Counterweight (9 page)

The crewman’s eyes widened. “You’re that guy they were
looking for when we lifted off!” His eyes darted to the side as he considered
whether this realization might offer him some additional leverage over Rick.

“You’d better hope that doesn’t occur to the captain,” Rick
warned. “If he starts talking about taking me back, I might need to derail the
discussion with a suitable distraction.”

The eyes were back on him now, all hint of speculation gone.

“Returning to 3428 is a death sentence for me.” Rick saw no
reason to hide the fact. He wanted to make it very clear that he had nothing to
lose. “I’ll help you out,” he offered with a nod at the shuttle, “but I need
your
support in return.”

“Why were your people looking for you?”

Rick sighed. “I defended myself – a little too well –
against  someone who felt I shouldn’t be involved with a certain young
woman.”

The young man looked at him for a moment, the beginnings of
a grin forming. “That’s a story I can understand,” he muttered with a glance
over his shoulder. “Let’s go see the old man.”

They resumed their course to the bridge, ignoring the
surprised faces of crewmembers as they passed in the main companionway.

“We don’t carry enough reactant to make it back to your
planet anyway,” the young Tauhentan advised. “G’Maj always buys enough to cover
our trip plus eleven percent. Anything more is a waste.
Foxlight II
runs
on the good stuff but the half-life for high-yield reactant is only a few
months.”

“Why eleven, exactly?”

“It’s the EOQ, the economic order quantity, for the
Benthic/3428 run,” the young man replied, sounding as though it were the most
obvious of facts. He saw the lack of comprehension on Rick’s face. “Look, when
we order the reactant, there’s a handling charge from the vendor. We also
consider how much we plan to use and what sort of safety factor we want to
allow for. Add in the expected loss from degradation of the stored fuel and you
get the exact amount needed to minimize our economic…”

“So, long story short,” Rick interjected, “we’re past the
point of no return?”

“Yeah.”

They walked into the bridge and everyone turned to stare. If
being a stranger wasn’t enough, Rick was also wearing a full
extra-vehicular-activity suit. He’d found it shortly after the shuttle had
landed inside the
Foxlight II.
He disliked the cold of the shuttle bay
and the suit kept him warm enough to sleep.

He’d also wanted to keep open the possibility of hiding on
the outside of the ship, as needed.

Only one of the bridge crew was wearing an EVA suit, the
rest were in insulated overalls. Their suits were attached to the wall beside
their stations, splayed open so their owners could back into them and close up
on a moment’s notice.

A Tauhentan, late middle-aged and tending toward the pear
shape common to older men of his species, turned a disapproving eye on Rick’s
young companion. “N’Mid,” he growled, “what did I tell you about bringing pets
on board?”

Rick realised N’Mid was too nervous to handle the situation.
He was on the verge of saying
We found him in one of the shuttles.
The
inevitable
Who is we?
 would then follow and the man sitting at the
navigation panel would become involved. He couldn’t see much more than that but
it was enough to know he’d better speak up.

“N’Mid caught me coming out of your shuttle bay,” Rick
declared.

“And what were you doing in there?”

“Hiding?”

“Any idea what happens when you get shoved out an airlock
during distortion travel?” the captain asked sharply.

“Not really.”

“Hmmm.” The captain nodded, looking over at the bridge
windows. “Me neither,” he said in mild surprise. “Though Q’Is over there seems
eager to find out.” He nodded at the suited crewman at the sensor and comms
station. “Says he needs to crawl out to the hull later today and fix part of
our array.”

Rick had been the second most senior engineer on the
Canal
and he understood the science behind a distortion envelope. “If he stays on the
hull,” he ventured, “he should be fine. If you toss him out, though…”

The captain chuckled.

Rick saw a way to add some value to his presence. “I’m an
engineer; I could go out there with Q’Is.” He looked over at the suited
Tauhentan. “What’s broken?”

Q’Is ran his fingers over the central control surface. “Not
sure yet,” he muttered. “Our sensors are dead, but… Yes, we can still send
out-going messages.”

