Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades Read online

  The scavengers didn’t match with Carthan personnel records, so there was no possibility that they were with a recovery team. The one she could see was dragging a heavy box away from the exposed part of the massive Carthan ship. “Attention, looter. You will be fired upon if you and your four companions don’t retreat from the area immediately. You are interfering with Carthan property, and looting this vessel is classified as an attack,” she recited, not for the first time since she’d become a ranger.

  The figure below ducked behind the crate he was pulling and fired several shots in her direction. The energy bolts barely registered on her fighter’s shield monitor. Alice set the energy level of her secondary guns low and fired at the crate. After a couple of wide shots, she struck the side, melting through it in only a few hits. “That was your last warning, you really don’t want me to come down there,” she announced, half hoping that the looter and his friends would duck into the wreck. It had been several days since she’d had a good chase.

  To her disappointment, the looter stood slowly with his hands held high. His friends were emerging from the wreck with their hands up as well. A skipper truck – a boxy vehicle mounted on a cheap antigravity sled - appeared not far from the wreck as it deactivated its camouflage, and the group began heading towards it. One of the looters slapped the first one Alice noticed across the back of the head as they were about to board the vehicle.

  Alice watched the truck turn and advance over the horizon, logging it into her report for Haven Shore and the Carthan government. When she was sure they were gone, she guided her fighter into a slow turn and opened a channel to Carthan Control.

  “Control here, what can we do for you Ranger Alice Valent?”

  Instead of replying, she sent the details of her discovery to Control as a set of scan results and a video report of her encounter.

  “One moment please,” said the operator.

  Alice turned the fighter back towards Haven Shore and powered into a climb. “They’re going to say…” she started whispering to herself.

  “Control here, I see you’ve scouted and cleared the area. We will send a recovery team within twenty hours. Thank you, Ranger Valent.” Her communications system notified her that the work increased Haven Shore’s land claim on Tamber and another hundred twenty thousand units of Galactic Currency would be delivered to them by the end of the day. She was entitled to one percent as a bonus, and she’d see that in her quarters along with the rest of the cash she hadn’t had the chance to send to the Warlord.

  “Yeah,” Alice said as she closed the channel. “They’ll go in,” she muttered to herself, “after nineteen hours. It’ll take five hours to cut through the wreckage, and when the grateful crew emerge, they won’t even mention that I could have gotten them out nineteen hours sooner. Meanwhile, those looters will come back, and there’s just the slightest chance that they’ll disturb the wreck, crushing the people trapped inside. I liked it better when the Carthans were still too screwed up to make the rules.”

  The fighter’s altitude cleared five thousand metres. She retracted the cloth wings and increased thrust with the inertial dampeners off. The crush of increased g-forces and the counter squeeze of her vacsuit made her feel like she was exerting herself, doing something other than playing a game of Verify the Scan. The ship, and her teeth, rattled hard as a sonic boom announced that she’d passed Mach one as the ship climbed.

  With a satisfied sigh, she engaged the inertial dampeners and increased her acceleration. “Something about flying in atmo makes drifting in space seem like a light snooze.”

  “Navnet Control, here. You are approaching my orbital sector, Ranger Valent,” said a thickly accented male controller through her priority channel. He was controlling a navnet sector in Tamber’s orbit from one of those great big British Alliance carriers. Her requests for a tour had all been rejected, but she continued to send them every two days.

  “Just looking for a good route to Haven Shore, British Alliance Navnet Control. Help me beat the traffic?” Alice replied in jest. There was very little traffic anywhere but around Haven Shore and a couple of other hot spots on Tamber. Most of the people who survived the siege months before had fled to the nearby planet of Kambis or left the system.

  The controller chuckled. “I’ve got a nice straight path for you, just keep it to a responsible speed, please.”

  “Aye, thank you,” Alice said. “Party pooper.”

