He was never good under pressure. Somehow, if he didn’t want more bloodshed, he would have to rise to the occasion. Oh, Betti, he thought. If only I had your way with words.
“Let’s hear what the Lightning has to say,” he said to Vin.
Griff didn’t like this one bit. He opened the same wireless channel he had used before.
The research station might be broadcasting that repeating garbage, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t receive a signal.
“Station Omega. We have lost contact with our pilots. Where are our pilots?”
He knew the look on his captain’s face. He’d initiated this contact on his own. This wouldn’t be the first time he had kept Nadu from killing everyone in sight.
“Station Omega. This is Cruiser Lightning. Repeat. We have lost contact with our pilots. Respond, or we will take retaliatory action.”
Nadu stared at him. “You actually expect them to have some frakking response?” He waved to others on deck. “Load the forward missiles. They’ll get more polite once we’ve blown up a building or two.”
Griff ignored his captain, still trying for a response. “Station Omega. If we do not receive a response, we will consider this an act of war. You will be fired upon.”
The warning loop, which Griff had kept playing faintly in the background, cut out abruptly. Griff turned up the volume on the incoming feed.
“Cruiser Lightning, this is Station Omega.” The familiar voice of the doctor cut through the static. “Our apologies. I’m afraid we’ve had a little misunderstanding.”
Well, that was a polite way to put it. Griff replied, “Station, we want to speak to our pilots. Now.”
“Cruiser Lightning. Those were fighters you sent down. Our defense protocols are a little primitive, I’m afraid. They have a programmed response to any ships that might pose a threat. Your pilots and their ships were both… neutralized before I could intervene. But no harm has come to your pilots or their ships.”
Griff glanced at Nadu. The captain glared back without response. That was Griff’s job now.
“If our pilots are unharmed, we need to speak to them.”
It took the doctor a moment to respond. “I’m sure you can, in a short time. I’ll have to get them patched into our wireless network. They are being held in a separate facility. When last I saw them, they were quite incoherent.”
“What have they got down there?” Nadu asked softly. Griff knew exactly what he was thinking. Symm and Twitch were usually ready to take on a dozen armed men with their bare hands.
Griff opened the wireless channel again.
“What aren’t you telling us, Omega? We have a full complement of weapons. If we suspect any foul play, we will not hesitate to use them.”
Another moment of silence.
“Oh dear,” the doctor’s voice finally replied. “That would be most distressing. There are other matters I need to bring up to you, about our companions. I think your men had a reaction—”
Griff cut him off. He didn’t have the time to listen to the doctor’s ramblings. “Let us talk to our pilots, and we can work this out. Otherwise…” Griff let the rest of the sentence hang.
“No, no. Please, you told me you’d send somebody a bit more—diplomatic. That was your term, wasn’t it? I’m sure we can work everything out. Now that I’ve seen the protocols, I can shut them down. The same thing won’t happen twice, I assure you. I’ll meet the next transport personally.”
Griff glanced at the captain again. This time, Nadu nodded his agreement. It was Griff’s call, then.
“Very well. We’ll send down a team of three in a landing transport. You’ll be talking with a young man who has my full confidence—Tom Zarek.”
“No,” the captain cut in loudly. “We will also send an escort. Two more Vipers, prepared to blast your station to rubble at the first sign of anything questionable. Do you understand?”
“Understood.” The doctor paused, then added, “I really don’t think—”
Griff cut him off mid-sentence. “We will want them to see the pilots first. As soon as our transport lands. Do you agree?”
The doctor paused a moment before answering again. “I’m—I’m sure we’ll work everything out.” He sounded overwhelmed.
Griff almost felt sorry for the doctor. “No doubt. You’re here alone on the edge of space. I imagine you can’t be too careful, hey? Do you agree?”
“I’ll make sure the pilots are ready to talk. If you could give me a little time—”
“Our diplomatic mission will meet you very shortly. We are quite concerned about the health of our men. I’m sure you understand. I will open a channel again when we launch the transport. Please be ready. Cruiser Lightning out.”
Griff cut the connection. He looked up to the captain. “So?”
“You didn’t give him a choice,” Nadu answered with the slightest of smiles. “We’ll get our men. Maybe we can get them without too many of their people being killed.”
Griff still didn’t have the best feeling about all of this.
“What do you make of this doctor who seems to run things?”
The captain shook his head. “He doesn’t run things very well.”
“He sounds a bit like a fool,” Griff agreed. “Or someone in way over his head.”
“He may lack experience in this. It would take a certain amount of brains and guts to work on a station way out here. I don’t know exactly who we are dealing with here, but I do not think they are fools.”
Griff thought the captain was right. This might not be quite so easy a jaunt as they had thought.
“Maybe they’re just being cautious,” he suggested. “Maybe they’re planning to use our pilots as hostages to force our good behavior.”
Nadu let out a short bark of a laugh. “Let’s hope it’s that interesting. It would amuse me to do a little negotiating.”
It was Griff’s turn to laugh. Last time somebody tried to bargain with him, the captain had finished the negotiated exchange and then promptly shot everyone on the other side.
