Banished Worlds (2 page)

“Oh, that’s fine, lay in the course. Confirm that we will be there, awaiting their arrival.” Nelson gave me a quick glance before he turned his attention back to the data pad in his hand.

“Why am I here, Nelson? Why did you snatch me off of a prison planet?”

“I told you, I have work for you. You are to retrieve a lost package, and that’s all you need to know for now.” He did not even look my direction, as he mentioned this package to me. And he burned an apartment building down to get to me.

I had a lot of thinking to do, but all I thought about was that my hands were getting tired. I released the bench frame, drifted up to the ceiling where my back touched, then my feet. I stayed in a crescent position and floated, so my arms and legs dangled down with my head slightly tucked so as not to bump into anything. I tried not to notice the digital time clock facing the cell, but you know how that is, the harder you try not to look the more you find a reason to. I floated, waited, and watched. Seven hours almost to the minute, and the radio squawked.

“Agent Nelson, sir, they’re here.” The copilot turned his chair to face the cabin area. “They are requesting that we dock, so they can board. The interview will begin as soon as they arrive.”

“Fine, dock to whichever port they like. Oh, switch on gravity plating.” Nelson shot me a look and a smile, as I scrambled to get my feet underneath me before the gravity came on line.

I almost made it, but instead hit the deck hard on my hands and knees. “You son of a …” I cursed at Nelson to which he grinned at my little impact on the deck plating. I held my left knee and rubbed the injured area.

“Now, Harry, I remember you as being tougher in the old days. A little old drop like that wouldn’t have hurt you back then.”

“I wasn’t tougher. I had body armor on, like you do now.” I moved to the bench and sat down on the edge. “So tell me, Nelson, what is this interview about?”

“They want to know that you are the right man for the job you’ve signed on for.”

“I haven’t signed on for any job, I got kidnapped, remember.”

“Worse. You are a prisoner fleeing from the prison planet Lark. You were convicted of arson, escaped, recaptured and are now being relocated to the planet Tirus for the rest of your life.”

“I should kill you.”

“Not one of your choices. What are your choices?” Our ship shuddered slightly as it contacted the other ship for docking. “Well, we’ll get to that, soon enough. For now, behave yourself, or you’ll wish it was you that took that fall, not MoCco.”

“I’m already wishing.”

The ships docked and the main hatch opened to let more people into our small ship. In walked two armored agents, and a man that looked like he had a worse day than mine. His expression told me of his discomfort. The three piece suit said he did not spend much of his time traveling in transport ships. On the big ships, you almost had to know you were in space to even have the slightest nausea. Three more agents in armor followed the sick guy to the holding cell. The last agent was a woman by the shape of the armor she wore.

The sick man walked over to Nelson. “Is this the man you thought we needed?”

Nelson looked to me. “Yes, sir, this is Harold Danbeu. He used to be one of my best people.”

The man walked over to my cell and looked me up and down. “You don’t look like much. Kind of seen better days haven’t you, agent?” He might not feel good, but if I read him right, he was the kind of jerk that never felt good. That being the case, he would be a jerk to me now and a jerk to me later. Something else I would have to deal with, later.

“I’m not an agent anymore,” I corrected him, nicely.

“Why undertake this assignment if you are no longer an agent?”

“Harry works for pay, he’ll be paid well.” Nelson spoke up fast.

I guess I was supposed to go along with that, but too bad nobody bothered to inform me. “We’ll discuss payment after I hear about the job.”

The man turned to Nelson. “You said this was worked out, that Harry Danbeu had agreed to retrieve the President’s daughter.”

“President’s daughter, huh, The Package,” I said.

“Yes.” One of the last three guards stepped forward, the sick man that had been talking moved aside for the guard to approach. “We are talking about my daughter, Mr. Danbeu.” This guard handed his rifle to the woman, unhooked his helmet and lifted it off. It was the President himself facing me. “Jane, my daughter Jane, is on Tirus. There was some kind of a mechanical malfunction on her ship. They had to land on Tirus. Your job is to retrieve her and get her to the extraction site.”

“Is the ship damaged beyond repair? Can’t they just fix it and fly away?” I asked. The group of men outside of the cell all looked around at each other, but no one answered me. “Look, I can’t help, won’t help if I don’t have all of the information. I need everything you know, or think you know.”

“It might have been sabotaged, Harry,” Nelson said.

“We don’t know that,” the President snapped.

“And?” I prompted.

“We communicated with the ship after the crash. What they found might be sabotage, but it could not be confirmed prior to losing the signal.” This piece of information came from the sick man.

“It’s a trap. Somebody snatched your daughter, and you want me to get her back and off of Tirus, the prison planet for murderers. No one is allowed to land there.”

“Yes,” the President replied. “What do you say, Mr. Danbeu? Do we have a deal?”

“Hell no, we just started talking. I still don’t know why you didn’t just send in five hundred agents and snatch her back. You have the men and they love to shoot people.”

“That’s complicated.” This remark came again from the sick man.

“And landing on Tirus, finding her, and getting off again isn’t?” I folded my arms and waited.

“As you know, if we go down there in force and someone has her, they’ll kill her before we get close.”

Nelson thumbed the remote in his hand and electrified my cell for a quick second.

I jumped and cried out in pain.

“Don’t be dumb here, Harry,” Nelson told me. “This gets you off of Lark, or do you like that prison planet now that you’ve been there for the last eight years?”

“Tirus is a prison planet too and worse than the one I was on. Lark doesn’t have convicted killers roaming free.”

