by Rick Partlow
I shuddered as a breath went out of me, nearly lost my footing. I hadn’t killed anyone in four years, and I had been hoping it would be a long time before I had to do it again.
“Cal,” I heard Rachel call, turned and saw her climbing out of the wreck of the groundcar, running toward me. A trickle of blood ran from her nose, but she seemed otherwise uninjured from the crash as I took her in my arms, pressing her to me in relief. “Oh God, Cal, I was so worried...”
“How did you know?” I asked her, confused.
“They called,” she told me, wiping absently at the blood on her lip. “They tried to call you, but that...thing was jamming you.”
“Who?” I shook my head. “Who called you?”
“Kara McIntire,” Rachel told me and I suddenly had a gone feeling in my gut. “She says she’s insystem and on her way to the spaceport, with an old friend.”
“What old friend?” I asked numbly.
“She didn’t say,” Rachel told me, shaking her head. “She just told me to warn you that she had heard an assassin had been sent after you and that she would meet us at the farm as soon as she could.”
“We’d better get back there,” I said, already starting to feel paranoid and vulnerable standing out in the open. “Is the car drivable?”
“I’m not sure” she said, staring back at it, “but I put in a call to Jason on the way, he should...”
I heard the sound of the hopper first, naturally...with the amount of money and time Commonwealth Intelligence sank into me during the war, there was precious little on my body that wasn’t augmented. My head snapped around and Rachel broke off in mid-sentence to stare at the black dot on the horizon as it grew into the shape of a small, ducted-fan hovercraft heading our way.
I pushed Rachel behind me, worried it could be allies of the dead assassin trying to finish the job, but then it approached closer and I could see the Canaan Constabulary markings on its side and I began to relax. But as we waited for it to land, I again started wondering what Kara would be doing here. I hadn’t seen her in years, not since the business with the Corporate Council; and to be honest, I had been glad not to have her around. Kara and I had become involved sexually while we fought the Council and I still carried quite a bit of guilt around with me for cheating on Rachel. Now she was back, and while I was worried what my feelings for her might be, I was also worried about the why of it. If she was back, it meant that General Murdock was finally calling in that favor I owed him...
A high-pitched whine filled the air and a cloud of dust and debris surrounded us as the hopper came to a gentle landing less than thirty meters away and the side doors swung up. Out of the pilot’s seat emerged Jason Chen, whose tall, lanky frame marked him as an Offworlder. He had been my best friend since his family had moved to Canaan back before the war and had been my second in command since I had taken the job as planetary Constable upon our return home.
“Are you okay, Cal?” He asked worriedly as he walked up to us, pulse pistol hanging loosely in his left hand.
“Yeah, we’re good...the Titan over there isn’t doing so hot, though.” I nodded toward the beheaded assassin.
“Whoever hired him obviously did not brief him well,” said the other occupant of the hopper as he squeezed out of the passenger door. “Otherwise he would not have attacked alone.”
Trint walked up to Rachel and gently tilted her head back to look at her bloody nose. Twenty years ago, the sight of a Tahni warrior that close to Rachel would have sent me into a killing rage. Five years ago, the knowledge that the warrior was not just a Tahni—there were more and more of them in Commonwealth space since the end of the war—but one of the very few artificially-engineered Imperial Guard cyborgs that had survived the end of the war would have spurred me into a relentless attack.
But Trint and I had saved each other’s lives during the fight with the Corporate Council; and more importantly, the cyborg had saved Rachel’s life. After it was over, I promised General Murdock that I would be available to help him out if needed, in exchange for being allowed to take the cyborg home with us. After four years, I still found Trint a bit hard to fathom, but I had come to trust the Tahni as I did my own family.
“No serious damage,” Trint concluded after examining Rachel’s eyes. “No sign of concussion.”
“We’ve got to get to the spaceport,” I announced. “Rachel says that Kara McIntire is inbound there.”
