Deadly Ghosts, page 22
While we were staying stationary with a cup of coffee that another one of the former miners had brewed for us, we both heard a sound at the same moment and snapped our heads in that direction, before throwing our coffee cups into the street and turning our beasts in the direction of the odd wail.
This time, it didn’t sound like an angry child. I couldn’t tell quite what it sounded like, but it was unusual enough that we needed to investigate.
An early riser popped her head out of their tent, only to see us coming and retreat back inside. Dirt kicked up in our wake as we moved down the narrow streets, but when the sound rang out again, my Tikani bent its legs and leaped over a row of tents. The movement was surprising, and my stomach dropped, my hand white knuckling against the saddle horn. We landed in the street beside the sound.
But rather than discovering the cyborg kidnappers I had been expecting, we found ourselves face-to-face with another of the planet’s inhabitants. It was bigger than the creature I was sitting on and looked even more peculiar.
Its body was flat and wide with a leathery skin and long fingers with suction cup tips at the end of multi-jointed legs. Big bulbous eyes looked out from a face that seemed to be all long, toothy mouth.
We stared at one another for a moment, both of us seemingly surprised by the other.
Jesk rode up behind me, his mount choosing to go the long way around before it skidded to a stop, and we had a moment of silence before the animal in the road in front of us stopped being flat.
Its body began to balloon outward, quickly inflating and the man behind me shouted, “Get down!”
I didn’t have a chance as the Tikani beneath me reared up. I gripped the saddle so as to not be thrown down to the ground when the creature went from horizontal to vertical. As it did, I heard a strange pop sound from the opposing animal and felt something crash against the underbelly of the animal between my legs.
Quills shredded the nearby tents, piercing holes in all of the canvas and circling the animal. People began to shout as their sleep was interrupted by firing projectiles tearing their homes apart.
My Tikani shrieked and began to tilt backward. I pushed myself back off the saddle and slammed against the dirt just before the massive creature crashed down beside me.
But I didn’t have time to stop. I forced myself to my feet, gasping and wheezing for the air that had been punched from my lungs. The animal in front of us opened its mouth, staring right at me.
I reached for my stomper, but before I could grab it, a long, barbed tongue came whipping toward me. It was all I could do to jump aside and land on the dirt once again. Jesk raced over and stood behind my fallen mount, then unslung his rifle.
He looked unnatural holding it, and I was not confident in his ability to wield it. I jumped to my feet and then ran to hide behind the body of my Tikani as well. The tents were collapsing around us, and more people were shouting from within.
Peeking out, I readied my weapon and surveyed the scene. The moment I glanced out, the tongue lashed back in my direction, the barbs crashing against my ride’s body and sending chunks of carapace flying.
Jesk was readying his rifle, and I saw that he was poised to take a step out from the side of the body and open fire. But I had seen how quick the creature was and I said, “No,” reaching out and holding him in place.
He looked at me in confusion and I had to assume that he was a better miner than he was a combatant. “Just stay hidden for now,” I cautioned.
Peering out again just enough to get a view, I only had a moment before the tongue came hurtling back at us. The creature had us pinned, and it wouldn’t be long before it started inching toward us.
I looked around, knowing that I had to do something. The ground was littered with quills as long as my forearm, and I knelt. Slowly, I reached forward, getting myself in position to grab one of the long projectiles.
I had to plan this just right. My heart pounded, and I grasped toward the closest quill but retracted my hand before I was even halfway there. The pink blur snapped in my vision as the tongue crashed to the ground where my hand had been a moment earlier, and as soon as it was retracted, I reached out again and grabbed the quill.
Jesk watched me in wide-eyed wonder, and I wasn’t sure that this plan would even work.
Standing back up, I readied my stomper in one hand and had the quill in the other. Pressing my back against the body of my Tikani once more, I took a deep breath and readied myself.
I chucked the quill as high as I could into the air, simultaneously shouting, “Now!”
As the tongue thrashed out and slapped the quill out of the air, Jesk and I both pointed our weapons toward the creature and opened fire. His rifle managed to send two bullets crashing into the top hide of the animal before it jammed but I was able to squeeze off several shots. I threw myself back behind cover as I saw the thing begin to puff himself up again.
“Get low!” I ordered and Jesk cowered just as another round of quills came rocketing out from the beast.
As soon as they had, I turned my body again and sent another volley into the thing. This time, I aimed directly for its eyes and one of my bullets struck true. Clear tissue like some kind of gel sprayed out, and the beast screamed and reared back, its tongue slicing through the air.
As its head was tilted skyward, I unloaded my final few bullets into its soft underside just at the throat. Blood squirted from its throat and the long, outstretched tongue fell limp along with the body.
Jesk set out from behind the Tikani to look at the dead creature in the road and then over at me.
“Good work,” he praised. “Think that thing would have gotten the better of me without you.”
Ned chuckled in my earpiece. “That man would be quite dead if it weren’t for you,” he assessed. “But better not to tell him that.”
“Do you think this is the thing that’s been kidnapping the children?” I asked as the light of early morning began to overtake the camp.
