In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (7 page)

The cargo hold filled the body of the
Merak
Star
, with large rectangular space doors on either side and connecting
pressure hatches in the forward and aft bulkheads. This one hold alone could
have stowed a ship the size of the
Silver Lining
, although the Drake
assault carrier, with its immense vehicle and hanger decks, had a greater
carrying capacity overall. The aft side of the hold was stacked with VRS
containers while a square metal frame reaching from the deck to the ceiling
dominated the center. The alien-tech hemisphere floated in the center of the
frame within a glowing stasis field. Alongside it, magnetic deck clamps secured
four small cube-shaped containers and one long rectangular chamber with a
transparent upper surface, all loaded from the
Cyclops
.

I approached the stasis cradle looking for a
control console to sabotage, but it must have been operated from the bridge
because there was nothing evident. I drew my P-50 and fired twice at the hemisphere,
aiming high, but the stasis field absorbed the slug’s kinetic energy,
suspending them both a few meters from the white metal machine.

“Worth a try,” I muttered to myself, holstering my
gun and turning to the nearest cube container.

It had a simple control panel of recessed surfaces
which I tapped experimentally until the top of the cube hinged up to the
vertical, revealing four metal circles lying flush with the top of an inner
panel. When I pressed lightly on one of the circles, it rose up revealing a twenty
centimeter long cylinder with metallic end plates and a transparent body. A blue
substance glowed within, held in place by an invisible field preventing it from
touching the sides. I lifted the cylinder out of its storage space, finding it surprisingly
light and cold to the touch, and held it up for the bionetic receptors in my
eyes to optically scan. After a few seconds, my threading projected its nonsensical
conclusion into my mind.

BALL LIGHTNING.

Deciding to keep it for later analysis, I slid the
cylinder into a pocket inside my jacket and resealed the cube, hiding my
thievery. Finally, I turned to the three meter long rectangular chamber. Its curved,
transparent upper surface was frosted with ice crystals and a faint hum issued
from its base. I wiped frosting from the transparent surface revealing a frozen
alien lying within. Unable to tell if he was alive or dead, I released the
transparent coffin-like lid which lifted up with a hiss of misty air. A frosted
life signs display above his head indicated he was barely alive, sustained in
hypothermic suspension by the cryochamber.

The frozen alien was from a race I’d never seen, a
species my threading could find no optical match for. He had a squarish head
covered with taut, light brown skin, with large round eyes deeply inset below a
protruding brow. Below his eyes was a flat nose with a single horizontal nostril
and an almost human-like mouth, although his ears were little more than
vertical slits in his bony cranium.

Over his body, he wore a dark flexible body suit with
matching boots and a belt that had been stripped of attachments. Several thin
rectangular plates lay beside him, having fallen from his suit, although there
was no clue as to their purpose. I retrieved one of the plates and wiped it
clean of frost, revealing a column of finely engraved symbols that my threading
couldn’t identify. Whatever the language, it wasn’t from a species the EIS had
ever encountered. The symbols appeared to be control points, but when I touched
them, there was no response, indicating whatever the device it was, it was as
lifeless as its owner.

At a guess, his brain to body mass was close to
man’s, so if he was ahead of us on the evolutionary ladder, it wasn’t by much. I
considered trying to revive him, but the metallic click of the pressure door
unlocking sounded behind me. I quickly pocketed the rectangular plate, closed
the cryochamber and took cover among the VRS containers at the back of the hold.
A moment later, Anya and Captain Nazari stepped through the aft pressure door
and started across the cargo deck toward the open door.

“I won’t use marked navpoints,” Nazari said in his
slurring Cali accent. “It will allow me to avoid Earth Navy inspections. I just
hope your Drake friends know enough to leave me alone.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Anya replied as they
approached the stasis cradle. “Rix is a secretive bastard. He hardly tells me
anything and I’ve been with him five years.”

“If I’m attacked, I’ll tell them I work for the
great Captain Rix.”

