SILURIAN WORLD: The Silurian Nebula 4210
"He's here." the sheriff said bluntly.
Though separated from the hive mind for the sake of independent action, Bandor was able to utilize much of CC Cyborg faculties to his advantage. Information streams could be gotten when needed. He could see this sheriff had taken a determinedly long voyage pursuing his quarry. He also had a list of the man's fighting equipment. It appeared the sheriff had enhanced standard issue with some private upgrades. That was disconcerting.
This one's relishing this, Bandor thought uncomfortably. He ran data streams scanning base perimeter.
"I sense nothing. What makes you so certain?"
"I can feel him. He's here." Beneath the grey skin-suit, the sheriff’s head cocked to one side. "Have you read his files?"
"Some." Bandor lied. "But I don't see what biographical information on a loser con can matter. He'll be hydroponics fodder very shortly." Bandor said acidly.
"Perhaps." the sheriff adjusted his weapon.
Bandor grew more fretful by the minute with this sheriff’s presence on his base. The man was obsessed with his desire for Leavel’s throat. Like he was hunting tigers on Rigel Four.
Harry's in on this! I know it! Bandor felt his control in the scheme of things slipping away. First Harry, now this monster.
"You should really read your files, Mr. Bandor"...
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THE DERELICT: Hercules Cluster 4210
When I rounded the last of the shattered unformed webs of nebula and neutron star derelicts that skirted the darkness at the edge of the galaxy, I came up upon the big Hercules cluster. I could see the final void of intergalactic space just past the Echo City mines and the alloy camps of Phlegra station. Into that labyrinth of red and black smelters and dark skeletal forms looming against
the void I shot. The casts then were nearly silent but for a maddening background of static and wailing signals like the ghosts of the Predecessors warning doom.
Empty casts, I knew what that would mean.
Corpses and busted shields, empty silver starships drifting in the charcoal wastes, in the cold and radiation. |
Deep void off Pleiades Cluster, 4110.
It was a long nasty haul across the void...
The resurrected ship was ancient, designed before the Arcturian wars. Most of Vince's flight training didn't apply. He figured things out by trial and error while moving through Zero Space, fine tuning a MERGE piloting helmet as he went. There were the CC corpses he'd dispatched-they'd have been able to explain everything, but he couldn’t have risked even a questioning before he killed them.
In a fury he'd murdered them all, slashing riotously with his fathers mining lasers, spilling guts and entrails mixed with plastics and software from another era. Another era when they'd committed genocide against the ancestors of his people.
He careened alone through the darkness. Just him, the ship, and space that matched geologic time with an uncompromising perfection. He learned its ways, he waited.
Vince had his ship, and when the bitter irony wore off his twisted mad laughter, he found quiet sanity again. There were the hyper casts; he listened to the garble of a hundred civilizations. The inane claptrap of lonely freighter pilots, virtreal stations that offered to fry your brains with ugly pleasures, and occasionally a fresh cast off some glistening new Post light months away.
He pieced odds and ends of news together.
Seemed the king of the Pleiades was at war, and the Pleiades were his destination. A good place to show up with a warhorse star frigate in mint condition. So, he would begin his career as a mercenary.
Even the void had an end.
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RIPTIDE: Perseus Arm: Luxus University World
The candyapple red yacht darted out of hyper at the edge of the Luxus system flawlessly, almost recklessly. Its navigational coordinates had to be recent, fresh out of Deneb 4. It negotiated satellites and stations like there had been trial runs.
There hadn't. The pilots were simply good, very good.
System police barely had time to raise eyebrows and alerts. Then priority override codes casted in. The yacht was permitted to continue toward the second planet without even having to register title. It broke atmosphere with hesitation, slowing only a little then, coasting toward the mirror seas.
There wasn't a scratch on it.
Obscenely expensive, seductively luxurious, the yacht was embossed with the name RIPTIDE in letters two meters high and either side. It looked frighteningly out of place when it water ported on the placid inland sea of Lake Lux. Yet there it was among a cache of small white in-system shuttles,
tugs,transports and water ships.
Vincent Leavel noticed the red yacht early that same morning from an elevated maglev train that ran along the waterfront. He smiled when he saw the Riptide's oversize hyper drives. The lines of the yacht were sleek, sexy, bent forward as if ready for action.
"Hot, quick, and easy." He whispered to himself... |
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