Spoiler
The rather run-down docking bay was quiet, plastic pallets scattered about, a Harpoon missile still left on a holding rack with the warhead cover open. The dockworkers were gone, having being bribed or threatened into vacating the premises for a few hours. Such things were quite routine on this particular station given the nature of its clientele, and the staff as a rule weren’t particularly inclined to object to taking a break from the daily grind, so none of them had really complained about the eviction. Now there were just three people here with the frigate - no, six now; the guests had just arrived.
Tomás Ibarra shifted on his feet, trying his best not to look jittery as his new customers walked through the loading door. He brushed some imaginary lint off the front of his shirt and dusted off his slacks, more to calm his nerves than anything else. It wouldn’t do to be seen rubbing his palms together in front of the clients.
Adela Sybitz was looking good as always, he thought wistfully, even in that dull red jumpsuit she was wearing. They’d done business several times before, and he rather regretted the fact that business was all she seemed to be interested in. Or maybe it was because he kept flubbing his pickup lines. Still, she was always a pleasure to have around, and he looked forward to interacting with her again.
Valentina Dragunova, on the other hand… Ibarra suppressed a shudder, and carefully avoided eye contact as she approached. He was convinced that she was just waiting for an opportunity to kill him in as brutal a fashion as possible, especially after the time he lost three hundred credits to her in a pub blackjack game and snuck off without paying. Though he couldn’t tell for sure, he was certain she was currently carrying at least two guns under that pseudoleather jacket of hers, and he was suddenly acutely grateful for the two bodyguards beside him that the Hatchet had provided.
White-coated Loz Sequeira he paid no attention to at all. They had little reason to interact beyond the occasional discussion of some technical aspect of a ship being traded.
“It’s good to see you, Adela,” Ibarra said as she approached, putting on his most winsome smile.
“Good to see you too, Tommy,” she said, shaking his hand. “I suppose this is the Vigilance you wanted to sell?”
“Yep. I took the liberty of adding shielded cargo pods, a capacitor bank attachment, and an expanded missile chamber. With a good crew, this bad boy will outfight any government frigate in half the subsector, and carry all your loot around afterwards.” He beamed. “If you’d like to take a look at the internals?”
She nodded, flashing a quick grin. “Be glad to.”
“...so, as you can see, the reaction wheels more than make up for the sticky maneuvering thrusters,” Ibarra said on the bridge thirty minutes later. “Of course, a fine skipper like yourself would have no trouble even without it, yes?”
“Perhaps.” Sybitz gave him a carefully metered smile, which almost became too big when she saw it have the desired effect on him. “Still, I’d feel better if you showed us some trials against a fighter wing or two.”
“Of course. I just…” he started, when his communicator started buzzing. “Excuse me,” he mumbled, then lifted the device to his head. “What is it, Doug… boarders? Power armor?! You can’t be-”
Even through the comm with its noise dampening system, the flashbang on the other end of the line came as a sharp jab to his ears. He jerked his hand away, flinching, and in his distraction failed to realize his prospective clients were already drawing weapons. His bodyguards were doing the same, but unlike Sybitz and her team, they’d been caught by surprise, and it cost them a valuable split second.
In that split second, Sequeira and Dragunova leveled and fired their electrolasers, sending a few hundred volts arcing through the air into Ibarra’s goons. One went down with ventricular fibrillation, although he would end up staying alive thanks to prompt medical attention. The other was simply paralysed temporarily, but more than long enough for the red-haired pirate gunner to drive the butt of her weapon into his solar plexus and send him slumping to the deck.
By the time he realised anything was even amiss, Tomás’s bodyguards were already down and out, falling without so much as a groan. He started to say something, only to be presented with the muzzle of Sybitz’s mag-pistol, and found himself completely, utterly speechless for the first time in his life.
“Sorry, Tommy,” she said genially, “but you’ve been hanging out with some really bad people. They’ve made my new friends very, very angry, and if you don’t tell them everything you know, they’re not going to protect you from Tina here.”
His eyes darted to Dragunova, who had just finished cuffing her guard, and swallowed at her piercing green gaze. “Good day, Mr. Ibarra,” she said coldly. “Remember that blackjack game?”
“Dios, please, I don’t know who’s funding them,” Ibarra whimpered. “I’m just a middleman. I get guns and ships for Holk and the others, they give me credits. I don’t ask where the money comes from.”
