Both men shouted and raved as Lupus fell onto Tanner. The centurion tried to surge up, but the weight of the underman slammed him back down. Tanner thought Lupus was trying to grab the knife. As Ursa screamed at her protector to stop, Tanner hacked with a will, gutting the underman as he opened the praetorian up. He killed Lupus and drenched himself in blood doing it.
Ursa stopped screaming. Painfully, with his eyes struggling to focus, Tanner managed to climb to his feet. His bloody hand gripped the monofilament knife with all his strength. It was a killing weapon par excellence. He dared not let anyone else get a hold of it.
The centurion saw the bloody underman on the floor. He could see that Lupus was dead. The praetorian’s blood soaked his clothes. Tanner stepped back, careful not to slip in it. Finally, he looked at Ursa.
She stared at him in horror. “You killed my Lupus,” she said.
Tanner opened his mouth to tell her the underman had tried to kill him first.
“He’s protected me all my life,” she whispered.
The words he wanted to say wouldn’t leave Tanner’s mouth.
“You’re a monster,” she said.
“What…” He wanted to ask her what else he was supposed to have done. The underman had come at him. Maybe he should have apologized to the praetorian earlier.
Ursa Varus was shaking, with tears dripping from her eyes. “Don’t ever speak to me again,” she told him. Then, she turned away, staggering down the corridor weeping.
-25-
Marcus Varus solemnly spoke to Tanner in the circular area just before the bridge.
Greco and Tanner had already cleaned up the mess in the galley, putting the hacked-up body into a plastic body bag, zipping it shut. Neither man had said much then.
“The Lady Varus is angry,” Marcus said in a low voice. The big heir wouldn’t meet Tanner’s eyes, but there was no sense of fear in the avoidance, just barely suppressed rage.
Tanner didn’t know how to handle this situation. He hadn’t intended to kill the guardian, but the underman had come at him hard. What else could he have done?
“This…this will make the mission more difficult,” Marcus said. “The pair…has been with us for a long time. I can’t tell if Vulpus knows who killed his brother. If he finds out it’s you…”
“Keep him far away from me,” Tanner said.
Marcus breathed a little faster as color tinged his cheeks.
“Lupus attacked me,” Tanner said.
“You…needle people, Centurion. I…” Marcus’s lips closed, pressing together.
Tanner wondered if saying he was sorry would help. He doubted it. No one ever believed that. What had happened had happened. He couldn’t take it back. How would a few useless words help change things? They couldn’t. Brother and sister were determined to hate him. That was fine with him. He knew how to deal with hatred. He had been doing that for a long time already.
“I am not going to hold you to blame,” Marcus said.
Heat built up in Tanner. Did Marcus realize the guard had just come at him? Was he supposed to let himself die so a patrician didn’t lose her murderous guardian? Who did these people think they were? They should be grateful he wasn’t charging them, or stranding them in the Petrus Hideaway.
Then it struck Tanner. The patricians would double-cross him because of this. Maybe it’s deeper than that. Maybe Acton set this all up.
The realization of the possibility shocked Tanner. Could the Shand have done that with his ability to control minds?
“Wait a minute, Lord,” Tanner said. “I just thought of something.”
Marcus shifted his gaze enough to glance quickly at the centurion before looking away again. “Yes?”
Tanner explained his thought about Acton.
“Are you trying to evade reasonability for killing my guard?” Marcus demanded.
Tanner turned away, mentally counting to five. He had to control his anger. He had to reason with the heir. Working to keep his voice neutral, Tanner faced Marcus.
“I killed Lupus while defending myself from his attack. I had no malice against your underman.”
“Go on,” Marcus said in a tight voice.
“I had a run-in with Acton earlier. I might have made him angry.”
“You appear to have a knack for that.”
