“Why is this statue so important to these people?” Saqr demanded, hauling herself up onto the air hockey table and almost falling as her shaking hands slipped on the edge. She maneuvered herself around so her deck-booted legs were swinging loosely off the table, looking around at the rest of the group.
Adam, calm and solemn as if they had simply been in a particularly complicated meeting, grunted as he began pouring beer for everyone from the sputtering dispenser. “It’s just money,” he called over his shoulder. “Some kinds of people do these kinds of things for money, and we just took all of Merez’s loose birr.”
As Adam spoke Al Hamra cast a handful of tags onto the coffee table in front of the sofas. He, too, showed no sign of reaction or fear. “We were chasing a gangster’s money. What did you think would happen?”
“Well, it was nothing compared to the Ghazali,” Saqr pointed out. “And we didn’t see anyone being eaten alive, or crushed, or electrocuted, or blown out of their escape pod. But I still want to know why that statue matters so much. I guess we can wait to ask Siladan?” Siladan was in the larger of their ship’s two medlabs, having his injured leg treated by Dr. Delecta. There had been a lot of groaning, screaming and blood by the time they got him back to the Phoenix of Hamura, but it seemed like he was not going to lose his leg.
“I think I have an idea why they want it,” Al Hamra told them, pulling out his tablet and connecting the tags to it. Numbers flicked up on the screen. He let out a low whistle of appreciation when they had stopped auto-calculating. “Another twelve thousand birr,” he announced, eliciting a small and ragged cheer from Olivia and Saqr. Olivia leaned next to Saqr on the air hockey table, and they clicked beer glasses together in salutation. Her foot had mostly healed, and she stood gingerly on it now, flexing it occasionally as if she did not believe it could be working again so soon.
“Twelve thousand!” Olivia repeated. “That’s enough to pay our first month on this beast, and set ourselves up to take passengers and cargo.” She slapped one hand on the edge of the table. “We’re up and running!”
“It’s also enough to get Merez back on our tail,” Adam pointed out. “That’s a lot of money, and now he doesn’t have his statue.”
“How many bodyguards can that greasy gandu have?” Saqr asked rhetorically. “And does he have any money left to hire more Cellar thugs?”
“Captain, you said you had an idea?” Olivia asked, waving Saqr to quiet as she tried to drag Al Hamra back to the topic of the statue. “What are you thinking?”
Al Hamra put the tablet down on the table next to the tags, leaning back on the sofa with a sigh of satisfaction. “I think that statue has some connection to Mystic powers,” he told them. “I felt something on the bridge when we first found it. I don’t know what, I’ve never felt anything like it before. But there was something there.”
“Is that why they got attacked by creatures from the Dark Between the Stars?” Adam asked, fiddling with a control panel for the window. The screen flickered from subtle pastel patterns through starscapes and several natural landscapes before finally clearing to give them a view of the Neoptra spaceport. The port’s ceiling hung far above them, a network of gantries and walkways interspersed with bright lights, drones weaving between the mess of cables and spars. A heavy crane moved slowly across the ceiling, on some freight delivery mission. “Were they guarding it?”
“Maybe,” Al Hamra conceded. “I’ve never heard of such a thing before, but I don’t really know anything about Mystic powers. Only what I can do myself.”
“Wow, so you had to learn everything about it yourself?” Saqr asked, and he nodded.
“Sort of,” he replied.
“Does the statue do something for your powers?” Olivia asked him.
He shook his head. “No idea. I just had a feeling. I’ve never thought about my power connecting to a physical object before. I don’t know what to do or how to do it!” He sighed. “You have no idea how confusing it is to have this feeling inside you.”
“But if we get the statue back you could experiment?” Saqr asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Adam told her. “What if he does something and some of the things that attacked Lavim come out of it? You saw how much blood he had on him. We don’t want to deal with that.”
“Can it be worse than a team of desperate Nekatra?” Saqr countered, and they paused to think about that.
