Star Runners: Mission Wraith (#3)

by L. E. Thomas

  Austin’s continuing appointments with the ship’s counselor had been used to disguise his secret briefings on Zahlian military customs and other aspects of his mission. And it was during one of these sessions Austin learned he would have to “die” to begin the mission. To carry out Austin’s staged death, Braddock had said undercover Legion agents paid a group of marauders flying modified fighters for a hit and run attack.

  Once Austin had punched out and floated in the escape pod, he had drunk the foul smelling medicine in the plastic test tube Braddock had given him and promptly passed out into the nightmare. Braddock had said he wouldn’t dream, that it would be like being knocked out for surgery.

  He was wrong. If Austin made it through this, he would be sure to tell the Major about it and see if he wanted to try being put into hibernation.

  At first, Austin didn’t understand why he had to “die” until Braddock said he feared the effects of the Zahlian forces hacking into the Legion network at the science station. If Austin’s files listed him as deceased, he would be erased from the Zahlian Intelligence and would be theoretically clear to carry out his mission. By now, he knew his comrades had said goodbye to him, thinking he was dead and gone.

  Ryker had probably said her farewells. He wished he could get a message to her, but she had her squadron. She would be fine. He needed to concentrate on what was ahead of him. He knew he would have to pass covertly through Zahlian space and steal the Wraith. But how exactly this would happen was a mystery.

  Braddock said an entire team of Legion agents had organized transportation behind Zahlian lines to put him in a position to steal the Wraith. Austin figured a crack team would somehow deliver the Wraith to him. The less who knew the entirety of Mission Wraith, Braddock said, the more chance of success.

  Although he got the feeling the Legion thought of him as expendable, Austin agreed to the mission. Anything would have been better than battling against an invisible fighter and waiting to get picked off. If this mission allowed the Legion to balance the scales, he was fine with it.

  And they said time was running out before the Wraith would move from its known location. He was the Legion’s only chance.

  He snorted. It might be a suicide mission.

  He shut his eyes. The nightmares from his drug induced coma plagued his mind. Images of burning forests, Mom screaming, Nubern crashing into the ocean …

  He shook his head.

  A high-pitched wail burst through the air. A voice filled the air, speaking in a language Austin had never heard before. Searching the room, his eyes fell on the molded sink. He saw a translator sitting on the edge of the rusty steel.

  “You’ve slept long enough,” a voice announced through a small, ratty-looking speaker in the corner of his room. “Take a right out of your room and meet us in the common area.”

  The speaker clicked, and he was once again in silence. Fighting the urge to lie back down on the bed, he stood on wobbly legs. His joints popped as he walked across the room and opened the hatch. It moved outward with a screech of metal on metal. Steam burst into the room, bringing with it the smell of cooked cabbage.

  Wonderful.

  He slowly made his way down the hall.

  The corridor opened to a small circular space not much bigger than his quarters. Two men sat at the table. On the left, a brawny bald man in a greasy shirt with a dozen holes in the chest hunched over a steaming bowl filled with green and orange leaves. He took an ample wooden fork that looked like a rake in his pudgy fingers, scooped up the food and shoved it into his angular face. Liquid dripped down through the sandpaper stubble on his chin and back into the bowl. He stared across the room with dull, black eyes.

  His companion couldn’t have been more different. Long, stringy hair tied back behind his head, the wiry man stood and stared. If a stiff wind came through the room, the man would be blown to the floor. The thin man stared for a long moment, his sunken eyes studying Austin.

  “So whatcha doing way out here traveling in a body bag?” the man said, his voice sounding like a rodent squeaking.

  Austin remembered the cover story quickly. “I’m a refugee. Escaping persecution on my own planet, Toman.”

  The thin man glanced at the giant man at the table still focused on shoving the oily leaves into his massive face.

  “I’m Ravi,” the lean man said. “This here is Blaine, but he’ll respond to just about anything. Except don’t call him slow or dense, really seems to rub him wrong, you know?”

