Chapter Eleven

  The Shooting Star

  Spacer’s District, Port Royal City

  Planet Dannith, Ventica III

  Year 301 AC

  “We could clean these fools out, Andi. There’s nobody there that’s a match for you, or for any of us, for that matter.” Gregor was standing right next to Andi. She was tall, and a wiry kind of muscular, despite her overall slim build, but the blond, almost albino, giant soared a good quarter meter over her, and his bulk made her look almost skinny and waiflike.

  “We had a saying in the Gut back on Parsephon, Gregor. Don’t shit where you eat.” She had heard the term back in Vulcan City, but she’d never quite understood its usage then. In her experience, people in the Gut would shit anywhere…both literally and figuratively. But she’d since decided it was good advice, and completely on point at that moment. The Shooting Star was no palace, but it was the crew’s informal headquarters in Port Royal City and, save for the fight two years before—the disturbance which had given Andi her chance to push her way into the crew to begin with—Captain Lorillard always tried to keep things calm there. He’d always told the crew to avoid fights, or at least not to be the ones starting trouble in the ragged old bar.

  The bar had very little difficulty finding trouble without their help.

  The Star was a rough place, and not much to look at, but a quick glance at the crowds and the bar business left little doubt it was profitable enough. Perhaps more importantly, it hadn’t taken Andi long to realize that Lorillard was friends of a sort with the owner, and not much longer for her to pick up on the fact that Nightrunner’s captain owned a stake in the place himself.

  Definitely not the right place to cause trouble. And, fleecing drunk gamblers, however legitimately the game was played, had a pretty significant track record of leading to trouble.

  Don’t shit where you eat.

  She reached out—and up—and slapped her hand on Gregor’s massive shoulder. “Don’t worry…we’ll hit some of the other places later tonight. There are plenty of games out there.” She had enough sense to step away from the Star when she was looking for marks, but she was anxious to put her newly honed skills up against some of the District hustlers. She’d been pretty good the last time Nightrunner had been docked at Port Royal City, but she was better now. The trip back from the last mission had been a long one, lengthened further by a detour to avoid a pack of naval escorts patrolling just beyond the frontier. That left a lot of time to hone her poker skills against her shipmates.

  She had other advantages in a game, besides pure skill. She had a perfect poker face, utterly devoid of emotion. And, she hardly looked the part of a skilled and capable gambler.

  Her body was tight, muscular, and she was an experienced killer, but she looked like anything but at first glance, especially when she wanted to. She could pass for somewhat of a lost young woman ripe for exploitation when it suited her, and with her hair pulled back and tied behind her head, she looked even younger than she was, especially if she dressed the part, too.

  “You bet we will. I got taken last time, I’m sure of it. I think they used some kind of marked deck on me.” Her shipmate’s voice had a bit of edge to it.

  Andi just nodded. Gregor always thought he’d been cheated when he lost. She found it amusing, and it certainly wasn’t worth arguing with her shipmate. She always felt better crawling through some imperial ruin with the giant at her side, and humoring his ego defense for gambling losses didn’t seem a large price to pay.

  I wonder who would have the guts to actually cheat Gregor…

  There were safer marks out there than a towering goliath who looked most of the time like he was on the verge of boiling rage. Andi knew Gregor, of course, and she was aware that he was actually more of a gentle giant most of the time, despite appearances. Some hustler in a card game lacked that knowledge, of course.

  “Andi…you got a minute?” Captain Lorillard had walked out from the back room. Andi hadn’t even known he was there.

  “Sure, Cap. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m putting out feelers now for our next mission. As soon as I find something that looks worthwhile, I’ll let you know. Go ahead and hit the card games tonight, but stay in touch tomorrow, okay?”

