Marathon: The Complete Series (Books 1-9) (Complete Series Box Sets), page 9
part #1 of Marathon Series
He went downstairs and found Alice, Dallas, and Bing in the galley. Dallas had the nutritional aperture on his armor hooked up to a dispenser in the ship’s hull, but the other two weren’t eating.
Alice bent over a giant field pounder that took up almost half the galley. She adjusted the breech fitting while she sighted the crosshairs on the galley wall.
Bing sat at the table in front of a mountain of rifles. His many limbs went through a whirlwind of blurred movement, checking, cleaning, adjusting, and loading them.
All three turned around to look at Eckhart when he entered. He raised his eyebrows at the pounder. “What do you plan to do with that?”
“Pound—what else?” She made another minor adjustment to the sight. “I plan to shove this so far up Helvall’s ass he’ll be tasting Datrium for the next ten years.”
“Helvall is a Nalzai,” Bing chimed in. “I don’t think the Nalzai have asses, per se. They excrete their wastes through their—”
She rounded on him and gave him such a look that he cut himself off in a hurry. “Were you saying something?”
Bing looked away. “Nope. Not me.”
“I need all of you to take your stuff down to the cargo hold,” Eckhart told them.
“What for?” Bing asked. “We’re working in here.”
“Go work down there. We’ll be deploying the façade in a few minutes, and I need you three down in the cargo hold.”
“Which façade are you using?” Alice asked.
“We’re using the Ierde HG-38.”
“What the hell for?” Alice demanded.
“Why can’t we use the Sani?” Bing asked. “They have more firepower.”
“We’re landing on a Regiment station. The Sani belongs to the Qiqan race. The Regiment won’t let an alien ship land on the station, and they sure won’t give us permission to go out and explore for Clifton and DeWalt. We have to use a ship that’s more likely to be manned by an Earthling…which is why you have to go down to the hold.”
The three of them stared at him in a way Eckhart didn’t like at all. For a second, he was absolutely certain they were about to attack him.
“You want us to pretend to be your…your…” Alice didn’t finish the sentence.
“Prisoners,” Dallas said. “It’s smart. He wants to pretend he’s keeping us locked up.”
Eckhart held up both hands. “I’m the only person on this damn ship who’s still sufficiently Earthling to get onto the station. I’m not saying I like it, but if they don’t see me treating you the right way, they won’t let me off the ship.”
“By treating us the ‘right’ way,” Alice snarled, “You mean treating us like prisoners.”
“Or slaves,” Bing added.
“Or cargo,” Dallas replied.
“You wouldn’t make much of a cargo with only one of each of you,” Eckhart pointed out, “and the three of you are far too ornery to ever be slaves. Now pack up your shit and get into the hold. Be grateful I don’t chain you up to make the performance more convincing.”
Dallas and Bing both laughed. Alice didn’t. Dallas unplugged from his aperture and snapped his arm plate shut. Bing scooped up his rifles and followed Dallas out of the galley.
Alice motioned toward the pounder. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“Just leave it here. I’m sure it’s adjusted well enough, and it isn’t as though any of us is going to push it around the station.”
“This is a really terrible idea,” she told him. “You know that, right?”
17
Eckhart scoffed. “I don’t remember you ever having a problem with terrible ideas before. Are you saying you’d be happy for the Regiment to develop a doomsday weapon to use against the fringe aliens…or to keep the fringe aliens down by threatening to use it?”
Alice made a disgusted sound in her throat and turned away. “You won’t be able to stop them if you’re dead.”
“Hold it.” He pulled her back, but her expression didn’t soften. She glared at him so ferociously he yanked his hand away, but ferocious glares were nothing new for her. “Did you pick up anything strange about DeWalt?”
“Strange? You mean like he’s a gutless worm who shits his pants if an alien looks at him sideways? Yeah. I picked that up.”
“Besides that.”
