Pirates of the Outrigger Rift (12 page)

“Irreplaceable, are you?”

Maxwell sighed. “Of course not. I just do my duty like any
other corporate employee should. You, for example.”

“Me? I don’t work for the corporation. I work for Randol.”

“A matter of semantics, surely,” Maxwell said, putting his
feet up on his desk, both providing the appearance of relaxation and widening
the gap between himself and Chandler. “I really can’t blame you for being so
crude. After all, you’re fighting a losing battle. Lord Randol is asking you to
do by yourself what the concentrated effort of a megacorporation could not
accomplish.”

“I’m not impressed by your efforts, but I know one thing,”
Chandler said. “There’s a leak in this organization that’s been feeding
information to Thorne, and that leak is somewhere up high, and I’m not
convinced it was Casey. Tell me, Maxwell, do they pay you enough? Irreplaceable
employees usually command a hefty salary.”

Maxwell kicked away from the desk, bolted to his feet and pointed
a finger in Chandler’s face. “Watch yourself, Detective. You can only push me
so far, and it would be unfortunate for you and Lord Randol if you were
implicated as an accomplice in the recent theft of corporate data.”

Chandler rose from the desk and smiled. “Relax, you’re going
to mess up your pretty suit. Besides, as soon as you find that data, we should be
able to end all this confusion, right?”

Maxwell’s cheeks flushed, but he quickly composed himself
and spoke in a more contained tone. “Mr. Chandler, toward that end, you could
benefit financially if you were to assist my office in the apprehension of the
courier whose capture you disrupted the other day. There’s a price on her head.”

“Good luck with that,” Chandler said. “Your goons have been doing
great so far.” He turned and began walking out of the room, leaving Maxwell
fuming behind him. “You know what this office really needs?” He didn’t wait for
a reply. “A coffin and mourners. This is the most depressing room I have ever
seen. And what the hell kind of music is that?”

Chandler smiled as he switched off the holo transmission and
faded away. His perceptions shifted and he was again sitting in the cockpit of
the
Marlowe
. He removed the crown-like transmission ring from his head
and put it away with the holo unit.

There was something about Maxwell that rubbed him the wrong
way. He was too smug, too clean. But Chandler knew he had to be careful and not
push too far—he needed Maxwell’s cooperation.

He reached forward and checked the piloting controls. He was
closing in on the location of the hospital base. It was time to make some calls
to some old contacts. He needed information that only they could provide.

Brock sat
quietly in the transport compartment of the small troop carrier. As he had
hoped, his performance on Raken had got him promoted. The single contact he
knew in Thorne’s organization had introduced him to a disreputable ship captain
and a destination unknown with a group of fellow recruits. Brock felt like a
hot prospect on the move, getting closer to uncovering the details he needed.

But from the
vacant looks on the faces of the other men around him, he was either destined
for true greatness in the organization or he was just delusional. He was bored
anyway, so he figured he might as well test the waters.

“So,” he
said to no one in particular. “What do you think about the latest trends in the
economy?”

They stared
blankly at him.

“Okay, how
about art? Did anyone catch that exhibit by Trath on Matilda?”

No reaction.

“Ah, I see. Does
anyone really hate it when it’s raining and you look up and get hit in the eye?”

“Yeah! I
hate it when that happens,” the guy on his right said. “I do that all the time.
Small universe, ain’t it?”

He had found
their intellectual level. Perhaps they would discuss why it was that the smell
of your own flatulence was never quite as bad as that of others’.

Luckily,
conversation was kept to a minimum on the trip. They mostly slept, fought, ate,
and used the head. By the time they arrived at their destination, Brock had
determined that most of the men were local street toughs, too unemployable by
the corporations to make a living any other way but illegally. They were ripe
for recruitment for a few credits, but also dangerous to count on to do any
work requiring subtlety, or to trust with sensitive information.

Thorne solved
that problem by not telling them anything. Brock had no idea where he was being
transported to. He knew only that it was some sort of base for staging raids
and that he was to serve as a boarder—to help take ships—and as a guard, in the
event prisoners were taken.

He would be
expected to work for a minimum of one year. He’d enjoy the provided
entertainment, save his pay, and be returned home at the end of his tour with a
pocket full of credits. More likely, however, most would end up chucked out an
airlock if Thorne thought they knew too much. Thorne hadn’t survived this long
trusting his secrets to morons like those Brock saw around him.

