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Decker stepped through the open door and met a wall of stagnant hot air that nearly took his breath away.
This deep inside a box canyon in the middle of an endless desert, the slightest breeze would have been a miracle.
Two months had passed since the rescue on Marengo and their return to Caledonia. Captain Ulrich had immediately given them the Garonne mission, as Decker expected, but with a twist neither of them had anticipated.
Turning to look back the way they’d come, he felt a stab of regret for the enticing coolness of the underground naval station. They’d arrived on this minor colony world only two days earlier, but he’d developed a fondness for the quirky and very secret installation, suspecting that he’d soon come to miss its clean, wholesome atmosphere. The engineers who maintained and refurbished ships for naval intelligence had turned out to be his kind of people.
“I should have forced you to take the bet,” he grumbled, sizing up their new home.
“So you keep saying,” Talyn replied, sounding distracted, her attention on the worn, shabby-looking spaceship squatting beneath a shimmering camouflage net. Its sleek lines seemed eerily familiar though she couldn’t quite figure why.
“Getting involved in a rebellion never turns out well for anyone, mark my words,” Decker continued. “We’re going to regret poking our noses into the Garonne business.”
“So you keep saying,” she repeated. “Zack, does this tub remind you of anything?”
“What?” Decker frowned while he ran his eyes over the pitted and blackened hull. “It’s an old sloop. Something the Navy took from your standard down-market pirate and kept for spook work. I’m more worried about you flying the thing out of here. Unless I’m mistaken, you don’t have much time at the controls of a starship, especially a lander.”
The big Marine ran a calloused hand through the mop of sandy hair covering his skull, wishing his current cover identity didn’t require him to wear it so long.
“Why do you think I spent so much time in the simulation tank after coming home from Marengo?”
She turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow. Talyn, in contrast to Zack, wore her hair short, and that gave her a harder, leaner appearance than usual.
“You were bored enough to play first person shooter games?” He shrugged. “I was too busy to pay attention.”
Talyn snorted.
“I’m sure your companion of the moment found you busy alright. Come on, let’s climb aboard and fire her up. Neither of us is getting any younger just standing here.”
Duffle bags slung over leather-clad shoulders, they walked up the ramp into the belly of the beast, inhaling the sharp tang of metal, lubricants and all the other familiar scents of a starship.
“You know,” Zack said, looking around at the bare corridors, “now that I think about it, this tub does feel familiar, but there’s something missing.”
He stopped by a closed door.
“I’m going to venture that this is the main cabin.” It slid aside at his touch, revealing a plain compartment but one that was, by the standards of a small ship, rather spacious. “We can leave our gear here unless you want to take separate quarters.”
“And miss hearing you whine about the mission in your sleep?” She chuckled, then tossed her bag inside. “I’ll decide once we’re under way.”
The bridge had that same aura of familiarity, though it seemed as well used and strictly functional as the rest of the vessel. Talyn sat down at the helm console and touched its screen, sending power through dormant systems. Within moments, they came to life, and she scanned the data on the readout before looking at her surroundings again.
“Zack.”
“Hmm?” Decker, at the tactical console, was busy running through pre-flight checks and didn’t raise his head.
“We’re on Syrah.”
“Amali’s yacht? The one we stole at Nabhka? I thought the Navy planned on returning it to his heirs and successors. How do you figure?”
“She has the right feel. I sailed her long enough to remember.”
“Well, if it is the bastard’s ship, the Navy’s given her a serious upgrade. Remember the mercenary sloop that ran us down by the Talkin array after we stole this thing?”
“Sure.”
“Next time, we’ll be the ones chasing the mercs away. It’ll make up for the engineers taking out all the beautiful luxury fittings it used to have.”
“I would have been difficult pretending to be rogues if our ship looked like a high-class brothel.”
“The old Syrah was comfortable, though.” Decker sounded wistful for a moment, eyes raised to the deck head. He sighed theatrically. “But I’ll grant you that I wouldn’t be able to pass for a pimp and you sure as heck wouldn’t pass for a working lady.”
“Why would I be the entertainer? I’m willing to bet I could pimp you out easily enough, big boy.” She smirked at him over her shoulder.
“I’m willing to try if you are.”
“No doubt. Now how about you get your mind out of the gutter and earn your pay?”
“All systems are up and running,” he replied without missing a beat. “The Navy did a good enough job that I might just stop complaining.”
