“Nice landing,” Captain Valance commented as he made for the bridge doorway.
“I aim to please.”
“Oh, and when you go out to supervise hull inspection bring a deck chair,” The Captain said before closing the hatch behind him.
St. Kitts Port
The main gangway lowered. One of the arms at the end jammed for a few seconds then dropped several centimetres with a sudden gaseous release and a loud clink. The other was working perfectly, lowering its end as smoothly and quietly as it could with the impedance of its counterpart on the other side.
“I guess I'll add that to the list,” Finn said, shaking his head. He followed Frost and the Captain down the ramp.
“We'll never be taken seriously in port with these things,” Frost commented as he re-holstered the slim, elegantly styled silver pulse pistol. He looked up to the Captain, who was in his black form fitted vacuum suit, sealed up to the neck, and thick, long black trench coat. It was loaded with engineering tools and many other useful objects. No one had an accurate inventory of what he kept in that thing but the armoured coat itself was worth more than everything Frost had on him. It could stop most small arms fire, expand into a survival pod with life support and that was only what he had seen the Captain use it for over the last three years. What the white silk scarf he always wore with it was for he didn't know and would never ask.
He looked him up and down again. “Well, maybe they'll take you seriously.”
If Captain Valance heard his comment, he didn't show it. The yellow tinted sunshine, heat and humidity hit them all at once. The tree line was just below their landing platform and the air was thick with the aroma of life. They were close enough to hear the chirps of birds and calls of the small primates that leapt and ran through the uppermost branches.
The port complex consisted of massive pillars with landing platforms jutting out of the sides. Some of the platforms were over five hundred meters across but most were between one and two hundred. They reached a kilometre high, and were spaced out so they wouldn't interfere with the sunlight. Finn looked around, taking it all in with an expression of unrestrained awe and wonder.
“Good thing there aren't any insects up here or our boy here would be catching flies,” Frost said as he followed the Captain on a walk around the outside of the ship. They had to inspect a section of the hull like everyone else before they could continue on their way.
“If you think that's something, kid, look over eastward,” the Captain pointed.
Finn turned away from the jungle. For as far as he could see there was nothing but blue sky and darker blue water. “Oh my God,” he said quietly. “I've never seen anything so beautiful.”
Ashley came down the ramp with an old, beaten up deck chair under one arm all ready to tan in a skimpy dark green bathing suit. She was reviewing a holographic list projected by a small three centimetre data stick.
“You said it kid,” Frost said with a whistle.
“Frost, eyes back on the hull. Sooner we get our part of the inspection done the sooner we can find out how hard it'll be to take the Ferret.”
“Aye sir.”
Finn could hear Ashley giving orders to the rest of the crew, sending them to repair damage and inspect different sections of the hull. “Why aren't I helping with repairs?” He asked.
“Don't ask why kid, just go along with it.” Frost whispered as he inspected the section of hull he and the Captain were responsible for.
“We need someone to get up here and make sure that seam isn't coming loose,” Captain Valance pointed. “There's some kind of corrosion under way.”
“I see it. What do ya make of it kid?”
“Looks like there was fluid between the primary and secondary hull plating. It probably blew the plates part way apart when we entered the atmosphere and the liquid expanded.”
Captain Valance turned and looked to Ashley, who had set her chair down and was watching the crew set to work. “How busy are we? Do we have an extra man?”
Ashley looked up to him then back to her list. “We have some extra bodies. Other than a particle emitter that needs servicing and a little work on the hull there isn't much to do. Most of the crew will probably be out here getting some sun with me by the time you get back.”
“Have someone take care of this section, we have about nine centimetres of corrosion.”
“Aye sir.”
“Let's get going. The Ferret isn't far off,” Captain Valance said as he looked at a command and control unit on his left arm. It was three quarters the length of his forearm, black, and had a curving display as well as a pair of small hologram emitters. It was tied into all three of his ships, had independent communications systems and a basic information management artificial intelligence. Finn peeked at the screen on the black unit and saw that the Captain had found the Ferret III's transponder.
As they walked to the embarkation doors Finn took the opportunity to ask about it. “Captain, I'm wondering, if you can switch transponders so easily, why doesn't the Ferret do the same?”
“Good question. The Ferret is an Aprisa model small freighter. They're known for their power cores and engines, so they're popular with legal cargo haulers but the transponder is built right into the middle of the antimatter reactor. You'd have to uninstall the entire core of the engine and rebuild it with a new transponder.”
“Ah, I could see that being a problem. Glad the Samson has a mass reactor.”
“You're not the only one, lad,” Frost agreed. “Security checkpoint time,” he said before they stepped into an airlock that lead into the port expressway.
“This is your first time on an agricultural planet?” Captain Valance asked Finn.
“Aye sir. I grew up on Mercury Prime.”
“Ah, in a port city?”
“Yup, Perth.”
“Not much growing there. That's mostly refineries right?”
“Yup, ships coming and going from above, and thousands of different chemical products being refined below,” he said as the trio were scanned for dangerous foreign materials and weaponry by the automated systems.