Alice’s sightless eyes drilled Eckhart with particular intensity. He didn’t want to think about what she could pick up about him when she looked at him like that. “What are you getting at?”
“Was there anything about him…anything…more than Earthling?”
“More than! Earthlings are the most pathetic, useless, weakest—”
“I got that. I’m asking if there was anything else.”
“Of course there wasn’t anything else. At least Clifton knows how to use a weapon. DeWalt is a nothing.”
“I know that, but… So many people are after him. They want to kill him. They would gladly blow up the Marathon and the crystal to get rid of him.”
She hesitated. “Maybe it’s something more than I could see on the surface, or under it.”
“What do you mean?” Eckhart asked.
“I mean maybe it was something I couldn’t see. Maybe it was something no one could see.”
“What would that be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was something implanted in his mind, or in some part of his body. Maybe…” Alice shook her head. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“Seriously,” he insisted. “What do you think? I want to know.”
“I’m saying maybe they don’t care about the Oksite. Maybe he’s the weapon.”
“If he’s the weapon, why would they want to kill him? The Regiment wanted to develop a weapon they could use against aliens. An Earthling wouldn’t be much good for that.”
“That’s what Helvall said. Helvall told you the Regiment wanted to develop a weapon they could use against aliens, but maybe this Trinity Code group only put that out on the grapevine. Maybe their real intentions are something different.”
Eckhart ran his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t think what intentions the Trinity Code might have to explain their actions, but Alice was right. He really didn’t know what was going on. He’d just trusted that Helvall was right about the Regiment wanting to kill Clifton and DeWalt.
“Do you still plan to go get them?” she asked.
Eckhart snapped alert. “More than ever. Get into the hold with the other two. If you still want to work on your pounder, you’d better take it with you. You won’t be able to leave the hold once I deploy the façade.”
She approached the pounder, planted her spindly arms against its giant metal bulk, and started pushing it toward the door. It was too big to fit through the opening, and Eckhart didn’t want to stick around long enough for her to ask him to help her.
He returned to the bridge and relayed the order to Rixby. She didn’t argue. She hopped off the workstation and headed for the corridor.
“Rixby?” Eckhart called after her.
“Yes?”
“Did you go over the ship’s internal scans while those two were on board?”
“Of course,” she chirped. “I always go over the scan data.”
“Did you pick up anything strange about either of them—anything out of the ordinary for Earthlings, I mean?”
She inclined her head to one side, and her antennae stretched toward him. “I did, actually. The shorter one—DeWalt—his body temperature was elevated.”
“Elevated how? Do you mean he had a fever or something? Was that why he panicked the way he did?”
“His internal body temperature was ten degrees above the normal range for an Earthling.”
Eckhart stared at her. “Ten degrees? Rixby, that’s a lot.”
“Is it?” she asked thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose it is, now that you mention it.”
“He should have been in a coma with a temperature that high.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t have been walking around, talking to us, and trying to bribe you into going back to Earth where you belong, would he?”
Eckhart couldn’t enjoy the joke. “How do you explain something like that?”
Rixby waggled a bit, an expression that Eckhart had come to know as more or less a shrug. “I can’t, other than to say that humans are strange. There are three alien races on the fringes whose normal body temperature range is as high as that, but I checked DeWalt’s physiological readings. Everything else about him was normal for an Earthling.”
“Are you saying he had normal Earthling DNA? He wasn’t hybridized with anything else?”
“He’s Earthling through and through, but we already knew that. He had all the right organs in all the right places for your species, and none of his other bodily functions were outside the normal range. There’s no scientific explanation for it. I’m sorry, Eckhart, but it’s a mystery.”
“You can say that again.”
She tilted her head the other way and waved her antennae at him. “Is there anything else you need from me, Eckhart?”
“Yeah, actually. I want you to set up a station for yourself in the hold. I want you to monitor the situation on Kukuri and, if anything goes wrong, I want you to take over and fly the ship to safety. Understand?”
