Odo let out a long breath of air that sounded painful.
Then finally said, “OK.”
Chapter Six
We were returning to Ceres Alpha; the last place in the universe I wanted to be. Granted, if we had any chance of figuring out what was going on, maybe returning to the source of the mess we were in was something.
Plus there was that whole giving the Zarnissa twins their racing pinnace back.
“It’s not too bad there,” Odo told me. “The council’s got a lot of the rioting and looting back under control. And now that communication has been established with Kappa Coronae, supplies are coming in daily.”
“I won’t be able to walk around freely.”
“Nah, but Zy’s cousins will help us.”
“You sure about that?”
He said nothing.
It had always been Zyla they wanted to see. If she hadn’t have had family on Ceres A, we wouldn’t have been able to R & R there. It was an expensive place, and even an overnight stay on a resort world like that could set you back a few thousand chits easily.
But for Zyla, the Zarnissa twins would give us the run of their place. I had no idea what they did on the holiday planet, but when we turned up, they’d leave us to it, disappear into the palm trees and beach bars and coconut huts selling all manner of things.
After they’d spent an hour or two locked in a soundproofed room with my navigator.
Without Zyla, I wasn’t sure how long the welcome mat would be.
“Once we get back there, we’ve got no way off,” I warned Odo. “We’ll be at their mercy.”
“You make it sound like they’ll string us up by our guts.”
I wouldn’t have put it past them. I’d always thought Zyla’s cousins were capable of much more than they seemed.
“Listen,” I said. “They’re not going to know how it went on Delphini B. We could borrow the pinnace for a little longer, and try to source another ship.”
“With what?”
Well, I was thinking the pinnace would make a fine downpayment on a cargo vessel.
“Ceres A is a trap,” I said flatly.
“I’m not wanted for murder.”
The words hung in the small confines of the cockpit as if sharp blades waiting to strike at any sudden movement.
“About that,” I started.
“Don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s in the past.”
I could have explained that I’d acted under orders. But none of the crew knew my history; knew where I came from. Sure, the surname gave a lot away, but there’re a fair few Jamesons dotted about the galaxy.
Odo had never asked. It was kind of a golden rule on the Harpy. What happened before the Harpy stayed in the before of the Harpy. That sort of thing.
I wondered now whether it would be wise to let him in on some of my secrets.
But he held himself so rigid in the pilot’s seat, and I couldn’t help feeling that he had the right to judge me how he was judging me.
“Alright,” I said, clearing my throat gruffly; it still hurt from the noose. And being reminded of that made me think of other things we needed answers to.
Like why a Zenith had bothered to land on the Delph in order to kill me. Because there was no denying I was his target. No other poor drunken sod got strung up by Flexi wire to hang off the limb of a tree.
“We need answers,” I said, lamely.
“There’s more you should know,” Odo offered quietly.
“Hit me.”
He grunted. It was slightly amused and more than just a little wistful. I think he did want to hit me and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word.
“Whoever bombed the flux out of Ceres A, did the same to Gamma Cephei.”
A chill washed down my spine. I sat forward as if I hadn’t heard Odo right and I needed to be closer to parse the words he’d just spoken.
“That’s another Zenith world,” I murmured. “And not a militarised one, either. What is it? Farming?”
“Agriculture and scientific research mainly. Farmers and scientists and their families.”
“Same MO?”
“Unmanned drones from orbit.”
“Still sounds like an internal Zenith conflict to me.”
“Yeah, well, Zenthia’s closed its borders. As if they think they’ll be next.”
I sat still for a moment. Then manned up.
“Is that where they took Zyla?”
“Yeah.”
“Under what charge?”
“They think she’s involved, Cap. They think that beacon she has embedded in her neck called the nukes down on their heads at Ceres A.”
I stared out at the Black, trying to think.
“She didn’t,” I finally said softly.
“You sure about that?”
“Three years, Odo. Three years she’s been with us on the Harpy. How can you not be sure?”
