Mission Pack 2: Missions 5-8 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  “And then some,” Mort added.

  “They’re Mom’s recipe for adults-only cookies,” Rhiannon said.

  “How’d you get her to—”

  “The day I turned eighteen,” Rhiannon replied before Carl could finish. “That’s what I asked for on my birthday. It used to bug the shit out of me that I couldn’t even try them.”

  “So what’s in them?” Carl asked.

  “Hey, how about this one?” Roddy said, barging over the confectionery side conversation. “Former prison colony for the Zheen, outside their occupied space and abandoned. ARGO took it from them about twnety years back and never settled it.”

  Mriy accessed her datapad. The azrin had followed the search mainly in silence, napping on and off at the far end of the couch from Roddy. Her felid metabolism didn’t take well to long periods of wakeful semi-activity. “Read to the end,” she said. “Believed occupied by the Black Nova pirate ring.”

  “That intel’s a couple years old,” Roddy said. “Could be anyone there now.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be listening to this. Just pick which desolate shithole we’re going to live on. I don’t want to hear all about all the pirates, parasites, and methane atmospheres,” Rhiannon said. The game board projected a holographic battlefield atop its surface, as well as the war bands that she and Esper had selected. The two miniature armies approached one another for combat.

  “It’s not the worst we’ve looked at,” Tanny said, rubbing her eyes. “I’ll add it to the ‘maybe’ list.”

  “Why can’t there just be a nice, warm, uninhabited world with a fuel depot and an unlimited supply of food?” Carl asked. “I mean, there’s got to be one out there somewhere.”

  “Fuel depot might be going over the falls,” Roddy said. “But the rest, yeah. Probably not on file though, since the minute someone finds a place like that, some rich fucker buys it and installs an orbital security system.”

  There was a tiny electronic scream as one of Rhiannon’s troops was impaled by one of Esper’s spearmen. “Ha! That’s classic,” Rhiannon said through a mouthful of cookie. “It’s like cartoons fighting each other. Come on, little man, stick ‘em right back. Find an anvil or a baseball bat or something. You can do it.” She giggled as she cheered on her forces.

  “Can I try one of those?” Esper asked, pointing to the cookies.

  “No,” Mort said before Rhiannon could respond. “Last thing you need is Becky Ramsey’s ‘special’ cookies mucking up your head. I tried them once and couldn’t work a proper spell for hours.”

  “Oh,” Esper said.

  “Here’s one,” Carl piped up. “Geronn Minor!”

  Tanny threw her datapad at him, but Carl was already ducking for cover. It bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. Tanny had been stranded on Geronn Minor once during her service in the marines. She’d spent days wondering if Earth Navy was going to be able to either win the orbital battle going on far above, or at least open a window for an extraction. In the end, they’d gotten off world, and the ENV Supremacy had devastated the biome. If there was anything left to eat or breathe on the surface, Tanny wanted no part of it.

  “Well, that’s about it,” Roddy said, dropping his datapad to the cushions. “I can run a new search with wider parameters, but we’ll only be looking at shittier places than we’ve already got.”

  “We could always hunt for our food and fuel,” Mriy suggested, showing a lazy flash of fangs.

  “No piracy!” Tanny insisted. “Maybe we raid someplace for supplies, but we’re not hunting ships.”

  “If only we could trust connecting to the omni,” Carl said. “But we’d need someone to cover our tracks, and we’re lacking in the computer support area these days. Hey Rhi, any chance that Lloyd of yours would consider taking a course in omni security? He’s sort of ruined the whole lawyer deal with being a fugitive.”

  “Lloyd?” Rhiannon asked. “He wasn’t tuned in on the tech scene in New Cali, never mind modern stuff.”

  “Worth a try,” Carl said with a shrug.

  “Where is Lloyd, anyway? He still playing with Kubu?” Roddy asked.

  Esper didn’t look up from watching her holographic troops slaughtering Rhiannon’s. “He’s teaching him English. It’s not playing. Once Kubu learns, we don’t all have to rely on translator earrings to understand each other.”

  “Is he really that interesting that you’d want to hear him talk?” Rhiannon asked.

  “Which do you mean?” Carl asked. “Kubu or Lloyd?”

