I sat in the hangar bay near the box-shaped hauler that was to be our bait ship. The others hadn’t arrived yet, but they would soon, and I had nowhere else to be. Tempted as I was to go up a few levels and get some drinks, I needed my head clear, even in the early stages of our plan. There was just too much that could go wrong, and I wasn’t confident I could rely on the others to think for me.
I felt naked in the civilian clothing I had changed into to better match my role as a member of the freighter’s crew. It wasn’t often that I took off the armor in a public setting. To do so meant I was less protected in a fight, of course, but it was more than that. Being a hunter sparked a kind of fear in people, an unease, and I was more comfortable keeping that shroud about me. Young as I was then, I hadn’t learned yet that people’s awe is not the same as their respect.
I had stored my armor in the locker aboard my ship, a process that had rattled me more than I expected. The station power was still hooked into it, but somehow it felt entirely lifeless, like I was walking through the husk of some great dead beast. Worse yet, the carcass of the only companion I really had. You can tell who has never really been out there, you know, who has never really moved from planet to planet like we had to, because they scoff at the notion of being connected with your ship. It’s not the OS either, not the voice they put on it. It’s more like your fates become intertwined, like she’s along for the journey. No, like the journey is as much for her as it for you.
I could see her from where I was sitting then, across the hangar bay, suspended motionless from the lifts. I had named her Shrike, because she had that hidden fierceness like those little birds that used to show up around my house when I was a kid. Small and fast, but smart enough to impale its prey on thorns to make up for its lack of strong talons. Her cleverly disguised weaponry had outwitted more than one cocky mark. You fly differently when you can’t tell the enemy has a torpedo bay.
They had removed her fore plating now though, to examine the components underneath. Like me, stripped of her armor, at the end of a long journey, future uncertain. They had finally confirmed to me that it was the drive core, totally fried. Couldn’t even salvage the parts, because when the containment fails, all the structural components melt. It was a total replacement or nothing.
I should have been focused on the mission, but all I could think was that if something happened while I was gone, if they scrapped her, that I’d have to kill every living soul in that hangar bay. They didn’t have the right. You think of the most foolish things when you’re on the edge of something big, it messes up your perspective. So all I could do was sit there, head down, and get more frustrated.
It didn’t help that I was instead going to board the ugliest brown cargo ship I had ever laid eyes on. The damn thing didn’t even have a name, just a designation number. It seems small now, but it infuriated me then. I thought someday I might be the stuff of legends, Cor Szo and his Shrike, the most feared pair in the whole frontier. But Cor Szo and the 166-24? Nobody would tell that story.
The others did arrive eventually, though. No one walked away from the job, which was always a surprise. I’ve seen crews dissolve on the eve of a big contract for no other reason than one is insulted by the color of another’s gear. There have always been plenty of stupid mercenaries, after all.
We didn’t talk much as they gradually filtered in. They were still focused on their own responsibilities. Rada was first, and she disappeared inside the ship, no doubt to make sure she knew it inside and out. I didn’t usually work with pilots, even in the rare circumstances that I worked with a team at all. I wasn’t an ace or anything, but I was competent enough in the cockpit and had my own ship, so there was no need. But the ones I had known were always neurotic about the details. That we would immediately abandon this one when the pirates arrived perhaps should have made it irrelevant, but I didn’t expect she’d see it that way.
Then there was Nesti, whose appearance in a dark blue maintenance uniform was startling. His body armor had seemed like it was melded to him, honestly, like a second skin, and I had to imagine he was uncomfortable without it. He didn’t seem bothered though, and maybe if I was built like a titan, I wouldn’t be worried either. There wasn’t much preparation for him to do, all things considered, so he just took up a spot on a nearby wall and read something on a datapad.
Vos’go was the last to arrive, which was unsurprising given his general demeanor. But Sarvallans were also not known for their punctuality, a cultural trait I’m told there’s a good reason for, although no one has ever been able to tell me what it is. Like the others, he seemed a bit out of place without his normal equipment, or a tool in his hand, but he insisted he had everything we needed and would explain on the way.
So we joined Rada in the freighter, weaving our way through the cramped cargo bay towards the small cabin area behind the cockpit. The whole room had that intense smell of ozone that I’ve come to hate over years of exposure, leaking out constantly from the stacked metal crates of spent fuel cells. Luckily they were inert in their spent forms, because there was no guarantee that our targets would board peacefully, and there were plenty of more volatile shipments we could have been carrying.
We scrambled our way up the thin ladder that provided the only access to the cabin and got our first view of what the next few days’ arrangements would be like. As expected, there really wasn’t sufficient room for the four of us, but some extra cots had been added along the back wall. The designer clearly only expected one person on board at a time; there wasn’t even a separator between the cabin and the cockpit.
There was a single, circular table in the room, molded to the floor itself so smoothly that it seemed more like a protrusion than a piece of furniture. We took seats around it in turn, except for Nesti, who found another wall to lean on. Rada was slow to leave the cockpit when we first entered, but finally came over when Vos’go started insisting that he needed to explain the tech.
From his pockets, he spilled out an array of objects of indiscriminate purpose. This was by design, of course, since anything that looked like real tech would likely be destroyed when they searched us, though it seemed like worthless junk by even the most generous appraisal. But the Sarvallan’s excitement was clear enough, so we waited for his explanation.
“Our communicators,” he started, passing us each a small clear piece of plastic. “Place it on the inside of your ear and press hard to seal it in place. Works on short-range waves that conduct well through walls, but will be worthless between ships. Once in, should allow us to stay in contact. And not visible to most detectors.”