  CHAPTER 2

  One Strange Night

  Minh-Chu Buu took his seat at the table and let the atmosphere around him soak in. From the inside pocket of his bomber jacket, he drew a thin bottle of Zuugo, an expensive herbal drink, and he poured it into the empty glass on the table. The empty glass cost three pips at the bar, an extreme price for the privilege of serving yourself.

  “Why’d you buy that, man?” asked Jack Kipley, a man who had become known as two things: Lucius Wheeler’s former first officer, and the ship idiot. It was Minh’s turn to babysit. “Just sneak it out like this,” he said, demonstrating by pulling a canteen from his grey and green long coat and taking a swig.

  “You’re going to get caught,” Stephanie said, taking a seat to Minh-Chu’s left. “You’ll get tossed out and draw attention.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Kipley said exaggeratedly.

  Minh-Chu had seen small towns with fewer people than the massive commerce centre around them. It had been built inside an emergency shelter set against the side of an impact-pockmarked mountain. Shops, food stands, and bars surrounded a sea of tables, lounges, and chairs. He could count the familiar products on offer on one hand; the objects and services on offer ranged from new to unusual. The most entertaining was something he picked up as a curiosity – a Groom Worm – that claimed to …disappear under clothing, keeping the user clean and fresh for up to one year!

  He wouldn’t use it – the thought of using a parasite in lieu of bathing or vacsuit grooming seemed like a last resort option – but he enjoyed the little package presenting a small white worm as a souvenir for his shelf on the Triton.

  The music in their area of the expansive seating section was a whirling thrash of alien instruments, the kind of thing that nagged at him, challenging him to translate it into some kind of tune he could properly comprehend or enjoy. He wasn’t sure he was hearing the intended music in the first place, since all sound in the cavernous shelter was processed through a scrambling field. That was the biggest attraction for the crews who gathered at the Alt-Mecca Mall: the scrambling field that rendered all recording devices useless.

  It was a dangerous place, sure, but crews could make plans without worrying about authorities listening in. The people within couldn’t be scanned either, making the Alt-Mecca the perfect place for the wanted, or whoever shouldn’t be found on Planet Vinuto. It was a border planet in a system sitting roughly between the no-ship’s-land of three wars. When the Warlord first started visiting ports and collecting information, Minh-Chu had difficulty grasping the idea that there were three major interplanetary wars going on at the same time. The Iron Head sector, named after the Iron Head Nebula that occupied over one tenth of the space, was the most dangerous area he’d ever seen. Nevertheless, it had become the home of the Warlord for nearly seven months.

  One of the wars fought by the Roche Group against Nihilists, an alliance of corporations protecting several solar systems against a group of idealists who believed that territory, data, and the property of the deceased should be completely free. Through experience, Minh-Chu had determined that the more organized Nihilist cells were opportunists and thieves who didn’t much care about civilian safety. If he had to call them by another name, it would be raiders, or worse. The Roche Group wasn’t perfect, but they were rebuilding their collective territory and trying to re-establish order, and that was something their people needed. He was thankful that the Warlord had no business in that war, and Jacob Valent had quickly grown to hate Nihilists almost as much as he despised the Order of Eden.
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  The second war in the sector was based in trade, and the Warlord had every reason to watch and learn from that mess. It was like the big war in the area, undeclared, but fought tooth and nail regardless. Too many companies to count fought to get their cargo through and around the Iron Head Nebula, to and from the Order of Eden frontline. They hauled everything from raw materials to slaves, and the competition for contracts as well as the rivalries between companies often became lethal. Add in a liberal smattering of pirate crews who preyed on these cargo haulers and messenger vessels, and you ended up with a mess that presented as much danger as it did opportunity. The Warlord had managed to steal two cargo trains without firing a shot, hacking one ship’s main computer and simply menacing another into dropping its cargo train and making a run for it. Captain Jacob Valent knew how to pick his targets, but it involved a lot of intelligence gathering and careful timing. The survival supplies and equipment were delivered to the Triton, where they were parcelled out and distributed to Haven Shore after the Warlord staff took their pick of the prizes, resupplying the ship and taking equipment vital to its reconstruction.

