Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt (2 page)

He sealed himself into his
room. Dozens of working replicas of space force men and materiel sat on his
shelves around him. A pseudo virtual trainer helmet and mat dominated one
corner of the room. Just staring at his own room showed him the magnitude of
the disaster: his entire life was preparation for this blocked career. He had
acted exactly how so many parents wanted their kids to be: focused on the
future instead of the present. Caden was the model child for pushy parents with
ambitious goals for their kids, the kind of go-getter who didn’t have to be
nagged to achieve great things. He did it on his own. He was a fire-and-forget
missile launched at a career they did not really want him to hit.

A knock came on his door.
Strong, insistent. His father called him on his link.

“Yes?” he said on his link.

“I had hoped to spare you this
realization,” his father said. “Real war is as much about luck as skill, at
least for the people holding the guns.”

“Robots hold the guns, dad. New
Annapolis is an officer academy. It’s just training to be an officer, knowing
the basics of warfare before you move on to the way it’s done today.”

“I’m not finished. Caden, do
you think you won that tournament on skill alone? How do you think it works?”

“I know how it works perfectly.
How do you think I made champion?”

“Oh? Then let me congratulate
you on a brilliant campaign. ‘The Hunter’. Very smart. And fourteen million
fans.”

“It’s nice, sure, but I didn’t
do it for that.”

“You won because of that. Where
do you think the money comes from for such a big tournament? It’s huge. There’s
a lot of money involved. The Hunter fits a character profile in their scheme.
The one who goes around killing all the cowardly squatters, who only move
enough to keep from being disqualified. The audience doesn’t like to watch
squatters, Caden. They like to watch the Hunter.”

“Yes, that’s why I have the
fans. So what?”

His father sighed. Caden heard
it through the door.

“You won because you have the
whole package, Caden. Good looking, hard training, hard enough to sell it that
you’re the legit winner. But in the end, you had the story they wanted, the
action the fans wanted, and that’s why you won. You had help. Without those
fans, someone would have tagged you, Caden. The Blood Glades is rigged. You won
a popularity contest as much as anything else. I’m sorry. You’re good, but
don’t be naive. You’re old enough to know better now.”

The connection dropped.

It’s not true
, he
thought. But it still hurt. He felt robbed of the championship. The doubt had
been introduced. He tried to sidestep the turmoil.
And besides, the point
was New Annapolis; this was only a stepping-stone.

Some small part of him wanted
to cry for the first time in years, but he stomped it down. Caden Lonrack no
longer cried.

Since Caden did not know how to
process this disaster further, he fell into an old habit of checking up on his
friends and his usual virtual haunts. Before flitting off to share his bad news
wherever his buddies were enjoying themselves, Caden checked his batched
messages. One stood out: a job offer from a tiny outfit called Parker
Interstellar Travels.

Mr. Lonrack. Your performance
in the Blood Glades tournament impressed us a great deal. We understand your
test scores are outstanding as well. If you’d like to try something every bit
as challenging as the space force, without big brother standing over your
shoulder, contact us. We have a fantastic position for you on the frontier. We
will cover all travel costs just for the chance to speak with you about our
offer at Parker Interstellar Travels.

“Without big brother standing
over my shoulder,” he said aloud.

I wonder what that means?

Chapter 2

“Stand up and show me your
hands,” said the humanoid police robot.

Imanol stood up from his desk.
A scowl lay across his unshaven face. Disheveled clothing hung on his strong
but short frame. Chaotic curly hair added to the unkempt image.

“You have the wrong place. Check
your address,” he said. “I’m Imanol McCollum.”

The police robot checked
Imanol’s link identification, but it did not desist.

“That’s no one-shot stunner,”
said the cop’s voice again. The robot’s rifle came up a fraction as the
operator noticed the weapon strapped across Imanol’s chest.

“I said I’m Imanol McCollum,”
Imanol said in irritation. “I’m a licensed security agent operating within—”

“Identity confirmed. Though you
are no longer licensed. Put your weapon on the desk.”

Imanol’s face turned red in
anger. His mouth compressed. “You’d better know what you’re doing.” He
surrendered his weapon as ordered.

“I’ll add your threat to the
pending list of charges,” the robot emitted. Imanol stopped talking. A tracker
was glued to his neck. His link was electronically isolated. Then the police
robot stuffed him into a security vehicle and whisked him to the police
station. Imanol knew the place. The building was squat and armored, a flat wart
on the dark landscape of Bliss.

Into the lair,
Imanol
thought.
Am I supposed to be intimidated? They’re too afraid to come out
except with their robotic proxies.

Next was the wait. Though the
arresting officer probably had little real work to do except down a big lunch,
making Imanol wait was just a part of the routine. He had his link cache to
play with while he waited, but of course it was boring without being able to
connect to the outside world.

