by Jean Johnson
“Fly fast, shoot hard, and get all of us in and out of there. Alive. Do you have a problem with the orders a member of the Command Staff, one of your lawfully designated superior in the Navy’s chain of command, has given to you, Captain?” she asked, her voice hard but quiet.
A muscle ticked in Sudramara’s tanned cheek. “No. I do not.”
“I’m glad. We’ll need to send a time-delayed message to Battle Platform Justicar, so they’ll know we’ll be needing reinforcements as soon as we show up in the system. Any sooner, and word might get back to our targets,” Ia added. “I’d like to get everyone in and out in one piece, without any further betrayals of our plans to the enemy.”
“Don’t worry about my crew and me on this job, Captain,” Drek stated quietly, catching Sudramara’s attention. Drek dipped his painted head in Ia’s direction. “You and your threats don’t mean a damn to us . . . but she scares the shakk out of us. You have my word as a businessman and a fellow captain that we will not step out of line.”
“Good,” Ia snapped, glad he hadn’t gone so far as to give her game away. “Your orders are to be polite, respectful, and cooperative on any matter relating to this operation.” She turned back to Sudramara. “Drek has sent the message that he has captured me and is willing to deliver me in person for a tidy fee. I am hoping that this means they’ll wait until they have me in their hands before they carry out their intentions toward the others, but we don’t know what this Lyebariko intends to do to our missing soldiers. We have to assume the worst, and that means time is running out. You know Drek already. These are his best engineer and his best pilot from his fleet. Gentle-meioas, introduce yourselves.”
“Captain Sudramara, I am called Zipper. I am the closest you’ll get to an expert at Solarican style star-hopping without actually being fuzzy,” the tallest man in the group stated politely, if wryly. “Engines producing the balance of power to the warp fields need to be monitored carefully by someone with experience in surfing a natural rift. It is as much a matter of sound as it is of scanners, so I would like to be escorted to your engine room. I shouldn’t need to touch anything, but I do need to know that my advice will be heeded, or the rift will buck us back into realspace. In pieces, if we aren’t careful.”
“And I’m Kells,” Drek’s pilot stated, smiling and holding out his hand. He dropped it when Sudramara just stared at him. “Your Liu Ji, here, is a sweet ship, but she needs to be piloted by someone who knows what is normal behavior and what is dangerous. I’m the best at surfing the rifts, so that means I will actually have to touch the helm controls.” He tipped his head and flashed Sudramara a grin. “But if it makes you feel better, you could always have a pretty girl hold a gun to my head while I fly this ship. I like a little spice in my life. Makes things interesting.”
The look Sudramara aimed at him was a disgusted one, but the captain turned away without saying anything more, including any protests. Ia sighed and followed, mindful of how closely she had skimmed the legalities in what they were doing, and how closely she had just walked the line of military protocols, too.
MARCH 31, 2492 T.S.
SIC TRANSIT
“Harder!” Ia ordered, straightening back up. She staggered in the next moment, but so did the man in front of her. As did the men and women watching this fight.
Most of them were fellow Marines, members of the 1st Platoon who were supposed to be exercising as they bounced their way through hyperspace wrapped in a tenuous FTL bubble that could break at any minute. One of them was Drek, who leaned against the mirrored wall with his arms crossed over his plexleather-covered chest. Not that anyone could see much, since most of the lights had been shut down to conserve energy, but they were watching the two of them.
Spyder raised his fists again, but hesitated. They were covered in clunky rings that didn’t quite fit his fingers even over the thin exam gloves he wore to keep his genetics off the silver. “I’m not exactly comf’rable doin’ this. Sir.”
“You’re under my orders, Sergeant. It’s all perfectly legal.” She gave him an impatient look when he hesitated. “I need color, Spyder. Cuts, bruises, all of it. And it has to have time to age by a few hours. Everything has to look real. It’s completely realistic for me to have woken up and fought my captors, and for them to take out some of their frustrations on me. But it’s not legal for Drek or his men to hit me. I don’t intend to give the captain of this ship any excuse to lock them in the brig. Now, hit me.”