  # # #

  Lloyd slipped quietly into the cockpit. At the helm, Tanny sat with her feet up on the arm of the co-pilot’s chair, reading from her datapad. Outside the forward windows, the uniform gray of astral space was all the eye could see.

  “Did you people come up with a place for us to hide out?” Lloyd asked softly.

  Tanny glanced up. “You don’t have to pussyfoot around. I heard you coming.” She shut down the datapad and dropped it on the ship’s controls with a clatter. “And no, we didn’t come up with shit. Everyplace is either too desolate to sustain us or filled with people who’d happily turn us over to ARGO for the right price. There’s probably a hundred worlds out there where we could let Mriy and Kubu hunt for food to support all of us, but not a fuel rod, thorium core, or anti-matter reactor within a dozen lightyears. We got to talking about defecting to a non-ARGO aligned system, but no one could agree on a race to go begging for sanctuary. We’re not exactly a sympathy case, and humans don’t exactly have a lot of friends outside ARGO.”

  There was a fire in her that Lloyd could feel from a meter away. “I see… maybe this isn’t a good time then.”

  Tanny seethed out a sigh. “Don’t pull that passive-aggressive shit on me. What is it? I don’t need another thing hanging over my head. Spit it out.”

  Lloyd laid a cautious hand on Tanny’s shoulder. “It’s about Carl…”

  With a sudden jerk, Tanny shook Lloyd’s hand from her shoulder. “I haven’t been responsible for him for years. If he and Rhi can’t work out their own differences, that’s their problem.”

  “It’s not that. I was walking past his quarters… the doors aren’t really all that thick… he was talking to someone. It sounded like… possibly—”

  A wall of hands went up between Lloyd and Tanny. “I don’t want to hear it. What Carl does in his quarters is—”

  Lloyd grabbed her by both shoulders. “Look at me! He sold us out.” Tanny stared up into Lloyd’s eyes. “He’s working out a deal to save himself and turn the rest of us over to ARGO.”

  # # #

  Tanny blinked and shook her head. Lloyd was imagining things. He was a neophyte, probably in trouble with the law for the first time in his life. It stood to reason he’d start sniffing at shadows and trying to watch over both shoulders at once. “You’re imagining things. Carl would never rat us out, and no one’s going to find us. We’re on the far side of nowhere, practically off the star charts—well, maybe not literally. Point is, no one’s coming to get us. It’s just that we can’t go anywhere in particular in case they come looking. Just relax, get some sleep, maybe pay a little attention to that girlfriend of yours. We’ve been in tough pinches before. We’ll make it through this just—”

  An impact shook the Mobius. Tanny checked the scanners as indicators lit red across the console. Main engines were down in a single shot.

  A second impact dimmed the interior lights and took out most of the displays on the console. They were blind and adrift. Tanny’s breath quickened, and a cold wave spread through her from toes to shoulders. But the panicked fear ran into a wall of Recitol and couldn’t push through. The drug kept her instinctive response to mortal terror suppressed—but she felt it lurking just beneath the surface.

  There was no power level indicator, so Tanny couldn’t even tell whether shields were available. She reached for the comm, but it came on before her finger touched the button.

  “Criminal vessel Mobius, this is Commande
r Franklin DeMarco of the ENV Kingfisher. Stand down and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with deadly force.” As if to punctuate his point, the Mobius took another jolt, strong enough to throw Tanny over the edge of her seat despite the exemplary gravity Mort had always maintained on the ship.

  “That seems worth worrying about,” Lloyd said, plastered against the wall just outside the cockpit.

  Tanny didn’t have time for holding Lloyd’s hand anymore. She scrambled to her feet and shoved past him, shouting as she ran. “We’re being boarded. ARGO found us. Mort! We need you!”

  “Oh my God!” Lloyd shouted. “Look out there!”

  Despite the urgency of her own actions, Tanny spared a glance back to the cockpit. Debris drifted across the bow of the ship: bits of scrap metal, a scattering of clothes and furniture… and Mort. The wizard pinwheeled slowly through the inky gray astral space, lifeless. How could it be possible that Mordecai The Brown, who’d evaded capture by the Convocation for something like twenty years, had died in the initial salvo of an attack on the Mobius. Some ARGO gunnery sergeant was probably congratulating himself on taking out their engines, not even knowing he’d just killed the best wizard Tanny had ever met—admittedly a short list.