The chamber lights turned green and the inner doors opened for them. “Dangerous city.”
“We've had a couple explosions since I was born, a few fires, but nothing too costly.”
“Do you have anyone back home?”
“A brother, sister and our parents. They all work in the refineries. I wanted to get out and see the galaxy though.”
“Welcome to the big, big universe Finn,” Jake said as they passed through the inner doors to the expressway walk. It was a large open space. The walkway was a broad balcony that ran along the entire inner wall of the massive port building. The empty space in the center was occupied by the skeleton of a massive sea creature, longer than the Samson. The walls, floors and ceilings were white and clean with no advertisements.
“Now these people know how to take care of a planet. I'll take this over the mad jungle outside any day,” Frost said quietly.
“Who owns it?” Finn asked.
“The Thadd Government. They named themselves after their founder when he died a couple hundred years ago.”
“Yup, everything is expensive unless you live here.”
“You get discounts if you're a resident?”
“Yup, about sixty percent but you're not allowed to barter with outsiders unless you're registered as a business. Then you're bound by the Resource Management Authority, who regulates your prices, the quantities you sell, who you sell them to, pretty much everything. Citizens are guaranteed quality housing, education, easy jobs and the best fresh food. They live like royalty but at a price,” Captain Valance said as they headed towards one of the twenty or so lifts set into the sides of the port tower.
“I'll take a cot in a shed on a dust ball over this any time. It's too alive, never know what's waiting in that jungle of theirs,” Frost commented.
“You were whistling a different tune when we took lea
ve on the beach a few months ago,” Captain Valance said as they stepped into the lift. There were a couple of travellers in colourful vacationers clothing inside, and the trio were quiet as the transparent elevator car made it's way up. On one side you could see level after level of the walkways whip past. On the other the jungle met with the great ocean, a stripe of white sand created a visible border between. The various ships and landing platforms went by as well and Finn was torn between looking at their various designs and the sights past them.
Everything from high speed cargo haulers to pleasure yachts with large rounded windows and gently curved hulls were present and the port was very busy. The vacationers stepped out and the doors closed, leaving the trio alone.
“Okay, stay behind us Finn. The Captain of the Ferret hasn't made a lease payment in over six years and we're the fourth reclamation crew to officially go after him. He's shot someone before so if it looks like it's about to get dangerous, go for cover. No heroics, don't even poke your head out. If someone or something gets right in your face stun them, don't give them a warning, don't try to run, and don't give it a second thought. It's better to stun first and apologize later than it is to get an extra hole in you.”
“I thought this port didn't let people with lethal weaponry in, that's what the port laws said.”
“You're right lad, but you can carry whatever you want on your landing platform,” Frost filled in. “I'm guessin' this was never a fact findin' mission.”
“You're right. We have to go in light and fast on this. There's no where to hide on these platforms, if we go poking around they'll notice us so we have to go in before they know what's going on. The other retrieval agents failed because they didn't make it aboard the ship, so I'm going to walk in, act like I own the place and they'll believe me. Besides, Silver served on the Ferret a couple years ago, I don't know how close he is to his former Capitan but I'd rather not give him the chance to blow this on us.”
“Ah, aye Captain.”
Jake Valance took another look at his arm console as they stepped out onto the walkway. They were about fifty levels up from where they had left the ship and Finn couldn't help looking back out the window and down. It was looking down the trunk of some shiny, white tree, with spoon like branches extending straight out from the trunk in all different directions. The fact that they were various sizes only added to the aesthetic. He squeezed his eyes shut as vertigo threatened to overtake him.
“You all right kid?” The Captain asked.
“I'm fine, sorry.”
“Right, don't look down if it makes ya green,” Frost chuckled.
They walked along the causeway behind Captain Valance, who kept his command unit just high enough to glimpse at. He was surveying the walkway and the doors leading out to the platform where he expected to find the Ferret III.
They moved into the scanning chamber and the doors closed behind them. The outer doors were fogged, so no one could see in or out. The blue scanning beam moved up and down across the three, did a second pass, which was normal, then proceeded to do six more passes. “He jammed the scanning chamber,” Frost concluded.
“Yup,” Jake Valance said. “One minute.” He accessed the Port Master's channel through his command console and a moment later a round faced tanned fellow's head appeared holographically above his arm. “Port Master's Help Desk, Kala speaking. How can I help you?”
“We're a repossession crew trying to access platform 1245h and the scanning chamber is jammed.”
“Send me your claim and I'll pass it on to security for you sir,” responded the talking head pleasantly.
Jake pressed a button on his arm unit and waited a moment as the agent reviewed the file.
“There we go, Port Security is now aware of your claim.”
“Thank you Kala.”
“Now, back to your initial problem. The airlock scanner reports nothing illegal and no dangerous contaminants. I'll try to unlock it for you.”
The outer door quietly clicked several times but nothing happened. “Nope, looks like it may be a little more complicated than that.”