  “Sure,” Austin said, although he didn’t understand. How did the Legion get him on board a ship like this?

  Ravi gestured to the table. “Dapar Leaves?”

  “Huh?”

  “You like Dapar Leaves?”

  Austin winced as the stench of the leaves surrounded him like a cloud. He kept breathing through his mouth, hoping he would grow accustomed to the odor.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said with a grimace. It still smelled.

  He sat at the table, his joints aching.

  Ravi sat and stared at him, the stench of his breath washing over the table. “You gotta name?”

  “Connor,” Austin said without thinking. “My name is Connor.”

  “All right, Connor. Eat up.”

  Up close, the Dapar Leaves smelled like they had been soaked in dog urine. The leafy vegetable had a way of sticking in the throat, and he quickly wished he had something other than murky water to wash it down.

  “We have a lot of work to do,” Ravi said. “Once you finish, we need to start on the tattoos. Yes.”

  He sighed, remembering the part of the briefing Braddock said he needed tattoos as part of his undercover work. “Right. When do we reach our destination?”

  “Tomorrow,” Ravi said, picking black stringy particles from his teeth as his leg gyrated under the table. “Gives us enough time to finish up the tattoos. Gotta ask you something, though.”

  Austin looked across the table, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling. “Go ahead.”

  “We’re getting paid a lot of money to transport you. Yes. Seems like you might be worth quite a bit of money. Maybe we should drop you somewhere else.” He leaned across the table, his buggy eyes taking him in. “Maybe I put out a message and ask for a ransom. Maybe I do that, eh? Maybe I do? Whatta ya think of that?”

  For the first time, Blaine looked up from his Dapar Leaves and smiled, revealing blackened teeth spotted with yellow. He pounded his massive fists on the table.

  Austin remembered this part of the briefing when Braddock instructed him of his backstory. For countless hours, Braddock had instructed him on what portion he knew of Mission Wraith.

  “My uncle is paying you to deliver me safely,” he said. “And he’s paying you well. You don’t want to cross my uncle. He’s a very powerful man and would take it personally if I didn’t arrive safely. He’d take it very personally.”

  Ravi released a gurgling sound from his throat.

  “You make a good point, Mr. Connor. Yes. We were paid to pick you up and deliver you. That is what we intend to do.” He thrust a rusty knife across the table. “Don’t think of crossing me, got it?”

  Austin nodded. “Ah, sure thing.”

  *****

  “Mr. Connor,” the cracked speaker hissed. “We are approaching our destination.”

  Austin flinched at the sound. Somehow, he had managed to sleep a little but the popping speaker ended his rest. The effects of the hibernation drugs must be wearing off, just as Major Braddock had indicated. His vision seemed clearer, the filthy details of his quarters coming into focus. His mind still felt like a haze hovered over everything.

  His arms ached from the tattoos Ravi and Blaine had added the night before. Stretching his arms above him as he remained on his back, he studied the strange black and yellow circles on his forearms. The three circles interlocked similar to the Olympic rings, except these were placed with one on top and the two others below the first on either side.

  Austin had
been told they were the symbols of the Originist, whatever that meant. Braddock had said little about how the actual mission would be carried out, only that it would be carried out by the embedded agents in Zahlian space and that it was top secret. He said there wasn’t time, and Austin would be told more when he needed to know along the way.

  “Mr. Connor?”

  Austin stumbled across the grimy room, his feet scuffing the cold floor caked in a permanent layer of sludge. He pressed the intercom. “All right. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  Austin dressed in the tan coverall, ignoring the sore muscles and tender arms that had been tattooed the night before.

  Austin shuffled out into the corridor and into the cloudy stench of boiling cabbage. He had been awake on this derelict vessel for almost two days, and he had still not grown used to the stench. Blaine stood in the common area, watching the open flame on the stove. He tossed some of the oily leaves into a pot and laughed at the sizzling sound.

