They spent another day on the idyllic paradise planet, watched the night time light show as the volcanic planet cast red and orange hues across the calm ocean.
The same bored man in the hangar at the landing port gave them the coordinates to the jump gate so they wouldn’t have to search for it as it traveled around the volcano planet. They launched, sped over to the fiery planet and Jessie eased carefully through the gate, wary of any ships the pirates may have placed directly in front of the exit. They were waiting, dozens of them, but they didn’t dare fire at him, thanks to the transmitter from Sharaal. The angry reptilian that filled his screen warned of dire consequences if he was ever found anywhere else in the galaxy. The Queens protection was only honored in her system and his life would be short. He held up his fist and crushed a metal drinking cup, told the insignificant worm he’d do the same to him if they met again. He had killed pirate men and destroyed pirate ships. They didn’t forget or forgive.
No one fired on them but they had to dodge spinning wrecks that came out of nowhere on a collision course with their ship.
31
The Collectors Men
“Not here.” Drashad said. “They didn’t fire on them; they must have the Queen’s protection.”
His brother agreed and they stayed hidden in the space junk. The tracker Prashad had attached to their ship before it left port would lead them to where ever they went. The Consortium and the pirates had a grudging respect for each other and usually didn’t interfere but nobody crossed the Queen and lived very long. They had hoped the pirates would be able to destroy their ship and they could safely collect her body. Over the past month, as they’d tailed them at a safe distance waiting on the equipment, they’d grown to have respect for their flying and gunning abilities. They didn’t want to try to take them head on, it might be a difficult battle. They couldn’t attack here, though. If their quarry had gotten safe passage from the Queen they would follow to the next jump. It had taken them a long time to gather the required supplies they needed, the titanium box and the polarity circuits had to be custom built, but they were finally ready.
They had to wait until they were in a lightly populated system before they made their move. In the outer reaches where there was no other traffic, they would notice if a ship came within missile range. They didn’t want to spook them until there was no chance of escape. They followed at a safe distance and watched for a chance to take them out near a jump gate with enough other crafts to mask their approach and no Federation patrols nearby. They could destroy the unusual ship easily with their seeker missiles but it would take time to find her body, encase it in the polymer and get it back to the titanium box.
They’d gotten tired of trying to guess why they needed to take such precautions but Chala had never steered them wrong. All they could figure was she had some kind of data in her head and that was the only way to preserve it or stop it from being transmitted. It wasn’t the type of job they normally did. Chala the Collector either, for that matter. He must be following orders that came down from one of the powerful conglomerates. It didn’t matter. They would do the job they were paid to do, collect their credits and maybe it would lead to bigger opportunities when the powers that be saw they were dependable and competent. It would be nice to only do two or three big jobs a year and quit the petty kidnappings or leg breaking that barely paid the bills.
“Next jump.” Drashad said. “It’s a mining and agro system, it’ll have plenty of automated freighter traffic. I’ll scan for Federation ships but I doubt there will be any, not this far out. If it’s clear, we come in fast and before they know we’re close, we’ll send a few signature seeking missiles up their boosters. They’ll never know what hit ‘em, maybe won’t even have time to send out a mayday.”
“They’re starting their run.” Maddy said as she watched the blip on her screen accelerate.
“Better strap in.” Jessie said as he slowly eased into the portal then shimmered out of sight. When they came out in the strip mining and terraformed agricultural planets in one of the conglomerates systems, he shoved the thrusters to the max and pulled the yoke all the way back. The ship shot straight up to the top of the shimmering jump point and he looped then cut the thrust.
“If they’re following us, they can’t get a reading until they come through.” Maddy said. “We’ll watch their reaction. If they realize we’re behind them and take evasive maneuvers then we know for sure.”
“This’ll be the fifth time.” Jessie said. “I’m already pretty sure they’re pirates and I’m pretty sure they’re following us.”
“Likely.” She agreed. “But this will tell us for sure.”
