“I have their navigational logs,” Tosh said. “Wow, there’s a lot of data. This will take a while.”
“Work on it,” Ripley said. “I’m going down when they open the lock.”
“Me too,” Yegor said, unbuckling to follow her.
“If you wish,” she said. He activated his personal communicator. “Lieutenant Vasiliev, we’re docking with the shuttle, but something is wrong. Please have your men meet us there.”
“As you say,” the commander of his platoon of mercs said. Ripley gave him a look.
“In case it’s a trap.” he said. He spread his arms. “We have millions of credits of F11 here, and those mercs just spent three months drinking, eating, and cheating at poker. Might as well have them do something for that money!”
“Agreed,” she said. They met the mercs at the lock, just as the shuttle was thumping into place. The military men might have been sitting on their asses for months, but they hadn’t gone soft. They were all in combat armor and armed with some impressive-looking lasers and shotguns designed for use in zero gravity.
“I believe we should go in first,” Lieutenant Vasiliev said. Yegor was about to complain when Ripley cut him off.
“You’re the mercs,” she agreed. She gestured to the lock door, leaned in, and tapped the access code. With a screech of old metal, the inner and outer door slowly slid aside, and air flowed into Dante from the shuttle. It was rank with the smell of corruption.
“Head up!” Vasiliev barked and slammed his helmet shut, immediately followed by 20 more helmets clicking.
“Bozhe moi!” Yegor gasped at the gagging stench, and pushed back further from the hatch. Ripley covered her mouth with one hand while retrieving a pair of masks from a nearby hatch with another. She floated one over to him, donning one of the masks and handing him the other. Several other crewmembers had been floating down to see what was happening. Yegor recognized them as friends of those who’d stayed behind.
“Return to your stations,” Ripley barked, the mask muffling her words somewhat. The smell had reached them, and their eyes were wide in fear. “Now, damn it!” They retreated out of view. While that was going on, Vasiliev and a squad of his men made entry, weapons at the ready. The other three squads waited in Dante to repel boarders if necessary, but there were no explosions, or laser blasts, or yells of combat. They waited outside, occasionally seeing flashlight beams moving around the inside of the shuttle, until Vasiliev came back some time later.
He looked disturbed.
“What is it?” Yegor asked, forgetting he wasn’t in charge. The merc looked at him, then to the captain. He seemed at a loss for words. After negotiating with the man, Yegor found that frightening.
“You better come in here,” he said to the captain at last.
“Wait here,” Ripley told Yegor.
“Fuck that,” he said. “I paid for all this, I’m coming.” She looked at the merc, who shrugged.
“Suit yourself.” Together they followed the merc lieutenant inside.
The first thing Yegor saw was debris floating everywhere. Hundreds, no, thousands of rations packets floated empty and shredded. Not just the regular meals they’d left with them, but emergency rations packets from the shuttle’s emergency stores as well. He caught one and examined it. It looked like it had been cleaned in a dishwasher; there was not a trace of food left. The captain had followed the merc, so he pushed through the cloud of debris to catch up.
They passed through the main storage area, where all the months of supplies had been stored. The merc pointed to several dark splashes on the wall. Blood splatter. Gods, Yegor thought, it was pirates. But why’d they eat all the food too? Into the central lounge of the ship the found one of the mercs floating. He was looking at something, a look of disgust on his face. Yegor followed his eyes and saw it. Two people, strapped into lounge chairs. They were very dead.
“What the fuck happened here?” Vasiliev demanded.
“You’re the merc,” Ripley said.
“Look at them,” he demanded. The captain and Yegor floated closer. The two people weren’t just dead, they were nearly mummies. Their skin was stretched as taunt as a drum, lips pulled back from teeth in a rictus of death, eyes dried into black hollows. Both had long hair floating around them. Yegor reached slowly to touch the closest one. The skin cracked at his touch and he recoiled as if he’d been burned, almost sending himself into a spin. “They’ve been dead a long time.” The captain shook her head, not understanding.
“There were six,” she said.
