Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench (23 page)

The image from the screen capture of the man who’d slammed into her on the space station was still up on her back screen and had captured Mac’s attention. Deven hadn’t sent the rest of the data disk up, but he had forwarded her that image in case she knew him. She hadn’t, but had left it up in case it jogged something.

Mac still hadn’t said anything, but hit Jakiin’s arm to get his attention. Both sat there staring for a few moments.

“How did you get his picture?” Mac said and kept his eyes on the image.

“If you have him on camera, don’t you have the woman as well?” Jakiin blurted at the same time.

“You two know him?” Vas watched them both carefully.

“Aye, Captain. The image is grainy, but I remember him. He was with the lady who hired us. The woman with the dust. I’d recognize that uniform, even if I didn’t know the face.” Mac spoke with a certainty he had been lacking moments before.

Vas clicked the image to make it a bit clearer. “What else did you notice about the uniform?” She didn’t want to lead them into recalling something that really hadn’t been there.

“That thing on his arm.” Jakiin finally found his voice as he waved at the still image. “You can’t see it very well there. But it was this weird long diamond shape.”

Mac nodded slowly. “Yeah, I remember that. I know most ship patches, never seen that one before. And the lady had the same symbol on her necklace. Real expensive too, something definitely upper tier.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Vas swore. The man who slammed into her was tied into the gang who’d gotten those drugs on her ship. Which meant it wasn’t a gang at all but yet another tie to the Rillianians and possibly the Graylian monks. She still wasn’t sure what was going on, but the knots were all starting to point one direction.

So much for sloppy drug smugglers. When they’d seen the Rillianian stamp on the inside of the box, she’d pretty much figured that theory was dead. However, she’d still held a sliver of hope for it, one that just died.

She needed to get the rest of the vid from Deven once he was clean and conscious. Maybe there would be something else to jog her two pilots’ memories.

“I don’t suppose you have any other information?” She spun around and fixed them both with her best glare. Jakiin flushed his gills after a few moments and Mac just looked like he was going to be ill.

“No, but we could continue to see if we can find anything about that company she said she worked for?” Mac said with a pathetic attempt at a smile.

Jakiin nodded.

It wasn’t lost on Vas that neither of them had asked again about how she had that image.

“Yes, you’d better.” She glanced from one to the other. Their mistake had been just that, a mistake. Potentially catastrophic in scope, but not one they came to completely on their own. They were set up. Someone was looking for them because they were on the
Warrior Wench
.

“I want you both to find this woman, somehow, somewhere, find her. And write down everything you remember of your encounter, starting with the instant your feet hit the gang plank.” She raised a hand as both started to rise.

“Separately. I need you two to work apart. No, it’s not a punishment,” she added as both pairs of eyes went wide. Although separating them more often might cut down on problems. “I need to see what each one of you remembers. If you’re together one might influence the other’s memory. It’s vital we know everything.”

“Aye,” both said in unison, but neither rose to their feet this time.

“Dismissed.” Vas held back her grin; she might have actually gotten through to them.

With an almost military nod to her, both turned and left.

Vas turned back to the still image. “So what secrets are you hiding, my friend?” When no more tidbits of information came forth, she got up for some mint tea. The herb was soothing and cleared her head. She also swore it could heal. One of the few traditions from her home planet, mint tea was used for everything from curing sick children to ending droughts. She’d never had the nerve to ask Terel if it really worked. She didn’t think she’d be happy if the answer was no.

Sipping her tea, she tried to sketch out the series of events. Until she knew different, she had to stick with her missing time as the start point. Try as she might she couldn’t get past the blocks in her head to find out what had really happened. She really needed to let Deven try, but she couldn’t. It was completely illogical, especially considering the stakes, but she couldn’t let him prowl in her head. Not again.

Whoever took her felt she wasn’t going to come back, so that was party one. She drew a line on a huge pad and labeled it. Party two was whoever had tried to poison her, she marked off that cluster. Party three was whoever put the trackers in her blood. The groups could have overlapped; there didn’t have to be three. Something big was happening. Something that she felt she could just see the edge of. Her mind was putting pieces together, when her door buzzed and almost sent her through the roof.