Tanner let that go. He had to. “We’re getting closer to the big prize. Maybe Acton doesn’t like me knowing so much. Maybe he has more to hide than we think. Maybe I just pissed the hell out of him in the rec room. He wanted to strike back but not in a way that might jeopardize the mission. Okay. So what does he do? Maybe he has listening bugs all over the ship. He knew how…how I needled Lupus before. So Acton decided to use that against me. I tell you, Lord, there was no reason for Lupus to come at me the way he did.”
“You were trying to grab my sister’s hand. He saw that and reacted as trained. I don’t think you realize just how responsible you are for all this.”
Tanner scowled. “I thought you said earlier—”
“Centurion!” Marcus nearly shouted.
Tanner stiffened, getting angrier.
Marcus swallowed twice and nodded slowly. “I did not mean to shout at you just now,” he said. “I am…troubled by these events. I am angry. I don’t think you can imagine how much. Now, this blame-shifting on your part—”
“I’m using my head,” Tanner said. “I’m not letting emotion cloud my judgment.”
“And I am?” Marcus asked in an ugly voice.
Tanner almost replied, “Yes, you jackass. That’s exactly what you’re doing.” He hesitated, and in hesitating, he decided not to answer the question.
Tanner found himself breathing heavily. Could he be right about Acton, or was this one of those stupid problems that crops up at the worst times with people? Could he really have been at fault with Lupus?
“I respect your anger, Lord,” Tanner forced himself to say. “I have shed the blood of one of your people. I understand if you resent, even hate me.”
Marcus was staring at him now.
“I…I…” Tanner found that his lips were dry. His heart pounded.
“You what?” Marcus said.
Tanner rubbed his eyes. Why was this so hard? It hadn’t been his fault. The underman had attacked him. Why couldn’t these damned patricians keep their guards under control?
The centurion balled his hands into fists. “Look,” he said, hoarsely. “Killing Lupus wasn’t my intent.”
“You’ve already said that.”
“Yeah. I have. Now, I’m saying it again. I did not want to kill him.”
Marcus frowned, and the stare had changed. It seemed as if understanding dwelled in the heir’s eyes. “Are you trying to say you’re sorry for killing my man?”
Tanner couldn’t get the words out. They simply would not come. His nostrils flared. He warred with himself. Finally, with the barest of motions, he gave the barest of nods.
“I see,” Marcus said. “Yes. I think I’m beginning to understand. I don’t know if this will help with my sister…but I—”
Marcus Varus held out his beefy, strong hand to Tanner.
Tanner examined it to see if he could spot any alien grease on the palm. It didn’t seem like there was any. He gripped the heir’s hand in return.
“We won’t talk about this again, Centurion.”
“Yes, Lord,” Tanner said.
“We had a terrible misunderstanding,” Marcus said. “It’s over now, behind us. We have to work together if we’re going to free Remus.”
“Yes, Lord.”
Maybe Marcus would have said more. Before he could, the red alert began to blare.
-26-
Tanner reached the control room, sliding into his seat.
Greco tapped controls before turning to him. “I think we should stop our deceleration, boss, and head in-system at our present velocity.”
The centurion saw the sensor board. A vessel using a hard fusion burn had barely lef
t the extensive asteroid belt. While the spaceship was a long way from them, it was on an intercept course with them at its present heading.
“First,” Tanner said. “What is that, a giant missile?”
“It’s worse, boss. That’s a destroyer-class vessel.”
Tanner studied the sensor readings. “That’s a Coalition destroyer.”
Greco nodded.
“Has it been waiting out here for us?” Tanner asked.
“I’d give that a high probability.”
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Tanner said.
“Why is it accelerating for us then?”
“Because it can read our dimensions as easily as we can read theirs,” Tanner said. “They have to know this is a Remus raider. They’ve laid traps for us all over the place in the past.”
“Yes,” the apeman said. “That could be right. Or they could know the plan.”
“You mean…Maximus’s death was a fake?”
“We have to accept it as a possibility,” Greco said. “Maximus might have told them everything, and they programmed him to kill himself in order to fool us as to what they know.”