Finally a real human appeared
in the waiting room to speak with him. The man was older, his hair graying, and
he carried extra weight. He had a heavily lined face that Imanol automatically
attached hatred to.

“So my license has been
revoked? Why?” asked Imanol.

“You dealt with the wrong
crowd. A gang. You can’t expect to work with people like this and keep your
license.”

“What gang? You’re a buckle
bulb.”

The officer gave him a dirty
look. He paused to access a document on his link. “Says here, Blue Comet
something or other.”

“That’s not a gang, that’s a
frontier development company,” Imanol growled.

“They’ve broken UN law; now
they’re a terrorist gang,” the officer said. “Take this up with the bureau if
you want. I’m just processing you. Close down your net storefront. You’re no
longer licensed to operate as a security agent on Bliss. Give us a list of your
last year’s active clients so we can inform them. If you cooperate from this
point forward, I’m going to drop the weapons charge, given that you probably
believed you still had authorization for it.”

“Or given that your jail is
already full of people who’ve broken your idiotic rules, and your budget has
been cut in half because of the alien menace, and you’ve probably realized
crossing me is a mistake,” Imanol ranted. He barely managed to stay seated.
Though he could not avoid venting his anger, some part of him knew if he stood
and began to physically move in on the officer, it would go badly.

“Last chance,” the officer said
levelly. “Cooperate now, or be incarcerated.” He watched Imanol to see which it
was going to be.

If his cells weren’t full, and
his budget not cut, the arrogant bastard would have already thrown me in there
just for mouthing off to him
, Imanol thought. Nevertheless,
some shred of intelligence crept back into his thinking. Time to cut his
losses.

“I’ll shut it down,” Imanol
said as calmly as he could manage. Which was a very poor acting job, but the
officer accepted it. He started to think on which clients he would report, and
which ones he would leave out.

I’m washed up here. The only
place I’ll get work now is way out on the edge of the frontier. With people who
care nothing about licenses.

On his initial list, Imanol omitted
the wealthiest clients. They might hire him again for high-paying jobs. At the
last minute, he added two shady clients to the list. He had not done anything
illegal for them, though he suspected those two were into black-market stuff. If
they knew he was out with the police, it might actually help his chances with
them.

Even with fully automated
systems to handle his incarceration and release from beginning to end, and
Imanol’s cooperation, the bureaucracy moved at a crawl. It wasn’t until the
next day that he was released to clean out his office.

Imanol stopped to take a call from
someone named Jason Yang.

“Mr. McCollum,” Mr. Yang said.
“I’d like to hire you. It’s a very special job, off the beaten path. I think
you would find it very challenging. I’m prepared to pay your travel expenses in
full to come out and consider us.”

That was fast.

“Who was the referral?” Imanol
asked.

I need to know who tipped these
guys I was available.

“A friend of a client in the
force. Nick Vrolyk?”

“Who?”

“Nick Vrolyk. It would have
been a while ago.”

“That was a long time ago all
right,” Imanol said. “Thank you for calling, but I’m not really interested in
any opportunities back on Earth, Mr. Yang.”

“This is quite the opposite,”
Mr. Yang said. “Though my headquarters is on Earth, you’d be traveling farther
out from the core worlds than you are now. The work, should you join us, is on
the frontier as well. We’ll pay your expenses to come out and listen to us,
with no obligation.”

“Very well, send me the
details,” Imanol said.

At this point, what have I got
to lose?

Chapter
3

Siobhan Cutter was in a good
mood. A wicked smile started to form on the edges of her lips. A few strands of
dark hair obscured one of her gleaming eyes.

The sinuous young woman from
Spero Five, an old but huge space habitat, was about to exact her revenge upon
the company that had famously owned two generations of her ancestors, using
their slave labor to maintain Spero’s vast space-based solar array.

It was the main reason she had
traveled here to Valomine. There was also healthy self-interest in mind, as her
scheme would prove lucrative.

An expert in industrial design,
Siobhan had worked to put a backdoor into a factory control module installed
for the new colony. Though not an employee of Speronautics Space Fabrication
Corporation, she had been contracted as a frontier worker whose expertise could
be drawn upon to get Valomine moving quickly.

She walked down the factory
floor, admiring the brand-new setup. The smell of virgin lubricant filled the
vast room. Fabricators of all shapes and sizes littered the space. Belts and
overhead hooks waited to bring the raw materials in for processing into
countless parts. Then she heard her name called aloud.

“Siobhan Cutter?”

She peeked around a bank of
equipment. It was a man, short, with ugly hair. He wore a courier’s uniform.
Most everyone here seemed short to Siobhan, who had grown up in less than one
Earth gravity.

