In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (14 page)

A quick search of actives found no inbound or
outbound consignments for the
Merak Star
. It had been a long shot,
hoping Nazari had picked up side contracts revealing where he’d come from or where
he was headed. Whoever he was working for, they were paying him well enough to
prevent him from moonlighting. As far as the Society was concerned, the
Merak
Star
wasn’t even in Outer Draconis. She was supposed to be doing monotony
runs in Ursa Major for colonial governments and blue chips. According to the
Society – who auto-tracked ship transponders – the only trade ship in port or even
to have landed in over seven months was the
Silver Lining
. The only way Nazari
could have got down without the Society knowing was if the
Merak Star
had
her transponder off, something genuine URA surface batteries would never have
allowed. If they hadn’t blasted the
Merak Star
out of the sky for hiding
her identity, there was a good chance they’d turn the same blind eye toward the
Cyclops
when she got here.

My last task was to check the threat advisories, looking
for specifics on the
Cyclops
. There was no ship known by that name, but
there was a phantom who matched her description, who was blamed for every ship
that inexplicably vanished near the Acheron. She was only known of at all because
a handful of modern freighters with fast bubble had escaped before she’d got
within weapons range. Nothing was known of her captain, only a dozen guesses as
to his name, none of which were Rix. Whoever he was, he liked his privacy, not
easy to keep in his line of work, but at least that explained why my threading
had no matches on him or his ship.

With more questions than answers, I retrieved my
gun and stepped out onto the street. My DNA sniffer had barely begun area-scanning
when four men converged on me at once. Two grabbed my arms while the others pressed
guns into my ribs from both sides, giving me no chance.

“Give us an excuse, spacer,” one of the men said
with a distinctly Ardenan accent as he pulled my P-50 from its holster. He was
dressed in Faller street clothes, but his height and build showed no sign of genetic
adaptation to the local gravity.

They pulled my hands behind my back and snapped
restraints on my wrists as a small solar powered three wheeler pulled up in
front of us. Its rear cargo door popped up, then they threw me inside, slamming
the door shut behind me. In complete darkness, I felt the vehicle pull away from
the curb and begin swerving through Citadel’s narrow streets, certain I’d made
a good first impression on someone.

* * * *

They hung me by my wrists from force clamps
inside a shadowy cold storage room, surrounded by enormous carcasses rendered microbe
free by irradiation. To avoid freezing to death, I performed leg lifts and had
my threading trigger muscle tremors, but it was a losing battle. By early
evening, my shoulders were straining under the heavy gravity and a layer of
frost had formed across my face as cold clawed my body. I’d started thinking it
was only a matter of time before I’d be as frozen as the carcasses around me
when the cold room’s metal door swung open.

A small machine with four articulated legs riding
on ball rollers stepped over the door seal and trundled in. It was followed by
a tall, slender man and one of the thugs who’d bundled me into the three
wheeler outside the Society’s office. As they crossed the room, the rollerbot
was careful to remain close to the tall man at all times. It wasn’t until it stopped
below my dangling feet, immediately reducing the strain on my shoulders, that I
realized why. It was equipped with a personal acceleration field, reducing
ambient gravity to something fractionally less than Earth Normal. Such devices
were extravagances on any world and certainly unexpected on a place as remote
as Hardfall. Whoever my visitor was, he had no intention of going native anytime
soon, of enduring years of discomfort to build muscle and bone density the old
fashioned way.

My guest studied me with a curiosity colder than
the freezing air while I stared blankly at the floor, feigning hypothermia.

“This is Sirius Kade?” My visitor asked.

“Yeah Gov’nor, that’s him.”

Governor? Union mandated colonies usually elected one
of their own to run things, but their accents told me they were both from
Ardenus. Offworld appointees were only sent to restore worlds riven by
corruption and incompetence, but I doubted that was the case here. My DNA
sniffer tried pattern matching them, but couldn’t identify the Governor. His
muscle man was Stas Riscani, a URA deserter facing five years in the stockade
once the Union army got their hands on him.

“What do we know about him?” the Governor asked.

