“Tell him I agree to the terms,” he said looking at the chronometer on the console in front of him. “We will make orbit in thirty-seven hours. Hopefully, his roster of overqualified personnel includes some top tier cargo handlers, too. I want us loaded and out of here with a minimum delay. I think that will improve his life expectancy substantially.”
He spun and shot through the door before he lost what little restraint he had left. Makhbar’s attitude wasn’t Ammo’s fault, but he knew that his frustration would arc to ground somewhere, and she was awfully close to ground zero at the moment.
“Boss, can you come by my quarters,” Kaycee asked over his private comm channel as he hit the crew deck corridor.
He dropped his head and sighed. “What’s swinging?”
“I’ve got a problem and I need to you look at something,” she said. “It’s urgent.”
“I’m on my way,” he said, cutting off the link and growling to himself. What else could go wrong today?
Walking up to her door, he knocked. “Come in,” she hollered.
The door lock clicked open and swung inward. The illumination was off in the sitting area, but her bedroom lights were on full. There was enough glow through the open door he could tell she wasn’t in the front room.
“Kaycee?” he asked.
“I’m in the bedroom,” she said, stepping into the doorway. Naked.
He choked in shock. His eyes still took in the scenery in spite of the fact that he knew he should find another suitable place to stare. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m keeping him distracted,” she said.
“What?” As far as he knew, Rene was wasn’t into sex if it didn’t involve machinery and he didn’t think Quintan liked women. Then he remembered that there were passengers aboard. His brain was melting, or he might have realized that she could have picked up on one of them.
“I’m keeping him distracted,” she repeated. “Come here.”
“I think it’s safer if I stay over here until I know what the frak you’re talking about.” He forced his eyes the rest of the way down toward the deck. It took all of his will, and she was still five meters away.
“I’m serious. I need you to pay attention to me,” she said. “Come here.” Her tone cut through his resistance like a laser.
Clearing his throat, he walked toward her bedroom door. As he got closer, he could feel her presence even without looking up.
“Now look at me,” she said.
He held his breath but brought his gaze up off the floor. Slowly.
Leaning in toward him she whispered, “Look over my shoulder. Out the window. There’s somebody out there.”
“Right,” he said. “What kind of game is this?”
“I’m serious Ethan. I was getting ready for a shower when I caught him looking at me. Just keep watching.”
Leaning his head a little to the side, he stared out through the window into the dark. He was about to push himself back when he caught a reflection. It was an EVA suit faceplate.
And it really was outside.
He jumped back, both to get clear of her cloud of pheromones, and to make sure he was far enough into the shadows to not be seen by whoever it was. Tapping his commlink he whispered, “Marti has anyone gone outside the ship?”
“Negative, Captain,” it said. “There has been no airlock activity since we sealed the hangar deck doors.”
He tapped his link again, switching channels. “Angel, I need you and Quinn to get suited up for an EVA. We’ve got an unexpected guest on the outside of the hull.”
“Whassat?” she said. She sounded like she had been asleep although as far as he knew she never slept. Except when she was drunk, and it was too soon for that to be true.
“Yah, we’ve got somebody hanging on the ship outside Kaycee’s room.”
“You seriously said there’s somebody outside?” she asked, sounding more alert.
“Affirm. He’s outside her bedroom.”
“What the hell is he doing out there?”
“I don’t know, washing the windows maybe?”
Chapter Fifteen
“It will be twenty-one hours before Cygnus Deep-Two gets back to us about our prisoner,” the captain said as he and Kaycee walked up outside the stateroom they’d decided to use as a holding cell. It was the smallest one on the Dawn but still more luxurious than anything their prisoner had seen in a while.
Angel leaned against the wall across from the door with a pulse rifle over her shoulder and a stun pistol in her holster. Quintan was inside with the prisoner and if they’d followed Ethan’s orders, they had him tied to a table. “In the nowtime, we just sit on him I guess?” she asked.
The captain nodded. “We’ll have to work out the watch details. Eriksen volunteered several of her squad to help out, but once we make our delivery, we’re back to just us.”
“Quinn and I can do tight rotations to make sure someone is on the door physically at all times,” she said. “We don’t want another one of those vanishing acts like Pruitt pulled.”
“Elias had special skills,” Kaycee said. “Chances are this kid’s got nothing like that in his toolbox.”
“Other than being a peeper,” Ethan said.
“I feel like he should pay me for the free show,” Kaycee said, winking at him.
He felt himself blush. “Unless they pay pirates a lot better than they pay us common people, I don’t think he could afford it,” he said. “I know I’ll be paying for it for a long time.”
Angel swung her eyes back and forth between the two of them for several seconds before she shook her head. “That’s more than I need to know,” she said. “Well maybe not, but—”
“It’s a lot more than I needed to know,” Ethan said, nodding in her direction.
“I didn’t think I looked that bad naked,” Kaycee said, trying to look heartbroken in an over the top way.
“I’m sure you don’t,” Angel said, “but we do have business to decide. Are you going to want to interrogate him?”