“That’ll be the day. Give me some time to sort myself out. It’s not like we have much leeway getting out of this slot and I’d rather not scrape our nacelles on the way up.”
“It’ll add character.” He touched his screen. “Incoming from the station, they’re ready to withdraw the cammo net.”
“How kind. Tell them I’d like a few more minutes.”
“Sure. Just don’t let us get too old sitting here, will you?”
Talyn mumbled something that might or might not have been obscene, and he smiled fondly at her back.
“I’m ready to go,” she finally announced, flexing her fingers. “They’ve put a good AI aboard, so I’ll not be flying her alone.”
“Glad to hear that.” He touched his screen again. “Control, this is Chimera. We’re ready.”
“Overhead retracted,” a voice replied moments later. “There’s no traffic in any direction for a thousand kilometers and nothing in orbit above this location. Godspeed and good hunting, Chimera. Try not to damage her too much. We put a lot of hours into the conversion.”
“No promises,” Talyn replied absently, her attention on the controls.
Though she seemed calm, Decker could read the tension in the set of her shoulders and the hard lines marking her face. There was nothing he could do to help, so he simply sat back and tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong lifting out of a tight space in a large thing with the flight characteristics of a slab of granite.
“I hope you’re strapped in, Zack.”
“Why? Are you going to perform aerobatics to amuse the folks on the ground?”
“Strap in, Zack.”
“Yes, ma’am. You concentrate on flying. I’d like to keep the nice engineers who gave us this toy happy, so don’t dent it.”
She briefly scowled at him over her shoulder, then pushed the thrusters to full strength. Chimera’s lift-off rumble echoed through the canyon, and the rock walls began to drop away. The little ship felt steady to a degree that surprised both operatives and within seconds, it was free of the mesa and gaining altitude fast.
“Remember to retract the landing gear,” Decker said. “We might need it some other time.”
“Done. The AI in this thing is impressive. I thought we’d sway like a boat in a storm until we were out of the canyon.”
“Thank you.” A disembodied voice startled the two agents. They looked at each other, then Decker shook his head.
“Oh no. Not happening. I’m not having it speak to us, especially in that voice.” He called up the relevant subroutine and entered a command string. “That should do it.”
This time, a soft chime sounded.
“Much better.” Zack smiled at his partner.
**
Gradually, the blue of the sky faded to purple and then to black when they passed through the upper atmosphere and into the vacuum of space. Talyn chose not to spend any time in orbit and broke out immediately, headed for the hyperlimit. With nothing else to do, Decker spent his time productively by compiling a detailed inventory of the ship’s systems while happily humming a marching song.
They’d almost reached the point where they could go FTL when his tactical screen flashed an insistent warning.
“A Navy sloop just lit up, and it’s targeting us.” Pause. “We’ve been ordered to heave-to and prepare to be boarded.”
“No reply,” Talyn said, shaking her head. “We can outrun her.”
“Can I ping her with my targeting sensors, just for shits and giggles?”
“That’s probably not a very good idea. We might show that we’re stronger than we look.” She glanced at her screen. “Besides, we’ll be jumping out sooner than you might think.”
“Aren’t we still twenty or thirty minutes away from the hyperlimit, even in this little tub?”
“Only if we follow Navy rules. You can jump a lot closer to a gravity well than is generally assumed but it’ll take years of usable service off a ship’s lifespan if you do it too often. We don’t have to follow those rules. The sloop behind us does, and only a life or death situation would warrant breaking them.”
“They’re becoming insistent,” he said, “but I get the feeling they’re not really trying hard to catch us. Their rate of acceleration is pretty anemic.”
“Ah.” Her face lit up with understanding. “A little misdirection then: anyone watching will assume we’re not exactly honest if the Navy takes too great an interest.”
“I hope that you’re right.” His jaw clenched. “They just fired two rounds, and they’ll graze us enough to feel real.”
Bright balls of plasma streaked by on the starboard side and a voice on the radio warned them that the next shots would be aimed at their engines.
“A few more seconds,” Talyn said, “though we’re still a tad closer than I like.”
“In that case, keep your hand right on the controls, ready to punch it in. The moment I see their gun barrels begin to glow again, we need to be out of here.”
“You sound a little stressed, Zack.”
“I have a healthy dose of paranoia to work with, and I don’t like being shot at, sham or no sham. The last time I was on the receiving end of a few salvos, my life went to hell.”
“Understood,” she replied, remembering the chain of events that had brought Decker back into the Corps as an intelligence operative. “But the Navy won’t sell you into slavery, you know.”
