Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (22 page)

Jase tensed. “Skipper! Don’t ram
him!”

I chuckled, without taking my
eyes off the screen, amused Jase thought I was that crazy.

A thermal warning appeared on the
main screen as the cutter’s engine blast began to heat our hull – nothing the
Lining
couldn’t handle while the shield
was activating. Our collision alert sounded, then I released maglock two, dropping
the external VRS container and rolling hard away. We narrowly missed one of the
cutter’s boosters before flying out from behind her stern on the side opposite
to her main gun. I barrel rolled again, keeping the cutter’s bulk between us
and their big stick, then sent the
Lining
racing up alongside the cutter’s scarred black and gray hull.

By now Gwandoya knew we were
running, but his collision alert would be wailing in his ears as our container full
of scrap metal hurtled towards his main engine. The cutter began to thrust
sideways and spin on its axis, trying to bring its big gun to bear as it dodged
the container. Good ship handling for a pirate, but the cutter was too big and
slow for that kind of maneuver.

If there were weapons on the
blind side of the cutter, they weren’t ready, because we passed along her hull
without a single shot being fired. I swung the optical feed to view astern as
we passed the cutter’s bow, keeping it center screen while we climbed away. A
bright flash erupted from the cutter’s stern as the VRS container struck Gwandoya’s
main engine, then a massive fireball engulfed her aft section. It blasted away
from the cutter in all directions, forming a rapidly expanding orange ring of
superheated plasma with the raider at its center.

At that moment, our battle shield
came to life, momentarily dimming our view of Gwandoya’s ship. By the time our
optics compensated, the blast ring encircling the crippled pirate vessel had
expanded to reveal its stern had been blown off and was now drifting away from the
rest of the cutter. Amidships, the infra red bloom was coming into view as the
cutter’s hull spun, bringing its main weapon around to bear on us. Its engines may
have been destroyed, but the energy plant in the center of the ship was still
able to power its weapons. A beam of searing yellow lashed out from the infra
red bloom and began eating into the
Lining’s
shield.

“Damn!” Jase wheezed. “He’s got a
can opener!”

It was slang for a fusion beam, a
short range naval weapon that could slice open lightly armored hulls like tin
foil. They required enormous capacitors to charge, which is why Earth Navy
fitted them to much larger ships than cutters. Gwandoya must have gutted the
interior of his ship to mount it, but how did a rabid murderer like Gwandoya get
his hands on such a weapon?

“Captain,” Izin called over the
intercom, “the shield is bleeding at four hundred and thirty percent.” His artificial
voice sounded calm, but I knew he was worried. “Failure is imminent.”

“Just a few more seconds,” I said,
knowing we were piling on the distance between us.

The fusion beam stayed locked onto
us as we pulled away, testament to the accuracy of Gwandoya’s targeting system.
Below our stern, a brilliant white disk formed and began to grow as the
Lining’s
shield struggled to radiate
away the incoming energy pouring into us. The shield thinned, but the distance
between the two ships grew until the glow softened and began to slowly shrink.
Soon the fusion beam’s intensity fell away, diffused by distance.

“The shield has stabilized,
Captain,” Izin reported.

Far behind us, the cutter’s stern
had begun to tumble and was no longer aligned with the rest of the ship. The
blast ring had expanded into a large circular cloud that was slowly cooling,
while secondary explosions rippled along the cutter’s hull from the wrecked
stern. After each explosion, a slender plume of atmosphere vented hundreds of
meters out into space as another section of hull decompressed.

“She’s had it!” Jase said
incredulously. “I can’t believe you smoked it with a trash can.”

“It’s a first for me.”

The fusion beam ceased firing as
a gray lifeboat shot away from the cutter, propelled by a low power thruster.
We waited expectantly, but no more lifeboats launched. Even overloaded, that
one lifeboat couldn’t have carried more than forty. A cutter that size should
have had at least four such escape craft, but Gwandoya must have removed the
others to make room for his oversized can opener.

“Do you think Gwandoya made it
out?” Jase wondered aloud.

