“Connections, sister, it’s all about who you’re sleeping with at the time.”
“Really? Who’d sleep with DeLaney? Even a galaynian would refuse his money.”
“Haha, that’s cruel… but right. I don’t know how it came about, but the rumor amongst us mercenary crews was that he’d had a family connection to Crown Central that ran all the way to President Aleatra through various degrees of removal. And one of the old matriarchs saw something in him… well, saw something on him at least. Those old crones probably hadn’t been sexually satisfied in hundreds of years. Even the best cryo can’t keep ’em fresh forever.”
Sara screwed up her face. “That’s grim—for both concerned.”
“I don’t judge. Each to their own. Besides, he wasn’t going anywhere as a courier; he couldn’t even find his way out of the system most of the time. The Crown probably saw this as a way of getting him out of the way. And with Telo in charge, DeLaney was only here for tradition.”
“Hey, you two, look sharp.” DeLaney lowered a graphene rope. “Air tanks coming down. Best get in your suits now; things don’t look good up here.”
“What do you mean?” Sara asked.
Margo looked down at her from the gloom. Sara could just make out a pensive expression on her face. Her shoulders tightened. “There is a degree of hull damage,” the Hentian said with her usual neutral tone as though she were just delivering a fun fact.
“How bad? Is it breached?”
“Nothing is breached yet,” DeLaney said, his head shrouded in the shadow of the room above him. “Let’s not take the risk, though. Suits on. Now.”
“Send down a couple more suits, then.” Bookworm gestured to Humphrey and Prescott. “Or had you forgotten about our wounded.”
“Of course not,” DeLaney said and disappeared back into the room.
“Of course not,” Bookworm mimicked savagely.
Murlowe clambered down the side of the bridge and checked the two men. “They’re awake,” he said and helped them to sit up.
“What happened?” Prescott asked. “Oh my, we were attacked. Did we escape? Why is the ship on its side? Did we crash onto a planet? What happened?”
“Your guess is as good as anyone’s,” Bookworm said.
“Who are you?” Prescott snapped. “I wish to speak with someone in authority, not some grease monkey.”
“Oi, DeLaney,” Bookworm shouted. “One of your people here, wanting an update.”
Humphrey, on the other hand, got to his feet, and started seeing how he could help. Like a crewmate should.
It took DeLaney a little while to answer the arrogant prig Humphrey’s questions, and while he did so, everybody else suited up, connecting the air canisters to their backs but not initiating the feed, deciding to use the air left in the ship before using their reserves. Prescott needed a lot of help to get into his suit, and he complained the whole time.
Each suit had a two-way radio, but as Sara tried to speak, she realized it wasn’t working. They could breathe but not speak once their helmets were on and locked down.
“Is the air feed controlled by electronics?” Sara asked. “Or is it mechanical?” She’d never had cause to wear one before, and it was too dark to investigate.
“It’s regulated by electronics, yes,” DeLaney said.
“Oh, great,” Bookworm said. “That means we’re proper screwed.”
“How is that?” Prescott asked fearfully.
“Think about it, genius. Since jumping to this hellhole, nothing electronic has worked. For whatever reason, there’s something here that screws with this stuff. No Telo, no power. No air either. Unless we can suck it out of the tanks directly.”
“No chance of that,” DeLaney said. “The seals are all electronic. Unless you have a power source, you won’t be able to get to the air.”
Murlowe, for the first time since they entered the void, spoke. “I fear this is it, then. We should make plans.”
“What do you mean, plans?” Sara asked.
Murlowe and Margo spoke as one. “Funeral plans.”
Chapter Four
Tai ground the revolver into Linus’s jaw.
Linus sighed. “You’ve got about three minutes to clean up this mess. Dalgefs are heavy.”
“First pick,” Tai said. He had the gun, so he had control.
“First five.” But Linus didn’t care whether he lived or died, which made things a little… awkward. Linus smiled. “Two minutes forty.”
