In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (37 page)

I pocketed the pass and the gun. “Why are you
helping me?”

“Rix told me too,” she said with a hint of
irritation. “For some strange reason, he doesn’t want you dead.”

“Where’s the Cyclops now?”

“Orbiting Duranis-B. They didn’t want us spooking
the tourists, so they made us park over there and use our launch. We’ll be
leaving as soon as I get back.”

“Why didn’t Rix come himself?”

She smiled sourly. “Because they’re always watching
him. They need us, but they don’t trust us.” She glanced down at her bathing
suit. “I lost the two security men they had following me when I changed into
this.”

“Good disguise,” I said trying not to stare at her
near nakedness.

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What are you to
him?”

I realized my brother confided in no one, not even
his most trusted lieutenant. “We crossed paths once, in another life.”

“You’re as big a liar as he is!” she said with
simmering anger, not at me, but at Rix for not trusting her.

“Tell him Ransford’s crazy if he thinks he can play
the Matarons. Ransford’s the one being manipulated.”

She showed no surprise at the mention of the
snakeheads. As navigator, she must have seen their ships when the
Cyclops
picked up the hijacked Kesarn-tech.

“They’ve done everything they said they would.”

“Only because it’s been in their interest. When
this all falls apart, you don’t want to be in the middle, because anyone
helping the Matarons is going to end up dead.”

“I’ll tell him, but he won’t listen,” she said
slowly, wondering what interest I had in Matarons. “You’re not really a freighter
captain, are you?”

“Sure I am. Ask anyone.”

She gave me a dubious look, knowing it was another
lie, then slipped away into the garden. I gave her a few seconds to get clear,
then strode past the water nymph fountain into the passageway leading to the
hanger deck.

At the transparent pressure door, a polite
synthetic voice said, “The captain and crew of the Aphrodite hope you enjoyed
your visit, madam. Please come again soon.”

Most of the technicians and their multi-armed maintenance
bots ignored me as my sniffer area-scanned the hanger. A red warning indicator
flashed into my mind, pointing to the right, outside my peripheral vision. I
turned, drawing the needle gun and aiming at a man with a red targeting
reticule framing his head. He wore a technician’s uniform, but was pulling a
JAG-40 from beneath his coat. I didn’t remember him, but my sniffer did, from
the
Merak Star
. His assault gun was halfway up when I fired, sending his
head snapping back as the needle struck his forehead dead center. The clatter
of his gun hitting the deck as he crumpled caught everyone’s attention, warning
the other mercs that I’d arrived.

I ran to the side of the hanger, using one of
Aphrodite’s
guest transports for cover as a shot whizzed past my head and struck the
bulkhead behind me. The engineers, realizing they were in the middle of a gun fight,
fled to the workshop, crouching to avoid stray slugs.

“Skipper,” Jase’s voice sounded in my ear, “we’re alongside.
I don’t have docking permission, so … hurry!”

“I’m almost there,” I whispered, dropping flat to
the deck to look under the hulls of the parked craft. Multiple pairs of boots
were running for safety while one pair moved quietly the other way. Returning
to a crouch, I crept alongside the transport, periodically checking beneath its
hull. At its thrust nozzles, I stopped to listen. The hanger was quieter now
and the hunters had gone to ground, waiting for me to show myself. Knowing time
was on their side, I edged around the engines, then crept alongside a cargo
ferry toward the taxiway that ran down the center of the hanger to the space
doors.

“You’re not getting out of here alive, Kade,” a
familiar voice called out. It was Julkka Olen, Trask’s lieutenant who’d
shattered my skull and left me for dead on the muddy streets of Nisport. “Give
it up and I’ll make it quick!”

My listener analyzed sound reflection and distance,
calculating Olen was near the hanger’s inner space door. He’d hidden himself
where he could ambush me as I went for the airlock, forcing me to go after him
first.

Halfway along the cargo ferry, my listener
detected the faintest click of a boot on deck plating behind me. I crouched and
turned toward the sound as a woman stepped around the ferry’s tail section
holding an assault gun at eye height. My first shot took her in the shoulder,
knocking her aim off as she sent a burst of heavy slugs whizzing past my ear. My
second shot drilled her throat, severing her spine, then she folded like a rag
doll, gurgling blood as she hit the deck.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Kade,” Olen yelled,
his voice ringing hollowly through the hanger. “Now I’m going to do you slow.”

