Generations (The Nimbus Collection Book 3)

by Clemens, D. C.

  Ultimately, the Oracle did not suffer many mechanical setbacks and the entry into the Badlands was uneventful. Their only contact with any type of civilization was at an orbiting fuel station a jump into the Badlands, where they refilled the jump-engine’s reserves so they had enough for the journey back. Fuel stations were, of course, potential spots for ambushes, but strategically valued fuel stations were often defended by the military, law enforcement, mercenary groups, or some mixture of the three, so the little Oracle was as safe there as on Arcadia. When they finally were nearing the coordinates, Clay decided to jump short of the destination, settling the Oracle in what he estimated was just out of range of any long range scanners belonging to those waiting for them.

  “Think it’s smart to make them wait longer?” Trista asked her other half.

  “As my commanding officer always barked at us, ‘Always play it safe, you daisy-ass cocksuckers!’ Or something like that.”

  “But we made such good time! We would make a good first impression.”

  “We’re in the Badlands, my sweet bumblebee. I’d prefer a quick getaway to an impressed gangster.”

  So it was not for another ten hours did they make their next jump, making absolutely sure they had the lowest recharge time possible. Waiting at the end of the jump, perceptible by using the zoomed up screen in the cockpit’s window, was an imposing tanker ship modified with rail cannons on its broadside and was probably protected by a powerful shield. Two frigates flanked the impressive ship, with one other docked on top of the tanker’s long deck. Everyone but Wei, who was retrieving the containers, were by the captains, including Turkey, who was on Mr. Broussard’s right shoulder.

  “They’re hailing us,” said an excited sounding Trista.

  A nod from Clay had her flipping a switch.

  Over the speakers, a woman’s voice asked, “Frederick’s people, I take it?”

  “That’s right,” answered Trista. It was an unspoken rule that Clay conversed with men and Trista to the women. They discovered early on that this system worked out best for them. “We have your shipment.”

  “My frigates are going to escort your ship to our deck so you can dock with us, then you’ll have one of your men bring out the shipments and meet one of mine. Once we confirmed that you haven’t fucked with it, we’ll pay you and be allowed to leave. Got all that, sunshine?”

  “Got it.”

  The tiniest bit of apprehension leaked into the cabin. They understood the precaution the larger ship was taking, but none of them had been so under the mercy of something that could effortlessly blow them to bits during a routine drop off before. It had customarily been as simple as meeting someone at certain illicit havens—generally a place near a dock or a space station—and waiting until they received their pay to hand over the goods. Simple. Still, it was only a minuscule leak, one they would have to get used to if they wanted to keep dealing in this hazardous section of space.

  The tanker’s frigates flanked the larger Oracle, but the size difference did not ease them any. Space battles always came down to one word; quality. It was unlikely that the Oracle could match either frigate in weapons potential, maneuverability, or engine endurance. The Oracle’s one advantage over most ships of its class came in its shielding and armor plating. They were the main reasons the ship was bigger than most other frigates, but superior shielding was only a significant edge when facing a single ship, since even the best defenses could easily be overwhelmed by greater numbers. The Oracle harmonized with the steady speed of its chaperons, making sure not to execute any sudden movements as they approached the much larger vessel. When they were in line with the tanker’s deck, some movement on it caught Kalie’s attention. She saw someone attired in an armored gray space suit enter a small frigate anchored on the deck. A few seconds later and this ship had lifted off the deck, disappearing half a moment later in a jump. There was barely any time to wonder why the jump had been made before the Oracle’s scanners picked up a dozen new ships surrounding the area, their allegiance becoming clear when she saw the penetrating red and blue lights oscillating from those nearest her.

  Almost as fast as those archetypal lights reached them, an authoritative voice entered the speakers and declared, “This is the Arcadian Defense Force. Deactivate your weapons and shields. Prepare to be boarded or be fired upon. I repeat…”

  Before the reiteration of the message, one of the escorting frigates made a jump, leaving its counterparts behind. A more dissecting scan of the dozen new ships revealed a beefy cruiser and several frigate escorts that were broadcasting their military affiliation, extinguishing any hope of doing anything but jumping, even for the once impressive tanker. Evidently, the two enemy ships left behind could not jump yet either, forcing them to comply with the authorities.