Tai, on the other hand, had things to do, money to make, women to chase; he snarled and said, “First three.”
“Deal.” Linus held out his right hand.
Tai transferred the revolver to his left hand, still keeping it tight against Linus’s jaw, and shook Linus’s hand. “Deal.” He holstered the gun and grabbed Felek’s corpse, dragging it into the shadows beside a waste chute.
He turned back in time to see Linus stab the dalgef in the torso with the creature’s own sword. The blade gleamed as it plunged in and out.
“Dead now,” Linus said as he grabbed the corpse.
Tai swallowed. He grabbed the dalgef’s flaccid legs and helped Linus carry the body into the shadows.
They were still stripping the bodies of anything valuable when the loading dock’s main lights flared into life. But they knew the geography of this cavernous space and were still obscured in the shadows of the waste chute.
“Time?” Linus said.
“Time,” Tai agreed and unlatched the chute. The fetid stink of the reclamation vats wafted out. Linus dumped Felek’s corpse inside. A long moment of silence was followed by a wet meaty thump as the body landed on the deck far below. Tai helped with the heavy body of the dalgef, and Linus closed up the hatch.
Pounding feet as scavenger crews and mechanics poured onto the docking deck.
“This”—Linus grabbed the dalgef’s shotgun—“this”—he grabbed Felek’s semiautomatic pistol—“and this”—he lifted a piece of jewelry he had ripped from Felek’s ear.
“That?” Tai pointed at the golden teardrop. “If the vul catch you with that, you’ll be guest of honor at one of their midnight feasts.”
“I’ll take that chance. Your pick.”
They portioned up the booty between them, filling the sacks that all Haven prospectors carried as a matter of course.
Tai reloaded the revolver, clicking the almost-empty cylinder out of the frame and snapping in a fully loaded one from a pouch on the back of his belt. He spun the cylinder to check that it was seated right, and holstered the gun.
“Next time, buddy,” Linus said.
“Next time,” Tai said.
They bumped fists and sauntered away from each other, with the loaded sacks over their shoulders.
Nobody would notice fresh blood on the deck, and even if they did, it didn’t matter. Without bodies, nobody could say for sure what had happened, and the strange doglike creatures, the grelas, down on the reclamation deck would have already butchered the corpses of Felek and the dalgef for the vats.
Tai emerged from stashing his sack in the Mary-May, and saw his mother approaching in all her splendor.
“Great,” he muttered.
***
Tai turned his back on his mother and her approaching entourage. He pulled a collapsed telescope from the pouch on his belt and snapped it open, studying the new ship captured by Hollow Space through the port windows. Well, half a ship by the look of it. Maybe even less. Ripped up and spinning slowly, the ship had already collided with some of the other hulks out there. And it was going to hit that old stripped-clean hulk that most people used for target practice.
Tai adjusted the focus of the telescope, zooming in slightly, and took a closer look at the ship. Colorful. It must have been a sight to see at one time. A mosaic pattern of black and reds on the side of the ship, shattered now of course, no way of telling what it was supposed to be.
That ship had been in a fight.
And had lost badly.
The whisper of leather skirts behind him.
“Hello, Mother,” Tai said, without turning around. He could see a seam of silvery metal slashing across the back of the ship. Titanium? Good pickings on that hulk.
“Tairon,” his mother said.
He turned slowly.
She was dressed in a dress of red solan leather, the skirt full and the bodice tight. Wings of stiffened leather framed her face; her jewelry sparkled in the harsh light of the dock. Rubies and gold with the highlights picked out in diamonds. They didn’t call Miriam Cauder the ‘Red Cauder’ for nothing, and she lived up to the name in all sorts of ways.
Her secretary scurried around her in a tight circle. Chegans, who were related to the grelas carrion farmers on the reclamation decks, could not stay still for long. Small quadrupeds with sad faces and telepathic abilities, chegans were rare on the station, but the Cauder clan could afford the best help.