“Already took care of it,” Jase assured me. “I sent Pete over there to pick her up in the other hopper. They’ll meet us at your place.”
“Good. Trint,” I turned to the cyborg, “do me a favor and see if you can get the groundcar patched up enough to drive it back to the house. Once we’re clear of whatever jammer the Titan has on him, we’ll call the office and send a recovery team out to take care of the body. If you wouldn’t mind, stay here till they get here to make sure no one screws with him.”
“It is not a problem, Cal,” he said. It had taken three months to get him to stop calling me “Captain Mitchell.”
“Then let’s get going.”
As we rode the hopper back to our house, Rachel leaning tiredly against me, I thought about the last time I had seen Kara McIntire. She had come to me in a downtown chopshop—black market bionics lab—in a building that had long since been torn down in a section of Harristown that no longer existed, brought to me by a cyborg bionics tech named Cutter because she had no one left to turn to for help.
She was a Department of Security and Intelligence operative posing as a Corporate mineral scout and she had stumbled upon a treasure trove of Predecessor technology; as a reward, her Corporate Council bosses had attempted to have her assassinated to conceal the find. Even her superior in the DSI was in on the Corporate plot to use the Predecessor tech to take over the Commonwealth government, so she had no one to run to but her old friend Cutter, and he knew nowhere to turn for help but to me.
The Corporate Council came after her, and my family was caught in the middle. Rachel was taken and I thought she was dead; by the time I learned different, Kara and I had fallen into an intense, stress-induced relationship. Eventually, we beat the Corporates and freed Rachel and I never told her about Kara and me...I didn’t see the point. I was sure I would never see Kara again.
I should have learned not to be that sure of anything.
We reached the house first, circling in a broad spiral to make sure the area was clear. Beyond the clear cut area around it, the broad, crimson leaves of the local foliage shone brightly, taking in the sun while they could. Canaan had a rotational period of 124 Earth-days, which meant that in the 62-day long Night, the temperature differential led to hurricane force winds and huge storms. That hadn’t been the case for a space of ten years right after the War with the Tahni, during the time the Corporate Council mining division was digging iridium out of the mountains. They’d put reflectors in orbit to obviate the Night, nearly killing off the local flora and fauna.
But when I’d been given free rein by General Murdock to rid our world of Council control, I’d destroyed the reflectors with proton cannons. The mines were still there, but only recently had they started to produce again---there had been a significant readjustment period after the death of Corporate Council Chairman Andre Damiani and the removal of their exemptions from anti-monopoly laws. The Commonwealth President who’d taken office after Greg Jameson lost the election wasn’t favorably disposed to allow the Council’s continued existence and they’d been forced to break into component corporations.
I wasn’t sure if that was going to reform the way they did business, but at least they’d be forced to look over their shoulders a bit more. I certainly thought they knew better than to fuck with me again…but someone had paid that Titan to come after me.
Finally we came in low over the house---it had been rebuilt after the Corporate Security Force had destroyed it four years ago and now it looked more fortified, both against humans and the weather. I felt a lurch in my stomach as I saw it, a
feeling of shifting reality like it was the last time I would ever see it, and I grabbed Rachel’s hand and squeezed it for reassurance.
I could see a Constabulary hopper on the ground already and three of our cops patrolling around the perimeter, which made me feel better about the possibility of more assassins waiting for us on the ground. Still, I was pretty keyed up and paranoid by the time the hopper touched down, and when the door opened, I made sure I had the pulse pistol I’d borrowed from Pete close to hand.
The front door opened to the touch of my palm and Rachel and I went inside while Jason went to coordinate with the patrols outside. The house should have been familiar, homey…the holos of my family and Rachel’s, the hand-made furniture…but instead it looked suddenly alien to me. I sank onto the couch and Rachel sat next to me, leaning against my shoulder.
“I thought all this was over with, Cal,” she murmured.
“So did I, honey,” I shook my head. “Let’s wait and hear what Captain McIntire has to say.”
