Chapter Fourteen
“Now, you definitely said something soft that pays a lot, right?” asked Ken.
Captain West turned around. He was in the lounge assigned to the lock the Kilkka was docked in and Ken had just walked in with another man. The other man was smartly dressed, but looked very, very stressed. Ken looked so happy that could easily eat an onion without getting a tear in his eye, which was either a very good sign, or a very dangerous sign.
“Captain West?” asked the man.
“Yes, I’m Captain West.”
“My name is Ordovus Cleverly, I manage a band called The Rockers. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”
Ken’s smile became impossibly bigger and he gave a big thumbs up.
“I have.”
“One of our band members has a daughter and she has been kidnapped. We want to hire your ship to get her back safe and sound.”
West looked at Ken to see if this was on the level. Ken was nodding emphatically.
“Oh,” said Captain West. “Well, certainly. Please, sit. What are the conditions?”
Ordovus sat in the lounges that Captain West indicated. “We have been given a ransom demand. In it, it specifies to take payment of ten million in transferable funds to a remote location where there is a repeater beacon waiting. In the demand we were also given some access codes to transmit and the repeater will pick up on that and provide further information.”
“Sounds fairly straightforward. We’ve done jobs like this in the past, so we know how this works. Did you want to send a representative or will you authorize one of my crew to act on your behalf?” West kept quiet about the small detail that on some occasions the Kilkka had been the kidnaper, as well as having been the rescue vessel.
“I don’t know,” said Ordovus. “I want to go myself but I have too many responsibilities here. I want to send someone but if something goes wrong I don’t want to have been the one to have sent them into harms way.”
“The Kilkka is more than capable of defending herself, Mr. Cleverly. My main concern would be getting the girl aboard unharmed. That’s the tricky part. What do we know about the kidnappers?”
“She was taken by a man who called himself Lother. The ransom demand identified the ship as the Bloodbath and Captain Jeanette’s navigator confirmed the identification.”
West looked at Ken.
“Give me a few minutes and I’ll see what information I can pull up on the Bloodbath,” said Ken as he jumped up and went to a console.
“Do you have any other information?”
“No,” replied Ordovus. He handed West the data disc that Jeanette had given him. “Here’s the ransom demand with the instructions and the access codes.” Ordovus gave West a credit disc. “Here is an unlocked credit disc with eleven million loaded in. The ten is for paying the ransom, the other million is your retainer for taking on the mission There’s another million waiting here as payment for the safe return of Valerie. And the Balga judiciary has also asked me to inform you that there is a bounty of fifty thousand for any crew of the Bloodbath that are captured alive. And the band has posted a bounty of another million for the destruction of that ship - assuming that Valerie is not on it, of course.”
Captain West felt himself being crushed under the weight of all that money. As a Captain, he was accustomed to handling large transactions but a retainer of a million was serious business. With an unlocked credit disc he could just transfer the money to his own account and fly away, but he’d never be able to live with himself. He could also fly out to meet the Bloodbath, blow it kingdom come without talking to it and then claim that they’d blown themselves up, but that was unacceptable as well. If he accepted the mission, he’d do his best to do it right and get the girl back.
“We’ll need to prep a few things, but we’re basically ready to leave now. Did you want to come or send a representative?”
Ordovus thought about it. He really did want to go himself, but it wasn’t really practical for him to do so. And he didn’t really have a spare staff member who was either important enough to warrant sending or experienced enough to remain cool under pressure.
“No. I’d like to appoint you as our representative.”
“Very well. Anything else before we leave?”
“She may be Ryder’s third daughter and she has five siblings, but she is irreplaceable. We do want her back safe and sound.”
With that Ordovus got up and walked away. West got up as well and was heading back towards the Kilkka when Ordovus stopped and called out from the door.
“Once you have Valerie aboard, feel free to blow the Bloodbath into billions of tiny pieces, if the desire takes you.” And with that, he left.
“Well I’ll be damned!”
Tyrell was standing in front of one of the old data terminals in the Duck on Inn. He’d put the old data disc in and he and Higuel were looking at the information that was contained in the Narjus.
“I don’t get it,” said Higuel. “It just looks like a bunch of stars.”
“It is a bunch of stars,” replied Tyrell. “Or more accurately, it’s a map.”
“A map of the stars? I can get that from any terminal in the station.”
“Not this map. It’ll need some slight adjusting for the changes that have happened since this was drawn up, but it’s pretty accurate. This is where we want to go.” Tyrell pointed at a seemingly blank space in-between several stars that had a green flashing ‘X’ on it.
“An empty spot? What’s there?”
“According to the notes that have been added, it’s a damned treasure trove. It’s right there, just lying there waiting to be picked up.”
“Treasure? What is it, gold? Platinum?”