They arrived
at the base in two days. They called it “Thorne’s Lair.” All he knew of it was
that it was an underground maze. The trip in the cargo hold hadn’t afforded him
a view of anything except the sleazy recruits around him. When he got off the
ship it was through an airlock tunnel. It was surely some hunk of rock
somewhere too small to have an atmosphere. And the maze had to be the result of
mining. That might be a good hint of the location if there weren’t thousands of
abandoned, mined-out moons and asteroids. Still, he resolved to look out for
signs that might pinpoint where he was.

At this
point, however, he didn’t know how he would contact his handler in the Confed to
report. Ideally, he would like to collect as much intel as he could, then find
a way to shanghai a ship and blast out of there. The navcom on the ship would
tell him what he needed to know about the location. But he had to be able to
escape the pirate fleet that was stationed there. That was going to be damn
near impossible.

The men were
all herded into a room where a quartermaster was issuing gear. The
quartermaster was a grizzled old reprobate with bad teeth and a desperate need
to trim a pair of eyebrows that branched together like wild octopus tentacles.

“Name?” the
quartermaster asked.

“Brock.”

“What size
shirt and pants?”

“I wear a
standard-plus-one in shirt, and a thirty-four-unit waist by thirty-six length
in the pants.”

The
quartermaster made an entry into a notescribe and grabbed a box off the shelf
behind him. He checked off each item as he handed it to Brock.

“Here we
are. Crew shirt, large, two each. Crew pants, large, two each. Boots, large, one
pair. Socks, two pair. Belt, large, one each. Sword, junior class with scabbard,
one each.”

Brock looked
at the stack of outsized clothes and frankly stared at the cutlass. “A sword?
Really?”

“Yes. Have
you not seen one before? It’s like a long knife. You stick people in the gut
with it and they die.”

“You tell me
you actually use swords? What about pulse pistols? Blasters?”

“Don’t be an
idiot. Of course we use pulse pistols and blasters, but the sword is mandatory.
It’s part of the uniform. And …” the man looked from side to side and then
leaned toward Brock, whispering. “Thorne has some sort of blade fetish or
something. He’s the boss. We follow his rules. Don’t get caught without yours
or I guarantee you won’t get a second chance. You’ll get a blade in
your
gut, son.”

Brock
nodded. “Alrighty, in that case—yo ho ho! I’ll buckle me some swash then.”

The rest of
the group got their gear and were led toward the crew quarters. The advantage
of using the old mine was that there was a lot of available space. Each man
could have his own private room. There was a common crew area for eating,
drinking, and gambling. This seemed to be the major pastime. He was told that
once a month a shipment of pleasure workers was imported from parts unknown.
This was also a major form of entertainment.

As they
walked down the corridors, Brock glanced down a side hall. There was a guard
posted in front of a barred cell door. A beautiful blonde woman paced behind
those bars. He asked the man leading them around. “What’s that?”

“That’s the
brig. Prisoners, hostages, that type of stuff.”

“She’s quite
a looker. I wouldn’t mind interrogating her.”

“You and me
both, pal. But don’t get caught wandering in that area unless you’re assigned
there. You’ll end up dead.”

Brock
nodded. He wondered who the woman was. That was another bit of intel that he
intended to discover before he left this rock. He was going to try to wrangle
himself a job as a jailer. If he could manage a jailbreak in the process, all
the better.

CHAPTER TEN

C
handler started the search for
information about Helen Randol by getting in touch with a few of his more shady
contacts. Ships were hot commodities; the pirates would turn the
Aurelius
quickly for profit. There were always those who didn’t care where their ship
came from as long as the price was right. There was a thriving underworld that
specialized in processing stolen ships for resale, refitting them just enough
to prevent easy identification.

The Confed had
attempted to crack down on this criminal industry by making it mandatory for
ships to carry unique transponders and encoded microtags. However, it was
difficult to regulate all of Manspace. Humanity, fiercely independent, rebelled
against rules and feared that the Confed would become too powerful if it were
that easy to track the movements of every human ship. Conspiracy theories ran
rampant, and the Confed could not get the independent corporations and
governments to cooperate on a standardized registry. Any ship could be
ultimately identified by comparing it to its blueprints and researching serial
numbers deep in the bowels of the hold. But first the Confed had to have
probable cause to conduct the search—hard to get when the shipyards are silent
for the right price.

Therefore, it wasn’t
any great difficulty to sell a stolen ship. The odds of getting caught were
small. Although some ships were ultimately recovered, they had to be found
quickly before they were refitted, and the owner would need very specific
information to identify a particular vessel.