“People like him always do.” They
were usually the first to jump ship and thought nothing of leaving others
behind. I watched the cutter for a moment, noting the atmospheric plumes were
thinning as Gwandoya’s ship died. It might take weeks or years, but eventually
Icetop’s gravity would pull it down to a fiery end in the planet’s atmosphere. I
climbed off my acceleration couch with a melancholy feeling. I knew Gwandoya
and his crew had been responsible for many deaths over the years, but no one
who lived in space ever liked to see another ship destroyed. “When we reach
minimum safe distance, bubble for Axon.”

“I don’t suppose I could convince
you to head for Breega instead?” Jase asked. “I need some sun after all that
ice.”

Breega was an arid world, so hot
that the human settlements were all located below ground or in high mountains.

“Why there? You can only step on
the surface at night?”

“Yeah, but the only ice they have
is in their drinks.”

“Next time,” I promised, then headed
to engineering where Izin was still meticulously watching our shield levels. “You
can drop the shield, Izin. Did we take any damage?”

“Nothing I can’t repair in the
next few days.”

I watched Izin de-energize the
shield, then said. “Good work back there on Icetop. How did you manage to crack
the auctioneer?” It was something even the EIS would find useful.

“I didn’t. I told you, Captain, I
could not break its security. I found the auctioneer passed the results to a
softbot
, which displayed the message. All I did was subvert
the
softbot
, replacing Captain Vargis’ name with yours.”

“Oh,” I said thoughtfully. “So the
auctioneer thinks Vargis won?”

“Yes Captain, not that it matters
now.”

“It will to Vargis.”

“Why is that, Captain?”

“Because it would have
transferred the money from his vault-key, even though he got nothing for it,” I
grinned thoughtfully. “I wonder if that double dealing slime ball knows?”

“He will the next time he
examines his vault balance.”

“Good thing he didn’t check it
before takeoff,” I said amused. “Rather than leave us to Gwandoya, he might
have blasted us himself!”

Chapter Four
: Axon Way Station

Free Station

The Shroud Dark Nebula

Outer Lyra Region

Artificial Gravity

1,082 light years from Sol

18,000 inhabitants

It took
three weeks to make the seventy-eight light year voyage to Axon Way Station, a sprawling
ramshackle structure that had grown haphazardly over the centuries into one of
the largest free floating habitats outside Core System space. It was gravitationally
anchored to the edge of the Shroud, a vast dark nebula of dust and ionized gas
which in a few million years would begin spawning new stars, turning the cold dark
nebula into a glowing spectacle of light and color. The station had originally
been a hydrogen refinery established by the Axon Corporation over three
centuries ago. Being located halfway between Hades City and the Outer Cygnus
colonies, it quickly became a favored rest stop for trade ships. Once the
traders came, the merchants and smugglers followed.

Axon was a free station, a self
governing commercial enterprise under corporate rather than political control. It
was on friendly terms with the four Earth collective-governments, but was carefully
independent of them all. That autonomy and its location fuelled the illicit
trade which transformed Axon into the black market capital of the Outer Lyra
region. There was a small UniPol outfit there providing a semblance of law and
order to the more civilized inhabitants, while the local EIS cell operated in
secret who, thanks to my purge and wipe, I had no way of contacting. The
station’s location, freedom and thriving trade made it a natural choice for the
Beneficial Society’s regional headquarters, which said volumes about how close
the Society was to the black market. The next nearest Society HQ was months
away, which was why I was betting Marie was headed to Axon.

The Outer Lyra run was always hazardous
because the Shroud created natural bottlenecks marked by navpoint beacons where
ships unbubbled to make course corrections. Ravens were known to lurk around
the edges of these natural choke points, occasionally picking off easy prey and
running the moment a navy frigate appeared. Everyone knew there was a Raven
base inside the Shroud, although no one outside the Brotherhood knew where it
was. Even inside the Brotherhood, it was a closely guarded secret, known only
to a handful of senior navigators, all of whom would die fighting rather than
be captured by the navy.

This time around, we had a clean
run all the way to the second last navpoint, where we picked up a signature
drifting at the extreme edge of sensor range.

“Can’t tell what it is,” Jase
said. “No transponder, no energy emissions. I can’t even tell if it’s human.”

It was human. No one else used
our navpoints. “Any emergency beacons?”

“Nothing. No active scanning
either. If it’s alive, it’s just listening.”