“But Harry, do this little job and you’ll be a free man again, back in the network.” Nelson smiled and that scared me more than the remote in his hand.

“Mr. Danbeu, I will give you a full pardon, if you do this and get her back to me safely.”

I stepped back from the cell bars and sat down on the bench. “You want me to go there, locate the girl, get her off planet, and for that I am a free man?”

“Exactly,” the President answered.

I sat there a minute, watching Nelson, his finger itching to trigger the electrocution remote. I waited and watched until I could see his hand muscles tense up “I want more. I want more than just my freedom. You have the troops to storm the planet and get her back, but you want me. I frankly don’t care why.” I stood up and approached the bars again. “I’ll do this, but I get the Rei Gali Space Station.

“You’re CRAZY!” Nelson yelled. He raised his voice enough to make me wonder if the armor was too tight.

“That’s my price—A full pardon AND Rei Gali Space Station.

“Rei Gali is a commercial company. I don’t have the authority to just give it away,” President Garrett said, staring at me.

“You are the President of the Federal Union of Worlds, make it happen,” I replied, then looked to Nelson. “And if you touch that control again, my price goes higher, maybe a whole planet.”

“You realize you are trying to blackmail the President of the Federal Union. I might just drop you in a hole on some deserted planet and forget you are there.”

“It ain’t my daughter on Tirus. Let me know which ride I am taking.” I walked over to the bench and stretched out.

The small group of guards and the President watched me a minute more, then the President led them back into his attached ship. The airlock closed behind them. I figured I had a long nap coming, but in this case I was wrong. I had barely closed my eyes to drift off when I heard the door hiss open. A guard approached the cell, pushed a data pad my direction, and waited for me to stand up again. “It’s done. We need your thumb print to finalize the agreement.”

“Can I read the document first?”

“I don’t know, can you read?”

I took the data pad and read the information. “This is a stock transfer. I didn’t want stock.” I handed the pad back, but the guard refused.

“Yes, it is a stock ownership transfer. President Garrett owns eighty percent of the Rei Gali stock, and he is transferring it to you. You will have partners, other stockholders, but you will have controlling interest, so you will effectively own Rei Gali. Your legal pardons are at the bottom of the page.”

“He really wants this kid back. Doesn’t he have more, like a lot more? Why is one run away worth this stock deal? He had a lot of kids even before I was sent to prison?”

“That, Mr. Danbeu, is not my concern. Nor should it be yours if you take this job.” This time the guard reached for the data pad.

I held onto it long enough for my thumb print to scan into the system and accept the transfer, pardons, and rescue mission. “Okay, I’m in, so open up.”

“My orders are to release you once we are ready to insert your team.”

“Team, wait a minute, what team? I haven’t picked a team.”

“Agent Nelson picked them. All are accomplished agents, so they are trained and prepared for this.”

“Prepared for this, but you still need me, huh? One of us is wrong and they just paid me a space station not to be. Who’s on my team? And when do I meet them?”

“You already have. I guess you’ve already eliminated one member, an Agent named MoCco, but I hear you two didn’t get along much anyway. His friends aren’t happy either. You have a good rest now.” The guard stepped away from my cell.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know. They did, after all, pay you a space station to deal with this problem. You must have a plan.” He turned and left, closing the air-lock behind him.

I went back to my bench and laid down. I was not tired, but in the little cell there just was not that much to do. After an hour or so, the air-lock hissed open again and in came another agent. My visitor waved a remote at the cell door lock and pulled it open.

“It’s time for you to come with me.” The female agent still had her helmet set to opaque mode, just that shiny black face shield.

A quick glance at the power unit controls, on her left wrist, told me she still had the power setting on full. It made me wonder if she thought I might try to attack her and escape or some silly shit thing like that. “So have you been at this kind of work long?”

“Long enough. I am to escort you to the agents facilities where you will shower and get fresh clothes. We will then proceed to the mess hall for chow. Any questions before we start?”

I smiled at the black face shield. “Are you going to scrub my back?”

“I will not, but I am required to maintain visual contact with you at all times. It’s procedure with criminals.” She waved me toward the hatch to the other ship.

“Oh, well, that explains the fully powered armor. You must not have gotten the memo, I’m innocent, ask your President.”

“Pardoned is not innocent. I don’t confuse the two, you might not want to either. You were convicted of stealing government property. There was the conspiracy to steal an omega class vessel. There were bribery charges and also ten counts of assault and intimidation through threat to assault.” The agent read off my charges that fast. Either before the start of the mission she had been briefed, or she had studied my case for some reason.

“You’re a fan. I didn’t know I had any.”

We entered the other ship. The transport jump ship door cycled closed. She pointed up the corridor in the direction we were to go. Our ship had the clean white corridors of the agent fleet ship.

“So, why have you been studying me?”

My escort remained silent ignoring my questions.

“Come on, we can talk until I go on this mission. Maybe something will happen that you can read about.”

We reached the double set of doors that read Agents Station One; it was the quarters of the President’s personal guard. We stopped, or more accurately my escort stopped.

“I am not studying you. Your record is part of this mission. It was in our briefing, and I am the mission retrieval expert. If anything interesting happens on this mission, I won’t have to read about it.”

“Wait a minute, you’re going on this mission?” I took a step further away from her and studied the opaque helmet face shield.

“Yes.”

“Take off the headgear,” I ordered.

“Why?” her voice sounded just a little confused and I heard a touch of raised temper.

“If you’re on my team, I need to know what you look like. That goes for all of the agents that are going.”

“Later, but for now get to the shower, get something to eat, and be ready to go when they decide it is time to insert the team.”