“We should. He might know what other things we could face if we run into Jetaar again,” he said.
“Unfortunately, that’s more like when,” Ammo said, appearing in the hall behind them. “From what I understand, there are damn few planets in the binary part of the system. Once he gets his holes patched up, he will want to revisit our last exchange.”
“That will depend on how bad he wants what we’re carrying,” Ethan said. “If we can get in there and get these guns unloaded and installed on the planet, we should be safe while we’re under their cover fire. They can hold him off until we pick up the flip-run cargo, and then we’ve got extra legs, if we can get past him.”
“That’s probably true. Pirates like to go for easy targets since taking casualties runs up their overhead,” she said.
“So let’s see if the window washer wants to talk,” he said, turning and knocking before he opened the door.
Angel stepped in first, looked down at their prisoner and giggled. He was leaned forward over the table with his wrists cinched to the far side and his legs bent. He was shaking and sweating from the strain of the position. It kept him from being able to sit or stand. Quintan rested against the wall behind him and smiled in a terrifyingly contented way.
The captain’s brain locked, and he wasn’t sure if he was stuck in amusement or outrage. “What exactly are you doing?” he asked.
“Admiring the view, Cap’n,” Quinn said, winking. “He’s quite the pretty toy you know.”
“Frakking fuck-knot, untie me you shit-stinking, ass-munch,” the prisoner snarled.
“You’d be dead if we hadn’t hauled your sad-bag in here,” Angel said. “Show some respect.”
The prisoner rolled his eyes and snorted.
“I think we could cut him loose, maybe,” Kaycee said. “There are five of us and he is a bit on the tiny side.”
“As long as you two searched him and we know he’s unarmed,”
Ethan said, nodding. “You did search him, yes?”
“I didn’t do a cavity search,” Quinn said, stepping up behind the pirate and putting his hand on the small of his back. “Maybe we should be sure?”
The sound that came out of the prisoner’s mouth landed somewhere between a whimper and a scream.
The captain grabbed one of the chairs from along the wall and pulled it up to the table so he could sit close enough to see the prisoner’s face. “Right now, I’m tempted to ruin Quinn’s fun and have him cut you loose, but I want to know you fully comprehend the gravity of your situation. If you so much as move wrong or say anything that makes anyone in this room twitch, I might be of a mind to rethink that decision.”
“You don’t have the eggs for that,” he hissed.
“It’s not my eggs on the line here.” Ethan shrugged and stood up. “If you want to be brave, I’m more than willing to let him tenderize you a bit first. Well at least the parts of you that he thinks might be most worthy of his attention. Apparently, he thinks you’re pretty enough to be a pole mount.”
“Wait. You aren’t serious, are you?”
“I wouldn’t have been, except I take it personal when somebody tries to steal what’s mine. Your boss set my mood, and then our good fortune in finding you just gave me a landing zone for my frustration. If I were you, I don’t think I’d press my luck.”
The prisoner thumped his forehead against the table several times while he thought it over. “Alright, I’ll behave. Just cut me free.”
The captain nodded and Angel stepped forward and pulled a knife from her belt. As she sliced through the plastic straps around his wrists, he collapsed back onto the floor. Quintan picked him up by the back of his coverall and held him dangling in the air with one arm while he slid a chair up with the other. He dropped the prisoner into the seat and anchored him down after the first bounce with a firm hand on the back of his neck.
“Now that we have an understanding, let’s start with the basics. What’s your name?”
“Leonard Stahl,” he said. He rubbed his wrists and then wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the back of one hand. The strain of having been in that position had taken a toll on his body. His legs trembled as he stared down at them.
“Leo,” Ethan said. “You don’t mind if I call you Leo do you?”
“Whatever.”
“What can you tell me about Captain Jetaar?”
“I can tell you that you have no idea of the enemy you’ve made,” he said.
“Enlighten me,” the captain said. “I want to know what kind of response to expect.”
“You can expect to die. His response will be to kill you. And because you pissed him off, he’ll absolutely make it as painful as possible.”
“He doesn’t know anything,” Ammo said. She was staring at the prisoner and shaking her head.
“She’s right, I don’t know anything,” he admitted. “You’re wasting your time on me. You should be running.”
“You’re on his crew and it’s a small ship,” Ethan said. “You can’t share that kind of environment and not know something about Jetaar himself.”
“He’s brilliant. He will outthink you and use your own ignorance to beat you. I’ve only been with him for a few of his raids, but he never loses.”
“Listen Leo, you aren’t scaring me.”
“We handed him his ass,” Angel added.
“You got lucky,” Leo said.
“You were riding around in an old Clydesdale. That’s not much of a warship, no matter how many guns you hang on it,” the captain said.
“Yes, but it’s not the only ship he has,” he said. “He has something much more… dangerous.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know what it is. It’s big and it’s faster than anything in space.”
“Right. He’s got this super-bad-guy dreadnaught in his secret base, and he’s planning to take over the universe,” Ethan said. Behind him, Angel snickered.
“I’ve seen it.”
The captain leaned back and studied Leo’s face for several seconds. His expression never wavered.