“He’s a local trader. Second generation. Seems
genuine.”

“He wouldn’t be watching Loport or running
searches on the Merak Star and the Cyclops if he were genuine!” the Governor declared
irritably.

The Society were obsessively secretive about their
member’s activities. The only way he could have known what searches I’d run was
if he had the Exchange bugged, which was a flat out breach of the Union
Colonial Charter – something no genuine Union administrator would ever break.

The fake Governor stepped toward me causing the
little rollerbot to readjust its position. “Why are you here, Kade?”

I maintained my frozen stare on the floor, hoping
he’d believe I was close to an icy death.

“You left him in here too long!” the Governor
snapped.

“He’s not dead,” Riscani said, stepping forward
and shaking me by the knee. “Hey! Kade! Wake up!”

“What do you know about the Merak Star and the
Cyclops?” the Governor demanded.

When I didn’t answer, Riscani produced a short rod
shaped stun-jabber and shoved it into my side. For a moment, my body tensed
from the charge, then I relaxed.

“My name is Rykard Metzler. I’m the Governor of
this colony. The only way you’re getting out of here is by answering my
questions. Now tell me, who are you working for?”

“Nazari,” I wheezed.

“You work for Captain Nazari?” Metzler asked
surprised.

“He owes … me money.”

“How did you find him?”

“His … stim … dealer.”

Anger swept over Metzler’s face. “I knew we
couldn’t trust that Cali stimhead! We should have used our own people! What do
you know about the Cyclops?”

“Nazari … making deliveries … Don’t want … trouble
… just money.”

“He don’t know nothing,” Riscani said
dismissively.

“Maybe …” Metzler said warily, unconvinced by my
act.

“Want me to shove him in the food processor?”

“No, the Society knows he’s here. We don’t want
them asking questions. Not now, not this close.”

“So he’s bait then?”

“Yeah. Where are the other two?”

“Back at their ship. My people are watching them.”

“Grab them when they come out looking for him,”
Metzler said. “And have the garrison target their vessel in case they try to
run.”

“We could use their ship, Gov’nor,” Riscani suggested.

“Hmm … OK, capture it intact. I’ll tell the
Society it was impounded for charging weapons in a no fire zone. Prepare fake
sensor logs in case they want proof.”

“We’ll need a crew.”

“Some of the those Drake scum might want a pardon.
If not, I’ll send for a crew from Hades City.”

Riscani nodded. “When do you want us to dump Kade?”

“Tonight,” Metzler said, stepping back, drawing the
little rollerbot after him. “He won’t be the first offworlder to underestimate
the danger of the flatlands.”

* * * *

Sometime after midnight, Stas Riscani and his
three musclemen snapped restraints on my wrists and ankles and carried me up to
the rooftop where they loaded me into an aging cargo lifter. It had two
vectoring thrusters mounted high above the fuselage, a small one seat cockpit
up front and a tiny swivel mounted tail thruster for maneuvering. Both side
doors had been removed, making it windy and noisy in flight, and the cargo deck
stank of manure and was stained with blood, nonhuman blood according to my
threading.

We flew briefly above Citadel’s rooftops, then once
clear of the cliffs, power glided toward the southern plains. Soon we were
skimming low rolling grasslands, then just as the colony’s lights receded to
the horizon, the lifter slowed, coming to a hover above an abandoned bait trap.
Its massive door hung by a twisted hinge, while inside the rusting square cage
were the bleached bones of a long dead tankosaur. It was a first generation
trap, abandoned because it lacked the required strength and was too far from Citadel
to tow the catch back safely.

Riscani pulled my P-50 from his pocket and fired
repeatedly through an open side door. “Some folks beg for one round, so they
don’t have to live through it,” he yelled over the roar of the thrusters,
glancing at me quizzically. When I said nothing, Riscani shrugged, “Suit
yourself, Kade.” He fired several more shots then tossed the gun out, watching
it clatter through the bait trap’s metal bars to the artificially smooth rock
floor below.

