by G. J. Koch
“The rumors are you can’t be employed but can be hired. You’re a mercenary, a pirate. And the favorite of Janz the Butcher.”
“What’s your point?”
“I want you off Herion. Tonight.”
“Works for me. Let me out of here, give me my crew back, unharmed, ensure my ship isn’t rigged or bugged, happy as hell to leave.”
“Really? With that dangerous pirate armada out there?” Nitin sneered. He was pretty good at it.
“Made it away from them once. Odds on my doing it again have to be better than my odds of a happy life behind Herion bars.”
“We’d prefer that you not… escape.”
“Let me go, I’ll tell everyone we’re leaving ’cause it stinks here. Whatever.”
“I mean, we’d prefer that you not escape from the pirate armada.”
I let that one sink in for a few moments. “So, what, you want me to allow myself to be captured? Uh, sure. Fine. Let me go, no problem, happy to, and so forth.”
Nitin shook his head. “Please. No one is that stupid. We want you to allow yourself to be captured, you and your ship.”
“You’re crazy. Why would I do that? It’s suicide, they’ll just kill me.”
“Doubtful. You’re too good a pilot. De Chance will want you to fly for him. Make a deal, whatever he wants. With tracking on your ship, we’ll be able to capture the armada and save our solar system.” “You’re smoking Knaboor Gold. Not going to happen.”
He gave me an unpleasant smile. “Oh, it’ll happen. And to ensure that you do what we want? We’ll be keeping something you care about.”
The door opened and two Herion Military goons dragged Slinkie in. She was tied up and gagged, but still fighting. One of them pulled the gag off her. “Captain! Don’t do it!” She was going to say more, but one grabbed her head and the other shoved the gag back into her mouth. She still managed to bite him. I loved that woman.
They dragged her back out. Nitin turned back to me. “Now, if you want to see her again, you’ll cooperate. If not… well… she is a lovely thing, isn’t she? I don’t think I’ll let Bryant know she’s here—he seems so enamored of her. And I’m sure she’ll enjoy spending private time with me.”
That did it. I leaped up and head butted him right in the gut. He went back, doubled over, and I shoulder slammed him. As I’d noted before, he wasn’t as big as the rest of Herion Military. He wasn’t much bigger than me, really. And I was both furious and fighting for my life.
Nitin was on his knees. I kicked his jaw. His head went back and into the wall. He went down, slumped and bleeding a little. Not bleeding enough, but he was out.
If someone was watching, they’d be here fast. No time like the present. I slid my cuff-pick out of my sleeve, fiddled around behind my back for a few seconds, undid the cuffs, pulled Nitin’s arms behind his back and cuffed him. Like all of Herion Military, he was in a gray uniform, well-fitted, but the pants had pockets on the sides of the thighs, and the jackets had plenty of inner pockets. Searched all of them—he had a lot of interesting things, all of which I took. His keys were what I really wanted, and, naturally, I found them in the last pocket, on his left leg.
Unbuckled his shoulder holster and gun belt, put them both on. They’d taken my laser, but he had it on him, hooked in the back of his pants. Took that back.
Took Nitin’s little cloth officer’s cap off and shoved it into his mouth. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it might help a bit. Pulled his jacket off—the sleeves hooked onto the handcuffs. Flipped the main part of the jacket between his legs and the ends of the jacket back behind him, like he was in a huge diaper. I could only hook a few of the buttons through buttonholes, but it would slow him down whenever he gained consciousness.
Spotted something inside his shirt and I ripped it open. Money belt, or similar, was strapped around him. Took it. Decided he was too well trussed up to undo it and search his pants. Besides, I didn’t want to stick my hands down any man’s pants, let alone his.
He had a tattoo over his right pectoral—it looked like a flying Ebegorn—a bird with a wild mop of multi-colored feathers on the top of its head. Their nickname was the clown bird. I had more facts about them stored away, but decided to pull them up later—fly with an Aviatian, learn all the birds of the galaxy, basically. Not mine to reason why, but it seemed like something Herion Military wouldn’t approve of. However, I had bigger issues than Nitin’s odd choices in permanent ink.