Sighing heavily, he swung. This time, one of the rings caught on her cheek, digging hard enough to scratch and draw blood. The welt stung painfully, but she smiled. Half smiled, quirking up the opposite side of her mouth.
“That was better.” She leaned in close and murmured into his ear. “But remember, you’re senior-most among the remaining sergeants. You have to have the guts to follow your orders, and the will to lead these meioas into combat. Hit me again. Hard.”
He swung again, and stomped on her foot, bruising it near the ankle. Ia hissed in pain and hopped a little, but regained her balance. Only to stagger again as the ship bucked around them.
The intercom beeped, and projected a message from the bridge. Spyder checked his next swing as they all stopped to listen. “Attention, all hands. Once again, this is Kells, your guest pilot for the evening. We are coming up on the next big bump on our path in approximately . . . three to eight minutes. After that, we should have a three hours stretch of minor scrapes and contusions, nothing too much worse than what we’ve recently experienced. Provided our football-shaped field integrity holds.
“Once we’re past the bump, I’ll be passing the helm to your friendly, helpful Ensign Fresco-Vadrakka for two and a half hours of that. Major bump in three to eight minutes, all hands brace for impact, lock and web. I repeat, brace for impact, lock and web. If you don’t secure it, I’m not paying for it. Kells out.”
“This mean I get t’ stop?” Spyder asked her as the other Marines scrambled to get everything stowed and themselves strapped into the nearest acceleration couches, which were little more than straps that could be extended out of the padded wall opposite the mirrored one.
“It means you get a few minutes of reprieve. You heard our pilot, meioas!” Ia ordered the others, raising her voice. “Lock and web! Get those straps pulled out and hooked up, move it or lose it!”
Considering how hard the last “bump” had struck the ship, resulting in half a dozen crew members being sent to the Infirmary with injuries, no one hesitated this time to strap themselves into a sitting position against the cushion-padded wall opposite the mirrors.
Somewhere outside the ship, the warp panels were straining to project an elongated, cylindrical, extremely close field around the otherwise lumpy ship. A flexible field, rather than the normal stable one. Because the Liu Ji was wrapped in a warp field, they weren’t experiencing hypersickness from the distorted acceleration forces that normally plagued OTL travel, but the sheer size of the vessel dragged it very roughly through the edges of the hyperrift.
Two and a half hours is enough time for a nap, Ia decided, buckling the acceleration restraints around her torso. As soon as Spyder gives me a few more decent hits, I think I’ll go hide in my quarters.
APRIL 1, 2492 T.S.
BETA LIBERTY RESORT, BETA LIBRAE V
ZUBENESCHAMALI SYSTEM
“Ready?” Drek asked her.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure you can break free of all those restraints?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely sure?”
“Drek, you are a calculating, uncaring bastard. Be that uncaring bastard. Go.” Hanging as loose and limp as she could get herself to relax, Ia let the engineer, Zipper, and one of the gunners drag her zip tie wrapped body out the airlock of their courier ship, their hands hooked under the cream bands spanning her frame.
The plexi ties binding her body had been strapped multiple times around her wrists, forearms, elbows, shoulders, thighs, knees, calves
, and ankles. Her long-sleeved shirt and long trousers had been artistically ripped, her boots scuffed, and her hair mussed. With the welts and contusions now in full, colorful bloom on her face, she looked like a battered, subdued wreck. The trick right now was to seem unconscious, so she let herself dangle in their grip.
“Halt!”
She couldn’t, daren’t open her eyes to see what was happening, but knew it was the security guards for the backside entrance to the pleasure-dome colony of Beta Liberty.
“We’ll take the prisoner,” the guard stated.
“That was not the deal I arranged with your employers,” Drek stated calmly. “The deal is that I bring her in person directly to your board of directors.”