“I’m already in a state of servitude, thanks to you, what with my involuntary recall to active duty.”
“And here I thought you were happy. Goes to show you how ungrateful some folks are, eh, chief warrant officer?”
“Was I complaining, commander, sir? No. I was merely stating a fact. And they just fired again.”
Talyn’s hand came down, and the universe went sideways, forcing Decker’s stomach in the opposite direction.
“Tell me I didn’t just break something,” she said once the jump nausea had passed.
“Nope,” he said a few moments later. “Everything seems to be working the way it should. How long are we on this leg?”
“I figured we’d do about ten hours, to see how she handles. I don’t want to find out that they forgot to tighten a widget when we’re five light-years from the nearest left-handed spanner.”
“Lunch?” He asked, putting the systems console on automatic before rising to stretch his massive frame. “And then a game of strip poker?”
“Lunch and no strip poker. We need to spend some time crawling through the ship so we can memorize where everything is. Studying schematics and fooling around in the simulation tank for two days just doesn’t cut it. We can play grab-ass when that’s done.”
He gave her a mock salute.
“Aye, aye, Captain Bligh.”
“You can have a drink with lunch. One bottle only, though.”
“Do you really think they were kind enough to stock the booze locker with good stuff?” Decker rubbed his hands in anticipation.
“You do know that you’ve developed quite a reputation in the intelligence branch, right?”
“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.” He put on a mock-wounded face at her acerbic tone.
“Perhaps not for you but for me, seeing as how I’m your partner and the one who brought you in.”
She led the way aft to the small saloon, which now looked nothing like the luxurious salon it had been when Chimera still sailed under the name Syrah.
“See, that’s the problem when you’re working in black ops. We can’t boast about the stuff we do to the same extent as the rest of the branch, so they figure all we do is screw and drink our way through a mission.”
He opened one of the cabinets and grinned broadly.
“This is one of those times where I’m glad my reputation precedes me.”
Decker held up a purplish bottle with a label inscribed in alien runes.
“T’Klach vintage at that, top shelf Shrehari ale. They must have found a few cases on one of the prize ships brought in to be reconfigured. No one in their right mind would pay the freight to bring this nectar all the way to the ass-end of the Commonwealth.”
“Enjoy the good stuff while it lasts. The whiskey is so-so and the gin not much better than rotgut.”
She closed the bar cabinet and winced.
“Wine?”
“Dordogne mass-produced plonk.” She shook her head in amazement while she watched Decker enjoy his first sip of the potent brew. “Either you have fans among the station’s engineering crew, or you’re the luckiest bastard alive. You get good stuff while I have to make do with booze I wouldn’t buy for myself.”
“I’ll quickly point out that it’s free, so that should add a few points to the quality score,” he replied, mischief dancing in his deep blue eyes.
“Food seems to be prepared trays,” she said, ignoring his comment, “civilian versions of the standard navy rations; not gourmet, but tolerable.”
“Provided we don’t have to eat rat-bars, I’m happy.”
“We seem to have a supply of those as well if ever you get nostalgic for your pathfinder days.”
She shoved two slim packs into the autochef and touched a screen.
“What’s on the menu?”
“I don’t know. I just pulled two trays out from the lunch stack at random.”
“So it might be mystery meat on a shingle with hot sauce.”
“Or it could be duck à l’orange.”
The autochef chimed softly and spat out the trays.
They sat down and peeled back the lids covering their now hot meals.
“Chicken product with green stuff on noodles,” Decker said, examining his food with a jaundiced eye, “or more likely, some product not containing meat made to look like chicken.”
“Why should you care what it is if it feels and tastes like chicken?” She took a tentative bite of her fish and smiled. “I don’t care if this is cleverly disguised tofu. It tastes pretty good.”
Zack shoved a morsel into his mouth and chewed slowly, his facial expression on the wrong side of skeptical.
“Okay,” he finally said, after swallowing, “it’s not nearly as bad as I feared, but I’ll tell you what. If we get the chance to buy some fresh food, I’ll cook.”
She considered him for a moment and then chuckled. “I do believe that’s something I’d like to witness.”
**
“Okay,” Decker said, wiping his hands on a rag, “those spanner monkeys knew what they were doing. This ship is in perfect condition under a believable veneer of hard use and abuse. I’m impressed with how they managed to fit full-sized anti-ship missile launchers in there. We might not have much of a magazine, but it’ll be enough for any asshole wanting to do us grief. And the guns - much better than what she originally carried.”
