He Who Dares: Book Three (14 page)

“Good to have you aboard again, Skipper.”

“Great to see you again, Stadler. It’s been a while. Hope I didn’t mess up your Christmas celebration too much the last time.”

“Don’t remember much other than waking up back aboard the next day with a hangover and wondering how I got back.” He chuckled. He looked over his shoulder at Jenks. “You might have warned me about him.”

Mike shot him a look, “Who, Jenks?”

“Yeah. The little bugger conned me into taking him and your kit back to the ship. Said you ordered it.”

“Jenks?”

“I did no such thing,” Jenks snorted indignantly, “I just said that you told me to watch out for sticky fingered Marines who might want to appropriate your best booze is all. Don’t blame me if you didn’t understand the King’s English, my old son.”

“Har! Since when has cockney been the King’s English?” Stadler shot back.

“I guess it was my fault. I should have been more explicit with my instructions,” Mike mused. Had he known Jenks might try to sneak aboard, he would have.

It still puzzled him why ex-corporal Jenks Silverman would deliberately stow away aboard this scout car, and then re-up and join the Navy. After Borland, and the hell they went through to get off that god-forsaken planet, you’d think he’d had enough. Mike had a sudden urge to scratch his nose, but the mask he had on made that impossible. Micro-meteors were always a danger even with the scout’s shield up so he dared not take it off.

An hour later the
Orion Dawn
came up on the long-range scanner, and at this speed, they would be there in less than thirty minutes. He pointed to the Comm panel, seeing the pilot nod. He punched in the frequency and sent a short static burst. It was answered a few moments later by two return bursts of static. Captain MacManus got the message.

“Take her in slow and easy over the stern. You should see one of the landing bay doors open.”

“Aye, Skipper. Slow and easy as she goes.” Stadler answered.

Stadler brought her in high and slow from astern of the
Orion Dawn,
well clear of her drive trail. Even as they closed it was difficult to see any features until the landing lights came on. Stadler lined up with the rippling blue and white lights and glided in for a soft landing through the cold plasma curtain inside the shuttle bay. It only took a moment for Mike and Jenks to exit the scout car seeing a crewman motioning them over to a hatchway. Grabbing their bags, they quickly moved across the bay, hearing the scout car power up and turn around. Stadler gave Mike a quick salute as he powered up the thrusters and exited. Mike returned the salute and followed Jenks and the crewman into the interior of the giant ship.

CHAPTER FOUR:

The immigration officer at the Bristol spaceport looked at the next person in line, seeing a tall, sandy-haired, portly man in his late eighties wearing a formal business suit that almost looked like a uniform. Being the senior immigration officer, and lazy to boot, he’d placed himself in the end booth reserved for ‘Others’. One half of the line of armored glass booths was for returning citizens, the other for non-citizens. His booth at the end was reserved for ‘Others’ meaning diplomats, starship crews, government officials traveling on business, and for those passengers too stupid to know which line to get into in the first place. On any given day there were only a few of either, so with nothing to do he could sit back and watch his favorite porn vid. Behind the imposing old man, a wiry little fellow with a sullen expression on his face struggled along with two large bags. The man’s servant, or whatever he was, kept looking around either overawed by the grandeur of the arrival terminal or expecting someone to attack him at any moment to try and steal his bags. To officer Lenovo’s professional eye, here were a couple of colonial ‘others’ fresh off the farm of some backwater planet ripe for a fleecing. Probably some local big wig, full of his own importance, and his manservant. Being as tall as he was, the other man looked short by comparison, not that he was. Lenovo schooled his face into a scowl of disapproval before pressing a button under the counter.

“Next.” He yelled into the microphone, unnecessarily, as the “open/next” light began flashing on the bar over the entrance to his booth. The pair walked in, and timing it just right, he snapped the sliding steel-glass door shut behind them. The door closed with a loud “thud” yet neither batted an eye, which surprised him. Now they were isolated inside the armored glass booth should it become necessary to detain them for any reason.