“Deals change.”
Ia strove to stay limp as she picked up the distinct whine of energy clips charging.
“True, deals can change,” he acknowledged. She heard the plexleather of his outfit creak slightly. “So can the off-button on this bisthmite grenade. I can always turn it on, and blow up the back half of this installation.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I am called the Merciless for a very good reason, meioa. I don’t bluff. I do not fear death, and I do not go into a business meeting unarmed. Our deal is a personal audience, with a hand-delivered package. I am here to deliver it by hand. If you are smart, your masters will receive what they requested. If you are too cautious, there is simply no deal; we get back on our ship and fly away. With our little package. But then you will have to explain to your superiors why their little gift was taken away. The third choice, which will happen if you are too stupid, is a very short but very bright death for a lot of people.”
Ia couldn’t see anything with her head dangling down and her eyes shut, but after a few seconds, she heard a soft rustling.
“You choose wisely,” Drek praised, his tone sardonic. “You just might live to see a pay raise, at this rate.”
Again, she was hauled forward by the hands holding the straps wrapped around her elbows and chest, feet scraping down a flight of steps. Courier ships were small so that they could conserve energy during transit; their correspondingly light mass made it relatively easy for them to land and take off from planetary surfaces. That had meant passing through a series of airlocks and parking the ship on a landing pad a short distance from the complex proper. It also meant a long walk for the two men dragging her along; she didn’t blame them for letting the muscular weight of her legs scrape along the ground.
Several minutes of tedious hanging and dragging later, she heard Kells ask, “Are we almost there yet? Or can we stop for a few minutes? I’d like to pause and kick her a few times for being such a heavy bitch.”
“You already had your fun,” Drek told him. “As soon as we get paid, it’ll be our hosts’ turn to play with their prize.”
More dragging. The hissing of doors, the shifting of gravity from an elevator lowering them down somewhere. Ia occupied her time with reaching out, seeking, and tapping into each of the electronic systems they passed. Some she sampled and let go; others, she hooked into and carefully altered.
It wasn’t Drek and his men who would sabotage this place enough for Ferrar’s Fighters to enter. They wouldn’t have enough time to do it themselves, for one. For another, by keeping them from openly opposing the Lyebariko, Drek and his organization would be scrutinized carefully, but determined to have had nothing to do with the coming disaster. That would leave him free to join the Lyebariko a few years from now. At least, join the other members; only a few of those present would escape from here. The key to the Lyebariko’s long-term survival was carefully never exposing all of its members to the same dangers at the same time.
The light pressing against her eyelids faded as they passed from well-lit corridors into a deliberately darkened chamber, one large enough to echo slightly. Checking the timestreams, she risked opening her eyes. The flopped angle of her head was wrong to see much, but she did catch a glimpse of a long, dark brown, oval table illuminated by a single bright light carefully focused to shine down only on that table. The image was broken up by the silhouette of high-backed chairs ringing the near side, some turned at angles to face their inbound visitors.
She quickly shut her eyes again, lolling limp and unresisting as they neared the table. A single pair of hands clapped, loud and staccato, bringing Drek and his men to a halt.
“Well played, meioa,” a smooth baritone voice stated. The owner’s voice filled the chamber without strain. “An actual, functional bisthmite hand grenade. Our scanners say it has enough explosive power packed into that little sphere to crack open this chamber all the way to the surface. Your calling card is quite impressive.”
“It has its uses,” Drek returned calmly.
“No doubt it has opened many doors of opportunity for you. Including this one. Though you take a great risk in your insistence on personally hand-delivering our prize.”
“Some business contacts are best secured in person.”
“You thhinnk you have ssskills we would sseek?” a lighter, Tlassian-feminine voice hissed from somewhere off to the left a little.
“I have acquired that which you could not,” Drek replied.
“A fffluke,” the Tlassian scoffed.
