Crucible: Records of the Argos

by Michael J. Farlow

  “We’ll just have to go see what’s going on then.”

  “Who’s we?” Amini asked. “Doc can’t go, and you’re dragging. That leaves Sif and me. He wants to go by himself.”

  I thought about that briefly but then rejected Sif going alone. No telling what he would do with the pirates if left to his own imagination.

  “Do you feel up to going with Sif?” I asked, hoping she would know why I would ask the question. She gave a brief glance at the Arkon warrior and nodded. Her trust level of the Red was still not complete, but it was growing.

  “Wizzy, do we have a real combat suit that will fit Sif? I’m thinking the lightweight versions might not be enough for either of them considering the nature of Myron’s crew.”

  “Don’t be silly. I had one made in the fabricator as soon as he came on board. Of course, I made improvements to his and the one we have for Amini. I’m working on yours and Doc’s as we speak.”

  Of course, he did. Momentarily I forgot how the new magnificent Harry could, if he wanted, anticipate everything.

  “All right then. You two get suited up and get to the cargo bay and a shuttle. Not the one Doc and I used. The universal coupler was ripped to shreds. Be careful over there.”

  The trip to the Myron was uneventful, as was the docking process. Once inside the cargo ship, faceplate cameras on the helmets of Amini and Sif sent back vivid pictures of the ship’s interior to Doc and to me. I noted that the damage wasn’t quite as bad as the Vegar, but it was a mess. In the old wet Navy on Earth, everything onboard a ship was either riveted down or tied down in some way to prevent things from becoming airborne missiles when the ship rolled around. Apparently, the pirates weren’t quite as forward-thinking. There was junk everywhere I saw. Papers, boxes, chairs, and everything or anything that would move was strewn around the decks. Our shots had carried a greater impact than I thought.

  I watched the two go straight to engineering to ensure nobody started the engines and sped away while they were on board. That wouldn’t happen. The engines were still smoking from our blasts, and there was nobody in the spaces. No live ones anyway. I could see from the helmet cameras the charred bodies of some of the engineering staff. The pair lowered their rifles, left the engine room, and moved forward.

  They checked each compartment carefully on their way toward the bridge, but they were all the same, empty. Unable to check every level of the ship, Wizzy had provided Amini with some fireflies, which she released after departing engineering. Even those little things could find nothing. They could not even find a way into the bridge. That would be Amini and Sif’s job.

  Sif stopped at the hatch leading to the bridge and held up a hand, signaling Amini to stop. Then he clenched his fist in a universal sign of hold here. He had been teaching us these signals. Amini held up a thumb signaling she understood. They could use their helmet comms, but they were in the silent mode. Most spacecraft bridge hatches opened from the outside in. That was to prevent a sudden loss of pressure in the ship from pulling the hatch open and sucking all the air from the vital control area. Both in suspense, Doc and I watched as Sif eased the hatch handle back and put his shoulder to the door, preparing to push the hatch open. Early on, both he and Amini had agreed that when they entered a closed space, they would go in low to avoid weapons fire from the inside, ready to fire their own weapons, if needed. That had been the way they entered every compartment so far. This entry would be no different.

  With Sif’s hands busy with his rifle and the hatch, we saw Amini hold up three fingers and lower them one at a time. Three… two… one. The hatch blew open with Sif’s significant weight behind it. Both rolled onto the bridge deck with rifles up, ready to fire. There was no opposition. Instead, there were only shaking and frightened beings — five thin, tired, human-looking beings, not the vision of nasty, throat-cutting pirates.

  “Who are you?” Amini asked in Arkon standard. Her voice was amplified by the battle suit, which served to frighten the beings more. She lowered her rifle and dialed down the helmet volume.

  “We aren’t going to hurt you. But we need to know who you are and why you’re on this ship.”

  A lone quivering hand went up from the group. It was attached to a young female.

  “We are prisoners. The people who own this ship attacked and stole our cargo ship. We were taken. This is my family.”

  “Where are the possessors of this ship?” Sif demanded. His size, tone, and volume of his voice causing the group to draw closer together.