“Well,” he said, dusting his hands together as if he were rubbing them clean, “thank flux for that. I thought you might not have been the man I signed up with.”
I stared at him, saying nothing. I wasn’t the same man he’d signed up with. I was guilty. Guilty of things no man should ever be guilty of.
“Doc was dying, Cap’n,” Odo said quietly. “That bullet had minced up his insides bad, and there wouldn’t have been flux all that Cass could’ve done to repair him. He knew it. We all did. You just didn’t get a good enough look at him before the shit hit the fan.”
“Don’t,” I said, repeating his directive back at him. I didn’t need an excuse to ease my conscience. I liked my self-loathing exactly the way it was.
He said nothing. Maybe he actually agreed.
“So, Ceres A or chance our luck with a stolen Zenith racing ship?” I asked.
“You’re the boss.”
Heavier words had never before been spoken.
“Zyla’s not on Ceres,” I said, thinking it through. “Send a tight-beam to the twins and explain we’re going after her, and the pinnace is now essential to the operation.”
“They were pretty insistent that we needed to bring the ship back.”
“That was when it was being used to rescue just me.”
“True that.”
“Zyla can smooth it over with them when we’re done.”
“Yeah sure,” Odo said, not sounding convinced. But he sent the tight-beam. “So, where to?”
The universe was our oyster. The pinnace was state of the art, the highest of Zenith high tech; camo, FTL engines, jump point capable. It lacked the finer things like space to stretch your legs and a head or mess deck. But it’d get us to where we needed to get to in a hurry.
“How fast do you think this thing can go?” I asked.
“Faster than you’ve ever gone,” Odo said with glee.
He had no idea what I’d flown in my past.
“Try this,” I said, bringing up a star map and finding our destination. I sent the coordinates through to his nav panel.
Odo whistled. “You got some cajones, Cap’n. That neighbourhood is rough.”
“We’re in a borrowed racing pinnace of Zenith origin,” I told him, settling back in my seat and testing my restraints. “If we’re gonna get what we need in exchange for this thing, we’re gonna have to deal with someone willing to take on an angry Zenith.”
“Or in this case, two of ‘em.”
He entered the coordinates into the ship’s system, checked them, and then checked them again; Odo was no navigator. Which made me think of Zy.
Time was running out. Maybe. Who knew? But I had to suspect that things weren’t all good for my navigator. The sooner we got to her, the better. Which meant, we needed to run the blockade at the Zenthian homeworld and to do that, we needed something a little more capable than a racing pinnace.
“This should be fun,” Odo declared and punched it.
Stars hung suspended in the black and then streaked past us. Faster than the Harpy could manage,
that was for certain. Odo let out a whoop and threw his arms up in the air like he was on some old school rollercoaster. I smiled, chuckling at his joyous reaction to the pinnace’s speed.
It’d be a shame to lose the little ship, and its fate was looking pretty grim. Where we were going, it’d be lucky to come out of it in less than a million different pieces. But hopefully, its sacrifice would get us that much closer to Zyla.
I felt exhausted. Strung out and beaten. My hands shook slightly when I scrubbed my face. My body throbbed in agony. My chest was perpetually aching. I rubbed at it and closed my eyes. But sleep wasn’t forthcoming.
When I closed my lids all I saw was the Ceres A council chambers. Zyla being scanned for her emergency beacon. Doc slung between Odo and her as he was dragged back to the Harpy; still breathing.
All I heard was Cassi.
I’ve got a past that haunts me. But it was my present that was going to do me in, I feared. If I didn’t get a grip on this guilt, it would consume me.
Just one last hoorah and maybe I’d let it.
I had a place I could go and hole up in until the end. Somewhere no one else knew about. Somewhere from my past. It wasn’t much, but it was all mine. And it was the last place Cass had been before she’d been uploaded into the Harpy.
It seemed appropriate somehow that I’d end up back there when Cass was gone.
