Last Stand on Talos Seven Read online

  The old man’s eyes widened. “You got the hyper-drive working? I’m impressed. I assume you tested it.”

  “Uh...,” Anna said. “I was going to get around to it.”

  Nodding his head, the old man said, “Sure you were. Too bad I didn’t know what you were up to. I might’ve been able to help.”

  “How could you have helped?” Anna asked curious in spite of herself.

  Ryan’s eyes sparkled. “Well, for starters, I was the apprentice engineer on the Donovan. I used to know a lot about hyper-drives. Still do if I say so myself. If your parents or you had come to me, maybe we could’ve...” He pointed at the smoking hole and shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. Whatever you did to get the lifeboat’s hyper-drive working, it’s all gone now.”

  Anna looked at the old man and Connor for a couple of seconds. “Well, maybe not everything. The lifeboat’s gone, but I was working on the energy core trying to modify it to work on the hyper-drive. I had the core in the office. The hyper-drive was in the lifeboat, so it’s been destroyed, but the energy core might still—”

  Ryan nearly dropped his pipe. “What are you saying, girl? Are you telling me you may still have a working energy core?”

  When Anna didn’t reply, the old man glanced from Anna to Connor and back to her. “I’m not the enemy here, Anna. If you’ve still got an energy core for a hyper-drive, maybe things aren’t as hopeless as you think. I’m as eager to get off this planet as you. Maybe we can do some business.”

  “What kind of business?” Anna asked as curiosity overcame her natural hesitancy. “A hyper-drive energy core doesn’t do any good without an engine to put it in.” She pointed at the bits of the lifeboat’s hull that littered the smoking hole. “Not to mention that was the only starship on Talos the pirates didn’t confiscate or destroy.”

  Ryan looked over his shoulder as if making sure the streets were empty. He turned back with a wide grin on his wrinkled face. “Well, maybe the pirates didn’t do as good of a job of confiscating ships as you think.”

  Anna sensed Connor stepping beside her. “What do you mean, old man? If you know where there’s another starship, just spit it out and tell us where it is.”

  The old man took a big draw on his pipe and blew out a smoke ring. His grin grew even wider. “I’ll do you one better than that, boy. I’ll take you to it. I’ll take you right now if you’re willing.”

  * * *

  The drive in Old Man Ryan’s hover-truck was long and arduous. He mostly stuck to seldom used trails snaking through two and three meter deep ravines hidden in what was otherwise flat plains around the town. As the beat-up old vehicle made its way along the dusty trails, Anna checked out the inside of the cab. She sat in the middle of the vehicle’s bench seat squeezed in between Ryan and Connor. With both of the cab doors missing, she was forced to hold a rag over her mouth to keep out the dust.

  “How old is this thing?” asked Connor between coughing fits. “Couldn’t you find something a little newer with doors?”

  The old man laughed from behind the rag he’d tied over his mouth and nose. He patted the dust-covered dashboard with his right hand. “She may be old, but this girl’s tough. She was the Donovan’s utility vehicle. This baby helped keep us alive when our ship’s energy core fractured.” He gave the dash another pat. “She’s never let me down.”

  Whether the vehicle had ever let the old man down or not, Anna had to agree with Connor, doors would’ve been nice. “How much farther? We’ve been driving for over an hour now. Where’s this ship of yours anyway?”

  With a nod of his head, Ryan indicated a mountain range another twenty kilometers to the south. “That’s where we’re headed. Just give me another fifteen minutes or so, and I’ll explain everything. I called ahead to the others. They’re probably already there, or they soon will be.”

  “What others?” Anna asked, becoming concerned that she might’ve trusted the old man a little too much. She didn’t need to glance over her shoulder to know the bulge under the truck’s canvas-covered bed was the energy core for the destroyed lifeboat’s hyper-drive. Between Connor, Old Man Ryan, and her, they’d been able to remove enough debris from the collapsed part of the warehouse to make their way to the office area. They’d found the energy core and her stash of processed titanium right where she’d left them. Both items were now safely in the back of the truck.