“I.D chips!” Officer Lenovo growled, going for intimidating, grumpy immigration official. In answer the man sniffed and cocked an eyebrow at him before turning to look at the little fellow behind him.

“Well! Do you expect me to stand here all day while you stand there gawking like a damned tourist?” The bags hit the ground with a loud thud, and muttering to himself, the little man reached into a pocket inside his threadbare jacket and pulled out a small leather pouch with a memory stick inside.

He stood there a moment looking at the cluster of data input slots just below the counter. Officer Lenovo smirked and started tallying up how much he could squeeze these two for. They were probably ‘others’ and too dumb to know which slot to use. On the wall just below his counter was a row of painted squares contained a cluster of data input slots to accommodate the various ident chips. Each painted square had its classification above it in a number of languages. The Diplomatic square was blue, Government Officials an institutional green, the Crews bright red, and a horrible brown color for ‘Others’. After a quick look, the little man slipped the chip into the correct memory slot and gave Officer Lenovo a nasty look.

For a moment Officer Lenovo frowned for real as the two didn’t appear intimidated at all. He could still shake the old man down for a few credits calling them immigration fees or immigration tax. Even as intimidating as he looked this grumpy old fellow wouldn’t say anything even if he did find out he been gypped. He’d be too embarrassed about getting shaken down the moment he stepped off the boat so to speak. The split second it took to think those thoughts, and the I.D. chip to slip all the way into the memory port, was all the time Officer Lenovo would have to gloat before a warning light began to flash. His eye dropped to the screen embedded in the counter top. His face blanched and for a moment his finger moved towards the alarm button. Both men were armed with something very lethal and more than one something if the sensor was to be believed. Then his eye flicked to the identification screen, and he snatched his hand back. The screen flashed an angry warning at him. All he saw was Avalon – Diplomat – Tregallion. That was sufficient for him and he quickly pressed the release button on the exit door without even thinking about asking for the second man’s ID. Mike’s ID stick was the equivalent to having an ambassador-level diplomatic passport. The official word was you didn’t try to shake down, or impede the progress, of diplomatic personnel, especially someone from Avalon. Doing so could be harmful to your personal and professional health.

“Told you he wouldn’t ask.” Mike muttered softly to Jenks as they walked out of the booth.

“What the hell did I stick into that ID slot, Skipper. That poor bugger back there almost pooped his pants!” Jenks thought the man’s expression funny even though he couldn’t see what was on the man’s screen. The fact that he hadn’t even asked about the weapons they carried was also odd.

“Oh, just an old I.D stick I happened to have on me,” He lied.

“Right, and my dear old dad was meshuga and a goy,” was Jenks retort.

“Oh, now I know where you got it from. Anyone who smuggles themselves aboard a warship, and re-ups after what you went through, has to be crazy… wait… What’s goy?” Mike asked as he queried his language chip looking down at his height-challenged friend, hearing Jenks chuckle.

“Well,” he smiled, “it’s Hebrew, or a Yiddish term if you like, for a non-Jewish person. Synonymous with ‘gentile’”

“So, you and I are both ‘goy’ and crazy?”

“Well, one of us is, that’s for sure,” he laughed. Then he looked up at Mike who had managed to avoid answering his question. “Crafty bugger,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing, Skipper, just remarking that the sun was shining for a change.” They lined up with the rest of the passengers and waited their turn for the robo-cab.

“
Destination, please
?” The female computer voice asked, as they piled in.

“Free Traders Guild Hall. Direct route.” Mike answered.

“
Please insert your credit stick in the slot
.” The cab’s computer accepted his credit stick and took off. “
As a visitor to London, would you like a tour…”

“No!” Both said at once. The electric cab cruised out of the terminal and onto the motorway and picked up speed before transferring to the twin mag-lift rails.