“Of course.” She turned and waddled away. “Good luck, Eckhart.”
PART 3
ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
18
Eckhart stepped into the cargo hold. His four friends looked up, saw him dressed in a Regiment major’s uniform, and Dallas and Bing burst into gales of laughter. Rixby made a rapid chirping noise that told Eckhart she was laughing at him, too. Alice looked away in disgust.
“Enjoy yourselves while it lasts.” Eckhart strode over to Bing’s pile of rifles and picked one of them up. He examined the weapon and put it back.
“Take it,” Bing urged. “You’re gonna need it.”
“They aren’t Regiment-issue. It would only give me away.”
Dallas took another look at Eckhart and exploded all over again. “Wait! Wait! I want to record this in my cerebral archive. I want to be able to pull this up when I need to cheer myself up after a bad day.”
“Ha ha,” Eckhart snarled. “You stay here and cheer yourself up while I do the dirty work. Are you ready, Rixby?”
“Ready,” she replied.
“Take it easy, hotshot,” Dallas told him. “I’d be going with you if I could.”
“Well, you can’t, so stay out of the way. If anyone sees you, the game is up.”
Eckhart went over to the improvised workstation Rixby had set up in the cargo hold. “Hail the station.”
The same channel flicked on, but this time, a female officer answered. “Ierde HG-38, Insignia 743-GISQ, state your origin and destination.”
Eckhart read out the route data from the screen that Rixby displayed for him. “Origin Viborix 5QA, destination Catov 87Z.”
“State your business at Kukuri Station.”
Eckhart grabbed Bing by the back of the neck. He gave his friend a vicious yank and hauled him over in front of the screen.
Bing shrieked in surprise and indignation. He let out a string of Yakit curses, and his limbs flailed in front of the screen while he tried to free himself from Eckhart’s grip.
“Dropping off three alien felons for incarceration and sentencing!” Eckhart yelled over the noise. “Gotta get these delinquents off my ship, fast!”
The female officer checked her own readings of the Marathon. Eckhart watched her gaze flicker from one set of readouts to the next. She could identify Bing, Alice, and Rixby easily enough. She just couldn’t see what they were doing.
What she might think about Dallas was anybody’s guess. He no longer possessed enough Earthling DNA to read as human on any system, especially not the Regiment’s.
Sure enough, the female officer frowned at the last set of readings. “You appear to have an AI on board, Major. Can you state the original manufacturer? Some AIs are banned in Earth’s jurisdiction. If your AI is one of these, we’ll have no choice but to confiscate and destroy it.”
Eckhart kept his voice steady. He anticipated something like this. “I understand, Captain. The AI was manufactured by Platanistoidea Havilm.”
The officer turned to a set of instruments off screen. She visibly relaxed when she read the results. “That’s all in order, Major. Permission granted to land. A dispatch of security guards will stand ready to take your prisoners into custody.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Stand by to receive coordinates for landing.”
Rixby cut the connection, and Eckhart turned to find his crew all staring at him. “How are you going to stop them from taking us into custody?” Alice demanded.
“Simple. I’ll tell them that you’re in a hibernation cycle and that you need to be moved at a certain time of the day. They’ll be more than happy to leave you here until then.” Eckhart entered the information into the station’s system and went to the ramp. “Stay put and keep quiet. I’ll try to find Clifton and DeWalt.”
“That will be nearly impossible,” Bing pointed out. “You’d be looking for weeks for two Earthlings on a station crawling with Earthlings. They could anywhere.”
“They’re in a restricted cell in the secure biocontainment block,” Rixby announced. “They’re in Cell 48C.”
“Thanks, darling.” Eckhart waved his friends aside. “All of you stand over there while I leave. Don’t let them see you walking around free—except you, Dallas.”
Alice, Bing, and Rixby crossed the hold, and Eckhart opened the ramp. Regiment security guards patrolled the station in droves. They went from one ship to the next on a wide landing zone packed with spacecraft from all over the galaxy.
