Gaz and Victor came upon a T-section where the bodies of five pirates floated in a cloud of blood. Victor had to wipe his visor when a globule struck it, leaving a red smear.
Turning the corner, Victor saw the pirate he had killed floating in front of him, his chest a pin cushion of flechettes.
Gaz signaled Toren to reach their position. When the short heavy-worlder arrived, Gaz said, “Toren, you cover the right corridor and waste any fucker who comes through. Me and the new guy will clear the left.”
“You got it, Gaz.”
Gaz looked to Victor. “You got point, new guy.”
Victor nodded. He wasn’t pleased to be the point man but neither would he argue about it. He took a calming breath and moved up the corridor, handhold to handhold, keeping his big revolver pointed in front of him.
He checked around the corner and saw no one. Sending the clear signal, he covered Gaz while he moved up ahead. Gaz then signaled Victor to move up.
After looking around another corner, Victor saw a closed hatch. “I’ve got a closed hatch here.”
“Comin’ up,” Gaz said. When he arrived, he handed Victor a cone-shaped breaching charge. “Put that on the latch. I’ll cover you.”
Victor floated up the hatch, pulled the adhesive strip off the bottom of the charge, and placed it where Gaz told him to.
He then kicked himself off the hatch as hard as he could and made his way around the corner behind Gaz.
“Fire in the hole!” Gaz said, pressing the detonator.
A deafening bang erupted from around the corridor, and then Gaz grabbed Victor, said, “In ya go!” and threw him toward the open hatch.
Victor flew through the broken hatch into what looked like a galley. It was full of smoke and floating debris from the blast, along with three dazed pirates. They were all armed.
Victor aimed his revolver at one of them and fired two shots, both going wide. The light recoil of the gun put him in a slow spin.
Luckily for Victor, the pirates didn’t return fire until he reached the hatch on the opposite side and pulled himself into cover. Bullets tore into the bulkhead he hid behind.
As they did, Gaz appeared and fired a full-auto burst from his pistol, bracing himself with his free hand.
The gunfire coming Victor's way stopped, and he pulled himself around the corner and emptied his revolver, not so much aiming as simply throwing fast-moving metal in the direction of the pirates.
When his gun clicked on an empty chamber, all three pirates were floating lifelessly in the galley. Victor was pretty sure he didn’t hit any of them. Gaz floated over to him, replacing the magazine of his machine pistol.
“You make a good decoy, new guy.”
Victor sneered at the pit fighter. “Fuck you, Gaz.”
Gaz gave Victor a spike-toothed smile. “Hey, you lived! And we still have the rest of this tub to clear.” He opened the hatch behind Victor and called on the radio. “T, the way is clear.”
Toren arrived with his assault rifle. “We done yet?”
“Not yet. We still got the bridge to deal with up ahead. That’s where they’ll make their last stand. New guy—”
“Take point, got it,” Victor said. He ejected his revolver’s spent cylinder, letting it float away as he put in a fresh one.
Gaz nodded. “Get to it.”
Victor moved through the galley, careful not to blunder into any more blood. He didn’t look forward to cleaning what he already had smeared over his suit. Boarding a hostile ship was a dirty business. He reached the hatch to the bridge and found it locked.
Gaz and Toren floated up behind him and placed their breaching charges over the latch and hinges of the hatch. Backing away, they detonated the charges and blew the hatch in. Victor didn’t wait to be thrown in, like last time; he went in the instant after the charges blew.
He flew through the smoke, blind at first. But when he reached a console, he pulled himself behind it and used it for cover. Peeking over, his revolver trained forward, he saw five pirates, none of them in armor, holding their hands up, their discarded weapons floating from reach.
“Gaz, they’re surrendering,” Victor said.
“They are? Well, ain’t that nice.” Gaz floated onto the bridge, followed by Toren. “You know what to do.”
“I do?” asked Victor, then Gaz and Toren leveled their weapons at the pirates and opened fire.
