Blackstar Command 1: Prominence

by A. C. Hadfield

  Prominence

  Blackstar Command Book 1

  A.C. Hadfield

  Colin F. Barnes

  Vast Frontiers Ltd

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Authors

  First Published in 2017 by Vast Frontiers Ltd

  Copyright A.C. Hadfield & Colin F. Barnes 2017

  All Rights Reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Version 1.0

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter 1

  In the dappled gray light of a Zarundan winter’s afternoon, Kai Locke stood over the smoldering, still body of the trader and wiped smoke from his eyes.

  The pungent gas hung in his throat. Blood dripped down his face like viscous sweat on a humid summer’s night. This wasn’t summer, however; it was mid-winter on the jungle planet, and despite the chill wind blowing through the market, Kai’s body temperature continued to rise, along with his heart rate.

  “What did you do?” he said, his attention still on the body of a spindly alien from one of the outer ring planets. A Therusian, Kai guessed, given the augmented gills on her throat.

  He whirled around and stared at his employee and friend, Senaya.

  She looked up at him with those big eyes of hers and blinked slowly.

  Standing a foot shorter than Kai, her larger-than-human eyes seemed even wider than usual. Her thin mohawk, dyed a bright blue, ruffled in the wind, the diodes entwined with her hair twinkling like distant stars. She held in her right hand one of her bespoke firearms: a short-range plasma-pulser.

  Smoke from the rusted barrel billowed in the frigid wind.

  The stench of rotten eggs filled the air.

  “Don’t look at me like that, boss. I had to do it,” she said. “But we can’t just stand around here. We’ve got a ship to find, right? So let’s go find it.”

  The other market traders headed back to their stalls beneath the canopies strung along the tree trunks. Wandering dealers and buyers of a dozen species huddled past Kai and Senaya, only briefly looking at the dead information trader, exchanging whispers amongst themselves before returning to the hustle and bustle of business.

  It wasn’t the first dealer to be killed at a market gathering. It wasn’t even the first one today, but still, Kai was a business owner, a racing-ship mechanic, and that came with a certain respect that he liked to maintain, even if he wasn’t as clean as his reputation suggested.

  “Sen, what the hell? You killed her; why’d you do it? She gave us the coordinates of the ship. It was a fair price. There was no reason to shoot her.”

  “Plenty of reason.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Check her body, see what she’s got in her third arm.”

  Kai knelt and pushed the alien to her side, revealing a third, smaller arm articulated from the spine. In the three-fingered hand, the alien held a dart-loaded short-range sticker—a weapon of choice for assassins.

  “So this is no trader, then,” Kai said.

  Senaya shook her head. "It was a cover—I thought I recognized her when you first started the negotiation, but I couldn't quite place her until I saw the barrel of the sticker."

  “Crap, I came that close, eh?”

  “Not you, Kai. Me.”

  “I don’t understand. Why’d anyone want to assassinate you?” Kai stood up and looked through the market. A commotion was breaking out at the edge near the entrance. It seemed as though someone had informed the security bots.

  “We have to explain this,” Kai said.

  “No chance. We're getting out of here. Come on. I'll explain later."

  “Sen, we can’t afford to have a visit from an inquisitor, not this close to the race. The fine will be astronomical. Let’s just explain…”

  “Talk later, boss. We have to move,” Senaya said, turning away from the stall. She holstered her plasma pulser into one of the many pockets on her leather mechanic’s suit.

  Kai remembered the day when she had made the suit herself. That was over eleven years ago when she was just seven years old. She hadn't grown an inch since then and was still just as impulsive.

  The small half-human, half-Tasarel grabbed Kai by the elbow and dragged him away from the stall to join the flowing stream of pedestrians. “Just trust me. Let’s get out of here for now.”

  Kai refused for a moment. He stared into her eyes, trying to see if she was lying to him. After a brief pause, he saw nothing to suggest she was lying. He’d known Senaya for long enough to extend the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, but we need to talk more,” he said, and quickly escaped through the market. He briefly looked over his shoulder. A security drone had arrived at the scene of the shooting and buzzed around, recording the scene.

  Kai and Senaya dashed through the throng of people and down narrow alleys and through waste tunnels until they were sure they were safely away from the scene.

  A yellow beacon signal shot straight up into the sky. A drone ship would be along soon to recover the body for processing. It seemed the other market traders hadn't talked, as there were no sirens or security droids in the sky—yet.

  Still jogging, Kai and Sen exited the market district and entered the wild jungle that surrounded it. Thick leaves fifty meters high blocked the orange light of the sun, giving the jungle a cooler, more foreboding feel, which Kai preferred.

  Darkness meant shadows, and the canopy meant it was more difficult to be spotted by air. They continued on, following a trader’s path through dense trees and over narrow bridges made from branches of the tall akarlis tree.