Not for the first time I wished I’d let Randolph hook us all up with comlinks. Of course, my reason for not doing so was simple—our first usage of a comlink set up had contributed to Saladine’s death.
Didn’t dwell, didn’t have time. I needed to find Slinkie, figure out what they’d done to and with the others, and get us the hell out of Herion.
CHAPTER 23
I opened the cell door carefully. No one around. Interesting.
Maybe Nitin hadn’t been lying and Lionside and his pals didn’t know where Nitin had taken me. Meaning that Lionside probably didn’t know they’d captured Slinkie, either. Or she was in his quarters being ravaged by him. I chose to focus on option number one.
One of the things I’d lifted from Nitin was what appeared to be an electronic compass. Turned it on. Better than a compass. It was a system tracker, set to the military complex. This would have been better if Randolph were with me, since he could figure out the code to make it work with a lot more accuracy.
However, some things were automatically loaded into these things—the owner’s individual living quarters, main holding cells, general areas, things like that. I tried to figure out where I was from any of the standards. Near as I could tell, Nitin’s quarters were nearby. Decided to head for them—he was male and holding Slinkie. She was probably already tied up in his bed.
Let part of my mind enjoy itself with this train of thought. The majority of my mind was focused on getting to this location undetected. The complex was a big rat maze, and I was going to get lost in it. Tried to pull up the simple rhyme Randolph had taught me years ago when dealing with something like this.
“Dots are natural, dots are fun, dots are best when they’re one on one.” Realized this made no sense to me at all and figured Randolph had been deranged for at least as long as I’d known him.
Stared at the system tracker again. There were dots on it. One was green and it seemed to be moving. Another dot was blue, several were yellow, a couple red. The red ones were in what looked like bigger areas. Okay, figure red meant main area. Avoid red.
Since there was only one blue dot, and it was closest to where the green, moving dot was, I tried to see if I was the green moving dot by heading towards the blue dot. Seemed to be working. The green dot reached what appeared to be a corridor at the same time I reached what was for sure a corridor. So far, so good.
I turned and walked towards the blue dot. The green dot did the same. Felt I could safely assume I was the green dot. No firm assumptions yet on what the blue dot was.
I heard the sound of running footsteps and noted there were several gray dots moving towards the area where my green dot had been not too long ago. Decided to make a wild guess that these were more military—decided to worry about whether they were Nitin’s guys or another set of goons later.
Looked around. Not a lot of hiding places. Typical. Ran on towards the blue dot. I had to turn a corner again and, thankfully, there were doors in this new corridor. The blue dot wasn’t all that far away so I raced for it. Green dot was pretty much on top of blue dot. So far, so good. Or at least, not so awfully bad yet.
I pulled out Nitin’s keys. Happily, he had a master—they were always camouflaged to look like an ordinary key. Problem was, they all looked alike. Well, not a problem for me. Because to learn what the master for any world was like was to learn how to spot all the others on said world. Why locksmiths kept on making masters like this was anybody’s guess, but I never argued with luck going in my favor.
It worke
d on the door. I opened it, stepped inside, closed and locked it quickly and quietly. It was dark in here, which was fine for right now. I could hear the pounding footsteps and they were getting closer.
Heard what sounded like people trying to open doors, the one I was standing by included. “Locked.” Male, not a voice I recognized.
“Yeah, all of them. Any idea what’s going on?” Different male, still no one I’d heard speak before.
“No, but Major Lionside’s pretty upset. Not that we’ll be able to do anything when we find Nitin.”
“Cut the chatter.” This voice was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it to a face. “Find Nitin, find the offworlders. Figure he stashed them separately.” I heard footsteps trailing off. It sounded like everyone was gone. But I had instincts, and they told me I wasn’t alone.