  “My friend means you no harm,” Amini said. “He hates the people who did this to you and wants to find them if they are still on this ship.”

  The young female eased away from the meager shelter of her family.

  “I think they are all dead. We think they were all killed when the ship was hit by powerful blasts. Some we know were headed for a shuttle, but we think that was also hit. Our prison was partly destroyed, and we all ran out looking for safety. This was the only place we found that we felt safe. Who are you?”

  “If you are prisoners, as you say, we are friends. It was our ship that fired on this one. We trailed it from Kiber. It was after another smaller ship which they fired on. There was only one survivor.”

  I noticed Sif looking systematically around the bridge, including the overhead. Something was bothering him.

  “We should leave.”

  “What’s wrong?” Amini asked.

  “I feel vibrations and hear sounds that I do not like. I think the ship is breaking up.”

  “All of you. My friend does not trust this ship to survive. We must all leave now. We have a shuttle and can take you all to safety. Follow us… now!”

  Sif’s senses were right. As the Argos shuttle returned home, the Myron started to disintegrate. Things happened slowly at first as stressed frames began to give way and the hull’s integrity weakened. None of us could ever be sure what caused the final explosion, but it was probably sparks from tearing metal that ignited either fuel or stored weapons, or both. Whatever the cause, the last moments of the Myron were brief but spectacular. A bright flash, and then there was nothing but bits and pieces accelerating into space.

  Chapter 9

  The decision to watch and follow the Myron paid off. The female survivor of the Vegar turned out to be part of what I can only call the Resistance. That’s not the real name, but I can’t pronounce the real one, so I’ll stick with this one because I like things to be simple. I decided to ask our favorite AI to sum things up. This is what he said.

  “Well, Captain, combined with what we learned from our trip to Viron and what our survivor told us, we know that the Arkon left the basic infrastructure in place for the cities and surrounding areas after they departed. They did nothing to take advantage of or develop the enormous amount of undeveloped land that comprised the huge continent. Therefore, the people who remained after the Arkon departure might have had much to be thankful for, had it not been for the inevitable self-absorbed, power-hungry element of the remaining populace, some of whom were Arkon who declined to leave. Many of the former Arkon governing positions were filled with Arkon collaborators who kept their positions by yielding to those demanding and assuming power.”

  “And why was there nobody to stop all this?’ I asked.

  “I think I have already suggested that there was and is no police force or army to prevent things like this from happening. In fact, it was the people filling the power vacuum that had weapons, and they will to use them. As a result, the planet became a virtual slave habitat. Yes, people had businesses, and traders did business with one another or two other planets like Jayton and Tula but under the strict supervision of the new rulers.”

  “Then what happened?” Amini asked, now captured by the story Wizzy was telling.

  “Ah, yes. As time passed, the powerful wanted more. Isn’t that just like primitive apes? Anyway, they in
stituted an increasing number of fees to do business and to convert precious metal to script, which they controlled. We’ve seen that ourselves. The latest insult to the population and visitors has been virtual piracy. Visiting ships and even Tye ships and their cargos were being seized by the overseers. The crews and passengers of the ships were either turned into slaves for labor camps or forced to crew a growing number of cargo ships solely dedicated to making the rich richer.”

  I interrupted Wizzy. “And when we arrived, we saw firsthand how the latter was happening. We called it piracy for lack of a better word. When we saw what was happening on the planet, we decided that the pirates had taken over the planet and the government.”

  “Right you are,” Wizzy continued. “The name the people of the planet had for it was Mayhar. Loosely translated into ‘the bastards.’ The ruling elite, now true pirates, loved it and adopted it for themselves — the Mayhar government or just the Mayhar for short.”

  I still liked the word pirates, though. It made things simpler to understand.

  “Anyway,” Wizzy continued, “the Resistance is made of a growing part of Tye’s oppressed society that resents the Mayhar — excuse me, the pirates for my simian friends. Citizens are traders who are cheated, families whose members have been taken and never heard from again, and a long list of others suffering from the degradations of their world.”

  When Wizzy was done, I remembered Mrs. Thomas, my ninth-grade history teacher, used to tell us about those sorts of problems and groups on our own world, Earth. Didn’t like them then and don’t like them now. Neither do my companions.