In the course of his
past investigations, Chandler had met many individuals who made their living
through illegal means, but he had a mutually beneficial business relationship
with them nonetheless. It was a necessary evil for those in his line of work.
He let the word out that he needed information about any ship matching the
description of the
Aurelius
coming to market. He had some of Randol’s
money to throw around in gratitude, as well as his personal reputation for honorable
discretion when it came to protecting the identity of his sources.

He knew the
Aurelius
was an Athena-class yacht so he had details of her tonnage, engines, and
capacity. But he didn’t know any uniquely identifying details of the interior
structure that would distinguish it from any other ship of the same class.
Randol was of no help on the subject—he never paid any attention to anything
but the carpet and furnishings.

Chandler needed a
crew member who crawled around the hold. Worked on the engine. Scribbled
graffiti in the toilet stalls. Luckily, one had survived. But talking to him
wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Chandler hated
hospitals. They smelled funny, they didn’t let you drink or use tobac, and they
liked to wake you up to give you sedatives. People went there to die and, while
they waited, their butts got cold sticking out of those stupid hospital gowns. But
the main thing he hated about hospitals was the fact that they were full of
sick people.

Pissed-off
ex-husbands, he could handle. Street freaks with shivs, he could handle. Guys
hopped up on stims who wanted to play rough, he could handle. Invisible germs
that can make you drop dead, he had a problem with. He wished the hospital was
part of Nebulaco’s holo network. But no such luck.

Chandler walked down
the cold, antiseptic hallway toward Jackson Radje’s room. Radje had been a crewman
on the
Aurelius
, and he was the only witness to the attack, escaping in
a life pod that was later found by a Confed patrol. He was injured, but he
would live.

When he reached the
door to room 432, Chandler looked in and grimaced. It was a ward of ten beds,
full of coughing, sneezing, wheezing, dying people. What a pain in the ass. He
read the nameplates on the beds as he passed by. Unfortunately, he could not
avoid also reading the diagnoses. Altairian Plague, Ritifian Fever, parasitic
and fungal infections—he was afraid to breathe.

Finally, he found
Radje’s bed, displaying the comforting diagnosis of skull fracture. He could
live with that. One thing was for sure, if you were poor, you couldn’t afford
to get sick because you never knew what disease the sap in the next bed might
have. Radje’s head was bandaged with a gel-like substance that glowed and
throbbed with his heartbeat. Wires ran from a monitoring console to the man,
and a confusion of displays showed on the screen above his head. He appeared to
be sleeping.

“Hey, Radje,”
Chandler said.

The man didn’t stir.

The patient in the
next bed began to have a coughing fit. Covering his mouth was evidently not in
his nature.

“Great,” Chandler said,
and moved to the other side of the bed, only to discover an overpowering odor
of shit emanating from the patient on that side.

“Wonderful. Oh,
Radje! Wake up!” Chandler shook the man’s shoulder. “I don’t have all day. I
want to leave here a healthy man.”

Still the man did not
stir. Looking around him, Chandler turned back to the unconscious Radje and
bent to yell in his ear. “Wake up!”

The man jolted awake,
almost falling off the bed. The monitors went crazy, turning red and wailing.

A nurse rushed in to
see what was the matter, her white uniform chilling the effect of her beauty. “What
happened?”

Radje sat up in bed,
breathing hard. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Must have been a
nightmare,” said Chandler. “Since you’re up, let me introduce myself. Mike
Chandler, private investigator. I’m trying to get some information about the
pirate raid on Randol’s yacht.”

“Sir,” the nurse
said. “You really should leave. Mr. Radje is in no condition to answer any
questions, and you’re disturbing the other patients.”

“I’m sure Mr. Radje
wants to speak with me, especially since he likes his job at Nebulaco and wants
to keep it. And as far as these others are concerned, hell, they’re all goners—maybe
they’ll kick off early and save you some work. Speaking of which, the guy next
door there has had an accident.”

The nurse sighed. “Fine,
but if I have any trouble out of you I’ll—”

“What? Spank me? Okay,
but wash your hands first and keep the nurse’s uniform on.”

The nurse scowled and
left to see to her next patient.

Radje had calmed a
bit, settling back on his pillow. Chandler sat on the edge of his bed and took
out a notescribe to record the interview.

“Okay, Radje, tell me
about the raid.”

“What about it?”

Chandler rapped on
Radje’s bandaged skull. “Hello, is anybody in there? Tell me how it happened.”

“Ow! That hurts like
hell!”

“So talk to me, pal.”

“All right. What is
this, one of those insurance things?”

“Yeah, whatever. You
want to tell me what happened, or do you want to listen to a couple of
knock-knock jokes?” Chandler moved as if to rap on Radje’s head again.