They sat back to enjoy the two and a half hour trip to London and enjoyed the farms and fields rushing by once they’d exited the city. Here and there they passed houses, or small villages, once or twice a town. On the elevated mag rail, to Mike’s eye, the sun-dappled English countryside gliding by reminded him of a John Constable painting: pastoral, and idyllic. A place of peace and tranquility, where none of the trials and tribulation of the real world ever intruded. A place where childhood dreams went on forever, the stolen apples always ripe and juicy, the sun and wind always soft and warm on your skin, the golden wheat fields a symphony of motion under the gentle hand of a passing breeze. Twenty minutes later, Jenks opened his eye and looked at his captain, seeing him relaxing back with his eyes closed. Jenks eyed the speedometer, a puzzled frown scrunching up his face. Something wasn’t right.

“Skipper?”

“What’s up, Jenks.” Mike asked, sleepily.

“I hate to say this, but this cab is going a little fast.”

“It’s supposed to.” Mike yawned.

“Yeah, but not 125 miles an hour!” Mike instantly sat up and looked at the minimal instrument panel. “Last I heard the top speed was about 100 miles an hour.”

“Now that you mention it, we do seem to be traveling a tad fast.” Mike felt his stomach tighten as the cab rocketed around a long curve, leaning over like a roller coaster, the speed indicator reading 125 MPH.

The mag-lift rail stretched out ahead of them into the distance, banking and curving here and there, but relatively straight as it looped across the open countryside. This section was about sixty feet up on ‘A’ frame pylons so even if they could get the door open jumping out wasn’t an option. Mike took a quick look behind only to discover they had an additional problem. Besides another robo-cab behind them about a quarter mile back, there was another car about the same distance under slung on the maintenance rail and moving closer. Only the maintenance crew had access to one of those, and the line was usually closed to other traffic for safety reasons while they did maintenance or repair work on the rail. There was no reason for one of them to be on the rail while it was in service.

“I think we’ve got problems, Jenks,” he muttered as he reached for his weapons. Jenks took a quick look and did the same.

“So, we shoot out the control panel, Skipper?”

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea right now.” Mike murmured, seeing the maintenance car catch up and go underneath them. At the speed it was going it should have appeared in front of them very quickly if it was just a maintenance run, it didn’t and stayed out of sight beneath them.

“Shit!” Mike stood, bent over, and pressed his back against the side window, motioning Jenks to do the same.

“What’s their plan, Sarge?” Jenks pressed his back against the side window, a worried look on his face. They were trapped, and he didn’t like the feeling. His instinct said to blow the shit out of the instrument panel, but for some reason Mike had nixed that idea.

“This has me puzzled, my old son. The cab’s going too fast and I suspect we have nasty guys underneath us…” As he spoke, several high-velocity needle rounds punched their way through the floor, the bench seat and roof of the cab with an explosive
crack
. As they both had their backs pressed against the side windows, the rounds missed. “…Okay, so the first part of the plan is to kill us.”

“Oh, I think I got that part of the plan, Skipper. Then they crash us into something hard like the steel buffers at the end of the track to destroy the evidence?”

“Could be, but the cab comes off the mag-lift rail before that.”

“Wait… if I remember Sar… sorry, Skipper,” Jenks grinned sheepishly for a moment. Old habits die hard, “The line dips at the end where the cab slows and goes back on its wheels.”

“So, we hit the last downturn at what,” Mike looked at the instrument panel, “better than 200 miles an hour, and then what?” Jenks blinked and searched his brain to think what was at the end.

“Oh yeah. Above the mag-lift station is the fusion plant, transformer, and sub-station for the line.”

“Oh nice. We go…” Mike pushed himself back and moved his feet as several more needle rounds punched up through the floor, “…as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted. We go out in a blaze of glory as we take out the sub-station and maybe the fusion reactor as well.” Nice plan, if it works.” Even the people in the cab behind them wouldn’t know there was anything wrong. Mike pointed his service blaster down at the floor.