“Hello, Shane,” she said warmly.
“Hello, Destiny,” he replied with equal warmth.
They shook hands and gave each other a wide smile. Shane had known Destiny Flores for five years. Although nobody could remember knowing her for more than the last ten years, she was liked and trusted throughout the region. Destiny was honest and her word was always good. She ran a straight establishment with great food, clean surroundings, and honest servants. With the exception of the meeting room, which anyone could use for a price, she did business only with people she liked. Anyone who created trouble in her establishment never was allowed back. The few people who had double-crossed her over the years had simply disappeared.
“Sorry about your house, Shane,” Destiny’s words were tinged with sympathy.
“Tough business,” Shane shook his head. He then changed the subject by waving his hand around the room. “Few more pockmarks than I remember.”
Destiny frowned, “The last group-talk degenerated into a shootout. In the end, my guys were doing all the shooting. Idiots apparently thought I was kidding about the rules.” She shook her head, not at the people’s deaths but at their stupidity. Violent death was as familiar here as it was throughout the Badlands and earned no special sympathy from anyone. Death did not bother Destiny Flores, but stupidity was a trait she could not abide.
“How’s Rafe Hawkins?” Destiny and Hawkins went back for several years. Hawkins was one of the first to do business with Destiny’s establishment and may have known her before then.
“He’s good, considering the circumstances. He has the OrCons and Goths on one hand and this on the other, but he is getting it done.”
Destiny nodded. She had great sources of information so would know about the OrCons in the Badlands. She would also know the reason Delacruz was here but she would never ask questions about either situation. She believed in minding her own business and letting others tend to theirs.
“I normally don’t give a damn about the meetings in this room but I hope this helps the process,” Destiny said.
“It will. When will Jochen Halder get here?”
Destiny consulted a timepiece on a necklace around her neck. “Two minutes if he’s on time and he will be. We’ve been tracking him with a tail for the last hour.”
“Any unusual activity?”
“No. I think he is playing this straight. But be on your guard when you leave. Never know.”
Delacruz nodded as the door behind them opened and Jochen Halder stepped in with two others and Destiny’s escort of three men. Shane and his men moved to the far side of the table. He sat as the others with him stood behind his chair. Jochen Halder sat opposite him with his two men standing behind him.
Destiny Flores stood at the end of the table and addressed the group. “I know everyone knows the rules but I will cover them anyway. We are not going to search you for weapons because body cavity searches are disgusting and we wouldn’t find all your toys anyway.” She motioned to the end of the room with the three slits with rifles. “Be advised there are three men at that end behind those guns.” The gun barrels wiggled back and forth. Destiny then motioned in the other direction. “And we have two men high up there with weapons and grenades.” The two men standing on the scaffolding on the backside of the wall were visible from the torso up, leaning on top of the wall. They casually waved down at the group. They were old hands here and had heard this speech many times. “If any of you make a sudden move with your hands toward a pocket or your belt, one of these men will shoot you dead. If both sides start something, all my men will start shooting and the grenades will fall. We won’t be understanding, and we won’t try to see it from your point of view. You agreed to come here and talk and that is all you’re going to do if you want to leave this room alive.
“Also be advised we have an electronic blanket over this room. No comm in or out. So if you want to have your friends set up a little ambush once this is over or have someone else listening in while the talking is going on, it won’t happen. Also the blanket not only stops comm, it will tell me the location of who was trying to penetrate the blanket. If I’m in a bad mood, I just might send some folks out to deal with the attempted intrusion and then I’ll charge the offending party extra for that trouble.”
Destiny and the escorts moved to the door that Destiny had used to enter. Her men moved through the door and Destiny turned around just prior to exiting. “However, it is perfectly acceptable to make threats and oaths of revenge. Just don’t put them into action in this room or immediately upon departure. Good talking.” She passed through the door, it shut, and a lock could be heard clicking into place.
The two men at the table turned from the closed door to face each other. Jochen was dressed casually in nondescript clothing. He had old fashioned, colorful ink tattoos covering both arms and on his neck extending down to under his shirt. He was clean-shaven but with a stubble in the late afternoon. His thick dark brown hair was in dire need of a haircut. His brown eyes constantly scanned his surroundings. He was older than most pirates, slightly overweight, and sweated easily. The armpits of his shirt were becoming dark. He looked at Delacruz with an unwavering stare and no hint of guilt. He knew how to play this game.
“Your meeting,” he started off.
“Our house on Ulatar was hit but I’m sure you know that. We know your cousin Fred supplied the information to the Goths. We aren’t sure on you or your brother, hence the meeting.”
“We had nothing to do with it. All three of us are clean.”
“Then explain Fred’s sudden riches. Paid off the Matterhorn boys with 50K and getting some serious work done on his ship. Not cheap and all paid for with Goth glitter.”
Halder opened his mouth to reply but Delacruz cut him off. “Be advised our house has just been burned down, and I’m not in the mood for cuteness. If I think you’re lying, I might come to the conclusion you and your brother are in on this, and I’m going to have to do something about that. Don’t try some bullshit story like you just took a treasure ship, won a lottery, or had a rich uncle die.”