“We’re in the midst of one messed up interstellar incident,” the first voice said. He was still right outside my door. “We don’t want that… do we, Captain Outland?”
CHAPTER 24
I didn’t reply. Or move. I didn’t stop breathing, but I made sure it was shallow.
The voice outside my door chuckled. “You’re good. I’m better, but in fairness to you, that’s because I’m special.” Something slid under the door. “Don’t try to find me. I’ll find you. Avoid the red dots—I know you don’t want to have to explain what’s going on to a full complement of our military. The buttons on the left side correspond to the levels—we’re on level three right now. The ones on the right show you the schematic of each section of a floor. We’re in the northwest schematic of this level.”
I looked. Made sense. But there was a blue dot supposedly right by my green dot. Interestingly, there was no gray dot by me. Worry about how this guy was off Nitin’s grid later. Because, supposedly, someone was in the room with me.
“I know you’ve realized you’re the green dot. The blue dot is, for Nitin, what he wants to keep track of.”
I looked behind me. It was dark but my eyes were adjusted. It wasn’t a big room and I appeared to be alone.
“The blue dot isn’t level sensitive.”
I pondered what this meant.
He sighed. “She’s on the top floor. Hurry up. There’s a lot going on and I frankly need you out of here and helping. Not that you want to help.” He chuckled again. “Just that, believe me, you’re going to find that it’s in your best interests to do what I need you to do. It’s nice when it works out that way.”
I heard footsteps now, leaving. Considered who had just been talking to me. Telepath of some kind, or else a lifelong friend I didn’t know I had whose voice I also couldn’t recognize. Put my money on telepath. Rare, not unheard of. Less rare than a lifelong friend I wouldn’t know. As lifelong friends went, Randolph was the closest, and it was only half of my life. And dead people didn’t count in this equation, meaning Saladine was out of the running.
Once the footsteps were gone and there were no gray dots anywhere near me, I turned on the light. Nothing much in this room. It looked like a standard storage room with not too much in it. Looked up. What it did have in it was a tiled ceiling.
Looked down to see what my new friend had slid under the door. It was a small envelope. Opened it cautiously. It had a plasticized badge, no name or picture, just a symbol—a rearing eagle. I slid it into my inner jacket pocket, the one that also housed my false identification and a universal card with a thousand interstellar credits.
So, this guy was working for the Royal Family of Aviatus. Interesting. Figured Slinkie and I were going to have to have a long talk about whatever it was she’d done to get run off her home planet, because I had to figure this was related to her in some way.
But to do that, I had to find her and, from what it sounded like, the others, too. Slinkie first. She was the best looking and the one most likely to be in danger of being ravaged by someone other than me.
However, my Great-Aunt Clara had always said taking time to think before running off madly was a good idea. Most times I disagreed with her, but this moment seemed like a good opportunity to take her advice.
I went through all the things I’d taken off Nitin. His keys had already been useful and would be again—right outer jacket pocket. The money belt contained, sadly, no money, but did have some papers that were obviously written in code. They had the Ebegorn crest on them. Moved into my special inner pocket.
Wallet with, happy day, many Herion credits, a variety of cards that might work or get me arrested, depending on when and how I used them and, in a zippered pocket, a small key. Took the key out and put it into my inner jacket pocket. Fortunately, I favored the Old Earth retro look in pilot-wear, so I was in what was called a bomber jacket. They weren’t form-fitting, which was great because as you stuffed your inner secret pocket with goodies, it didn’t make your chest bulge in odd and interesting ways.
Herion credits went into my wallet, left inner jacket pocket, but not hidden. The cards I put into the money belt, which I shoved into the left outer jacket pocket. The assortment of other things I’d snagged went into my left pants pocket. None of them looked like a tracking device or a small explosive, so I decided to save their perusal for another time—preferably when we were all long gone off this rock. Other than one thing.