“Look in there,” he said and pointed to one of the cabins. “Hope you didn’t eat this morning.” Yegor floated with Ripley to the cabin where two of the mercs waited, their lights illuminating the interior.
The room was like a child’s mobile from hell. Dozens of bones floated and bounced around the room. Yegor watched an obviously Human femur float right at his face and recoiled in unspeakable horror. The nearest merc grumbled something and swatted it away for him. It collided with a dozen other bones and further disturbed the macabre room.
“Captain,” her radio spoke.
“What is it Tosh, I’m kind of busy.”
“I finished looking at the data from the shuttle.”
“Can’t this wait?”
“No,” he barked, “you don’t understand. I know why there was so much data.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s 97 years of data.” Ripley and Yegor looked at each other in dawning horror. “It’s the fucking black hole—we were too close! We haven’t been there for 3 months; we’ve been down on Volchok for 97 damn years!” In the tomb of the shuttle, the bones continued to bounce.
# # # # #
THE LAST GUARDSMAN by Stephanie Osborn
The small, battered old excuse for a personal craft, its name and identification numbers too damaged to read, approached the gigantic transport Tylatha along a carefully-predetermined path, a trajectory which ensured it was hidden in the sensor shadow of the transport’s own bulk, yet was designed to look to any observer as if it were nothing more than an ordinary rider craft. It was a bit tricky, given the transport was rotating gently in order to simulate gravity; but the transport was so big and its movement so slow that it was not too hard to accommodate. So, as the big transport waited at the end of the queue for the stargate, its captain had no idea it had picked up an unapproved hitchhiker.
Within moments, the lone inhabitant of the small spacecraft had magnetically attached it to the transport, cut his own entrance through the hull, and entered the hulking craft. He already knew where he wanted to go, and he had made certain his entry point was close to his intended destination.
Wy’Lyn of Cochkala found himself in the most secure part of the Tylatha’s hold within seconds. He walked past the reinforced safe-storage room containing the F11, and up to a certain hatch—which looked like an ordinary stateroom door, except for the sophisticated locking mechanism on it. He laid a thin cord of material around its frame, stepped back, and tapped a button on the wrist of his gauntlet. A soft fwump! sounded as the tamped cord of K2 plastic explosive detonated, and the hatch fell inward. On the other side, a Sirra’Kan leaped to her feet from behind the desk, vertical-slitted blue eyes wide in her angular face, tall pointed ears swiveling toward the sound.
But before Bhay’va Jiv’ka of Te’Warri could cry out, the badger-like Wy’Lyn had fired a stun-round at her midsection, and she staggered backward into the bulkhead, unable to control her limbs. Fractions of a second later, he was upon her with bared teeth, his blade drawn; he slashed her throat from jawbone to jawbone, a single, vicious move that cut nearly to her spine. A look of mingled horror, pain, and shock entered the soft blue eyes, and her bloody throat frothed as she attempted to scream. But Wy’Lyn had not only slashed the arteries, he had cut her trachea below the vocal cords, and all that came out was a faint gurgle, as the air bubbled through the spurting blood. Bhay’va collapsed, the life ebbing from her body as it drained fro
m her eyes.
Wy’Lyn did not even wait until she was dead before he began pawing her body, searching through the short fur, grabbing handfuls of the velvety tunic in which she was clad, looking for pockets...and anything that might be in those pockets.
Coming up empty, he rifled the desk, then ransacked the small stateroom, pocketing any valuables he found, but still not locating his real prize. Finally he turned back to the body, lying on the deck in a slowly-congealing pool of its own blood.
“Mmm,” he growled, considering, then roughly palpated her abdomen.
Abruptly he tore open her tunic, then used his knife to slash open Bhay’va’s belly and groin, callously poking about in the layers of flesh...
...Before pulling a small plastic packet containing a data chip from her genital passage.
He tucked it into a pocket, then retreated the way he had come.
