by Eric Thomson
“Thank you, Tom.” Talyn patted his arm. “It’s always a pleasure working with you. At this point, other than the relief column showing up a few hours early for some reason, I’d say it was a successful operation.”
“Do you have any idea why one of your spooks was in a prison camp with a bunch of freedom fighters from a backwater colony on the edge of sweet fuck all, sir?” Vanlieth asked. “And why we took all of them with us and not just him?”
“Command chose not to tell us, sarn’t-major,” Talyn lied, “though I’m sure we can all speculate until the heat death of the universe. It’s best not to dwell on it. If we aren’t going to be involved in whatever’s going on, then it becomes none of our business.”
Decker grunted.
“Buddy down in sickbay is one of ours, and he was playing footsie with the rebels. Beaten up as he is, the boss will be looking for fresh meat to take over the mission. Somehow I think we’ll end up in the Garonne mess, you and me, Hera. I’m willing to bet a month’s danger pay on it.”
“Fancy-pants spies get danger pay?” Vanleith sounded incredulous. “All you do is live in the best hotels, sipping cocktails at all hours and shagging each other non-stop.”
“You know how it is, Gus.” A broad smile split Zack’s face. “The amount of shagging we have to do has been determined by the Navy’s surgeon general to be a severe health risk.”
“Only if you catch the Halterian clap, my overeager friend. Full spectrum immunization doesn’t cover that one yet.”
“I think we should move to the saloon,” Talyn made a helpless face at Mikado’s captain, “and leave those two to argue who has the tougher job. I have a feeling it’ll go downhill faster than any of us wants to witness.”
She tapped Decker’s shoulder.
“Don’t forget we need to debrief Badhorn the moment Mikado’s sawbones gives us the all clear, so don’t go on an all day trip down memory lane.”
**
“How are you, Josh?” Talyn smiled at the battered face framed by a large white pillow.
The agent tried to smile back, but his contorted face mostly showed pain.
“I’ve been better, and I’ve been worse.” His vocal cords sounded raw, abused. “Doc tells me I’ll mend.”
Decker ran his eyes over the regen sleeves covering Badhorn’s arms and legs.
“Sure, but will you ever be able to swing a golf club again?”
“Never was able to break a hundred, so I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference.”
“Do you feel ready to talk?” Talyn pulled up a chair and sat down by the bed. “I’ve made sure no one can listen in on us.”
“No, but I doubt Captain Ulrich would care about my feelings. He’ll expect my preliminary report on his desk before we leave this system. Go ahead.”
“Alright, then. Tell me how you ended up in a stockade on Marengo.”
“We left Garonne on the Tigris Maru, captain and sole crew by the name of Hasaka. I was traveling with four of the rebellion’s top specialists, all ex-military, all highly experienced in guerilla warfare. We were on a mission to procure advanced weaponry and other supplies, and had traveled about three parsecs when a pair of needle ships appeared out of nowhere while we were sublight, spooling up for the next jump.”
Badhorn paused to catch his breath.
“Hasaka locked up the passenger deck, and before we knew what was going on, we were fighting off a boarding party that had found its way in with the bastard’s connivance. That’s how we got most of our injuries.”
“Any idea who the attackers were?”
The agent tried to laugh but coughed painfully instead.
“You’ll never believe me.”
“Try.”
“The Confederacy of the Howling Stars.”
“What?” Decker’s eyebrows shot up. “Since when are the Jackals playing pirate? I thought they made sure to stay on the clean side of organized crime laws.”
“If Hasaka let them come on board, and then they let him go unharmed, it wouldn’t be piracy, strictly speaking, just unlawful detention of Josh and the rebels,” Talyn pointed out. “The Jackals have been known to dabble in kidnapping for hire, among other things.”
“It was for hire,” Badhorn confirmed. “They didn’t mistreat us, even though we gave them a lot of black eyes. After five days, we were transferred to another ship. It looked civilian from what I could see, but I’d swear it was an Avalon Corporation sloop in disguise. They brought us to Marengo where the militia took over.”
“Any attempts at interrogation?”
“Plenty,” the agent confirmed. “That’s when we got beat up all over again. They didn’t dare try mind probes for fear that we’d been conditioned and die on them. I’m sure someone well above the Marengo militia commander’s pay grade was pulling the strings, and they didn’t dare disappoint whoever that was.”
“Sounds likely. Getting the Confederacy to openly kidnap folks off a starship either takes a lot of juice or a lot of money.”
“Or both,” Decker added, “and it takes someone to finger this Tigris Maru as your transport.”
“Did you at least get a chance to pick up the trail on Garonne?” Talyn asked.
“No. The only good news is that no one’s found out we’re interested in what’s happening.”
Zack snorted.
“I’ll bet you I know who’s going to be thrown into that mess next.”
“Doubtful.” Talyn shook her head. “I’m sure the boss already has another operative making his way into the rebellion. We are under orders to return home with Josh.”
FOUR
Decker stepped through the open door and met a wall of stagnant hot air that nearly took his breath away.
This deep inside a box canyon in the middle of an endless desert, the slightest breeze would have been a miracle.