—It is good to see you, Tairon Cauder. The voice tickled at the aural centers of Tai’s brain. He appreciated the delicacy; telepaths had to dial down the imagery of their communications to converse with humans.
“And you, Reginous Phan.” Tai bowed.
Hela, Miriam’s personal enforcer, nodded to Tai. A small human woman with a deadly reputation, scars crisscrossed her face, which only added to her beauty.
Five other guards, a motley assortment of species, with assorted firearms in their hands and eyes scanning the surroundings with professional efficiency, formed a semicircle around the two Cauders, Reginous, and Hela.
Miriam said, “Felek is looking for you.”
“Is he?” Tai asked. “Haven’t seen him.”
“Borrowing from the vul, Tairon. Trading on our name. How far you have fallen.”
“I get by. What do you want?”
“That cutter of yours is the fastest ship in dock. How would you like to pick up some quick cash?”
“Twenty-eighty.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Seventy-thirty.”
“Reverse that.”
“Very well, fifty-fifty.”
“Sixty-forty. Or I’ll blast out there by myself and lay the claim.”
“What will you use for fuel?”
“This is a pure gold deal. I’ll get credit.” Tai grinned. “Better hurry, Mother, the law will be here soon, and then the deals get messy.”
—He is correct. The commandant is on his way. He brings a Scholar with him.
“Which one?” Tai asked.
—Sweet-Sap-Rising.
Miriam snarled, held out her hand, and said, “Fifty-five–forty-five.”
Tai grabbed her hand before she changed her mind. “Deal.”
Kina loped across the deck with Tooize and the kronacs. “Fresh meat,” she called.
One of Miriam’s bodyguards lifted his submachine gun and blocked her path. Tai rested his hand on his Dorian revolver.
“Step back, friend,” he said softly. “Real slow.”
Miriam nodded, and the guard lowered his gun. Stepping back into formation, he resumed scanning the surroundings with professional indifference.
“Family reunion,” Tooize whistled.
“Yeah,” Tai said. “Get the Mary fueled. We need to blast fast, hard, and now.”
Chapter Five
Sara pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her back against what used to be the ceiling of the ship. Wires and ducting ran all the way back to the sealed scar from the earlier battle. The image of all those stasis units drifting away, being picked off one at a time by those Markesian bastards, threatened to bring tears to her eyes.
Although she wasn’t usually sentimental about things, something that devastating was beyond normal cognition. Almost her entire species were sitting with her waiting to die, and one of them was reading a damned book as if he had nothing better to do.
The Hentians were babbling again. God knows what they were saying, probably some bullshit holy ritual. The humans from Hentia were all about their inner spirit or some such crap. Sara grew up on a shit-hole mining colony where the only things that mattered were digging ore and not getting diced and sliced by the machinery.
“We can’t just sit here, waiting to die,” she said. “We’ve got to at least try something.” She aimed it at DeLaney, their de-facto captain, whatever good that would do. His face was glossy with panic sweat.
“Suggestions, sister,” Bookworm said as he turned another page. He was reading some ridiculous old book written in the nineteenth century. Humanity had no idea back then, and their stories seemed to her to be utterly ridiculous, but Bookworm would risk his life in order to procure one for his growing collection.
“I’ve got a few suggestions for you, Bookworm.”
He guffawed.
“Seriously? You’re laughing at a time like this?”
He shrugged. “What do you expect me to do, eh? Rant and rave? We’re up the chute without a prayer. Might as well enjoy what little we’ve got.”
“And what about you, DeLaney?” Sara asked. “Anything the Crown might have taught you for this kind of thing? Perhaps something you picked up from your extensive training?” She didn’t even attempt to hide the snark in her voice this time. She’d had enough of the privileged class getting the plum jobs in the empire while colonists like her, the foundation of humanity—or what was left of it—were treated as second-class citizens. Third if you consider the AIs.