Halder smiled and didn’t waver. “If you all were serious about threatening me, Hawkins would have sent Killian O’Hare.”
“Couple of reasons why O’Hare isn’t here. Revenge goes to my squadron first. We know your cousin is involved but not sure about you. I’m sure you would agree O’Hare is not good at talking things out. She doesn’t threaten. She would just show up, kill everyone, and be done with it. Besides, she is looking through the Korpeau system right now.”
O’Hare was nowhere near the Korpeau system but Delacruz told the lie well. As he said the last sentence, he was staring at Halder but also watching the men behind him. One of them stared hard at Delacruz while the other flinched slightly at the mention of the Korpeau system. Halder had no change in expression. He was much better at this than his young muscle men.
Halder looked uninterested. “If O’Hare wants to take a tour, it’s okay by me. Probably quite boring for her.”
“I’m sure she can relieve her boredom by burning down your house when she finds it.”
“The rules say houses are off limits!” Halder voice rose to a near shout.
“That’s funny. Your cousin sells us out and you start talking about houses being off limits,” Shane’s voice was cold and distant. “My rule book got burned up on Ulatar. There are no rules now. Just payback. You can thank your cousin for that.”
Halder leaned forward menacing. He had broken teeth and bad breath. “We can handle you. No problem.”
Now it was Delacruz who looked uninterested. “I doubt that but even if you got lucky, your next visitor will be Killian O’Hare. In fact, I’ll tell you Hawkins’ orders to her. Kill everyone. And she smiled that little maniac smile of hers and said ‘Gladly.’ I guarantee when that wayward wolf and her pack blow into this system, she won’t sit across a table from you and talk this out. She’ll kill you, your brother, your cousin, all your crews, y
our favorite bartenders and whores, anyone who ever said anything nice about you, and probably even the workmen who built your ships. O’Hare has serious issues when it comes to killing people. Once she gets started, she just doesn’t seem to know when to stop. She will take the ‘kill everyone’ direction quite literally.
“Right now she has a house to locate. Once she does that, she will stand by to await code words to burn down the house or let it go. I get to send the codes. If she doesn’t hear from me in a set time, she burns down your house.” Shane smiled at Halder. “Hell, she just might get bored and burn your house down anyway.”
A long moment of silence followed. Delacruz calmly waited. He knew Halder had to work this out and pushing him wouldn’t help. Halder had to know his cousin had somehow found out where Charlie Squadron’s house was located and sold it to the Goths. His cousin probably had the Matterhorn Consortium breathing down his neck and, out of desperation, had chosen a very risky plan to get a big payday and solve all his problems in one move. Now Halder had to be weighing the cost of trying to save his cousin or letting it play out while he watched from a distance.
“My cousin is not involved. We gave him the money. He started his ship’s overhaul a week ago. It was before your house was hit.” Halder looked at Delacruz closely.
“He could have been paid a couple of weeks ago by the Goths and they just now got around to setting up the OrCons to do the shooting,” replied Shane. “If you gave him the money, how did you make the payment made to him?”
“We’re not obligated to tell you how we do business!”
His voice rose with a hint of exasperation but not as much as it could have been. He was going through the motions with no real sense of outrage or hurt innocence. He knew where his cousin had gotten the money and had no intention of going to the wall for him. With Flotilla One’s intel network, Fred Halder’s plan had no chance of remaining undetected. Hawkins had informers throughout the Badlands, and when the word went out to report any large money transactions made by people who shouldn’t have that kind of money, Fred’s payoff to Matterhorn came to light very quickly. The follow-on news that his ship was getting work done at an out-of-the-way shipyard, and there was no visible means to account for the increase in Fred’s income, only served to increase interest in Frederich Halder. Tactical had looked through the list of pirate ship sightings filed with the authorities on Potenka, and a pirate ship matching Fred’s had been reported near Ulatar. Coincidences did not exist in Raferty Hawkins’ universe, so Fred moved to the front of a very short line of suspects. Everyone else in the line met one or two of the parameters, but only Fred had all these counts against him. Fred was guilty in the eyes of Flotilla One personnel. The sole question was whether the two brothers were involved with their cousin. Nobody at the Fort believed they were, but Delacruz was determined to find out on his way to get Fred on Marblefall. If Lorelei had not been on the way to Marblefall, he wouldn’t have bothered but would have simply proceeded to Marblefall, killed Fred Halder, and worried about the brothers later.
Delacruz leaned forward across the table and talked with no trace of a threat but merely stating the obvious. “Your cousin sold us out. I know it and so do you. For that I’m going to kill your cousin. That’s a given. If you’re not involved, I’ll have no problem letting you walk, but if you feel some sense of family obligation to get in my way, I will have no problem killing you either. Pick the course you like, all the same to me.” Delacruz paused and leaned even further over the table. “But once you choose a course, you can’t go back.”
The young muscle man behind Halder who had flinched at the mention of the Korpeau system now snarled and reached behind his back under his jacket. He gripped something and started to pull it out. He wasn’t even close to getting it clear when an energy round from one of the three rifles at ground level hit him in the head. His right ear and most of what it was attached to dissolved in a red mist. Pieces of skull and brain matter spattered the tall wall below the two men now aiming down at the talkers. Delacruz and his men did not move as the sound of the shot echoed and reechoed in the small sparse room.