He was a talker. Maybe he thought it was
psychological warfare. Maybe he liked to taunt his victims. What he didn’t know
was every time he spoke, my listener improved the accuracy of its location fix.

Hoping he’d continue blabbing and while I said
nothing in return, I crept toward the ferry’s bow. The last of the engineers
were gone now, leaving the maintenance bots to carry on unsupervised and make
occasional mechanical sounds that broke the silence of the hanger. When I
reached the taxiway running through the center of the hanger, I listened for
any sign of the fourth merc, wondering where he was hiding. They were playing a
waiting game and I was out of time. The Nortin platforms might not fire on the
Silver
Lining
while she was hugging the
Aphrodite
, but the more time they
had, the more chance there was they’d find a way to cripple her without
damaging the starliner.

The taxiway was wide enough for one craft to get
to the space door. That made it risky to cross, but Olen was on the other side
with the airlock in his sights, leaving me no choice. I took a breath and sprinted
across. When I was almost halfway, a shot rang out narrowly missing my chest
and giving my listener a clue to its source. I immediately dived into the gap
between two cargo lighters as a second shot struck one of their hulls.

The clink of a grenade bouncing on deck plates sounded
behind me, then I threw myself under one of the lighters and rolled behind a
landing strut. When the grenade exploded, shrapnel peppered the small
transport’s hull while the landing gear shielded me from the blast. With my
ears still ringing, heavy boots began pounding the deck as the merc charged
toward me, spraying my hiding place with his JAG-40. It was standard assault
tactics: disorient with a grenade and charge. It was what he’d been trained to
do, what he was good at – and it was a mistake. He should have waited, gone for
a sniper kill shot from cover, but that wasn’t his way.

It was mine.

I aimed at his boots, fired and missed and fired
again, catching him in the ankle. He stumbled and fell, continuing to shoot as
he hit the deck. Heavy slugs drilled the lighter’s hull and ricocheted off its landing
struts, then I put two needles into him above his chest armor. He coughed blood,
then his assault gun clicked empty. I stole a quick look past the landing strut
to where the Orie merc lay face down, motionless.

“Not bad, Kade,” Olen yelled. “Too bad twenty just
like him are on the way. We’re going to have a party and you’re invited!”

He was trying to flush me out, to get me to run
for the airlock so he could pick me off. Olen was more patient than the others,
and smarter. That’s why he was Trask’s lieutenant. Too bad he was also a talker
and my listener had his position triangulated.

Slipping out from under the cargo lighter, I crept
between the workshop and the parked spacecraft. At each vessel, I checked the
hiding spaces ahead, matching them to my threading’s target finder. Now that it
was just down to the two of us, Olen had gone quiet, knowing I was stalking
him, that my only way out was through him.

At one of
Aphrodite’s
white and gold
passenger shuttles, I paused beneath its thrust cone to listen. There were only
two craft left between me and the space door and according to my threading, Olen
should have been in front of me, but he wasn’t. I began to wonder if he’d
moved, if he’d drawn me into a killing zone with his chatter, then silently
relocated to target me when I approached his old position. The hairs on the
back of my neck began to prickle as I anticipated a heavy slug coming from the
shadows, then my listener detected the merest rustling sound, causing me to
freeze.

Olen was above me!

Now that I knew where to look, I spotted the very
tip of a JAG-40 barrel protruding above the shuttle’s port engine housing. It
was a good sniper position, on top of the transport with an elevated view of
the airlock. If I went back, the shuttle’s hull would block my shot and if I
went forward, he’d see me.

“Skipper, Where are you? Aphrodite control is
threatening to blast us if I don’t undock immediately!” Jase yelled into my
ear.

Olen was so close, I didn’t dare respond, even
with a whisper. Instead, I climbed into the port engine’s cone-shaped thrust nozzle
and pulled myself silently over the upper side of the cone with one hand. I saw
Olen’s boots first, then discovered him lying on his stomach, sighting on the
airlock. I brought Anya’s small gun up over the edge of the thrust cone,
considered putting one into the back of his skull, then wondered if he could
help me find the
Mavia
. I knew roughly where the old depot ship was, but
she was running on dark energy and I had no way to track her if she’d moved.

“Drop the gun!” I said.

Olen froze, not even turning his head. Slowly, he
pushed the JAG-40 away, letting it slide down the side of the shuttle to the
deck, then I pulled myself up onto the top of the engine nozzle.

“You’re a dead man, Kade,” Olen growled, turning to
face me.