Tanner tapped a keypad, running numbers. “The destroyer will still reach us under those conditions, or reach close enough to use their particle beams on us.”
Coalition destroyers didn’t have lasers because the ship class wasn’t large enough to make them effective. The destroyer had three times the raider’s mass and many more personnel aboard.
Greco nodded.
“The destroyer must have been watching hyperspace territory closely to have spotted us this soon,” Tanner said.
“That is one possibility.”
“There’s another?”
“Maybe the manner of our dropping into normal space gave a larger signature than ordinary,” Greco said. “Maybe anyone would have spotted us because we entered normal space like a flashing beacon.”
“Yeah. That could be right.”
“You must speak to Lord Acton,” Greco said. “He might have more…more surprises in those boxes.”
“Yeah,” Tanner said, recalling the interrupted talk with Marcus Varus. He stood and opened a small compartment, removing a pair of leather gloves, shoving his fingers into them. He buckled on his gun belt next. As he turned to go, Greco spoke up:
“What about our deceleration? I think getting to the belt faster might be better. If we survive the first pass with the destroyer, we can run into the belt and hide as we repair the damage.”
Tanner considered that, finally saying, “Drop the deceleration to point five Gs. We’re simply traveling too fast. If we save too much of our deceleration for the end, we risk entering the asteroid belt at high velocity. There’s too much dust in the belt for us to do that and survive.”
Greco nodded again, beginning to manipulate the flight panel.
***
Tanner didn’t have to ring the buzzer to Acton’s quarters. The Shand waited for him in a junction. It told Tanner what he’d already suspected: the alien monitored at least some of their conversations. Probably all the conversations on the bridge had been recorded.
“The ship is in danger,” Acton said.
Tanner took a wide stance, keeping his hands on his belt instead of one of them on the gun-butt. “The destroyer outclasses my raider. If you’ll remember, the Calisto Grandee people stole my torpedoes—not that I’d want to trade torpedo shots with the destroyer. Having the torpedoes would have given us more options, though.”
“Your vessel cannot outmaneuver the destroyer?”
“Maybe if we could slip into the asteroid belt ahead of them I could,” Tanner said. “But not out here in the open. They’re heading for us. We could veer sharply away from them and run back to hyperspace territory. We could jump somewhere else and jump back here later, slipping into the Petrus System at that time.”
“No. Our window of opportunity at Planet Zero is too small for that.”
“I didn’t think you’d like the idea,” Tanner said. “Do you happen to know if the Coalition knows our plan?”
“How would I have gained this information?”
Tanner shrugged.
“You must not think I possess fantastical powers,” Acton said. “I am merely wiser and more intelligent than you are. I am not truly magical as some simple people believe.”
Tanner gripped his belt tighter. It was time to control his tongue, not give it free reign. “Do you have some torpedoes perhaps in your boxes?”
Acton shook his head.
“I’m going to need something extra against the destroyer,” Tanner said.
“You must use your innate cunning. In order to stifle your curiosity, I will tell you that the majority of my boxes contain triton.”
Tanner’s eyebrows lifted. Triton was worth far more than gold or even platinum. “If most of those boxes hold triton, are you thinking about purchasing the entire hideaway?”
Acton said nothing.
Tanner hesitated, finally blurting, “What about gravity control? I saw that device under the pool table. If you had something bigger, we might be able to boost our velocity, outrun the destroyer along the curvature of the asteroid belt and then slip in when we’re beyond their line-of-sight.”
“I do not possess such an artifact,” Acton said.
“Right. Thanks anyway, Lord.” Tanner decided to bide his time for once. This wasn’t over between them, not by a long shot. He headed down the corridor. Maybe Marcus had an idea.
***
Tanner explained the situation to Marcus. The heir put his hands behind his back, hunching his thick shoulders.
“I’ll be honest,” Marcus said. “I’m the fighter between us. My sister is the thinker. We have to talk to her about this.”