Siobhan had only a second to
decide: duck and run away, or walk up and ask what he wanted? The man did not
have weapons or even seem alert. So she walked up to him.

“I’m Cutter. Why the shout-out?
Your link not working?”

“Oh. I’m used to this place
being a dead zone. I guess everything is ready to go today, though, huh? Except
you. You’ve been pulled.”

“What? I’m still configuring
things in the controller.”

“Speronautics is doing it
themselves now. All the local contractors are being let go. A couple dozen big
company folks came in this morning on a UN transport.”

“But that’s illegal?”

“The council passed a close
vote. Speronautics is allowed to bring in all their own now to set up the whole
colony. The company practically owns the planet under the new arrangement.”

“Unbelievable! Doesn’t anyone
remember Spero Five?”

The guard shrugged. “No. Nobody
remembers that crap anymore.”

Siobhan almost struck the man
down. But if she had succeeded, all she would get out of it would be a detail
of security robots hunting her down and then a stunner or a glue grenade.
Suddenly she got very sad.

“Okay, I’m out of here,” she
said, turning away.

She checked a news feed and
caught herself up on the new law. She had been so busy with her plot she had
not seen it coming. She thought Speronautics had no choice but to use local
workers, at least until it got itself good and settled in. But now, their own
teams were coming in to do everything—on core government transports, even! The
UN was rotten to the core. It had all been arranged by using the alien menace
for an excuse. Speronautics was a big part of the space fleet buildup.
Freelancers like her would have to flee the system or risk getting stuck on a
world owned by the corporation. There were still limits on what they could do,
in theory, but she was not about to rely on them. Her ancestors had made that
mistake and paid dearly for it.

“Frackjammers!” Siobhan snapped
in annoyance.

It’s happening all over again.
The stupid UN is in bed with Speronautics. The people of Valomine are going to
be slaves to Speronautics just as my great grandparents were on Spero Five.

Her plan had almost worked.
With her back door to the controllers in place, she would have been able to
walk into any factory on Valomine and set it to making whatever design she fed
into it.

The damage she could have
caused Speronautics would have been incalculable. But it had all come to ruin.
“Because Speronautics owns too many UN parasites,” Siobhan growled. The new law
would block her out.

But it’s worse than just that.

Siobhan realized the
Speronautics engineers would give everything the once-over before starting up
the factories. They might even have an AI to help them check it all out. If
they found her back door, she would be on a list no one wanted to be on. Now
she had to leave the planet fast.

What contacts do I have?
Precious few.

Siobhan remembered she had
received an intriguing job offer the other day. What was it? Parker Interstellar
Travels.

She found the contact. A man
named Jason Yang. As she worked, her link delivered a message.

“Miss Cutter, please report to
the factory office.”

Dammit!

Siobhan opened a connection to
the contact for the job. An Asian man answered the call. She caught his image
from the visual partition of their channel. He looked young and handsome.

“Miss Cutter, I’m glad you—”

“You still have that job offer
waiting for me?”

“Well, yes, Miss Cutter,” he
said. “We—”

“Get me off this planet, and
I’ll come in to see you,” Siobhan said. “The sooner the better,” she added.

“I’ll see what I can do, Miss
Cutter.”

“I’m headed for the spaceport
now,” she said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Oh? You meant very soon
indeed.”

“You want me to come hear your
offer? Find me something fast. Don’t attract much attention.”

If this guy works with frontier
types, he won’t find that request unusual. Otherwise…

“I’ll try, Miss Cutter.”

Siobhan’s mind worked with
crystal clarity in her moment of pressure.

They haven’t sounded a general
alert because they don’t want to alert me, so only security knows I’m wanted.

Siobhan pulled her link
from the net and looked for another worker on the floor. She navigated around
several banks of heavy equipment until she caught sight of a man between the
rows of machines.

The man stared at a large
fabricator before him. She thought he might be a design mechanic or an
inspector. Someone who was probably checking out the hardware before it got
turned up. Siobhan wondered if he was local who had not been let go yet, or a
Speronautics man. She looked at his simple clothing.

A local. Any Spero jerk would
have a special uniform on.

Siobhan walked around the
corner of the machinery and sauntered up to him.

“My link can’t get through,”
she said, smiling at the man. “The factory floor channels are glitching again.”

“Mine’s up,” he said
uncertainly. The look on his face showed he couldn’t detect her link.

“Would you let me out this side
door, then? I want to go up to the office and see what’s wrong.”

The man frowned. “Sure, I guess
letting someone out isn’t a security issue,” he said.

“Ha, yes. It’s not like letting
the wrong person in!” Siobhan agreed enthusiastically. They walked over to the
edge of the vast floor and found a door. The man activated it, allowing her an
exit.

“Thanks so much,” Siobhan said,
and she meant it.

