Mutiny on Outstation Zori (7 page)

After ten anxious minutes of waiting, Aura gave up on politeness and strolled to the hatch, activating the cycle to gain entrance.

The door slide open.

She stepped back, carrying a handmazer hidden in a holster in the small of her back under her cape. Her right palm felt hot and moist, resting on the weapon's hilt.

She peered around the edge of the hatchway, expecting anything.

"How do you do?" a bearded man said in a disarming voice. He smiled warmly and wore a thick cream-colored robe with odd script rippling down one side. His hands were raised in a universal gesture of surrender.

Aura gambled and emulated his pose.

The man stepped forward, attempting to press his palms to Aura's open hand in what might have been a form of greeting.

She backed up a step.

The man stopped. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to affront you. My name is Ben Zurek. I am the Outstation's Admin Executive. And you are...?"

"Aura Devor. Doctor of Xenarcheology from Gamma Siegling 6. I received your announcement last week and thought it quite odd, so I decided to come over to see if you could use any help."

"You'll excuse me," Zurek said, clasping his hands behind him, "but I find that difficult to believe."

"Well, I…" Aura tried to sound flustered and a little shy. "I guess I wasn't telling the complete truth. But if you only knew how cut-throat academic research has become these days." She rambled on in the hopes of appearing disarming. "Even Professor Keith lost her grant because she prematurely let the media think she'd discovered the lost civilization of Krypt—"

The Admin Exec gave a quiet laugh, shaking his bearded head. "You have quite a wit about you."

They were alone together ln the passageway. The walls and floor showed no signs of a struggle. In fact, Aura realized that the dock area seemed squared away and normal; nothing like what it should have looked like had there been a struggle for power on the station.

"I don't dispute your name," the man smiled. "But had you been part of an archeological expedition in our sector, I'm certain you'd have checked in with us much earlier before this… eh, for purposes of personal security and back up." He turned and Aura followed him down a cramped but clean corridor. "And since I happen to know that this is your first visit to Zori, I suspect your story is a bit untrue."

This guy is sharp
. Aura tried to scan his mind and only got back a mild haze of impressions. Perhaps she was losing her abilities, or perhaps..."Has there been some problem here on Zori? Is everyone all right?"

Zurek spread his hands openly. "Everyone on Zori is fine, thank you. We are extremely busy preparing for an important event, which is why I am the only person free to come greet you. I wish you no harm, but I must learn where you actually came from. We cannot afford a confrontation at this time with the Imperium."

Aura found a smile and gave it to him. "So, why did you send a message saying you were closing relations? Surely, you must have realized that such an announcement only attract the notice of the Imperial fleet."

"Is that what you are?" Ben Zurek asked as they rounded a curve and stopped at a ladder. "A representative of the Imperial fleet?"

"No. I represent a communications net interested in acquiring exclusive rights to your story for distribution on the Galactic comlink."

Zurek laughed again. A deep hearty sound that bubbled up from his chest and shook him he stood. "I'm afraid I don't believe that story either." A panel suddenly slid aside on Aura's left, revealing a uniformed military guard aiming a stunner directly at her ear. "But I'm hopeful that you will volunteer the truth in the next twenty-four hours."

Aura realized she'd been suckered calmly and professionally by this clever man.
Why wasn't I more cautious when I found I couldn't scan this guy? I must really be losing my touch.

Zurek stepped back to allow the guard to pat her down. The handmaser was removed from its holster and all personal property taken from her pockets. Aura wore no jewelry, but if she had, she was certain it too would have been confiscated.

"You have no right to hold me," she charged. "I came here to help, or at least to learn more about your condition. I pose you no threat." She thought she recognized the uniformed guard from the personnel listings she had studied before approaching the station. Admiral Sydney Long was high-ranking enough to have better things to do on Zori than lowly guard duty. Maybe the situation here was more complex than she had anticipated.

Admiral Long gestured with the stunner for Aura to step back through the open doorway. "If you please," she said.

The two women locked eyes until the door slid shut.

Aura sent an impression back to the
Dagger
, tipping her teammates that things were not good on Zori. Time for Plan B.

* * *

Kleg maneuvered his ship closer to the Outstation that had taken in Aura's flitter less than an hour earlier. He concentrated on positioning the
Dagger
as close as possible to the Imperium station without risking detection of the cloak from Zori's proximity sensors.

"HOW MUCH LONGER WILL THIS TAKE," came a message on one of the ship's screens. "SEEMS LIKE I'VE BEEN OUT HERE FOR AGES."