“You better be careful,” Dallas murmured in his ear. “The Regiment has a unique form of slang for all the parts of the station and the ranks and positions of everyone who works here. If you make even one mistake, they’ll make you. And then I’d bet you’ll get shot on the spot.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Eckhart replied. “I won’t get shot.”
“You’ll attract more attention if you don’t speak at all. How do you plan to handle it if someone asks you which Patroon Regent you belong to?”
“Then I’ll tell them I belong to Destiny 2FV.”
Dallas spun around so fast the mechanical joints of his neck popped. “All this time!” he whispered. “You never told us! You never told me!”
Eckhart brushed that off and jerked his thumb at the rest of the crew. “Keep an eye on them. Don’t let them do anything stupid like coming after me.”
“You were in the Regiment!” Dallas hissed. “You were one of them! Why didn’t you tell me—me, of all people?”
Eckhart winced. This wasn’t the time to go over the distant past. “That was more than twenty years ago.” Eckhart forced a laugh. “I’m a criminal these days. The Regiment would be even more enthusiastic about killing me than the rest of you.”
Eckhart tried to turn away, but Dallas pulled him back. “What happened?” The iron grip on Eckhart’s arm told him Dallas wouldn’t let him go until he told everything. “You told me you grew up on Parilia. You said you grew up starving in the slums. Was it all a lie?”
“Of course not. I did grow up on Parilia. I escaped from the slums by performing a hit for Aistenz Trotaer.” Eckhart grimaced. “Are you happy now? I admit it. I earned my first income from a hit.”
Dallas shook his head. “I knew you had history with Aistenz, but—”
“We all do,” Eckhart said. “You do. Alice sure does.”
Dallas shrugged. “I didn’t think it was anything like that.”
“Well, it was like that.”
“Who was the hit?”
Eckhart hesitated. He didn’t want to delay going out onto the station to search for Clifton and DeWalt, but that merciless bite in Dallas’ tone left no room to negotiate. Dallas could stop Eckhart from leaving if he wanted to. Dallas wouldn’t let him leave until he got some answers.
“Zels Ariat.”
Dallas gasped again. “You were the one who killed Ariat?”
“Keep your voice down,” Eckhart murmured. “Don’t let the others hear you.”
“That hit is legendary!” Dallas whispered back. “We all thought it was one of the Lion Tribe that did it, it was so…so brutal.”
“Yeah, well.” Eckhart scanned the station beyond the ramp. “I planned it that way. I made it look like the Lion Tribe did it so no one would suspect it was just a starving teenager from the slums. As soon as I got the money, I jumped Parilia and I never went back.”
“So how did it happen? How did you get into the Regiment and…damn, Eckhart! How did you end up here?”
Eckhart tried to chuckle, and wound up wincing. He didn’t want to talk about it. He’d known Dallas for years, and the rest of his crew even longer. He’d kept his past quiet all this time—this part of it, at least.
“I saw a lot of nasty shit on Parilia. I made myself two promises. First, that I’d get the hell off the planet as soon as possible. Second, I promised myself I would never hurt civilians, bystanders, the defenseless, or the innocent. I promised myself I would help them whenever I could, and that I’d make my living hunting anyone who wanted to hurt them. Fortunately, there was plenty of work doing that, so I never went without.”
“What does that have to do with the Regiment?”
“I didn’t know then what the Regiment was all about. I believed the fairy tales about the Regiment being responsible for upholding the law and protecting the defenseless, so I joined up.”
Dallas snorted. “That was stupid.”
“I was young, and I had never been off Parilia. Besides, between the Regiment and going to work for Aistenz’s crew, I think I made the right call. I figured the Regiment would let me turn my skills to something nobler than being a criminal. I found out real fast what the Regiment’s real agenda was. Our team was deployed against civilians who resisted being relocated from their home planet to make room for a new Regiment installation. I finished the tour and got discharged. I came back out to the fringes where I belonged, and no one ever found out.”
