The last statement was probably true, because Captain Mubarak hadn’t spoken a word of any of what Haveram had learned from his unguarded mind, and he had no intention of talking. The inference was that Haveram had killed the man, or ordered it done, to prevent his earning his release by revealing the kidnapping plot and other deals with the Sheiks of Khartoum.
Suddenly, an authoritative accented voice broke in. “Give him the coordinates for the pad near my family compound and palace. Have his ship escorted.” Sayed had obviously been listening in on the conversation.
“It will be done Sheik Sayed.” There was a pause then the controller spoke to Haveram.
“Captain, I just sent the coordinates to your navigation computer, and a cutter is lifting shortly to follow you. Wait until the pilot contacts you with instructions before leaving your present orbit.”
“Will do.” He disconnected.
Haveram turned to his companions, who flickered into view on the Bridge as they deactivated suit stealth. “At least we don’t have to shoot our way in. The Falcon is built for speed, not a slug match.”
“Looks like we’ve been invited to tea.” Sarge said with a grin.
Thad shook his head. “Can’t trust the buggers. They may act polite at first, and then cut your throat.”
Haveram nodded, “That was the impression I got from a crook on New Australia, who had tried twice to get in bed with these people. His first contact team never came back, and another one was sent packing with the front man’s throat cut. That thug thought the Falcon meant I had the same connections as the previous owner of this boat. Keeping the same registry name might have helped us get a foot in the door now.”
“Once Sayed has the kid in hand, he may decide he doesn’t need a new partner. Getting the kid out, and rescuing your butt might take more than a few minutes. You’d have to hold them off.” Sarge noted.
There sounded a harsh tone of dissent, from a voice pitched somewhat higher than the speaker had intended. “This damn kid has a name you know, and he can get himself out of a jam, especially when matched up against these Normal scum buckets.”
The remark came from the baby-faced ringer for a dead boy, who had been hurriedly T-cubed Jumped from Koban to Poldark two days earlier. He’d arrived late on the same day that Delta Dawn and her crew had been captured.
Bill Saber, who constantly tried to get friends and family to stop calling him “Billy,” was a former classmate of Cory Martin, who was Dillon and Noreen’s youngest son. He could probably pass for as young as fifteen if need be, although he was actually eighteen, by only a few weeks. He’d gone on the final K1 raid by sneaking aboard a ship at Koban, avoiding the age eighteen limit Mirikami had set for participants in that fight.
Now, the brash chip-on-his-shoulder youngster felt that he had been adequately blooded after fighting multiple Krall close up and personal. He was slightly built, as was his older brother Fred, and his small features, good looks and blonde hair, had made him a passable stand-in for the dead sixteen year old he would pretend to be. Getting him to act frightened and insecure might take extensive acting lessons.
“Bill…,” Thad barely remembered to knock off the ending, “Being faster, smarter, and stronger, doesn’t fully counter being outnumbered and unarmed on an unfamiliar planet, where many of the people only speak Arabic.”
“Don’t worry, colonel. I’ll play the helpless frightened victim as long as needed. I practiced with the extra sets of hand restraints you brought from Poldark, and I can snap the links between the cuffs easily, and then twist the cuffs to slip them off. I could kick asses even with them on, for that matter. They’re Normals, if that term applies to slavers.”
Haveram offered a caution. “It’s not the problem of getting your hands free; it’s where they may incarcerate you. You can’t as easily get out of a metal walled cell. They may also swap out the restraints. Slavers surely have their own shackles, with perhaps electronic monitoring and shock application if you act belligerent. You’re a piece of meat to them.”
“A valuable piece of meat, until they discover there’s no ransom for me.” The boy certainly knew the limits to his value to the Sheik.
Sarge nodded, “Then it’s a good thing we have some heavier firepower behind that nearby ice giant, if you and the Chief need a distraction in a hurry.” Hiding behind the next planet out, there were four ships with a couple hundred Kobani waiting for a Comtap call if they were needed.