  Mort and Tanny hadn’t always agreed. The wizard had a soft spot for Carl going back to Carl’s youth, and had sided with Carl against her more often than not. But he had saved her life—all their lives—more times than she could count. Tanny had given up hope of ever balancing that ledger, but now she would never have the chance to try. Worst of all, she hadn’t realized just how much she had come to rely on Mort’s indomitable presence to reassure her that the Mobius could overcome any obstacle. That gnawing, cold panic grew, and she could feel it on the verge of breaking through her chemical defenses.

  That last shot must have torn a chunk out of the starboard hull, along the crew quarters. Their best, and perhaps only, real defense against an ARGO boarding party was now dead. Mort’s magic might have rendered both vessels inoperable hulls, their science-based systems hopelessly garbled. That would probably have killed them all as they froze or starved to death together in the deep astral. Still, it was better than being killed without taking those bastards with them.

  Now, Tanny was at a loss. And that was a mental state she hadn’t found herself in for longer than she could remember. There was no “out.” Esper was only an apprentice wizard, and a new one at that. Tanny and Mriy could do their best to hold out for a while, but in the end, numbers and top-of-the-line equipment would hand the day to ARGO and the Kingfisher.

  Tanny shuffled into the common room, keeping a hand against the wall for support. Mriy was already armed and taking cover behind the upturned kitchen table. “What are you doing?” the azrin warrior snapped. “Can’t you hear them? They’re already in the cargo hold!”

  “The cargo hold?” Tanny asked numbly. The cargo hold! Kubu was down there, taking up residence in makeshift quarters. Tanny sprang for the door, not even caring that she was unarmed. She heard the blaster fire before she got there. Tears streaked her face as she knew what had just happened.

  An arm wrapped around Tanny’s midsection. “You can’t help him,” Esper said, lifting Tanny and dragging her back to the door to her quarters.

  Tanny sobbed. “He was just a baby. They didn’t have to shoot him.”

  Boot steps echoed from the cargo hold, the telltale sound of an approach up the catwalk. It was only a matter of time…

  The door exploded off its hinges, and Mriy fired blindly through the opening.

  The ARGO boarding party wasn’t held back for long. Return fire lanced forth from the doorway, obscured by the smoke from the explosion that had gained the boarders entry.

  One of those shots caught Mriy square in the forehead. No further shots came from the Mobius crew.

  Esper backed into her quarters, hands raised. Tanny just sat there, wondering why Esper wasn’t even trying to use her magic. Every instinct the marines had drilled into her told her to get up, to die on her feet. But she just couldn’t muster the will to care. Her world was crashing down, and maybe, this once, if she resisted the urge to fight back no one else would get hurt.

  A pair of the boarders leveled blaster rifles at Tanny and Esper. But before firing, each of them adjusted something on the barrel. It wasn’t any model of weapon Tanny had ever seen before, but she guessed the effect. Blue, sizzling shots leapt from the barrel. Esper dropped instantly. Tanny felt the jolt spasm every muscle in her body, but steadied herself after a few seconds.

  “This must be the marine,” one of the boarders said, his voice filtered through an EV helmet.

  “Hit her a couple more times, then,” the other replied. He took his own advice and shot Tanny a second time. Even before she recovered, the first boarder fired again, and this time she lost consciousness.

  # # #

  Lloyd laid Tanny’s head gently against the seat of the pilot’s chair. Her chest rose and fell with the slow rhythm of a sailing ship’s gentle rocking. Bygone days for a starship pilot. Maybe when he returned to Peractorum he would go visit Britannia and sail aboard one for a time. With all the A-tech he’d been putting up with of late, he would certainly have earned it.

  No alarms sounded. No booted feet pounded the deck plates of the Mobius. All was quiet in the late evening, as the crew busied themselves about their pre-bedtime routines. Through the general chaos of life aboard the Mobius, certain patterns had revealed themselves under his careful observation. Days spent among the inmates of this astral-borne asylum had paid dividends. Without delay, Lloyd made his way to the cargo bay.