They’d moved him to the Vigilance’s cargo hold and put him in a hard plastic chair with his hands cuffed behind the backrest. All the lights had been turned off except for the one directly above him, leaving his interrogators shrouded in shadow - except for Dragunova, whose intimidating visage loomed visibly over him like a mask of death.
“What kind of ships and guns?” Loz Sequeira’s voice was cold behind him.
“Frigates of various kinds,” Ibarra said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Some destroyers too… stolen or military surplus. A couple of Buffalo Twos, a Sunder, and one of the Condors I had in inventory. Their weapons too, of course. Plus small arms for boarding teams.” He hung his head. “I don’t deal with any of the really large stuff. They have other people for that.”
“Right. How many vessels are we talking about here?”
“Seven frigates, in the past three months. Three destroyers.”
“And you’re one of the small-time dealers,” Artemis Archer put in, leaning on a crate of spare flux capacitors.
“Y-Yes,” he said, nodding frantically. “They’ve been buying up ships like potatoes. The orders came in faster than I could stock them.”
There was silence for a while, and Tomás Ibarra became acutely aware of the cold sweat trickling down his neck and the pounding of his heart in his ears. Then Dragunova seized his jowls, lifting his face to meet hers.
“Listen carefully, Mr. Ibarra,” she whispered. “Those guys back there are the only thing standing between me and a very extensive rearrangement of your internal organs. If you like your body as it is, you better tell them something - anything - you know about your clients’ mysterious sponsors. Do you understand?”
“I swear, I have no idea,” he choked. “I mean, I overheard this guy talking once about some big interstellar corporation paying them off and even sending them some ships, but he was drunk at the time, so-”
“Hold up,” Major Janusz Koniecpolski cut in. “This guy you ‘overheard,’ he wouldn’t happen to have a name, would he?”
The arms dealer exhaled sharply after a few seconds. “Krešimirovic. Dmitar Krešimirovic. He runs the Claws of Adria from out of Thrace, I think. I sold him a Lasher and a couple of autocannons once.” His eyes drifted pleadingly to the source of the voice. “That’s all I know about him, really. Can I go now?”
“Depends,” the Marine answered. “Maybe if you tell us a good way to find him, we’ll ask your girlfriend nicely to leave you alone.”
Ibarra found himself caught in her green eyes again, like a deer in headlights, and tried his best not to wet himself.
“Does Ms. Dragunova always act like that?” Archer asked later in the hallway outside.
“Nah, Tina’s really mellow once you get to know her,” Sybitz said, leaning back against a bulkhead. “She never even really cared about that blackjack game all that much, honestly. That act was just because the job called for screwing with Tommy’s head.”
“I’m surprised. I didn’t expect her to help us so well.”
Adela shrugged. “She wouldn’t, normally as a rule, she doesn’t have the time of day for governments. But she also believes in doing a job well even if she doesn’t like it. That’s one of the reasons I keep her around.” She glanced at the cargo bay they’d just left. “What are we going to do with the prisoners?”
“Well, they aren’t actually guilty of piracy themselves, so we can’t just toss them out the airlock.” Artemis folded her arms. “That said, we’ve talked to the local authorities, and it seems some of them have been really naughty boys. They’re all going to spend some quality penitentiary time, at any rate.”
“What about Tommy? He’s been very helpful to us, and it would be a shame to just toss a nice kid like that in prison.”
Archer tilted her head. “You think we should just let him go?” It was a question, not a barb, but it could have easily been interpreted otherwise.
“Not quite.” Sybitz handed her a piece of paper - old-fashioned cellulose, not the synthetic substitutes that just about everyone had used pre-Collapse.
“What’s this?”
“Drop him off at this address.” The pirate skipper smiled thinly. “I guarantee you that what his mother will do to him will be worse than any punishment we can think of.”
“It is still not fully resolved, then?”
“I… I am sorry, Your Excellency,” the engineer in the observation room stammered. “We have repaired the fire control as best as we can, but I cannot promise it will not fail again under the stresses of battle.” He bowed. “I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit, on behalf of my men.”
“Hmph,” Manza Holk snorted. “Just take a day or two more to try again, but I have other ships that require attending to as well. I expect that they will be done on schedule.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” the other man said with audible relief. He walked away, his eyes still on the deck.
Beside Holk, Blanco y Marcos looked down through the thick viewport at the mammoth form of the Doomfist in its docking cradle, skinsuited technicians and their bots scattered around it like so many ants. Repair drones scurried about on the brown hull, as a heavy lifter carefully attached a new missile pod to the upper middle bow. From up this close, few things were as impressive or terrifying as a fully armed Dominator-class cruiser like it, and he could only imagine what mind-numbing terror its victims must have felt staring down the barrels of its guns.