  A sudden suspicion popped into Anna’s mind as a shiver ran down her spine. Maybe the old man’s working with the pirates, she thought. I remember him being friendly to my parents, but what do I really know about him other than that he was one of the Donovan’s crew?

  Anna glanced around the crowded cab, searching for a weapon. She saw nothing useful the old man could get his hands on. A light touch to the bulge under her shirt made her relax. In the confines of the vehicle’s cab, she knew a good knife was better than any gun the old man might have tucked unseen in his belt. She relaxed a little. Even so, the next fifteen minutes was the longest of her young life.

  Once they left the last of the dusty fields that had once contained tens of thousands of square kilometers of wheat, oats, and corn, the hover-truck made its way up the side of a mountain along a weaving dirt path. While the trail was narrow with hairpin turns, Ryan took the curves at what Anna considered to be a breakneck speed. Her pride kept her from saying anything.

  “Hey, be careful,” said Connor who obviously wasn’t quite as proud as her. He tightened his seatbelt. “You almost threw me out the door that time.”

  The old man laughed. “Believe me, I am being careful.”

  Contrary to the man’s words, Anna sensed the vehicle slow slightly. “How much longer now?” she asked.

  Turning his head to glance at her, Ryan let go of the steering lever with his left hand and pointed ahead. “As it so happens, we’re here.”

  Looking in the direction indicated by the old man, Anna noticed the dirt path end at a black opening in a cliff face that was cut into the side of the mountain. From the telltale scars left by plasma drills, she knew the cliff was manmade. A series of dilapidated metal sheds stretched along both sides of the opening.

  “So what’s this supposed to be?” Anna asked. As she spoke, the sun came out from behind a cloud. Its light glinted off metal from inside the opening in the cliff. Looking closer, she made out the rounded nose of a starship. “Is that the—”

  “The Donovan?” finished Ryan fairly beaming with pride. “The one and only.”

  As soon as the hover-truck slid to a halt, Connor unhooked his seatbelt and jumped out. He fairly ran the twenty meters to the cave opening, staring up at the nose of the ancient survey ship. It was an old V-wing design intended mainly for horizontal takeoffs and landings. The starship stretched back into the cave another fifty meters. Anna got out of the truck and joined Connor. Up close, she could easily see the rusted scratches and dents that covered the metal hull.

  “I thought the Donovan was destroyed when you crashed on Talos fifty years ago,” said Connor. “What’s she doing here?”

  Ryan laughed. “Oh she was banged up all right, but she wasn’t destroyed. The energy core for our hyper-drive fractured when we tried to takeoff after we did our survey. Captain Rytel jettisoned the core and tried to switch to our ion drive. Unfortunately for us, when the core ruptured, the power surge also took out our ion drive. The captain glided the Donovan in using her wings, which was no easy feat I can tell you. We crashed in that valley down there.” The old man waved his pipe in the direction of a narrow valley a half a kilometer off the side of the trail.

  The sound of footsteps from inside the cave opening alerted Anna to the presence of others. Reaching under her shirt for her knife, she spun to face the possible threat. As soon as she saw who was there, she relaxed. Five men, all white-haired and wrinkled, stood at the edge of the cavern just under the bow of the Donovan. One of the men that Anna knew by the name of McAvits stepped forward.

  “I was navigator on the
Donovan,” said McAvits. “I was in the cockpit when the captain brought the ship down. I doubt there was another pilot in the galaxy that could’ve gotten our ship down in one piece. Half our crew died in the crash, including Captain Rytel. The rest of us pulled the Donovan up here with the help of our utility vehicle and waited for rescue. When your grandparents showed up in orbit with the rest of the settlers, we decided to stay.”

  “We’ve been working on the Donovan ever since,” said Ryan, taking up the story. He laughed and gave a wink. “I guess we had dreams of taking the old girl back into space one last time. There’s only the six of us left now. We were beginning to give up hope.”

