Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) (32 page)

The floor was, as promised, covered in the swirling silver markings of artificial gravity runes. The walls were plain steel, stretching up to the roof of the double-height compartment. Along each side of the compartment, half-height windowed cubicles marked the offices where spacers would meet with the officers of Heinlein Station. At the far end of the room, to make sure no one entered the station without paying all the correct tolls and fees, four men in matte black body armor carried assault rifles and grim expressions.

In contrast to the implicit threat at the other end of the hallway, a perky redhead in jeans and a blue tank top was waiting at the entrance for them. Her bright smile almost distracted David from the rocket pistol she wore strapped to her hip.

“Welcome to Heinlein Station, gentlemen,” she greeted them. “Your docking fees are paid up, but you’ll need to discuss station access fees and visitor’s insurance with one of our Intake Specialists.” She checked her wrist PC quickly, and then gestured towards one of the cubicles. “Specialist Wan is available in office five. Please speak with her so we can get you into Heinlein as soon as possible.”

Wan was a dark-skinned tiny woman with an unusually pronounced epicanthic fold for a child of the twenty-sixth century. As they entered, she waved them to the seats in front of her desk.

“Welcome to Heinlein Station,” she repeated the girl outside. “Which of our station’s many services are you intending to make use of while you’re aboard? Passes to the station are separate for each external quadrant.”

David glanced at James, and gestured for the engineer to answer the question.

“We’re meeting someone in Quadrant Gamma,” Kellers told the woman. “We will also need access to the Promenade in Quadrant Beta. Several members of our crew will also be coming aboard who will need Promenade access for shore leave, so we will want a group rate for that.”

Wan nodded calmly. “You have a crew of eighty, correct?” David nodded. “I will give you the group rate for forty Quadrant Beta passes. If your crew use more, all individuals will be refunded the difference for the higher group rate – if you use less, your ship will be billed for the difference. Acceptable?”

With a quick glance at Kellers, who nodded, David agreed.

Wan touched a command, and both of their wrist PCs blinked receipt of a message.

“Your passes are loaded to your PCs,” she explained. “If you are found by Heinlein Security aboard station without having paid for access and oxygen, you will be required to pay for the unauthorized use at a punitive damages rate. If you cannot pay, you will be required to work off your debt.

“We strongly recommend that you purchase Amber Medical Co-operative and Amber Judicial Co-operative temporary insurance,” she continued. “Without these, you will have minimal access to the Co-operatives’ medical or judicial services.”

“I have standing memberships in both,” Kellers told her, tapping his PC to a reader on her desk. “Have Captain Rice added as my temporary auxiliary.”

“Ah, a Citizen,” she said approvingly, glancing at the profile that the engineer had transferred to her screen. “Of course. The requests have been sent,” she finished after a moment. “Is there anything else I can set up for you?”

“Not at the moment,” David confirmed. “If we wish to travel to the surface, do we need to discuss that with you?”

“We are only concerned that the Heinlein Station Corporation is properly reimbursed for use of our facilities and oxygen,” she told him calmly. “You can book transport to the surface or any of the shipyards with any available in-system transport companies.”

Thanking Specialist Wan, David and James headed to the back of the room, where the grim-faced Heinlein Station Security soldiers waved them through with the slightest hints of smiles.

Outside the processing area, only a single pathway was marked out with gravity runes, leading towards the set of elevators that accessed the outer rim with its centrifugal gravity.

“What’s the rest of the core?” David asked Kellers, noting that there were doors and corridors leading away, most sealed with a three letter symbol – ADC.

“The Spire is the main dock for the Amber Defense Co-operative as well as civilians,” James told him. “They keep the munitions for their corvettes here, under tight lock and key. As an ADC member, I approve of their security,” he added dryly.

“I thought you’d left Amber years ago?” David asked in response to that.

“I did,” James confirmed. “But on Amber, you’re not a true Citizen unless you contribute to the three Co-operatives – Medical, Judicial, and Defense.
Officially
, there’s no benefits for being a Citizen beyond those of being a member of the Co-ops – but it opens a lot of doors I didn’t want to see closed if I ever came home.”

The elevators were clearly marked where each one led, so the two men clambered into one for Quadrant Gamma. There were none of the warning signs that most worlds would have, but the lack of gravity and belts on the seats made the need to strap in obvious.

A few minutes of dizzying acceleration and twisting later, the pod settled into the outer ring. Feeling somewhat motion-sick, David unstrapped himself and stumbled out into the upper access way of Heinlein Station’s Quadrant Gamma.

The central corridor of the Quadrant was an immense, six storied, gallery. They stood on the top level and looked down a thirty meter drop to the bottom of the gallery. Each level was marked by advertisements and signs. People bustled around, all of them dressed in bright colors and carrying various varieties of personal weaponry.

David had seen busier stations in his life, but it wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting of Amber, the notorious semi-outlaw of the galaxy. He glanced over at Kellers, and the muscular black man grinned at him, clearly enjoying his discomfiture.

“Amber was built to an ideal, Captain,” he said quietly. “You and I don’t really agree with that ideal – and for all that I left, I probably agree with it more than a Mars native like yourself – but enough people do that this world is a Mecca for them. They come here to be free from the bureaucracy of the other Protectorate worlds.” His smile faded. “Many get squished in the gears, exploited, or just lost, but that is the darker side of the dream they come here to find. Come on,” he concluded. “Keiko is on level one. We need to get downstairs.”

#

The omnipresent nature of weapons on Heinlein Station threw David’s fine-tuned paranoia for a loop. Everywhere he looked, everybody was openly carrying a weapon. It made it difficult to identify what might qualify as a threat – especially as no one around him was reacting as if this was particularly unusual.