Two months had passed since the rescue on Marengo and their return to Caledonia. Captain Ulrich had immediately given them the Garonne mission, as Decker expected, but with a twist neither of them had anticipated.
Turning to look back the way they’d come, he felt a stab of regret for the enticing coolness of the underground naval station. They’d arrived on this minor colony world only two days earlier, but he’d developed a fondness for the quirky and very secret installation, suspecting that he’d soon come to miss its clean, wholesome atmosphere. The engineers who maintained and refurbished ships for naval intelligence had turned out to be his kind of people.
“I should have forced you to take the bet,” he grumbled, sizing up their new home.
“So you keep saying,” Talyn replied, sounding distracted, her attention on the worn, shabby-looking spaceship squatting beneath a shimmering camouflage net. Its sleek lines seemed eerily familiar though she couldn’t quite figure why.
“Getting involved in a rebellion never turns out well for anyone, mark my words,” Decker continued. “We’re going to regret poking our noses into the Garonne business.”
“So you keep saying,” she repeated. “Zack, does this tub remind you of anything?”
“What?” Decker frowned while he ran his eyes over the pitted and blackened hull. “It’s an old sloop. Something the Navy took from your standard down-market pirate and kept for spook work. I’m more worried about you flying the thing out of here. Unless I’m mistaken, you don’t have much time at the controls of a starship, especially a lander.”
The big Marine ran a calloused hand through the mop of sandy hair covering his skull, wishing his current cover identity didn’t require him to wear it so long.
“Why do you think I spent so much time in the simulation tank after coming home from Marengo?”
She turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow. Talyn, in contrast to Zack, wore her hair short, and that gave her a harder, leaner appearance than usual.
“You were bored enough to play first person shooter games?” He shrugged. “I was too busy to pay attention.”
Talyn snorted
.
“I’m sure your companion of the moment found you busy alright. Come on, let’s climb aboard and fire her up. Neither of us is getting any younger just standing here.”
Duffle bags slung over leather-clad shoulders, they walked up the ramp into the belly of the beast, inhaling the sharp tang of metal, lubricants and all the other familiar scents of a starship.
“You know,” Zack said, looking around at the bare corridors, “now that I think about it, this tub does feel familiar, but there’s something missing.”
He stopped by a closed door.
“I’m going to venture that this is the main cabin.” It slid aside at his touch, revealing a plain compartment but one that was, by the standards of a small ship, rather spacious. “We can leave our gear here unless you want to take separate quarters.”
“And miss hearing you whine about the mission in your sleep?” She chuckled, then tossed her bag inside. “I’ll decide once we’re under way.”
The bridge had that same aura of familiarity, though it seemed as well used and strictly functional as the rest of the vessel. Talyn sat down at the helm console and touched its screen, sending power through dormant systems. Within moments, they came to life, and she scanned the data on the readout before looking at her surroundings again.
“Zack.”
“Hmm?” Decker, at the tactical console, was busy running through pre-flight checks and didn’t raise his head.
“We’re on Syrah.”
“Amali’s yacht? The one we stole at Nabhka? I thought the Navy planned on returning it to his heirs and successors. How do you figure?”
“She has the right feel. I sailed her long enough to remember.”
“Well, if it is the bastard’s ship, the Navy’s given her a serious upgrade. Remember the mercenary sloop that ran us down by the Talkin array after we stole this thing?”
“Sure.”
“Next time, we’ll be the ones chasing the mercs away. It’ll make up for the engineers taking out all the beautiful luxury fittings it used to have.”
“I would have been difficult pretending to be rogues if our ship looked like a high-class brothel.”
“The old Syrah was comfortable, though.” Decker sounded wistful for a moment, eyes raised to the deck head. He sighed theatrically. “But I’ll grant you that I wouldn’t be able to pass for a pimp and you sure as heck wouldn’t pass for a working lady.”
“Why would I be the entertainer? I’m willing to bet I could pimp you out easily enough, big boy.” She smirked at him over her shoulder.
“I’m willing to try if you are.”
“No doubt. Now how about you get your mind out of the gutter and earn your pay?”
“All systems are up and running,” he replied without missing a beat. “The Navy did a good enough job that I might just stop complaining.”
“That’ll be the day. Give me some time to sort myself out. It’s not like we have much leeway getting out of this slot and I’d rather not scrape our nacelles on the way up.”
“It’ll add character.” He touched his screen. “Incoming from the station, they’re ready to withdraw the cammo net.”
“How kind. Tell them I’d like a few more minutes.”
“Sure. Just don’t let us get too old sitting here, will you?”
Talyn mumbled something that might or might not have been obscene, and he smiled fondly at her back.
“I’m ready to go,” she finally announced, flexing her fingers. “They’ve put a good AI aboard, so I’ll not be flying her alone.”
“Glad to hear that.” He touched his screen again. “Control, this is Chimera. We’re ready.”
“Overhead retracted,” a voice replied moments later. “There’s no traffic in any direction for a thousand kilometers and nothing in orbit above this location. Godspeed and good hunting, Chimera. Try not to damage her too much. We put a lot of hours into the conversion.”
