Doomed Cargo Read online

  One corner of her lips drew into a smile, eyes burning with malignance. “Very well. Continue with the project. And, Lars,” she said grabbing his full attention. “I want to hold this Ch’tikott in my hands.”

  He bowed with supreme subordination and said, “It will be done, my Matriarch.”

  “Next?” she said.

  Vice Prefect of Adjudication Remm stood, a tall, narrow man with a dour face, and said, “We have an update on the Kronyn-Sarz development. Eleventh planet of the Cabal and home to the Sarzi production fields.”

  Xantrissa gave him a wave of her long, slender hand, motioning him to continue.

  “Our infiltrator has made contact. Seeds planted there have begun to fruit. Sanctions are being lifted that once protected the Kronysh-dai, the spiritual framework of their largest nation state. They are now open to attack from all sides. Uprising is leading to upheaval. Their culture is fracturing.”

  She smiled crookedly and proposed, “Which side will their Wi’ahr take now, and who’s side will he betray?”

  “Precisely, my Matriarch,” Remm said. “If the situation falls into conflict, it will shake that society to its core. Their foundation will unravel. In a single generation they will have altered the very fabric of their society. In two generations they will crumble to dust.”

  “Truths turned to lies. Lies to truths. And gods will become forgotten,” she said.

  “Indeed.”

  “Continue your work,” she said. He nodded. Her stinging eyes hawked across her panel. The men looked back at her, each bearing the powerful yet anxious look of men in a boiler. She stood and strode to the far side of the room where the view of space shown all around her. There was no viewport, no wall or bulkhead, but rather an atmosphere containment membrane that covered the entire space. It was only molecules in width. She could reach out and touch the vacuum. She always thrilled at being in such proximity to death and danger.

  Her thin, onyx lips tightened and she said in a low, serious tone, “What of … N’halo?”

  Obsalom Admiral Visham stood slowly, with proud dignity. “There is news, my Lady.”

  Her head tilted slightly.

  “We have found her.”

  Xantrissa smiled with devilish charm. Her admiral’s words were like heaven’s harmonies to her ears. “You have …” her head tilted a degree more, “… found her?”

  “Indeed.”

  She inhaled, straightened. “How certain are you, Visham?”

  “A child of obscurity. A child of Sarcon. Motherless. Fatherless. No lineage. The last of the N’hana creed. It is the N’halo.”

  “Where is she?”

  His chin lifted. “A disbursement camp lost in the neutral lanes, my Matriarch.”

  She grinned to herself. A disbursement camp. Of course. The evidence was perfect. It was pure logic. The one who would rise from the ashes of war and fulfill the destiny of the planet Sarcon, lead the Cabal in its final death charge to victory over the suns. The N’halo.

  At least, that’s what the Sarcon prophecy foretold.

  And now N’halo had been found.

  Xantrissa tasted blood on her tongue. She swam in it.

  But, let’s not be hasty.

  “There are many disbursement camps,” she said. They were refugees fleeing the war from all corners of the solar twin system. Filthy, disgusting creatures.

  “We have tracked refugee lanes from Sarcon to the planet Molos. She is the one,” Visham assured her.

  “The coordinates?”

  “They’ve already been fed into the nav engines. Say the word, my Lady. We can deploy immediately.”

  She turned to face her council. “Good work, Visham. All, leave.”

  They each nodded, stood and shuffled out leaving Paleron standing at the doorway looking at his matriarch.

  Xantrissa said sharply, “Give me the Imperium.”

  He nodded. The holotable emitted a live, real-time, 3-D projection of another council, each member sitting at their respective chair shimmering in long distance broadcast waves. These men did not bear the “faceless man” pins. Their uniforms did not acknowledge the Obsalom Order with purple highlights, nor were they Obsalom members. This was the Imperium.

  “Gentlemen,” Xantrissa said. The word put disgust on her tongue.