Alice bent over a giant field pounder that took up almost half the galley. She adjusted the breech fitting while she sighted the crosshairs on the galley wall.
Bing sat at the table in front of a mountain of rifles. His many limbs went through a whirlwind of blurred movement, checking, cleaning, adjusting, and loading them.
All three turned around to look at Eckhart when he entered. He raised his eyebrows at the pounder. “What do you plan to do with that?”
“Pound—what else?” She made another minor adjustment to the sight. “I plan to shove this so far up Helvall’s ass he’ll be tasting Datrium for the next ten years.”
“Helvall is a Nalzai,” Bing chimed in. “I don’t think the Nalzai have asses, per se. They excrete their wastes through their—”
She rounded on him and gave him such a look that he cut himself off in a hurry. “Were you saying something?”
Bing looked away. “Nope. Not me.”
“I need all of you to take your stuff down to the cargo hold,” Eckhart told them.
“What for?” Bing asked. “We’re working in here.”
“Go work down there. We’ll be deploying the façade in a few minutes, and I need you three down in the cargo hold.”
“Which façade are you using?” Alice asked.
“We’re using the Ierde HG-38.”
“What the hell for?” Alice demanded.
“Why can’t we use the Sani?” Bing asked. “They have more firepower.”
“We’re landing on a Regiment station. The Sani belongs to the Qiqan race. The Regiment won’t let an alien ship land on the station, and they sure won’t give us permission to go out and explore for Clifton and DeWalt. We have to use a ship that’s more likely to be manned by an Earthling…which is why you have to go down to the hold.”
The three of them stared at him in a way Eckhart didn’t like at all. For a second, he was absolutely certain they were about to attack him.
“You want us to pretend to be your…your…” Alice didn’t finish the sentence.
“Prisoners,” Dallas said. “It’s smart. He wants to pretend he’s keeping us locked up.”
Eckhart held up both hands. “I’m the only person on this damn ship who’s still sufficiently Earthling to get onto the station. I’m not saying I like it, but if they don’t see me treating you the right way, they won’t let me off the ship.”
“By treating us the ‘right’ way,” Alice snarled, “You mean treating us like prisoners.”
“Or slaves,” Bing added.
“Or cargo,” Dallas replied.
“You wouldn’t make much of a cargo with only one of each of you,” Eckhart pointed out, “and the three of you are far too ornery to ever be slaves. Now pack up your shit and get into the hold. Be grateful I don’t chain you up to make the performance more convincing.”
Dallas and Bing both laughed. Alice didn’t. Dallas unplugged from his aperture and snapped his arm plate shut. Bing scooped up his rifles and followed Dallas out of the galley.
Alice motioned toward the pounder. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“Just leave it here. I’m sure it’s adjusted well enough, and it isn’t as though any of us is going to push it around the station.”
“This is a really terrible idea,” she told him. “You know that, right?”
17
Eckhart scoffed. “I don’t remember you ever having a problem with terrible ideas before. Are you saying you’d be happy for the Regiment to develop a doomsday weapon to use against the fringe aliens…or to keep the fringe aliens down by threatening to use it?”
Alice made a disgusted sound in her throat and turned away. “You won’t be able to stop them if you’re dead.”
“Hold it.” He pulled her back, but her expression didn’t soften. She glared at him so ferociously he yanked his hand away, but ferocious glares were nothing new for her. “Did you pick up anything strange about DeWalt?”
“Strange? You mean like he’s a gutless worm who shits his pants if an alien looks at him sideways? Yeah. I picked that up.”
“Besides that.”
Alice’s sightless eyes drilled Eckhart with particular intensity. He didn’t want to think about what she could pick up about him when she looked at him like that. “What are you getting at?”
“Was there anything about him…anything…more than Earthling?”