“No promises,” Talyn replied absently, her attention on the controls.
Though she seemed calm, Decker could read the tension in the set of her shoulders and the hard lines marking her face. There was nothing he could do to help, so he simply sat back and tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong lifting out of a tight space in a large thing with the flight characteristics of a slab of granite.
“I hope you’re strapped in, Zack.”
“Why? Are you going to perform aerobatics to amuse the folks on the ground?”
“Strap in, Zack.”
“Yes, ma’am. You concentrate on flying. I’d like to keep the nice engineers who gave us this toy happy, so don’t dent it.”
She briefly scowled at him over her shoulder, then pushed the thrusters to full strength. Chimera’s lift-off rumble echoed through the canyon, and the rock walls began to drop away. The little ship felt steady to a degree that surprised both operatives and within seconds, it was free of the mesa and gaining altitude fast.
“Remember to retract the landing gear,” Decker said. “We might need it some other time.”
“Done. The AI in this thing is impressive. I thought we’d sway like a boat in a storm until we were out of the canyon.”
“Thank you.” A disembodied voice startled the two agents. They looked at each other, then Decker shook his head.
“Oh no. Not happening. I’m not having it speak to us, especially in that voice.” He called up the relevant subroutine and entered a command string. “That should do it.”
This time, a soft chime sounded.
“Much better.” Zack smiled at his partner.
**
Gradually, the blue of the sky faded to purple and then to black when they passed through the upper atmosphere and into the vacuum of space. Talyn chose not to spend any time in orbit and broke out immediately, headed for the hyperlimit. With nothing else to do, Decker spent his time productively by compiling a detailed inventory of the ship’s systems while happily humming a marching song.
They’d almost reached the point where they could go FTL when his tactical screen flashed an insistent warning.
“A Navy sloop just lit up, and it’s targeting us.” Pause. “We’ve been ordered to heave-to and prepare to be boarded.”
“No reply,” Talyn said, shaking her head. “We can outrun her.”
“Can I ping her with my targeting sensors, just for shits and giggles?”
“That’s probably not a very good idea. We might show that we’re stronger than we look.” She glanced at her screen. “Besides, we’ll be jumping out sooner than you might think.”
“Aren’t we still twenty or thirty minutes away from the hyperlimit, even in this little tub?”
“Only if we follow Navy rules. You can jump a lot closer to a gravity well than is generally assumed but it’ll take years of usable service off a ship’s lifespan if you do it too often. We don’t have to follow those rules. The sloop behind us does, and only a life or death situation would warrant breaking them.”
“They’re becoming insistent,” he said, “but I get the feeling they’re not really trying hard to catch us. Their rate of acceleration is pretty anemic.”
“Ah.” Her face lit up with understanding. “A little misdirection then: anyone watching will assume we’re not exactly honest if the Navy takes too great an interest.”
“I hope that you’re right.” His jaw clenched. “They just fired two rounds, and they’ll graze us enough to feel real.”
Bright balls of plasma streaked by on the starboard side and a voice on the radio warned them that the next shots would be aimed at their engines.
“A few more seconds,” Talyn said, “though we’re still a tad closer than I like.”
“In that case, keep your hand right on the controls, ready to punch it in. The moment I see their gun barrels begin to glow again, we need to be out of here.”
“You sound a little stressed, Zack.”
“I have a healthy dose of paranoia to work with, and I don’t like being shot at,
sham or no sham. The last time I was on the receiving end of a few salvos, my life went to hell.”
“Understood,” she replied, remembering the chain of events that had brought Decker back into the Corps as an intelligence operative. “But the Navy won’t sell you into slavery, you know.”
“I’m already in a state of servitude, thanks to you, what with my involuntary recall to active duty.”
“And here I thought you were happy. Goes to show you how ungrateful some folks are, eh, chief warrant officer?”
“Was I complaining, commander, sir? No. I was merely stating a fact. And they just fired again.”
Talyn’s hand came down, and the universe went sideways, forcing Decker’s stomach in the opposite direction.
“Tell me I didn’t just break something,” she said once the jump nausea had passed.
“Nope,” he said a few moments later. “Everything seems to be working the way it should. How long are we on this leg?”
“I figured we’d do about ten hours, to see how she handles. I don’t want to find out that they forgot to tighten a widget when we’re five light-years from the nearest left-handed spanner.”
“Lunch?” He asked, putting the systems console on automatic before rising to stretch his massive frame. “And then a game of strip poker?”
“Lunch and no strip poker. We need to spend some time crawling through the ship so we can memorize where everything is. Studying schematics and fooling around in the simulation tank for two days just doesn’t cut it. We can play grab-ass when that’s done.”
He gave her a mock salute.
“Aye, aye, Captain Bligh.”
“You can have a drink with lunch. One bottle only, though.”
“Do you really think they were kind enough to stock the booze locker with good stuff?” Decker rubbed his hands in anticipation.
“You do know that you’ve developed quite a reputation in the intelligence branch, right?”
“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.” He put on a mock-wounded face at her acerbic tone.
“Perhaps not for you but for me, seeing as how I’m your partner and the one who brought you in.”