  The common room was quiet. No discordant, lifelike images blurred across the penned-in landscape of the holo-projector. The kitchen table held the remains of a pair of meals, but no diners. Most of the crew had retired to their quarters, if not to sleep, then at least to prepare. His window of time was narrow, but large enough for the task ahead. Quietly, Lloyd opened the door to the cargo and closed it gently behind him.

  Kubu’s ears twitched. He lay slumbering in a massive pile of blankets, sheets, and discarded clothing that had been heaped in a corner of the cargo bay to serve as a bed. But asleep or not, the canid creature heard him. Growing by the day, they all said. Lloyd hadn’t known the beast long enough to see the effect for himself, but Kubu was already an intimidating specimen. Two hundred kilos and growing, they said. He looked as if he could snap awake and tear the head from Lloyd’s shoulders at the slightest provocation. But any waking activity put the lie to that view of Kubu. He was a puppy at heart, playful and gentle. As a sentient, he was simpleminded.

  Stepping lightly on the metal floors, Lloyd approached the sleeping canid. Kubu’s ears kept vigilant as he drew near. When he laid a hand on the back of Kubu’s neck, sleepy eyes blinked open. “It’s all right, Kubu. It’s just me.” With the translator earring though his ear, Kubu could understand him just fine. It was a fine piece of arcane craftsmanship, even if the jewel-smithing was shabby.

  “Is it food time?” Kubu asked, pausing for a cavernous yawn. Lloyd raised a hand to cover his mouth and nose against the gust of omnivorous breath. Few creatures put so much omni into their diet.

  “Not yet,” Lloyd said. “Can you do me a quick favor?”

  Kubu nodded, still blinking the sleep from his eyes.

  “Just look me in the eye,” Lloyd said.

  Such an endearing creature. Lloyd had never been fond of dogs. Noisy, smelly, demonstrably over-affectionate slobberers had never appealed to him. But Kubu was a loyal, trusting soul. He looked Lloyd square in the eye without a hint of reservation.

  A few moments later, Lloyd backed away from a sleeping Kubu, and there was not the slightest twitch of an ear to show he was aware of Lloyd’s movements.

  # # #

  The Mobius had been running low on beer since its impromptu escape from Peractorum. There hadn’t been time to put together a proper supply run. Everyone else acted like the booze would
last forever, but Roddy couldn’t afford to think like that. He had put himself on a ration, keeping just a light buzz going. The thought that he might be stranded on a world with no beer industry was horrifying. On an agrarian or even a wilderness world, he’d find a way to brew some. But for all the options he had presented to Tanny for hideouts, he had conveniently overlooked ones where the prospects of finding booze didn’t look promising.

  And then there was his stash. The bowels of the Mobius were Roddy’s private sanctuary. His playground. His vault. There was a coolant line with the insulation exactingly stripped back to create a perfect, 275°K custom cooler just for beer (and occasionally some nicer booze he didn’t want to share with the crew). Carl knew about the stash, but Tanny hadn’t done a major coolant-system overhaul since Roddy had been a part of the crew. Esper might have learned about it if she’d stuck with her internship as backup mechanic, but now that she was getting sucked down into wizardville, that was out the airlock.

  A flashing red indicator light overhead warned Roddy that someone was in the engine room. With a beleaguered sigh, Roddy let his head bonk quietly against the bulkhead he leaned against. The comm system must have been on the fritz. That was the only time anyone ever came down to the engine room anymore.

  Usually it was just comm after comm from the cockpit with Tanny whining about some new minor problem that could wait until they were planetside to fix. Engines at 89%? Deal with it. Power distribution leaking 4%? Not an emergency. Shield generator off-line? That was something worth looking into, but it was usually just a glitch in the indicators, not an actual problem with the shields. Still, those sorts of calls were the minority.

  With four hands working, Roddy quickly tidied up his stash and laid the door panel in place to keep the cold air trapped inside. It was an area too cramped to be comfortable for the humans in the crew, but it never hurt to be thorough. He scampered on all fours to go greet his intruders before they touched something they shouldn’t. Carl in particular was dangerous around buttons and dials.