The navigator leaned over, frowning at the screen. “’No time
like the present?’” he blurted. What the hells kind of test message is that?
And why a drop burst? We could just emit a ping to test the array…”

The hairs on the back of Rick’s neck began to tingle a half
second before the knowledge hit. “It’s an attack!” he shouted.

Everyone forgot about the exchange between the two officers
and turned to stare at Rick in surprise.

The captain chuckled. “Settle down, Sonny. We’re not going
to space you, if that’s what has you so desperate…”

“No, Captain,” Rick cut him off. “It really is an attack;
we’re about to get hit from starboard with medium L.A. rounds.” He jabbed his
finger at the bank of windows on the captain’s right. “Right there!” His helmet
snapped shut.

The captain frowned. “Even if I believed you, which I…”

Rick dropped to the floor and activated the suit’s magnetic
docking plates just as a vicious hail of linearly accelerated projectiles
blasted their way through the thin fabric of the bridge.

From the starboard side.

Rick was terrified. Until the atmosphere of the bridge
finished venting, he couldn’t release the suit’s docking plates. If rounds were
about to strike him, he wouldn’t have a lot of options. The navigator flew past
him, just inches above his visor and slammed into one of the starboard windows,
pulled there by the violently escaping air.

Acting as a fluid hammer, the hapless Tauhentan’s body
caused a localized pressure spike, forcing his body through the fabric of the
ship and turning a small collection of holes into a single, body-sized opening.

The remaining air was quickly drained and Rick was able to
release the mag plates holding him to the floor. The throbbing in his temples
began to subside now that he’d be able to react to incoming rounds.

Fourteen seconds didn’t add up to an eternity, but it was
certainly enough to
avoid
eternity.

N’Mid was near the captain, his arms and legs wrapped around
the supports of a workstation. His eyes were shut and he worked his mouth
convulsively as the saliva boiled off the moist tissues and exhausted through
his nose, joining the gasses evaporating from his lungs.

Mercifully, he lost consciousness just as the first nitrogen
bubbles formed in his bloodstream. His body slumped over and fell to the floor
as he died.

Rick saw the shielding officer, her face in agony as her
mouth gaped open, spewing blood and tissue onto the deck plating. She’d tried
to hold her breath when the atmo started draining and she’d taken a round in
the leg and failed to reach her suit in time. After the navigator had widened
the hull breach, she’d stood no chance and her lungs had burst.

The terror in her eyes faded as Rick stared back helplessly.
He caught movement to his right and turned to see a large suit closing around
the captain who must have remembered not to hold his breath. He couldn’t warn
him and he couldn’t save him either, because he had no weapon. As the plates
locked into place around his limbs and torso, two rounds punched through the
center of mass but the holes were smaller than those caused by medium-caliber
L.A. projectiles.

The captain held his left hand over the closely spaced
holes, drawing a sidearm with his right. He fired three rounds, off to Rick’s
left, before a third round drilled straight through the center of the old man’s
visor.

Rick turned to find Q’Is, the officer who’d been suited from
the start, holding his left hand to his own torso, his weapon lying on the
deck. If ever he’d had doubts that Q’Is had been the inside man for this
ambush, they were as dead as the rest of the crew.

Any minute now, the rival smugglers, Q’Is’ new partners,
would be boarding the ship. They’d already pushed the distortion envelopes of
the two vessels together and now they would cut their way in. They’d kill the
crew and take the cargo.

The value of a full hold of spicewood was beyond imagining.
The
Foxlight II
was a cheap bauble next to such wealth, and a damaged
one at that. Chances were good they would simply leave her in distortion,
letting her drop out on her own when the reactant finally ran out.

As soon as Q’Is dealt with the immediate imperative of a
breached suit, he’d notice Rick. It didn’t take pre-cog to know what would
happen then.