  He glanced up at Austin as he entered, the smile fading from his face. Austin nodded, but the man turned back to his leaves.

  At least he doesn’t want to cook me, Austin thought. Blaine reminded him of a troll from the fairy tales, the one who would sit under the bridge and wait for travelers to pass by or for stray animals to linger at the top of the bridge. As a result, Austin tried to give the beast of a man a wide berth and let him enjoy his leaves while, hopefully, ignoring everyone around him.

  He passed through the common area and down the corridor leading to the bridge. The short hall was about as wide as a portable toilet and smelled about the same. Austin winced as he raised his arm to knock on the bridge door.

  “Yes?” Ravi’s squeaky voice called.

  “It’s Connor,” he said. “We almost there?”

  “Yes, yes, come in.”

  Austin pushed back the door and saw the bridge for the first time. Colorful wires hung from the ceiling, tangled into a mess of blues, yellows, and reds. Red lights flashed on the dashboard—usually a warning sign on his Trident, but it must be standard operation on this vessel. Ravi tilted his head back, staring for a long moment as he chewed on what Austin hoped was beef jerky. Ravi left one hand on the wheel, pointing out the viewport that wasn’t much bigger than the television Mom had in the living room back home.

  “That’s where we’re heading,” Ravi said. “We orbit there, and we’ll be contacted. Yes. Contacted pretty soon, they say. At least, you’d better hope it’s really soon, right? Right, Connor?”

  Austin raised his hand. “Right, I got it. Thanks.”

  He stared at the approaching planet. An ocean was visible under a thin swirl of clouds. The golden brown color of the continent signified a vast desert was running up against the ocean. Thick clouds covered the rest of the planet, hiding whatever lurked below. Austin had been to three planets in his life. He still marveled at the fact there were other planets capable of supporting human life. And now he was about to orbit another one.

  “What’s the name of this planet?” Austin asked.

  “Not really named on a map, nope. Not really a need.” Ravi chewed with his mouth open, the smacking sound grating Austin’s nerves. “We’re far from anything, far from even a remote outpost.” He pointed to the left and then used his thumb to point the opposite direction. “Empire’s that way; Legion’s this way. That planet down there doesn’t have a name—at least not to the people who make maps. People down there call it something else.”

  Austin stared at the planet spinning beneath them. “You’ve been down there?”

  Ravi swayed back and forth. “Sure, lots of times. Treat us like gods they do down there. Yes. It’s nice. Ashia’s a nice place.”

  “Ashia? That’s what they call it?”

  “Ashia, yes. Ashia. Wanna Vitar?”

  Austin blinked. “What?”

  “Vitar?” Ravi asked, holding out a piece of the beef jerky.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Your arms okay?”

  Austin glanced down at his forearms. The skin around the tattoos had turned red and tender, but he had grown used to the feeling. After the effects of the hibernation drug, the burn of the tattoos had felt like nothing at all.

  “Good.” Austin nodded, glancing at his arms. “They’re good. Thank you for doing it.”

  Ravi tilted his head to the right, then left again. “Yes. We’re earning our paycheck, right? Course, if no one shows up to claim you, you’re in trouble.”

  Austin sighed. “So you said.”

  He watched as Ravi brought the ship into orbit and shut down the engines. The brown terrain of Ashia stretched out beneath them.

  “Now we wait.”

  Austin nodded. “Now we wait.”

  *****

  Austin dropped his fork into the oily leaves—the stinking, wretched leaves he had been forced to eat for two days onboard Ravi’s ship. The fork sunk into the vegetation with a squishy sound like something getting sucked into quicksand.

  “All right look, man,” Austin said, placing his elbows on the table and resting his face in his hands. “I have always tried to be accepting of other cultures and their food. I have always enjoyed trying new things.”

  Blaine looked up from his leaves, a slight smile forming at the corner of his massive mouth.

  “But,” Austin continued, pointing at the steaming leaves in his bowl, “this stuff really sucks.”