“Erm…” DeLaney rubbed his face again as if the very act would pull some knowledge from his brain. “There’s the escape pods… there’s fifteen kept on the bridge side.”
“No power,” Sara said. “Unless you have a sail and some oars, I can’t see how you’re going to get moving. And where’re you going to go?”
DeLaney turned to her then. “Fine. You tell me what you’re going to do. You seem to be quick to criticize; what’s your plan? We’re all listening.”
The blood rushed to Sara’s face. She jumped to her feet, rushed to DeLaney, grabbed him by the life-suit’s outer pockets, and slammed him against the hull. Their helmets were open but butted up against each other as Sara vented her frustration.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I ain’t going to sit around here waiting to die like a coward. I’m going outside. There’s other ships out there, and I saw something before…”
It only occurred to her then in her rant what exactly she’d seen but had forgotten in the ensuing panic.
“What is it you saw?” DeLaney said.
Sara backed off, allowing herself to cool down. She took a deep breath and thought back to the image she saw just before Telo died and the power cut. “A station and a planet, or at least what I thought was a planet.”
The others stared up at them.
Bookworm gave her a wide-eyed ‘what the hell’ look. “You what? You’re just telling us this now?”
“Hey, I don’t know if you realized, but if you took your head out of your damned stories for five minutes, you’d have seen we were all a bit panicked. You know, the rest of our species floating off into space, the Markesians kicking our ass. Sorry if my memory wasn’t perfect. You ass.”
“Are you sure?” DeLaney said. “A station and a planet, where?”
Sara closed her eyes, trying to reverse the situation and place the ship and her location to where it was when she saw the image. She traced it back, trying to ascertain where it would be now in relation to her new position. This was her skill, the reason she got the job as pathetic human backup to the superior AI navigators.
After recompiling the movements, she rushed past the others until she reached the railing. She climbed it until she reached one of the viewports. She looked out and to the right. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then as she looked down, she saw the obvious spheroid shape in the reflection of the glossy black hull of the wreckage beneath them and, above it, through the floating graveyard of hulks, with amber lights shining at various points on its perimeter, a definite man- or alien-m
ade space structure.
“It’s there. It’s right frecking there. I knew it. If we could get out, perhaps send a distress signal or something, maybe, I don’t know, send ourselves out there. We’d only need to push ourselves off and wait. It doesn’t look much further than a few hundred miles.”
“Oh, is that all?” Bookworm said. “Why don’t you pop out and get some milk, we’ll wait for you here. It’ll only take you… Oh, I don’t know two, three hundred hours. How much air do these tanks hold, DeLaney?”
“Four hours, tops. And the seals are electronic, remember?”
“Well, there goes that idea. Sorry, sister, you’re outta luck with that one. I’ll be in my cabin reading. If I take shallow breaths, I should at least get one classic read before the air in here gets so bad I suffocate. It’s supposed to be quite a nice way to go, bit of a headache and then you just drift away. Give me a shout if anything more interesting turns up.”
Bookworm clambered up the floor to a door next to the room that held the life-suits. A small passage led off from there to where their cabins were. Sara was glad Bookworm left; her patience with him was wearing seriously thin.
Murlowe helped Sara down and took her place, spying the same reflection as Sara. “I see it too,” he said in his low, considered tones. “It’s not so far. I volunteer to go. Trajectory is going to be difficult, but in lieu of any communications, perhaps they’ll notice one of us approaching.”
“You’ll be dead hours before you even get there,” Sara said.
Murlowe turned to her and fixed her with a deathly calm expression, his blue eyes seemingly glowing in the gloom. “I know.”
“Are you mad? We’re not sacrificing you. There’s got to be another way. Perhaps set a fire or an emergency beacon; there’s got to be some mechanical flares on this ship, right?”
“In the other section,” DeLaney lamented. “The section that didn’t come with us.”
Galactic - Ten Book Space Opera Sci-Fi Boxset Page 48