  “You got it, Captain.” Andi was excited. She had been looking forward to sitting in as Lorillard negotiated their next deal, but she’d thought he was bringing her to humor her, because he was tired of her working him to do it. Now, she realized, he actually wanted her there. She was still the rookie on Nightrunner, technically at least, but the captain had come to rely on her more and more with each passing mission. The ship’s crew were all experienced, but they were specialists, too. Gregor was handy in a fight, Yarra was a great engineer, Sylene could code and crack computer systems like no one she’d ever seen.

  Andi was the most like Lorillard. She’d seen that, and she’d let herself begin to believe it, but now she suddenly realized the captain had also noticed. Andi had always been determined and stubborn, but she’d never considered herself especially smart. The Gut wasn’t the kind of place that recognized intelligence, nor for the most part, rewarded it, save perhaps for a raw kind of street smarts. But two years on Nightrunner had exposed Andi to all kinds of new experiences—poker was just one of them—and she’d exceled at them all. She’d dared to think she could handle more, that her lofty goals, her determined effort to achieve great wealth one day, wasn’t necessarily a fantasy, after all.

  And the fact that Lorillard seemed to agree only bolstered her confidence. Poker games or not, she would damned sure be ready when the captain called.

  Damned sure.

  * * *

  “Darvin, I have a job that needs to be done.” Gavereaux sat in the corner, looking across the table at the Spacer’s District hustler. Darvin had a reputation for turning up useful intel at times, and an equally-deserved one for a lack of discrimination for whom he dealt with. Gavereaux didn’t know if the information broker suspected he was Sector Nine, but he didn’t think the rogue would care. Not if the purse was large enough.

  “What do you need, Rolf?” Darvin had worked for Gavereaux before. The Union spy had found the data Darvin peddled to be spotty at best, sometimes useful, other times looking more like some concocted scheme to create something to sell. But Gavereaux wasn’t buying leads this time. He was looking to sell one in particular.

  “I have a lead, Darvin, and considerable data to back it up. It’s a big score, possibly a really big one.”

  “You have your own crews, Rolf. What do you need from me?”

  Gavereaux pulled a sack from the seat next to him and tossed it on the table. He knew nothing would capture Darvin’s attention like a bag of platinum hectocredit coins.

  “I need you to find me a crew. What I don’t need are questions.”

  Darvin pulled his eyes from the sack, with some apparent difficulty. “What kind of crew?”

  “A very good one. One that can penetrate an operational imperial defense system and retrieve the artifacts beyond.” Gavereaux paused. “Or at least one that can overcome most of the defense net, and leave the door more open than they found it.”

  Gavereaux didn’t care if the hired crew completed the mission and retrieved the artifacts, or if they only managed to blunt the defense network before they were killed. His Foudre Rouge could finish the job no matter what. They could go in, get past the damaged and disarmed imperial defenses, and find the artifacts themselves.

  Or they could simply follow the crew in and kill any survivors, relieving them of whatever treasures they may have found.

  The important thing was, to gain the skills of a veteran crew, a team that had more expertise with imperial systems than any of his people.

  “You want a crew that will go in and get killed. You want to set them up, to send them into a trap.” It was the kind of thing one might have said with disapproval and condemnation in their tone. But those emotions were absent from Darvin’s voice.

  “Yes, Darvin, that is exactly what I want. Though it is of little account if any survive, as long as they penetrate the main defenses.” A pause. “And, when I say a good crew, I mean a good crew.” There was no point in sending a bunch of fools in who would only get cut to ribbons before they’d achieved anything. Gavereaux glared across the table. “Do we understand each other?”

  Darvin smiled broadly, an expression that should have been less creepy and disturbing than it was. “Yes, Rolf. I understand you perfectly.” His grin widened even more. “And I have just the crew for the job. They’re a little…annoyed with me right now. I’m afraid we had a misunderstanding a couple years ago. But they’re one of the best teams on the frontier, and I think they just got back and are looking for a new job.” He was silent for a few seconds. “I’ll have to get someone else to front for me—and that’s going to cost you extra—but I think we can pull it off.” He sat silently again for a bit, looking extremely self-satisfied. Then, he added, “So, you are saying that, whatever happens, none of them will be coming back?”

