The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (33 page)

Counterweight

Pending Smashwords Edition 

Published by A.G. Claymore

Edited by
B.H
. MacFadyen

Copyright 2013 A.G. Claymore

This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places,
Incidents and Brands are either products of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark
owners of any products referenced in this work of fiction which have been used
without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized,
associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Pruning the Tree

Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

C
allum
McKinnon gazed down the length of the massive, moisture hazed, vertical atrium
running through the middle of Tsekoh. A steady stream of drops fell past his
face from the upper levels, offering some concealment. Built into a narrow,
sub-oceanic canyon, Tsekoh was the only population center on the
Republic-controlled oceanic world of Chaco Benthic. Roughly four kilometers
long, one kilometer high and averaging a half kilometer in width, the city
contained just over a half billion square meters of floor space and housed just
over fifteen million citizens - legally.

There were at least another eight million NRW’s as the
administration referred to them. Non registered workers who had no fixed address
and simply found a place to lay their heads between shifts. They mostly had
jobs, but there was only so much space set aside for housing. NRW’s worked
their shifts, predominately in ore processing facilities, paid for a few
minutes in a public shower and changed at their rented lockers before meeting
their friends at one of the thousands of public houses for dinner.

They produced ore, and they generated tax revenue through
their spending so the Dactari controlled corporations that ran this planet couldn’t
care less where they slept. It was an ideal solution to what would have
otherwise been a severe labor shortage.

Not so ideal if you were an NRW.

There was a combustible feeling to the place, and that was
the reason Callum had been assigned here. The Alliance liked to find small
fringe worlds like this one where there was no Republic military presence. Stir
up enough trouble here and the enemy would have to deploy troops to put it
down, bleeding off their central reserves.

This was Callum’s eighth assignment. Each one took roughly a
decade to plan and execute properly and each time, he came to identify more
with his target world than he did with Earth. A century and a half of
pretending to be a Tauhentan expatriate had severed his emotional links to his
real home world – a world he wasn’t welcome on anyway. His post vaccination
lifespan was estimated at just over thirty five hundred years, but he just
couldn’t see himself ever returning to Earth.

 He felt a tingle in his right hand and looked down at
his palm. The message, spelled out by fluorescent compounds in his skin,
suggested a get together at a popular eating establishment in the mid levels.
He made a fist, clearing the message, and looked for the target that it was
meant to indicate.

The messages were displayed on the recipient’s palm by a
sophisticated network of transmitters that could locate the customer and
fluoresce text or green shade images by creating highly focused interference
patterns in the skin. It was an efficient way to communicate, but not secure. A
bank of computers in the central core constantly monitored all message traffic,
looking for flagged content – words such as bomb, kill, uprising or even worse
– union.

You certainly couldn’t use it to say ‘The guy we’re planning
to kill is about to walk past you – one level down…’, but you could send an
innocuous dinner invitation, listing a restaurant that was nine floors below
the subject’s current level. Callum had picked an odd number, knowing that the
tracking software would correlate suspicious activity with any message traffic
that matched the floor as well as any even offsets, such as ten floors up or
down.

The real art, of course, was in killing the subject without
arousing any suspicion.

Callum leaned on the slick graphene railing and looked down
to the steady flow of pedestrians on the wide pedway one level down and fifty
meters away, across the atrium from his position. The languid flow was in
contrast to the hurried crowds, an hour earlier, rushing to start the night
shift.

These pedestrians were fresh from their post-shift showers,
some already half drunk from whatever pick-me-up they kept in their lockers,
and they were walking off the stresses of collecting Manganese nodules on the ocean
floor with nothing but a centuries old shield-suit to hold back the crushing
deep. Over the next hour, they would drift in and out of the shops and
alehouses until exhaustion forced them to their cramped quarters or, for the
NRW’s, to some quiet corner of the city.

Callum had no trouble spotting D’Nei. He was a Tauhentan (a
real one) who had been a NRW since coming here as a child with his father. He’d
constantly gotten the short end of every stick in the Universe and Cal usually
found such subjects eager to join in the struggle against oppression. Still,
every now and then they internalized the wrong message from their induction.

For D’Nei, it wasn’t about the struggle, it was about
him
.
He’d taken on an air of self importance since joining one of Cal’s insurgent
cells and he was drawing too much attention. He’d even begun flapping his gums
about the organization. A casino manager who was into him for eighty thousand
credits had sent his goons to give D’Nei a friendly thumping and he had somehow
gotten the idea that Cal would make good on the debt.

The damage had been contained, and the casino was now a
regular, if somewhat reluctant, ‘contributor’ to the cause, but Cal couldn’t
afford to let a walking risk vector like D’Nei continue breathing. He had to be
stopped.

Cal realized with a flush of pride that he couldn’t make the
operator from cell thirteen who’d been tasked for the op.  There wasn’t
the slightest sign that D’Nei was being tailed, and Cal wondered, with a sudden
flash of concern, whether the man had lost his target. D’Nei was almost to the
cab stand. If it was going to happen, it would be in the next ten seconds. He
felt the surge of adrenaline and fought to control  his physical behavior.
If a passerby noticed his agitation, only seconds before D’Nei was shoved over
the railing-free edge of the cab stand, they might make the connection.