“Last time she showed up here,” Rachel pointed out, “our house was blown up with me in it.” She unconsciously rubbed at her right arm: it had been severed in the explosion and she’d had a new one grown and implanted. “You wound up on the run from the law, I was held hostage by that Corporate Council guy Damiani and we all nearly died.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” I cracked, “maybe I should shoot her before she gets in the house.”
“Give me the damned gun,” Rachel said dully. I winced. As if this wasn’t going to be awkward enough…
I was about to attempt to say something placating when I heard the hopper coming in. Pete, I transmitted via my neurolink, is that you? My headcomp translated the thoughts into a synthesized version of my voice before sending them on to my younger brother.
It’s us, came Pete’s reply, converted in the opposite direction. We’ll be touching down in a minute.
“Pete’s here,” I told Rachel, rising from the couch.
She was silent as we went out to meet them. My little brother Pete was first out of the aircraft, a bit taller and thinner than me, his hair longer and shaggier, but otherwise the family resemblance was strong. It always felt strange to me to see him in his Constabulary uniform; in my mind, he was still a kid, I guess, even though he was over thirty now. Still hadn’t settled down though…
After him was a tall, athletic woman with spiky brown hair and striking green eyes; she wore no uniform though I knew she could have. She was officially a major in General Murdock’s Department of Security and Intelligence, now under the umbrella of the Commonwealth Space Fleet---which was why she’d been able to get the heavy pulse pistol hanging from a gunbelt at her waist through customs at the spaceport---but instead of Fleet blues, she wore a black leather jacket and loose, grey utility pants.
“Hi Kara,” I nodded, trying to act less awkward than I felt.
“Cal,” she smiled grimly, “Mrs. Mitchell.”
“Major McIntire,” Rachel nodded politely.
Then the final passenger of the hopper stepped out and I blinked in surprise. Tall and slim, with swept-back brown hair and a face that could have been custom sculpted but wasn’t, he was dressed in a green jacket inlaid with ever-changing holographic symbols that I assumed was the latest fashion somewhere. His mouth was set in a wry grin.
“Howdy farmboy,” he said taking my hand in a firm grip. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Deke,” I shook my head, still in shock. “It’s good to see you but…I can’t imagine it’s good news that you’re here.”
Deke Conner had been my partner in the Glory Boys commando unit during the war and I had gone to him for help during the situation five years ago with the Corporate Council. The last time I had seen him, he was heading back to Earth to try to set things right with his estranged parents; I hadn’t heard anything else since.
“I think we can all agree that the news is not good, Cal,” he said soberly. “General Murdock is missing,” Kara said, “and someone’s trying to kill us.”
“’Us’ being?” Pete asked.
“All of us,” she said, “who were involved in the whole business with the Corporate Council four years ago. Pete told me you got the one the hitter they sent after you, but that just ups the stakes. Once they find out he failed, they’ll come in heavy.”
“Who’s ‘they?’” I wanted to know. “Who exactly is doing this?”
Deke and Kara looked at each other, Deke scowling. “We still don’t know for sure,” he admitted. “And frankly, that scares the shit out of me.”
“We can tell you one thing for sure, though,” Kara said grimly. “You need to get out of here as soon as possible, Cal…you and your whole family. You can’t stay on Canaan or you’re all dead.”
Chapter Two
“So,” I prompted, “what happened?”
Deke took a gulp of the vodka I’d poured for him and sat back tiredly on my couch. “Well, Kara here…recruited me, I guess the word is, to help her investigate something in the Pirate Worlds…”
“Let me start it,” Kara interrupted. “It begins before that, before you got involved.”
“Aye, aye, boss lady,” Deke muttered. He clearly wasn’t happy.
“I started working for General Murdock about three years ago,” she said. “I tried doing some actual mineral scouting for a while, but to be honest, it got boring. And damned if he didn’t seem to know exactly when I got bored and chose right then to approach me and ask me again if I wanted to come be his chief field agent.