On the outer hull of the ship, the
Dagger
's co-pilot stood hunched over the wrist key-pad on his vacuum suit. The key-pad connected directly to the ship's interior, allowing communications between the two men without generating a signal that might be picked up the nearby station. Plan B called for Jamie to cut loose from the communications and lifelines, and attempt to drift across to the rotating construct.

"I'M THE PILOT," Karr answered. "YOU'RE THE SCOUT."

It was the same comment Kleg had made earlier during their planning session. Jamie hadn't contested it; if Aura could go over alone as a stalking goat, he could go over as a spy. Besides, it would put him in a position to gain first-hand information on the whereabouts of Cast Janssen. Still, sneaking on board an Imperial Outstation was not something you did without healthy fear, and Jamie never felt healthier.

"GO FOR IT," came Karr's signal.

Clamber uncoupled his lifeline, kicked off, and began to soar silently through the nothingness of space.
At least they didn't fire on Aura's ship. Maybe there's hope yet.

Kleg had given him a stealth suit to wear over his other garments, in order to be invisible once he left the
Dagger
's cloak. Jamie's left arm held tightly the other items of equipment he'd brought along to use to gain access, hopefully, through one of the station's maintenance ports.

Jamie turned his head and watched Kleg's ship dissolve from his view. The raider vanished as he floated beyond the cloaking field. Cold darkness surrounded him. Faint light glinted inside his helmet. He couldn't use his radio for fear that the station's sensors might pick up the signal. He was totally alone, unless you counted the massive surface of Zori's outer hull, swinging toward him at a frightening speed.

His trajectory was a bit off, so he risked magnetically grappling the station's outer surface. He fired the magnetic pad, striking and holding to Zori's pitted surface, and used the grapple's thin cable to absorb the sudden tug as his body matched the station's rotation.

After waiting approximately sixty seconds for any sign of activity from within the outstation, he began to feel a sneeze coming on. Jamie stifled it between clinched lips, an act which avoided disastrous effects to the inside of his helmet, and his ears popped like he'd been kicked in the head.

He took a breath and located a small jack near the maintenance port, plugging in a datalink. The tiny screen on the link's face flickered through a series of status displays. Jamie was certain that the information he wanted would be inaccessible, but Zaxt had provided the datalink with a "de-classifying" programs that just might cut through the blocks and give a glimpse of what was happening inside the station.

Working the keys of the datalink, Clamber cycled through a series of commands. The datascreens were replaced by a real-time view of the area on the other side of the maintenance hatch. Jamie added a few more prompts through the link and the monitor camera inside Zori panned left and right, revealing a workroom of some kind, but no people.

Thank God.
He knew he was nearing the point of no return when his suit's air supply would be just slightly more than enough to get him back to the
Dagger
.

Jamie scrolled back through the screens on the datalink, using the de-coder function Zaxt had installed to locate and send a signal that opened the outer hatch. At the same time, within the outstation's security loop, an alarm was undoubtedly sounding, but if Jamie's luck held, he'd be through the hatch and inside the station before anyone could respond.

"What do you know," he whispered to himself. "I'm a full-fledged pirate."

The hatch sealed behind him. He waited with sweat dotting his brow, as the inner lock cleared. His handlaser was at the ready. When the hatch opened, no one was there thankfully to welcome him aboard.

Jamie glanced around, confirming that he was in the station's laundry facility. There were tethered bags of clothing and other fabric items bundled along a wall next to the sonic washers. He took off the stealth suit and shrugged out of his vacuum suit, shoving it deep into an empty bag and tucking the bag beneath one of the folding tables, where it would not likely be found for some time. He checked his elapsed time and slid back into the stealth suit, just as footfalls sounded beyond the room's entrance.

Two Imperial marines in full combat uniforms angled into the laundry, alerted by the alarm and ready for a confrontation.

Jamie huddled behind a stanchion, feeling naked.
This costume better work.
One of the marines scanned the area for life-signs.
Or I'm going to spend the rest of my life in some backwater brig. If I'm lucky.

"You get anything?" the other marine called out, while poking at several bags of dirty clothing with the tip of his mazer.

The first man looked up, staring directly at Jamie. "The place looks clean." The two men checked the hatch, while Jamie moved silently toward the corridor. "The security circuit must have malfed again."