“I agree with you,” Nadu added abruptly. “Zarek’s best for the job.”
“Out of our available talent?” Griff shrugged. “He’s young. He can think on his feet. He’s expendable.”
“It’s the first law of scavengers. With great risks come great rewards. Besides, we haven’t really even broken him in.”
Compared with most of those on board, Zarek was barely a part of the crew. And there were always other young men looking for opportunity.
This would be his first test. Tom was a survivor. He would find his way through this. Griff would be surprised if young Zarek didn’t outlast them all.
Captain Nadu started his tuneless humming once more, then abruptly stopped. “We’ll send him out on his peace mission. And we’ll get the rest of them ready for war.”
He waved at Griff.
“Call another general meeting. I think we need to build a little fire underneath our crew.”
CHAPTER
9
FREE CRUISER LIGHTNING
Before this, Tom Zarek realized, he had never seen his captain truly angry.
Nadu’s scarred face seemed to glow in the subdued light of the control room, his cross-hatched flesh twitching with a ruined energy.
Zarek had barely gotten back to his bunk before they had sounded another “all hands.” The remaining crew had all scrambled back to the control center. Griff had singled him out, and told him to step forward and stand by the comm station.
Griff scanned the room, silently counting the crew-members. “We’re all here, then? I’m afraid we have a bit of a problem.” He nodded to the captain. Nadu paced about his station at the center of the room, glaring first at one cluster of the crew, then another, so that his good eye had scanned all of them in turn.
No one else spoke. They all knew when not to cross their captain.
“They have captured Symm and Twitch.” Nadu grimaced, as though just s
aying the words brought him pain. “Well, they say they are being detained. They give me double talk about problems with their defenses.”
He turned and slammed his fist down on the control console before him.
“They want to play Nadu for a fool.” His tone said that was a mistake. “They say they have technical difficulties!” His voice was rising with every sentence. He stopped to take a ragged breath.
“They’re trying to keep us in the dark,” Griff said into the silence. “They have their own agenda.”
Nadu turned to stare at the comm officer, clenching and unclenching the fist that he had so recently slammed into his controls. Zarek realized his knuckles were bleeding.
“My second in command makes a valid point,” Nadu said softly. He looked like he would kill Griff anyway. “Perhaps we should drop a few missiles to light our way.”
“That would jeopardize our pilots,” Griff replied in equally measured tones. “Our men are in their hands. We hope for their sake that they are still alive. They claim they have made a mistake.”
When Nadu didn’t reply, he added, “At least they are still talking to us.”
Griff looked out to the assembled crew. “The rest of you did not witness our pilots’ landing. It’s quite a facility they have down there. But at the very last minute, we lost our visual feed. We heard a few shots fired.”
“Shots?” asked Grets, the woman who acted as both ship’s cook and doctor.
“A few,” Griff replied. “No prolonged gun battles. We pray they were not executed.”
“That would be a foolish thing to do. Let us hope they were just detained. We would not want them to be lying to us.” Nadu smiled broadly. It was a frightening sight. “I will now tell you all what we will do.”
Nadu paused to look at every single person in the room. “We have men missing. We never have men unaccounted for. We will find our missing pilots. And if our new friends have done anything to our pilots, they will be very sorry. They do not frak with Nadu!” He pounded his bloody hand on a second console, grunting with the pain.
“We are to assume—until they convince us otherwise—that the inhabitants of this place are not to be trusted.”
The ship was full of stories of how Nadu had outwitted another bunch of scavengers, or traders, or even whole Colonies. Maybe, Zarek realized, this was why the captain was so angry. The stories always had a common thread—how Nadu would say one thing and plot another. It was almost as if Nadu were looking in a mirror. He had had his own double-dealing techniques used against him.
“But, if they are to be believed, we are the first outsiders they have seen in decades. They need us, for supplies, for news from home.” He smiled again. “Maybe they’re even looking for a way back home! We will use everything we can to bargain.”
“Five of you will be going down,” Griff said. “We’re calling this a peace mission. You will give them a chance to explain their actions. And remember, any shooting could damage potentially lucrative merchandise.”
“Exactly,” Nadu agreed. “But if anyone makes a move against you, feel free to kill them.”
“Perhaps we should locate our pilots before we get too aggressive,” Griff replied.
Nadu stared at his second in command. “Perhaps.”
“Five are going,” Griff repeated.
“We need someone who can think on his feet.” Nadu pointed at Tom. “Zarek. You can talk as well as anyone. I’m putting this second landing under your control. But watch everything.”
So that was why he had been asked to step forward. This was the first time he’d been entrusted with anything of importance. He had tagged along on a few exploratory missions, and Griff would let him fill in on the comm board in off-hours, but until now he thought that Nadu barely knew his name.
“Yes, sir,” he managed.
“Get our men back. That’s your primary goal. Then you can talk to the people down at the station, see what they want. See what they have to offer. Oh, and see what they’re trying to keep for themselves. Don’t promise them a thing. For anything final, you have to talk to me.”
“Yes sir.”
