by Jay Allan
“Come,” Admiral Kharn said, slapping his friend on the back, “we will discuss it on Red Viper. I’ve got an excellent Antillian brandy in my quarters—the last from a truly memorable raid.” He started walking back toward the ship, Rhennus following closely behind. “A weak replacement for the four-alarm binge you were planning, perhaps, but we poor spacers get by as we can, don’t we?”
“Indeed we do, my friend.” It was obvious the mention of the brandy put a little cheer back into Rhennus. The top vintages from Antilles were some of the best in the Far Stars, almost beyond price, and Kharn knew it would be some solace at least, for the loss of Madame Corelia’s ladies.
He hoped it would help soften what he had to tell him next. The two men were walking slowly up the ramp leading to Red Viper’s main airlock when Kharn said, “This is serious, Rhennus.” All the cheer had left Kharn’s voice. “I’ve never seen the ka’al so angry.”
He stepped inside the hatch, turning to face his friend as he entered the ship. “We’re looking for a needle in a haystack, my old friend . . . and if we don’t find it, I’m afraid we’re all in deep trouble.”
CHAPTER 8
“THEY’RE MAKING THEIR FINAL APPROACH NOW,” LUCAS SAID while bent over his scope, monitoring the imperial ship’s heading. The Claw had been pursuing the mysterious vessel for seventy-two hours, staying in the target’s blind zone to avoid detection. “They should be on the ground within an hour, maybe less.” He turned toward Blackhawk, his face twisted into a frown. “I can get us a rough landing location, Skip, maybe a three-hundred- to five-hundred-kilometer radius, but that’s the best I can do. Unfortunately, we’re too far out for anything more precise than that.” His voice was thick with frustration.
Blackhawk nodded, sighing quietly. A thousand-kilometer circle was a hell of a lot of ground to search for one small ship. Still, he thought, Lucas had done a hell of a job piloting the wounded Claw, staying close enough to track the target while still remaining hidden. A five-hundred-kilometer radius was amazing tracking from this range.
Blackhawk knew Sam deserved a lot of credit, too. He had no idea how she’d managed to keep the Claw’s damaged engines so close to 100 percent output for as long as she had, but he knew it hadn’t been easy. She’d been prowling around the engineering crawlspaces for the last three days without a break, sleep, and with barely any food. He wasn’t sure what was keeping her going. Sam was so quiet and soft-spoken, he sometimes forgot she was tough as nails, too.
“Okay, Lucas, get the best read you can, and then bring us in on the most direct route.” Wolf’s Claw was already going to be a day and a half behind the imperial ship, and they had no idea how long their target was staying on Saragossa. Blackhawk didn’t plan to waste a second. He wanted to get the Claw down to the surface and find the enemy ship as quickly as possible. Then, a quick smash-and-grab job to steal the hyperdrive core, and they’d be off that miserable rock as quickly as Sam could install the stolen system. He was planning for their stay on Saragossa to be short and sweet. The last thing he intended was to get involved in whatever was going on down on the planet. He wasn’t interested in wandering around through anyone’s civil war, and especially not if there was some kind of imperial involvement. He just wanted to get the Claw repaired and back to Celtiboria to return Astra to her father. That was their mission.
That’s not the only reason, though, he thought. Because there was more to it than just getting her home. She was too distracting to have on board. His mind kept drifting back to her when he needed to be thinking about other things, and he couldn’t allow it to go on.
He wouldn’t.
Lucas drew him back to the present. “Got it, Skip. I’ve got the course already plotted and locked in,” the pilot said, slapping his hand on the side of his workstation. “As soon as the imperials land, we don’t have to worry about being scanned. We can fire up the engines and revector directly in and save some time.” He turned toward Blackhawk. “I think I can get us there in a little over twenty-six hours if Sam can keep the engines going that much longer.”
“You hit that time, and you’ll earn your pay this month.” Blackhawk was surprised at the pilot’s claim. He didn’t see how he could manage it, but he’d learned not to bet against Lucas Lancaster—not when he was behind the controls of Wolf’s Claw, at least.