Holk was turning away now, and Blanco followed him. The pirate chieftain took just a moment to dust off his immaculately tailored suit jacket before exiting into the corridor outside, and they walked some distance before stopping at another viewport.
This one offered the sight, close up, of a Gemini freighter/carrier that had just received a repainting. Emblazoned on the side was a black-on-red flag, based on a familiar logo with a twist. The central element was one he had seen many times before: a hatchet, a snake curled around its long, solid handle; but the fourteen five-pointed stars arranged in a ring around it were new. And if he thought it was pretentious to have all of them there so soon, before their plan had even really kicked off, he made no mention of it.
Further in the distance was a small group of ships, barely more than silhouettes against the blackness of space - several frigates and a destroyer, conducting a training exercise - and all of them had received the same symbol. This was just one of many squadrons they had… and when the time came, all of them would bear a common banner as they executed the will of their master and commander.
“You see, Rigo?” Holk said, an unlit cigar in his hand as he motioned at the scene. “I have often said that opportunities are principally a matter of the strength and will to seize them.” He smiled thinly. “Out there is our strength, and in here we have the will, the likes of which the Sector will learn to respect and fear.”
“It is as you say, my lord,” Blanco answered simply, and their eyes returned to the view of the stars beyond. As he contemplated all their plans, the glorious future that awaited them, he recalled something else he had once heard his master say.
Terrorize the galaxy with one ship, and they will call you a pirate. Terrorize it with a hundred, and they will call you an emperor.
“Please. You’ve got to help me.”
The heavyset mercenary petty officer in the bar examined the back of his hand, paying no obvious attention to the nervous youth at the same table. His corner of the place was quiet, an island of isolation from the bustling conversation, loud music and strobing lights in the middle of the floor… or at least it was until two minutes ago, when this scrawny boy who barely even looked like he was of drinking age had approached him, unsolicited. “And just why would I do that, kid?”
“The government killed hundreds of civilian protesters here on Duval two weeks ago,” the lad whispered, eyes darting about in search for eavesdroppers. The generally omnipresent secret police tended to patrol the areas frequented by foreigners - such as this entertainment venue - more lightly, but it would take only one informant for him to be disappeared permanently. “They say the demonstrators fired first, but it was a put-up job. None of us were even armed with modern weapons - not in Sekos - and they’re inflating the cop deaths while playing down the civilian ones. I’ve got evidence - video footage, photos, eyewitness accounts, a doctor’s report - and I have a journalist friend in Carda. If you can get it to her-”
“I got that part, kid,” the grizzled sailor interrupted, dropping his beer down with a thump. “What I wanted to know is, why should we care?”
The young man flushed with moral outrage for a moment, but bit his tongue and shook himself. The mercenary was his only hope of accomplishing his task, and calling him callous or a sociopath would do nothing to persuade him to lend his assistance. Reluctantly he dipped into the pouch hanging from his belt, pulling out a fistful of credit chits, and dumped them on the plastic surface along with a small data card. “Eight hundred. That’s all I have.”
“Mm.” Eight hundred wasn’t a lot - it’d barely cover the cost of the detour from their planned route - and wouldn’t be worth squat if he got accosted by the Security Directorate on the way out. On the other hand, the Skipper had a bit of a humanitarian streak, and could probably be persuaded to take on this job. Besides, the crew had little more love for the despots of Sekos than the locals did.
He took a gulp while he considered his options, then set the half-empty stein down on the table. “Alright, I’ll talk to the captain. If the answer is no, I’ll come back tomorrow and return your money and the chip. Else, you’ll probably hear about it on the news in two weeks’ time. Good enough enough?”
“Yes.” He nodded jerkily. “Thank you. That’s all I ask.”
“Alright.” The larger man surreptitiously scooped up the hard polymer wafers on the table, putting them in his pocket. “I’m leaving now. Wait at least five minutes before you make your own exit. And...” he gave the closest thing to a smile he could, “watch yourself, kid.”
As he watched the mercenary stand up and walk casually towards the door, the youth made another silent prayer for his lost friend Enrique.
Two days later, the ISS Black Star left Duval orbit and headed outsystem, taking half a gigabyte of various files with it.
Author
Topic: The Marenos Crisis (complete: 2015-01-31) (Read 51291 times)