Victor flinched from the bursts of fire. All five pirates spasmed as bullets tore through their bodies. When the firing stopped, the pirates drifted, surrounded by globules of their own blood.
It took a moment for Victor to process what just happened. He sneered at Gaz. “They surrendered!”
“So? The bounty on dead pirates is the same for live ones. And dead ones don’t suck air,” Gaz said.
“But…”
“But nothin’. These fuckers killed one of my crew, and the captain’s orders are no survivors. We’re not cops. We’re exterminators,” Gaz said. He pointed toward the aft hatch. “Now cover that hatch with T. I’m gonna let the captain know we’re on the bridge.”
Minutes later, Cormac, the Fortune’s engineer, floated in. Moving with ease through the zero gravity, his pressure suit’s bubbled helmet and his long spidery limbs made him look like an insect.
He got to work hacking the pirate vessel’s controls, attaching a wire from his large tablet to a port of what Victor assumed to be the main computer.
For several minutes, the starchild’s narrow head twitched this way and that as he tapped on the screen of his datapad. Then he said, “Captain, I have control of the ship, including the internal security system. At least four pirates are still alive in the stern pressure hull.”
“Are they in suits?” asked Captain Hyde.
“No, Captain.”
“Space ’em.”
Cormac tapped once on his tablet. “Done.”
An alarm chimed in Victor’s helmet as the pressure dropped. Within minutes, the blood floating around the bridge boiled, and the interior of the ship became a hard vacuum.
“All right,” Gaz said. “Cleanup duty.” He pointed at Victor. “That means you, new guy. I’ll take care of Dom.”
***
Victor spent the rest of the day collecting the bodies of dead pirates and throwing them out the airlock. The pirates who had died from vacuum exposure looked relatively peaceful compared to the ones who had died from gunshot wounds.
After hours of pushing the deceased into space, the Fortune and her prize were surrounded by a small satellite system of dead bodies.
With the bodies gone, the pirate vessel was repressurized. Victor lifted up the visor of his pressure suit and breathed in the stale air of the ship’s atmosphere processors.
While Cormac and members of the engineering crew worked on the pirate vessel, Victor returned to the Fortune to rest, where he found Gaz clearing out Dom’s pod.
The tattooed man looked up at Victor. “Here, catch.” He threw a gun toward Victor. It was Dom’s, an automatic carbine of some kind. “Oughta be more useful for you than that pump-shotty you tried to use back there.”
Victor examined the carbine before depositing it and his dubiously useful shotgun in his sleeping pod. “What’re we sending back to her next of kin?”
“Next of kin? You’re shitting me, right?” Gaz laughed, exposing his sharpened teeth. “There ain’t no next of kin with our kind, new guy. Excuse me, I mean Victor. You’re broken in.”
“Broken in?”
“You survived. Sucks Dom died. Means we need to get another new guy, but at least you got bloodied and showed you’re not completely useless. Though you’re gonna have to lose some of that queasiness you have about shootin’ down pirates. I don’t know where you came from, but that ain’t gonna fly on this boat.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Victor said.
Gaz pulled out a flask and took a draw from it before handing it to Victor. He accepted it and took a sip of it, almost gagging from
the taste.
“Good shit, huh?”
“Some kind of shit, that’s for sure,” Victor said, returning the flask and its wretched contents to Gaz.
Gaz chuckled. “It’s a ’quired taste. You should get some rest, Cap’s gonna undock us from the pirate ship and take us to examine the freighter. We’re gonna see if there’re any survivors. More important, we’re gonna tag it for salvage.” His smile broadened, showing that row of spiky white teeth of his. “We’re all gonna get a share of the prize. That includes you.”
“It’ll be nice to have some walking-around money,” Victor said.
Gaz chuckled again. “I ain’t gonna use that money for walking after we touch back down on Mustang.”
The Fortune undocked from the captured pirate vessel, leaving Cormac and his salvage team to do repairs.
Hours later Victor was back in his suit, waiting in the airlock with his new carbine while Captain Hyde docked with the freighter.
