Sector Nine didn’t pull as much old tech out of the Badlands as the Confeds did, but since most of the Confederation finds were made by illegal prospectors who sold their booty on the black market, the Union was able to throw some cash at the problem, buying what they couldn’t find themselves, and actually gaining a slight edge in the tonnage of ancient equipment acquired.

  Most of the frontier adventurers refused to deal openly with Sector Nine, of course. The Union was the enemy, and even though most of the hardened prospectors considered the Confed navy that hunted them just another adversary, most of them retained a strange kind of patriotism. That was easily circumvented, of course, and Sector Nine maintained dozens of agents in Port Royal City, many of them in deep cover, able to withstand almost any level of investigation a prospecting crew was likely to conduct.

  For the most part, however, values like patriotism were cheap, and in the end, many crews just went for the biggest payday, especially if there was no obvious Union involvement. Gavereaux sometimes wondered how many of them really cared where the money came from. Patriotism was an odd thing. Most of the frontier adventurers were far more persecuted by their own government than by Sector Nine or any Union forces, yet they maintained at least the façade of loyalty, if not the real thing.

  Gavereaux stood and watched for another few minutes, and then he turned and walked back to his office. This time, he had more to think about than getting Clipper on its way. He was going to lead the expedition himself. It was something he’d never done before, and he was scared. He would have far preferred to remain behind and direct operations from his comfortable office, as he usually did. But he knew his life was on the line this time—literally—and when he’d sat down and thought about who he trusted to pull his ass out of the fire, he came through the exercise with a small list. A very small list, with a single name on it.

  His.

  He knew what would happen if the mission failed, and that bolstered his courage against the dangers he knew waited in the Badlands. He’d actually considered running if things went bad, of disappearing and hiding somewhere far from the battlefields of the espionage wars. He had some funds stashed in secret, the result of a number of years of moderately successful embezzlement. His lifetime of espionage experience had even prepared him for such a flight. But he quickly discounted the idea. Against any normal agents, he’d have bet on himself to make good his escape.

  But Ricard Lille would find him.

  Gaston Villieneuve’s top henchman had an uncanny ability to find his prey, and chasing down a fleeing agent with a signed kill order in hand would be dead center in Lille’s area of expertise.

  Hell, the psychopath would probably enjoy it more if I ran…

  No, he had to see the mission through. He needed to make it work, to return with the promising old tech the scouting report suggested existed in the target system.

  To restore his reputation and regain the favor of Gaston Villieneuve.

  * * *

  “All systems green-1, Captain. We’re accelerating at 1.2g, heading toward the Ghosalon transit point.” Andi sat bolt upright in her seat on the bridge, as she snapped out the crisp report. She could feel energy almost crackling through her body. She’d been nervous at first, but she’d quickly built up her confidence, and she fancied her ship and crewmates a match, ton for ton at least, for any ship in the Confed navy.

  Not that she much liked the navy—the patrol ships stationed on the frontier spent most of their time half-heartedly harassing Badlands prospectors—but there was no arguing with the record of the Confederation’s fleet. There might even be some things to emulate. A little polish of the sort common on military vessels could only help operations on Nightrunner.

  Andi had been born a street rat in the darkest alleys of the Gut, scavenging for food, and now she could pilot an interstellar spacecraft. She’d nursed her lofty goals in those early years, but now she realized how ridiculous they had been, how wildly audacious. And yet, it seemed almost amazing how far she had come. She was still a long way from that vast fortune, but there was no question she was vastly closer than she had been.

  “Very good, Andi. You fly Nightrunner as well as I do. Maybe better.” Captain Lorillard looked over and met her gaze, giving her a smile she knew was genuine. She’d had two real mentors in her life, the Marine, of course, and now Nightrunner’s captain, the man who’d come so close to sending her on her way the day they’d first met two years before.

  Both men had taught her many things and, almost uncontrollably aggressive in her desire to learn, she had soaked it all up, rapidly focusing and mastering the skills her instructors imparted to her. Flying Nightrunner through an empty system wasn’t the same thing as handling the ship in a battle or other difficult situation, she knew, but she could also see Lorillard’s surprise—bordering on shock—at just how quickly she’d become adept at the pilot’s position. She’d never taken Nightrunner into battle, of course, but she was beginning to fancy that she could pull it off if she had to.

  “On a straight run through a clear system, I’m okay, Cap. But I’ve got a long way to go.” It was appropriate modesty, but it wasn’t completely honest. She was beginning to believe she could handle the controls in any situation.

  “You’re smart, too. Controlled. You never bite the hand that feeds you. You protect your teacher’s feelings, understate your abilities, just that little bit. You’ll go far out here, Andi. Unless this mission turns out to be what it looks like it might. Then, you’ll just be gifted and skilled, sitting among the idle rich on some pleasure world while those hard-earned abilities atrophy.” Lorillard clearly had high hopes for the expedition. Andi knew that much from his tone, and also from the edginess that had taken hold of him from the moment they’d left Dannith. He was anxious, hopeful…but also nervous. Even scared.