“A carefully calculated series of actions, meioa-e,” Drek corrected her. “When it became apparent to me that your organization was taking a particular interest in a particular mining organization . . . and that said interest was constantly being thwarted by a specific Marine Company, I deliberately altered my usual territory so that I could find and insinuate myself into the life and trust of one of their members.
“At the time, I had no idea you would seek to kidnap the command structure directly, but I knew that having inside access would eventually pay off. As you can see, it did,” he admitted, his plexleather creaking faintly in what had to be a shrug. “I like to study a situation carefully and lay my plans accordingly for the long term, meioas. My skills would be an asset for any Library staff.”
The chittering of a K’katta proved there was more lurking in those shadowed chairs than just bipedal sentients. The meioa’s translator box kicked in after a moment, speaking in cultured Terranglo over the clicks, whistles, and hisses of the alien’s natural speech. “You are an assassin, a kidnapper, a saboteur, and a tech thief. We have plenty of those at our disposal.”
“Plenty, if you enjoy enduring all that incompetence. I also dabble in information, speculation, and acquisition of otherwise unattainable rarities. As I said, I have acquired that which you seek. Gentles, deliver the meioas their package. Consider this a gratuity on my part, gentlebeings. A gift, and my calling card as you said. The next one will not be free. I am a businessmeioa, after all.”
Zipper and the gunner heaved Ia’s legs off the floor. Grunting, they threw her up and forward. Even knowing it was coming, the thud of landing on that sturdy, solid, broad table knocked the wind out of her. Coughing, Ia struggled for breath.
“Thank you, meioa. Beyond this, however . . . your services are not required.” That came from one of the Human-sounding females lurking in the shadows.
“Are you absolutely sure there is nothing else you want from me?” Drek asked.
“Abssssolutely.” That came from the Tlassian.
“Well, then. Since you are so determined to do without my services at this time,” Drek stated coldly, “that is all that you will get from me. The rest, at your insistence, is no longer of any concern. Do with her whatever you will. We’ll leave now. Call me when you change your minds . . . because you will.”
Ia pressed her cheek into the polished surface of the table, resisting the urge to smile. She had coached him to state it exactly that way, so that he could cold-bloodedly point out that they had essentially ordered him to walk away without asking him if he knew of anything else they might want or even need to know. Like the Marines, Army, and Special Forces operatives currently infiltrating the perimeter of the resort, bypassing sy
stem after electrokinetically sabotaged system.
The doors hissed quietly shut behind Drek and his men. The same first voice spoke again. “Well. Shall we fetch the others, and have ourselves a little celebration?”
“Gloating is dangerous,” a new female voice said.
“Oh, but so much fun,” the male countered. Something clicked, and he stated, “Bring all of the toy soldiers to the boardroom, and fetch my red case.”
“Yes, sir,” someone replied on the other end of the connection.
“I personally have lost too much in our ventures not to extract my pound of flesh,” the shadow-cloaked man stated.
She didn’t have to see his face to know who he and the others were: Siddhartha of the powerful, influential Tycho Interstellar holding combine. Sllaish of the long-running Tlassian Longspitters crime clan. A Gatsugi with the nickname Black Eyes who had yet to speak. The second female was a Solarican named Purtzen, while the K’katta held the nickname of Webmaster in the Lyebariko. Most of the other races couldn’t pronounce his real name . . . but it didn’t really matter. Like the others gathered around the table, the nine sentient beings in this room were forgettable. Dangerous, and therefore eminently expendable, but forgettable.
Not that they’d see it that way themselves, she thought wryly, lifting her head from the table. She made a show of blinking and peering into the darkness, then of testing her bonds.
“No, no, don’t struggle, Sergeant. Or, wait . . . do struggle. The futility and frustration are so amusing to watch,” Siddhartha Tycho murmured.
Roughly four minutes to the arrival of the others, give or take. Lyebariko staff don’t dawdle, but it’s not like they’re being held in the next room, either.