One of the guards moved to the rear of the fuselage
where he pulled back a tarpaulin covering an old quad-bike. He activated its
four ground effectors, floated it forward to an open door then shut it back
down. Another of the guards switched power packs, then tried starting the
quad-bike himself. This time it whirred weakly, unable to lift itself off the
deck. The pilot, who’d been watching over his shoulder, dropped the cargo
lifter close to the ground, then the two guards pushed the quad-bike over the
edge and watched it crash onto the rock flats below.

“You hired it this afternoon,” Riscani explained,
producing my vault key. “Paid for it with this.” He slid the key into my pocket,
shaking his head with mock sadness. “When will you spacers learn? This ain’t no
place for joy riding!” He laughed, then motioned for the others to drag me to
the edge.

With my face hanging over the side, Riscani
unlocked my restraints while I lay as limp and helpless as when they’d first
removed me from the cool room.

“You could try hiking back to Citadel,” he said. “You
might even make it, if you’re lucky.”

One of his companions laughed. “There ain’t no one
that lucky, Stas.”

Riscani stepped back with the restraints to let
his companions throw me out onto the ground. As their weight shifted, I twisted
suddenly, spearing my knuckles into the throat of the guard to my left. He fell
back choking, then before the others knew what was happening, I whipped my arm
back, crashing my elbow into the forehead of the guard to my right. He reeled away,
stunned, blood welling from the split skin above his eyes.

The third guard launched himself at me, but I
rolled onto my back and caught him with my heel and hands and catapulted him
over my head through the side door. The guard caught the landing skid as he
fell and swung beneath the cargo lifter as I jumped to my feet only to find myself
staring into the business end of a short barreled shellgun. It fired armor
piercing, exploding shells ideal for taking down the heaviest beasts on
Hardfall and making a mess of any human.

“You don’t fight like no spacer,” Riscani said, glancing
at his companions. One was turning blue from lack of air, another lay unconscious
with blood smearing his face while the third desperately clawed his way back up
into the lifter. “Maybe the Gov’nor’s right, you’re not what you appear to be.”

“I just don’t like walking,” I said taking a step toward
him.

Riscani raised his gun to eye height in an unmistakable
warning. “The Gov’nor wants it to look like an accident, but I’ll finish you
here Kade, right now, and dump your body down south where it’ll never get found.
Makes no difference to me. You get eaten all the same.”

“What’s Hardfall to a bunch of Ardenans?”

He gave me a sour look. “Nothing! I hate this stinking
place, but it pays better than the army.”

“When Earth Navy finds out what’s going on here,
they’ll burn you to the ground.”

“We’re ready for them,” he said with surprising
confidence.

“Don’t bet on it.”

“There ain’t a navy ship within five hundred light
years could stand up against our defenses.”

It was more than an idle boast. The colony’s eight
armored turrets could be hiding enough firepower to knock out a frigate before
it ever got within range, but why would anyone want to fortify an isolated
outpost like Hardfall? Its proximity to the Acheron made it attractive to smugglers
and Drakes, but no one else.

Riscani nodded toward the open door. “Jump!”

I glanced down at the ground, hesitating.

“Or I’ll blast you out the door,” Riscani added malevolently.
“Your choice!”

I moved to the edge, stepped down onto the skid and
dropped lightly to the ground.

Riscani looked out across the plains, searching
for movement. “They can smell you already, Kade,” he yelled from the open door
as the lifter climbed away. “You don’t have long!” He grinned as the aircraft
turned away toward Citadel’s distant lights.

I clambered over the fallen door into the giant
cage, recovered my P-50 and checked the ammo counter. It was empty. I holstered
my gun, becoming aware of how eerily quiet and empty the flatlands were at
night. A soft light came from the stars above, partly obscured by the
impenetrably black depths of the Acheron Abyss, while far to the north, Citadel
floated like a glowing island above the dark plains. A point of light close to
Citadel marked Hiport’s location, although Hadley’s Retreat and Loport were both
hidden from sight, too low and far away to be seen. I could have hiked back to the
city in a day, but Riscani was right, trying to get there on foot would be
suicide. My best chance was to stay with the cage and hope Jase and Izin found
me in the morning.