“It doesn’t say, just the location. Presumably the person that made the map figured that they didn’t need to remind themselves of what they had.”
Tyrell transferred the data into a newer disc and pulled both out of the terminal. He smashed the old one and dropped the pieces into a bin.
“Right then, let’s go find ourselves a ship.”
He hated it already.
Welton Leshem was accustomed to life aboard stations. That was were he’d been born, that was where he had spent most of his life. He was standing on the roof of the Burdex Building, which housed the A550 Judicial building. It served as the Judges base on Belousov, and he was surveying the view. In every direction he looked there were spires and towers and skyscrapers and starscrapers. It was all jagged edges and noise and glass.
And he could see forever. Well, truth be told he could see much, much greater distances in space, but that was normally represented by a holovid display or some type of tactical projection. To be able to see to the far horizon with the naked eye seemed troubling in some fundamental way.
Far below, his people were hot on the trail of Georgi and Selinin. It hadn’t taken much after he’d arrived and gone through all the proper channels to start the gears turning. His people were using some of the most sophisticated programs available to trawl through the sum total of data available in order to track where they were, what they did and whom they spoke to.
He was just trying to decide how long it would take for the busy people below to work out what was going on and send someone up with some kind of progress report when sure enough, someone came up the stairs onto the roof.
“Judge Leshem?”
“Yes Sallie,” replied Leshem, happy to have remembered her name. “What news do you bring?”
“Lamentably, the two suspects left Belousov three days ago,” said Sallie. “However, we have managed to track all their movements from point of arrival to departure. They spent a long time at the Hall of Records and departed immediately after leaving there.”
“Do you have a fix on where they went?”
“They filled a flight plan before leaving, but we’re still trying to verify if they actually went that way or not. They chartered an exploration vessel named New Dawn and the given destination is consistent with an exploratory mission.”v
“Okay, we’ll assume they went where they said for now. Do we know who they spoke to at the Hall of Records?”
“Oh yes,” beamed Sallie. “We have him on the way here for questioning right now.”
“Well done Sallie, very well done.”
“Okay Captain, what’s the big rush?”
Guiora and Jed were the last to come aboard. A few minutes earlier, Powell had sent a message out on the comms for all the crew to return to the ship immediately. Guiora could already feel the pull as the Celiker moved away from the station. He was somewhat startled to find two strange men in the main lounge with Powell and Papo.
“Hello chaps, welcome back,” said Captain Powell, altogether a little too happily. “Jed, can you go down to the mess and help Skourpa and the two new kitchen hands put away the provisions?”
Jed looked around at the other people in the room. There was obviously something strange going on and it was equally obvious that the captain didn’t want him to know about it. Or to be more specific, he wanted the two strangers to think that he didn’t want him to know about it since the captain inevitably shared everything with the crew anyway.
As soon as Jed had left, Guiora piped up. “Like I said, what’s up?”
“We have just left Kuparinen where there was no load to take anywhere. As per the company regulations, I took initiative and when opportunity knocked, I answered. In this case, opportunity took the form of Misters Higuel Nuttall and Tyrell Huntingdon here who have taken it upon themselves to charter us for a little trip.”
“Oh really?” said Guiora. “And just where might we be heading?”
“It’s a simple salvage operation,” said Tyrell. “We have a location where something that we are interested in is, we just have to go in and pick it up.”
“Sounds a bit too easy,” said Papo. “What exactly are we picking up?”
“To be honest,” said Higuel, “we’re not sure.”
“Something which is apparently rather valuable,” said Powell. “Since they provided the location and we provided the ship we gat a forty five percent share.”
“Forty five? Why not fifty-fifty?”
“Because they paid for fuel, food and consumables on this trip. Apparently what we are picking up is of such great value that a five percent stake will vastly outweigh the costs of running the ship. So even if there is nothing there, we still end up ahead.”
Guiora gave the captain a searching stare. He knew Powell quite well by now. He wasn’t the type to suffer fools, so the two guests had either had some type of collateral or had done quite a number on the captain. But it was obvious that Powell didn’t think that there was going to be nothing there or that he wasn’t getting paid, otherwise he would have paid out of his own pocket.
“So we have a destination?”
“Right here,” said Tyrell, offering Guiora a data disc. “We had agreed to leave the station and then provide the destination. There was always the small risk of the information being leaked or picked up by Kuparinen control before we left.”
“There’s also the slight chance that since we now know were we are going and that there is going to be something valuable there, we could just kill you and throw your body out the airlock,” said Papo.
Higuel turned a shade paler.
“I am kidding of course,” said Papo.
“Oh,” said Higuel.
“And if you had wanted to do that it wouldn’t have helped. Were we are going there is a marker that will only be activated by feeding it a specific code, which we have. And you don’t.”