“You had your chance.” He frowned, confused, then
I added, “On Krailo-Nis, right before you killed Tiago Sorvino.”

Olen looked puzzled, then he studied my face with
growing realization. “You’re him! That spacer! But I killed you!”

“You didn’t kill me enough.”

Finally, he figured it out. “You were his contact?”

“Now you’re going to help me find the Mavia.”

“The hell I am!” he growled, snatching a grenade
from his belt.

I shot him in the head. “That’s for Sorvino,” I
said grimly as his lifeless fingers opened, revealing a grenade with its detonator
flashing. The silver metal sphere rolled from his hand and over the side of the
hull as I jumped down into the shuttle’s thrust cone. The grenade struck the
deck and exploded, blasting a hole through the shuttle’s side and spraying the
thrust cone with shrapnel.

“Skipper!” Jase yelled urgently. “If I don’t
undock in the next thirty seconds–.”

“That’s all I need,” I said into the communicator
as I jumped onto the deck and ran to the airlock. As soon as I’d cycled through
into the
Silver Lining
, I yelled into the communicator, “I’m aboard. Go!”

“Releasing Aphrodite,” Jase said with audible
relief. “Go where?”

“Duranis-B,” I said, “then straight to Earth!”

Type 1A Supernova Progenitor

White Dwarf Star, Duranis Binary

Evacuation Zone, Outer Draco

16.2 billion kilometers from
Duranis-A

Uninhabited

We unbubbled in the blue ice giant’s orbital
wake, quickly spotting the
Mavia
with optics alone. The old depot ship
was parked well beyond the harshest effects of the giant planet’s immense
gravity, clearly visible in the light of the white dwarf’s swirling accretion
disk. Above the
Mavia’s
reinforced hull, the
Hrane
tunneler’s curved arms were unfolding like the petals of a flower while the
trunk of the tower slowly lengthened, moving the arms away from the ship.

“They’re not wasting any time, are they?” Jase
said, impressed at how fast the tower had been installed. “What is it?”

“Our ticket to Earth,” I replied.

Izin sat behind us, watching with interest. “The
tower appears to be stretching elastically.”

“Quantum weirdness,” I said as the
tower’s arms locked into place, forming a hemisphere a
thousand meters across.

When the tower’s apex
was nine thousand meters from the
Mavia
, it stopped extending, fixing
the entire structure rigidly in place.
E
lectrical
energy began leaping from the tunneler’s arms toward the center of the
imaginary sphere they cradled. Where the streams of lightning met, a brilliant
point of light appeared, small at first, but growing rapidly, dimming as it
inflated. Once it had expanded to half the width of the arms, a thin beam of
sparkling blue light shot from the tower’s needle-like apex up into the heart
of the sphere, pouring exotic matter into the darkening wormhole mouth.

Izin turned to his
control console and scrolled through one engineering screen after another
studying the nascent wormhole. “It’s emitting powerful gravity waves.”

“It’s creating a
micro-singularity,” I said.

The sphere continued to expand,
filling three quarters of the space between the arms and darkening to an inky
blackness.

“Spacetime is collapsing
sharply toward the center of the sphere,” Izin reported.

“You seriously want to fly
into that thing?” Jase asked anxiously.

“Do you know a faster way
to Earth?” I replied as a pair of navigation
beacons blinked on at either
end of the
Mavia
, emitting red beams that crossed above the dark sphere.
“That’s our entry point.”

“Theoretically, a wormhole sphere can be entered from
any angle,” Izin said.

“Except we don’t want to fly through the tower’s
arms or the exotic matter,” I said, deciding to play it safe.

“The gravity’s increasing exponentially. Unless
you want a long run in, Captain, we need to go now.”

“Right!” Minimum safe distance for a bubble, even
a sub-second one, was being pushed steadily away from the
Mavia
by the
micro-singularity’s gravity.

“The Cyclops is out there!” Jase exclaimed. “She’s
way over toward the edge of the system.”

I glanced across at his sensor screen. The
Cyclops
was hiding on low power, waiting for her launch to return.

“She might come after us,” Izin said, “once they
see us approach the Mavia.”

“No, she won’t protect Separatist ships.” My
brother had made that abundantly clear during the meeting on the
Aphrodite
.
“Ignore her, she’s not interested in us and she won’t fight for them.”