“They wouldn’t believe you. And even if they did,
they’d kill you just to stop you telling Rix what happened.” She gave him a
meaningful look. “He’s not the forgiving type.”

“So, I’m on my own,” Nazari concluded nervously.

“You’ve got fast bubble. You’ll be OK.”

They stopped close to the white hemisphere to
study it a moment. The two slugs I’d fired were on the opposite side, out of
sight, and were slowly being expelled by the stasis field.

“You don’t know what it does?” Nazari asked
without noticing where I’d wiped frost from the cryochamber’s transparent
surface a few meters away.

She shook her head. “Only Trask and his technical
advisor know, and they won’t even tell Rix.”

They continued on toward the open cargo door. Nazari
produced a small red stimhaler, pressed the spout to one nostril and breathed
deeply, then exhaled a crimson vapor.

Anya stepped away with a scowl on her face. “Be
careful with that stuff, you’ve got a ship to fly.”

“It calms my nerves. You saw how the skinny one
looks at me? Like he is waiting to slit my throat! On my own ship!”

“Do you have a gun?”

“I have three,” Nazari said, “but I am no
fighter.”

“You won’t be if you fry your brains with that
stuff,” she said, nodding toward his stimhaler.

He sniffed, wiped his eyes, then grinned mischievously.
“You want a try? First one free!”

Anya scowled. “No thanks, I like to keep a clear
head.”

“I’ll be glad when this is over and I’m back running
contraband through Ursa.”

“Over?” Anya gave him a surprised look. “This is
just the beginning.”

Nazari looked miserable. “See? They tell me
nothing. I am less than dirt to them.”

One of my slugs finally reached the edge of the
stasis field surrounding the alien-tech machine and fell to the deck, landing
with a reverberating clang.

Anya spun around, drawing her gun. “What was
that?”

Nazari turned more slowly due to his tranquilized
reflexes and waved dismissively. “Ah! This old ship is always creaking!”

Anya studied the cargo hold, missing the remaining
slug floating high in the stasis field. She holstered her gun and turned back
to him. “I’ll see you at Loport in four weeks. Don’t be late.” She studied his
bloodshot eyes, adding, “And lay off the stims. They’ll kill you!”

The
Merak Star’s
captain nodded weakly. “Maybe,
when they let me go back to Ursa.”

Anya strode down the door-ramp, then Nazari ambled
back across the cargo hold and passed through the forward pressure door. When
the hold was deserted again, I crept from my hiding place to the cargo door.
Anya was walking up the vehicle ramp into the black hulled
Cyclops
behind a laden cargobot. When she was out of sight, I jumped down to the ground
and hurried back under the
Merak Star
, then slipped back through the
Permian proto-forest to the tent market.

Once back on dry land, I headed for the
Silver
Lining
through narrow tent alleys, past endless black market stalls,
careful to keep the bottle of ball lightning well hidden inside my jacket.

* * * *

Once aboard the
Silver Lining
,
I went straight to engineering and handed the alien-tech cylinder to Izin for
analysis. He turned it over curiously, then placed it in his particle analyzer.

“Do you have any idea what it’s used for, Captain?”
he asked, watching the output screen.

“That’s what I want you to tell me.”

After the analyzer had completed several passes,
he said, “There’s a containment field surrounding the material. Whatever it is,
our analyzer can’t penetrate it.”

“Can we open it?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it. If the substance is
highly reactive, there may be an energy release of unknown proportions. If you
must open it, Captain, I would do so in a remote location, such as the other
side of this planet.”

While I was still deciding what to do, an alarm
sounded.

Izin turned to his console, searching for the
cause. “It’s the Rashidun,” he said. “They’ve declared a general evacuation.
The Souk is over.”

“Stow that thing in our smuggler compartment!” I
said, pointing at the cylinder of ball lightning as I ran out.

By the time I reached the flight deck, sixteen
ships had already launched and were climbing into the sky, brilliant points of
light on divergent trajectories. Among them was the
Cyclops
, which had
abandoned whatever of its cargo remained unloaded. The energy levels of the
remaining ships were all spiking as they powered up to lift off.