Haveram was alerted by his AI. “Sir, a small warship, cutter class, has just left atmosphere, and is closing with us.”
“Thanks, Bela.” He then spoke to the others.
He used the old formal Hub society mode of address, which most Kobani were no longer using. “Gentle Men and Gracious Ladies you had all better vanish before I’m hailed. I don't want to delay my reply, causing suspicion.”
The ten armored figures, male and female, that had clustered on the Bridge or near its two hatchways, flickered out of sight. Haveram could hear them moving to their places of preselected concealment.
“Bill, you’re supposed to be penned up with the animals, so you’d better go back there and lock yourself in. Tell Kim and Karl where we’re landing and who we’ll be meeting. I could Comtap them, but a direct frill is more personal to them than their new chips. Remind them that they are supposed to be tame big cats, and not to send terror thoughts to any strangers that might be brave enough to touch them. The other animals can smell them but have been calm for the last few hours, so I don't want growls to stir them up. I’d like to keep them all calm for our introduction and sales pitch to the Sheiks. If we get that far.”
“Yes Sir.” He turned to leave, but tossed a comment back over his shoulder. “You do know you won’t get that level of cooperation from the raptor, or that big bull and his cows.”
“I know we can’t control them, but at least I can get the cats to cooperate.”
“Ha. You wish.” A voice that sounded like Sarge’s sounded overhead.
“Nothing can be done to shut up some big dumb animals.” He said to the air. He glanced up at an area of the overhead bulkhead and grinned, where he knew a stealthed Sarge was hiding in “plain sight.” The chuckle from the adjacent ceiling section demonstrated Thad was up there as well, wedged between coolant pipes and air ducts on this old model freighter. All of the Kobani aboard, other than Haveram and Saber were placed where a searcher wouldn’t accidentally bump into an invisible object.
On the general Comtap circuit for the entire complement, he said, “People, at least shut off your damned speakers. I don't want to have to claim it was me that burped or farted when they board us for inspection.”
When the Khartoum cutter called him, he was ordered to fly to the coordinates he’d been provided. The escort then followed him five miles in trail, with missile tracking radar active and locked on for the entire way, providing a feeling of cuddly warmth for this unfriendly place.
Before he started his descent, the cutter pilot asked about his crew.
“I normally travel with a two or three man crew, but for this trip I didn't want to share the money I expect to make, so I came alone except for cargo.”
“After landing, unlock all external hatches for inspection parties to enter. Don’t step outside. That would prove fatal.”
“Understood.” He started his descent.
The Falcon was more a large flat oval shape, compared to the vertical ovoid of a clanship, and had only three decks. The lower deck was equipment, Jump drive, fuel and thrusters, and a power link from the Tachyon Traps to the plasma chamber for the clanship heavy plasma cannon Haveram had installed. The upper deck was Bridge, crew quarters, some masterfully concealed compartments for hiding high value small sized contraband, and the three concealed and disguised laser cannons.
The middle deck had the highest ceiling, and was the main storage area for cargo, passengers if it was cleaned up and configured for them, some additional hidden compartments under deck plates to
hide people or things, and the main ramp at the rear for loading and unloading cargo. On this trip, there were extremely heavily barred pens for the animal cargo, isolated from one another by sight via floor to ceiling partitions, with some sound absorbing capability. Scent couldn’t be masked, despite running the air handlers at maximum. The smell of animal waste was pervasive, and the Jump from nearby Poldark was two and a half days for the Falcon’s T-squared Jump Drive, so it had accumulated more than a bit of odor.
The pens nearly filled the available main hold space, and one locked wire cage in the back had a bunk for Bill Saber and a toilet bucket, or rather, it was for Arkedy Christoph; the boy he was supposed to be. Next to him was a similarly flimsy slightly elevated wire cage for the pair of rippers. Flimsy was a relative term. No Normal human, or even Earth born tigers, could have escaped those cages, but a Kobani and rippers could tear them open with only a bit of effort.