“Okay! I was on the
bridge when we realized we were approaching another ship. It was just sitting.”

“You just ran into
it? In other words, it was waiting directly in your route?”

“As near as I can
guess. We took a couple of hits and lost the hyperdrive. About that time, six
ships intercepted us and started shooting. A message came over the navcom
saying that we should surrender to Thorne and prepare to be boarded.”

“What about the
passenger, Helen?”

“Uh. Well, I didn’t
see her the whole trip. She pretty much stayed in her cabin and didn’t
associate with the crew. She was one of them lordy-type women.”

“So you don’t know
what happened to her.”

“No idea. I just got
out as quick as I could. The captain gave the abandon-ship order. We were just
a yacht. We didn’t have the firepower to combat odds like that. I made it to a
one-man life pod and launched. The last thing I saw before the stasis field
kicked in was the
Aurelius
and the pirate ship docked together. So far
as I know, I’m the only one they’ve found so far. Maybe I’m the only one who
made it out at all.”

“So the ship was
intact when you last saw it?”

“Yes, but I’m sure it’s
gone. No ship ever attacked by Thorne has been recovered.”

Chandler rubbed his
chin. “Thorne, Thorne. You know, I keep hearing that name. Why do you think it
was Thorne?”

“Well, I saw one of
the pirates and he had a sword.”

“A sword?”

“Yeah, everybody
knows that Thorne’s pirates have swords.”

“Why?”

Radje shrugged. “They
look scary, I guess.”

 “Whatever. Okay, you
had your chance to tell me a fairy tale and I really enjoyed it. Now, let’s
hear what really happened.”

“What do you mean?”
Radje said.

“Your life pod was
full of … souvenirs.”

Radje tried to sit up
and looked around. “I think I need the nurse.”

Chandler smiled. “You
will if you don’t start talking.”

“I was just trying to
keep the pirates from getting it. It was okay. I asked her and she said it was
okay.”

“Asked who?”

“Lady Randol. I seen
her when I was leaving. I swear. I was headed down to the pods and I went by
her cabin. She was running to the pods, too. She had a gun and then these
pirates started shooting at us. I jumped for the pod and that’s all I
remember.”

“So you did see
Helen, and you even spoke to her? This is finally starting to make some sense,”
Chandler said. “You used her to cover your escape, didn’t you?”

Radje turned white.
“No! I would never do something like that. I swear to all the gods. I’m just a
crewman, but I wouldn’t abandon a woman like that.”

“Sure, bud. I get
you. You’re one of those hero types.”

“Yeah, that’s right.
I would have stayed to help her, but I thought she got into a pod, too.”

Chandler smirked.
“Tell you what. When I find her—and I will—I’m gonna make sure and ask her
about you so that we can come back and pin a medal on that chest of yours.”

“Oh no,” Radje said,
shaking his head. “It wasn’t anything. I was just in the right place at the
right time. No big deal.”

“Sure. Either that,
or she’ll tell me you’re a thieving coward who was willing to throw her to the
wolves and you’ll get what’s coming to you.” Chandler laughed. “But hey! That
won’t happen because you’re telling the truth.”

Radje really didn’t
look well. “I need that nurse. I think I’m going to get sick.”

“Tell ya what, hero.
I understand from your records that you were a maintenance tech. I need some
details of the ship. I need to know what flavor of bubblegum is stuck under
which table in the galley. I need to know which faucet is leaky. I need to know
what color duct tape you used to fix the coolant hose. I need to know the
location of the hidey-hole where you stored your contraband.”

“That was medicinal,”
Radje said.

Chandler smiled. “I’m
sure it was. We’re gonna go over things, and if you give me what I need, I’ll
put a word in to Lord Randol and we won’t prosecute you for theft and desertion.
How does that sound?”

Radje became very
cooperative after that. Chandler logged as many details about the
Aurelius
as
he could get out of Radje. At the end of the interview he felt confident that
if he could locate the ship he had enough to identify it.

As he rose to leave,
he leaned down to speak to Radje. “I think this is enough, but I may have more
questions. Stay easy to contact. Oh, and since you’re going to be stuck here
for a while, I’ve got some advice.” Chandler straightened and gestured toward
the various patients hacking and wheezing in the room. “Try not to breathe.”

Everybody who was anybody on
Nebula Prime ate at the Executive Towers Royale. The restaurant sat perched
atop the twin towers of the corporate headquarters with a thin glassed-in walkway
between the two portions of the establishment. The north tower seated the
general population, while the south tower, built slightly higher, catered to
the elite.