  The forward member, a Supreme General of whose name she did not know nor care, stood to address her. “Bitch Xantrissa,” he said in his prototypical drone. “Before we begin, this transmission will never occur. We deny your existence and we do not acknowledge your authority.”

  “Very well,” she said, moving beyond the obligatory greetings of her counterparts. The Obsalom Order did not follow any rules of war, any military protocol, any code of social ethos. The general’s disavowing of her was merely rule and regulation. It was custom. They had knife work. She had the blade. The Imperium wanted her services. She gave them deniability.

  In return for her silence, Xantrissa was given access to their entire Imperium war machine. Marauding, destroying, even murdering at will was hers on a whim. That’s how she’d ascended to the position of Prime Matriarch of the Obsalom Order. Her blood never ran hotter.

  She was Bitch.

  “What is your request?” the man said.

  “A wave of long range EmDrive rockets from the cannon station at Golotha.”

  The councilmen shared a stiff look. “And the target?” the leader asked.

  Xantrissa gave him an insulted look. “That is not your concern, Imperium.” The man swallowed, melting. But Xantrissa grinned in her wicked way. “But to answer your question, a refugee colony over Molos.”

  The man said, “Do you have the—”

  “I do,” she said. “I will give the word.”

  “Are you certain?” the man said.

  Xantrissa turned her head slowly to look at him, a glare to put shivers up any man’s back.

  “Very well,” he said clearing his throat. “Give us the word when you’re ready and we’ll relay the fire order.” He gave her a final look and the entire holo-projection fizzled away. Xantrissa smiled showing teeth, the incisors sharpened at their points. With that she strode powerfully from the comm center and out onto the command stage of her vessel.

  The Malice 1 command stage was a massive, circular area a thousand feet in diameter housing every primary element of ship operations in one single open space—nav control, fire control, the medical facility, etc. Her command dais was a towering one-hundred-foot pedestal at its very center while the workstations of her half-octagon command center flanked it on the floor level. All around was the darkness of space visible through the two-hundred-foot-tall vacuum membrane that encased the operational stage in its hermetic bubble. It was impermeable by laser beam and rocket alike, and was only vexed by slow moving solids. She had been known to thrust insubordinate crewmembers slowly through the membrane, usually feet-first, and watch them freeze in the vacuum inch by inch as they passed through. Their screaming always piqued her appetite, after which she would order a feast for her command crew.

  She took gracefully to her command dais, moved up the lift and appeared at her throne above the stage. She sat down like a queen and called out, “Nav!”

  “Coordinates laid in, my Bitch!”

  “Fire engines.”

  The powerful thrum of Malice 1’s enormous ion engines pounded through the entire vessel.

  She grinned wickedly and called, “Execute!”

  Malice 1 slid forward through the milky vacuum led by its round control stage at the front followed by a several mile long, pin-straight tube rail connecting it to a great space city emerging aft. The megaplex was a discus several miles in diameter housing the multi-thronged skyline of stately spires, squared off towers and terraced edifices all lending to the city thoroughfares below. Patron skiffs zipped to and fro over the heads of street revelers, bounty hunters and space scum as they went about their ugly heathenry among the harlot houses and gambling joints of the city. The enti
re complex was laid out in orbicular rows with the Matriarch’s battle arena at its epicenter—a place of lively commotion where her chosen man-slaves, mech-bots and bio-droid warriors fought to the death for the jeering and cheering of the crowds.

  A sky frame stood over the entire city—a massive, steel supported network of huge main columns curving from one horizon to the other. It was buttressed by great stanchions, girders and purlin runs creating a rib-like structure that housed rows of privateer ships, space taxis and transport vessels. The whole arrangement was encased in its own membrane sky like a huge bubble world in space allowing patrons to come and go as they chose, spurned by their baser instincts creating a world of godless barbarity.

  Below the shimmering space city, the ion-powered drive engines bawled out from their underside power plants propelling the entire operation toward their next target, ensconced in enormous cannon ports, weapons bays and rocket decks. The place was hell come to anyone that might oppose, and heaven to those that dwelt in skin and toil.