“She’s right,” Olivia said finally. “We survived the Ghazali. We can survive anything.”
“Doesn’t mean we have to play stupid games with anything that comes our way,” Adam pointed out reasonably. “Even if we get this thing back, I don’t think our captain should be playing with it until Siladan’s had time to do some research.”
“First we have to get it though,” Olivia reminded them. “Captain, can you find it now? If it’s been stolen, someone might be trying to move it now, and we need to get in quick before it gets out of reach.”
Al Hamra sighed, leaned back and closed his eyes. After a short period of silence, during which everyone else watched him intently, he opened his eyes again, sitting forward suddenly. “It’s in the spaceport!” He exclaimed.
“Whoever stole it must be preparing to ship it out,” Olivia suggested. “We need to get it back now!”
They broke into action, rushing off to their rooms to prepare gear while Al Hamra called the medlab to tell Dr. Delecta what they were planning to do. Within minutes they were gathered at the gangway elevator behind the bridge, armed and ready. This time Olivia was carrying her carbine, clumsily concealed beneath a heavy cloak. Seeing Al Hamra’s raised eyebrow she slapped the gun. “Not again,” she insisted. “We’ve been caught without enough punch twice already in this stupid little affair.”
“Should I stay on the bridge?” Saqr asked. “I don’t have a gun and if things go wrong we might need to leave suddenly.”
“That leaves just three of us,” Olivia protested, but Al Hamra nodded agreement with the pilot. “I think that’s best. Starting a firefight in the spaceport is kind of desperate. If things go wrong it might be a good idea to have the engines ready to run.” Saqr nodded and ducked down the hallway towards the bridge.
“Let’s add an anti-personnel weapon for the Phoenix to our list of tasks,” Adam suggested quietly as he watched the diminutive pilot disappearing through the forward service area towards the bridge.
“Let’s add not firing heavy weapons in Neoptra spaceport to our list of rules,” Al Hamra countered. “They’ll turn our ship and us to slag if we open fire with anything heavy in here.” He stepped back to make sure both of them were in view. “We can’t get in a public firefight here, okay?” He asked, and prodded Olivia in the arm when she did not immediately respond. “In someone’s ship if we have to, but not in the bays. Is that clear? And you, Olivia, maybe you can’t move properly yet, so let’s not do anything that we have to run away from.” Receiving a sullen nod from Olivia and a more attentive acknowledgement from Adam, he added, “We check the situation first, and we only do this if the odds look good, okay?” More nods. “We’ve got enough money to start our business, we don’t need to take any risks for more.”
They nodded reluctant agreement. “We can at least find out who has it,” Adam pointed out, and they headed out.
Neoptra spaceport was arranged by size, with the two largest bays, each capable of holding a single ship twice the size of the Phoenix of Hamura, side by side directly beneath the Spice Plaza. Next to them were two bays for ships like the Phoenix, each big enough for two ships about its size, arranged vertically. Beyond them were a series of smaller bays, stacked across multiple levels like a beehive. They did not have a map of this system of bays, so they had to work their way slowly to the location Al Hamra had identified by a process of guesswork and dead reckoning, moving along gantries and walkways and service corridors until eventually, after an hour of searching, they found themselves standing on a narrow, well-hidden steel gantry in one of the smaller bays, looking down at one of three small spaceships that occupied the bay. Two of those ships were standard light freighters, blocky grey- and blue-patterned vessels with their names and identification numbers painted in big, bland lettering on their flanks. Aside from flickering ready-lights around doors and bridge area those two ships were unattended and silent, their crews probably carousing dockside until the very last moment before they had to leave. Sitting between them, though, was a completely different kind of vessel. It was a sleek, narrow dagger-shaped thing, about fifty meters long and tapering to a sharp nose with a swept-back, aerodynamically-styled viewshield for the bridge. Narrow wings angled back from the mid-section of the ship, protruding about half its length to each side and drooping down to almost touch the deck. An obvious gun turret of some kind was recessed into the top of the vessel between the wings, and although it was difficult to tell through the structure of the wings it looked like there might be a set of rocket pods or some other kind of space-combat weapon slung beneath the hull. The whole thing was painted matte black, with simple arabesques in glowing red embossed along the sides and in detailing around the bridge viewshield and the rear cargo access door, which was open. No name or symbols of any kind were painted on the hull flanks or the wings, the vessel looking exactly as they would imagine an assassin would look if he or she were transformed into a space-faring vessel. Dock-workers in simple grey deck clothes moved around the cargo access door, directing stevedoring robots to carry small crates and boxes into the ship. Adam, Al Hamra and Olivia were all familiar enough with space travel to recognize preparations for departure, as the stevedore’s guild loaded the ship with supplies for a journey. There were perhaps three times as many workers as usual, though, and they were overseen from the deck by an imposing figure who stood side on to them, dark-skinned face impassive and glossy black hair merging with the shadows of a heavy, well-made black caftan trimmed with the same red arabesques as decorated the ship.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Well,” Adam grunted. “That looks … deadly. Are you sure it’s in there?”