Moments later, the tiny, unnamed spacecraft unlatched from the Tylatha, not bothering to seal the hole in the hull, triggering emergency hull breach sirens in the process. Simultaneously, he launched a spread of decoy drones and initiated the ship’s passive EM system, making it a much smaller signal than it otherwise would have been. Wy’Lyn left the stargate queue and proceeded toward the planet, before doubling back and reentering the queue under a false ID. Even as system security craft began to arrive, he took the next stargate transition and disappeared into hyperspace.
It was weeks, interstellar communications being what they were, before the Peacemakers’ Guild even heard about the incident.
* * *
“Yes,” Liiban Aachat of the Peacemakers’ Guild agreed from the satellite bureau in the Cresht region of the Tolo Arm, studying imagery of the crime scene provided by his investigators, “that looks like Wy’Lyn’s work, all right. That’s his signature throat slash.”
“But I thought he was Cochkala,” Viha’an Hi’mat protested.
“He is.”
“A Cochkala! But they do not—!”
“I never said he was ‘normal,’” Liiban pointed out. “He’s about as extreme an outlier, mentally and emo— well, generally psychologically, as I’ve ever seen among the Cochkala. He’s vicious, heartless, and cares nothing for any life other than his own. His drunken rampages are legend on some worlds.”
“Well then. It is past time his rampages were stopped,” Hi’mat averred. “I would have my cousin avenged.”
“She was hardly unimportant to the Cartographers’ Guild, either,” said Qwyllym ak Sykryn, the envoy sent by the Cartographers’ Guild to help handle the matter. “First assistant to the master of the guild is anything but an ordinary position.”
“What I don’t understand,” Liibat said, “is what she was doing there in the first place, and what Wy’Lyn stole. There is every indication he ransacked the room quite thoroughly, but there were few valuables to be taken—just a few trinkets, here and there, personal things belonging to Lady Bhay’va. He left with nothing that can be identified.”
“We care not about that,” Hi’mat observed, his tone heated. “The royal family is appalled at his callous killing and mutilation of the body. Such a thing is unheard-of in our culture, in our religion! Her Majesty is infuriated and has ordered our cousin’s body reconstructed to the best of our surgeons’ ability, to ensure she enters the afterlife as she should. We would wish the murderer’s head upon a platter, were it possible.” Liibat looked askance—and very sternly—at that remark, and Hi’mat replied, defensive, “I said, were it possible, not that we were issuing a contract for same!”
“That is better,” Liibat said, mollified. “But I still do not understa...” He broke off when he caught ak Sykryn’s eye. There is more here than I am aware of, and he knows what, the investigator thought. Time to change the subject, until I can get him alone to discuss it. “Well,” he diverted the conversation, “that is neither here nor there, for purposes of this conversation...though we must certainly know what we are to look for, if the investigation is to be properly pursued.” There, he considered, maybe that will get my point across. “For now, all I require is knowledge of what you wish done.”
“As for the Cartographers’ Guild, we wish the perpetrator brought to justice,” ak Sykryn declared, “and somewhat returned to the Guild, in its aftermath. We will offer whatever reward is needful to see this done.”
“And the House of Te’Warri will add to that reward,” Hi’mat averred.
“Conditions of justice?”
“Alive or dead,” ak Sykryn declared.
“Preferably dead,” Hi’mat added, and ak Sykryn nodded agreement.
Liibat jotted the information down in what he called his “outboard brain,” his personal work slate, then nodded.
“Very well, my friends, I think I can accommodate you,” he decided. “I plan to call in my most skilled bounty hunter and assign him to this case.”
“Oh?” Hi’mat offered the sole, curious syllable.
“Indeed. He is a human from Earth, the latest generation in a long line, a veritable dynasty, of lawmen.” Liibat neglected to add that the same family had also produced a dynasty of criminals, beginning with the next generation after their famous sire.
“Very good, then,” ak Sykryn agreed. “Let the matter be done.”
“Unless you have a contract ready, I will have my executive assistant compose one,” Liibat noted. “You may return at this time tomorrow to sign it.”
