Fire Fight (Star Runner Series Book 2) Read online

  The last android managed to escape, however. He aimed his weapon around the corner of a thick rock wall and fired a mini-rocket at us. The tiny warhead flashed against our port side.

  “Get that man, Jort. Put him down.”

  The anti-personnel gun made more ripping sounds. They went on and on for several long seconds. Bringing up a camera view, I was able to see what Jort was doing. The stream of bullets were tearing into the doorway, blasting fragments of rock everywhere. Sparks and ricochets rang throughout the landing pit.

  A moment later, the last patrolman’s smoking chassis fell from his hiding place. Jort had chewed through the wall he’d been hiding behind and destroyed him.

  “Such barbarity!” Dernel exclaimed.

  “That’s why we came here, Father,” Morwyn said.

  “That’s all the time we can spare,” I announced. “We’re lifting off.”

  The ship rose into the sky, slowly at first, then as we nosed up it shot into the clouds. Several curious patrol vessels were already gliding into the area, but after a brief pursuit, they fell behind and were lost in the hazy atmosphere of Tranquility.

  “The next time we visit this place,” Rose said, “we’re going to have to fake our identities—again.”

  I shrugged. It was nothing I wasn’t used to. She’d just described the life of a runner. We were always hiding, escaping—and occasionally biting the hands of those who tried to catch us.

  Warning lights began to pop up all over my consoles. Alarm tones soon followed.

  “Hull breach detected... Hull breach detected...”

  The computer was talking, and it wasn’t telling us good things.

  Chapter Two

  Everyone snapped their visors down on their helmets, including our new odd-looking friends. They didn’t have to be told that a sudden loss of air pressure could be fatal.

  I gripped the controls of the ship more tightly and steered back down into the troposphere.

  “What are you doing, Captain?” Sosa demanded.

  “If we go all the way out into orbit we might blow a fuel tank.”

  “A fuel tank has been ruptured?” Rose asked in alarm.

  “It might be, why don’t you two figure it out and start patching things while I fly the ship?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It was that belly-turret,” Sosa declared angrily on the way out. “That madman Jort blew up chunks of rock and sent bullets bouncing around everywhere!”

  “It could have been that rocket they fired at us,” Rose pointed out.

  Rose and Sosa left the bridge. Their conversation faded away as they took the main passage toward the aft of the ship. The damage control consoles indicated that’s where the venting had been detected.

  After a few minutes, I had the ship gliding along inside the atmosphere at about five thousand kilometers an hour. That was enough to heat up the external hull quite a bit, but with the low friction of the upper atmosphere, it wasn’t enough to burn us up.

  “Captain?” Dernel asked. “Can we possibly be of assistance?”

  “I don’t know. Do either of you know how to spot-weld titanium? You’ve got to be careful with that kind of metal, you know. It can produce a thermite reaction…”

  Dernel and his daughter looked alarmed. “I’m sorry,” Dernel said, “our talents lie elsewhere.”

  My eyes narrowed. “I thought you guys were from a mining planet. I thought you lived with mines full of metal-workers.”

  “That’s all true, but—”

  Morwyn put her small hand on her father’s arm. He was wriggling those fingers of his around like ten snakes. Maybe he did that whenever he was nervous.

  “What my father is trying to say, is that it’s a matter of caste. On my planet, we’re all born into certain duties, expectations and life-pathways—”

  “Yes, yes!” Dernel interjected. His eyes gleamed. “The Shining Path!”

  “Huh…” I said, glancing from one of them to the other. “All right, so you’re telling me you’re nobility of some kind? Too good to work with your hands?”

  “That’s a crude approximation of our realities,” Dernel agreed. “We’re philosophers, leaders—we guide people onto their proper pathways.”

  I waved for Dernel to stop. I’d heard enough. I turned to Morwyn. “What about you? Are you planning to become a philosopher mumbling in a robe someday?”

