by Eric Thomson
“We have positive tractor beam lock on you, Phoenix. Stand-by for the first transfer.”
“Phoenix helm confirms.”
“Phoenix cargo confirms.”
“Number one away,” the alto voice announced.
A standard container emerged from the opening in Mikado’s flank and slowly crossed the chasm between both vessels. The Q-ship’s cargo handler had a sure touch: it came through the space doors dead center and gently dropped to the deck.
“Clear,” the alto said. “I’ll let you get this one out of the way before I send the next one over.”
“Acknowledged.”
Using the powerful arms of his exoskeleton frame, Decker picked up the massive case and shifted it to the spot he’d chosen next to the inner hatch, where it could be unloaded quickly.
“Ready for the next one.”
“Number two away.”
And so it went until the only thing left was the missile pack.
“This is going to be a bit trickier,” the Mikado’s cargo handler said. “We don’t have much room for error due to the size. What I’m going to do is bring the pack to your doorstep, then have you grab the side and guide it in. I’ll keep the tractor beam on until you’re happy to have me drop it.”
“Okay.” Decker took a last look at the remaining space on the deck and hoped that he hadn’t made a calculation error. “Send her over.”
The missile pack was flatter but much longer than the standard containers, and when it got close to the space doors, Decker had a moment of panic wondering whether it would actually fit through. When it stopped, he extended his exoskeleton’s arms as far out as they would go and took hold of a handling bar welded to the side of the case.
“I have it.” He felt a thin bead of sweat run down his forehead. “Slowly now. There’s not much room to spare on either side.”
His heart almost stopped when he felt the vibration of a hard contact between pack and ship run through his exoskeleton. A quick glance showed him that he’d shifted too far left. Careful not to overcompensate, he pulled it to the right and took a step backward. This time, it cleared the opening.
“We’re aligned,” he said. “A few more meters...Okay, I’m letting go now. You can drop it.”
“Replenishment complete,” the alto announced a moment later. “If I can make a last suggestion – secure everything to the deck now. It’ll avoid problems later.”
“Will do, and thanks.”
“My pleasure. I’ll buy you a coffee next time you’re aboard Mikado. Cargo, out.”
The Q-ship captain’s voice came on again.
“Keep your heading and speed until we’re clear. Good hunting, Phoenix.”
The dark mass blocking the stars slowly moved away on a diverging course and Decker just had time to see massive sublight drives glow bright yellow before the space doors closed.
He removed the exoskeleton and secured it against the bulkhead before locking the containers down so they wouldn’t shift. Unpacking would be a bitch, but he’d make sure to conscript Steiger and Kidder. None of the containers bore naval markings so they wouldn’t see anything they shouldn’t, though there might be questions about the provenance.
Talyn had re-pressurized the hold by the time he secured the last one and he removed his helmet with a sigh of relief.
“All good down there?” She asked over the intercom.
“Yep. You can point us at the next stop. I’ll get this suit off and release our guests from the brig.”
“From their cabin.”
“Locked in with no bar, no food, and no entertainment other than a deck of cards, it’s a brig.”
**
“We decided to return you to your natural habitat,” Decker said, opening the cabin door. “It’s done, and you’re free to roam again.”
“Did your mystery supplier bring anything interesting or was it just more of the same old boring stuff?” Steiger asked in a sarcastic tone.
“Are a few cases of T’Klach vintage interesting enough?”
Her eyes lit up at his words.
“In that case, I forgive you for your lack of trust and for locking us up like vulgar defaulters.”
“Be happy I didn’t get my way. I wanted to blow knock-out gas into your cabin to make sure you couldn’t see or hear anything, but the boss nixed that idea.”
“Nasty man. And here I thought we were buddies.” Steiger glared at him.
“Our supplier doesn’t care about who scratches whose itch. The deal is no outsiders can witness who they are and how they operate.”
“Now I really want to know who you guys are and who you hang out with,” she replied. “Pretty posh operation for a pair of mercs nobody’s ever heard of.”
“It’s a big galaxy.” Decker shrugged. “We keep a low profile and stick to jobs the big guys like Avalon won’t touch. As long as the pay’s good...”
“Tran told me you have a doppelganger somewhere out in that big galaxy,” she said, following Zack and Kidder to the saloon, “a big bad former soldier who’s quick on the trigger and a whiz with weapons. Care to comment?”
“Nope. I’ll stick with the theory is that each of us has a double somewhere. Considering the endless billions of human beings out there, I’m a believer.”
He pointed at the table.
“Sit. I’m going to heat us up some meals. We eat and then we go into the cargo hold and start unpacking. When that’s done, I’ll crack open a few bottles of the good stuff. Deal?”
“And what if we decline to help?” She asked.
“I add the extra hours I spend unpacking to your final bill, and I keep the T’Klach to myself. When what we have now runs out, you can drink that Pacifica horse piss which, for some unaccountable reason, takes up space in the cooler.”
“You are a nasty man, Ser Whate.”
He grinned at her.
“I thought the itch scratching session had made that abundantly clear.”