  Taking her eyes off the aged crew, Anna gave the old survey ship a closer look. The hull was banged up with obvious patches along her portside, but as far as she could tell, the starship was in one piece. “Will she fly?”

  “As she is?” said Ryan. “No. She’s missing an energy core for her hyper-drive. Other than that, she’s space-worthy enough.” He pointed at the bulging canvas on the back of the hover-truck. “Now that we’ve got your core, I’d bet my life she’ll fly.” He reached up with his right hand and gave the hull a loving pat. “I’ve got confidence in the old girl.”

  Anna noticed fist-sized openings on the leading edges of the wings. An upper and lower turret fore and aft had similar openings. “Does she still have her weapons? You said she was an armed survey ship. Maybe when the pirates come back we could—”

  “Whoa, girlie,” said Ryan. “She was armed once upon a time, but we had to sell her weapons off over the years to buy parts from supply ships. We don’t even have a blaster left to our name now.” He shrugged his shoulders. “If’n we’d known pirates were going to show up one day, we’d have kept some of the weapons, but it is what it is.”

  McAvits stepped forward. “We also had to strip all the non-essentials off over the years and sell them for parts. The Donovan will fly, but I daresay it’ll be her last trip. If that energy core of yours is in decent shape, we’ll get two maybe three jumps out of the hyper-drive, then the engine will be dead for good.”

  “Two hyper-jumps won’t get us far,” said Ryan. He pointed at the rest of the Donovan’s crew. “That’s fine by us. We just want to get the old girl back into space one last time, but you’re both young. You’ve got your whole lives ahead of you. Assuming we can get the Donovan’s hyper-drive working again, where would you want us to take you?”

  Anna turned to look at Connor. “You said you wanted to fight. Are you sure? You could always go back to your aunt and—”

  Folding his arms, Connor said, “I’m going with you, and that’s final. The pirates are responsible for my parents’ death. I’m going to make them pay. End of story.”

  Nodding her head, Anna turned back to the Donovan’s crew. “We want to go to the closest place to Talos where we can hire mercenaries. Two hyper-jumps should get us to the Osterian asteroid belt. That’s our destination. Can you get us there or not?”

  Ryan turned to face the other five members of the Donovan’s crew. After all five nodded their heads, the old man looked back at Anna and winked. “Oh, we can get you there all right. How soon do you want to leave?”

  Anna glanced at the sky. She imagined the pirates in their transport returning in six months with a battalion of infantry and a unit of cats.

  “The sooner the better,” Anna said. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

  Chapter 3 – Plea for Help

  ____________________

  The underground barroom located on the largest asteroid in the Osterian system was loud, crowded, and filled with smoke from Draco pipes as miners and adventurers alike did their best to wind down and forget the troubles of the day. From the way that the hundred or so men, women, and splattering of other species were guzzling down alcohol, Wizard Scout Trinity Delgado had a feeling most of the bar’s customers had a lot to forget.

  “Can you blame them?” asked a voice in Trinity’s mind. “In a few hours they’ll be back on their next shift and hard at work in the mines or blasting off on one ill-fated adventure or another to their likely deaths. You know; typical carbon-based behavior.”

  Trinity snorted, but she kept her next words in the part of her mind she shared with her battle computer. Although she was the only one sitting at her table located next to the bar’s rock-hewn wall, there were too many people at the nearby tables for her to risk saying anything out loud. She tucked a loose strand of her long black hair back into the bun at the back of her head to give herself time to think of a good reply.

  “What would you know of hard work, Jennifer? You’re snug as a pactar in its burrow, buried inside a brerellium steel chip in my battle helmet like you are. You don’t even have hands.”

  “Ah, typical human,” replied Jennifer, adding some canned laughter to her voice for effect. “It is just like a carbon-based life form to think someone needs hands to work. I prefer to use my mind and logic. You should try it sometime, Wizard Scout. There is more to life than beating other species over the head with your phase rod.”