“Sounds great, Skip. Maybe I can send some money home to Mother.” It was a joke, one with some edge. Lucas was bitterly estranged from his family after they had exiled him when his drug addiction proved too damaging to the family’s standing.
Besides, his mother was one of the wealthiest women in the Far Stars.
“You do that, Lucas.” Blackhawk smiled. He was one of the few people who really understood Lucas Lancaster, and he’d recognized the pilot’s true quality that day they’d first met, in a dive bar on Antilles. Ace and Shira had been tougher to convince, and both suggested more than once that Blackhawk throw their detoxing passenger out the airlock, or at least drop him on some nearby planet. And their concerns weren’t without merit: Lancaster had been a raving lunatic for weeks, a sweating, screaming animal. But gradually, he got clean, and he responded to Blackhawk’s mentorship . . . and fists. And the moment he took the controls of Wolf’s Claw, he truly became one of them.
None of Blackhawk’s people had ever seen a pilot as good as Lucas Lancaster. He had all the technical skills, but it was more than that. It was an intuition, a sixth sense that seemed to guide his handling of the ship. The controls were like an extension of his arms, and he coaxed performance out of the ship his crewmates had never thought possible.
“Maybe I’ll just hang on to it, Skip. I could use some new boots. Mom will get by.” He smiled at Blackhawk. The crew of Wolf’s Claw followed their captain’s lead in maintaining a low profile, but none of them were anxiously awaiting their next payday. Blackhawk was generous with his people, and he always negotiated a heavy purse for the jobs they did. Like Wolf’s Claw itself—which looked like a struggling smuggler’s aging vessel but held a host of surprises for enemies—her crew played the part of wandering adventurers, living from job to job. But that was a fiction. They all had DNA-encoded accounts at the Far Stars Bank, as well as a variety of treasures stashed in hiding places around the sector. They were adventurers and mercenaries certainly, but they were very successful ones. Any of them could retire at any time and live a life of luxury—if any of them had been willing to leave Arkarin Blackhawk’s side, that is.
“Good idea,” Blackhawk said. “You know I like my crew well turned out.” The two shared a laugh, but Blackhawk’s mind was wandering down to the lower deck. He couldn’t get the image of Astra Lucerne’s face out of his head.
And that was a problem.
Because Blackhawk had known Astra for years. He had been her father’s friend and ally, and he’d watched her grow up in the shadow of his battlefields. He brought her presents from around the Far Stars whenever the Claw returned to Celtiboria, and the young girl’s response always warmed his heart.
Then, one time, he returned, and the little girl was gone, a young woman standing in her place.
He couldn’t place exactly when he’d noticed she was acting differently around him, but he’d written off her attentions at first as a young girl’s infatuation. That worked for a while . . . until he realized he had feelings for her too, much different from those he’d had before.
It wasn’t something he would let himself pursue, and he started avoiding Celtiboria, taking jobs farther away and visiting other Prime worlds for repairs and resupply. He hadn’t been back in three years when Lucerne’s message about Astra’s abduction reached him.
If he’d had any doubts about his true feelings, they were washed away during his battle with Cyrus Mondran. His rage had overcome him when he confronted Astra’s kidnapper, and his mortal combat with the pirate had landed him in Kalishar’s arena and almost cost him his life. He’d been unable to control himself, ignoring Hans’s repeated war
nings and giving in to pure, elemental fury.
Astra was an amazing woman—strong, beautiful, intelligent. She was like no one else he’d ever known, and just the sight of her distracted him from whatever he was doing. But she was his friend’s daughter, and however young Blackhawk may have looked, he was almost twenty-five years older than she was. Worse, he knew she was too good for him. He’d done his best to bury his past, forget the things he’d done, but they were still there. And he knew he could never burden Astra with any of that. She was destined for greatness as Augustin Lucerne’s only heir. Blackhawk wouldn’t let her waste her life on the likes of him.
No, he thought once again, I will not drag her into this life of mine. She is destined for much more, and I will not be the cause of her giving up her future. I will take her back to her father, and he will keep her safe. And I will slip back into the darkness.