It was a midsize starfreighter, about a kilometer long. Far larger than the Fortune but with a small pressure hull. It didn’t take long for Victor and the boarding specialists to clear the ship’s interior.
There they found the bodies of the freighter’s twelve crew, all shot to death in the freighter’s galley.
Chapter 8
The commercial convoy from Mustang arrived a day later. It comprised six megafreighters carrying two weeks of the total output of the Mustang system to the Tabor system, another major center for trade in the Free Worlds.
The convoy had a heavy escort: a dozen destroyers, four cruisers, and a multimegaton battleship.
When the battleship was identified as the Gryphon, everyone on the bridge collectively gasped in surprise. Everyone except Victor. He didn’t understand the significance of the ship’s name.
“That’s Holace Quill’s personal starship!” Captain Hyde said to Fowler in disbelief.
“Why do you think he’d be escorting the convoy?” Fowler asked.
“No idea. It may be why we were hired to clear this system. Speaking of which, time to send the all-clear signal.” Warwick composed a quick audio message and sent it to the convoy. With the Fortune and her two prizes loitering a million kilometers from the jump point, it would only take just over three seconds for the message to make its journey.
Ten seconds later, the Fortune received a reply from Holace Quill himself.
“That’s good to hear, Captain Hyde,” said Mustang’s wealthiest and most powerful citizen. He had a lined face and dark hair graying at the temple. “It would please me to have your ship dock with mine. I would like to discuss business with you and your crew personally.”
Warwick let out a long whistle. “Well, this was unexpected.”
Fowler nodded. “My guess is that he has another job for us, Captain.”
“He may. He may also want to buy the goods off the freighter we picked up,” Captain Hyde said.
Victor remained quiet, recalling what he knew of Holace Quill. His family controlled Mustang’s starship-building industry. And since interstellar trade was the basis of the planet’s economy, that had made them exceedingly rich.
The top ten wealthiest people in Mustang sat on the Council of Ten, which ruled the system. Holace Quill, being the wealthiest of the ten, was also their de facto leader. Which made him the ruler of Mustang, by extension.
Captain Hyde ordered the Fortune to set an intercept course for the Gryphon. It took ninety minutes for the ship to reach the battleship and request permission to dock.
The Gryphon was two thousand meters long, easily large enough to house the Fortune in its cavernous hangar. It made for an easy docking procedure. The ship just had to fly inside, lower her landing struts, and then set down on the deck.
A docking tube attached to the Fortune’s forward airlock almost as soon as the ship’s engines powered down. Most of the crew, including Victor, disembarked. Only Cormac and a skeleton crew remained aboard.
The first thing that struck Victor about the Gryphon was the subtle scent of vanilla wafting through the air. A stark change from the oily, sweaty smell of the Fortune.
Even the Spear of Lacano, the Lysandran emperor’s personal flagship, only had the industrial scents of an immaculately clean warship. And its interior was far less lavish and colder.
A thick red carpet decorated with golden embroidered horses covered the deck of the main corridor. Gilding covered the bulkheads, and the chandeliers hanging from above cast warm light. Every set of double doors they passed through had matching black marble reliefs of rearing horses. The Gryphon’s interior was more like that of a luxury starliner than a battleship.
Victor's breath caught in his throat when they reached the large dining room. It was somehow even more lavish than the main corridor. A long covered table occupied the center of the room, with food, cups, and cutlery already set out. The tableware looked like it was made from real silver. Paintings adorned the walls, and another deep red carpet—of the same pattern as the one in the corridor—lay on the floor here, and many pillars of polished gray stone were about.
Apparently Holace Quill liked to show off just how rich he was.
After being told the food and drinks were free, the mercenaries sat down and ate.
Victor sat between Toren and Gaz as they tore their way through the cultured meat and fresh vegetables.
Gaz, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a messy eater with his sharpened teeth, which he used to rip chunks of meat off his knife before chewing loudly and swallowing, grease running down his chin as he did.