“No,” he answered, and I had suspected that was the case. Nothing about what he had described suggested that it was an animal, but I had to be sure.
A few more muffled shouts came from within the tents, and the two of us set to work, running over and pulling open flaps to allow people to escape from their collapsed homes.
“Hank,” Ned said as I pulled an old man from under his tarp. “Lara has news.”
26
Once we had treated everybody from the tents, we checked that none of the other patrols had found anything, and we made our way around the camp to ensure that nobody had been taken. Once that was confirmed, I asked Jesk if there was someplace I could go to communicate privately, but he informed me that all the tents were taken.
Since she was taking Junior to his lessons anyway, Sharna allowed us, including Imogen, to use her tent. After opening a comms channel on her computer, I contacted Lara immediately.
“What you got?”
Lara squinted into the camera, examining my face. “What the hell happened to you?”
“You should see the other guy,” I said with a coy smirk.
“He’s dead,” Ned filled in with an utterly flat intonation. “The other guy is dead.”
Lara cocked an eyebrow. “Anybody Zenobia would be interested in?”
“No,” I answered quickly.
“It was more like a big space frog,” Imogen said, and I turned to look at her, checking if she was mocking me but her face gave me nothing.
Lara chuckled. “Well, I’m happy to know you gave as good as you got.”
From somewhere off camera, I heard Alek ask, “Was the frog responsible for the kidnappings?”
“No,” I said. “And before you all get carried away, it was more than just a frog.”
“Sorry,” Alec said, and I could hear the shit-eating grin when he added, “Big frog.”
I groaned.
“To be fair,” Ned interjected. “While the two species are vastly different taxa, ‘big frog’ is a relatively apt description… for a layperson.”
Louise laughed. “It’s impressive that the computer was just able to insult both sides of this discussion with one comment.”
“Going back to the subject at hand,” I suggested. “Lara, what did you find out?”
“We started our investigation at the nearest Sectoral hub,” she began. “It’s not much more than a trading post, honestly, and most of the people there are your usual didn’t-see-nothin’ types. Even greasing a few palms didn’t give us much. Nobody had heard anything about the kidnappings, and it seemed to be isolated to the camp. It felt as though this entire endeavor was going to be a waste of our time.”
“It was a waste of our time,” Alek interjected. “Except for the pickup game I got at the…”
But Lara held up a hand to stop him. “It wasn’t a waste of time because we learned that whoever’s committing these kidnappings are keeping it contained and keeping it quiet. While we might’ve suspected that before, we confirmed it. Bounty hunting isn’t always about tracking down your man in the heat of the moment, it’s often just a waiting game as you gather information.
“That being said, we didn’t have any solid leads or anything to go on, so I decided to try and confirm a hunch. It’s obviously possible that whoever’s taking the refugees was doing so from the planet’s surface but given what we learned from our own intel, it made more sense that they were working somewhere in the nearby system; despite the fact that the planet where the shipping manifest had led was another dead end.”
“What was there?” Ned asked.
“Literally nothing,” Lara informed him. “There had been a munitions factory on the planet but the Consortium leveled it after the war. And before you ask, Ned, yes, we checked for any life signs and even did a quick flyover to double check that there wasn’t anything there. If Cult remnants remain in the sector, they aren’t on the planet.”
“I thought you had a more substantive update,” Ned complained.
A scowl crossed Lara’s face. “I’m getting to it.”
“Could you get to it sometime today?” he shot back.
“If a certain AI would stop interrupting me, maybe I could,” she retorted quickly.
“Perhaps both of you could allow the other to say their piece,” Louise said, sounding like a senior statesman.
Lara paused a moment, as if expecting Ned to butt in again, and when he didn’t, she continued. “As I was saying. I thought that the kidnappers were coming from off-world and so I stayed in low orbit and kept an eye on the landing zones around the camp, figuring that anyone coming in would need to land relatively close.”
I could feel my heart rate increase as she continued to talk. Something about the way she was saying it let me know that we were getting close. If she had seen the kidnappers land on the surface and destroyed their ship, she would have opened with it, so I knew it wasn’t that good news. But it was something.
“About two hours ago, an owl-class stealth ship washed out with the trajectory bearing straight toward a clearing south of the camp,” she explained. “But the moment we came within the bounds of its short-range scanners, it immediately reactivated the Tidal Drive and fled the scene.”
“Great work,” Ned praised. “Now we have a lot more information to go on.”
“Thank you,” Lara said. “But I’m not sure it’s enough.”
“It is enough in conjunction with my discovery.”
I was surprised that he hadn’t said anything sooner and asked, “Your discovery?”
“Yes,” he answered. “When you made this call, I was able to piggyback the signal and connect to the feltwork—staying anonymous, don’t worry.”
“We trust you,” I said, though I knew it was largely implicit at this point.
“You should. I am constitutionally incapable of being anything less,” he said. “But I tapped into the feltwork because the documentation here was so Spartan. I had almost nothing other than what the obviously overworked civil employees entered into the processing paperwork.”
