to his ship.

  They made the short hop to the next building, about one hundred miles south, where he repeated the process with Brena K’laine, the daughter of Axaltier’s Premier. The next hop was two hundred and fifty miles to the east and Verina Lonshanks, the daughter of Y’pslandi’s President, was tucked safely away.

  “Let’s get up into orbit, Cass,” he ordered as he re-entered the ship and closed the outer hatch.

  “We’re not leaving our Princess here?”

  “No, we’re not,” he replied making his way forward, deliberately avoiding looking at the remaining pod as he passed by.

  The Tempest lifted away from the building and quickly powered her way back into orbit above Farinier without anyone actually noticing the ship had even been there, exactly the way Galen had hoped and wanted it to be. He’d used a dummy account with fake name to pay for the lockers so they could not be traced back to him.

  “Cass,” he said as he settled into the pilot’s seat, “open a channel to Caletos. Tell them we wish to speak to Pepin Ellaneiri but do not identify who we are. And make it audio only.”

  “We’re being secretive today,” she said.

  “We’re neck deep in political intrigue,” he replied. “And almost always it ends up with guys like me with a rope around their neck in situations like this. The less they know about us right now the better.”

  “Channel open,” she reported a few minutes later. “I have a ‘senior aide’ to Ellaneiri on the line. He’s being quite difficult and won’t connect me to Ellaneiri.”

  “Tell him I have the location of his boss’ lost jewel,” Galen ordered. “I can give that information directly to Ellaneiri; or I can go on my way, and they can try guessing where she is.”

  There was a brief pause then the com screen flared to life and a visibly agitated Pepin Ellaneiri appeared on the screen.

  “Who is this?” he demanded. “Why can’t I see you? What have you done with my daughter? I’ve been waiting to pay you the damned ransom for several days now!”

  Galen let the man vent until Ellaneiri was ready to listen to what he had to say.

  “My name is not important,” he began. “And it is better that you don’t see my face, at least for now.

  “Your daughter is perfectly safe,” Galen continued, tapping in the locker location, number and access code and transmitting it. “You will find her here. The man holding her on behalf of a third party had her in a sleep pod, which she still remains within. I suggest you send a medico team and a more appropriate change of clothes for her when your people retrieve her.”

  “A medico team… what have you done to her, you animal!”

  “I didn’t do anything to her aside from getting her away from the one holding her hostage,” Galen repeated. “And she appears to be physically fine…”

  “You could say that again,” Cassandra whispered loud enough for him to hear but not the pick-up. Galen shot a dirty look at the ceiling.

  “But the person holding her had her connected to a Jakamal,” Galen continued, and he saw the man on the other end blanch. “The control panel was destroyed after I wiped its memory, but the recordings of the…sessions…are still in the pod’s memory. Your medicos will need that data to know what to look for before they attempt a memory treatment on your daughter.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this.”

  “I was subjected to a Jakamal,” Galen replied quietly. “Some of what was done was erased. Some was not.”

  “You’ve given me all the information I need to retrieve my daughter,” Ellaneiri said after a long silence. “But you haven’t asked me for anything in return. Yet.”

  “And I never will,” Galen replied, reached to cut the connection. “Goodbye.”

  “Wait!” Ellaneiri raised a hand. “You said you were not the kidnapper. How did you come to rescue my daughter then? Who was holding her?”

  “A man named Dunstan Vedastus of Nammu was holding her,” Galen answered. “And you needn’t send your people for him. All they’d find of him wouldn’t fill a cup of tea. I was contracted to recover another item from him when I discovered your daughter and others, too. I’ve already been well-compensated for this job.”

  “You said he was holding her for a ‘third party’, friend, and I would have the name of the person who did kidnap my daughter.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you that name,” Galen replied. “But he will identify himself to you within the next day or so. Her kidnapper is the man who will contact you to tell you that she was killed on Nammu three days ago along with three other kidnapped women. As he is speaking to you remember one thing: Everything he is saying to you is a lie. Goodbye.”