  She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “I haven’t yet chosen my path.”

  Hearing this, Dernel’s normally detached, unflappable demeanor changed. He became instantly angry.

  “That is not true,” he said, staring at Morwyn. “Your path has been chosen, and it has been carefully lit for you. All you need to do now is embrace the truth and walk the path.”

  Morwyn looked down at the deck, but she didn’t answer him. I sensed I’d found a family sore-spot.

  The situation almost made me smile, but I managed to hold that back. They might have been offended. To me, it was only natural that a girl like Morwyn would want to choose her own way through life. It was equally natural for her father to try to hammer his square peg of a daughter into the round hole he’d chosen for her. It was a classic family problem, and it made me like both of them more. They seemed less odd to me.

  “All right then. We’re in a stable situation. Excuse me while I check on my crewmen—and please, don’t touch the controls.”

  To make sure they didn’t, I locked the piloting consoles with biometrics, then I went below. I soon found Jort and Sosa in an argument. Both were waving their hands around and shouting.

  Rose, on the other hand, was working as she should be. She methodically patched one hole after another with a handheld device built for the purpose.

  “Excellent, Rose,” I said loudly. “Keep working. Ignore these two breathers. They’re just trying to ride off your skill and shirk their duties.”

  This comment immediately stung Jort and Sosa. They stopped arguing and went back to work. They grumbled steadily as they patched the hull.

  “What’s our status?” I asked.

  “It’s no big deal,” Jort said immediately. “A few holes the size of a marble. The engines are undamaged, and the fuel leak was minimal.”

  “No big deal?” Sosa demanded. “Are you crazy? If some of those ricochets had hit the tanks and caused an internal spark—”

  “But they didn’t!” Jort replied, his voice rising again.

  “There they go again,” I said to Rose, jabbing a thumb over my shoulder at the others. “You could take notes on avoiding work from these two.”

  They finally shut up and went back to work. Soon, all the hull breaches were patched and the ship was ready to pull up into orbit again. By that time, several patrol ships were nosing near, floating above us in high orbit.

  My flight crew was back on the bridge and strapping in. I was at the helm again.

  “They’ve got us boxed in,” Morwyn said worriedly, watching the screens.

  “Yes…” I said without concern. “That’s what they’re trying to do. I can see they’ve been trying to encircle us. They’ve been waiting up here like fishermen in a boat.”

  “What are we going to—?” Morwyn began, but she broke off and gave a little squawk.

  I’d aimed Royal Fortune toward open space and gunned the engine. Seeing us make our move, the closing patrol ships suddenly swooped down. There were seven of them, and they moved like hungry predators.

  They never had a chance. By the time we were within range of their weapons I was already moving at twice their speed. Their targeting systems pinged us, locking on with their disabling neutrino cannons. If I’d let them get any closer, they might have been able to destroy one or both engines, and our day would have ended disastrously—but they were never able to get off a focused shot.

  Once we’d slipped out of their noose, I leaned back in my pilot’s chair and laced my fingers behind my head.

  “Just relax in your seats, everyone. You’
ll black out if you try to stand up.”

  No one tested my warning. They stayed in their seats, riding out the heavy G-forces.

  Several long minutes later I eased up on the thrust. We had left the patrol vessels safely in our stern wake.

  “This ship is very powerful!” Dernel announced.

  “Yes, it is,” Sosa told him. I sensed a hint of pride in her voice. “There is no faster smuggler’s vessel in the Conclave.”

  “Now,” I said, unstrapping myself from my seat. “I think it’s time the two of us had a conference, Dernel. Let’s discuss the exact nature of your proposal.”

  Sucking in a sudden breath, he put the back of his wrist to his forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling all that well. Can you assign me a cabin to rest in?”

  My eyes were smoldering. I was sensing a new dodge, a new effort to hide their true plans—but Morwyn spoke up before I could complain.