  Blaine frowned.

  “I mean really sucks,” Austin said, shaking his head.

  Blaine brought the leaves to his face and slurped. “Sucks,” he grumbled.

  Austin sighed. “Is there anything else?”

  “Anything else?” Blaine asked. He nodded and stood, grabbing Austin’s bowl before shuffling over to the stove.

  Austin smiled. Finally, he would have something more than the Dapar Leaves. The strange food hadn’t agreed with him, either, ripping up his stomach and causing far too many trips to the disgusting bathroom the three of them were forced to share.

  Blaine turned around and brought the bowls back to the table, a fresh steaming pile of leaves filling Austin’s bowl. Blaine nodded and continued slurping his leaves.

  Austin shook his head and scooped up a leaf. He swallowed it before the taste lingered on his tongue, and the greasy leaf slid down his throat like slime.

  “So your translator doesn’t work too well, does it?” Austin asked.

  Before Blaine could answer, Ravi burst into the common area. “Ship’s coming in. Yes. I think it’s your ride.”

  Austin slapped his hands together. “Great!”

  They rushed to the small bridge, Ravi collapsing into the torn leather seat behind the wheel. He grabbed a black stick about the size of a chocolate bar from the dashboard and cleared his throat.

  “This is the Ravi Real Ship reaching out to the nameless ship bearing on Ashia,” Ravi said. “Please respond and identify.”

  They waited.

  “So that’s the name of your ship?” Austin asked. “Ravi Real Ship?”

  Ravi turned, his forehead lowering. “Good name. Yes. I always liked the name.”

  “Yes,” Austin said, realizing once again how ready he was to leave this ship and get the next phase of the mission underway. “It’s a good name.”

  Ravi repeated his message into the black microphone and leaned back. “Your ride is being quiet. Yes.”

  Austin watched the incoming ship as it closed on their position. He wondered what the ship’s transponder was sending out, but decided Ravi wouldn’t know what he was talking about anyway. In fact, Austin was starting to wonder how Ravi and Blaine traveled through space at all.

  As the approaching ship came closer, Austin noticed the angular shape seemed similar to a Karda but with more weaponry.

  “Ravi Real Ship,” the gamma wave came to life. “This is Taliford One. Do you have the package?”

  Ravi clapped twice. “Pay day,” he said before grabbing the stick. “We have the package. Do you h
ave the payment?”

  A pause. “Payment will be transferred to your account once we have the package. Prepare for transfer.”

  “Understood, Taliford One.” Ravi stood. “Don’t try any funny business, yes? We expect to be paid.”

  “Deliver the package.” The gamma wave sizzled for a second. “Deliver the package and be on your way. We await the transfer. We are coming along side. Proceed once we are in place.”

  Ravi slapped Austin’s arm. “Let’s go!”

  Austin yelled, the pain flashing through his body as Ravi’s hand connected with his freshly tattooed skin. “What are you doing?”

  “Sorry.” He tapped Austin’s arm with his index finger twice. “Still sore?”

  Austin glared at him. “Still? You did this last night.”

  “Last night. Yes.” He tapped Austin’s shoulder with two fingers. “Let’s go get suited up. Yes.”

  The throbbing of where Ravi’s hand contacted the skin on his arm pulsed through his body. Austin wasn’t sure he heard correctly. He rolled his head around on his neck twice before responding. “Suited up? For what?”

  “Space walk. Yes.”

  “Space walk?” Austin shook his head. “Why?”

  Ravi stared at him, a confused look on his face. “For the transfer. Yes.”

  “You don’t have an airlock? A docking collar? Nothing like that?”

  “Nope. No airlock. Never worked right. Yes.”

  Austin thought of the operations on this ship. Nothing truly seemed to work as it should. In fact, the ship probably shouldn’t even be in the air. If he ever found out who planned this operation, he might have to have some words.

  “Do you have a space suit?” Austin asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.