“Damn it! Come in!” she yelled as she sorted out her papers.

Flarik entered and silently slid into one of the chairs. She watched as Vas gathered her scattered things. “Is everything under control, Captain?”

“Not yet, but it will be.” She toyed with how much to involve Flarik. The Wavian was a member of her crew, granted, but she was also a Wavian lawyer. Her reaction to the Rillianian threat had been disconcerting and eye opening. How much of a help she would be to Vas and the crew if she found a way to go after the Rillianians herself was a good question.

“We need to retrieve the
Victorious Dead
pieces.” Flarik said.

Vas studied Flarik over the rim of her mug, waiting for the insightful portion of her comment to arrive.

When nothing more followed, Vas sat her mug down.

“Yes, I was aware of that actually. However a few things have popped up to distract us from our goal.” Had they not let Flarik sleep enough? Usually the lawyer was the brightest of the bunch.

“Now. I believe we must start immediately. Once we have captured the first piece, we can take our time collecting the rest.” Flarik rose to her feet and paced within the small room. “The monks are working with the Rillianians. They are using our ship in a training ritual.”

Vas watched for a few moments. She’d never seen Flarik distressed enough to pace. Then Flarik’s words sunk in.

“Training ritual? As in they are going to blow up my ship?” She’d heard of the Graylian monks’ rituals. They were obsessive and often very bloody.

“I believe so. Maybe not right now, but eventually. However, if we can capture the first piece, it will slow them down extensively. They cannot complete whatever ritual they are trying to do without the first piece.” Her grin was one her brutal ancestors would have admired. “And if we refrain from going after the other pieces for a while, it will drive them mad. Utter chaos.”

“I like the sound of that.” Vas knew that sometimes a full frontal assault wouldn’t work in a battle. The one she apparently was fighting against the monks and the Rillianians was such a one. “While I don’t understand their obsession with ritual and order, I understand being able to use it against them. If this will throw them off a bit, we might be able to figure out what it is they are training for. And stop them. Do you know how far the first piece is?”

Flarik nodded. “I have cracked their puzzle, at least the first part. It’s not more than a short hypergate hop from here. Down in the Solaris system. We can be there in a day.”

Vas knew they needed to keep moving and get another job. Both of which were being compromised by having to stay hidden from the Commonwealth until they figured out what was going on.

However, not having retrieved any of her ship—Gosta still hadn’t been able to break through to the core yet—was chapping her hide. That it would throw her enemies into chaos was just a bonus.

“Agreed. Tell Bathie to lay in the course, and let’s go get part of our ship back.”

After a few hours of flight, Vas wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. But it wasn’t the ugly lump of plaststeel hanging in space before her.

“What did they do to my ship?” She sank deeper into her command chair as they closed in on the mass. If Gosta’s readings rang true, this blob was part of her ship. Of course she really hadn’t counted on them destroying the pieces, and then hanging them out in space.

“That’s not the piece.” Deven peered up from the console he’d commandeered once they came out of the hypergate. “The piece of our ship is inside that.”

Terel had finally given him a medical release after some more badgering from Vas. There was no evidence of what happened on the planet on his handsome face, but he didn’t look like he wanted to talk about it either. Which was fine with her.

The fact that part of her ship was inside the mess before her made Vas a little happier, but she was still confused. And pissed.

“Why? Did they really steal my ship, chop it up, coat it in refuse, just to leave it out in space in some twisted puzzle?”

“Yes.” Hrrru nodded as if she’d asked a genuine question.

The earnestness on his face kept her sarcasm in check. “Thank you, Hrrru. I suppose what I meant to say was, why me? Why my damn ship? But that’s not going to be answered today.” She spun toward the rest of her crew.

“Ladies and gentlemen, and I use those terms loosely, how do we get our ship piece out of that?” Part of her had to admit the monks had been amazingly creative in their use of space junk. The thing before her looked like a trash ball. Anyone who accidentally came across it wouldn’t even scan it for salvage.

Gosta squinted at the main screen as his fingers flew across his console keypad. “I think we’ll have to take the entire thing with us.” His frown and squint both deepened as he typed commands even faster.