  “I’ll discuss the matter with you, Captain,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” her father said. “I shall retire. Perhaps one of your crew could show me to the guest quarters?”

  I glanced toward Rose. “Take Dernel below. Give him our best cabin. Shake out the sheets too, will you?”

  Rose pursed her lips unhappily, but I pretended not to notice.

  “Jort, stay on weapons and scanners in case we’re pursued. Sosa, you have the helm. This way, Morwyn, to our conference chamber.”

  I sensed many eyes studying my back as I turned and glided the exotic-looking girl down the passageway. I ignored them all. I was the captain, and that meant it wasn’t my job to keep everyone happy at all times. Such a thing would’ve been impossible in any case.

  Our conference chamber doubled as our officer’s mess and lounge. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was larger than any cabin on the ship.

  In the center was a battle computer that doubled as a table or eating surface. There were cup-holders with magnetic rings embedded in the stained screen. One long crack ran between the two cup-holders on the starboard side. I guess that came with the territory when a ship was treated as roughly as was Royal Fortune.

  Morwyn followed me into the chamber and slid the door shut behind her. She smiled and sat across from me.

  “Captain… we haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

  “Really?” I asked, unsurprised.

  “Yes… you see, we’re fugitives from our planet.”

  “What’s your planet called, anyway?”

  “Vindar. We are Vindari.” She looked at me as if this revelation had great import, but I’d never heard of either her planet or her people.

  “Huh…” I said. “That’s very interesting. You already told me it’s a remote world, far from the major star clusters.”

  “That’s right. Like Earth itself, we exist in a relatively deserted region of the Orion arm.”

  “Earth… have your people pinpointed it?”

  She blinked at me in surprise. “Of course we have. Have you… have people here in the Conclave somehow forgotten the coordinates of our ancient homeworld?”

  “I don’t know. Regular people couldn’t tell you. It’s not stored in the grid anywhere that I can find. Either the location has been lost—or it’s been erased. I tend to think it was the latter.”

  “Amazing. Yes, of course we know where Earth lies. Every child who gets a pilot’s license to fly a gravity-hauler could tell you that by heart.”

  Studying the tabletop, she began pecking at it. Soon, she had a search screen up, then an archive.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “I’m filling out an informational grid-site update. I’ll share Earth’s exact location with everyone. How often does this ship transmit a pulse to the Conclave computers for an update? I’d like everyone to know—Captain? What are you doing?”

  I’d reached out quickly and grabbed her arm. Her skin was cool and soft to the touch. I immediately suspected that her body-temperature might be lower than human standard.

  Her light blue flesh looked strange in my grip. Somehow, my skin looked rougher, more animalistic than hers did.

  With a small effort, I lifted her tapping fingers away from the screen.

  “Don’t type in those coordinates,” I said. “We’ve just been flagged as runners by yet another world. If the Conclave government wishes the citizens to know where Earth is, the location wouldn’t be hidden from us.”

  Morwyn gently tugged, and I let her go. She ran her fingers over her wrist, and I looked on with concern. I hadn’t meant to hurt or scare her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I made another mistake. We don’t hide facts from one another on Vindar.”

  I smiled, as she didn’t seem to be upset. “I’m glad to hear that. But it does seem like your people hide their feelings.”

  She nodded. “This is true. Feelings are a luxury. We’re given pathways to follow early in life, and those who deviate from them do so at their peril.”

  “What happens if you turn away from that path? How are you punished?”

  Morwyn shrugged. “Exile. Abandonment. Scorn… I might be banished into our darkest forests.”

  I nodded. That didn’t sound so bad to me as I’d often suffered worse—but I supposed that to a Vindari, nothing could be more terrible.

  “Tell me now, if you’re fugitives, what do you want from me? Just a free ride in space?”

  “No, no. We need weapons. There is a war brewing on our world. A war between two peoples—maybe three.”

  “A civil war?”