I’d send a tight-beam to my great-grandfather then, to let him know that there was one less third-gen in the universe. It was cowardly, and I wasn’t usually that sort of man. But, right now, I was done with valour.
Buy a ship with the stolen pinnace.
Get past Zenthia’s blockade.
Rescue Zyla.
It was enough of a bucket list.
We came out of FTL flight and entered a jump point within an hour. Odo slept through it entirely. The pinnace could be piloted from the rear seat, so I didn’t bother to wake him for the jump. His restraints were on, so I let him get his rest.
God knew he’d need his strength when we got there.
Chi Virginis was not for the weak. I checked the lockers beside my seat and found a flare gun and a pocket knife. Not exactly stellar protection, but with Odo’s railgun and plasma rifle, we’d survive.
I took a stim and then watched the countdown.
And when the jump point exit appeared, I blasted out of nether space and into the Chi system.
Along with at least a dozen pirate ships.
They were a mixed bag. From bug-eyed freighters to sleek fighting machines. The only thing they had in common was their registration had been wiped off the side of the vessels, they were sending false transponder signals at everything, and they were armed to the teeth. Most sported various pockmarks and scorches from old skirmishes, and some even had a vapour trail showing the poor state of their engines. The one that caught my eye and made me blink was painted canary yellow.
“We there yet?” Odo said with a yawn.
“Yeah. How much life left in that plasma gun?”
“Down to a third. Railgun’s good for a few hundred rounds still.”
“I’ll take the plasma; you heft the RG.”
“Sounds good.”
“Does this thing have any security?”
“Basic AI, but state of the art security locked into our bio sigs.” All AIs were basic after Cassi.
“Is it on?”
“Is now.”
“Then we’re good to go.”
“You know who to approach in there, Cap?” Odo asked, eyeing the space hub warily, as it hung off to our port side, glinting in the weak illumination of the system’s only sun.
“My contact is old; he might have moved on.” A euphemism if ever there was for a place like Chi Virginis. “Won’t know until we dock.”
“I’d feel better if we soft docked.”
Soft docking was temporary and easily broken if you had to make a quick getaway. Hard docking required the hub release us from their docking clamps before we could leave.
“I don’t plan on taking this ship with us, Odo,” I told him. “But I also don’t want anyone else to take it without paying us. So set the security to its highest settings and ask the port controller for a hard dock.”
“Aye-aye, Cap’n.” The drawl was for show, no two ways about it. But I could hardly blame Odo for being uptight about this.
I was, too.
“Chi Virginis, this is the pinnace Zelene,” Odo drawled into his mic. “Request docking permission.”
“State your business, Zelene.”
“You’re looking at it, Virginis. Wanna buy a sweet ride off me?”
The controller chuckled and said, “Docking Bay Delta-3b. And you might want to try Davros on level three. He’s always eager to race something.”
“Thanks for the tip. Zelene is docking: Delta-3b.”
Now everyone in the system knew why we were here and what we had to offer. Chi Virginis might have been run by pirates for pirates, but it liked to have a little transparency.
Of course, not a single pirate out there would be completely honest with the port controller. Except for Odo, it seemed. That was why I’d always insisted he stay down in engineering.
The docking clamps clanked as they connected with our ship, jarring us slightly. Odo powered down the engines on the instruction of the controller, leaving us at their mercy. If there was ever a time to have second thoughts, now was not it. The docking arm pulled us in snug against the hub and then a cocoon was extended to surround the pinnace. It wasn’t a big ship, and it didn’t have a docking port, so we required an atmosphere to exit the vessel.
This was their solution. It freaked Odo out a little, but I’d been expecting it. I’d last come here with the Harpy, so I hadn’t had to go through this. But I’d seen smaller vessels get swallowed by the behemoth that is the Chi Virginis space hub and trading station.