They started to settle in for the wait. Maddy had noticed the same transponder number coming through a jump point about a half hour after they did three times in a row as they jumped across the galaxy. That wasn’t unusual, eight other ships had done the same. She informed Jessie when they started skirting the central system and it followed.
Moments later the ship shimmered into being and rocketed away. They had entered at full throttle and exited the same way, a dangerous practice, but they were on the chase. Seconds after they come through, they cut their engines and banked hard, circling around to find the ship that was now behind them.
“That’s our answer.” Jessie said and engaged all four of the ion thrusters to max throttle. The once sleek craft, the pride of the Madroleeka, shot forward like a blast and if it hadn’t been equipped with g-force equalizing modules he would have been crushed in his seat. Maddy opened up with the plasma cannons, cut off their escape back through the wormhole and forced them to run or be hit with plasma blasts halfway through their turn. Jessie caught up fast, hailed them on the communicator and was ignored. As Maddy sent sending warning shots past their bow, Jessie engaged the force override system native to the command ship and it smashed through their privacy blocker. The screen opened and they saw two reptilians, one at the controls and the other in the gunner’s seat and swinging their guns around to the rear.
“Why are you following us?” Jessie demanded, his face filling the screen on the other ship. “Who sent you?”
In answer they opened fire, the quad guns sending a barrage of deadly orbs from the plasma cannons and heat seekers shot out of the tubes, locked in and raced towards them.
“Oh shit!” Jessie said and hauled the controls hard to the right, feathered the foot pedals and went into a spiraling dive. The plasma orbs tried to curve and follow but his angle was too sharp and they flew past. The missiles had their own energy source and turned to give chase. Maddy hung upside down in her seat as Jessie rolled away again and she targeted them. Her mind worked faster than the ancient computer on the ship and her eyes darted, calculated then tapped the triggers. She blew the missiles out of the black sky and sent volley after volley into the fleeing ship but they bounced harmlessly away, deflected by the rear shields. The two pilots fought for position, rolling, spiraling and feinting, sometimes closing to within a mile of each other but Prashad was good. One of the best. His long years of experience made up for what he couldn’t match with Jessie’s’ twitch speed reactions and ability to respond instantly. The Madroleeka command ship was taking a beating. Maddy kept the heat seekers off of them but they kept coming, volley after volley while at the same time the big plasma gun hammered away at their shields. The brothers fought well as a team and had never been beat.
“We need to break contact.” Maddy said when Jessie continued to ignore the warning alarms that were getting more urgent with every round that hit them.
“Jump back through the portal, it will give us time to flee.”
“I’m not running.” Jessie said and went into another spiraling dive to avoid a volley of boulder sized plasma rounds.
There was nothing she could do; she was barely able to keep the barrage of heat seekers off of them. If she let up for even a second, they would punch through the shields.
The reptilians had a bigger ship,
more weapons and powerful shield generators but Jessie had speed. He spun away from a volley of plasma balls, rolled hard then shot under the brothers. He came up at an oblique angle in front of them, his wing passing within feet of their front ports, close enough to make the pilot throw his hands over his face, sure they were going to crash. Scarlet spun her guns, tracked her target while hanging sideways going a thousand miles an hour and fired once directly into the plasma cannon at near point-blank range. There was a satisfying series of explosions and debris flew from the ship as they shot off to circle back around. Jessie had flown insanely close to get inside their shield generators.
Jessie and Maddy watched the monitor as it jumped and colors faded in and out. The other ship had been breached and they saw the pilot struggle in the rushing air to patch the holes with sticky sheets of flexible alloy. Various sirens and warning buzzers where loud in the ship and danger lights flashed on the control panel. Smoke poured from the rear of the ship and a deluge of fire suppressant covered the interior. The lizard man unstrapped the gunner, laid him on the floor and worked on him for a moment before giving up. There was a lot of greenish fluid leaking out of him from dozens of deep cuts.
