Marathon: The Complete Series (Books 1-9) (Complete Series Box Sets), page 19
part #1 of Marathon Series
She turned around even more slowly, and her breath sounded extra loud coming through her mask. “And then you came. I thought you would wipe us all out.”
“I was supposed to. That was the job—to wipe out not just the Black Platoon, but everyone in the compound. The client didn’t want any witnesses left alive.”
“You freed all the aliens in the compound, not just the Bion. You even freed the collaborators.”
“What was I supposed to do—hold trials to decide who was worthy of a death sentence and who should go free? There wasn’t time for that.”
“You’re a fool, Eckhart,” she rasped. “You care too much. That’s your fatal flaw. You put your whole crew at risk by keeping DeWalt on board, but you’d rather stand up to every criminal syndicate in the galaxy than give him up.”
He looked down at the regulators and started flipping through Aistenz’s personnel files, but he only half looked at them. “It isn’t just DeWalt, is it? If the Regiment gets their hands on him or the crystal, they’ll use both against the aliens on the fringes. They’ll wipe out millions—maybe even billions.”
“Why did you let me stay on board your ship?” she demanded. “Was I another charity case like DeWalt?”
“Charity case! How can you even ask me that? You’ve done more for me than you ever got paid for—more than I ever did for you. Hell, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
He did his best to concentrate on the files, but he couldn’t stop fuming. If she wanted to leave, let her leave. She didn’t have to drag up the past or insult his decisions. Keeping DeWalt and the crystal out of Regiment hands had nothing to do with charity or Eckhart caring too much.
She fell silent again, and he let the files occupy his attention. He got so absorbed in them that he almost forgot she was there.
He knew a little less than half the people on the chip. He just didn’t know they worked for Aistenz, though he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Aistenz had at least a third of the Bloody Blossoms on his payroll, including the Grand Mother of their order. He also had moles in most of the major criminal organizations controlling black market traffic on the fringes.
Not surprisingly, Aistenz’s influence dwindled the closer he encroached on Regiment-controlled space. An alien couldn’t extend his power base into Earth’s domain.
For some reason Eckhart couldn’t figure out, Aistenz’s files didn’t explicitly state which of these assets he wanted Eckhart to free from the Silvercloud Vault. The chip contained five hundred personnel files, but none of them contained any special marker or flag to show which of them was Eckhart’s target.
He flipped through a few more. He passed Namol, a Hilkut assassin from the Thilte system, but the target couldn’t be him. Namol was working as a bodyguard to Fomfron, the warlord who controlled Ziqin and its system of moons.
The next document covered Ognu, a black marketeer from the Doncil satellite of the planet Krov. Ognu couldn’t possibly be the target. He employed a vast network of intermediaries precisely so he never had to stick his neck out far enough to risk getting caught.
Then came Dickat Norheall, a big-shot weapons dealer from the Ingrins system. He worked for the Vagill brothers and Dickat was far too valuable to them. Even if, by some outside chance Dickat got caught—which he wouldn’t—the Vagill brothers would never let him go to prison.
He turned to the next document, not expecting to find anything particularly interesting. His mind started to wander. He never expected the last three entries to work for Aistenz. Come to think of it, they didn’t work for him. They never had and they never would, so why did Aistenz include them here?
Aistenz must have seeded this chip with hundreds of dummy files to mask the one file he wanted Eckhart to find. Only one of these was the real target…but which one?
He almost left the bridge. He shook those thoughts out of his head and raised his hand to eject the chip when he saw the file in front of him. The name sent a prickle up his scalp.
Akkek Stratha. An almost human face stared back at him from his console, but Akkek wasn’t human. She was an Akeix safe breaker from the planet Shisax, but the Regiment had destroyed Shisax generations ago.
The surviving Akeix scattered and disappeared into the teeming hordes of alien populations on the fringes. They blended in and became something close to legend among criminals.