“Made what clear?” Talyn asked, entering the compartment.
“That I’m a nasty man.”
She sniffed the air around him and made a face.
“Considering how badly you need a shower, I’d say nasty’s an understatement.”
“Go ahead and play stevedore in a pressure suit for a few hours and see how sweet you smell afterward, darling.”
“I have no need to. Fetching and carrying is your job – darling.”
She blew Decker a kiss and then winked at Kidder, who quietly shook his head in mock despair.
**
“I’d hate to see your statement of operating costs,” Steiger said, hauling another case of ammo from a container and putting it on a grav sled for the move to the magazine.
“Why?” Decker collapsed the container that had held the provisions.
“Because I wonder how you can afford this, especially since some of it looks like it fell off the back of a Navy warship, even though it has no markings. That kind of merchandise doesn’t come cheap on the black market.”
“Yours is not to wonder how,” Zack sonorously intoned, “yours is just to help me shift the stuff so we can make sure we’re able to take your merchandise to its destination. Besides, since you're all secretive about the where and why of your what, you can’t expect me to tell you all of my secrets. We’re not really that close, the other night notwithstanding. As a matter of fact, I have no idea who Miko Steiger is apart from her appetites.”
She made an obscene gesture.
“Screw you, Bill Whate.”
“No play until we finish. Ammo doesn’t do us much good sitting here if we run out of what’s in the magazines before we run out of targets.”
“Sure.” She nodded. “If you’ll point me at the nearest shot locker, I’ll shift this pallet over.”
He pulled out his tablet and tossed it at her. She snatched it out of the air with practiced ease.
“Follow the directions. A pro like you shouldn’t have problems.”
&n
bsp; “Combat load?”
“Yes.” Decker’s face twisted into a mask of disappointment. “You needed to ask?”
“Touchy, touchy.”
**
“Steiger smells a rat,” Decker said after the cabin door closed behind him.
“Did you forget to run the vermin control protocols after we left Rakka?” Talyn asked, mischief dancing in her eyes.
“She’s got time in the Armed Services for sure. When we unpacked the missiles, she wondered out loud what we were doing with Mark Twenty-Threes that weren’t, under any circumstances, allowed to end up in civilian hands.”
“Too smart for comfort?”
“Yeah. She loaded the magazine for the main guns without calling for help. I checked afterward. Flawless.”
“Coming from you, that says something.”
“Sure, but what does it say?”
“That we need to tighten our game and maybe give up a few hints to gain her confidence. The question is how much?”
“I’m thinking more and more that if I drop the Ser Whate act and scrub this disguise to become Ser Decker, interstellar mercenary, we might get further. If we’re going to be under contract to the Garonne rebels for more than just cargo haulage, Tran will be the first to recommend they take advantage of a former Marine master gunner’s expertise, and that gives us a way inside.”
“And if the Coalition is behind the rebellion, for whatever Machiavellian reasons, the game’s up. You’re a known quantity after the affair on Pacifica and that little trick you pulled, returning from the dead.”
“Not if the analysts at HQ are right, and Amali’s vendetta against me was personal rather than Coalition business, which makes more sense than my being their number one bugaboo. I’m just a small irritant in the grand scheme of things and quickly forgotten.”
He stripped off his coveralls.
“Since my personal file is buried so deep the Grand Admiral can’t read it without special permission, there’s nothing to say I’m back in the Corps. Even better, seeing as I’ve got no public record since I supposedly retired, I can say whatever I want.”
“I’d still like to err on the side of caution. The Coalition has had its tentacles deep inside naval intelligence before. Let’s see what happens at this gathering of transports before we make any hasty decisions. Steiger can stew in her suspicions until then. Right now I’m not sure I either like her or trust her and not only because she was a little too quick to scratch her itch with you.”
“Jealousy is such an ugly thing,” he replied, quickly ducking into the heads before he became the target of a well-aimed pillow.
FIFTEEN
“You’re not locking us in again?” Steiger asked, twirling a half-empty bottle between her fingers.
Several days had passed since the covert resupply operation, and relations between the mercenary and Zack had remained somewhat strained.
“I can, if that turns your crank,” Decker replied with an indifferent shrug. “But this is your tribe, and there’s no magic to our approach.”
“As opposed to the magic that makes this ship a pocket frigate? I suppose you have a jolly roger in your flag locker somewhere.”
“Probably.” He finished his drink. “You can join us on the bridge if you like your boredom in generous servings.”
“Not very trusting are you?”
“Approaching an unknown rendezvous with colors aloft and the band playing is not really a good strategy for long-term survival. We’d rather know what things look like before we blunder into them.”
“At the risk of sounding churlish,” Kidder interjected, “that didn’t work out too well with the late Ser Syko.”
“And yet, he’s the late Ser Syko, and we’re taking a pleasure cruise along the Rim, Tran. I think that worked out splendidly for everyone, Syko and his goons excepted, and that’s a blessing for Andoth and the galaxy at large.”
“As you say.” The former silahdar inclined his head.
Talyn stuck her head into the saloon.