Al Hamra nodded. “It’s definitely not in the freighters, I’m afraid.”
“We get all the luck,” Olivia said with a small sigh. “But that ship can’t be carrying many people,” she observed. “It’s built for speed and combat, I’d say, not transport.”
“Good point,” Al Hamra conceded. “Still, let’s see what we can learn. Saqr?” He touched the communicator in his ear, and after a moment the pilot responded affirmatively from the ship. “We’re in bay …” he looked around “… Z74. We don’t have the flight logs here, can you check what the third ship in the bay is? We have Asimov’s Donkey and Consortium Route 473a, but there’s a third one with no name or ID.”
They waited, watching the bustling activity around the cargo area. “Hello Captain?” Saqr spoke after a moment, this time in all their communicators. “That is a beautiful ship, and I would love to fly it.” They guessed she had a picture or a schematic on her monitor back on the bridge.
“The name, Saqr,” Al Hamra reminded her. “And who it works for if you can find it.”
“It’s called the Shadow Hunter, Captain. No details but it’s not registered as Legion or Order. I guess it’s a freelancer?”
The Legion were a semi-formalized military force, something between mercenaries and a standing army in the service of one of the Factions. They were born in the aftermath of the Portal Wars, when the few surviving ships from the last cataclysmic battle turned to pillaging and raiding to survive the Long Night. Over the centuries that followed, and with the recovery and reconnection of the Third Horizon’s systems, they slowly transformed into a coherent military and fleet, first as trade security guarantors for whoever paid them, eventually becoming almost entirely agents of the Faction called the Consortium after the foundation of Coriolis station. Their ships were not especially sophisticated, usually clearly labeled, and generally ugly. Since the Consortium was a mercantile Faction founded in and closely associated with Coriolis station, the Legion usually had several ships of varying size and lethality docked at Neoptra spaceport at any time, and would not be expected to be involved in criminal theft within their own station.
In contrast to the Legion, the Order of the Pariah very rarely visited Coriolis station, except in connection to the hospital that their Samaritans ran there. They were a Firstcome Faction with an almost fanatical devotion to the Icon known as the Judge, whose motivations were largely religious and who were generally distrusted because of their overzealous in their pursuit of people they deemed heretics. They were rumored to maintain a brutal theocratic dictatorship in their home system of Zalos, but it was difficult to confirm the truth of this rumor because the system was closed to outside interference and most reports about its situation were provided by dissidents with strange religious views. Their ships were usually very large, with a distinctive religious style and iconography, easily identifiable even by people with no knowledge of space travel.
There were other Factions that were commonly involved in space travel, but their aesthetic was less purposeful than the Legion or the Order of the Pariah, and it was impossible to tell from the outside whether a ship was associated with any of those factions. “Any other information to help us figure it out, Saqr?” Al Hamra asked her.