In that instant, Jamie knew he was going to sneeze. The force of the reaction built in the back of his head like a stunner on overload. He clamped a palm firmly over his mouth and increased his pace toward the exit. When the sneeze came, it seemed to have blaster-strength, but Jamie kept the sound down to a slight
geep!
and froze again just outside the doorway.

The two marines immediately stomped into the passage. They looked around, but saw no sign of Jamie pressed against the bulkhead across the way. One man shrugged and the other wondered aloud how his security report would look with words "skivvy-check" listed on it. They chuckled boisterously, radioed back an all-clear, and passed along the corridor.

Jamie breathed and un-clinched his jaw.

* * *

Admiral Sam "Slag" Sawyer of the Imperial Marines Special Forces was not happy. Even though he controlled the operations of the Starship
Ironfist
and its compliment of three hundred and fifty highly-trained tactical techs, Sawyer felt that he could always do a better job if the higher command would just leave him alone.

This latest communique was a perfect example of how disruptive the Imperium's demands were to an organized shock troop.

^**You are instructed to leave Outstation Runde immediately this date and proceed to Outstation Zori to investigate situation in FZ13.**^

Sawyer wondered what the hell was going on. Had Zori been attacked? It wasn't responding to his ship's hailing on the tachyon beam. Had that insufferable bore, Admiral Long, finally screwed things up so badly that the Imperium had to send a Starship over to ensure discipline?

Shaking his head, Sawyer reflected that it would take him approximately two days to follow these orders, plus another two days to return to normal procedures at Runde. He was not happy about this sudden change in operations, but he knew enough not to complain until after following orders.

Sawyer functioned by the book, keeping his men at the ready. Some said he enjoyed trouble, others that he a petty tyrant. None of this mattered, of course. The fact was that Admiral Sam "Slag" Sawyer was a damn good officer. And after all this nonsense was over, he would see that someone would pay dearly for disrupting his command.

"Lay in a direct course for Outstation Zori," he told his helmsman. "And be prepared to go to red alert when we exit hyperdrive."

CHAPTER 6

Jamie felt strangely exhilarated as he skulked through the hallways of Outstation Zori.

The various screens inset in the walls cast back his reflection that seemed poised for sudden intrigue. The situation was a lot more exhilarating than any HAVENset he'd ever played, but it was also exceedingly more dangerous. If he were caught, he'd be killed. It was this ever-present prospect of jeopardy that thrilled him as he moved carefully from room to room, corridor to corridor with an extra stealth suit carried over one arm to be used by Aura if—no, when—he found her.

No sound came to him as he moved toward a bank of drop tubes. He eased himself to the floor and belly-crawled the last ten meters. When the corridor flared ahead, Jamie noticed the slight brightening of the light long before the opening yawned into view. Despite his intense suspicion, he found he was alone in the passageway.

Riding one of the tubes down to the reactor core, Jamie mentally reviewed a map of the station's layout. There were three levels to the core. First, the monitor sector where a few service techs and bots kept control over the ion accelerators, matter annihilator, and fusion backup systems. Then, the ion accelerators themselves, humming their lonely, deadly tunes to no one. And, finally, the huge field coils of the matter/antimatter reactor where constant bombardment and flux took place.

It was at this lowest level that Outstation Zori maintained its brig; two small cells, three by three by six meters, each cubicle set solidly behind thick bars of duralloy. He had expected to find Aura occupying one of these chambers, but both cells were vacant.

Okay. So where are you?

He caught a lift and rode back up through the barracks, noticing that hardly any of the people there were doing anything except eating and sleeping. The large recreation center and pub, called the "Space Rock Cafe," was completely empty. No music, no dancing, no drinking.

People stationed on Zori seemed intent on something very important. The individuals who were awake seemed to be concentrating inwardly on serious calculations or weighty issues. Jamie got the impression that, if he were to turn off his stealth suit, the single-minded crowd around him would still fail to take notice.

He followed three somber marines into a lift and came into the drydock module, slipping silently past a security guard station. Most of the inner walls of this chamber, the station's largest, had been raised to allow personnel and equipment to flow between a dozen large knots of intense activity. People were scaling ladders and gantries, crossing catwalks, lowering null-gray cranes around what Jamie suddenly recognized as the twelve missing Esper Shadow ships.

The sleek little vessels were being dismantled—no, modified—at a furious pace by the company of no-nonsense technical personnel.

Jamie's curiosity kicked into hyperdrive. This was a major military operation, one certain to be rated as top security. What had he stumbled into? And where the hell was Aura?