“More than! Earthlings are the most pathetic, useless, weakest—”
“I got that. I’m asking if there was anything else.”
“Of course there wasn’t anything else. At least Clifton knows how to use a weapon. DeWalt is a nothing.”
“I know that, but… So many people are after him. They want to kill him. They would gladly blow up the Marathon and the crystal to get rid of him.”
She hesitated. “Maybe it’s something more than I could see on the surface, or under it.”
“What do you mean?” Eckhart asked.
“I mean maybe it was something I couldn’t see. Maybe it was something no one could see.”
“What would that be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was something implanted in his mind, or in some part of his body. Maybe…” Alice shook her head. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“Seriously,” he insisted. “What do you think? I want to know.”
“I’m saying maybe they don’t care about the Oksite. Maybe he’s the weapon.”
“If he’s the weapon, why would they want to kill him? The Regiment wanted to develop a weapon they could use against aliens. An Earthling wouldn’t be much good for that.”
“That’s what Helvall said. Helvall told you the Regiment wanted to develop a weapon they could use against aliens, but maybe this Trinity Code group only put that out on the grapevine. Maybe their real intentions are something different.”
Eckhart ran his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t think what intentions the Trinity Code might have to explain their actions, but Alice was right. He really didn’t know what was going on. He’d just trusted that Helvall was right about the Regiment wanting to kill Clifton and DeWalt.
“Do you still plan to go get them?” she asked.
Eckhart snapped alert. “More than ever. Get into the hold with the other two. If you still want to work on your pounder, you’d better take it with you. You won’t be able to leave the hold once I deploy the façade.”
She approached the pounder, planted her spindly arms against its giant metal bulk, and started pushing it toward the door. It was too big to fit through the opening, and Eckhart didn’t want to stick around long enough for her to ask him to help her.
He returned to the bridge and relayed the order to Rixby. She didn’t argue. She hopped off the workstation and headed for the corridor.
“Rixby?” Eckhart called after her.
“Yes?”
“Did you go over the ship’s internal scans while those two were on board?”
“Of course,” she chirped. “I always go over the scan data.”
“Did you pick up anything strange about either of them—anything out of the ordinary for Earthlings, I mean?”
She inclined her head to one side, and her antennae stretched toward him. “I did, actually. The shorter one—DeWalt—his body temperature was elevated.”
“Elevated how? Do you mean he had a fever or something? Was that why he panicked the way he did?”
“His internal body temperature was ten degrees above the normal range for an Earthling.”
Eckhart stared at her. “Ten degrees? Rixby, that’s a lot.”
“Is it?” she asked thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose it is, now that you mention it.”
“He should have been in a coma with a temperature that high.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t have been walking around, talking to us, and trying to bribe you into going back to Earth where you belong, would he?”
Eckhart couldn’t enjoy the joke. “How do you explain something like that?”
Rixby waggled a bit, an expression that Eckhart had come to know as more or less a shrug. “I can’t, other than to say that humans are strange. There are three alien races on the fringes whose normal body temperature range is as high as that, but I checked DeWalt’s physiological readings. Everything else about him was normal for an Earthling.”
“Are you saying he had normal Earthling DNA? He wasn’t hybridized with anything else?”
“He’s Earthling through and through, but we already knew that. He had all the right organs in all the right places for your species, and none of his other bodily functions were outside the normal range. There’s no scientific explanation for it. I’m sorry, Eckhart, but it’s a mystery.”
“You can say that again.”
She tilted her head the other way and waved her antennae at him. “Is there anything else you need from me, Eckhart?”
“Yeah, actually. I want you to set up a station for yourself in the hold. I want you to monitor the situation on Kukuri and, if anything goes wrong, I want you to take over and fly the ship to safety. Understand?”
“Of course.” She turned and waddled away. “Good luck, Eckhart.”