Nesti rolled his around in his hand, observing its various faces, none of which possessed any useful details. “How do we turn it on and off?”
Vos’go shook his head repeatedly, as if surprised by the question. “Are always on.”
“So what happens if we’re all talking at once?”
“Don’t do that,” he added, tapping his temple. “Bad headache.”
I was amused by the exchange, although I could foresee problems with communication if we were all forced to relay info simultaneously. But that was how things went; if you wanted it to be inconspicuous, sacrifices had to be made.
Vos’go pulled out another handful from a different pocket, this time a series of small maroon balls of putty. He handed one to each of us carefully, which made us pick them up more cautiously.
“Pyrotechnic material, pressure activated. Will melt most traditional metals and plastics. Should be enough to break out of a cell.”
“Where on the door should we apply it?” Rada asked.
“Depends on the cell,” Nesti cut in. Vos’go nodded repeatedly. “Some it’s the lock, others the door mechanism. We won’t know ’till we get there.”
“How much pressure are we talking about?” I added.
“Stick on something, then stomp with your boot. Should get it started.”
“That’s not really that much pressure, what if it goes off by accident?”
Vos’go seemed a little worried that I didn’t already know the answer. “Will burn a hole in your side and probably kill you. Keep somewhere you won’t get hit. If set off accidentally, search the rest of us again. All be trapped.”
“What about the other systems? The hangar will probably be closed, so we’ll have to open the doors so I can fly us out of there.”
Vos’go rapidly shook his head at her. “Can’t do it remotely, all of my tools are detectable. Have to get in front of a console. Easy then.”
“Will you also be able to find the target’s location from it?” Nesti chimed in.
Vos’go seemed momentarily serious. This was an element of the plan he wasn’t comfortable with. “No, won’t have names. Can only get location of other holding cells.”
Luckily, I had a partial solution to this problem. I took out a picture that the old man had given me of our target, grabbed some adhesive from a nearby drawer, and pasted it to one of the walls.
“This is Kai. We’ve got several days travel, so spend your time memorizing his face. Hopefully at least one of us gets thrown in the same holding area and we can skip straight to extraction. Otherwise…” It might have seemed like a dramatic pause to the others, but I spent the moment genuinely considering what other options might exist to narrow our search. Coming up with none, I continued. “We’ll have to search them all.”
The others were quiet. I don’t know if they thought it was a good plan or not, or if it was only then beginning to really settle in just what we were doing. After all, in a real sense, our entire plan was to improvise at every crucial juncture. The range of possible outcomes was vast, but an unsettling chunk ended with us dead. Or worse, on the way to the Cluster ourselves. Given those possibilities, maybe it was for the best that no one felt like discussing it anymore.
Rada finally stood, stretching slightly and headed back to the cockpit to make her final checks. I just stared at the picture, hoping he was worth all the trouble.
In the first day, few words of note passed between any of us. I was fine with it, not caring much for company and knowing that friction could result from too much idle banter, a thing we could not afford at this stage. Everyone kept to their own spot, in so much as we could, given the space. Rada only left the cockpit for brief periods of sleep, during which she insisted we not interfere. Vos’go disappeared into the cargo bay for a while, I assume because none of us were likely to follow him. Ozone is more common on their home world, so it probably didn’t bother him.
Nesti got bored of standing eventually and started playing cards with Vos’go when he returned from the lower deck. I couldn’t tell what game. It appeared to be one of the high-variance games played in low-end casinos, the kind you find in every broken down waystation on the edge of civilization. I had never learned the rules to any of them; those game dens were built to separate foolish lowlives from their meager earnings, and I was a lowlife that preferred to keep his money. It seemed like a fine enough way to pass the time here, though. It frustrated the Sarvallan, that much was obvious. He seemed to like the idea of the game, but was very unhappy at how often he got unlucky, which elicited periodic deep, genuine laughs from the big man. Eventually he tired of it and returned to his spot in the cargo bay.
I had pulled a seat over to a corner, away from the tiny bathroom, to have my back in as stable of a corner as I could find. That was where I spent most of the trip; there was a cot set up for me, but I dozed off in the chair a few times anyway. I was used to it, since there had been many long jumps where I had fallen asleep in the cockpit of the Shrike, only to be jarred awake by the drop back in.
We were dropping back in quite a bit, the standard hops along the mostly unused route towards Nazvar. With so few of the systems having been charted, it was important to follow the existing route as closely as possible, or risk hitting heavy mass objects on our way. Of course, this meant being at low speeds outside of the jumps, in totally unsettled systems with no defenses. There were plenty of opportunities for attacks, and that was what we were planning on. If we managed to get to Nazvar, we’d have to just turn around and try again.
I found an extra datapad shortly after we embarked, and I took the opportunity to research as much as I could about the groups in the area that could have been responsible. This was more difficult than it sounds, because there wasn’t much coverage of anything that happened out here, much less the inner workings of pirates. But I needed a better understanding of the layout of the frontier regardless; when you take a contract, you need to know what you’re getting into. What seemed like a simple bounty could kick off a war under the right circumstances. Knowing how to read the political environment is a survival skill of its own.
I didn’t manage to discover much at that time, and none of it seemed out of the ordinary. There were palajak cartels operating on the margins of the law, as usual, and bands of petty pirates looting supply vessels and occasionally holding a mining shipment for ransom. But there didn’t seem to be a story behind it, and that’s the thing you’re really looking for. The pattern to the whole thing, the real picture that only becomes apparent when you put all of the smaller images in the right place. I just couldn’t see it, what the undercurrent of the frontier was, what people were really fighting over beyond simple survival. And it’s never that straightforward.
I might have figured it out, too. But that’s when the first shots landed.