There was a flat, milky disk on a leather strap, surrounded by metal. It was clearly meant to be worn as a necklace. It looked manmade, but I couldn’t be sure. I pondered, then put it on and tucked it inside my shirt. It lay flat enough and this way I couldn’t lose it easily.
Considered my options. I could go back out and try the corridors, but I had to figure there were still plenty of gray dots looking for me. Decided to play around with the system tracker for a while. My mysterious friend had given me what I needed to figure out the best way to get to Slinkie. Did a quick run-through of all the levels—I was in luck, she was pretty much right above me, albeit two more floors above me.
Decided to use the ventilation system. Sure it was a common technique, not to mention a cramped one, but for some reason, it still worked nine times out of ten. Did a quick recount. Yep, since the last time it hadn’t worked, I’d used it seven times. Should mean I had breathing space.
Did the stand on the table and push the tile up thing, did the cough, curse and brush off wildly as the ceiling tile disintegrated thing, did the search for a portable light thing, then did the check the extra junk thing. Sure enough, Nitin had a penlight with him. Nice of him to come so equipped.
A part of me wondered how much of a set up this was, but, as Great-Aunt Clara always said, in for a penny is a stupid amount to get nabbed for, if you play, play big. She didn’t always make complete sense, but I got the gist of what she was going for.
I moved into the ventilation system, penlight held in my teeth, and started the long, dusty crawl. The system was one I was familiar with—interconnected up and down. Common to military and prison complexes for some reason. Presumably those all forced to dress alike wanted to also all smell the exact same air all the time.
No vermin showed up to share the fun with me, which was a small blessing. Not that vermin bothered me all that much, but there’s something about having a crawly with a lot of legs inside your clothes to make you jumpy, and I didn’t have a lot of room to jump in.
Crawled to the end of the corridor and found the shaft going up to the next level. This was the fun part, so to speak. If you enjoyed shoving your back against one side, bracing your feet against the other, and shoving yourself up, it was great. I didn’t think about slipping down—once I was up a few feet, that wasn’t an option I was willing to contemplate.
Inched and shoved my way up to the next level. Collapsed in the horizontal shaft for a minute. I used the time in between pants to check the schematic. Was rewarded for the effort—there were gray dots all over the schematics now, anywhere I looked.
For good or bad, Herion Military’s ventilation system was a crisscross, meaning that I had to crawl the entire length of t
his floor in order to get to the next upward shaft. Wanted to send an angry memo to the cosmos, but knew it would get returned unopened with a “balance due” stamp on it.
Did the inch and shove routine again. Wondered if I could send in a bill for my cleaning services—no one else had been in here for ages, if the dirt my clothes were cleaning off was any indication.
Reached the top, got to crawl all the damned way back to the blue dot. I was getting to the point where I didn’t care who or what was there, as long as I could get out of the stupid shaft.
Finally arrived. The ventilator grill was under me and I took a look. Couldn’t see a damn thing. Not because it was dirty, though I assumed it was, but because there was nothing much to see. A carpet was about it. According to the system tracker, however, I was right above the blue dot.
I listened. Nothing. I chose to hope this meant Slinkie was tied up but alone, versus tied up and being ravaged or, worse, not tied up and happily in bed with someone. Decided not to wait to find out.
The grill lifted off easily enough, but then it slipped through my hands and crashed to the floor. Not my smoothest move. But, no one came running. Maybe there was no one in the room. Or they were waiting for me to come down before they killed me. Figured I’d make it easy on them and a lot more pleasant for myself.
I slid over the opening and went down legs first. Landed in what I had to admit was a pretty cat-like way—standing, knees slightly bent, ready for anything.
Well, anything but what I was looking at.
CHAPTER 25
“Captain, I’m very glad to see you.”
I looked around. There was no one else here, just me and Audrey. “Um, hi. You got captured?”
“Yes. They said they would harm Randolph if I didn’t come with them.” She sounded calm and cheerful. We really had to do something about the voice program on Audrey.
“Who’s they?”