“And thus everybody’s happy,” said Powell. “We still have another day before we are out from Kuparinen control. We’ll make the first jump just as indicated on our flight plan, but then we’ll be free to head off to this destination of ours.”
Guiora gave Powell a hard look. Going off to some unknown destination with a couple of strangers was bad enough. But to do so without telling anyone was just plain stupid.
“We have a contact!” shouted Waldemar. He was one of five members of the observation team sitting at the banks of monitors and displays connected to all the deployed antennas.
“What do we have?” asked Georgi.
“Processing now,” replied Westby. “But it’s right on the line you said that it would be, so that should be the Swift.”
“I concur,” said Waldemar. “The mass is right for a courier ship, it’s moving on a flat trajectory and there’s nothing else within an eight hundred thou sphere of us. If that’s not it, it’s well off course.”
“Excellent,” said Georgi. “Notify the Captain, I’d like to go in for a closer look.”
The New Dawn made short work of the jump to be next to the Immonen. The two ships sailed as one, with the two being quite markedly different from each other. The Immonen was a rather small ship with few frills and a snub nose. If there had been any light around to illuminate it, it would have been a dull gray as most of the exterior layer had ablated away in the vacuum.
The bigger ship, bigger by a fairly large margin, was obviously a much newer type of ship. Seemingly sleeker yet broader at the same time, the New Dawn was covered with antennas and observation dishes giving it a definite porcupine-like appearance. If the same light that had been hypothetically landing the Immonen were to also shine on the New Dawn, it would have shown up as being primarily blue, with some red highlights around the edges.
Captain Rosalie Vargas carefully scrutinized the ship that was alongside the New Dawn. It hardly seemed worth the effort, but if this was what Georgi and Selinin wanted to see, then this was what the New Dawn would look at. She looked up as Selinin entered the bridge.
“Okay Captain, who are you sending across?”
“Excuse me?”
“We need to get someone aboard that ship.”
“We have four EVA suits aboard, two which are used primarily by the engineers when they inspect the exterior of the ship and two leftovers from the fitting of the new equipment which weren’t unloaded before we left.”
Georgi came onto the bridge.
“Our engineers have their null-gee time limited by their contracts,” continued the captain. “So from where I’m sitting, we can look at and scan the ship as long as you want, but if you wanted to put someone aboard then you should have mentioned that before we left.”v
Georgi and Selinin were both crestfallen. To be so close and yet so far.
“And none of our suits are equipped with hull cutters, so if you want to get aboard, you’d better find a door you can open.”
“Well,” said Selinin. “There’s your white whale. Go get it.”v
“I’ve never done EVA work!” replied Georgi.
“What, you expect me to do it?” retorted Selinin. “Fancy that, sending out an old man to do his dirty work. I tell you, these young people think they can do anything.”
Georgi looked at the displays. They were a relatively close distance to the other ship. There where no large bodies around to exert a gravitational pull, so it wasn’t like he could drift away. “Do you have any lifelines?”
“Sure,” replied Rosalie. “A couple thousand meters if you link them up together. Head down to the main airlock and Frank will help you suit up.” Secretly, Rosalie wouldn’t be particularly worried if Georgi did himself an injury. There was something wrong with these two and she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
About an hour later, the outer door on the airlock swung open. Georgi’s heart thumped in his chest as he saw a vast empty blackness beyond the door. His suit lights were on, but there was nothing to illuminate except the distant stars – and the light from his suit wouldn’t reach them for many years.
“Hey Georgi,” said Selinin on the comm. “We have your vitals here on the display. You’ll need to calm yourself down just a tiny bit.”
“Sure thing boss,” said Georgi through clenched teeth. He reached to his waist and felt that the line was secure. The other end was attached to a winch that could pull him back if something happened to him. The Immonen wasn’t in his view; he’d need to step out before he could see her.
“Okay, we’ve added a map overlay on your HUD so you can keep your bearings. We’ve also pulled up a schematic of the same type of ship as the Swift so we can guide you around.”
Some lines and arrows appeared on his HUD, which went out the door and down to the left. It took all his nerve to take the first step, but after that it got easier. Then he reached the door and froze. The vista was as awe inspiring as it was terrifying. There was almost literally nothing in every direction he looked except towards the Immonen.
“Oh, gort!” said Selinin. “Your vitals just did a massive spike. Settle down before you give yourself a coronary.”
“Sure. Thing. Boss” Georgi’s clenched teeth made him a little hard to understand, but those on the bridge got the message easily enough.
“Hey Georgi, it’s Frank. You remember how to work the controls on your maneuvering pack? Nice and easy, just like I showed you.”