“That is acceptable,” Hi’mat agreed.
“Yes, we will be here,” ak Sykryn confirmed. “We thank you.”
“If that is all...?” Liibat half-rose from his desk chair.
“Yes, quite,” Hi’mat said, rising and heading for the office door.
“Actually, sir, the Guild has somewhat more they wish me to discuss with you, on, ah, other matters,” ak Sykryn murmured. “If I might have a few more moments of your time, to discuss them in private...?”
Liibat shot a glance from one being to the other. Hi’mat shrugged.
“Very well,” the Sirra’Kan said. “I will see you both tomorrow.” And he headed out the door, the twitch of his tail the only sign of his annoyance and displeasure at being summarily dismissed.
“All right,” Liibat said, raising what passed for an eyebrow, “tell me what this is really all about.”
* * *
“You’re kidding,” Liibat said, some half-hour later, when explanations were complete.
“No, we are not,” ak Sykryn declared, dead serious. “And yes, it is that important.”
“The data chip is all you care about?”
“No, not all,” ak Sykryn protested. “Jiv’ka was a trusted colleague. And a friend.”
“And the guild master’s lover.”
“Ah, er...”
“Right,” Liibat said, a wry, humorless chuckle crossing his lips. “Very well. I see the problem. It would help to know what the data actually is.” The other merely looked back at him. “But let me handle the matter with my people; if word gets out in the wrong way, the lot of them will grow curious—because we are investigators, after all; we like solving puzzles, for the most part, and the whole thing will go to the underworld in a woven carrier.”
“That...is acceptable,” ak Sykryn decided.
“Anything else?”
“No, that is all.”
“Good. I’ll see you back here tomorrow. Get here about an hour earlier than Hi’mat so you can look over my wording and verify it’s good. That way, we have time to tweak it before Hi’mat gets here, if we need to.”
“Excellent. I shall be here as you say.”
Ak Sykryn rose and exited the investigator’s office.
Liibat waited several minutes to ensure he would not return, then keyed his comm unit.
“Adrub?” he addressed his administrative assistant.
“Yes sir?” came the immediate response.
“Contact the Last Guardsman and call him in.”
“At once, sir.”
&nbs
p; * * *
Robert James Tilghman was indeed the descendant of a dynasty of lawmen; the thirty-two-year-old, duly-deputized bounty hunter of the Peacemakers’ Guild was the grandson, some eight generations removed, of famed Wild West lawman William Matthew “Bill” Tilghman, who, along with Chris Madsden and “Heck” Thomas, had formed the original Three Guardsmen. Many in the Tilghman lineage over the centuries had become law enforcement officers of some note.
Unfortunately, in each generation, there had been, on average, at least one notable lawbreaker as well, beginning with the sons of Bill’s second marriage, apparently influenced by his brother-in-law...though there had long been rumors Bill was less than perfect, himself. The lawmen of the family were not a little ashamed of these details, and consequently it was something for which they strove to atone, Bob Tilghman not least. His older brother Jack had died in the line of duty some seven years before while attempting to bring in their cousin Warren for a relatively minor infraction...shot by the hand of said cousin. Bob had finished the job Jack started; Warren was executed for Jack’s murder two years later. It had solidified Bob’s reputation as an unswerving, incorruptible lawman and bounty hunter, and had earned Liiban Aachat’s respect...as well as a permanent, and rather free-ranging, deputization under the Peacemaker.
This also left Bob as the last of the Tilghman line—hence the designation, “The Last Guardsman”—but he wasn’t worried about that. Amanda Faye Nixen had agreed to marry him when he’d finally proposed several months ago, and the wedding plans were proceeding apace on Earth. He fully intended to make a few last lucrative collars, then retire to Earth to raise a new generation of Tilghmans on what was left of the family ranch, after so many generations of breaking it up among the descendants.
And, based on what Liiban Aachat had told him, a successful conclusion to this case would put his “retire and start a family” fund over the top.
The Good, the Bad, and the Merc: Even More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 8) Page 20