  Expressing the sentiments of everyone, Trista said, “Shit! Can we jump yet?”

  “Not for another four and a half minutes,” answered Clay, “and that’s if we manually bypass the safeguards and don’t really mind where we end up.”

  “Shit burgers.”

  As three police frigates were closing in on the Oracle, an acquainted voice of a particular lawman came over the speakers, saying, “What a coincidence! Who would of thought I’d run into a little moving company way out here? My friends and I were just talking about moving some junk. We’ll need to come aboard and discuss rates. Lower your shields and disarm yourselves. We’ve been waiting out here for a while now, so you don’t want to test our itchy trigger fingers.”

  Everyone stared at Mr. Broussard, who took Turkey into his arms, shrugged, and said, “With the ADF involved, I can’t prevent them from seizing this ship. They won’t go through a raid this lavish without having the authority to arrest anyone in the region they believe is involved with the operation. If possible, I recommend jumping so we can jettison our cargo. They’ll catch us soon after, but as long as they don’t have proof we had the packages, I should be able to negotiate a much more lenient deal for us.”

  “Gods!” said a panicking Brandon. “You mean we’re going to jail no matter what? What will my mother think!? And my sister! She’s going to kill me!” He then sprinted off to the living quarters to find Wei.

  “Trista,” said Clay, “Make it so you can jump us manually from engineering.”

  His wife nodded and left for the lower deck.

  “But they’ll be attached to us in a couple of minutes,” said Kalie. “Our j-e isn’t strong enough to create a wormhole around two ships.”

  “Then we’ll just have to force a detachment,” replied Clay, turning to the control panel.

  “What do y- Oh… I guess we’ll be fine without one of them. Want me to take care of that?”

  “If you don’t happen to be busy. Now if we can just stall them long enough...”

  With two minutes left on the jump clock, one of the patrol frigates was adjacent the Oracle and extending a cylindrical conduit to its entry point.

  Speaking to the agent’s ship, Clay said, “Be advised that we’ve been having problems with our coupling procedures. As you know, Agent Vaughn, the Oracle is a fickle girl.”

  “Just keep her still, captain,” said the clearly exasperated partner of Agent Vaughn’s, a red headed woman named Mariah Grace, who was ordinarily much less chit-chatty than her cohort.

  When the conduit latched on a minute later—after a couple of unsuccessful attempts brought on by “sudden” and minor changes of angles caused by a “leaky” thruster—Agent Vaughn ordered, “I need for everyone to wait by the ramp, get on their knees, and place their hands behind their heads, you know, just like all those kinky parties y’all have.” Some moments passed and Agent Vaughn spoke again, a tinge of annoyance escaping him for the first time. “I know you’re not resisting arrest, are you? I need you to comply now or force others to intervene who won’t be as complacent as I am, I shit you not.”

  Using the intercom on engineering, Kalie connected to the proper frequency and answered in her m
ost girlish voice, “We’re all just sooo scared, mister. We think we saw a ghost somewhere. If you think you’re brave enough to come in our haunted ship and save us from the horrible spirit, we’ll be ever so grateful.”

  As slowly as they thought they could get away with, everyone but Trista and Kalie, who remained in engineering, followed the directions of the agent.

  “They’re already started torching the door!” Wei yelled out.

  Using the last of their filibustering cards, Trista grabbed the lever Kalie was holding and pulled it down about a third of the way, resulting in the ship trembling. She then used the intercom to say, “We think that one of our propulsion engines is about to blow in about forty seconds. A negligible malfunction, but it would be a very bad idea for you to slice open our ramp and have the explosion suck us all out to space. ¿Comprendes?”