Now Eckhart understood why Aistenz was so tight-lipped about who his target was. No wonder he’d hidden her identity among so many other personnel files on the chip.
Unlike all the other files, Akkek’s details came from the Regiment itself. Regiment records going back at least fifty years listed bank robberies, art thefts, jewel heists, and high-risk raids on some of the most dangerous criminal elements on the fringes.
Akkek had even been known to infiltrate the Silent Death and come back alive to tell the tale—but she never told the tale. That was her greatest quality.
She’d been caught a total of ten times. She’d been incarcerated in the highest-security prisons in the galaxy. Not only did she never once tell who she’d been working for, but she escaped imprisonment every time.
The Regiment had transferred her to higher and higher security holding facilities every time she got captured. The last time she got caught, she had broken into a burial crypt belonging to the Immortals, a black-market syndicate on Uriax.
Akkek had lifted a collection of priceless jewelry from the tomb of one Omhar the Liar. The Immortals had conveniently been supplying information to the Regiment about a renegade population of Zainids, but even if they hadn’t been, the Regiment had already been burned too many times by Akkek’s exploits.
They’d tracked her down, and with the help of a few of their other two-faced contacts on the fringes, they captured Akkek and shipped her off to the Silvercloud Vault.
There were two unusual circumstances about her capture. One was the fact that they captured her at all. They shouldn’t have been able to find her, because the Shisax were notorious for disappearing, blending into crowds, and erasing their existence.
Some speculated that Akkek let herself get caught just to humiliate the Regiment by escaping from them. She hadn’t been able to escape from the Silvercloud Vault, but maybe she just hadn’t been trying all that hard.
No, the really bizarre thing was that the jewelry was never recovered. It never turned up on the black market and, despite many criminal organizations offering stupendous rewards for it, it never resurfaced.
Needless to say, the Immortals were furious that some refugee from the ass end of the galaxy ripped off their glorious leader. They offered even higher bounties on Akkek’s life, but since she was all locked up in the Silvercloud Vault, no assassin could reach her.
Eckhart frowned at the file. He didn’t need to read it to know every detail of Akkek’s story. She was famous on the fringes. Mercenaries, assassins, merchants, thieves, and traders whispered her name with reverence in smoky bars and dingy alleys—anywhere the Regiment couldn’t hear.
A bomb went off in Eckhart’s mind and he shot out of his chair. “This is it! This is the contract!”
Alice jumped in surprise. “What? Who is?”
Eckhart wasn’t listening. He unlocked the door and ran to the stairs. He stuck his head down and yelled, “Get up to the bridge, all of you! We’ve got work to do.”
PART 2
ONE LAST JOB
7
Bing rubbed his head and clamped his eyes shut. “Let me get this straight. You want to break into the Silvercloud Vault.”
“To get Akkek Stratha out of there and bring her back to Aistenz,” Dallas finished.
“That’s right,” Eckhart replied. “In exchange, he’ll destroy the Oksite for us so we don’t have to worry about it falling into the wrong hands. We also won’t have to worry about anyone coming after us and trying to kill us for it.”
Clifton glanced over at DeWalt, but he was the only one who did.
“Why doesn’t Aistenz just fire the Oksite into the lava on Laloyama?” Bing asked. “That would get rid of it, along with the Silvercloud Vault. That would shut Akkek Stratha up real good.”
“No one can kill Akkek Stratha,” Dallas murmured. “She’s untouchable.”
“Killing Akkek isn’t the job,” Eckhart reminded them. “The job is getting her out of the prison and back to Aistenz’s safehouse on Pheste. If he wanted Akkek dead, he would have found a way to do it by now.”
“By that logic, if he wanted Akkek freed from the prison, he would have found a way to do that, too,” Bing argued. “Why did he have to hire us to do it?”
“Does it matter?” Alice spoke up for the first time from the back corner of the infirmary. “We’re doing it. Why doesn’t matter.”