I took one last look at the long range sensors, reassuring
myself the Super Saracen fleet had not yet arrived, then we blinked to a point twenty
thousand kilometers above the
Mavia
. The wormhole mouth lay in the
center of our screen, flanked by the old depot ship’s bow and stern beyond. She
was protected by a military grade defense shield that extended several hundred
meters from her hull while her sides appeared to curve and grow brighter
amidships. It was an optical trick caused by the wormhole’s gravity, bending
and amplifying light coming off the
Mavia’s
hull like a lens.

“We’ll be a sitting duck if she starts shooting,”
Jase said apprehensively.

“She won’t. The Mavia’s unarmed. Big shield, no
guns,” I said, diving the
Silver Lining
toward the intersecting beacons
at full power.

“And an enormous acceleration field,” Izin added, studying
his console. “It’s offsetting the singularity’s gravity.”

“Can our fields handle the singularity?” Jase
asked.

“Once they finish tunneling, they’ll shut it down.”
I turned back to Izin. “When we make our run, record everything, all the way to
the Solar System.”

“What for?”

So I could pass the data to Lena for the boffins
on Earth to study until their heads exploded. “I know people who’d pay a
fortune for that data.”

“Very well, Captain.”

The wormhole’s black sphere was rapidly filling
our wraparound screen, framed by lightning streaming from the Hrane tower’s cradling
arms, revealing a single blurry dot directly ahead.

“What’s that light?” Jase asked.

Izin took a moment to answer. “The
micro-singularity’s gravity is lensing light from the other side through the
opening in the exotic matter. I can correct for the distortion.” After a
moment, the point of light expanded into a field of stars with a large golden
orb at its center.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

“Yes, Captain. That’s Earth’s sun.”

“We’ve got company!” Jase declared. “It’s a Super
Saracen, no transponder, directly behind us. Make that two! Three!”

In the next few seconds, thirty two Super Saracens
appeared with Earth Navy precision in line ahead formation, already on a
trajectory aimed at the wormhole entrance. Aligning their entire fleet with the
wormhole while in another system was some fancy navigation. It showed how well
they’d mastered the kind of formation flying nav-tech Earth Navy used.

We’d seen some of the Super Saracens at Acheron,
most we had not. As soon as they’d all arrived, they began accelerating toward
the wormhole at a stately five g’s, showing they preferred keeping formation to
a fast transit. We had a minute’s head start and were accelerating seven times
faster, but I was planning to roll and decelerate down at the halfway point.
Having no idea what was inside the wormhole, I couldn’t risk diving into it at
high velocity. I wanted to creep through slow enough to maneuver, if required.

“We’ll reach the wormhole fourteen minutes ahead
of them,” Izin said, “assuming they start braking halfway.”

“That’ll keep us out of weapons range long enough to
get off a warning to Earth Navy,” I said.

“Suppose they don’t believe us?” Jase said
unconvinced. “You know how stubborn those navy types are.”

“They’ve never seen a wormhole before. They’ll
listen.” And I had a recognition code up my sleeve that would set alarm bells
ringing all the way to Earth. “We’ll have front row seats when Earth Navy blasts
those Super Saracens to bits,” followed by nearly eight months bubbled up to
get back out here the old fashioned way.

“Perhaps not, Captain,” Izin said slowly,
transfixed by his console. “The gravity waves emanating from the wormhole are
not diminishing. They’re increasing.”

We could see Earth’s Sun, proving the tunneling
was complete. “They should be shutting it down,” I said, puzzled.

“The exotic matter has stabilized the wormhole,
Captain, but the micro-singularity is blocking the exit mouth.”

Damned tamphs, always spoiling the party.

“They’re trying to stop us going through!” Jase declared.

“The Mavia shows no sign of even knowing we’re
here,” Izin said. “We’re a small target and interference from the tower is hiding
us from them.”

“Why is the gravity increasing?” I asked uneasily.

Izin’s slender fingers ran over his console with
lightning speed. Suddenly, he froze in an instinctive ambush predator response
to danger. If he didn’t move, his enemy couldn’t see him.

“Izin?” I said, trying to snap him out of it.
“What is it?”

He breathed again. “The stars on the other side,
and the Sun, are not where they should be. The wormhole’s in the wrong place!”

“Where is it?” I demanded.

Izin touched his console, throwing an
astrographics overlay onto the main screen. “The exit mouth is here.” The dark
sphere was on one side of the screen and the blue-green orb of Earth was on the
other.

“You calculated it wrong!”

“There’s no error, Captain.”

“They’re attacking Earth?” Jase asked
incredulously.