PART 3
ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
18
Eckhart stepped into the cargo hold. His four friends looked up, saw him dressed in a Regiment major’s uniform, and Dallas and Bing burst into gales of laughter. Rixby made a rapid chirping noise that told Eckhart she was laughing at him, too. Alice looked away in disgust.
“Enjoy yourselves while it lasts.” Eckhart strode over to Bing’s pile of rifles and picked one of them up. He examined the weapon and put it back.
“Take it,” Bing urged. “You’re gonna need it.”
“They aren’t Regiment-issue. It would only give me away.”
Dallas took another look at Eckhart and exploded all over again. “Wait! Wait! I want to record this in my cerebral archive. I want to be able to pull this up when I need to cheer myself up after a bad day.”
“Ha ha,” Eckhart snarled. “You stay here and cheer yourself up while I do the dirty work. Are you ready, Rixby?”
“Ready,” she replied.
“Take it easy, hotshot,” Dallas told him. “I’d be going with you if I could.”
“Well, you can’t, so stay out of the way. If anyone sees you, the game is up.”
Eckhart went over to the improvised workstation Rixby had set up in the cargo hold. “Hail the station.”
The same channel flicked on, but this time, a female officer answered. “Ierde HG-38, Insignia 743-GISQ, state your origin and destination.”
Eckhart read out the route data from the screen that Rixby displayed for him. “Origin Viborix 5QA, destination Catov 87Z.”
“State your business at Kukuri Station.”
Eckhart grabbed Bing by the back of the neck. He gave his friend a vicious yank and hauled him over in front of the screen.
Bing shrieked in surprise and indignation. He let out a string of Yakit curses, and his limbs flailed in front of the screen while he tried to free himself from Eckhart’s grip.
“Dropping off three alien felons for incarceration and sentencing!” Eckhart yelled over the noise. “Gotta get these delinquents off my ship, fast!”
The female officer checked her own readings of the Marathon. Eckhart watched her gaze flicker from one set of readouts to the next. She could identify Bing, Alice, and Rixby easily enough. She just couldn’t see what they were doing.
What she might think about Dallas was anybody’s guess. He no longer possessed enough Earthling DNA to read as human on any system, especially not the Regiment’s.
Sure enough, the female officer frowned at the last set of readings. “You appear to have an AI on board, Major. Can you state the original manufacturer? Some AIs are banned in Earth’s jurisdiction. If your AI is one of these, we’ll have no choice but to confiscate and destroy it.”
Eckhart kept his voice steady. He anticipated something like this. “I understand, Captain. The AI was manufactured by Platanistoidea Havilm.”
The officer turned to a set of instruments off screen. She visibly relaxed when she read the results. “That’s all in order, Major. Permission granted to land. A dispatch of security guards will stand ready to take your prisoners into custody.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Stand by to receive coordinates for landing.”
Rixby cut the connection, and Eckhart turned to find his crew all staring at him. “How are you going to stop them from taking us into custody?” Alice demanded.
“Simple. I’ll tell them that you’re in a hibernation cycle and that you need to be moved at a certain time of the day. They’ll be more than happy to leave you here until then.” Eckhart entered the information into the station’s system and went to the ramp. “Stay put and keep quiet. I’ll try to find Clifton and DeWalt.”
“That will be nearly impossible,” Bing pointed out. “You’d be looking for weeks for two Earthlings on a station crawling with Earthlings. They could anywhere.”
“They’re in a restricted cell in the secure biocontainment block,” Rixby announced. “They’re in Cell 48C.”
“Thanks, darling.” Eckhart waved his friends aside. “All of you stand over there while I leave. Don’t let them see you walking around free—except you, Dallas.”
Alice, Bing, and Rixby crossed the hold, and Eckhart opened the ramp. Regiment security guards patrolled the station in droves. They went from one ship to the next on a wide landing zone packed with spacecraft from all over the galaxy.