They watched the fuzzy, jumping screen and the joy of his daring victory faded. The man was on his knees, head bowed over his fallen comrade. His ship was in complete disarray with dangling ceiling panels, smoldering wires and warning lights flashing on every instrument.
“Should we offer to help?” Jessie asked. “He’ll die out here if we don’t, won’t he?”
“He is Reptilian.” Maddy said. “He will not accept help. He will kill you if you try.”
“I think he was planning on killing me anyway.”
“He will kill you twice, then. It is a grave insult to offer aide to one you have vanquished in battle.” She said. “We are close to the gate and he is drifting towards it. On the other side there is a little traffic. A trade ship will help him.”
They watched him mourn but before Jessie could switch the monitor off, give him a little privacy with his sorrow, the lizard man stood abruptly and walked to face the shifting images on his screen. He stared directly into Jessie’s eyes and showed his teeth, both rows of pointed fangs exposed. He held his gaze for a moment then shimmered away as the disabled ship was pulled through the jump gate.
“We must avoid him in the future.” Maddy said. “You have been marked.”
“Yeah, no problem.” Jessie agreed. “Dude looked pissed.”
32
The Agro Planet
“Are we there yet?” Jessie asked, his feet up on the console.
“No.” Maddy said “We will arrive in twelve hours thirty-seven minutes.”
Jessie made a Jacobs Ladder with the loop of string he was playing with.
“Are we there yet?” he asked again a few minutes later.
“No.” Maddy said. “We will arrive in twelve hours thirty-one minutes.”
“Are we there yet?” he asked a moment later.
“No.” She said “We will arrive…
“Never mind.” He cut her off, annoyed. “It’s more fun when the other person gets aggravated.”
She turned and smiled at him. “Yes, it is.”
He stopped fiddling with the string and stared at her.
“Oh you tricky devil.” He said and grinned back when he realized she’d turned the joke on him. “You’re getting good.”
He leaned back in the captain’s chair and sighed, bored out of his mind. Space travel sucked, it felt like you were sitting still for days. No wonder nobody ever went anywhere that wasn’t close to a jump gate.
They had been gathering supplies for months from various spaceports and planets as they kept jumping towards the far side of the galaxy, as close as they could get to earth. They sold more 1st Federation coins and acquired the modules, the equipment and tools they needed.
As they shimmered through the last known jump gate they passed a number of huge transport ships lined up and waiting their turn to go through. They were in the HD40307 system, a group of agricultural planets that orbited an orange star that had the perfect combination of sunlight, rich soils, abundant water, humid air and growing seasons for hundreds of different tropical food crops. It was always harvest time on one of the planets and ships from all over the galaxy were there to unload their seeds and repair parts then reload with hundreds of tons of freshly picked fruits and vegetables. Each of the nine planets had their specialties and were run by mega conglomerates that fed much of galaxy.
Maddy radioed to get permission to dock, they wanted to stock up on long term storage foods and this had seemed like the best place for it. The supplies would take up all of the remaining space on the ship, it made sense to pick them up last. They still had a month-long journey beyond the farthest planet to reach their destination, it was going to be cramped. The corporate agricultural worlds didn’t have her on the manifest for dock time. They could contact the head office and request an appointment sometime next month when the rush slowed down. They were busy moving thousands of tons of product on big freighters, they didn’t have time to sell a few hundred pounds.
“We have enough, don’t we?” Jessie asked. “There’s still a lot of that stuff from the Madroleeka.”
“We have adequate supplies.” Maddy said. “We can manage with what we have although I know you find them distasteful.”
A captain from one of the transport ships waiting his turn to dock hailed her on a private channel.
“You can try the culties planet.” He said. “They sell to the public. It’s the last one out in the system.”
She thanked him and pulled up the star chart information she’d gotten from the four-armed man at the bazaar.
“It’s listed as abandoned.” She said.
Jessie checked its orbit on the system map, saw it wasn’t very far out of the way of their final destination and punched in the coordinates.