Toren wasn’t exactly delicate with his food either. But at least everything that went in his mouth stayed there.
Victor sighed and ate his own food. There were worse things in life than eating free food with messy tablemates.
He picked up a fork—the heft confirming it was, indeed, made of silver—and ate an unfamiliar cubed-meat dish.
It was good, really good. Tender and savory. Victor had forgotten what good food tasted like. He hadn’t had a meal this good since…before Savannah was destroyed.
Victor’s chewing slowed, but his appetite didn’t disappear. Not completely at least.
All the eating stopped when Holace Quill walked in through the ornate double doors of the dining room. Even Gaz took a moment to wipe his face.
Quill wore an expensive but not elaborate suit of dark gray fabric, cut perfectly for his small, lean frame. He looked every inch the patrician.
He stopped in front of Captain Hyde, who stood to shake the man’s hand.
“Welcome aboard the Gryphon, Captain Hyde. I assume you and your crew are enjoying my hospitality?”
Warwick smiled. “Why, yes, sir. We are.”
“Good.” Quill gave Warwick a warm smile, though Victor couldn’t help but notice how cold the man’s eyes were, with no affection in them. “In that case, I’d like to get down to business.”
“Of course, sir,” Warwick said.
Quill nodded, his warm smile and cold eyes unchanged. “First, on top of your payment, I would like to purchase the freighter you liberated, along with its cargo. Say, a million credits for the prize. That ought to cover your expenses for a while.”
Warwick nodded. “That it would, sir.”
“Good. You can sign the required paperwork before you leave my ship.” The way Quill said it made it sound more like a polite command than a request.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Quill continued. “I noticed you captured a pirate vessel.”
Warwick smiled. “We did, sir. Did you also want to buy it?”
Quill shook his head. “Oh, no. I had something else in mind. Have you ever heard of a Trojan horse?”
Warwick looked confused. “No.”
“It’s a legend from the early First Civilization,” Victor said, “long before they ventured into space. Long before they had any technology really.”
Warwick shot him a hard look, annoyed at the interruption, but Quill looked impressed. Th
at earned Victor another irritated stare from Warwick.
“Continue, please,” Quill said to Victor.
He nodded. “After a decade-long siege of the city of Troy, the Greeks built a giant wooden horse and hid soldiers inside. The Trojans thought it was a gift from the gods and brought it inside the city gates. That night, a small group of Greek soldiers snuck from the horse and opened the gates of Troy for their army. The Greeks razed Troy to the ground and won the war.”
Quill smiled. “I can appreciate a man who knows First Civilization mythology. What is your name?”
“Victor, sir.”
“And what’s your job on Captain Hyde’s vessel?”
“I’m part of the boarding party, sir,” Victor said.
Quill’s eyebrows shot up. “Boarding party? That’s even more surprising. You don’t often find educated men in such…hazardous jobs. Captain Hyde, where did you get this man?”
Warwick fidgeted in his seat a bit before answering. “I recruited him in a bar back on Mustang. He was looking for mercenary work.”
“Ah, interesting.” Quill nodded to Victor and then returned his attention to Warwick. “As you may have guessed, I think the pirate vessel you captured could be put to a similar role as the legendary Trojan horse.”
Warwick cocked his head to one side. “How?”
“There’s a pirate base two jumps from here. Built into a crater on a dwarf planet orbiting a red star. It’s possible the pirate vessel you captured came from there,” Quill said. “I want to offer you the job to infiltrate and destroy the base.”
“Infiltrate and destroy? With respect, sir, why not send your fleet in to destroy the base?” asked Warwick.
“Because the system that base is located in is claimed by the Kingdom of Mohawk. If I sent a fleet there, it would start a war which I do not wish to wage. However, an accidental munition explosion or sabotage by a rival group of pirates? That would get rid of that base just the same, without having to worry about King Marsh declaring war against Mustang.”
“How much would we be paid for this?” asked Warwick.
“Five million credits.”
Warwick’s eyes lit up with greed. “Done.”
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