“I don’t think she wants to talk to me,” Tanner said.
“Leave that to me. I’ll convince her. Where should we meet?”
“Let’s meet in the rec room,” Tanner suggested, deciding to spare Ursa from the bad memories of the galley.
“Give me…twenty minutes,” Marcus said.
“Sure. I’ll be waiting.”
***
It took one hour and twenty minutes. Tanner finally racked the pool table and knocked down all the balls nine times before he put everything away.
When Varus finally showed up, it was just Marcus. The big man said, “You’re right, Centurion. She’s not ready to speak with you yet.”
Tanner crossed his arms, nodding after a moment. “Well—”
“She did have an idea, though,” Marcus said.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“It involves the Petrus Hideaway.”
“Okay,” Tanner said hesitantly.
Marcus told him the idea.
Tanner looked disappointed. The idea sounded complicated and hard to do right, but he didn’t see that they had many more options.
“I’ll give it a try, Lord. But I’m not making any promises.”
“I only ask that you give it your all,” Marcus said.
***
It took some time to get everything ready, which included having Lord Acton loan him several triton bars. Surprisingly, that was the easy part.
“Do you think you can hit the communication satellite at this distance?” Tanner asked the apeman.
“At this range,” Greco said, “it will be touch and go. It’s a possibility we’ll lose the connection at the worst moment.”
“Can you do it or not?” Tanner asked.
“Let’s find out.”
For the next two hours, Greco manipulated his board and ran computer programs. Finally, the apeman said he was ready.
“About time,” Tanner muttered.
“Firing the transmission link,” Greco said.
An invisible laser speared from the Dark Star at a comm-satellite just outside the inner system asteroid belt. That was many billions of kilometers away. The laser-link wouldn’t speed up the communication. The voices would still travel
at the speed of light. That meant hours of separation between each location. That made dickering difficult but not impossible. Plus, using a laser-link made for a tight message, audible only to those linked to the satellite, so it couldn’t be heard by the destroyer’s comms.
As Tanner and Greco waited for the laser-link to hit the satellite and send their message, the centurion explained some of the plan’s reasoning to the apeman.
“Ursa doesn’t think the destroyer went all the way to the hideaway. Likely, it’s been prowling on the outskirts of the asteroid belt. Since it’s a warship, the pirates in the hideaway might have decided to leave it alone. Maybe they think the destroyer is a precursor to a major assault and are gauging its actions.”
“I understand the reasoning,” Greco said. “Yet that seems like a dangerous game for the destroyer.”
“No one said Coalition people lack courage. It’s partly what makes them so bad. If they were cowards, they never would have attacked Remus or Avernus.”
The hours passed while they waited. Finally, the laser reached the satellite. It would take just as long to see if the laser had been on target and if the pirates would reply.
In any case, Tanner made his pitch. He showed the triton bars on the screen. He ran an analysis on them, showing the hideaway people these really were what he claimed them to be. Afterward, Tanner waited.
Greco left to get some shuteye.
Tanner remained at his post. Many hours later, with his eyes droopy, a signal lit the comm board. He snapped up and slapped the switch, opening the comm.
An unsavory individual with tattoos on his cheeks, a ring in his nose and long stringy hair stared out of the comm screen. His glassy eyes made him seem high.
“You have triton, beautiful triton,” the man said. “Yes, I think you are showing me real triton. Therefore, I agree. We will do it. But it is up to you to reach the location. You don’t have to send a return signal. I will know by your raider’s actions. It should be interesting. And if you fail…I can send my scavengers out to your destroyed craft later to grab the triton. But I like your style, bounty hunter.”
Tanner’s stomach twisted. They knew he was a bounty hunter. That was bad. They hated bounty hunters at the Petrus Hideaway. Yet, he could deal with that when the time came—if it did. First, he had to get past the destroyer. He was surprised the Coalition people hadn’t tried to hail him yet.
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