“There is most likely a clean way to get the pieces out, but with what we have to work with out here, I can’t see how.” He stopped typing. “We need to send it to Home and let them try to pry it out on land.”

Vas stared at the piece of melted and warped refuse before them for a few minutes then finally sighed. She did have plenty of people stuck at Home without anything to do. This would keep them busy until she found a job for them.

“Xsit, call Home and have a team come get this. Tell them to bring heavy haulers and a few of the smaller fighters. We’ll stay here until it’s loaded, but I don’t want them to be unprotected in case someone comes after them.” She wasn’t sure how closely these monks were watching their training exercise. However, if they were behind the ore hauler, she had to figure they were watching something.

The mini-armada from Home appeared with remarkable swiftness. Obviously boredom was getting to her fighters.

She also had the ship’s complement of Flits out patrolling, and kept all of the weapons ports open. But no one tried to stop them.

The captain from the Home armada wanted to know if they should go after the rest of the pieces in the puzzle, but Vas told him no. While her instinct would be to get all of the pieces as soon as possible, she was willing to bow to Flarik’s expertise in this. If she felt just taking one and leaving the others for now would cause more mayhem, so be it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The next day started with no answers to any of her growing pile of questions, but at least they had a job. Deven barged into her quarters at some hideous hour to tell her they’d received a rescue job. Family cluster group, not more than a few hours away. Vas thanked him, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

She should have realized something was up when he never called her as they got closer.

***

“Damn it, Deven, you said this was a job. Not a mercy mission.” Vas swore a few hours later as she stared out over the ten raggedy-looking population ships below her as they came out of the hypergate. She should have checked his data, the bastard.

“This is a job.” He folded his arms and looked down at her. Quite a feat when she was only a few inches shorter than him and she currently had her flight boots on. “I’m paying us.”

“You don’t have enough to pay for what I think you’re asking.” She ran her hands over her face. “We need real work, not guard duty. You can’t come up with—”

“Captain, we just received a transaction. Non-traceable, but it’s for eighty million credits.” Xsit’s voice went into the upper register with the amount. That was more than they pulled in during an entire year. Where the hell had he come up with that money? No place he’d tell her, of that she was certain.

She stared at him in silence for a good three minutes, and then finally shrugged. “Since you’re hiring us, what’s the job?” She wasn’t going to fight about this here, but she was going to find out what the hell was going on before they did anything with those ships.

“They are our job. And the folks still on the planet. There’s a war going on, but many of the people are refugees from outlying worlds who came here to hide.” He pulled up a map of the largest continent. “The fighting should be here.” He pointed to an area not far outside a densely populated area. “But it’s here.” He tapped another area further down near the equator.

Vas studied the screen. There was no way a professional mercenary company could have mistaken the two areas. Which meant someone was after the refugees.

“Where did you say they were from? Lantaria?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think that many people made it off that rock, we may have the only survivors back on Home. These are from the Sicila system, two of the larger moons. The moons were destroyed two months ago.”

“What?” How in the hell had she not heard about something that big? Part of being good at her job was knowing what was going on in the Commonwealth systems and beyond. Yet moons were being blasted apart with no word in the space lanes?

“Someone or something is destroying smaller outlying worlds, and it’s been going on since before Lantaria.” His eyes were as flat as his voice, but Vas knew that masked fury. She couldn’t blame him. Two months? Yet the Commonwealth had done nothing? She’d never been a huge fan of the Commonwealth, but she respected the way it protected its people. Until now.

As much as she’d like to walk away from this, she knew they couldn’t. She couldn’t. Something was changing in her more than just going a little soft and having feelings for Deven. Besides, Deven’s money had already been transferred.

“Shit.” Vas said, and then opened a ship-wide comm. “I need a landing crew to get to the shuttle in the next ten minutes.” She turned back to Deven. “We get in, get the ones still on the planet, then lead the whole bunch out of here.” She jabbed him in the chest. “But not Home. There are a few thousand people out there in those ships, and I’m not flooding my only refuge. We can find that moon you said Marli has been hiding on.”

“She’s not going to like it.”