“Sorry about the ride in, Skip. The stabilizers must have gotten knocked out of alignment. Sam and I should be able to fix those right away now that we’re on the ground.” Lucas was leaning back in his seat, exhaling hard. The Claw had bucked and kicked coming in, but he’d gotten her down with no further damage. Planetary landings were always tricky, generally the hardest part of piloting a spaceship. Gravity and atmosphere created a lot of complications that simply weren’t a factor in the vacuum of space, and bringing in a damaged vessel was not a job for the fainthearted.
“Lucas—you’re too hard on yourself.” Blackhawk looked over at his pilot. “I suspect anyone else would have smashed us into a hill at 10 kps.” He was unhooking his harness with one hand and flipping on the intraship comm with the other. “Everybody okay down there?”
“Yeah, Cap.” Ace sounded a little ragged, but Blackhawk knew he’d never admit it. “We got a good shaking, but we’re okay.”
Ace hadn’t shot a barb toward Lucas’s piloting. Blackhawk knew his cocky sidekick well enough to realize what that meant. If Ace wasn’t giving Lucas a hard time, he was pretty shaken up. “I’m betting Sarge and his guys could use a little time to pull themselves together after that, so you and Shira break out some weapons—I want to go out and have a look around.”
Blackhawk had ordered Lucas to bring the ship down in a sparsely populated area on the very edge of the five-hundred-kilometer zone. That probably meant they’d have some ground to cover, but it also kept them away from prying eyes—both imperials and any factions that were warring one another on this mess of a planet.
“You got it, Ark. We’ll meet you at the airlock.” Ace sounded a little steadier. Blackhawk didn’t know if he was feeling better or just managing to make his bullshit more convincing. He mentally flipped a coin.
“I’ll be right down.” To Lucas: “Get the field up as soon as you can. I don’t know who might have spotted us coming in, but I’d like to keep the number of them actually finding us to a minimum.”
Lucas nodded. “I’ll have it up in a minute, Skip. Then Sam and I will get up top and take a look at the exterior damage. We might as well deal with that right away. Hopefully, we won’t be on the ground too long.”
“Exactly,” Blackhawk said, walking toward the ladder to the lower level. “Get all the exterior and critical work done as quickly as you can. I want to be ready to get off this rock on a moment’s notice.” Blackhawk had a bad feeling about Saragossa, even worse than what he might have expected being stuck in the middle of a civil war trying to steal a hyperdrive core from an imperial ship. It was the imperial ship that truly had him nervous, and not just because he had to sneak into it and steal a major piece of equipment. Blackhawk knew an imperial ops ship almost always meant trouble. What he didn’t know was why the empire was involving itself in a power struggle on a backwater world. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t come up with an answer that didn’t spell trouble.
And now he was going out of his way to look for trouble.
“We’re just going to do a quick reconnoiter and check out the area. Once Sarge and his boys have had a few minutes to pull themselves together, tell them to get suited up and ready for action. And break out the buggy. We’ve got a long way to go to get to that ship.”
“Will do, Skip. Good luck out there. Be careful.”
Blackhawk gave Lucas a quick nod then scrambled down the ladder. His mind was still racing when he got to the airlock, coming back again and again to the same question:
Why was the empire here?
“Looks like some nasty shit went down around here, Cap.” Ace was a few steps ahead, his eyes panning over the charred ruins ahead of them. It was the third burned-out village they’d come across, and it was just like the others. The stench of death was everywhere.
The buildings had been mostly small huts, but there was little left of them but a few blackened timbers lying in the piles of ash. A long wooden wall was still standing, close to the small square in the village center. It was riddled with bullet holes. In front, there were at least twenty bodies, lying half decomposed, covered with swarms of Saragossa’s oversized equivalent of flies.
“There’s a reason the guilds redlined Saragossa, Ace.” The transport combines were not skittish, nor were they unduly troubled by moral and ethical concerns. They were willing to ply their trade anywhere they could make a profit. The guilds usually stayed above the often cantankerous politics of the Far Stars, happy to deliver supplies of weapons to both sides in a conflict regardless of the ideologies involved. They only redlined a planet when the local situation was too dangerous to their ships and personnel—or when someone paid enough of a bribe. “I don’t see anybody caring enough about this shithole to pay off the guilds,” Blackhawk said, “so I suspect things got too violent for them. They can make a lot of money running guns into a war zone, so things must be pretty damn bad if they pulled out.”