  That gave Andi a bit of a chill every time she caught the concerned look on his face.

  Andi had been on a number of missions, but they’d all been relatively normal, which is to say, dangerous, but not hopelessly so. She’d seen the scouting reports on this one herself, participated in the negotiations. She hadn’t much cared for the broker who’d sold them the lead. Actually, she would have passed on the whole thing if it had been her call. She didn’t think Lorillard had been overly comfortable with the details either. But Nightrunner’s crew had dealt with the man before, and everything he’d sold them in the past had proven to be at least reasonably legitimate.

  And the payoff was potentially monstrous.

  The target was an old space station, one that appeared to be in at least reasonable condition, even partially operational. That made it dangerous, no question, but even Andi’s controlled mind raced at the thoughts of possible artifacts they might find.

  Andi was still young, but even at her tender age, she was hesitant to allow greed to overrule good sense and caution. She was often surprised at how few people did the same.

  Her eyes darted to the small screen on her workstation. There had been something there, for an instant, at least. She was sure of it.

  She turned and looked over at Lorillard. “Cap, I think I saw something on the scanner, just a flash. Maybe we should change course and check it out before we move on.”

  Lorillard looked down at his own display for a few seconds before answering. “I don’t see anything, Andi. AI shows a transient contact on the record, zero point three seconds in duration, low power. It’s probably some natural occurrence, maybe two small meteors collided, or even a gas cloud burst.” He paused a few seconds, clearly thinking. “I don’t think it’s a problem, not all the way out here.”

  Andi knew they were far out, and they were going farther. This mission was taking Nightrunner, and her with it, vastly deeper into the Badlands than she’d been before. Deeper than anyone on the ship had been, its captain included. That had her nervous. She tried to tell herself she was being foolish, that mere distance from the Confederation border meant nothing. But she couldn’t push it from her mind. She looked again, intently, changing the readings on the scanners. But there was still nothing. Only the one brief contact.

  “Cap, there are some pretty heavy dust clouds over there, and a small asteroid belt. Someone could be hiding in there, couldn’t they?”

  Lorillard looked down at his screen again, a demonstration of just how seriously he took his youngest crew member. But he shook his head and repeated the essence of his earlier response. “You’re right, technically, at least. I suppose someone could be hiding somewhere on the edge of the system. But who would be all the way out here, engines shut down, laying low? It’s always possible we could run into another prospecting ship, of course, but who would be running silent, waiting for…for what?”

  Andi understood what Lorillard was saying, and she tried to push aside the concern. But it was still there.

  “I’d run over there, Andi, just to take a look for caution’s sake. Hell, it could be some kind of artifact as well as a threat of some kind…but it’s probably nothing, almost certainly nothing in fact, and this trip is long as hell. We’re going to be tight for fuel anyway, and we’d need to blast the engines hard to go over there, and then again to get back on course. I think cutting our fuel supply that close puts us at a lot more risk than whatever chance there’s some danger sitting out there.”

  “Yes, Cap. Of course.” Everything Lorillard said made perfect sense. But, if she’d been in charge, she still would have gone over and investigated.

  But she wasn’t in charge, and she wasn’t about to dispute the captain’s decision. So, she put it out of her mind.

  At least as well as she could.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sector Nine Freighter Clipper

  Heckmere System

  Year 301 AC

  Gavereaux stood in Clipper’s small landing bay, watching as the robots pulled the shuttle into place and clamped it down. Clipper had a small crew, and most of those were specialists of one sort or another, in areas ranging from hand-to-hand combat to codebreaking, but there was no room for flight operations crew and the like. The robots were sophisticated units, and very expensive, something a vessel like Clipper would not normally possess, at least if the ship hadn’t been an undercover Sector Nine asset.

  The freighter wasn’t anything special in most other ways. Improving the old vessel too much would only have only drawn suspicion, and since its primary purpose had been shuttling Sector Nine spies around the Confederation, the less attention it gained, the better. The two small laser turrets were an exception, very high tech and far superior to anything a normal freighter might carry. Still, the limitations of the reactor capped the ship’s offensive capability. It could take on another freighter or similar craft and win, but it was nowhere close to strong enough to fight off even the smallest warships.

  The doors on the shuttle opened, and a man stepped out.

  Though Gavereaux wasn’t entirely sure he would designate the new arrival in quite that way, and a man.

  He was tall, and even through the light body armor he wore, Gavereaux could see he was lean and muscular. He had short-cropped brown hair, and he stared forward with a withering intensity. Gavereaux had seen Foudre Rouge before, but he’d never gotten comfortable around the clone-soldiers.

  “Agent Gavereaux, Lieutenant Emile-2756 reporting as ordered. My soldiers are under your command.” There was no detectable emotion in the officer’s voice, though Gavereaux knew Foudre Rouge soldiers did have emotions, like any other human. The Union’s elite troops had always seemed cold and robotic to him. He couldn’t imagine being created in a lab and raised in a crèche before beginning a relentless regimen at age seven, one that continued into adulthood, and led only to a life of more training and war. He couldn’t speak to what that kind of life did to the Foudre Rouge, but he subscribed to the generally accepted theory that it messed with their heads.