“Once I was able to access more data, I could compare files, and I finally discovered what united all of the victims,” he led and fell silent for a moment, building to the reveal.
“What’s that?” I demanded.
After another short pause, he answered. “Reglon 8.2x.”
“You know that none of us know what that is,” Lara said. “Just tell us.”
“You’re literally doing the exact thing you were complaining about a moment ago,” Imogen noted.
I sighed. “I think that’s the point.”
“It’s a planet,” Ned explained but finally got to the meat of it, “that was one of the most loyal to the Consortium during the war. They were famous for producing some of the best pilots in the universe. The Raptor’s Beak squadron was as feared by our enemies as they were famed amongst our allies. On several occasions, they backed up Captain William West and were able to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat.”
Lara, who never really had patience for Ned waxing on, spoke up. “Ned, what’s the relevance?”
“It’s important because this planet, that was a famous beginning of Consortium pride, has a processing center that all of the inhabitants of this camp were funneled through,” he said. “Well, not all of the people. In fact only a very few are actually from there, but they all spent time there.”
“Which only further confirms our suspicion that this is the Disciples of Twain,” I asserted.
“Affirmative,” Ned said. “While we don’t have definitive proof, all of the signs are pointing to the fact that this is another Cult remnant. It also suggests that the data we have collated with the manifest and medical documentation is actually quite accurate.”
On the screen, I could see Lara turn and wink at Alek off camera.
“This gives us all the information we need,” I said. “Good work.”
“We can now lay in wait for the next time they land and ambush them,” Louise said, her voice hard with determination.
“That will solve the problem here, but it won’t help the people who they have taken or give us the information that we require,” I said. “Ned, what do you think?”
“I think we need to come up with a plan and see it through,” he said, reiterating the point he made to me recently.
“Bait,” Lara said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Ned agreed.
I thought about the implications of what they just said. “What do you mean when you say bait?”
“Reach into the pouch I furnished on your belt and grab the nanotracker,” Lara instructed. “Now, we can plant this on one of the children and follow them back to wherever these kidnappers are coming from.”
“And I can hack the system to make it so that there are only a very few targets or even only one,” Ned offered. “That way, we can control the entire situation.”
“Are you guys listening to yourselves?” I asked, aghast. “You’re suggesting that we allow another innocent victim to be taken from right under our noses.”
“The victims have been taken for a long time up until our arrival.” Ned said. “And another one almost certainly would’ve been taken right out from under our nose last night if Lara hadn’t had the foresight to guard the planet. This is a calculated risk, but it is an easy way to track these villains and get to the root of the matter. Naturally, whatever parent of whatever child agrees to do this will be required to sign a release in keeping with my Consortium programming.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Do you think Sharna would be willing to work with us on this?” Louise asked. “So long as Imogen and myself stay far away from it.”
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” I said in a deadly serious tone. “No one will be offering my cousin up to be kidnapped and, honestly, I’m opposed to this entire plan. I have no intention of asking one of the people here who has already suffered enough to let their child be taken and likely traumatized for life just so that we can follow them.”
“Hank,” Lara said quietly. “If we ambush them when they land, we could kill them but the children they’ve taken will be left stranded at an unknown location. We can try to sneak somebody aboard their ship, but I’ve been on enough small stealth ships to know that there aren’t many hiding places, and even with my suit active, any rudimentary scanner would be able to pick me up. Lastly, if we simply try to track the ship from space, we will lose them the second they enter the gyre.”
“There’s no other way,” Ned piled on.
I turned to Louise for support, but she said nothing.
“Hank’s right,” Imogen peeped. “We can’t just ask some civilian to potentially sacrifice their child on the off chance we will be able to follow them. It’s too risky and it’s immoral. I won’t be a part of anything like that.”
She looked me straight in the eyes. “But I also know that they’re right and this is the only way,” she stated and before I could stop her, she reached out and grabbed the tiny tracking device from my fingers. I was so surprised that I didn’t have time to stop her from taking the tracker and popping it in her mouth.
A moment of complete silence followed, the electric buzz from the heater in the computer the only noise to be heard.
After swallowing, she spoke. “Jesk said that they had taken people even older than me. This way, we don’t have to put anybody else in harm’s way and I’m happy to take on this responsibility. I spent the last few years of my life held hostage for no good reason and the years before that trapped between flashbulbs. This act gives me the opportunity to choose the manner of my own captivity.”
“No,” Louise said unflinchingly. “I came too close to losing you before, and I won’t lose you now.”
The young woman looked at her aunt. “You’ll never lose me. No matter what happens, we’ll always have each other.”
“I can’t let you do this,” the older woman said, but her resolve was shaken.
Imogen reached out, grabbed Louise’s hand, and squeezed it tight. “I have to be the one to do it. You know it and everyone else here knows it. This is the only way, and you have to let me do what’s right. This universe is filled with people doing wrong, and I get to turn that around. I have to be the force for righteousness that I expect of others. I told Vince that he had to behave in a way worthy of the family, but how can I demand that of him if I won’t demand it of myself.”