Redlining was a big deal. When the guilds pulled out, the Far Stars Bank almost always followed suit, and whatever other worlds had embassies usually closed them. A redlined planet was on its own, effectively cut off from all interplanetary commerce, even communication. It rarely improved the situation on the world in question, and things often turned more savage and feral once the embargo was put in place.
This village seemed a perfect example.
Blackhawk kept walking, looking past the wreckage and the bodies all around him. The scene was oddly familiar, triggering long-suppressed memories, images of similar atrocities from long ago and far away: destroyed homes, the bodies of helpless villagers—unarmed men and women lying dead in the burnt wreckage. He’d seen it all before, too many times. These simple people were the pawns, the innocents lying in the paths of those who would claim power. And here, as so often before, it was they who paid the price, in pain, suffering, and death.
He pushed the thoughts aside, forcing the anger and guilt back into its place. His rigid discipline slammed down, blocking the distractions. He didn’t have time for self-loathing now. He had a job to do. He had to get his people off Saragossa and return Astra Lucerne to her father.
“We’re being watched, Ark,” Shira said quietly. Unlike Ace, who filled tense moments with his own boasting, Shira preferred to watch and listen, and she was always aware of everything around her. In moments like these, Blackhawk—though he’d never admit it aloud—preferred her on his six. “To the left, just over that ridge. They’re trying to hide, but they keep looking over to see what we’re doing.”
“I see them, Shira.” Blackhawk kept walking. “Let’s move toward the stone building ahead to the right. There’s some cover there.” They were out in the open where they were, sitting ducks if their observers were to turn hostile.
“Got it, Ark.” Shira’s voice betrayed no emotion, no fear, not even stress. Just a cold, relentless calm.
“Ace?”
“With you, Cap.” Graythorn’s voice was less restrained.
It’s never dull going into a fight with Ace, he thought.
They took another few steps. “Now,” Blackhawk said quietly. A
s one, the three of them broke stride and dashed for the cover of the wrecked building. Shira slipped around the end of the half-collapsed stone wall, while Blackhawk and Ace leaped over. The whole thing was over in an instant, and they were crouched behind the wall, weapons drawn.
“Stay cool. We don’t want a fight here if we can avoid it.” Blackhawk was peering out over the wall, trying to get a read on how many potential enemies they were dealing with. As keen as Shira’s observation skills were, he knew his vision was better—another gift from his genetically engineered heritage—and he wanted to get a good look for himself.
“Hello,” he called across the narrow plain. Imperial Standard was the primary language used in the Far Stars, but there were various dialects and local tongues, too. Especially on backwaters like Saragossa. “We are not hostile.”
“Interesting choice of words, Cap,” Ace whispered.
Blackhawk glared at Graythorn, but he knew his lieutenant had a point. If he realized one thing about the crew of Wolf’s Claw, he knew they were capable of extreme hostility when provoked. They just weren’t looking to be hostile at the moment.
“Our ship was damaged, and we landed to make repairs.” He hoped he was getting through to someone over there—he’d spotted at least ten men, and he didn’t relish the idea of getting into a firefight outnumbered more than three to one.
“Who are you? What were you doing in this system?” The voice spoke Imperial Standard, but with a heavy local accent. It sounded vaguely familiar, and Blackhawk tried to place it.
It is a Saragossan peasant accent. Ninety-two percent probability the speaker is a factory worker from the industrialized belt in the south ward of the new capital.
Blackhawk nodded, his subconscious acknowledgment of the AI’s assist. If the AI was right—and Blackhawk had to admit it was rarely wrong—this peasant would know his way into the capital city . . . and that was the likeliest place to find the core they needed. Saragossa had two capital cities. Old Vostok had been the ancient capital for centuries until New Vostok was constructed in the fair richer northlands of the main continent. The old city had steadily declined in importance until it remained largely a religious center, with only the oldest of the great families maintaining residences there. New Vostok, on the other hand, had expanded rapidly, and it had become the center of the planet’s industrial revolution.