“It’s worth checking out. I’d rather have more than enough than just barely adequate.” He said “Once we get there, it’s a long way to the nearest grocery store.”
When she contacted them, a bored voice gave her a dock assignment. There was only one other ship in port as Jessie hovered down, found the pad and settled in place.
“Awful small for a transport ship.” The tall, slender man said as they walked over to him. “What are you selling?”
Gravity was less than Jessie was used to and he felt light as a feather. He barely felt the weight of his leathers and blasters. The air was rich and clean and tasted good after weeks of breathing manufactured oxygen.
“We’re not here to trade.” Jessie said. “Just visiting. A vacation of sorts, maybe pick up a few things.”
The man snorted a high-pitched laughter and spun a wrench on his long finger. It looked an awful lot like a standard 9/16th box end from back home.
“Think you came to the wrong place at the wrong time, then.” He said. “Nothing here but robo-agro and Jalamon believers. There’s nothing to see and nothing to do.”
“Jalamon?” Jessie asked.
The man looked at them curiously, he’d never seen anything quite like them before but that wasn’t saying a whole lot. The transport ships had people from every known system crewing them and for every race and species he knew of, there were probably just as many that he didn’t. He wasn’t a galaxy jumper; he’d only been to a few other places. Space travel was expensive and he had everything he needed right here in his home system.
“Yeah, the Jalamon’s,” He said. “Nice enough people, even if they have some funny beliefs. They bought this planet from the Barozzi Corporation when it didn’t produce enough to make it worth their while. They hired me to run their port, they don’t like technology much, you know. Of course, they like the mechanized seeders and harvesters just fine. Like I said, funny folks.”
Jessie smiled. It sounded like Dozer’s people back home, the Hutterites.
The slender man wiped his hands on a ra
g, stepped away from curiously examining their machine, introduced himself as Larmeck.
“What are you looking for, supply wise?” he asked “I can save you some time, tell you who to see. I think I know everything that’s in season and for sale.”
The man gestured to some chairs under a large, shady awning. He seemed to be in a talkative mood and they were in no particular rush so they joined him. He pulled out a long pipe and filled it with dried leaves. As he lit it, Jessie pulled out his poke and rolled a smoke. It was good to relax outside, feel the sun, breathe the fresh air and get out of the ship. He was going to be cooped up in it for a month once they took off again. He’d been hoarding his tobacco, only enjoying one rarely. There wasn’t much left. He’d tried a few of the different plants they smoked on the various planets they’d visited but nothing tasted the same, not even close.
“What is that you’re smoking?” Larmeck asked “I’ve never smelled anything quite like it.”
“Million-year-old tobacco from a zillion miles away.” Jessie said and offered him some. He didn’t begrudge the tobacco. When it was gone, it was gone. He was going back to earth soon anyway.
He hoped.
Larmeck set his pipe aside, pulled out another from a different pocket and took the offered pinch.
“This is incredible.” he said after a few moments. “This is really good. I’ve exchanged smoking plants with many, many traders. I’ve had exotics and common from many, many systems but never anything like this.”
“Just good ol’ Kentucky Burly leaf.” Jessie said. “If I had any seeds, I’d give you some. They’d probably grow fine here.”
“You could do that?” Larmeck asked “This isn’t a protected plant? No one owns it? The agro enforcers would allow this?”
Maddy understood immediately but it took a few minutes of explaining for Jessie to realize that all of the civilized systems had strict controls over their food and seeds. Everything was genetically enhanced and the corporations owned the patents. Seeds harvested from plants were useless, they wouldn’t grow and if anyone was caught illegally growing company owned crops, they would be confiscated. Only the backwards planets outside the authority of the Council grew their own food. Jessie immediately thought of the terminator seeds from the big corporations back home. He’d heard that Monsanto and others used the same technology and marveled again at how similar everything in the universe was. Greedy people doing greedy things.
Zombie Road | Book 8 | Crossroads of Chaos Page 21