  The Vegar captain, Larona was her name, was an athletic woman with short, blond hair and brown eyes. We went to see her in the med center after Doc said it was OK. Once she was convinced that we were not part of the pirate organization or any organization on Tye, she told us she was on her way to one of the Resistance camps with more news of missing ships, families, etc. She was thrilled to be rescued, that we had done away with one of the pirate ships, and to top it off, saved one of the families that had been listed as missing. She was more than a little concerned that one of our crew was an Arkon Red but moderated her concerns when she learned what he had done for the rescued family. She balked, however, when I asked the location of the camp she was headed to.

  “I can’t tell you that without the permission of our leadership. I’m sure you can understand why.”

  I could, and I did. But I started seeing a big plus here.

  “Sure, I understand. But you could be a big help to us.”

  “I’m not sure how,” Larona said. “We don’t have a ship with the weapons you do. How could we help you?”

  Larona hadn’t seen the improved parts of the Argos, just the medical center and the old quarters and mess hall. The real capabilities of the ship, by my orders, were off-limits to everyone until I said otherwise. “I’m working on that. But for now, we need eyes and ears on Tye to follow the activities of the pirates and whoever controls them…”

  She cut me off. “You don’t know who controls all this? The actual head of the Mayhar?” She asked that like I was stupid, which I was about some important details about this part of space.

  “Ah, no.”

  Then she laughed. More at me than my friends, but we all took a little offense. “You’ve never heard of General Gurko?”

  “No. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Gurko runs everything, all the kidnapping, cheating, and, as you call it, pirating in this part of space, as well as what is loosely called a government on Tye.”

  I was too busy seeing the dropped jaws of Doc and Amini when they heard this. Sif seemed unimpressed. I wondered.

  “Sif, I can’t help but see that you aren’t surprised to hear this. Did you already know about this Gurko guy?”

  “Yes. I thought everyone did.”

  I slapped my forehead. A picture of Larry, Curly, and Moe flashed before my eyes. You know, the old-time comedy team, The Three Stooges. My mother and uncles used to watch them all the time. That’s who we seemed like as we stared, with annoyance, at Sif. I felt like using two fingers to poke into Sif’s eyeballs — just kidding. Then another thought hit me.

  “Oh, Wizzy,” I called. “Did you know about Gurko?”

  No visual appeared, just the voice. “Ah, no. Absolutely not. Never heard of him. Was that important? Don’t answer that. I’ll just go and find some details for you. OK? OK. Talk with you later. Bye.” The voice was gone.

  I turned to Larona, who was just keeping her grin under control.

  “You’ll have to forgive us. We’re new to the area, except Sif (who I glared at), and we are just getting up to speed. We were attacked twice and find it hard to figure out what’s going on.” That wasn’t the total truth, but close to it. “Tell us more about this Gurko guy, especially where he operates from, assuming you know.”

  “That is a little more difficult.” She then filled us in on what she knew. The bottom line is that we discovered Gurko has a place (more like a places) in Viron and Kiber, which he seldom uses. The locals suspect that he might have a camp in a secluded spot on Tye, but nothing concrete. That the Resistance knows of, he has at least two warships, a destroyer, and a corvette, commanded by an undistinguished Arkon Red named Coriolanus. The ships are old Arkon ships. In my experience, those sorts of ships, on a good day, were not known for being high on maintenance and reliability.

  Larona was surprised we had met Toor on at least two occasions and survived both. Toor was ruthless and Gurko’s chosen person to control ship hijacking, cheating traders, controlling the script market, and, last but not least, kidnapping. A lot, in my mind, for a short, red-eyed pain in the ass.

  We agreed to fly Larona and the family of five, who remained huddled in the old crews’ quarters, to a place where she could later be picked up by her fellow Resistance members. She gave us several frequencies to call her or the other leaders, and we worked out a recognition code. Not bad for a day’s intelligence work.