D’Nei was halfway past the ten meter cabstand. A group of
company magisters was approaching from the opposite direction and Cal felt the
urge to curse but stifled it. It was too risky. There were five of the lawmen
and they raised the risk level to unacceptable levels. They would have to set
up for tomorrow and run the risk of one more night of D’Nei telling everyone
how important he’d become.

Cal was just about to turn away when he saw a disturbance
among the company enforcers. One magister had been knocked to the floor and
almost rolled over the glowing red strip marking the edge of the stand. He’d
been stopped by one of his quicker comrades who held him, legs dangling, over
the seven hundred meter drop of the central atrium.

A brief moment of exertion and he was safe again, sitting on
the floor in the grip of an adrenaline rush. One of his fellow officials
dragged the cause of the accident into the clear space left by the watching
crowd, throwing him down in front of the shuddering judge.

It was D’Nei.

Cal forced an expression of mild interest to hide the smile
in his head. His operator had obviously absorbed every detail of his briefing.
D’Nei had more than ninety demerits on his account.

They had learned of his predicament when he’d reached
seventy five. At fifty demerits, you’re deemed too stupid to operate a
passenger vehicle and your license is revoked. At seventy five you’re denied
the privilege of reproduction and an implant is hidden somewhere on your body
to render you sterile. With limited space and resources, the administrators
didn’t want the city filling up with criminals or idiots.

D’Nei had been spotted coming out of the clinic and Cal had
learned of it within the hour. Through a ‘friend’ in the records department,
they had watched with growing concern as his demerits continued to grow. He’d
accumulated the vast majority of points since his induction to the movement,
pushing ever closer to that fateful hundred.

If you accumulated a hundred demerits, you just didn’t
belong in Tsekoh. The cost to leave was beyond most citizens. There was only
one way out – up the orbital tether through a shielded corridor that protected
passengers from the immense pressure of the ocean as well as the poisonous
gasses of the planetary atmosphere. The price per kilogram of an elevator ride
up the massive carbon tether was usually only achievable after years of saving.

And there was no way the administration was going to pay to
ship malcontents off world…

The magister climbed back to his feet and pulled out his
handheld. One of his colleagues reached down, grabbing the grovelling D’Nei’s
hand and held it, palm up, for identification.

D’Nei’s hand fluoresced his identity code and the aggrieved
magister scanned it, grinning as his readout flashed red. Assault carried a
range of five to thirty demerits and, when the accused had almost killed a
company magister in the process, the maximum was considered justifiable. The magisters
edged D’Nei over to the glowing red warning line, one of them waving off an
approaching cab – directing it to drop it’s passengers at the next level up.

A registered citizen who accumulated a hundred demerits
would still serve the city – as an organ bank. They were far less likely to be
addicted to narcotics and their organs were usually all claimed within the
first week. It at least gave them a chance to put their affairs in order.

If you were an NRW, the risk of contamination was deemed too
high. Far better to simply get rid of them, but there was still that nagging
problem
concering
the cost of deportation. Well, they
were
criminals, after all.

Ignoring D’Nei’s frantic pleas, the officer he’d hit raised
his unit and pulled the trigger. The energy burst began at center of mass,
blasting D’Nei’s tissues outward in a spray of flesh and fluid, vaporizing
every last bit of him within a one meter radius. It was clean, efficient and
absolutely terrifying to watch.

Though Cal was disgusted by this demonstration of law
enforcement, he was still able to appreciate how well the operative from cell
thirteen had performed. He’d spotted the magisters but, instead of simply
aborting, he’d used his knowledge of the target to engineer his death at the
hands of the administration.

The operator would certainly bear watching, but in a much
more positive connotation than D’Nei.

Planet 3428

R
ick
paused, balancing on his left foot with practiced grace. He eased his right
foot back, looking down at the twig that would have snapped under his foot,
drawing the attention of the farthest smuggler. He cocked his head as
realization dawned. Whether the nearer smuggler had a hearing problem or was
simply pre-occupied, it was an advantage to keep in mind.

He was close enough at any rate and he sank down to a
crouch, sweat jarring into motion, gathering speed as the rivulets absorbed
smaller beads on their way down his face. He wanted to be sure of what he was
seeing before taking any action so he settled in to watch the two men working
in the tropical heat of the dense jungle.

Men
might have been a stretch, but they were humanoid
and close enough in their looks to pass unremarked among the humans back at the
‘
Canal’
. They’d claimed to be Tauhentan traders, when they had first
come down to the surface with a badly shot up port lifter and atmosphere
venting from several locations on their ship, the
Foxlight
.