“Sure,” she heard him say
behind her as she dashed away.

Siobhan looked around outside.
She noted the tall metal link fence around the property. Piles of red flakes
had formed against it in places, a by-product of the local life form, the
hashes. Hashes were fat insect-like creatures that derived their sustenance
from the local star. They molted often, resulting in two flat flakes of skin,
one for the top of their body and another for the bottom. The surface of the
planet was littered with the molted skins. It was like dead leaf cover on
Earth.

Climb the fence? Or try that
gate?

She did not have time to decide
before a man in a Speronautics uniform came jogging out of a gate office ahead
to meet her at the perimeter.

“Miss Cutter, stop right there,
please,” the Speronautics man ordered as he approached.

“Aw, you caught me,” Siobhan
said in a high dainty voice. The man walked up to her. She raised her hands and
then front kicked the man under the chin with one of her long, graceful legs.
He collapsed, his limbs flopping randomly.

Ouch. I don’t think his foot
folded in the right direction.

She looked at the fence. There
were no insulators on the bottom supports, but the top foot of the metal chain
links glistened in the light.

Contact paralytic. Great.

She ran up to the gate office.
The door was still open, but the fence gate was closed. No doubt Siobhan would
not be able to open it. She looked around, starting to feel trapped. A humanoid
robot moved into the office from the other side.

Dammit!

She started, but the machine
said nothing to her. It started to clean the office. Siobhan let out a sigh of
relief, but her heart rate remained elevated.

Then she saw a maintenance
worker’s gloves. She grabbed the gloves and donned them. Then she attacked the
fence. It was hard going, especially for a girl who had grown up in less
gravity.

Dammit! I’m just too heavy
here. I hate this planet.

She dropped to the ground,
panting.

“Stop there!” called someone.

Siobhan did not look to see who
it was. She turned the other way and ran toward a piece of equipment across the
factory yard. A huge catapult, by the looks of it. She remembered something
about a fissure over the wall.

The junk catapult. A fun
diversion for the engineers.

The machine shot loads of trash
over the rise just beyond the fence, into a deep fissure. Siobhan remembered
the arc taken by the trash barely cleared the rise. The engineers loved
watching the refuse clear the rise by a meter.

Those loads of trash must weigh
less than me… I would fall short of the fissure, up on the slope.

Siobhan sprinted for it. She
felt the familiar rise of a pleasurable adrenal rush.

Hell yeah. I’m going for it…

“Stop! What are you doing?
There’s nowhere…”

Siobhan slammed against the
side of the launching machine and climbed up. The launch point was about three
meters off the ground. At the top, she hopped onto the launching platform. Her
link gave her its services. Being an oversized toy built by the engineers in their
spare time, there were no authorization checks. She told it to launch.

Ratchakachaka Whump!

The acceleration was intense.
It threw her off more than she anticipated, squeezing the breath from her
lungs. But Siobhan had done a lot of daredevil sporting, including some extreme
bungee jumping, skydiving, and even space vaulting. She gathered herself. She
acquired a roll relative to the ground, causing the ground to rotate in and out
of view. She had experience orienting herself while tumbling… in space.

Siobhan opened from a ball,
trying to increase her drag.

Rising… rising… the hill grew
larger.

Then she caught a glance at the
top of her arc. Well short of the fissure. She would hit the top of the rise.
She remembered the gravity here was considerably more than last time she had
taken a long-distance vault.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good
idea… but I’m close to apogee and my lateral speed is dropping...

Siobhan formed herself into a
ball again. She impacted near the top of the gravelly rise. As she had just passed
zenith, she didn’t come
down
very hard, but she rolled
forward
with surprising speed. She slid across the gravel-littered surface of the top of
the rise then started to descend… toward the fissure.

No!

Siobhan left her ball and flung
her limbs outward. She feared breaking something, but she could not allow
herself to slide too far. She felt the angle changing.

One of her hands caught a rock
and tore some skin. She heard the deep rip of connective tissue. Then she lost
her hold and started to slide down.

“Noooooooooo!”

Her arms and legs scrabbled
against the dirt. She noticed hundreds of the reddish hash flakes sliding with her.

This is it.

Siobhan gained speed. She tried
to face her feet downward, but she did not have the purchase or resolve. Panic
was taking hold.

Suddenly the world yanked hard,
and she stopped. The rapid stop stunned her, even though it had felt soft. She
looked around. She was caught in a netting across the bottom of the slide, at
the edge of the fissure.

Oh yeah. Someone did mention a
safety net.

She lay there, listening to her
ragged breathing.

“Damn what a ride!
Yes!
”
She laughed. Her hand was bloody, her arm swelling, but she smiled. The
adrenaline did not let her feel the pain.

Now, which way was the
spaceport?