  This was the city of Aphrodisia conceived in sin and built over time by an army of engineers.

  They were underway. Xantrissa made her customary wicked grin, eyes glistening with malicious glee. Suddenly, she was in a certain mood. She lowered from her dais to the floor where Paleron awaited her. She said, “Stay. I have business to attend in my chambers.”

  “Your loins, my Bitch?” he asked.

  She walked away still grinning, hips swinging in exaggerated motions, and assured him, “My loins …” All the powers of sex and death trailed closely behind her as she made her way from the control stage, whispering, “Or my blades.”

  Chapter Three

  It had become a lonely place once the havoc of a dying world subsided. Space had become a vast sea of rotating tonnage. An entire moon’s rubble had begun settling into a rotational path through the Stathosian gravitational influence. As time would pass, the field would become evermore stable. For now, there was still a lot of bumping, rubbing, and slow, heavy collisions.

  Amidst the destruction of Menuit-B, REX had found his way to one of the larger asteroids. With Ben’s piloting skill, they had clasped onto its surface using the industrial tow cables in composition with the mag-spires. The vessel clung tightly to the asteroid’s surface with the spires opened like arms hugging its contours. It had enabled the craft to use the rock to shield them from the million other pieces of rubble until the screaming and exploding ceased. Their lives were saved, but the price had been paid. Though he clung to a slowly tumbling lifeline, REX was all but dead.

  The Internal Systems Power Plant, or ISP2 was down. That meant everything—the atmo-processor, systems diagnostics, interior utilities aids, even the aqua processor motor. They had zero life support. Furthermore, they had no operational functions. Doors wouldn’t open. Panels wouldn’t boot up. They couldn’t access the drive systems. No comm. Nothing worked. And there was no way to check vessel operations until they fixed the ISP2. They were about to freeze to death, if they didn’t suffocate first. Trouble was right around the corner and coming fast.

  Fortunately, it didn’t take ten minutes to narrow down the problem. A blown primary fuse. Scoring made it obvious. Ben considered them lucky, until he realized he couldn’t reach the fuse panel. He could see it fine, but now it was all heavy lifting.

  He solder cut through one of the port divider bulkheads and wound his way into the engineering pass-through with time working against him. It wouldn’t be much longer before REX was no more than a frozen chunk of junk drifting through the asteroid field. The ship’s guts were all around him, most of them lifeless. He muscled open the main bus fuse panel, which had been jammed shut from debris slamming into the exterior, and wrestled with one of the main knuckle fuses. He had to tug and pry at it with basic tools—screwdrivers, leverage bars, and a wrench. Nothing worked. There was no artigrav for him to gain any traction. Everything floated. He was making very little progress. Tawny held herself stationary in the weightless environment behind him passing tools back and forth.

  “Is it working?” she asked.

  “Gods blast it!” he shouted as the bar in his hand slipped from its bite and tumbled through the crawl space. He grabbed at it, but it was too late. It drifted away. The knuckle fuse was still jammed in its casing. “Well, there goes that.” He reached behind. “Pass me the chisel.”

  She did so.

  “Palm pounder?” he asked.

  Tawny turned to her toolbox, pulled out a battery driven piston machine the size of a hammer. “Yeah, here.” She could see her own breath. It was starting to freeze.

  “Alright, let’s see here.” Ben jammed the chisel into the casing as hard as he could and placed the pounder at the handle. He pushed a button and the tiny piston slid back, gathered several hundred pounds-per-square-inch in its cylinder, and slammed forward. The chisel shimmied in. “Perfect.” He started working the tool back and forth. The knuckle fuse held tight, but he played with it using a combination of good old elbow grease and profanity.

  “It’s getting cold,” she said.

  “I know.” He had to keep his mind occupied, avoid the plummeting temperature as long as he could. “You want to go over our Space Rules now, or later?”

  She laughed. “Are you serious, babe?”

  He paused. He didn’t even know the answer to that question himself.

  Their Space Rules.