  Gavereaux returned the stare, and his eyes were cold. “I can promise you that, Darvin. This mission is a most definitely a one-way trip.” He stood up. “Go, get your people lined up. I want this done as soon as possible.” He reached out and dropped a small pile of data chips on the table. “This is the intel on the system and the site. It should be enough to get any ship’s crew salivating. But it’s sensitive data, Darvin.” He paused. “Listen to me very clearly. That is very delicate information. If you lose it, or if you share it with anyone besides the crew you hire, I can promise you, they won’t find enough scraps of you to get a decent DNA sample.”

  Darvin’s smile shrunk a bit, and a look of unease slipped onto his face. But then he looked back at the money, and he just nodded.

  Gavereaux reached out and slapped his hand against the sack on the table, jingling the coins inside. “This is only a down payment, Darvin. Get me a crew ready to go, and there’s another sack just like this one.” He paused. “And when the mission’s done, there’s two more. How’s that for a bonus?” Gavereaux had always been convinced of the utility of greed as motivation.

  He could see the avarice in the hustler’s eyes. The money Gavereaux had just offered was a king’s ransom, but it was nothing compared to the artifacts his people would retrieve if the crew Darvin chose managed to get past the defenses.

  “I will get this done immediately, Rolf. You have my word.”

  Gavereaux struggled to control the snort that almost escaped his lips. Darvin’s word might be worth something, but he wasn’t sure what. But he was quite confident the scoundrel’s greed would get the job done.

  “See to it, and contact me the instant you have someone in place. I want this expedition launched in three or four days, a week at most. Understood?”

  “Yes, I understand. I know just who I can get to approach them. Give me two days, and I’ll get back to you.”

  Gavereaux nodded. He didn’t like relying on the likes of Darvin, but there were few of his type on Dannith that were more dependable…and willing to set up a crew to send into a trap. And there were none as reliably greedy. The funds Lille had brought had proven quite useful, and he’d doubled the amount he’d initially intended to offer.

  Just a bit of insurance, a bet on greed as motivation.

  It was a bet he felt good about, especially when it was supported with just a bit of fear.

  Chapter Twelve

  Free Trader Nightrunner

  Approaching Ventica Transit Point 3

  Ventica System

  Year 301 AC

  “Prepare for jump in forty seconds.”

  Andi sat quietly as Lorillard spoke into the small comm unit. She was sitting at the number two station, and her hands were on the piloting controls. Lorillard had always helmed Nightrunner, but Andi had been working on him for a while to teach her how to fly the ship. She’d had some success, and he’d allowed her to watch as he flew the vessel, and even to pilot herself a number of times.

  Still, she was shocked he was letting her take Nightrunner through the point.

  She was a bit nervous about it, too. Flying the ship in the open was one thing. Navigating the strange alternate space that made interstellar travel possible was quite another.

  It was a reminder of just how much confidence Lorillard had developed for her. It made her feel good, and reinforced her belief that she had found a family, at least one of sorts.

  It also made her stomach feel like it was about to heave.

  “AI systems engaged.” The AI would take the ship right into the point, but Andi herself would have to navigate through the tube and out into the destination system. The space inside the point had various effects on man and machine, but scrambling most electronics was one of the most difficult to handle. “Entering the tube in fifteen.”

  Her hands moved over the controls, switching the power flow, adjusting the thrust coordinators. She knew what to do, at least intellectually, but it was quite another thing to remember it all for the first time.

  “Ten seconds.” A thought flashed through her mind, and she wondered what the others thought of hearing her voice on the comm instead of the captain’s. They’d all come to put their faith in her abilities…but she was far from sure piloting the ship could yet be categorized as an outright ability.