“So, about a year ago, General Murdock began to get reports from some of his sources about some of the local warlords in the Pirate Worlds attacking each other using weapons no one has seen before, weapons that cut right through defense shields. Weapons that sounded suspiciously like the Predecessor tech the Corporate Council found five years ago.”
“General Murdock rounded all that up, didn’t he?” I asked quickly, hoping my assumption was correct. Much as I might dislike the Bulldog’s methods, he was nothing if not thorough.
“All that we knew about,” Kara said with a nod. “And believe me, they started looking for them before I got there and we are still checking under every rock just to be sure. But someone has them. I tracked down some old contacts from my days pretending to be a mineral scout, and asked them who would know about that sort of weaponry being shopped in the Pirate Worlds.”
“Unfortunately,” Deke grumbled, “the name they gave her was mine.”
“Which brings us back to your part of the story,” Kara said.
“Well, after our charming Captain McIntire made her convincing pitch to me,” Deke said drily, “we boarded my ship and headed for Peboan…”
Deke went on speaking, but he also shot me a significant glance and communicated with me via neurolink: You and I can skip the hot air, he thought at me, and do this more directly.
And then, before I could ask what he meant, he dumped a whole section of his memory into my headcomp and on into my brain…
* * *
Conner:
Deke stepped down the Dutchman’s ramp into the swirling chaos of a winter snowstorm. Peboan was a cold world, most of it nearly uninhabitable, and even Shakak---the capital city---was gripped by subzero temperatures for nearly half the year. Even with the glaring floodlights that shown from poles around the perimeter, the city’s bare-bones spaceport was nearly invisible this night between the blinding snow and the steam coming off the still-hot bulk of the Dutchman.
Over the howl of the wind, he could hear the metal of the hull pinging and creaking as it cooled. But beyond those sounds, he could hear the light, graceful steps behind him as Kara followed him down the ramp and stopped beside him. He winced. The flight here had been…well, tense would have been an understatement. He still wasn’t happy about being forced into this whole thing and she had been decidedly unapologetic.
“Are there cars for hire,” she asked, fastening her flight jacket, “or do we h
ave to walk in this shit?”
“There are cars,” Deke allowed, “but the drivers all report to the Sung Cartel enforcers that run this city. They already know we landed; if we take a hired car, they’ll know exactly where we’re going.”
“Damn,” she muttered, pulling up her collar. “Let’s go, then.”
He ordered the ship’s hatched closed using his neurolink and led her off toward the spaceport’s exit, grinning. He had, perhaps, exaggerated the possibility of the hack drivers reporting them; but if it made her more miserable, it was worth the walk in the cold.
There was a customs booth at the exit to the spaceport: there had to be. In a Commonwealth spaceport, you could handle everything via computer and automated payments. In the Pirate Worlds, there were no outside bank accounts to draw upon, no legitimate ship registrations to track. Everything was face to face.
Deke led Kara inside, hearing her sigh with relief as they stepped out of the bone-chilling cold and walked up to a ratty desk with a ratty little man behind it. He was pale, having spent far too much time away from the warmth of the sun, and had not bothered to adjust his appearance cosmetically. His face was pinched and unpleasant, his hair was thick and unruly and he gave off an air of a man who loathed his job and was going to make you pay for it.
“You’re the light freighter in Bay Six?” he demanded and Deke nodded in answer. “Three hundred for port charges, six hundred for customs fees. Payable now.”
Deke turned to Kara and smiled. “Well, pay the man, boss.”
She cocked an eyebrow dubiously, but reached into a pouch on her gunbelt and pulled out a credit spike, placing it in the socket on the ratty man’s desk. The customs agent smirked, then pulled the spike out and handed it back to her.
“What’s your business here?” he asked.
“Searching for cargoes,” Kara told him curtly. Deke could tell she wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible.
“We offer a service to connect available cargoes to ships,” the agent said, a greedy twinkle to his eye, “for only two percent of the shipping fee.”