No one asked the obvious question of why she’d changed her mind about joining them on this suicide mission. Eckhart didn’t ask, either. He was too glad to have her with him. They needed every able crew member they could get.
“But how?” Clifton asked. “The Silvercloud Vault…I mean, it’s impenetrable.”
“Not really,” Eckhart replied. “There are two entrances, and there are ships going in and out all the time.”
“Ships with enhanced heat shielding we don’t have,” Dallas added.
“Ships with clearance codes,” Bing finished.
“Ships with experience,” Alice chimed in. “Ships who have been in and out many times before and can time their entry into Mount Graelges.”
“We can get all that information,” Eckhart told them. “Aistenz’s chip contains timing information on how to get inside the mountain.”
“Without frying our asses off,” Bing finished for him.
“Aistenz also said we could use his bank accounts to get any modifications we needed. We can buy the shielding to get through the lava.”
“Forget about breaking in by force,” Dallas countered. “It can’t be done with any kind of weapons. You’d blow the whole planet breaking through the glacier.”
“I don’t plan to break in by force,” Eckhart replied. “I just said we could time Mount Graelges, and we can buy the shielding to get through the lava.”
“And then what?” Alice asked. “The prison is armed with some of the most powerful guns in the galaxy. There are motion sensors in every corridor and DNA detectors linked to the genetic trace of every prisoner inside its walls. Every cell is armed with weight detectors linked to the prison’s mainframe. If any prisoner leaves their cell without authorization, it triggers an alarm and locks down the whole prison.”
Eckhart nodded. “I know all that.”
“So what’s your plan?” Clifton asked. “How do you plan to get inside?”
Eckhart opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Ilke moaned on the exam table. She’d been unconscious since she’d saved Eckhart’s life on Zuic.
Dallas stomped over to the table and slipped his metal fingers around one of her arms. Eckhart averted his gaze, and the others retreated from the infirmary.
They filed out, and Eckhart turned his steps back to the bridge, but when he reached the threshold, he looked back. Dallas raised Ilke’s arm to his helmet in a kissing motion. Ilke smiled up at him, but she was still too weak to stand.
Eckhart tore himself away and forced that image out of his mind on his way to the bridge. Whatever was going on between Ilke and Dallas didn’t bode well for the Marathon. Doubting Alice was bad enough.
Rixby looked up from her perch on top of her workstation when Eckhart walked in. “I used the chip to access Aistenz’s bank accounts.”
He threw himself into his chair and took the regulators. He fired up the engines and turned the ship around.
She hesitated a lot longer than he expected before she asked, “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Sohiri.”
She nodded. “We should be able to buy enhanced heat shielding from Skarekd. He usually carries goods like that.”
Eckhart didn’t answer. He let his thoughts wander while he steered to Sohiri. The crew would handle it better if they didn’t find out until the last moment what he planned to do.
Actually, no, they wouldn’t, but putting them in danger so he could finish the job didn’t sit right with him.
He entered orbit and tapped out a few instructions on his controls. The ship slotted into a smooth rotation around the planet and a communications signal came to his console from the ground.
An alien covered in grey fur appeared on his display. “The usual, Eckhart—Celdian and Datrium? You’ll never learn to play nice with the other children, will you?”
Eckhart had to laugh. “Thanks for the compliment, pal, but we have plenty of Celdian and Datrium. We just supplied on Zuic.”
Skarekd cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Zuic! What were you doing there?”
“Getting shot at by the Aegeans—what else? Do you have any shipments going out to the Silvercloud Vault, Skarekd?”
Rixby spun around so fast she almost toppled off her workstation. “Shipments going out to the…!”
Eckhart held up his hand for silence and Skarekd scratched his ear. “I might, I might. A prisoner barge has been parked here for about a week. They stopped here and took on a full load of Guk cakes.” He made a disgusted face. “It’s a miracle they show up at the prison with any living prisoners, if that’s what they feed them en route.”
“Who runs the barge?” Eckhart asked.