“I don’t really care. That’s as good as it gets right now.” She turned to finish her orders for the ground crew. Low-tech planets were interesting in that they called for weapons that required more skill than pulling a trigger. However, when her goal was to get in and out as fast as possible, they were a pain in the ass. And she’d have to play by their rules. She couldn’t take the risk that it was the entire Commonwealth selling these people out. She didn’t need to lose her merc license.

“Make sure those population ships can hold the people from the planet. We’re not taking them in our ships.”

“Already done.” Deven’s smile told her he knew she’d give in on this. And he most likely knew it wasn’t because of the huge sum of money he’d thrown at her. Well, mostly it wasn’t.

“You’re making me a fool.” She got in his face and spoke low enough that none of the rest of the crew could hear.

“No one thinks you’re a fool.” The look in his eyes was gentle but that just made her want to smack him more. “Maybe this is who you’re meant to be.”

Vas held his gaze for a few seconds then stalked off. “Go to hell.” She didn’t really mean it, and she swore she felt his eyes bearing into the back of her skull. She’d bet all those credits that he knew she didn’t mean it either.

It took surprisingly little time to get a full landing crew down to the planet. Well, as full of a crew as Vas could gather from her command staff. Since Deven had originally said this was a cleanup mission, she’d only counted on twenty fighters. Given the new situation, she’d been able to add another fifteen, but more than that and the
Warrior Wench
would be dangerously undermanned.

What had her jumpy was that while there were definitely a fair amount of fighters in the refugee zone, there were no warships in orbit. There should have been at least one cruiser out there lending support, but Gosta continued to report nothing beyond the mammoth population ships full of refugees.

The area of the fighting was rough, the terrain far too mountainous for a clean pickup. Vas scowled at the mountains as she flew the shuttle in. Close enough to be a major problem if enemy troops were hiding in them, far enough to be a pain in the ass to go check out.

The city before them had clearly been abandoned long before any fighting took place. Buildings showed new scars from primitive mortar rounds next to already crumbling buildings. Which made sense. Easier to take over an area if it was already discarded. The refugees had probably been welcome to the place.

“Since you’re our client, what do we know about them?” Vas asked as she watched her crew unload. “Did the locals accept them?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but yes, from the reports I gathered, the local population welcomed them. This part of Asterlia is extremely underpopulated and the refugees were willing to pay a fair amount.”

Vas sighed and buckled on her sword. “So it’s not the locals, and we have about eighty people still to get off planet.” She poked him with her fist. “Paying fees or not, you owe me for this. We’re not a rescue barge, you know.”

Deven nodded, but Vas could tell he wasn’t sufficiently cowed. He never was.

The rest of her crew was armed and ready, so they jogged into the town. The dangerously silent town. In Vas’s world, silent was rarely ever good.

The city wall had once been made of a light yellow brick, probably not more than five or six feet high, which indicated a low level of aggression between neighbors. Most of it was little more than golden dust now, blown apart by something far heavier than a low-tech planet could produce.

Not good. That reinforced that whoever did this was not part of the merc companies fighting to the north and didn’t care who knew it. The penalty for bringing high-tech weapons to a designated enforced low-tech world was brutal. The fact that whoever was behind this did it without a care chilled Vas almost as much as the continuing silence did.

“Be careful, people,” she said as her team prepped to spread out. “I want a full recon in groups of four or more. If you lose sight of one of your team, come back to base. There is something very wrong here.”

Vas nodded to her three and they slowly moved out. The stillness of the place crawled along her spine. A crunching of rubble followed by the high-pitched whine of a pair of arrows was the only warning. With a warning yell to her people, Vas flattened herself to the ground. The arrows thunked into the broken building behind them. Her two archers leapt to their feet, ready to fire back. For moments no one moved, the wind lifting the rubble was the only sound.

“Show yourselves,” Vas yelled as she dusted off her knees. “We’ve come to take the refugees off planet.”

“Captain Tor Dain? Isss that you?”

The extended “s” sound relaxed Vas’s shoulders. She knew that Silante voice.