“If he’s got this monster ship, why didn’t he bring it to the party? You’d think he’d want to put his best foot forward.”
“He’s got his reasons,” he said.
“And those would be?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging.
Ethan looked up at Quintan and nodded. The handler tightened his grip on the back of the prisoner’s neck and Leo’s eyes bulged. “I really don’t know anything about it,” he gasped. “Other than rumors.”
“What do the rumors say?” Kaycee asked. She was staring at the prisoner like she was trying to read his mind.
“Jetaar is looking for a special crew for the ship. When he gets it, he’ll be unstoppable.”
“A special crew? Kaycee asked.
“It takes scientists to run it.”
“Scientists?” Ethan asked.
“Yah. It’s why we’ve been hitting science vessels and not cargo ships.”
“We’re a cargo ship in case somebody forgot to tell you,” Angel said.
“But you’re carrying scientists,” he said.
“Archaeologists,” Ethan said.
“They’re scientists too,” Leo said, his eyes sparking.
“Captain, may I speak to you in the hall?” Kaycee said. “Now.” She spun and headed out of the room, leaving the door open behind her.
Ethan glanced at Ammo and nodded for her to join them. As soon as he closed the door the doctor said, “He’s a lot smarter than he lets on.”
“And he’s still hiding something important,” Ammo added. “He’s too green to be on a boarding party unless he has some special skill they needed. You’d think any forward deployed pirate would be a lot harder to crack than this.”
“If they’re looking for scientists then maybe he’s supposed to be making sure they get the ones they’re looking for? It takes one to know one, maybe?”
“That makes sense,” she said.
“Does what he’s saying tell us something we need to know?” Ethan asked.
“If he’s looking for the right crew, then the ship isn’t something he built or modified,” Kaycee said. She looked like the edge of something frightening was gnawing at her, but its teeth hadn’t found meat yet. “It has to be something he found.”
“Or captured,” Ammo added.
Ethan shook his head. “All ships are pretty much the same in principle. I don’t need a science team to teach me how to drive something even as sophisticated as a multicruiser.”
“Then maybe it wasn’t built by the Coalition,” she said.
“That would be bad,” Kaycee whispered, shaking her head as the fear bit in. “It can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?” he asked, trying to read from her face what she meant.
She shook her head again. “We should try to find out what kind of scientists they’re looking for.”
“Let’s ask him,” he suggested, turning around heading back into the room.
“Leo, why don’t you tell me what kind of scientists Jetaar is looking for,” he asked taking his seat and leaning back.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, just science people.”
“Where did you study science, Mr. Stahl,” Ammo asked.
“Study?” The prisoner looked around the room trying not to make eye contact with anyone.
“You know, where did you study archaeology?” she asked.
“Archaeology? Why would you think I studied that?” he asked.
“Well it’s not a real science,” Ammo said. “But that’s what you went to school for isn’t it?”
The muscles of his jaw flexed, and he shook his head. “I don’t understand why you’re asking me these questions.”
“Because you’re too damned wet to be a real pirate,” Ethan said. “I’m thinking you got to ride along with the big dogs to help them figure out who they needed to take
and who they could leave behind.”
“Captain Jetaar doesn’t leave people behind.”
“He left you, didn’t he?”
Chapter Sixteen
Ethan sat on the ConDeck and glared at the planet below. It was terrestrial at the moment, but with the elongated orbit it followed around its primary stars, it was only a function of the stellar season it happened to occupy. In another couple of months, it would be hotter than the proverbial Hades, and then over the next twenty months it would plunge back into a frigid winter at least as harsh as Mars.
The Olympus Dawn had settled into position above the site of Makhbar’s digs, and although there was no reason to let his guard down, Ethan had felt a tangible wave of relief wash over him when they took up station to unload. Of course, until they’d deployed the guns on the surface, they were no safer here than anywhere else in CG-670. Fortunately, there had been no signs of pursuit from Jetaar.
So far.
Over the last twenty-four hours, Kaycee and Ammo had spent most of their time trying to get more information out of the window washer. He needed to know what Stahl knew, but he was afraid it wasn’t enough to make any sense out of things.
Why would a pirate be kidnapping scientists? Nothing fit close enough together to connect the dots, so he was sitting on the ConDeck expecting anything to happen and unable to venture a guess about what might come at him. It also didn’t help that Kaycee knew something she wasn’t sharing either.
“We are being hailed from the surface,” Marti said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Is it Dr. Makhbar?” he asked. He was in no mood to put up with his imperious high-born attitude.
“It is Dr. Taryn Tegan,” it said. “She is Dr. Makhbar’s senior team leader.”
“Put her through,” he said, taking a deep breath and trying to assemble a less frustrated expression on his face. Her image appeared on the main screen.
“Dr. Tegan, what can I do for you?” he said.
“Captain Walker, we’d like to invite you down to the surface to tour our operation. If you’d be interested?” She sounded much more pleasant than her boss.
“Thank you, but after our run in with the Blackwing, it would be best if only one of my pilots were on the surface at a time,” he said.
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 28