“You better be careful,” Dallas murmured in his ear. “The Regiment has a unique form of slang for all the parts of the station and the ranks and positions of everyone who works here. If you make even one mistake, they’ll make you. And then I’d bet you’ll get shot on the spot.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Eckhart replied. “I won’t get shot.”
“You’ll attract more attention if you don’t speak at all. How do you plan to handle it if someone asks you which Patroon Regent you belong to?”
“Then I’ll tell them I belong to Destiny 2FV.”
Dallas spun around so fast the mechanical joints of his neck popped. “All this time!” he whispered. “You never told us! You never told me!”
Eckhart brushed that off and jerked his thumb at the rest of the crew. “Keep an eye on them. Don’t let them do anything stupid like coming after me.”
“You were in the Regiment!” Dallas hissed. “You were one of them! Why didn’t you tell me—me, of all people?”
Eckhart winced. This wasn’t the time to go over the distant past. “That was more than twenty years ago.” Eckhart forced a laugh. “I’m a criminal these days. The Regiment would be even more enthusiastic about killing me than the rest of you.”
Eckhart tried to turn away, but Dallas pulled him back. “What happened?” The iron grip on Eckhart’s arm told him Dallas wouldn’t let him go until he told everything. “You told me you grew up on Parilia. You said you grew up starving in the slums. Was it all a lie?”
“Of course not. I did grow up on Parilia. I escaped from the slums by performing a hit for Aistenz Trotaer.” Eckhart grimaced. “Are you happy now? I admit it. I earned my first income from a hit.”
Dallas shook his head. “I knew you had history with Aistenz, but—”
“We all do,” Eckhart said. “You do. Alice sure does.”
Dallas shrugged. “I didn’t think it was anything like that.”
“Well, it was like that.”
“Who was the hit?”
Eckhart hesitated. He didn’t want to delay going out onto the station to search for Clifton and DeWalt, but that merciless bite in Dallas’ tone left no room to negotiate. Dallas could stop Eckhart from leaving if he wanted to. Dallas wouldn’t let him leave until he got some answers.
“Zels Ariat.”
Dallas gasped again. “You were the one who killed Ariat?”
“Keep your voice down,” Eckhart murmured. “Don’t let the others hear you.”
“That hit is legendary!” Dallas whispered back. “We all thought it was one of the Lion Tribe that did it, it was so…so brutal.”
“Yeah, well.” Eckhart scanned the station beyond the ramp. “I planned it that way. I made it look like the Lion Tribe did it so no one would suspect it was just a starving teenager from the slums. As soon as I got the money, I jumped Parilia and I never went back.”
“So how did it happen? How did you get into the Regiment and…damn, Eckhart! How did you end up here?”
Eckhart tried to chuckle, and wound up wincing. He didn’t want to talk about it. He’d known Dallas for years, and the rest of his crew even longer. He’d kept his past quiet all this time—this part of it, at least.
“I saw a lot of nasty shit on Parilia. I made myself two promises. First, that I’d get the hell off the planet as soon as possible. Second, I promised myself I would never hurt civilians, bystanders, the defenseless, or the innocent. I promised myself I would help them whenever I could, and that I’d make my living hunting anyone who wanted to hurt them. Fortunately, there was plenty of work doing that, so I never went without.”
“What does that have to do with the Regiment?”
“I didn’t know then what the Regiment was all about. I believed the fairy tales about the Regiment being responsible for upholding the law and protecting the defenseless, so I joined up.”
Dallas snorted. “That was stupid.”
“I was young, and I had never been off Parilia. Besides, between the Regiment and going to work for Aistenz’s crew, I think I made the right call. I figured the Regiment would let me turn my skills to something nobler than being a criminal. I found out real fast what the Regiment’s real agenda was. Our team was deployed against civilians who resisted being relocated from their home planet to make room for a new Regiment installation. I finished the tour and got discharged. I came back out to the fringes where I belonged, and no one ever found out.”