“Carrix? You old bastard, what are you doing ambushing proper mercs?” With a nod to her archers, she sheathed her sword. Carrix was a mercenary captain of a small company of Silantians. While single species companies weren’t common, some worked extremely well.

Carrix had one that did.

A rumble of ruins slid down about twenty feet from where they were standing. Moments later five short, dust-covered forms came out. Vas’s frown grew even deeper. Two were limping badly. It took a hell of a lot to make a Silantian limp. And they usually stayed in much larger groups. Keeping an eye on Carrix and his four-member team, Vas scanned the ruined buildings lumbering around them.

“Please tell me you brought more people than what I see.” Carrix stopped in front of her, letting the man he was helping slide to the ground. Silantians were a small reptilian-based race, not more than five feet in height. However, what they lacked in height, they made up for in bulk, and their short powerful legs served them well.

Vas glanced around again, but still saw nothing. “We have another thirty spreading out. What the hell happened? Where are your people?”

The small captain before her was clearly exhausted, another thing she didn’t think could happen to Silantians. His golden slitted eyes held hers. “It’s a trap.”

Vas had her sword out before he drew another breath, but he grabbed her arm and slid her weapon back. “Easy, old friend, the trap was already sprung. Although it may have been you they were after. They didn’t seem happy to see forty Silantians swarming the town.”

“Should we be standing out here?” Vas held off from responding to his grab of her sword hand. She and Carrix went back to her first merc job. That, and Silantians had a different concept of personal space than other races.

Carrix’s residual gills on either side of his neck flittered in embarrassment. “No, we shouldn’t.” He shook his head. “Forgive me. We’ve been trapped down here for a month, and my mind is not functioning.” He turned and led all of them into an enclave of crumbled buildings.

Vas motioned for two of her people to stand guard but stay behind shelter. Normally she would trust Carrix to have some sort of guards, but she had a sinking feeling the four with him were all he had left.

The main room he led them into was collapsed, but the next room was clear and had clearly been home for the five Silantians. Vas held her tongue until Carrix got the two injured fighters settled. “Damn it, Carrix, what the hell is going on?”

He sighed and patted a rough stool next to him. “In a viper’s egg, I have destroyed my company. We answered a call for help thirty days ago. There is a sanctioned action in the far north.” At Vas’s nod that she knew that, he continued, “We received a plea. None of the companies fighting to the north could or would come down, and the plea was from a group of Silantians on board some slow-moving population ships. The ships are still in space, yes?”

Vas nodded. They’d checked them out. Were they not legitimate?

Her concern had been clear on her face, and Carrix patted her hand. “Do not worry; they are not the ones to fear. They called out legitimately asking for help for the people still trapped here. They had no way of knowing they’d already been slaughtered.”

“When?”

“Before we got down here. That much is known. We were attacked by unknown forces the moment we set down. We pushed them back into the mountains, thinking we were going to save the people trapped here. They doubled back and laid a trap.” His eyes closed. A look of exhausted sorrow filled his scaled face. When he opened his eyes, the gold had faded to a light green. “My company was butchered in that first day. I only could save these. Before reinforcements could come down, a pair of unmarked ships blew the
Guardian
out of the sky.”

Vas heard Hrrru’s intake of breath behind her. She’d kept him with her since he was the calmest of the three she had, but even he couldn’t help but react. Carrix’s ship held over 250 people and had often worked together with Vas’s company.

She wanted to extend her sympathy, but the Silantian way was to mourn their dead only after they had been avenged. “Do you know anything about the ships that attacked? There’s nothing out there now but the refugee ships.”

“Not much I am afraid. Their attackers hit without warning. There was very little my people could say before they were destroyed. I would tell your Gosta to be on extreme alert.”

Vas nodded, and thumbed open her comm. “Gosta, Carrix is down here. His ship was destroyed without warning. Gather the refugee ships as close as you can.….” She paused, ten slow-moving population ships against something that could blow a heavy cruiser to bits. “Belay that. Have six Flits escort the refugees out of here. Now. Take them to Home and make sure to have them go through enough jumps to throw off anyone following. But get them out of here and stay on red alert.” That would only leave a skeleton crew on the
Warrior Wench
but she didn’t have a choice.