  Five seconds.” She reached out, cut the power flow to the engines. An instant later, Nightrunner was in freefall, slipping right into the center of the transit point’s maw. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to center herself. She’d come to realize that alternate space tended to make her a little nauseous. It wasn’t serious, usually at least, but just then it combined with the effects of her nerves. She was at the controls, responsible for getting everyone through, and throwing up all over her workstation was not going to be helpful.

  She’d heard about spacers who struggled with terrible problems inside points, severe vomiting, mind-splitting headaches, even near-psychotic episodes. A little queasiness was certainly nothing she was going to allow to interfere with her work.

  She felt the—sensation was the only way she could label it—of moving through alien space. It was unsettling, but perhaps the strangest thing about it was the seeming inability to describe it after the fact. She’d tried several times, and she’d seen others, including lifelong spacers, fail as miserably as she had. It was just one more inexplicable aspect of the ancient imperial network of transit points.

  Nightrunner moved steadily forward through the tube, though there was no sensation of motion at all, and with the instruments mostly down, no way to confirm that the ship was making its way through the tube. Except she knew it was.

  They all knew it was.

  She imagined the strange feelings of alternate space would wear her—anyone—down given enough time, but fortunately, most trips between systems took only seconds, and almost always less than a minute. Andi was looking straight forward when she felt it, the sudden return to normal sensations. The scanners and monitors were still down, and it would take them thirty seconds to two minutes to recover and reboot, but there wasn’t a doubt in Andi’s mind.

  Nightrunner had emerged.

  They were back out in the Badlands.

  * * *

  “Get your asses moving! Our takeoff slot is in six hours.” Gavereaux was frustrated at the pace of loading the ship. Clipper was a freighter, designed and built in the Confederation, and bought second hand by Tristar Trading Company, a Confed-based entity with a home office on Dannith. The firm, like the ship, looked to all casual inspections like any of a hundred similar enterprises, small freight haulers supplementing commodity transit rates with some speculation in the purchase and resale of certain…controversial…cargoes.

  Tristar was different from the others in one significant way, however. It was funded—and owned, through a bewilderingly complex web of dummy companies—by Sector Nine, the Union’s premier espionage agency. Tristar and its ships were tools the Union used to spy on Confederation activities, interfere in certain operations, and, most importantly, to operate within the Badlands, and the crucial efforts to find abandoned imperial technology that went on there.

  “Yes, Chief. We’ll be finished in an hour.”

  Gavereaux scowled, not believing what he was told for an instant. “What, a Patrovian hour?”

  Patrovia was a world in the Union, one famous for its very long days, each of its hours lasting almost a conventional week.

  “Nevermind…” He didn’t want an answer, and even less a bullshit excuse. “…just be sure you’re done in two hours, and not a second more.” That would leave enough time to begin the launch sequence as scheduled, and anything that reduced tension on the ship, and its crew and cargo, the better.

  The Union and the Confederation were enemies, bitter rivals who had fought no less than three wars in the previous seventy years. Those conflicts, and the underlying struggle that continued almost as fiercely in technical times of peace, were also fought in the Badlands, a vast stretch of space full of dead imperial worlds. That struggle was less conventional, and generally not fought by warships, but it was no less vital than any other front.

  The Union had a route to the Badlands, but it was long, out of the way, and it snaked through an expanse of unsettled and barely explored systems on the Far Fringe. The Union sent expeditions through that long and torturous route, of course, unwilling to be left behind in the race to reclaim ancient knowledge. But they had achieved most of their successes through Sector Nine’s clandestine activities on the Confederation’s far more strategically-placed frontier worlds.

  The Confederation’s focus on freedom, one that existed more, perhaps, in rhetoric than reality, and the disorderly state of its politics, created a perfect atmosphere for the Union spies to operate. The fact that the Confederation paid, at the very least, lip service to the international treaty compelling all nations to share any old technology finds helped the Union keep up in the tech race. That document, the butt of raucous laughs in some circles, was utterly ignored by every other signatory, save of course, those with no direct access to the Badlands and no practical way to violate its constraints.