Clamber glided carefully along an outer bulkhead and approached one of the translight vessels. Cool blue lasers chewed through duralloy steel, sculpting away portions of the small crafts' fuselage. Fatigue-clad marines labored quietly to re-distribute engine components.

The lack of conversation lent an eerie quality to the work. These people seemed hollow of any emotion, intent on their task and purpose, which was...what? The full power of such a dedicated military force combined with advanced vessels like the Esper Sha—

Someone plowed into him from behind. He kept control of his wits enough not to make or utter a sound, but it was clear as he toppled to one knee that he'd forgotten about the downside of his invisibility.

The confused technician rubbed his left shoulder and looked around as if he'd awakened from a dream.

Jamie held his breath.

The tech's brow knotted, his eyes darted. Slowly, he stepped back, turned, and dashed away down the passage.

Jamie knew this meant trouble. He, too, rushed back down the passageway. Edging past the security station as slowly as possible to avoid creating even a faint draft, he listened while the alarmed technician urged the guards to issue an alert. The man gestured and pointed to where he had bumped into the soft, invisible object. The security officers looked at one another skeptically, at last deciding to investigate, just as Jamie eased past their station.

He rushed to one of the lifttubes that had brought him to the drydock. Clamber stepped inside once certain that he had a tube to himself. But he caught the sound of a general alarm just as the door slid shut and his mind raced. Which way was it to the laundry where he'd hidden his vac suit? Up or down? Before his fingers could touch the controls, the tube began to move. Up it was then, but he'd better get off this public transport system before it was shut down for security reasons.

The tube door opened and Jamie started to exit, but stopped dead when Cast Janssen stepped aboard.

The short, thin man appeared distracted, much like most of Zori's residents. His yellow, smooth skin glistened in the tube's dim light. The door shut, and Janssen pressed the indicator for the upper deck.

Jamie couldn't get over the sight of the Paethorn, after months of speculating that Cast might be dead. He recognized immediately that this was indeed his old friend; Cast had a habit of nervously rattling his fingers against the loose items carried ln his thigh pockets. The familiar jangling sound now came from the hands of the short, golden-hued man before him. Clamber also recognized the stolen pendant hanging from a chain around Cast's neck.

Jamie didn't know whether to hug the Paethorn or hit him. He'd wanted to believe that Cast would be found, but never imagined that it would happen like this. The circumstance was too complex for a casual reunion.

There was a station-wide alert out for Jamie; Aura needed locating and rescued; the twelve Esper Shadows were being rebuilt on the station; and here stood Cast Janssen rattling the items in his pocket with one hand and about to pick his nose with the other.

The lifttube door opened and Cast stepped off. Without conscious thought, Jamie followed.

They stood in the darkened control room of the telescope array at the very top of the station. A bank of lambent oval screens filled one wall of the room, while the others were cluttered with an ensemble of loosely connected control devices and data recording units. Each screen was lit with dim, blue images of star clusters. Cast moved from one to another, inspecting each as if he expected to see a message written in the cosmos.

Jamie watched the Paethorn rub the back of his neck in concentration and move to the data recording system on the opposite wall of this small, dimly-lit control chamber.

Cast seemed frustrated by the results of his inspection. "Nothing," he said aloud to what he must have thought was an empty room. "Just a vacant blankness."

"Yeah," Jamie said, "I'd say that pretty well describes you, too."

Cast turned slowly with a look of disgust on his face, as if he'd been expecting such a derisive comment. His expression shifted from resigned disgust to confusion when he confirmed that there no one behind him.

"Empty-headed and empty-hearted," Jamie went on.

Cast's face began to twist. His eyes filled with fear.

Jamie thought,
This is kind of neat.
Then he said, "You can fake your death, but you can never escape your conscience… to coin a phrase."

Cast's voice sounded ragged. "Where are you? Who are you?"

Jamie laughed deep in his throat. "Men call me the Psyche...I know many strange things, for I have looked into your mind, Cast Janssen, and read your past."

The Paethorn's eyes narrowed. "I know that voice," he charged, still somewhat in awe. "It's not possible ...but it sounds like ...Jamie Clamber, the third-rate circuit jockey."

The time for nonsense had passed. Jamie shut down the stealth suit. "And you remind me of a useless, dead-head thief."

Cast took a step back as Jamie appeared before him. His mouth hung open momentarily and then he smiled, his eyes gleaming with genuine delight. "By my pledge, it is you! What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," Jamie responded, firmly clasping the Paethorn's hand.