  The last of the three wars was the most difficult to watch. The Order of Eden and Regent Galactic were on the other side of the Iron Head Nebula, expanding their territory and routing distant armies. The largest of the opponents in the sector, the British Alliance, had declared war. However, after no combat between them and the Order, they withdrew their declaration after agreeing on a border they called The Frontier. It was endlessly frustrating, watching the largest power in the sector go on as though what was happening in the adjacent areas had nothing to do with them. This was the war the Warlord gathered intelligence for, constantly hacking into computer systems of all sizes, spying on the few Order of Eden officers in port, and tagging ships hired by Regent Galactic to transport their manufactured goods to the frontlines. They had recorder tags on hundreds of active vessels that collected and retransmitted communications and unsecure data. Minh-Chu couldn’t help but see the intelligence gathering as the Warlord’s deep breath before issuing the war cry and charging into battle.

  His thoughts returned back to the present, and to their activities on the planet. Vinuto, named after the resource-heavy solar system it called home, had become one of the biggest trade centres in only a few months. If you wanted to buy and sell supplies over any of the lines drawn through the warring sectors, chances were you’d end up on or near Vinuto. The same law stood if you were a freebooter preying on the mercenary traders or shippers. All were welcome, and in many areas, like the commerce centre the Warlord crew were visiting, law was lax. The local business owners were responsible for their own security and for meting out the punishment for breaking the local laws.

  “Yeah, so if I can’t use this, I’m going to get something with real kick,” Kipley said, starting to get up.

  Minh-Chu elbowed him in the shoulder, putting Kipley off-balance just enough to send him back into his chair. “An impatient man will find balance elusive,” Minh-Chu said just loud enough for his charge to hear. Stephanie Vega, the first officer of the Warlord, couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Stop doing that!” Kipley shouted at Minh-Chu. “I’m not some private you can push around! I bet there’s a thousand ships in port who could use a guy like me, and I could find work right here.”

  He’d made the threat before, and Minh-Chu knew he should ignore it, but couldn’t resist turning it around. “Please, go ahead.”

  Kipley stared at him, furious. Minh-Chu turned his attention to Agameg and a few other crewmembers as they made their way through the crowd bearing two trays heavy with mugs and pitchers.

  “Fine then,” Kipley said, starting to get to his feet.

  Minh-Chu elbowed him again, kicking his foot out from under him at the same time. Kipley spilled out of his chair, sending the flimsy seat into the table behind them. He scrambled to his feet in time to come face to face with the eight human men and women behind Minh-Chu’s table. They glared as though Kipley had interrupted the most important meeting of the century.

  For reasons Minh-Chu didn’t care to ponder, Kipley righted his chair and quietly sat down across from him. He and Seamus Frost had found that there was no limit to how far you could push Jack Kipley; the man just wouldn’t leave, no matter how miserable his social existence became. “Sleep with one eye open,” hissed Kipley. Threats weren’t uncommon, however.

  Minh-Chu raised his glass as though toasting the idiot sitting across the table and took a sip of his herbal drink. It was unlike Minh-Chu to provoke or tease anyone, but Kipley was a rich and worthy target. He was Lucius Wheeler’s former first officer, and a child of Freeground. He’d leered at and groped several women on the crew, including Ashley and Nerine, picked fights with a few others, and had a habit of making a bad situation worse. On the other hand, Kipley was a walking trove of information, and the more Minh-Chu and Frost pissed him off, the more he revealed to other crewmembers about where he’d been and what he’d seen while he was whining about his problems. To Minh-Chu, it was the longest but most effective interrogation he’d ever heard of, and Kipley had no idea it was happening. The ship idiot would spend plenty of time venting that evening.

  “Hello, Ronin, Stephanie,” Agameg said, smiling at them. The Issyrian’s big green eyes and smooth face made the smile seem comically exaggerated. Agameg had learned how to fortify his skin against foreign environments, a skill that took members of his race a long time to master. The result was a rounder-faced, smoother-skinned Agameg who seemed more confident on planet-side visits. The cilia that once lined his facial features were hidden, and humans who weren’t used to an Issyrian’s native features felt more comfortable around him.