The culture shock was enough that he missed the
actual
threat until it was almost too late. The six men and two women converging on him and Kellers were dressed the same as everyone else, other than that each wore a long black cloak closed at the neck with a golden insignia of some kind.

When eight people wearing a pseudo-uniform start closing in on you, it’s generally time to get out of the way. David had been following James through the station up to this point, as the other man had a clue where they were going and David didn’t.

Now he grabbed his engineer’s shoulder and began to duck away through the crowd.

The response from the cloaked pursuers was instant. The two in the direction that David dodged produced weapons from underneath the cloaks – larger ones than the usual sidearms being worn around them.

“David Rice, halt where you are!” one of the women bellowed as the other produced weapons. “We are Sanctioned Hunters, you will surrender.”

For all of his intellectual understanding that he’d become a criminal when he’d broken Damien out of the jail in Corinthian, part of David rebelled at drawing and firing on police officers
again
.

James Kellers had no such hesitation. Even before the cloaked hunters in front of them had cleared their weapons, the short but muscled engineer had yanked his stungun clear of the quick release harness he wore and opened fire.

The loud announcement from the Hunters had at least had the effect of clearing the immediate area, as the locals scattered for cover. The SmartDarts from Kellers’ weapon slammed into both of the Hunters in front of them, pausing for a moment to assess their targets’ health, and then delivering calibrated incapacitating electric shocks.

Both of them went down in convulsing heaps, and David dived past them. He skidded past a cart selling hot dogs; in time to watch a tangleweb shell from one of the Hunters shotguns splatter itself all over the ground next to the cart – the goo instantly hardening into foam that would immobilize a target.

David found himself staring into the barrel of the hot dog vendor’s pistol. He met the woman’s eyes carefully, and she jerked her head sideways. He realized after a second that she was pointing towards a hatchway leading off of the main gallery. With a grateful nod, he dived for that hatchway, barely missing a second tangleweb shell.

Breaking into a run down the corridor, he realized he’d lost James along the way. He turned back to check for the engineer, only to see two of the cloaked Hunters follow him through the hatchway. His hesitation about shooting police was gone now, and he opened fire with the stungun.

One of the Hunters went down, convulsing from the SmartDarts’ electric shock. The other dodged back around the corner, firing a round from her shotgun at David.

David dodged around the corner and managed to avoid
most
of the impact when the flashbang round went off in mid-air. He blinked against what spots he hadn’t dodged and a passing inability to hear, and then took off down the hallway again.

He turned another corner, moments later, and ran into
another
Hunter. The other man spun his cloak in a carefully practiced gesture, catching the SmartDarts David fired in the non-conductive fabric of the garment.

Before the Hunter had his weapon targeted, David had closed into his personal space. He knocked aside the barrel of the shotgun, brushed aside an attempt to slam him with the butt of the weapon, and then redirected the Hunter’s momentum into the wall.

Spin-induced gravity and inertia handled the rest, and the bulky bounty hunter went down. Before he could get back up, David grabbed the other man’s weapon, checked the digital display to see what shell was up, and blasted him with a tangleweb shell.

He spared just enough time to be sure the solidifying foam wasn’t threatening the Hunter’s ability to breathe, and then took off again. He was moving a bit slower this time, pulling up a map of Gamma Quadrant to find Kellers.

The engineer was heading towards him, and he changed his course towards James. They finally met up in a dimmer back corridor, each checking behind the other for Hunters.

“How much trouble are we in now?” David asked, breathing heavily. He wasn’t used to running this much.

“No more than we were before, unless you killed one,” Kellers replied. The engineer didn’t seem to have even worked up a sweat. “Amber respects the right to self-defense, even against Hunters. It’s rude to kill one though.”

Both tensed up when they heard voices coming from behind Kellers, and the engineer gestured for David to lead the way away. They weren’t fast enough, however, and an emergency bulkhead suddenly slammed shut ahead of them.

David swore. “Can you open this?”

“Not a chance,” Kellers replied grimly, turning back to face their pursuers. “There can’t be many of them upright at this point, though.”

“Surrender now, Captain Rice,” a voice shouted from up the corridor – the same woman who’d ordered them to lay down weapons before. “You aren’t going to change how this ends.”

“I can bloody well try,” David muttered, checking the ammunition count on his stolen shotgun before tucking himself next to the wall, covering himself as much as possible. Kellers did the same with his stungun – he hadn’t lost his, unlike David.

“Flashbang,” Kellers muttered, closing his eyes as a small metallic object bounced down the corridors. David followed suit, opening his eyes as soon as the flash and noise had faded. He was disoriented, but not as badly as he could be – and he saw the Hunters coming.

Four of them now, all with their black cloaks wrapped completely around their bodies to protect them from SmartDarts, marched down the corridor, their weapons seeking any movement or sign of David or Kellers.

David had three of the tangleweb shells left, and he opened up with them immediately. The automatic shotgun cycled smoothly as he blasted the bounty hunters with the non-lethal shells. Two went down, wrapped in the rapidly hardening foam, but the other pair took cover against the wall, blasting back with similar shells.

Neither hit, allowing Kellers to fire back with his stungun. The SmartDarts didn’t penetrate the black cloaks, however, and the engineer grimly dropped the non-lethal weapon to draw his pistol.

The shotgun had one flashbang round left, and then the remainder were notoriously unreliably non-lethal ‘beanbag’ rounds. Wincing against the impact, David fired the flashbang at the roof in front of the Hunters.

The bright lights flashed, hurting his eyes, and the sounds pounded his ears. When the chaos faded, he loaded the beanbag rounds and stepped around his tiny corner.