  We found out what was happening and who was responsible, but we still had no idea what Gurko’s strength was, where he was, or if he was a threat to the Consortium. Besides, we had only been here a little over two weeks — seventeen days, to be exact. That may seem like a long time until you realize that, to us, without the ability to leap, the greatest single consumer of time was travel. Remember, space is big. A day to go here, two days to go there, it all mounted up.

  The next day we located ourselves over Viron again in stealth mode. We wanted to track another ship, this time to look for pirate bases and even capture some of the pirates, if we could, to interrogate. We held off doing that earlier because we weren’t sure what to do with the extra people. Now we knew the Resistance would be more than glad to take them, along with any prisoners we were able to rescue. We sat and waited. I know, you’re asking yourself why we didn’t decide to go back to the asteroid base where we were captured. It might be a good place to visit again, but we were overpowered and outgunned the last time. Perhaps we could do that later if we had more help.

  Ten hours later, I was on duty with Sif when he spotted a ship he had seen before. A freighter, a little newer than those they had seen before, but still old. I decided to follow it in stealth mode. It headed away from Tye and in the general direction of Asteroid 3 — the direction from which we had originally come when we were first approached by a pirate.

  Argos had no problem following the ship, which hadn’t gone to FTL. They were hunting, or maybe they had an intelligence asset that alerted them to coming prey. I prefer to think they were on the hunt in a corridor that had been fruitful in the past. I was right.

  Three days out, another Zarminian cargo ship, thinking the new territory would yield great rewards, was plugging its way toward Tye, likely loaded with construction materials, including lumber just as we were when we first arrived. I suspect they looked forward t
o big profits from their sale to a world recovering from Arkon oppression and maybe the purchase of lots of cheap Arkon ship parts that must be littering these abandoned areas of Arkon power. Those could be sold at big profits for repair of the numerous damaged Arkon ships following the war. It’s funny what the promise of profits will do to some people’s good sense. It was no secret that ships frequently disappeared in this region, yet they came anyway seeking trade with the old Arkon Empire. This one, like those before them, was a simple ship and could offer little to no resistance if jumped. The crews would likely be taken as laborers if they didn’t fight, and Toor, we now knew, would keep the trade materials and add the ship to his cargo pirate fleet.

  It happened just the way we thought. The old ship offered a pathetic resistance before the pirates forced them to surrender. Then they took possession and headed off in a new direction toward one of the two moons of Tye called Ledo. That was different, so we continued to follow for two days back toward Tye.

  There are two moons of Tye: Ledo and Krona. Each about half the diameter of Earth’s moon or about eleven hundred miles in diameter each, give or take. The verbal history of both is that they used to be storage locations for the Arkon Empire but were abandoned after the Arkon defeat. A history file created by Wizzy showed that ships have gone to both moons but found nothing worthwhile. The general consensus on Tye was that the rumored use was a myth or maybe a political/PR lie from the time of the war. Since the war, no attempt to use either moon was made in earnest because there were no materials that were of value. Plus, the low gravity and lack of oxygen made it too difficult to colonize or use. Just not worth it. Still, people tried now and then but always with failure.

  Nonetheless, the ships we were following headed straight as an arrow for Ledo. As we got within our visual range, we could see that the ships were not headed for the surface or a sub-surface facility. Rather, the pirates had established a space station of sorts in stationary orbit on the far side, the side not visible from Tye. It wasn’t much, just a couple of old hulks linked together by cables. The moon’s gravity wasn’t enough to hold the hulks in a permanent, stable orbit, so we guessed they had to use positioning thrusters now and then to maintain position. But each hulk looked to have considerable storage for contraband, supplies, temporary prisoner facilities, and modest living quarters. We suspected they were replenished regularly, in part at least, by the delivery of ships and cargos like the one in tow by the pirate ship we had been following. It was starting to appear Toor was smarter than he looked and found ways to spread out his risk, wealth, and support on the chance that one or more storage sites might be found and/or destroyed. Always a place to hide and store some loot at the very least. But it wasn’t a major base. The exterior of both hulks was dark, and there were minimal emissions. Just a waypoint in the pirate web. The new question was what to do, if anything, now that the base was found. As we watched, a few shuttles went back and forth between the captured ship and one of the hulks, then stopped. Sif had the simplest plan.