  She looked up at me, startled. “A civil war? Oh… yes, it’s a term from Earth’s histories. No, no—let me assure you that our colony started off isolated and anyone with rebellious tendencies was banished generations ago. I’m talking about true outsiders—alien creatures.”

  I’d begun frowning, and when she said the word “alien” my frown deepened into a glare.

  “Tell me about these creatures.”

  Morwyn talked for several minutes. Before she had finished, I’d begun to suspect Vindar had been invaded by the Tulk—and possibly by other more vile aliens as well.

  “We understand the Tulk,” she said. “They have long existed among us, choosing to live within the bodies of a wise people. They aren’t all that bad, when you get to know them.”

  I gritted my teeth, but I managed not to shout at her. I forced a smile.

  “We also know about the Tulk,” I told her. “Sosa had one in her body for years, in fact.”

  “Oh really? I had no idea. What happened to her rider?”

  I gave her a wolfish grin. “Jort and I removed it and stomped it to death on this ship’s steel deck.”

  Morwyn’s mouth fell open. “Such a crime! Such barbarity!”

  “Nonsense. The Tulk was abusing her, scarring up her liver and forcing her to do its evil bidding through pain.”

  “Really? That’s not how the Tulk we know behave.”

  I opened up some private files and displayed a short clip on the table under our elbows. She watched as Jort and I relieved Sosa of her Tulk.

  Morwyn gasped and winced. “Such violence…”

  “Look,” I said, “you’re on a gun-runner’s ship. What did you expect? That we’re all pacifists? You’re here to buy weapons. What do you think will happen if you form an army and start shooting things with those weapons?”

  Morwyn nodded. “You’re right. We must steel ourselves. We aren’t used to violence, but it has come to us.”

  “Who are you going to be shooting?” I asked. “You still haven’t told me that. What are these guns going to be used for?”

  “To stop the Skaintz—that’s what the Tulk call them. They are violent aliens that come in many forms. They’re similar to ants, in that they nest underground and lay young in eggs in their queen’s chamber.”

  I stared at her for another moment. Then I riffled through my video files again.

  “Like this
?” I asked, playing a recording of my struggle with a shrade, a snake-like being that was very difficult to kill.

  She watched in fascination and nodded. “Yes. Exactly like that. Their species is called the Skaintz. They’re coming to Vindar from the Faustian Chain. They’ve overrun most—or maybe all the human colonies there. Now, they’re seeking a way to invade the Conclave.”

  My hand went to my chin, and it rubbed there. I eyed the vids playing on the cracked table between us. There were several clips of the strange enemy I’d met up with on various occasions.

  I now had a name to put with the alien species I’d been afraid of since I’d first encountered it: The Skaintz.

  Chapter Three

  “You mentioned that there were three participants in this war,” I said. “The Vindari, the Skaintz… and who else?”

  “The Tulk, of course. But they seem to be on our side.”

  “Hmm…” I said, not trusting the parasites. Anything that dug into a man’s flesh and attached itself to his liver—well, it wasn’t something I wanted to consider an ally.

  Morwyn reached out her hand and put it on my hairy wrist. “Will you help us, Captain?”

  “Of course I will.”

  She smiled in relief.

  “Now then, let’s discuss the details of this arrangement, shall we?”

  “Oh… of course.”

  “When do you need these weapons?” I asked.

  “As soon as possible. The Tulk tell us that the Skaintz are on their way in seed-ships. Once they land in the remote, wild areas of Vindar they’ll begin to nest. There are many isolated and abandoned mines in the countryside—such places would make a perfect home for them.”

  “I see…”

  Morwyn leaned close. “We left Vindar a long time ago, William. The attack we’ve been fearing might already be underway. When we left, rangers were walking the dark forests, seeking the aliens—but that isn’t enough. Some of them are bound to seed successful colonies. Some of them—”

  “Yes, I understand. You have an urgent need, and I understand it. Now, tell me how and when you shall be paying me for my services? In advance, I hope?”