“The Jackal Clan runs it, but it’s completely manned by Kadrok raiders. I can only guess they get paid by the head on delivery, whether the prisoners are alive or dead. They’re leaving in a couple of hours.”
“That’s perfect. I’ll see you in a few minutes, Skarekd.”
Eckhart signed off. Rixby stood still on her workstation and regarded him with her antennae pricked. “What are you going to do?”
He pointed to her workstation. “Take us down to the surface. I’m going out on the outpost. As soon as I’m gone, I want you to read the instructions I left you on the ship’s mainframe. Don’t read it until I’m gone. Understand?’
She didn’t answer. She just stood there, rooted to the surface of her workstation. She must sense that his instructions wouldn’t be anything she would want to follow.
He went downstairs to find Bing and Dallas in the cargo hold. “How’s Ilke?” Eckhart asked.
“She’s fine,” Dallas replied.
Eckhart studied his friend’s helmet. He considered telling Dallas the truth and immediately discarded the thought.
Eckhart had just gone through Aistenz’s personnel files on the chip. The chip listed dozens of names from the Bloody Blossoms who were loyal to Aistenz. Ilke’s name wasn’t on the list, but Dallas didn’t need to know that—not yet.
The ship boomed and shuddered when Rixby set the Marathon down on Sohiri. Eckhart went to one of the lockers and tugged off his jacket. Then he unbuckled his sidearms and put everything in the locker. He didn’t like going unarmed, but the Kadrok would only disarm him anyway.
“What are you doing?” Bing asked.
“I’m going on a little trip.” Eckhart waved toward the stairs. “Look after my ship while I’m gone.”
“Gone!” Bing exclaimed. “Are you leaving?”
Eckhart smiled sadly at his friend. “Rixby knows all about it. I’ll see you soon. Don’t worry about me.”
He said the words, but he didn’t feel them. Dread settled over his heart. If he didn’t go now, he would lose his nerve.
He opened the hatch and stepped outside. The setting sun dipped behind the outpost. Five enormous freighters dwarfed a low, squat building. One of them was the prison barge, and he wasn’t looking forward to getting on it.
He trotted over to the outpost and skirted around behind it. He pressed his ear to the back door and heard shouts coming from inside.
He held his breath and commanded his heart to stop beating against his ribs, but it didn’t listen to his commands. Cold sweat broke out on his palms.
A whistling sound faded into the sky as the Marathon launched out of the atmosphere and disappeared into space. He was alone and unarmed on this planet with a bunch of Kadroks who wanted to capture him.
He tightened his grip on the doorknob, took a deep breath, and burst inside. The Kadroks froze, staring at him for a minute, and then they pounced on him as one.
He barely had time to raise his arms over his head before seven of them attacked from all sides. They rained him with punches and drove him to the ground. They kicked and pummeled him with clubs. He felt ribs snap, and splitting pain shot through his shoulder into his chest.
He huddled on the ground for protection, but when the beating stopped, he screamed in pain when they grabbed hold of his broken limbs and hauled him back outside.
He heard Skarekd yelling at the Kadroks to stop, but they paid no attention. Their low, guttural barks echoed back and forth through the gathering darkness.
His broken body bounced on the rough metal ramp when they dragged him into the prison barge, and he screamed again when they threw him down into a sea of bodies packed in the hold.
8
“YOU DID WHAT!” Alice bellowed. “YOU JUST LET HIM WALK OUT OF HERE—JUST LIKE THAT? WHY DIDN’T YOU STOP HIM?”
Bing tried to shrink away from her, but she only followed up her advantage. She seized him by the neck with one hand and brandished her fist in his face. She shoved him hard against the galley wall.
“Don’t blame me!” he cried. “I had no idea what he was going to do.”
Dallas stomped over and shoved his giant arms between them. He forced Alice and Bing apart. “None of us knew what he planned to do. He didn’t tell us.”
“He told me to check his instructions after he left the ship,” Rixby explained. “He told me not to read them until after he was gone.”