  Ultimately, their list came down to a few simple jobs they would mutually refuse to accept on the other’s behalf. In short, the list read:

  There will be no combative measures against either side

  No assassination contracts

  No involvement in espionage or spy-work

  No ferrying of combat weaponry or the carrying out of arms deals

  No delivery of military technologies

  No transporting of military or political personnel

  No interference in law enforcement for the adjudication of war crimes

  No monies, rations or supplies of a military nature will be accepted

  No transfer or relay of military wartime communications

  Beyond this list, any contract challenging the ideologies or ethics of either team member pertaining to any given wartime situation will not be accepted.

  They had successfully fulfilled their decree on every job they’d ever taken, until the Menuit-B job. Of course, the circumstances were unique. Their lives had hung in the balance, and carrying out the Menuit-B job had been the only solution. Of course, it hadn’t gone exactly (or even closely) the way they’d planned. They were just supposed to deliver a payload of 1-B-1 mol bots to the lunar engineering crew to sabotage the cannon’s development, not necessarily turn the entire moon into a wholesale cosmic space fart, but …

  Nevertheless, here they were, alive and well.

  At least for the time being.

  Their routine was to review their Space Rules after each contract to ensure they’d sufficed the list. But after having face-stomped rules 1, 3, 5 and 10, and potentially plasma shattering rules 2 and 4 on this single contract, they figured it best to break routine. They’d broken everything else, so why not?

  “Yeah,” Ben said, “we’ll leave that alone this one time.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “Our Space Rules seemed to have gotten in our way.”

  He gave one good growl saying, “Maybe so—” heaving on the chisel until it gave, and the knuckle fuse loosened. He sighed with a grin. He was finally getting somewhere. He jabbed the chisel back in. “I think there was more to this than that, though.”

  “Yeah, like Sympto,” she said with that familiar old edge returning to her voice.

  “We should talk about that.” His voice was tight as he strained against the tool again.

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Benji.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “A head shot,” she said.

  He gave a good—Oooph!—and the fuse popped out into his hand. He glared at it
discerningly and said, “We can’t do that, sweetheart.”

  “And why not?”

  He chuckled at her—so bloodthirsty. “Aside from him being a Guild liaison, we kind of need him.”

  She flinched angrily. “That little narse tried to jack our contract, Benji! We’re in this mess because of him.”

  “Scoot out,” he said, and followed her back out of the crawl space. They emerged into the tiny hub control closet congested with piping and circuitry boards. They positioned themselves under perfect buoyancy. “Tawny, Sympto’s a businessman. He wasn’t acting personally. An opportunity came to him, he took it. It didn’t work out. Nothing more.”

  “He almost got us killed.”

  “I’m not saying we should be his friend. Believe me, I have just as much reason to kill him as you do. But look around you. See our ship?”

  She gave him an incredulous stare, lips tight, eyes like razors.

  “This is going to cost. We’re going to need yield,” he said.

  “I don’t care. Sympto’s gone deep gray in my book. No. Way!” she demanded.

  “Sweetheart…”

  “No,” she insisted.

  Ben shook his head at her and moved off. He pulled himself into the cargo bay and floated up the lift tube.

  She followed close behind. “I can’t believe you’re actually suggesting we go back and get work from that vac scum.”

  “We have to go back to the Guild. Repairs, you know?” He whisked himself into the passenger hold, Tawny close behind.

  “We’ve got other places we can go for repairs. What about Raider’s Bay?” She said.

  “Zhiatt? I thought you didn’t trust him.”

  She gestured with both hands, choosing the lesser of two evils. “Gee, let me think. Zhiatt, or Sympto. Hmm—”

  “Tawny, we don’t even know what the damage to the drive systems are. We’ll be lucky to pull point-oh-one inner-warp.”

  “So we get some down time. We could use some downtime.”

  “Downtime?” He blurted with laughter. “That just turned four hours into four days. Speculus is the closest thing we got. Raider’s Bay is way out in uncontested space. That would be two weeks, maybe longer.”