“We’ll keep a channel open with the lander. If any questions—or any difficulties—arise, there’ll be somebody on the other end you can talk to.”
“Sounds good, sir.”
Nadu actually clapped him on the shoulder.
“Zarek, if you do well on this, you’ll get a bonus.” The captain smiled. “If not—well, no one will miss a junior member of the crew.”
Nadu pointed at different members of the crowd. “You’ll take the lander. And bring the Creep along. You and you will pilot the escort.”
“Remember, I want seven of you back here.” He looked at everyone crammed into the corners of the room.
“The rest of you are dismissed.”
Zarek saw flashes of relief on the others’ faces. Nobody expected this was going to be an easy ride.
But this was what he had signed up for. If he handled this well, he might get the sort of reward he was looking to get out of this.
He watched the crew retreat through the hatches. Tom realized he didn’t know exactly who else was on the mission until the crowd thinned out. Well, everybody knew the Creep, a tall, skinny man who seldom spoke and always dressed in gray. They said he could get in and out of anything before the other guys knew he was there. That’s why he had the name.
It grew very quiet. The control center had emptied of all but the senior staff and the five going out. Zarek could hear the soft mechanical pings and whirs of the various boards that managed the ship. He nodded to the other men who would go out with him on the mission. Their pilot would be Boone—he generally took out the larger ships. He was an affable guy, always willing to show Zarek the ropes. Tom would be glad to have him along. Slam and Ajay would be escorting them down in the old Mark One Vipers. Zarek liked both of them better than the two idiots—Symm and Twitch—that bunked across from him. He wondered if they would ever really get them back, and realized he didn’t miss those two in the least.
The replacement Viper pilots were both fairly new on the crew. Zarek thought Ajay had logged only a couple more months here than he had. Maybe they hadn’t had time yet to grow into proper idiots.
Griff talked to them first. “We expect you to pay attention down there. This is the most—” He paused to search for the word. “—rewarding job we’ve had in a long time. This could be a big payday if we handle it right.”
“You’ll be taking weapons.” Nadu spread his arms wide. “Big guns, which I expect you to wave around a bit. They bring us Twitch and Symm, we’ll make nice. Until then, watch your step.”
Zarek realized that, with two crewmen going down the first time and five down the second, the captain was committing almost half his crew to this venture. Nadu wouldn’t be turning back from this one. One way or another, he would get his payday.
“Any questions?” Griff asked.
Nobody dared to ask anything.
“We’ve got two of our own to rescue,” Nadu announced. “I want you out of here now.” With that, he returned to his command console. As if he didn’t want to see them again until the job was done.
Tom Zarek left with the others. All five went straight up to the launch bay.
Boone looked to the storage lockers that surrounded the bay. “Let’s take anything we think we can use. Guns, grenades, survival gear. I’m going to take seven suits in the lander. If we have to, we’ll cram everyone in together to get back here.”
The lander was large enough to normally seat five. It carried atmosphere suits and rations to last a full crew for two weeks. It was as close to an escape vehicle as the Lightning had. What would Nadu do if they didn’t come back? If it came to that, Tom imagined the captain would crash the Lightning into the research station, killing the rest of the crew just to get back at whoever crossed him on this planet.
And how did Tom feel about this? He couldn’t afford feelings. He was in t
his until the end.
Boone and the Creep loaded their arms with whatever weapons they found to hand. Zarek grabbed an extra pair of suits—with their bulk, two suits was all he could manage. Boone climbed in through the hatch and told the others to pass him everything. No one else entered his boat until he had everything in place.
Boone popped his head back out after a moment. “We still got some room.” He waved at the pilots. “Ajay. Bring me a couple of extra cases of rations. That sort of thing has trading value.”
The Vipes pilot frowned as he lifted the supplies. “Shouldn’t we ask someone before we take all of this?”
“Do you want to talk to the captain again? Besides, if its down here, it’s surplus. It means the stores up in the galley are full.”
Boone took the cases from the pilot and disappeared inside.
“Almost ready,” he said when he appeared again. “One more thing.” He pointed into the far corner of the room. “Zarek, open the locker all the way down on the left.”
Zarek went over and tried the locker door. It was stuck.
“Kick it a couple times!” Boone called. “Can’t have people getting at it too easy. It’s my own private stash.”
Zarek banged the bottom of the locker with his boot. The metal door swung free. The locker was mostly empty, with only a small, ornately carved box on an upper shelf, while a battered case, stenciled with the words property of the colonial forces, lay at the bottom.
“See that case?” Boone asked loudly. “Bring it along.”
Zarek pulled the case out of the locker. It was surprisingly heavy. He half carried, half dragged it over to the lander.
“It’s an old survival kit we scavenged from our last stop,” Boone explained as he waited. “I think it predates the war.”
Tom hefted the case up to the hatch with a grunt. Boone wrestled it inside.
“We’re looking for anything that will give us an edge.” Boone continued to talk as he disappeared inside. “And, seeing how we have no idea what we’re getting into, we’re looking for anything. I figure an extra case of emergency gear can’t hurt.”
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