“We should still be wary of who we let aboard.” Talyn stripped off the coveralls she’d found hanging in the engineering compartment. “The wrong person with the right knowledge of starships might see there’s more than advertised.”
“True, especially if it’s someone who knew her when she was called Syrah. You got the vibes, and we only spent a few days in her a year ago so you can imagine a long-term crew member.”
“Another five hours until we emerge,” she said looking the nearest screen. “Supper?”
He was about to reply when his stomach rumbled loudly.
“Traitor,” he muttered at the offending organ.
“Supper it is.” She laughed, knowing exactly what Zack would have proposed they do instead of eating right away.
**
“So,” Decker asked, slumped back in his seat now that his appetite was sated, “what do you think Ulrich is going to do with the guys we pulled off Marengo? I mean the real rebels, not our guy. He won’t be in any shape to go back out for a while yet.”
“No idea, but if I had to bet, I’d say he’ll keep them out of circulation until we find something. Letting them go back to Garonne now would just make our job harder. Our boss likes to be in control of as many variables as possible.” She picked up the empty trays and tossed them in the recycler. “Coffee?”
“Sure, though I should probably stay off the hooch until we’ve gone through the emergence cycle.”
She snorted.
“The way you metabolize alcohol? I’m touched at your considerate attempt to deprive yourself in the name of safety, but if you want a dram with the coffee, be my guest. We’ve got a little over three hours left. That’s plenty of time.”
“In that case, sure, don’t mind if I do.” He was about to get up, but she waved him down. “Thanks. You’re a peach, and with that haircut, you’ve got the fuzz to prove it.”
“I know that Ulrich is convinced the Coalition’s somehow behind the doings on Garonne,” she said after sitting down again, “even though our man and his traveling companions were taken by the Confederacy of the Howling Stars. It’s a shame he couldn’t find any evidence.”
“What interest would the Coalition have in fomenting unrest on a colony owned by Celeste? I thought its government was thoroughly infested by assholes wanting a return to the glory days from before the last Migration War.”
“Or maybe assholes who want to bring about an Empire that’ll make the Shrehari look like amateurs, but I take your meaning.” Talyn took a sip of the bitter brew and scrunched up her face. “I’m going to guess this isn’t one of the top shelf brands.”
“Ulrich is the last of the big paranoids,” she continued, “I think you got that from the few times you met him; that’s why he lasted so long in this business and got black ops to himself, but his instincts are uncanny. If someone could distil them and create a vaccine, we’d all get a dose.”
“True. The good captain is one of the few officers who actually scares me, and that’s saying a lot, but it baffles the brain to think about buddies of the Amali clan supporting rebel movements against colonial governments owned by their political allies.”
“And yet, the boss thinks that’s the case, which is why we’re on this ex-Amali yacht.” She pushed her cup away in disgust. “He was one of my instructors when I got recruited into the intelligence branch, by the way; he was an uncanny bastard then and still is one now.”
“You know,” Decker said, washing the lousy coffee taste from his mouth with a shot of cheap whiskey, “I think it’s not the grounds but the machine. Let me take a look. They might have forgotten to clean it properly before they installed it.”
“You mean we’ve been drinking lubricants and the like?”
“Yep.” He downed his glass. “You should take a shot; it cleans the palate and your ability to metabolize booze isn’t bad either, so you’ll be completely sober when we drop out of hyperspace.”
He shook his head.
“The damn Coalition again. Well, maybe it’ll give me a chance to take down the rest of the Amalis and then get a head start on the second and third cousins.”
“Watching Harmon Amali get eaten by sand sharks on Nabhka wasn’t enough for you?”
Decker shrugged.
“I’m two for two with both him and his cousin Walker. Why stop now?”
“You know Ulrich won’t sanction a hit without a good reason,” she warned.
“It doesn’t mean I can’t kill any in the heat of the action. A little double tap to the head and no regen tank’s going to save them.”
“Plenty more of their kind out there, Zack. You can’t get them all.”
“So long as I make a dent in their numbers, I’ll die happy.”
“The only way you’ll die happy is in the middle of a hot session with a young lady.”
“Yep.” He smiled contentedly at the thought. “Though I’ll take a hot session with an older woman too. I have very flexible standards.”
“Don’t I know it? Well, come on, Marine Boy. We do have three hours to kill.”