“Earth’s defenses would blast those ships the
moment they appeared,” I said, confident Earth was safe from a fleet attack by
a mere thirty two cruisers – even a surprise attack.

“Their fleet can’t attack Earth,” Izin said
calmly. “The micro-singularity is blocking the exit mouth. Any ship attempting
to use the wormhole will be destroyed. Us and them!”

That wasn’t what Trask, the Chairman or the
Separatist Leaders had in mind when they’d planned this little party. “How
close to Earth is the wormhole?”

Izin studied his console a moment. “Twenty two
thousand kilometers outside Earth’s orbit.”

I relaxed. “At least Earth’s not going to hit it.”

Izin ran a flood of calculations through his mind
in the blink of his amphibian eyes. “It’s not a collision, Captain, it’s a
slingshot. The micro-singularity’s gravity is radiating from the wormhole mouth
like a giant planet, close enough to perturb Earth’s orbit.”

Oh crap! “By how much?”

Izin’s attention returned to his console as he
directed the
Lining’s
processing core to crunch the mechanics. “Earth’s
new orbit will be highly elliptical. Aphelion will be over three hundred
million kilometers from the Sun, well beyond the orbit of Mars.”

“Earth will freeze!” Jase exploded.

“That’s the idea,” I said ominously, for the first
time seeing what was really happening. The Matarons weren’t backing the
Separatists, they were manipulating them, not to break away from Earth, but to
destroy it!

They’d tricked everyone: the Consortium, the
Brotherhood, the Core Worlds, even me. It would look like we stole technology
we didn’t understand and used it to accidentally destroy our own homeworld! No
one would be able to blame the Matarons because everyone would believe we’d
done it to ourselves. The Galactic Forum would have no choice but to rule
against us, to isolate the survivors for their own protection, saving us from ourselves.
It was clear cut. The Fourth Principle of the Access Treaty gave each species a
right to develop in its own way except – second exception – when facing self inflicted
extinction!

Forum intervention was not only permitted, it was
required!

With the exit mouth blocked, we couldn’t get
through the wormhole, but that no longer mattered because there was nothing we
could do on the other side. The real threat was this side, where the micro-singularity
was being generated. Without waiting for the autonav to plot a new course, I
immediately rolled the
Silver Lining
one eighty degrees, angling past
the tower toward the
Mavia
as we began decelerating.

Jase gave me a surprised look. “We’re not halfway
yet.”

“We have to brake now so our acceleration fields
have something left to offset the singularity’s gravity when we get there.”

Jase’s eyes widened, then he nodded. “Glad you
thought of that!” he said with relief, realizing the alternative was to be
crushed as we neared the wormhole.

“Scan the tower. Find out what it’s made of.”

Jase studied his console briefly. “Nothing our
sensors can identify.”

Considering the energies the tower was channeling,
it was almost certainly impervious to our proton burster, which left only the
Mavia
herself. Like all navy ships, she was ruggedly built with reinforced double
hulls and honeycomb bulkheads, as well as a heavy shield – and us with no
drones.

“Two Super Saracens just powered up!” Jase said. “They’re
breaking formation, coming after us, pulling high-g’s!”

“Izin, what do you know about wormholes?” I asked.

“Very little, Captain. If you’d wanted me to
become an expert in wormhole dynamics, you should have told me – yesterday.”

“I know one thing,” I said. “They can’t survive without
exotic matter. So if we turn off the tap …”

“It’ll collapse,” Jase said. “Great idea, except
that ship is crawling with guys from my home planet, guys with big guns and
itchy fingers. They’re not going to let you walk in there and flick a switch.”

“I wasn’t planning on walking. I prefer to ride.”
I turned to Izin. “Did you fix those battle suits you borrowed from General Trask?”

“I’ve restored pressurization and recharged their
power cells, Captain, but I couldn’t replenish their magazines.”

“They have enough ammo for what I have in mind.”

“They won’t let us dock,” Jase said. “You’ll have
to jump.”

“We’ve had practice at that, haven’t we Izin!” I said
with a grin, glancing back at my tamph engineer. “We’ll park alongside, then
kick in the door.”

Izin slipped off his acceleration couch. “I’ll be
in the cargo hold preparing the battle suits,” he said as he hurried off the
flight deck.

“He’s excited,” I said. “I don’t let him off the
leash very often.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s the way his eyes scrunch up at the sides.”

Jase gave me a doubtful look. “His eyes don’t do
that!”

I shrugged. “There must be some way to know what
he’s thinking.”