Nobody had thought to question their profession. What did it
matter how they earned a living? Everybody was far more concerned about the
combat damage on the
Foxlight.
The residents of the
Canal
were
the last of mankind and they’d survived this long by staying hidden. For near
eight generations now, they’d managed to avoid detection. And now there were
strangers in their midst and potential hostiles in the black above?

After their ancestors had refused the unlawful command of
Admiral John Towers and fled from the dying, plague infested fleet, they’d
settled here and remained hidden for a century and a half. The war was done.
The Dactari, if they had managed to escape the plague, would have been able to
chalk it up as a victory and get back to business as usual.

Perhaps Humans would rise again, but for now, they were an
endangered species.

And the presence of a smuggler ship in their midst had
raised the spectre of discovery. Sam Fletcher had led the discussions with the
visitors, as was his hereditary right, and he’d reported that the aliens didn’t
seem to possess the limited precognitive abilities common to Humans born on
3428. He’d been able to dance verbal circles around their guests and concluded
that killing them would only bring search parties, led by their comrades.

Of course, the smugglers had no idea they were up against
such an advantage. They also had no idea about the rapid fire questions that
were almost, but never quite, asked. Almost every human on 3428 had the ability
to see anywhere from three to fifteen seconds into their own futures and most
of them were able to handle a live stream of several future perception trails
as a part of their daily life.

More than eighty five percent of the average 3428 resident’s
brain was in use at any given moment, processing the results of their possible
actions and sorting out the wisest options. Nobody disagreed when Al Fletcher
decided that the best course of action would be to trade spicewood with the
smugglers in return for materials and parts.

Fletcher had noticed the smuggler captain’s reaction to the
small spicewood box in the conference room and probed him about it. Through
several dozen questions, considered but not asked, he learned of the value that
was still placed on spicewood and knew he had the ability to apply leverage.

There was enough spicewood on 3428 to make a thousand men
rich and Fletcher knew the smuggler captain and his crew, all family, would go
to great lengths to protect the secret behind their new-found windfall. But
that didn’t mean they wouldn’t get greedy.

The deal had been struck almost a year ago and both sides
had done well. The smugglers’ shuttle, sitting just inside the hangar bay of
the
Canal
, was a shiny new model, a far cry from the one they’d landed
in the first encounter. The food and textiles brought by the traders had gone a
long way toward making life a little more comfortable for the Humans and Rick
had managed to get his hands on enough parts to start bringing the
Canal
back
up to snuff.

As a direct descendant of the ship’s original chief
engineer, Sandy Heywood, Rick and his older brother had inherited the job and
the parts brought in trade had gone a long way toward reversing the ravages of
time.

But now, it looked like the smugglers were thinking about
cutting out the middle man. As Rick crouched in the tropical humidity, the two
smugglers in the clearing ahead were stacking up sections of spicewood trunks.

The agreement was clear. The Humans would harvest the wood,
and the only loading point would be in the hangar deck of the
Canal.
The
smugglers were obviously padding the deal with a little free wood.

Rick couldn’t see more than fourteen seconds into his own
future, but he didn’t need his precog ability to know that things would go
badly for his people if they were cut out of the deal.

Rising to one knee, he drew his recurve bow, massive arm and
back muscles making light of a motion that he’d been practicing his entire
adult life. He took careful aim at the farthest smuggler. He waited for a few
seconds to avoid an apparent lack of distraction with the nearest man and then
loosed. The arrow, made of dense spicewood, took the man in the armpit as he
reached up to wipe the sweat from his face. His body pitched sideways from the
force, just as Rick knew it would.

He was already attending to the death of the second man, who
was just starting to notice that something was amiss. Rick aimed at a spot
above the second man’s head and released the second arrow as the target rose to
go to his comrade’s aid. The arrow punched through his back, snapped a rib and
destroyed his heart.

Rick raised to his feet and, seeing no complications, jogged
into the clearing to retrieve his arrows. Even in death, they couldn’t have
spicewood that they hadn’t paid for, and the arrows would raise questions. Far
better to let nature take it’s course.

He wiped the shafts on the smuggler’s shirt before rinsing
them off with some of his drinking water. He reached into his pouch and pulled
out a salve laced with chimera urine, applying it to the two shafts. With a
quick scan of the ground to ensure he hadn’t dropped anything, he turned and
loped off into the undergrowth to retrieve the springbuck he’d shot earlier.

He was halfway there when he heard the first snarls of a
chimera. In this region, exposed blood would draw them within minutes. If you
scratched yourself and didn’t have any salve to cover the smell, you’d be
better off cutting your own throat. Weighing just over eight hundred kilos, the
chimera was a four legged predator covered in thick, protruding chitinous
scales that acted as heat sinks. Though reptilian in appearance, they gave
birth to live young and fed them from mammary glands.

They loved the smell of humanoid blood above all other prey
for some reason, and Rick knew he’d have an easier than usual time returning
home with the slightly bloody but heavily salved beast over his shoulder, now
that they were distracted. He would have nothing to worry about from the
smugglers either. Nothing would be left of the two men but teeth and their
captain could hardly ask the Humans about two men he’d sent to steal wood.