Chi, itself, was a rocky, barren planet that had a permanent temperature at well below the freezing point of water. It was simply too far away from the system’s sun. But it was deposit rich, and so a hub had been built to ferry miners down to the surface. When the planet had been sucked dry of all possible profit, the hub had been abandoned.
In stepped enterprising individuals who had a beef with authority. It became a pirate trading Mecca within the span of twenty Standards.
Now it was where you went to offload goods that weren’t clean and hoped you wouldn’t get shanked in the process.
The light beside the docking hatch turned green, indicating we had a breathable atmosphere.
“You wanna do the honours?” Odo asked, nodding toward the release for the canopy.
“Chicken shit,” I groused and held my breath while I hit the button that would expose us to whatever was outside the pinnace.
We didn’t get sucked out, but it was chilly. Ice formed immediately in my nostrils. I sucked in a breath of air and started coughing. Odo turned in his seat, eyes wide, and stared in horror at me.
“I’m fine! I’m fine!” I gasped and spluttered.
Odo tentatively took a breath of air.
“Flux, Cap’n. You had me going there for a second.”
“If you hadn’t noticed already, Odo,” I managed to reply, “I’m not the picture of perfect health right now.”
“Nah, you’re alright. Nothing a good meal wouldn’t fix.”
“Please tell me you have chits.”
“Got some. Enough for dinner. If you wanna chance the locals.”
“I’ve eaten here before,” I said, climbing out of the pinnace.
“Who were you running from back then?”
I said nothing.
Odo didn’t ask again.
The docking hatch opened on surprisingly well-oiled hinges. The gel wall might have looked a bit scuffed, but maintenance of some description was being undertaken on the hub. It didn’t manage to settle my heartbeat much.
Odo checked the remote security settings on the key-tab for the ship and then nodde
d. I closed the hatch behind us and hoped we were doing the right thing.
“You know the place, boss,” Odo said. “How ‘bout you take the lead?”
I would have preferred getting our business sorted immediately, but the talk of food had my stomach churning and not in the I’m-about-to-puke way but the feed-me-now way. It had been a long time since I’d had anything decent to eat.
Not that Virginis would offer up Michelin starred meals. But even an MRE wouldn’t have gone astray right then.
We set off down the umbilical that attached our docking bay to the central hub. Odo with his hand on the railgun stuck to his thigh, me with my head on a swivel. The plasma rifle was slung over my shoulder, out of the way, but within reach. Using either on the hub could lead to our imprisonment. And I wasn’t entirely sure whether the accommodations here on Virginis would be better or worse than Delphini B.
Not using our weapons, though, could mean our deaths. So we kept them near, and we kept them visible. Just like every other spacer on the station. I just hoped everyone recognised and responded accordingly to the deterrents the weapons represented.
In the central hub, we were assailed with smells and sights typical of any trading post. Rich spices and vibrant colours. Hawkers calling out their wares and women showing an inviting amount of skin. You could pick whatever your heart desired on Chi Virginis. Zeniths. Rhodies. Humans. Mutts. Even Claxians if you swung that way and some people did. It boggled the mind, really.
But we bypassed all the most obvious stores and headed further into the station itself.
I was leading us in the general direction of my contact’s last known location, all the while keeping an eye on the clientele and the less obvious local security. Even pirates had a police force of sorts; just that this police force would shoot first and ask questions later.
We dodged an argument that was getting a little too close for comfort to a fistfight which would then quickly turn into a knife fight and might even knock on a railgun’s door. And then slipped down an arm of the station that led to a little hole in the wall Rhodian restaurant which used to do good chilli. Or what passes for chilli on Rhodia.
My mouth watered as soon as I spotted the place. A sense of peace and rightness swept over me, which really had no right to at that moment. Still, I grabbed it with both hands and ordered two large helpings and then put my back to a wall, tucked away from the flow of traffic, and ate the best meal I think I have ever had in my life.
Absolute Zero (The Sector Wars, Book 1) Page 7