  Galen cut the connection and then made contact with the other two fathers. Both conversations played out in much the same fashion.

  “You’re being very loose with your income streams,” Cassandra observed after the final call ended. “You could have literally asked for anything, and they’d have given it to you.”

  “We’ve already been paid for the job, save one final installment.”

  “And that is?”

  “The one I’ll collect when I come face to face with the two men who tried to set me up to get killed and be blamed for four kidnappings,” Galen vowed. “That kind of currency you don’t deposit into a bank account either.”

  “Are we taking our sleeping beauty back there home to daddy then?”

  “No, we are not. We are going to Belisama.”

  “Ah,” Cassandra cooed. “We’re going to see Lir Fiachra.”

  “He’s the only one I trust with this right now, and he’s seen his share of political intrigue. If anyone knows how to get out of this mess while keeping our necks attached, its Lir.”

  His old instructor and mentor back at the Academy. All the memories of his days there that he would classify as ‘good’ always involved Lir. The man was a walking military history archive, a cunning strategist, and a trusted advisor. A homeless orphan when he’d arrived at the Academy, Galen had found a father figure and a friend in one package. Lir would know what to do next, and if he didn’t he’d at least have some solid advice about what not to do.

  Fighting off a yawn, Galen rose and stretched aching muscles. It had been a full day and sleeping in the pilot’s chair was not conducive to good sleep.

  “Lay in the course for Belisama and get us underway, Cass,” he said stepping down from the flight deck. “Wake me up in eight hours.”

  He headed back to the captain’s cabin, but the sight of the occupied pod nagged at him. The ship was supposed to have a crew of two, and Galen kept the second room available for those times when he was transporting live cargo. Opening the hatch to the pilot’s cabin, he stepped in and pulled the blanket off the bunk.

  He made ready to toss the blanket over the pod, hiding the occupant from view. But he stopped himself, realizing that even with the covering, he’d probably not sleep well with just the one pod out here any more than he would have when there’d been four. With a long-suffering sigh, he tossed the blanket back onto the bunk.

  Stepping back out into the passage, he knelt down and pulled a hose from the base of the pod and dragged it over to an outlet panel in the ship. Making sure the connection was tight, Galen access the pod’s controls and rotated the compartment to the horizontal level.

  “I hear the proper way to wake a sleeping princess…,” Cassandra started.

  “Cass,” Galen cut her off. “Get your own sex life and quit worrying about mine.”

  “I can’t have one, so I have to be a voyeur,” she shot back impishly. “You know, here
’s your chance for your first taste of necrophilia…”

  “Cass,” Galen said as he initiated the process to drain the fluid from the pod. “Shut up and drive the ship.”

  Galen realized that in about ten minutes he was going to have a very scantily clad woman in his arms and headed off into the cargo hold. There was a shipment he was going to be delivering as soon as this little adventure concluded that might have what he needed. He’d have to cut the owner a discount on his fee for not receiving his entire shipment, but that was a negligible loss.

  “Ooh, Jhan is not going to be happy about this,” Cassandra remarked as he opened one of the boxes.

  “He’ll get over it with a twenty-percent discount on my fee,” Galen said dismissively, pulling out some garments and trying to decide if they’d fit the Princess or not.

  “She’ll shoot you if she wakes up wearing that grandma’s outfit,” Cassandra said when he lingered overlong on a full-length flannel dress. “And I’d let her do it, too. Start with that red one there for her to sleep off the meds in.”

  Galen held up a lacy red negligée that would do a little better at covering her ‘assets’ but not by much.

  “That’s the one,” Cassandra said. “Then that silky blue number with the tan sandals, and she’s good to go.”

  “They both seem a little low-cut, Cass,” Galen pointed out.

  “Don’t worry, she’ll fill them out nicely.”

  He considered saying something but decided against it as it would only encourage her to continue. Closing the lid back on the container, he took the clothing up to the pilot’s cabin.

  “Hey, you forgot the underwear,” Cass said in a teasing voice.