Rick raced over, diving to grab the pistol dropped by Q’Is
in his haste to seal his suit. He rolled to aim up at the traitor’s torso and
fired two rounds into the thoracic region.

Rick rolled to his knees, knowing the smuggler was about to
call for help, using the suit’s com link to the ship’s systems. He took careful
aim and put a third round between the man’s eyes as he fell.

Sliding the weapon into an empty clasp at his hip, Rick ran
around the perimeter of the bridge, closing up the three remaining suits. He
backed up to a section of empty wall space and re-activated the magnetic
plates.

Now he was just one of four closed suits hanging, unused, on
the wall.

A lateral jarring motion told him that the attackers were alongside,
and it wasn’t long before the killing began again. Though the bridge atmosphere
was gone, the rest of the vessel had not been hit and the sound of weapons fire
was carried through the bulkhead behind Rick and into the air of his
suit.                                                                                

He had considered going out to fight the attackers but they
would almost certainly come with overwhelming force and he knew how small this
smuggling crew was. Even with his abilities, it would have been a lost battle
before it had even begun.

He decided to do what he could to protect his people
instead. Though his life on 3428 had been less than ideal, he still had
relatives and friends on that world and he didn’t want them found by whoever
was taking this ship.

Using his suit, he activated a heads-up display of the
vessel’s systems, resetting his display from Tauhentan to Dheema. He entered
the logs of the unfortunate navigator and downloaded the course to the
helmet-mounted systems.

Then, leaving the current course and destination in effect,
he altered any mention of his home world. Giving fictional coordinates to any
reference that involved 3428. Then he did a global search of all storage
systems on the vessel, scrubbing out the planetary designation from every
single record, logs, invoices and contracts.

It was easier than expected. No doubt the captain had been
wary of the data falling into the hands of competitors and he’d kept it all
tagged with a burn reference.

Even the simple numeric designator would have been a risk.
Rick’s own ancestors had found the world in the ancient Imperial database. A
vague reference to spicewood even appeared in the entry and it would have been
enough to bring the entire Republic down on the inhabitants of the
Canal.

Shortly after Rick completed his scrubbing of the files, two
armed and suited forms walked into the bridge from the aft airlock. After a
quick look around the room, they moved over to the body of their dead
co-conspirator.

One of them looked over at the other and, after a brief
pause, the second man punched a fist into the raised palm of the other, perhaps
celebrating the increased shares resulting from Q’Is’ death.

The second raider turned to the console and placed a small
device directly on the screen. A red light flashed, slowly changing color to
green, then a steady blue. He retrieved the device and slid it into a
compartment at the front of his suit.

With that done, the two simply turned and left. Rick let out
a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and turned his thoughts to what would
come next. It was unlikely they’d return to the bridge, having already come to
collect either Q’Is or, if he was dead, his navigation records. Their only
other interest in this ship was its cargo and they were probably already
transferring that. If he stayed here, in his suit, for the next few hours, he’d
soon have the ship to himself.

Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

“
H
e’s
leaving but I still haven’t identified his replacement,” Nid reported, the
sounds of passengers and announcements automatically filtered out by his
earpiece. “Do I follow him or stay here?”

Graadt leaned out the side door of the eight-passenger
carrier, hovering just outside the railing. A safety strap dangled behind him,
unused, from the ceiling. He preferred to rely on his sense of balance and his
reflexes to keep from falling out. The safety harness could get in his way or
prevent him from reacting quickly enough to an unexpected variable.

He peered through the crowd, leaning forward just a fraction
as he spotted the target. “Stay at the station and try to identify the next
watcher.” Graadt ordered. “I have our man in sight. Krorian, black hair, green
overalls, scar on left cheek.”

“Acknowledged.”

Graadt looked down at his wrist pad and touched the thermal
signature of the enemy agent. He sub-vocalized a command and a targeting
reticule appeared over the signature. The pad was linked to an over-eye camera
and earpiece attached to Graadt’s headband. “Kaans,” he shouted toward the
cockpit, “keep us alongside him.”