A few moments of silence. “Nothing I can see Captain. Oh, but it’s leaving in the next few hours. Sudden change of itinerary.”
“Where to?” Al Hamra gave a meaningful look to the others. The reason for the change of itinerary was obvious to all of them.
“To the Portals.” And, when Al Hamra pressed for a destination for the jump, “No information Captain. Looks like they’re planning to go through solo.” Because Portal travel carried risks, many ship’s captains preferred to have the astrogators at the Portal stations provide them with entry coordinates, and such a request always required the captains to log their destination with the flight manifest at their departing station. The astrogators were expensive, though, so many captains chose to pool the fee with a group of other ships in what was commonly referred to as a Caravan. Since Caravans usually included freighters with fixed routes, and since Caravans formed through advertising for pool members on the Bulletin, the destination of most Caravans was public knowledge. If a captain had no money, was in a hurry, or wanted to hide their destination, they would fly through the Portal solo – doing their own astrogation and prayers and hoping that their skills in advanced astrophysics would be enough to avoid any unfortunate encounters with the Dark Between the Stars. It appeared that the captain of the Shadow Hunter was either desperate enough, poor enough, or good enough to go it alone.
“So our statue is on a combat vessel from an unknown Faction, going to an unknown place,” Al Hamra summarized, slapping his hand on the gantry railing.
“I don’t like the look of this,” Adam noted, somewhat unnecessarily.
“Any idea the crew size?” Al Hamra asked, and waited. Recording crew size was mandatory in most stations, for quarantine and security reasons.
“Four,” Saqr told him. “No names.”
“Rich enough to bribe the port authorities then,” Al Hamra said, but Saqr corrected him.
“Names not required at Coriolis, Captain.”
He slapped his hand on the gantry again. As he did so a figure descended the cargo ramp to talk to the dark-clad watcher. This person’s gender was impossible to determine beneath their layers of heavy combat armor, and they carried a thermal carbine. They bent forward to speak to the dark-clad watcher, then turned around to walk back inside.
“Think we can take three of them?” Olivia asked, and chuckled grimly.
“They’re Draconites,” Adam said, his jaw clenched in rage or fear as he said it.
“Friends of yours?” Olivia asked with a twitch of a grin, but did not pursue the question when she saw Al Hamra’s furious look.
“How do you know?” Al Hamra asked him.
“I just do,” he replied.
“Arkial was right?” Olivia pushed, ignoring Al Hamra’s frown.
“After a fashion,” the soldier admitted. “It’s complicated. But we can’t fight them.”
“Adam,” Al Hamra said, voice hard and low. “We can’t be working together if you have Factional allegiances that are more important than your crew.”
“It’s not an allegiance!” Adam snapped. “I just can’t fight them. Physically. I can’t physically attack a Draconite.”
“Good to know,” Olivia said as Al Hamra took a step back in shock.
“Why not?” Al Hamra asked him. “Is it some …”
“I don’t know!” Adam replied, becoming visibly flustered as he tried to think through the situation. “I just – I tried, once. I can’t. Okay?! So we can’t go into that ship. If they catch us, they’ll kill you and I’ll just have to watch.”
“Well,” Al Hamra collected himself and stepped back to the gantry rail. “We can’t fight them anyway. I don’t think my pistol will even scratch that armor, and I don’t feel like being barbecued in return. There’s only really one way in and out of that ship, and it’s small so probably just a corridor and a line of rooms. Unless they leave the statue in a box at the back of the cargo bay, we aren’t getting it.”
“And even if we get away,” Olivia continued for him, “If those people know who we are we’ll be in trouble with the Draconites. Fuck that for a game of soldiers.”
Al Hamra sighed. “Looks like we’ve reached the end of the road with this. Let’s get back to the ship. Siladan’s probably recovered enough to give us a lecture on the reasons why the Draconites would want a statue connected to the Dark Between the Stars.”
They stepped out of sight of the Shadow Hunter and set off for their ship, leaving the statue’s mysteries for the Draconites.