“Jase,” I said over the communicator. “Get up
here, we’re leaving.”

The belly sensor had him in its sights. He was
engaged in animated discussion with two Republic dealers. In one gesture, he
terminated the negotiation, scooped the niskgel containers from the table and charged
up the ramp. Before he got to the top, I ordered it to lift and seal.

By the time Jase got to the flight deck, I’d
finished a rushed preflight. More than fifty ships had now launched. Most were
activating their maneuvering engines as soon as they left the ground with no
regard for the down blasts that were tearing the flimsy tent city apart.

Jase slid onto his acceleration couch holding a
sculpted bust of a demonic creature. He placed it at the top of his console. When
he saw the direction of my gaze, he said, “That’s Kogol, Lord of the Syrman
Underworld. It’s a rare art treasure.”

“What did it cost?”

“Eighty grams. The republic dealer told me it’s
worth half a million credits to an Earth museum. All we have to do is get it
back to Earth!”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d been
conned, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. His cabin was already overflowing
with rare ‘treasures’ that were just waiting to make him rich.

“There’s only one ship outside the gravity well,”
Jase said, quickly checking his sensors. “It’s a merc escort broadcasting the
alert.”

“That’s a picket ship.”

It was right where I expected it to be. It had been
stationed in the outer system, then had bubbled in to the planet to sound the
warning when unwelcome company had arrived. It could be hours before the
newcomer’s signatures reached Novo Pantanal if they kept their distance, or
they could be here any minute if they jumped in after the picket.

Jase saw that preflight was complete, but we
hadn’t started powering up. “What are we waiting for?”

“The Merak Star.” If they were recording profiles
and we launched, they’d know from our Society registered energy signature we
were here. I had to wait until she was gone so we could slip away unnoticed.
High above us, the
Cyclops
cleared orbit and began racing toward minimum
safe distance.

“There she goes!” Jase said at last, as the
Merak
Star
lumbered into the air. At fifty meters, her big engines came to life,
pushing her into a powerful vertical climb. “The Rashidun escort just bubbled
out.”

True to their word, they’d given us one warning,
then saved themselves – contract fulfilled.

We watched on the big screen as the remaining
ships launched, completing the destruction of the tent city and leaving the
Silver
Lining
alone on the ground. When the raging wind storm finally ended, collapsed
tents and tables littered the ground, strewn with valuables abandoned in the
rush to evacuate, while high above, several hundred brilliant white stars
filled the sky, scattering in all directions.

“Who do you think it is?” Jase asked, wondering
what had triggered the end of the Souk.

“Navy or UniPol.” We still weren’t showing any
ships in orbit, indicating whoever they were, they were cautious. If they were
still out near the edge of the system, they’d have no idea the Rashidun Souk
had been abandoned. Only when they jumped in close and started picking up all
the energy signatures would they know what had happened.

One by one, the brilliant points of light winked
out, then when the
Merak Star
finally vanished, I turned to the intercom.

“Izin, light her up, we’re going!”

“Right away, Captain.”

Once we had enough power for thrusters, we started
climbing. Below us, the Rashidun trading post looked like a tiny village surrounded
by a patchwork quilt. Incredibly, for all its notoriety, the floating black
market had come to a successful conclusion with no arrests made.

“So, no payback?” Jase asked.

“Not yet, but I haven’t given up.”

He nodded approvingly. “I wouldn’t want to be
them.”

“They were Ories,” I said. “O-Force turned merc.”

Jase looked impressed. “Wow, you’re lucky to be
alive!”

“Domar Trask is their leader. Ever heard of him?”

“No, I never had much to do with O-Force. Saw them
exercise a few times. Crazy bastards,” he said with a touch of admiration. “Maybe
you should let this one go.”

“Good advice. If I was smarter, I’d take it.”

“I always wondered how I’d go against those
O-Force types,” Jase said thoughtfully. “Guess I’m going to find out.”

“Captain,” Izin’s voice sounded over the intercom,
“are you tracking any other ships close by?”