The landing pad where Haveram landed seemed to deserve a grander name than just a pad. He’d landed at Rim World city spaceports that were smaller. The white and beige palace, about five miles away, was impressive and excessively gaudy. There was a four lane divided highway that led directly from the pad to the palace. There were hundreds of tall skinny trees in the grassy highway median, sporting a cluster of broad fronds at the top. These were the only Earth style palm trees Haveram had ever seen outside of a few Hub worlds.
For some reason, he’d expected the area around the palace and landing pad to be in a desert setting, with sand dunes or dry rocky flats all around. Instead, there were miles of beautiful, well-watered green grass on low gently rolling hillocks, with many stands of trees and palms, surrounding multiple large lakes and smaller ponds, which in hindsight resembled oases, but without the parched landscape in between. Haveram saw numerous horses, camels, and goats, and what appeared to be several varieties of pale horned animals that looked like a type of antelope. All of them were freely roaming and grazing, or drinking water. Swans or white geese were in the water, and birds flitted between the trees and palms. Close to the horizon, on a low hill at the end of a winding two-lane road, was a small village. It was very pastoral.
There was a custom designed, white and gleaming space yacht that rivaled the size of the Falcon on the far side of the pad, adjacent to the main road. The Falcon had been ordered to land as far from that luxury craft as possible, and the cutter landed in the center of the pad, with its weapons trained on the Falcon. Just as friendly as ever.
A cluster of heavy trucks and open cab vehicles swooped out of several hangers or warehouses on the pad’s perimeter, carrying dozens of armed men waiting to board him. Haveram flipped the switches to release the half dozen smaller hatch locks, and lowered his main ramp. He walked to the top of the ramp to await his welcome wagon visitors.
A large swarthy man stepped out of a gleaming white painted truck, sporting a side arm on his right hip, and another in a shoulder holster. He wore a tan and beige uniform with red and yellow epaulets, with a red stripe down the outside of each pant leg. He pulled a saucer cap with a black bill from the vehicle and set it carefully over his short curly black hair. There were gold insignia on each collar; one looked like a PU Army captain’s bars, the other some sort of insignia design.
The man, after looking over the ship, looked up the ramp at Haveram. “I’m Captain Abdul Kader, of Sheik Sayed’s personal guard. You are Mike Haveram?”
“Yes, but I go by my nickname of Chief, to my friends.”
There were calls from each side of the Falcon, from men that had moved around the sides of the ship.
“Captain Haveram, two of your hatches do not seem to want to open for my men. Why is that?” It didn’t sound exactly threatening, but it was asked firmly, and he hadn’t called him Chief.
“The two hatches on the center of the left and right sides are manual open hatches, without motors. Just rotate the wheels counterclockwise until they stop, and pull on them hard, they’re unlocked. They’re for emergency use in case the ship was without power, and a crewman was outside.”
Kader called out in Arabic to the men at those two hatches, and nodded at the shouted replies and started walking up the ramp. Haveram extended his hand, which the man seemed about to ignore, but apparently reconsidered and extended his own for a firm handshake. Haveram made certain to keep his grip slightly looser than the one he received, thus avoiding the mistake of acting intimidating towards an underling that reports to the man you want to meet with you.
Haveram also knew not to show the soles of his shoes if he was invited to sit. If at the same table or couch, he should never allow his shoe to touch that of others. It was a sign of disrespect. He would not refuse any food or drink offered, and he would thank and complement his host for his hospitality. He couldn’t ask about a wife or wives, but could ask about health, children, schooling, and hobbies or interests, as part of building trust and a connection.
This establishing of a personal connection was essentially foreplay for learning more about the social structure here, who did what sort of illegal business, where they were, and what did they have to sell or want to buy. Surreptitious Mind Taps would come first, and if nothing seriously criminal was exposed here, they wanted to get a reference to meet with Sheiks that did have such interests. In the meantime, Sheik Sayed had already tipped his hand. He was known to engage in child abduction and selling, and his agents had killed his “cargo” in an attempt to escape.