  “Hey, Agameg, you wouldn’t happen to have an extra mug for Kipley, here?” Minh-Chu asked.

  “I have several extra mugs,” Agameg replied, putting a frosted mug in front of Kipley and filling it with fizzy amber liquid from one of the pitchers. “They say Munger Draft is the easiest drinking beverage in the Grand Concourse.”

  “Thanks,” Kipley said, regarding the mug, which was half filled with liquid and half with foam. “Too bad you can’t pour worth a damn.”

  Agameg was frozen in place for a moment, until he blinked one eye at a time and moved on to pass out the rest of the mugs. He took his seat once one pitcher had been poured out. “I think Frost and Finn will be here shortly. The captain is meeting a friend not far from here, so he may be along if he has time.”

  “Is he still walking around without a disguise?” Stephanie asked.

  “He said there are plenty of notable captains in port, so many that he and the Warlord are minor players,” Agameg said.

  “That’s a yes,” Stephanie said. “A notable captain is still a noticeable captain, who cares how many others are around?”

  “I spoke to him about that,” Agameg replied, nodding. “I believe I could mimic him well enough to pass, but he told me that he doesn’t need a double, and the Warlord is more of a failure here than a danger, since we haven’t taken any prizes by force yet.”

  “He’s right about that,” Kipley said, refilling his mug in a slow, artful pour that kept foam to a minimum. “I thought we’d be taking merchant ships down by now, making real money. I should’ve known better.”

  Kipley’s comment quieted the table, and Minh-Chu was relieved to hear human music start drifting across the sea of people. It was artificially created pop starring a fabricated voice that tapped into the mathematical formulae for sexy sound and motivational appeal rather than actual inspiration, but at least he could tap his foot to it.

  “The show’s about to start,” Stephanie said, pointing to the arched main entrance as Finn walked in with a small crate under his arm. He strode with so much self-importance that it was almost comical to Minh-Chu, and he was only outdone by Seamus Frost, who followed a few paces behind.

  With a practiced flourish, Finn placed the short crate on the floor and stepped away, as rigid
as a rail. Frost stepped onto the crate, not so much as glancing at it, his gaze falling over the numerous tables in front of him. “I bet he pulls five qualified crew in,” Kipley said. “I’ll put three pips on it.”

  “I bet he’ll sign four,” Minh-Chu said. It earned him a punch on the leg from Stephanie. “He pulled three the first time and four the last,” Minh-Chu explained. “Just playing the odds.”

  “I bet he pulls seven,” Stephanie said to Minh-Chu with an exaggerated sneer.

  Frost’s silent theatrics didn’t go unnoticed. The first two rows of tables were turning to look at the heavyset man with the thick brows. Frost’s clothing spoke as loudly as his demeanour; he was dressed in heavy survival armour that featured extra horizontal strips of shielding and a helmet so sturdy only the face shielding could retract. His normal bulk was formed in such a way that he seemed stout and powerful. “I call for your eyes and ears,” he commanded, his voice amplified by his suit. A glass hurtled towards him, smashing against his energy shielding. He didn’t grant the thrower so much as a glance. “I’m here to call on the bravest, the craziest, and the greediest of you,” Frost started, putting all his vocal weight on ‘greediest,’ to the crowd’s amusement. “I’ve seen the fight, aye, more times than I can count, and come through it like the hell-sent bastard I am, hungry for more. That’s because I fight for the fastest, hardest ship you’ve ever seen.” To Minh-Chu’s amazement, Frost had their attention. He’d changed his speech – it was more over the top than ever. “The marks on my armour were earned in combat with those damned Regent Galactic thieves and damned Eden machines. I’ve even had it out with Carans and Order of Eden ships. We came through under the direction of the greatest combat leadership and teamwork of our generation. The ship I serve is looking for qualified gunners and crew to join the fight.”