“I’ve decided to drop out of FTL some distance away from the given coordinates. That means we’re going silent in eight hours. I suggest you all take whatever rest, recreation, and sanitation you need. Once we’re at sublight, I’m shutting the ship down except for the essentials.”
She looked at Decker and jerked her head towards the passageway.
“I’d like a final check on our emcon condition before then. If you haven’t had too much of that Shrehari swill, we might want to do it now rather than later, just in case we’ve had a degradation in some of the shielding.”
“Roger that.” Decker tossed his bottle into the recycler and rose. “Duty calls. Feel free to enjoy the amenities for as long as you want. Like the boss lady said, we’re going to full emcon in eight, so plan accordingly.”
Steiger got up too.
“Mind if I tag along?”
“Why?” Decker asked the mercenary.
“Curiosity. Your ship is fascinating; quite unlike any I’ve seen.”
“And your curiosity doesn’t become a passenger who’s hired us to transport contraband,” Talyn said, her tone distinctly unpleasant. “Engineering and combat spaces are out of bounds to passengers.”
“And yet I’ve seen the inside of your magazine after seeing the inside of your distinctly non-standard supply containers.”
“A one-off for the sake of expediency. You’re restricted to this deck now.”
Steiger made a vaguely mocking hand gesture, imitating a salute.
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
“You know she’s trying to get under your skin, right?” Zack murmured once they were out of earshot.
“Under my skin and into your pants, which she’s thankfully managed only once.” Talyn gestured at the ladder, inviting him to go down first. “Try to keep it that way, Zack. I hope we can off-load her when we meet the rest of them. If she’s ex-Fleet as you suspect, she must have been in the security branch. They irritate the heck out of me every time I get near one. You’re sure you secured all the hatches leading off the passenger deck?”
“They aren’t going anywhere other than the saloon or their cabins, and if Steiger decides to try overriding the locks, the AI will let everyone know – loudly.”
“Doing things with the ship’s systems again that the designers never thought of?”
“Got to keep busy during a long crossing. Sex, booze and sleep will only get me so far.” They stepped into a tight maintenance passage.
“Maybe studying for a commission might occupy your time.”
“Huh.” He grunted, dropping into a crouch to check the keel junction box. “Why the heck should I go for a commission? My warrant pays me a major’s rates, I get saluted by the enlisted ranks when I’m in uniform, but I don’t have to put up with all the officer crap. The way I see it, I’m sitting in the sweetest spot of all.”
“The way I see it if you intend to have a long career, your next promotion is to major. Might as well get prepared.”
“Nope. Not in the middle of a mission.” He shut the panel and stood up. “This one’s good.”
Talyn pulled out a hand-held sensor and began walking aft, looking for emission leaks near the power conduits.
“Anyway,” he continued, following his partner down the narrow corridor, “I’ve got enough time in command of a company group, even if it was made up of Trans-Coalsack slave-soldiers, that I’m eligible for a direct commission without sitting for any exams.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You’re not a Marine, darling.” He blew her a mocking kiss. “I just have to apply and get the career management trolls to validate my field experience. After that, it’s the Commandant’s call whether I skip over the promotion list or get slotted for a career board.”
“So prepare your application.” She squatted by the aft junction box, opened the panel, and checked her sensor. “Clear. We can do the engine spaces now.”
“And we’re back
to why should I bother?”
“Because you can go a lot further than chief warrant officer.”
“I never figured to become a command sergeant, so I’d say my career aspirations have been more than surpassed. Why are you so interested in pushing me up the greasy pole?”
“Because I care?” She looked over her shoulder and gave him a disingenuous smile.
“That’s the most insincere thing I’ve heard all day.” Decker’s roar of laughter echoed off the bare metal bulkheads. “You’re just trying to get me to a rank where I can shoulder some of the officer-type responsibilities for our team.”
“Guilty. Trying to explain your operational decisions to the brass is becoming a full-time chore after every mission.”
“I’m a big boy. I can stand at attention in front of Captain Ulrich’s desk and take my medicine.”
“No doubt.” She opened the hatch to the fusion reactor compartment. “But I’m the commanding officer, so I get to wear the nincompoopery of my staff.”
“May I add nincompoopery to the Decker dictionary?”
“Of course. You caused it to be expelled from my over-tired brain; but enough persiflage, mon ami. Let’s pick up the pace so we can get a decent night’s sleep.”
**
“You’re sure we can join you on the bridge?” Steiger wore an entirely feigned look of innocence. “You haven’t changed your mind about locking us up?”
“If you keep up the sarcastic warrior princess act, I will change my mind,” Decker growled, but he waved her and Kidder over the coaming anyway. “You can take the two empty stations over there. I’ve disconnected them.”
“Sixty seconds to emergence,” Talyn announced, cutting off the mercenary’s reply. “You’d better be sitting when the countdown hits zero. I’m not picking you up if you face plant.”
This time, Steiger had the grace to obey without a further word.
The universe shifted, making Decker feel like his guts were about to take a fast trip up his throat. He swallowed hard and then touched his screen.