The hardest thing in the world for Georgi was letting go of the New Dawn. He felt like if he let go, he’d fall for all eternity. But once he let go, he had a moment of panic as he could barely feel the lifeline and had to look to make sure that it was still attached.
“Okay, nice and easy on the throttle. Make sure that you’re facing in the direction that you want to go”
Georgi faced the Immonen as best as he could. He gave the throttle a small nudge and he felt himself propelled forwards. A few tweaks with the stabilization thrusters and he was headed in the right direction.
“Nice and easy. Don’t give it any more stick because otherwise you’ll be moving too fast. That’s good, just hold that speed.” Frank looked at the others on the bridge. “He’ll be right.”
As Georgi approached the Immonen he could see the lines on his HUD change to indicate a point on the side of the ship.
“Okay, I’ve added the emergency access door on the Swift to your HUD. Head towards that.”
Georgi and Selinin had agreed to tell the crew of the New Dawn that the ship was the Swift, since that was the name that she had left Belousov with. That way, if they decided to check them up, they’d see that it was exactly as their cover story had said – a stricken courier ship.
“Will you be recovering the bodies on this trip?” asked Rosalie.
“No,” said Selinin. “We’ve now confirmed where she is and we can come back for it with a properly set up ship to take them home. At the moment we’re just doing data recovery.”
“The door is open,” said Georgi.
“What?” asked several people at once.
“I’m at the emergency door and it’s wide open. Can’t tell how recently though.”
“Is this good or bad?” asked Rosalie.
“It totally depends on when the door was opened. They may have opened it when they were trying to do repairs, but that seems unlikely. More likely it was opened at some stage after she was lost, which means that someone else knows where she is.”
“Do you want me to go in?” asked Georgi.
“You’re call,” replied Selinin.
After a pause, Georgi replied, “I’m going in.”
Selinin and the others could see what was going on with the telemetry displays. The suit Georgi was wearing had several cameras and there was a lot of data being fed back to the New Dawn.
“How did you want to do this?” asked Georgi. “This is a small ship, but it’s going to take a long time for me to search it on my own.”
“We’ll just search the rooms one by one. Most likely the data disc will be either in a locker or someone’s pocket.”
“Great,” replied Georgi. The eerie sensation of entering a tomb was palpable. That there would be bodies aboard was almost a given, but what condition they were in was anybodies guess. Georgi had to swallow his heart several times.
He entered the main room and saw the first body, the one that Knox had called ‘the first mummy’. Georgi paused for a moment to survey the scene, and the others on the New Dawn watched on in silence.
“Use the scanner on your left ankle, remember the one I showed you? Most data discs will have a fairly obvious signature and will let you search without disturbing the body,” said Frank.
Carefully, Georgi removed the scanner Frank indicated from his ankle. It fed the information straight into his HUD, and he swept it over the body. Almost instantly he got a response, a pocket on the left thigh.
“Wow, wasn’t expecting that,” said Georgi. Using excessive care, he slowly reached into the pocket and withdrew a small gray disc. It had a stylized letter ‘N’ on one side and a coat of arms on the other, one he didn’t recognize. “I think that this is it.”
“Could it have been planted there?” asked Rosalie. “I mean, the door was open and if someone else came here, wouldn’t they have been looking for this as well?”
“Not likely,” said Selinin. “There were very few people that knew about this data disc, so whoever was here may have been looking for the main data cores which are further inside the ship. Georgi – if that’s what we’re after, then you may as well come back aboard.
“I guess this is Asoye,” said Georgi quietly. He looked at the desiccated corpse and tried to work out how she had looked when she was alive. The body was too small to be Leshem and it was unlikely that anyone else would have had the Narjus on them. It felt wrong to just leave her alone and abandoned here on her own. There didn’t seem to be anyone else aboard. If they made their fortune, Georgi vowed to himself to come back and return her to her home to be buried properly.
He turned away and followed the safety line back out of the Immonon. As he was getting out of the ship, he looked out at the New Dawn. It really was a large ship but he hadn’t realized just how big when they had gone aboard. There were no windows to look out of when they gone in and they hadn’t had time to go exploring. As he was crossing the void between the two ships, he wondered what the New Dawn normally did.
About half an hour later, unsuited and back on the bridge Georgi and Selinin assessed the Narjus. It was basically a fairly standard type of data disc, or at least it had been a hundred years earlier. Fortunately, they were expecting this and had brought a variety of old data readers to get the information from it. Another half hour and they had managed to coax the reluctant information from the Narjus.
“There we have it, that’s where we want to go,” said Georgi, pointing at an empty gap between several stars. Rosalie and Kimetz the navigator studied the map.
“Well?” asked the Captain.
“Easy,” replied Kimetz. “We can be there in a day and a half. Maybe two.”
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