  “Bullshit!” said Agent Grace. “All this damn stalling, you fucking bastards are planning to jump after this “malfunction,” aren’t you? I bet this explosion won’t happen if we split open your door!”

  “Calm down, Agent Grace,” said her partner. “Our friends here don’t want to become charged with endangering the lives of two law officers. All they want is to leave their cargo somewhere.”

  “My client has warned you of the imminent danger, Agent Vaughn,” said Mr. Broussard. “Our best technicians have had to disobey your requests in order to try and resolve the problem. Either enter your ship until the danger has passed or risk endangering all our lives by creating a breach in an unstable event.”

  “You understand if I don’t choose to believe you.”

  “They’ve started torching again!” informed Wei.

  “Clay?” Trista tentatively asked.

  “We warned them,” Clay answered. “I hope everyone is bracing themselves!”

  Trista pulled the lever all the way down and locked it in place. A few seconds later and the entire ship violently lurched to the right, shoving everyone against the nearest stable obstacle. Kalie was braced against a wall and recovered quickly. She then turned a groaning knob and flipped a way-too-easy-to-flip switch for what its significant job entailed. Every light and alarm of the Oracle began flashing and blaring, and the quaking from the explosion was replaced by the activated jump-engine’s rumbling. This sensory bombardment muddled Kalie’s senses for a few seconds until her sense of touch was freed by the ceasing of the shaking. Trista shrieked when a steam pipe burst near her face. The first item Kalie noted was a digital one. The frequency of the agents was still active, despite the explosion and the ship presumably having had jumped.

  Attempting to confirm it, Kalie said, “Uhh, Agent Vaughn? Agent Grace? You guys still out there?”

  “Fuck me,” replied a quietly stupefied Agent Vaughn. “Didn’t think you bastards would actually do it.”

  “Um, are you guys okay?”

  “I’m going to make sure all of you burn in Venus for this!” vowed Agent Grace.

  “What my esteemed colleague means to say,” began Agent Vaughn, “is that we were able to keep our magnetic hold over the Oracle during the disturbance. We are currently still stuck to the ship in this way and would appreciate coming inside.”

  Gaining his bearings, Clay said, “We’ll gladly invite you in if you agree to wait for a few minutes.”

  “So you can get rid of the evidence?” said Agent Grace. “How ‘bout we continue torching a hole and suck you out to space with us?”

  “Have you forgotten?” asked Trista. “My Clay can warp air. He can stop the air from escaping and use it to knock your asses off my ship.”

  “So? We’re arcanists, too. Besides, we have better equipment and training. Do you really want to piss us off more?”

  “And that’s why we can’t let you waltz in just yet,” said Clay. The male captain nodded over to his co-captain and Kalie, each having had climbed up at this point to join the others. “Look, we understand our situation. We know we can’t escape in this flying mess with the ADF sweeping for us, and we’ll eventually be caught and charged with evading arrest. All we want is to do what we have to and then we’ll let you in to apprehend us. Is risking an unwarranted fight for some small fry really what you want?”

  “You smelly pieces of shit,” said Agent Grace.

  “Uh, captain?” said Wei, who sat at one of the pilot’s chairs looking over the ship’s status.

  “Hold that redundant thought for just a moment, Agent Grace,” said Clay, blocking her frequency. “What is it, Rhino?”

  “Sensors just picked up an outgoing jump beyond that gas giant, but that’s all we picked up. Can’t say who or what it was.”

  “Sneaky…”

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Thompson?” asked Agent Vaughn.

  “Only if you don’t agree to our offer,” Clay responded.

  There was a generous silence from the agents. During the non-chatter, Clay, Trista, and Wei grabbed some weapons from behind a wall panel Wei unlatched. Wei obtained a shotgun, Trista a heavy pistol, and Clay an old but reliable military assault rifle.

  Finally, Agent Vaughn said, “Mr. Broussard, everything from here on is off the record until I say so, agreed?”

  “Agreed,” consented the lawyer.

  “So, Mr. Thompson, I understand you wish to rid yourselves of the packages?”

  “Correct.”