  They eventually arrived at a leafy grotto ahead of a mountain cave system. Above them, a waterfall rushed down the rocky face and gathered in a bubbling pool.

  Kai stopped by the mouth of the cave, which was half-hidden by wide-leafed plants, and pulled Senaya to the side.

  “Are you going to expand on what happened back there?” Kai said, a growl in his voice.

  “I knew her,” Senaya said. “She recognized me just after you completed the trade for the ship’s coordinates. If we had time, I’d have explained more, but I’ve seen her before and, well, I had only that one chance—”

  “If this comes back on us, even for self-defense, it’s going to cost a fortune. We’ll be fined for fleeing the scene. The inquisitor is already trying to bill me for smuggling.”

  “The whole smuggling thing wasn’t my fault,” Senaya said, crossing her arms over her narrow chest.

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  “I know, but it’s
your body language. Every time you mention it, it’s as if you’re suggesting it’s my fault you got caught with the crystallites.”

  “Well, it was you who flew through a checkpoint, smashing the barriers.”

  “I was distracted by your whining.”

  “Sure…”

  “Anyways, forget that. The trader, I recognized her.”

  “From where?” Kai leaned in closer but kept an eye out for spy drones.

  Senaya reached into one of her many pockets and pulled out a narrow holoscroll. She unfurled it and showed it to Kai. “There, see? The one at the back of that crowd.”

  Kai squinted at the old, pixelated video file and recognized the alien. She was wearing a municipal driving uniform. The video showed her place something into her jacket and turn away from the crowd.

  “What am I looking at exactly?” Kai said. “The crowd I mean, what are they standing around?”

  “My dead cousins,” Senaya said. “I was just a baby at the time. I’m somewhere out of shot. But my cousins were much older and worked for the Coalition government. They were on their way to a summit for peace talks between the Coalition and the Host forces after the Host surrendered.”

  “And they didn’t make it?”

  “Right.”

  “So why would the trader—or assassin—come here to kill you?” Kai asked. “You’ve been with me all this time, and there’s never been any problems before. Why now?”

  Senaya shrugged her slight shoulders and replaced the holoscroll into her pocket. “Don’t know, don’t care. I got to shoot first, and that’s all that matters. I’m sure I’ll figure it out later, but with no family to speak of, I guess the assassin was tying up loose ends. For all I know, she had me found and wanted to get me out of the way to cover her tracks.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Kai said. He’d treated her like a sister, and as far as he knew, they’d shared everything. They had complete trust in each other.

  She shrugged. “It just never came up. Like I said, I was a baby and didn’t even know my cousins. A few months after that footage, I was orphaned and went from family to family until, well, until you helped me. I just wanted to forget all that, you know? I wasn’t expecting anything to come back from those times.”

  “But you kept the video footage,” Kai pressed.

  “Well, I guessed that one day I’d want to know more about what happened. It never occurred to me I’d ever come face-to-face with my cousins’ killer.”

  “So what now?” Kai asked, checking the few patches of visible sky above him. “Do you want to follow it up? I could probably find someone to check out the body, get an ID perhaps.”

  “Nah, I just want to forget it, Kai. Look, we have a ship to find, right? We need parts for the race, and this is our one chance. The longer we stand around gabbing about this, the slimmer the chance of salvaging it before someone else.”

  “Sure, but—”

  Before Kai could say anything else, Senaya turned away and walked off, heading north through the clearing and into a system of cave tunnels that would lead them away from the Market Quarter.

  Kai followed her, trying to figure out what all this might mean—if anything at all. Just why would the assassin go out of her way to kill Senaya after all this time?

  Nothing came to him right away, so he focused on the job at hand: finding the wreckage of a mystery ship that the recently purchased coordinates would reveal.

  A ship that was rumored to have some of the most advanced tech the backward world of Zarunda had ever seen. Such technology would give him the edge in the upcoming annual Zarunda Classic ship race, the winnings of which would help get him and his friends off the damned planet.

  Once they had left the tunnels, they would need to follow an old dirt track that led away from the jungle and track the Gretxi River that would ultimately lead to a patch of desert where the ship was reported to have crashed.

  After a few more kilometers’ travel, they came to the hiding spot where they had left their transport tug. Kai took the pilot seat, not trusting Senaya to be fully in control of her emotions.

  By the time they reached the spindle-like porcelain towers of Barbuta, Kai's heart rate had returned to normal, and the excitement of a scavenge soon took his focus.

  In the chair beside his, Senaya tapped out a series of commands on the holographic display. Chirps and radio signatures buzzed over the old speakers as Kai piloted the boxlike tug through a growing flow of traffic.