With a suppressed grunt, Cast pretended to try and throw him over his shoulder. Jamie laughed, twisting, and bringing up a knee which stopped only a centimeter from the short, yellow man's nose.

"I came to rescue you," Clamber said. "But you're obviously hale and hearty."

Cast threw back his head in the somber light and barked a laugh. "I should have known." He spoke in a reedy voice, his arms folded across his lean frame. "You always had a thing about rescuing people. I'm fine, as you can see. But how did you manage to locate me? I'm supposed to be dead."

"Yes, and I felt terrible when I got word of the destruction of your freighter. How did you get out?" His tone became sober. "How did you get here?"

The image on one of the pale blue screens began to roll horizontally. Cast reached over to adjust a control, stabilizing the image. He inspected the screen for a second and then leaned back against a cluttered counter top. "We were attacked," he responded casually. "Raiders came out of nowhere and without warning used high-intensity lasers to rip into
The Dancer's
hull, splitting the ship apart. I would have gladly given them the cargo, but they were more interested in doing damage than in making a profit. I got away in a lifepod and was later picked up by a passing icespector team. They took me nonstop all the way out to Heaven 7. I stayed with them, because...well, because I'd suffered some neural injuries." He touched his forehead.

"What?" Jamie said with sudden concern. "Are you all right?"

Cast shrugged. "Yeah, I'm fine, I guess. The injuries affected my retinal readings and the way I talk, which has pretty much barred me from any ARVAN transactions."

"I thought you sounded different. But without access to ARVAN, you..."

"That's right," Cast said. "I couldn't get to my credit. I was broke and as good as dead. I still had my Eldeit Card, but the transactor machines wouldn't recognize me. I was a nobody as far as the market knew. That's when I started getting the idea that I could start life over."

"Why the hell didn't you contact me? I'd've—"

"Rescued me? Yeah, I know. But I was feeling constantly confused then. I worked with the icespectors and lucked into a medium-sized claim. That got me enough credit to get off Heaven. Then I realized I could go anywhere I wanted." He turned, again staring at the images on the monitor screens.

"So you came here. I remembered you being interested in this place, but I never understood the attraction. I still don't."

Cast's hand went up to the crystal pendant dangling from a thin cord around his neck. "You're not going to understand all of this," he said slowly, "but when a person gets a chance to start over, he goes back to his dreams and tries to use the things he's learned about life to take him where he feels he ought to be."

"You're right." Jamie rested his weight against a smooth bulkhead. "I don't understand."

Cast shrugged, gazing at the twelve bluish screens connected to the telescope array. Very carefully, he said, "Do you have any idea who the government has kept in stasis on this station for over four hundred years?"

Jamie shook his head. Cast answered his own question. "The Messiah of Izar."

Jamie began to suspect the rationality of his friend's statements. Perhaps Cast's injuries were more serious than either of them knew. "But the Messiah is legend; she's supposed to be dead."

"If you'll remember," Cast smiled mysteriously, "so was I."

"Ah, I get it. You're saying that she, like you, was attacked by a raider, picked up by icespectors, and carried away to Heaven—"

"No, no, no, no. Her story is not nearly as mundane as mine. The point is, she's here, and I need to be here, too. I was called, and they accepted me. That's all that's important."

"Called?" Jamie didn't like the sound of that. "Who…?

Cast swallowed, reaching for the jewel that hung around his neck. "This pendant—"

"My pendant."

"Your pendant," he amended. "I—I took it because I'd heard that there were thousands of these things made before the Messiah disappeared. They're low-grade scanner crystals designed to pick up and faintly share her aura radiations."

"But it's just a decoration," Jamie said. "My mother gave it to me; her family gave it to her when she was young. It never radiated any energy or picked up any signals."

Cast hung his head, resignedly. "I know, I know. That's because the Messiah was in coldsleep here on Zori. When she woke up, the pendant began to emit faint amber light."

Again, Jamie began to suspect that his friend might be suffering from psychological trauma. Cast seemed in earnest about having been "called," to use his term, to Zori station. This last revelation about the resurrection of the Messiah of Izar was more than Jamie could accept. Yet the ex-circuit-jockey stood before him, eyes wide, face filled with earnest; the very picture of solid conviction.

Exactly like a zealot, Jamie thought. I've got to see that he gets the medical attention he obviously needs. He wanted to puzzle out this strange situation a bit longer, but a part of his mind couldn't forget that there was an alert out for him throughout the station. And he still hadn't located Aura Devor.