It could have been anything from
a derelict to a Raven ambush. I studied the signature warily, well aware of the
tricks the Brotherhood used to lure well meaning fools to their deaths. There
was no mayday signal and its reactor was stone cold, indicating it was a
lifeless wreck. Even so, I hated leaving a ship adrift in case there were
survivors – then I remembered my brother. He was out here somewhere, maybe in
the Shroud, maybe in a place like it. Whenever I saw anything that looked like
an ambush or was tempted to do something stupid, I thought of him, imagined how
dangerous it would be if he were laying the trap and then I bubbled the hell
out of there fast.

“We’ll report it when we get to
Axon,” I said, not that they’d do anything about it. The Shroud might have been
a shortcut, but it was also a place of death, where the only favor the living
could do for the dead was not join them.

We had our course corrections
down to a fine art and were soon on our way towards Axon. A few hours later, we
unbubbled a hundred thousand clicks out, leaving our transponder off while we
checked what ships were docked. We were outside the range of the station’s heavy
weapons, which would be targeting us as a matter of course, waiting for us to
identify ourselves. In the Shroud, taking a first look from long range with no transponder
signal was a sensible precaution, although entering weapon’s range without
revealing who you were was a fatal mistake.

There were more than twenty ships
docked, but the
Heureux
was not among
them. Either we’d passed her in flight or I’d guessed wrong and she was heading
for a more distant Society base, probably Xantis in towards the Core Systems.

“Show them who we are,” I said, lighting
up our maneuvering engines while Jase activated the transponder.

I booked a berth with Axon
Control as we approached the sprawling black structure. It was lined with
thousands of points of light, marking its many viewports, although there were
fewer active lights near the abandoned refinery at the center where the lowlife
types fought each other for scraps. The station was constructed of dozens of
vertically aligned cylindrical habitats of different lengths and thicknesses,
some with their sides pressed together, others separated by connecting tubes.
The ends of the cylinders mostly bristled with aerials and towers, although a
few contained transparent domes covering parks and housing for the obscenely
rich. Robot workers and human engineers floated like insects around several skeletal
sections under construction, while dull metal gun emplacements ringed the
station and a dozen orbiting weapon platforms showed Axon took its defense
seriously. No Raven ship had approached within weapon’s range for more than a
century, although they occasionally performed long distance scans of the
docking zones to see who was in port.

“Are you staying on board,
Skipper?” Jase asked warily.

“No. You are.”

He winced. “There’ll be trouble if
the Krieger brothers hear you’re on the station.”

There used to be three brothers,
famous drunks, gamblers and bullies who ran one of the local crime gangs.
Thanks to a shakedown gone wrong, there were now only two, and both had sworn
to kill me for dealing with their murderous brother. It wasn’t their station of
course, they just acted like it was.

“By the time they find out I’m
here, we’ll be long gone,” I reassured him, certain the Krieger brother’s
informants would be lining up to give them the good news if they got a sniff of
my arrival.

Jase looked doubtful. “I’ll be
ready if you need help.”

“No matter what happens, don’t
leave the ship,” I said, certain that if Jase so much as set foot on the
station, they’d grab him and offer to trade him for me, then slit both our
throats. They were predictable that way.

Jase gave me a frustrated look,
but knew my mind was made up. He had no history with the Krieger brothers, and
I wanted to keep it that way – for his sake.

“Prepare docking clamps,” I said
as the
Silver Lining
settled into the
guide beam leading to our mooring position, secretly hoping the Krieger
brothers’ eyes weren’t everywhere.

I didn’t have time for games, not
this trip.

* * * *

Dock security was non-existent at Axon. In
high threat space everyone was openly armed and would fight rather than
surrender their personal protection, so I was able to wear my P-50 holstered when
I boarded the station.

 
If Hades City was a honeycomb of well lit caverns,
Axon Way Station was a labyrinth of mostly dark and grimy corridors, straining
life support systems and gang controlled no-go areas. The exceptions were the
white zones, at the extreme upper and lower ends of the station, where the rich
lived. They were protected by private armies, were supplied with ample power,
clean air and good food and lived in sprawling homes with panoramic views of
the Shroud. They could have been a million light years from the lawless center
of the station.

The black zone was located in the
oldest, most dilapidated part of the station, around the old refinery, where local
stim-heads called ‘fynies’ would put a slug between your eyes for your boots –
let alone the mountain of credits I was carrying. The fynie dominated black
zone survived on minimal power and choked on air fouled by a leaking network of
disused pipes and rusting gas tanks.