  Kai flew the craft up into the next lane to avoid a slow-moving sky barge full of robed worshippers and switched on the comm-bud in his ear. “Seems busy,” he said.

  “Barbutan Festival of Fire today,” Senaya replied via her own comm-bud. “The opening ceremony is in a few hours. Shame we can’t stick around for it.”

  “Ah, of course. That’s useful—it’ll provide us some cover to pillage in peace. Okay, we’re coming to the toll gates, check clearance for me, would you?”

  “Scanners are clear,” Senaya said. “We’ve been given passage through towers two and three, level seven. Discount rate due to the festival.”

  “And saving money too. I’m growing to like the Barbutans,” Kai said with a smile.

  “They're very likable entities—apart from that whole sacrifice in flame thing…"

  “Yeah, that does seem a little excessive.”

  Kai checked the upcoming signage and made sure their tug was on the right flight vector through their allocated passage. When they were clear, they entered a slow, controlled dive away from the thirteen monolithic towers. Their pale-white surfaces shone with a warm hue as the sun started its descent towards the horizon.

  Below them, the river snaked eastwards. Traffic continued to flow north and west, leaving them alone. Kai, not a fan of being so open, brought the tug lower until they were skimming across the top of the one-hundred-meter-high celpy trees, their feather-like leaves brushing the bottom of the hull, clearing away accumulated dirt and grime.

  Their destination would take another hour, so Kai switched to autopilot and turned toward Senaya. She was busy running engineering checks.

  “Is the old girl doing okay?” Kai said.

  Senaya swiveled on the chair and nodded her head. “Good as goldite. If you don’t do anything stupid, we’ve got more than enough fuel to return home fully laden.”

  “Me do something stupid? That’s rich, coming from you after your exploits earlier.”

  She shrugged, got up, and headed to the back of the tug.

  “Hey, come back, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Kai said.

  “Someone’s got to prep the salvaging gear,” she shouted back, far more defensively than was necessary, and so loud in his ear that he winced at the temporary pain.

  He sighed and turned back to face the view screen. The light outside was starting to drop. The external lights of the tug switched on automatically, but he overrode the system, preferring to stay stealthy. He switched over to night vision and manually piloted into the desert, following closely to the coordinates he had bought from the now-dead trader.

  Thinking back on it, the trader had seemed odd once the deal was done. It was as if she'd changed her mind. That must have been when she'd seen Senaya, he thought.

  He let that idea submerge into his subconscious and focused on their fast-approaching destination. Below them, the field of celpy trees had given way to the steppes—volcanic rocks that stretched out for a thousand kilometers to the east.

  At first, Kai couldn’t find the wreckage, even though they were over the exact coordinates. He was about to call Senaya back to check on their scanners when an explosion lurched their tug violently to one side.

  A gaping hole blew open in the right side of the cockpit, and loose items flew towards it as the cabin depressurized. Flames burst around the aperture, licking at the edges of the vast gash in the hull, until the automatic extinguishers kicked in, dousing Kai and everything within the cockpit with powder
.

  “Sen, are you okay back there?” he asked while he fought to keep the tug flying straight. “What the hell happened?”

  “Raiders!” Sen screamed back over the communications channel, the last syllable swallowed by the blast of the tug’s cannons.

  Kai brought up their scanner view and saw three enemy units on the ground—surrounding the crashed ship. They’d been beaten to it after all.

  He hauled the tug up and around, sweeping back away from the trio of anti-air fire. “Sen, cover us with the cannons. I’m going back around. These pirate bastards aren’t getting my ship.”

  “I hear you, Captain.”

  The blasting of gunfire erupted again from the rear cannon.

  From outside the tug, a dull thud boomed. Senaya had managed to take out one of the anti-air vehicles. Sirens and lights blared in the cockpit, warning him of low fuel and pressure. He clipped on a face mask attached to his chair and set a low, circular flyby before exiting the cockpit.

  The bulkhead slammed behind him, and he raced through the narrow corridor until he came to the ordnance control pod. Further toward the rear of the ship, Senaya was sitting in the cannon module, her arms waving across control screens as she provided the cover fire he needed.

  The tug pitched and started its descent.

  “I’m all out of cannon ammo. And you better not have programmed a collision course,” Senaya shouted, her voice distorting loudly across the communications channel.

  “Of course not,” Kai replied.

  It was a lie.

  He figured that if the ordnance didn’t take out the two remaining enemies, then they’d do it the old-fashioned way. The tug should withstand a low-speed crash, and if this mystery ship proved half as good as the rumor, they’d easily have enough equipment and tech to get back to the workshop.

  The tug shuddered under incoming fire.

  “We’re hit again,” Senaya said, running down the corridor towards the hold. “Engine bay is on fire; extinguishing systems down.”