“Don’t move!” Halder shouted over his shoulder at the sole survivor behind him.
“But Johnny ... ” the man exclaimed. He didn’t move but obviously wanted to grab something from the small of his back.
“... is dead!” finished Halder, “and you will be too if you move suddenly.”
Delacruz leaned back into his seat and slowly stood up, keeping his hands in view the whole time. From his side of the table, he could view the body with only half a head lying on the concrete in a quickly expanding pool of blood. A shooter lay near the dead man’s right hand. There was never a chance he would have gotten a shot off. Destiny’s men had been doing this duty for a long time and had no qualms about enforcing the rules. “Stupidity will get you killed every time,” thought Delacruz. Shane now looked at Halder calmly and then nodded toward the dead man. “Should I take that as your answer?”
Halder rose and stared at him with malice but did not speak. The sweat stains at his armpits had expanded considerably.
“I’ll tell you what,” Delacruz continued conversationally. “I’m going to kill your cousin. If I see you or your brother before I find your cousin, I will assume you want to stop me and I will kill you. If I see you or your brother after I kill your cousin, I will assume you want revenge and I will kill you. Remember Killian O’Hare is still in the Korpeau system. Let’s see if you can move your house before she finds it.”
“We had nothing to do with it! I mean my brother and me. Fred goes his own way.”
“Too late,” Shane replied calmly and then raised his voice, “We’re done here.”
The armored door used by Destiny to enter and leave swung open again and she and three men entered. The men had drawn pistols and covered the whole group in case anyone got ideas. Destiny stopped at the end of the table as her men moved about behind her to get clear fields of fire.
Destiny pointed to the other door and spoke to Shane’s group. “You leave through that door. Two of these men will escort you to your shuttle. They will watch you board your shuttle and watch your shuttle depart. No stops along the way.”
Delacruz nodded to Destiny and moved past her to leave. Normally the two friends would have talked and Destiny would have walked him out but not now. She had to ensure the tense situation was defused and no further violence occurred. The two escorts took a position before and behind the Delacruz group and the front man reached for the door handle.
Destiny turned to Halder and was all business, “You owe me money for cleanup, and you’re not leaving until I get it. We can put the body on a wagon for transport to your shuttle for free or get rid of it for you ... for a small fee, of course.”
Delacruz’s group went through the door and into the hallway. They moved out through the bar area and into the street. The trip back to their shuttle was uneventful. They boarded their shuttle and departed for Vindictive. Shane never did find out the decision on the body.
Chapter 42
Rafe was on his computer when the message from the freighter at Rosstrappe flashed on his screen. He decoded it, read it, and forwarded it to Tactical and Baby Doll. He sent a copy to Skyler Mallory.
“Noted,” stated Tactical from her station.
“Noted,” parroted Baby Doll a second later. Neither woman stopped what they were doing.
Raferty heard both but gave no outward sign. He knew there were more pressing issues at the moment, and the information would be incorporated into their plan in the near future. Although these potential reinforcements had to be taken into account, he did not see this as a showstopper. Just another variable to be taken into account.
~ ~ ~
Three hours from Harper’s Reef, the force split up. Mackenzie led her squadron to a blocking position between the Reef and Gammatiga. The pirates continued toward their target. They increased to maximum speed.
The pirate
/Zeke forces closed on Harper’s Reef. The supply base had five floating batteries in orbit over the base and several batteries of guns and missile banks on the surface. The plan was to reduce the defenses to the point where the base would have to surrender or face destruction. It was highly probable the Goth garrison would destroy the large supply depot rather than have it fall into unfriendly hands. This was fine with the approaching force. They would have liked to secure the supplies for themselves, but the most important goal was to deny the supplies to the enemy.
Captain Raferty Hawkins sat calmly in his command chair as the bridge crew went quietly about their duties. He knew he had no real decisions to make in the immediate future. The next three hours would unfold according to a script driven by tactics, rules of engagement, and available technology. The base sensors would pick them up when they closed to within two hours of flight time. The base would see the approaching ships had no IFF codes, and they would send out a request for identification. The request would not be answered. Then the base would send out a warning to the unidentified ships not to approach, or they would be fired on when they got to within thirty minutes of the base. The ships would continue to close at top speed. The base would send out a general request for support and then prepare for combat. The ships would close to weapon’s range and the fight would commence.
Hawkins had considered trying to bluff their way in with false squawk codes. He had several codes used by trading vessels, ore carriers, and other such ships working in the commercial arena. Some of these codes he had registered himself weeks and months ago. The problems using such codes were - all these civilian ships travelled at slow speeds, did not generally travel in convoys, and had no viable reason to visit Harper’s Reef. All ships with a valid reason to visit the Reef would have been scheduled days in advance and the majority of these visitors would be military ships of the Goldenes Tor or its allies.
Allies of Convenience: Pirates of the Badlands Series Book 1 Page 21