Between the two white zones and
the decaying black zone were the grey zones, home to illegitimate businesses
and well armed vigilantes who kept the worst of the fynies sealed in their rotting
slum. Elevators and walkways connected the gray and white zones and a hull
skimming ferry service ran between the two wealthy ends of the station, but
there was no functioning transport link into or through the black zone.

The gray zone’s stim labs were
the center of Outer Lyra’s drug trade, and its workshops manufactured every
kind of weapon known to man. Scattered between the stim and weapon
manufacturers was a vast array of medlabs offering an impressive selection of
bizarre body
mods
and implants. Most infamous of all
was the Cauldron in Upper Gray, the reddest red light district in five hundred
light years. Everyone knew what Axon was, even the navy, but it provided a
protected stopover that the navy didn’t have to pay for, so they let it stay in
business.

After paying our mooring fees at
the gate, I passed through into the station without even a retinal scan, proof
Axon didn’t care how many systems a man was wanted in, so long as they got paid.
I took an elevator to Upper White Commercial, to visit Shipping Control to
confirm the
Heureux
hadn’t put in at
the station in the last month. Marie’s old freighter was slower than the
Lining
, so I held on to the slim hope
I’d passed her and she’d dock in the next day or two.

Hoping I might have better luck
with the Society, I headed for their Outer Lyra regional headquarters. It was
on the far side of Upper White’s retail district, a spider’s web of broad
corridors lined with shops overflowing with merchandise of every description, most
of it stolen. Many of the smugglers feeding Axon had Raven links, and made
healthy livings out of disposing of the Brotherhood’s booty in ways UniPol
found difficult to trace. The smugglers would pick-up the loot from prearranged
drop zones in the Shroud and sell it in Axon, or some other black market center,
before passing the funds to Raven vault-men, minus their cut of course. It was
an efficient operation, where everybody got rich. Very rich.

It was why Earth Navy couldn’t
stamp out the Brotherhood, and why the Society’s regional headquarters was a
well appointed fortress that forced me to hand over my P-50 before letting me
in. Like all traders, I had no choice but to be a member of the Society because
running cargo was their game. They owned it. The further out from Earth you
went, the truer that was. They protected the vendors by underwriting every
contract – for a healthy three percent skim off the top – and they ran the
Exchange, which only Society members could access. It was a racket and it was
legal, but we got discounts from Society endorsed dealers which eased the pain
a little. Technically, the Society didn’t get a cut of smuggling money, but
their skim was inflated to take a piece of that action too, although no one
ever discussed it.

After settling up the commissions
I owed the Society, I requested a heads up if the
Heureux
docked. Members could always contact each other through the
Society, with no questions asked, no records kept. I then checked which of
Axon’s merchants were Society authorized vendors, and as such, required to
offer me discounts. The run in with Gwandoya had left me feeling the
Lining
was underdressed, especially now
that I was doing double duty for the EIS. As luck would have it, Armin’s Armaments
was still on the list. Everybody bought from him, because his gear was premium
grade and came with permits – probably forged – but good enough to pass Earth
Navy inspection.

I retrieved my gun on the way out
and took the elevator down to Upper Gray, where the streets were crowded and
the air was a kaleidoscope of fragrances, not all of them pleasant. Everyone
down there was carrying, except for a few well dressed
richies
who were escorted by heavily armed guards in body armor. Stim-dealers worked
the street corners and a few grubby looking fynies skulked in back alleys, but
generally everyone was well mannered.

Politeness tends to accompany a
plethora of guns on hips.

A bunch of under nourished idlers
lounged outside Armin’s. Not fynies, but bottom feeders nevertheless. One was barely
conscious, pressing a dark colored stim tube into his neck, pumping toxins into
his blood stream at a steady pace. Another wore a brain wave modulator with the
visor down and was using his hands to simulate firing a weapon as he lived
through the helmet’s scripted gun-fantasy. A third sat on a low, graffiti laden
wall staring at a small device in his hand. When I reached the entrance, he aimed
the device at me. Too late I realized it was an alpha wave scanner, recording
the identities of everyone who passed within range. He looked up at me, eyes
wide, thinking of all the credits he was about to make, then jumped to his feet
and ran. I considered shooting him, but DNA locked him instead before he fled
into an alley.