Money laundering was a low priority crime to the Kobani, although the Poldark Governor was extremely interested to learn which influential people had profited from the criminal trade. It was human trafficking, particularly child exploitation, which Mirikami had told Haveram and friends he wanted ended by the sheiks. The four dead children might actually be considered luckier than those that survived to reach Khartoum’s Destiny.
Captain Kader and his men were seemingly thorough in their inspection, with at least twenty men searching compartments, storage lockers or closets. Some went directly to the concealed floor panels in four areas, where they quickly located the inconspicuous fasteners and raised the panels, weapons drawn. Not content to merely look inside the empty compartments, they dropped down inside and felt around. It was obvious the Falcon’s smuggling secrets were known to Kader’s men, at least its hidden features. None of them climbed up to sweep hands across exposed conduits and ceiling fixtures, where the stealthed Kobani were observing them using their visor presentations.
Kader, chatting with Haveram as they strolled through the ship, watched for signs of nervousness on Haveram’s part, looking where his eyes flicked to see where he glanced as the search progressed. He suddenly paused and pressed a hand to his right ear to block ambient noise as he apparently received a transducer communication from one of his men.
He gave Haveram a hard look. “Captain, I need you to lead me to your main cargo hold. You appear to have brought live cargo with you that you did not declare.”
“I suspect your men didn’t know what the items I listed on my manifest actually were. Aside from the boy, I declared three other items on the manifest by name. Four rhinolo, four blue streaks, a whiteraptor, and a pair of rippers.”
“These are animals?”
“Yes, they are. Very exotic and rare animals, from a planet well outside Human Space, and they are totally unknown to the Planetary Union. The PU would never allow anyone to import these animals until they spent decades studying them on their planet of origin. I think they will be of value to a collector of rare animals. I saw the herds of Oryx, camels, horses, and some other animals I didn’t recognize here. If Sheik Sayed is interested he can make me an offer, or he may know of a collector that would like to see them.”
“Presumptuous of you to think you can come here and sell random merchandise that wasn’t agreed to or described in advance.”
“I didn't presume anything, because I didn’t intend to offer them for sale here. I merely listed them as part of my cargo, as instructed.
They were my original cargo, before my Poldark contacts told me about Arkedy Christoph, who was a bit of opportunistic business on my part, which has to be conducted here. I already have potential clients for the animals at other Rim Worlds, but the opportunity for a business arrangement with the Sheik, concerning the Christoph boy took precedence.
“There was no safer place for me to house the animals than where they already were, on my ship. I never landed the Falcon on Poldark, to avoid a customs inspection there, and I traveled down via shuttle to pick up the boy. If there are no better offers from buyers here for these animals, one of my usual customers will buy them from me.”
They strode through the hatch of the main hold in time to be greeted by an ear-piercing screech of a roar. A small male whiteraptor, still showing his largely teal feathers of youth, was thrusting part of his bloody and narrow toothy mouth through the bars of his enclosure at the man scrambling backwards on the sawdust on the deck, getting away from the beast. He was missing his right hand up to the lower forearm, explaining the blood on the raptor’s mouth and the floor. Another man rushed to help him get back, looking fearfully at the fifteen-foot raptor, one hand on his submachine gun.
The injured man’s own screams had been covered by the noise from the predator, which had made him pay for his carelessness at thinking a feathered animal was safe to approach. The screened off large pen, which contained the four rhinolo, was producing its own noises of deep heavy grunts from the massive bull, and lesser bleats of fear from the two cows and a weaned male calf. They were not the normal prey of whiteraptors since the winter predator only visited snow covered rhinolo territory after those herds had migrated far to the south. Nevertheless, the unfamiliar sounds and smell of the now stirred up raptor clearly sounded threatening. The four blue streak antelopes were backed into a corner of their pen, their long curved black horns lowered towards the source of the raptor’s screams and the open part of their partitions around their pen.
Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire Page 38