  “Very well, Lieutenant. Thank you for shuttling over to discuss the mission. The scans of the system are clear, but I think it is best to maintain communications silence for as long as possible.”

  “No explanations are required, Agent Gavereaux. My soldiers and I have been placed under your command. Ours is to obey.”

  Gavereaux wanted to appreciate the lieutenant’s pure obedience, but the man made the hair on his neck stand up. “Okay, Lieutenant, if you have no argument, perhaps we can do this right here. Clipper is a rather small ship, and there are no conference facilities to speak of.”

  “Ours is to obey.”

  The cold, robotic demeanor of the Foudre Rouge—the result, in no small part, of the relentless conditioning they’d received—was off-putting, though perhaps it was perfect for soldiers intended for war. One glance at the lieutenant suggested he considered himself a member of an almost invincible fighting force. But, Gavereaux had his own doubts. The Foudre Rouge were good, but they had never quite managed to outclass their primary enemies, the Confederation Marines.

  “Very well. Your troops are ready for action, I presume.”

  “They are always prepared for combat, Agent Gavereaux.”

  “Then, I will simply brief you on the mission parameters, and you can then return to your ship before we depart.” And that can’t be soon enough for me.

  “Yes, Agent Gavereaux. I must also advise you that our vessel tracked a scanner contact approximately three point six four days ago. Mass in a range of four to eight thousand tons.”

  Gavereaux felt a twinge of excitement, and maybe a bit of fear as well. The contact the officer was reporting had to be Nightrunner. That meant Captain Lorillard and his people would be approaching the target any time, even as he stood in the bay speaking with the lieutenant.

  With any luck, Lorillard’s crew will fight their way through most of the defenses, and leave the door something close to open for us. And, whatever is left of them, well, that’s what these Foudre Rouge are for…

  “Okay, Lieutenant. Let’s go through the plan for when we arrive, and then you can return to your ship, and we can set a course for the final destination.”

  Gavereaux was going to see just how quickly he could cover everything, and relieve himself of the officer’s disconcerting presence.

  * * *

  “Feeding additional power to the scanners, Captain. We’ve got the station, in orbit just where it’s supposed to be…” Andi paused, looking closely at her screen as a small dot moved around the planet and into view. “…and there’s something else, too.”

  “A second contact?” Lorillard’s voice showed concern, but he’d been uncharacteristically serious and glum the entire trip. Andi knew he was concerned about the mission, more so than usual. It was a perfect match. She was just as edgy.

  She figured the blip was just another bit of imperial debris, perhaps an ancient ship flying around the planet, dead in a sustainable orbit. Until the second batch of readings came in.

  She frowned as she stared at the screen. She’d learned a lot in her two years in Nightrunner, but she also understood what she didn’t know. And, she was no expert in reading scanner reports and about the specific profiles of ships. But the new contact looked more to her like a half-rusted bucket of bolts than some sophisticated ancient imperial technology. The closer she looked, the more convinced she became.

  And the more concerned.

  “Cap, that thing’s no imperial tech. I’m no scanning master, but I can tell you that much.” Andi had never seen an actual imperial spaceship, nor even a decent-sized piece of one, but she’d looked at visual accounts and other images. The empire’s ships were sleek, usually close to symmetrical, and they were built from high-tech materials that rarely showed wear, even when they were centuries old. An imperial ship could be blasted apart, of course, and the wreckage of more than one such vessel had been found, but short of that, they boasted incredible durability.

  “Bring us in closer, Andi…and slow, one-tenth thrust.” Andi heard the captain’s voice, and she knew he was concerned too. The ship was the unexpected find, looking a lot more like a battered version of Nightrunner than a vessel of the old empire. The station was different…old imperial tech, certainly.

  “Power to engines now…just a touch…” Her hands moved over the newly familiar navigational controls, and the ship lurched slightly along its new vector. She felt relief from the freefall, if only the one-tenth normal grav equivalent the engines were providing.

  She didn’t remove her eyes from the screen. There was more information scrolling down, both new data coming in and previous readings the AI was gradually cleaning up and enhancing. There were no energy readings, at least none that appeared to be from an active reactor, or even significant battery power to systems. There were some trace indications of radiation, and the ship’s interior temperature was roughly three degrees warmer than the surrounding space. That wasn’t much, and it was easily accounted for by the decay of radioactives inside the vessel.

  “It looks dead, Captain…but it’s definitely a ship, and not an imperial one, at least not like any we’ve seen before.”

  “No…I don’t think it’s imperial either.” Lorillard was definitely concerned now and, either he was either making no effort to hide it, or he was failing completely. “Honestly, the mass, the hull material readings, even the general shape…it could almost be Nightrunner.”

  Andi felt a quick shiver move through her body. The whole thing was an all too clear reminder of the risks they took on every mission. Andi was coming to the same conclusion she believed Lorillard was. That was another prospecting ship out there. Someone had been there before Nightrunner…and it was looking very much like they’d never made it out.