“All right, please hold while I send a maintenance team out there,” said the talking head before disappearing. A slowly rotating graphic of a bunch of bright green jungle flowers appeared in the head's place.
“We don't have time for this,” Captain Valance said, reaching into an inside pocket, producing some fine tools. He tapped one spike into the control panel beside the inner door and the back of the implement lit up dimly. An illustration of the circuit board inside the door control came up on his command console and he instructed it to bypass the damaged circuits. “They did a number on this,” he jammed the second thin black tool into the door control right beside one of the buttons and worked at his arm console for a moment before the outer doors opened.
He pulled both the thin tools out of the door control and put them back into his coat then walked through. Frost was close behind, Finn tried to keep up as the Captain strode out into the open.
“Hey you! You're not supposed to be out here!” Shouted one woman in a heavy vacsuit. It had hard impact and radiation shielding. The ship she was working on was in it's takeoff cycle.
“Captain Raines?” Jake Valance called out.
“No, I'm his Bosun.”
“He's aboard?” He asked as he made to walk straight up the rear gangway onto the ship.
“No sir, he's not aboard!” Replied the Bosun as she tried to step in front of him.
Jake drew his gun with his right hand and practically walked through her as though she weren't there. She fell to the ground awkwardly. There were several crew members inside arranging and securing crates in the cluttered rear cargo hold. Jake levelled his sidearm at the nearest and pointed his arm console to someone who looked like the senior officer. Frost followed suit and pointed his own stun pistol at the woman who had just been knocked down. “I've been hired to reclaim this ship by order of the dealership for non-payment. Her commanding officer is so served and all crew are to disembark immediately. I am permitted to use all force and will be rewarded regardless of the vessel's condition on its return.”
Finn didn't raise his sidearm, he had barely gotten it out of his holster before the Captain started up the ramp.
Everyone in the cargo hold stood stock still, in utter shock for the better part of a minute.
Then the oldest of them, nearest the interior door leading into the rest of the ship tried to quick draw his sidearm. Jake Valance fired, stunning one worker, and shot another bolt of energy from his arm command unit, missing the older fellow narrowly. Frost shot the woman on the ground, and dove behind a crate inside the hold of the ship.
The older fellow returned fire as he backpedalled up the stairs, missing the entire time. Jake kept firing in his general direction with his arm unit as he took careful shots at the other three workers inside the cargo hold. One dove for cover while the other two fell limply to the deck, stunned.
Finn was terrified but mesmerized at the sight of Jake Valance striding up the length of the cargo hold towards the inner door and the man who was hurrying to get up the stairs. There was no fear, no hesitation, only a confidence so impenetrable that his success, his victory seemed an inevitability as he took shot after shot and after taking out two other crew members he made a carefully aimed shot at the older man's knee just before he escaped behind the interior door.
Captain Valance took the stairs three at a time and tried the door. “It's over Captain Raines! If you hand over the command codes for your vessel and disembark now I won't haul your ass back for grand theft and collect the bounty on your head!” He moved to the side of the closed doorway and a second later the sounds of small arms fire impact could be heard from the other side.
Frost managed to shoot the last conscious crew member and ran up the stairs. “Finn, get under cover and wait for further orders!” he shouted over his shoulder.
Finn did exactly as he was told, still going over what h
e had just seen in his head.
“How hard did you hit him?” Frost asked the Captain.
“Minor stun shot, he won't be able to walk on that knee for about four hours.”
“Surprised you didn't set your arm unit higher.”
“That thing only knows two settings, mild jolt and big hole. Can't set it to anything but mild jolt here or alarms start going off.”
“What's our next move?”
“We have to disable the ship. He's going to try to pilot this rig into space with the cargo bay doors open.”
“How do ye know?”
“It's what I'd do.”
“Ah.”
“Hey Finn, get into that panel there and pull the port side power. It should be about six meters up the crawlway,” Captain Valance shouted.
Nothing happened.
“Hey kid! Get your ass into the crawl way or I leave you here!”
“Yes sir!” Finn replied as he ran from behind his crate and opened the panel hiding the service crawlway his Captain had pointed out. It was stuffed with wiring, but he could see a way through.
The engines were powering up, the low rumble of the antimatter reactor was unmistakable. “That was quick.” Frost said as he watched Finn crawl into the service hatch.
“That's why antimatter is popular even though it's so expensive. Starts up quick, unlike a mass drive. Thirty seconds and you're at full power, one minute and you're in the air.”
“Well, unlike most mass drives.”
“Right, ours is a little modified, never really turns off. How are you doing Finn?” Captain Valance called after his young engineer.
“I think I see it,” He shouted back.
A worker they hadn't noticed peeked up from behind a crate and fired at Captain Valance, catching him in the shoulder with a vicious particle energy weapon. It knocked him right off his feet and down the stairs. Instead of worrying after him, Frost turned and fired back at the crewman, catching him full in the face with his stun shot.
He ran down the steps after his Captain.
Jake turned over slowly, one side of his face was a deep red, and his long coat showed a scorch mark. “Get him?”
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