  At the mention of her phase rod, Trinity’s right hand unconsciously reached over and touched the left side of her hip. She found only the empty belt that separated her stained gray trousers from her equally soiled gray shirt. Her phase rod and the rest of her wizard scout equipment were back on the recon ship Defiant. As far as anyone in the Osterian Mining Company knew, she was a down-on-her-luck miner trying to earn enough credits to get out of the Osterian asteroid belt and back to civilized space. She’d been working as a driller for the last two months on assignment for the Intergalactic Empire’s High Command. So far, her mission to discover how large quantities of weapons and military gear were making its way into the hands of the Balorian pirates had turned up nothing.

  “Well,” said Jennifer, “if you are lucky, which wizard scouts normally are, you may well find out tonight.”

  Staring at the four well-dressed businessmen sitting at a table in a corner on the other side of the room, Trinity had to agree. “The message we got from the Defiant was obviously correct. Those four are about as out of place as an ice comet in low orbit around a supernova.” She eyed the occupants of the dozen other tables in the bar. “This place is known for drawing the worst of the worst scum in this sector of the asteroid belt.”

  “Ha,” replied Jennifer, giving another one of her canned laughs. “Apparently you have forgotten that you are sitting in here along with the rest of the so-called scum?”

  “Don’t get cute, Jennifer. What I’d like to know is how Sergeant Ron got the information about the meeting in the first place.”

  “That information is not in my databanks. What I do know is that for a supposedly retired old man, the Defiant’s captain has his nose into more things than even I know about. I have it on good authority that he has a list of contacts a kilometer long, and that is just the ones in the central computer’s databanks.”

  “So you’ve told me.” Trinity replied. She remembered how the crusty old ex-sergeant and now recon ship captain had argued against her staying on the mining asteroid without any backup. She smiled. The idea that a wizard scout needed someone to cover their back was a little comical. She’d been on recon missions for the Empire forty light years behind enemy lines before with no mother hen to watch over her.

  “That is not true,” said Jennifer sounding as hurt as a computer could get. “You have always had me around. Sometimes I do not think you appreciate what I do for you.”

  Trinity gave a slight smile as she thought about how sensitive her battle computer could sometimes be. She wondered if all battle computers were the same.

  “Oh, I appreciate you, Jennifer. I may forget to say it often enough, but trust me, the appreciation’s there.”

  “Well, as long as you know,” replied Jennifer, sounding a little mollified. “Still, I calculate it would have been better if you had taken me with you instead of leaving me on the Defiant. If you get into trouble, S
ergeant Ron and Charlie will take at least four hours to make the quarter-of-a-light-year flight from their hiding position to that asteroid of yours without being spotted by some patrol. I can sense what is happening around you by monitoring the data in our shared space, but I cannot actually do anything to help, other than give advice. I should be there with you.”

  “Yeah, and how would it have looked for a poor driller to go around wearing a battle helmet. I’d say that would’ve blown my cover right quick. Besides, we can still communicate up to a quarter of a light year. What’s the problem?”

  “Uh, no problem,” said Jennifer. “That is, there is no problem yet. I calculate that may be about to change.”

  Trinity noticed heads around her turn in the direction of the bar’s entrance as the chatter in the room died down to a near silence. She also turned in her seat to look at the doorway. Two slightly larger than man-sized bats stood just inside the entrance. Large-bore phase pistols in leather holsters were strapped to their waists. One of the bats held a computer pad in her left paw.

  “Crosoians,” Trinity told her battle computer, keeping her words in the shared space of her mind. “Now why would the Crosoian Federation be sending bats to this Creator-forsaken asteroid?”

  “Uh, is that a rhetorical question, Wizard Scout?” asked Jennifer. “If not, my calculations give a list of four hundred and twenty-two possible reasons. Only one has a greater than four percent probability of being correct.”

  Ignoring her battle computer, Trinity concentrated on the two bats as they made their way across the crowded room. Being a good head taller than the largest human in the bar, the other patrons got out of the way quick enough. The bats made straight for the four businessmen until they stood next to the businessmen’s corner table.

  “Don’t tell me,” Trinity said. “That’s the reason greater than four percent. They’re here to meet with our targets.”