  “But you will surrender yourselves once that is accomplished?”

  “We know anything else will result in considerable prison time. All of us are aware that no one wants to force a confrontation for what is not really a desperate situation.”

  “Very well, captain. My partner and I agree to allow you to destroy the evidence, but under the condition that we see you doing it, off the record, of course. I need to know you are not playing us.”

  “That is acceptable.”

  “And the ship is ours immediately after?”

  “Yes. You have my lawyer’s word.”

  “Then open the ramp.”

  Clay nodded to Kalie, who was nearest the entry. She pushed the red button to lower the opening to reveal the infinite borders of unfriendly space. Using his aptitude, Clay clairvoyantly warped the atmosphere in the ship, thwarting it from pointlessly absconding into the cold vacuum. From Kalie’s vantage point by the ramp, she saw Agent Grace sliding her magnetized gloves against the ship’s armor until she made her way inside, followed shortly after by Agent Vaughn. When the two fully armored agents were entirely within the Oracle, Kalie closed the ramp.

  “Hey,” said Wei to the agents. “Where’s your torch?”

  “Oh, we lost that in the explosion,” said Agent Vaughn, a shrewd grin forming beneath his helmet.

  “I thought you complied with us a bit too quickly,” said Kalie.

  Agent Vaughn shrugged. “Where are the containers?”

  “Go get them, Rhino,” ordered Clay.

  Wei stood up and went to the living quarters, Brandon following him. Trista went to occupy the space Wei left.

  “Do we know where in the void we jumped too?” asked a still fuming Agent Grace.

  Trista pulled up an orange holoscreen that filled one half of the window. After a moment’s inspection, she said, “As expected, we did not complete a max jump to the planned system. It looks like we ended up in uncharted space. Well, uncharted for us.”

  “What does that mean?” inquired Agent Vaughn.

  “We picked up an outgoing jump not too long ago, but we don’t know who or what jumped. According to our scanners, that green gas giant over there is the last planet in this system, with three planets found so far, though we’re not picking up any type of active broadcasts. The star is a Class B. Aww, I like those. Blue is my favorite color.”

  The sound of lumbering feet had them all looking toward Wei and Brandon, Wei carrying both of the stacked containers with little effort. He set them down in the middle of the compartment.

  “Do you know what’s in them?” Wei asked the agents.

  “A few d
efunct rifles that were supposed to be the latest models for the Arcadian military,” answered Agent Vaughn. “The tanker we left behind is one of a few that were going to reproduce these ‘advanced’ armaments and sell them.”

  “So I’m guessing Frederick was caught before he could send the real rifles and was then used to lure the tanker,” said a speculating Clay.

  “More or less. My partner and I became involved when I was told he was going to use some familiar faces as the shippers. Bad timing for you to get involved with the big boys. Now then, how are you planning to get rid of some garbage?”

  “My original plan was just to jettison them into the star we were hoping to jump to, but seeing as we’re a bit far from this star, I suppose we could toss them into that gas giant.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Agent Vaughn. He helped himself to a chair, his assault rifle still magnetically holstered to his back, and placed his left foot on his right knee, generally looking as though the Oracle was already his ship.

  Meanwhile, Trista flew the ship closer to the gas giant. Even with one less propulsion engine, the Oracle made good time, soon getting close enough to make the greenish atmosphere of the unnamed vaporous planet most of their view. Agent Grace followed Wei and the containers to a garbage chute near the living quarters, seeing him place them inside and locking the door. When the chute was fully pressurized to shoot the items as fast as possible, and Trista had lined the Oracle at the proper angle, Wei pushed the eject button. The two objects were away and would soon be crushed within the gas giant’s immense pressure. With the incriminating task done, Kaylie, Wei, Brandon, and Trista, under supervision from Agent Grace, went to repair what they could in engineering. They quickly learned that the manual jump damaged some key components beyond pipes and circuit boards, making another jump of any kind unfathomable for at least two days. Of course, they expected to be discovered by then and be accommodated in different quarters.