On a Pale Ship Read online

  "Good. Let's get everything on the table," Zoya said. "We live in the presence of death every day. The list of people I care for in this wretched world has exactly one name on it and it's not mine. I know who you are, Marek. You are death itself when you choose to be. You aren’t going to kill me because what I say or do matters as little to you as these bodies matter to me. For you, I'll never be more than a means to an end. When you decide I'm more valuable to you dead, then I figure I'll get a ride on one of these slabs. If not, I can't say I'll be too upset."

  Marek nodded. "That's some twisted shite, girl."

  "Let's show Marek our latest addition and see if he has any ideas," Zoya said.

  "This way," the assistant said, walking through the sea of dead.

  It wasn't lost on Marek that the room they entered was hermetically sealed and shielded from all electronic signals. Not a single network connection was available. They might as well be on a ship in the middle of the deep dark.

  Three dismembered bodies lay on a single table behind a thick armored glass partition. He recognized Katriona's beautiful face and was disturbed by the fact that her long hair had been shaved close to her head as had all the bodies he'd seen. In her current state, her chest was sunken and it seemed her essence had been removed. Next to her lay a very large, brown skinned man with a young face. The young Mexican, apparently. Marek was surprised by the sheer number of blaster scorch marks on his body.

  "You sure the Mexican is alive?" he asked. "He must have been struck fifty times."

  "Alive enough," Zoya answered. "We counted two hundred forty. A hundred fifty of those wounds were peri-mortem, although that had something to do with the man who struck his patrol."

  Marek turned his attention to the final man who looked to be in his late thirties and well-muscled, although nowhere near the scale of the Mexican soldier.

  "And the bad news?" Marek asked.

  "Lights," Zoya said.

  When the lights were turned off, she opened the armored glass panel that separated them from the bodies and picked up a spray bottle. She spritzed the air, allowing the tiny drops to fall. Almost immediately, Marek's enhanced vision picked up on the faint fluorescent trail emanating from the third body's mouth. As the spray fell, everything that it touched fluoresced.

  "He's been tracked," Marek said.

  "Has to be Dorian," Zoya said. "It's just like her."

  "She's coming."

  "Maybe. We've known for a while that she's been trying to track us. So far, she's sent a few mercenary teams. Nothing with any punch. But then, she's never traced us all the way back to our lab."

  "Remind me. This isn't the warm and fuzzy, right?" Marek asked, causing Zoya to guffaw.

  Zoya turned the lights back on and closed the armor-glass container. "I don't remember you being funny."

  "Why do I get the sense that you were hoping I'd push my way in to your little shop of horrors."

  A light knock on the door interrupted the conversation. "Just in time. Here's that warm and fuzzy you were asking about."

  Zoya pushed the door open and found a nice-looking woman standing on the other side, looking into the room expectantly. She had light blonde hair and was wearing a simple jump suit. "You requested my presence, doctor?"

  "Emilie, just in time. I believe Mr. Marek has had his share of bad news today. I believe you'll brighten his day substantially," Zoya said.

  "Seriously?" Marek cut in. "That's insulting."

  Zoya laughed. "You men are all the same. Do you think that because Lieutenant Bastion is beautiful that she is less deadly?"

  "Lieutenant of what?" Marek asked.

  "Emilie?" Zoya asked.

  "It is part of the name Zoya shared with me. I was in an accident and have lost most of my memory. Doctor Zoya helped me just like they're helping all these people," she said, gesturing to the room full of partial bodies.

  "Emilie, would you detain Mr. Alexander?" Zoya asked.

  "Certainly," she replied, grabbing Marek by his lapels and pulling him into the lab.

  Marek saw the move coming, but preferred to deal with the beautiful, if somewhat vacuous woman in the open space of the lab.

  "Please don't resist," she instructed as Marek pushed against her and blocked her attempts at grasping him.

  "Marvelous," he said as he danced around her, only able to stay ahead by fractions of a second.

  "You are so fast," she said. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if necessary."

  "Call her off, you've made your point. She's the real deal," Marek said.

  "Are you sure?" Zoya asked, clearly enjoying Marek's exertion as he worked to stay ahead of the blonde buzz saw.

  "Can she shoot?"

  "What do you think?" Zoya asked. She turned to the young woman. "Emilie, please stop. Marek is our friend."

  "As you wish," Emilie Bastion said.

  Chapter 15

  Burdened

  "Have you heard from Marek recently?" Jimmy asked, flopping crosswise into the secondary pilot's chair so that his legs hung off the side.

  "That's a curious question, James. Hold on to that thought," Dorian answered.

  "All hands, prepare for transition to Trans Location," she announced.

  "Aww, shit." Jimmy brought his legs around and grabbed the arms of the chair. He'd been subjected to transitioning more times than he'd like and each time the process seemed worse than the time before.

  "Translocation displacement is treatable," Dorian said. "Research shows that about five percent of the population has substantial difficulty."

  "I'll be fine, darling," Jimmy drawled defensively.

  Dorian closed her eyes and ignored his overly familiar address. She might have smiled slightly as she directed Little Deuce to engage the translocation drive.

  Jimmy breathed out slowly, biting his lip as the colors of the universe around him seemed to smear and slide backwards. He'd theorized that the effect alone wouldn't be so bad if the color shift happened in a straight line, but it slid like a drunk navigating a crowded room trying not to spill his drink. Early on, he'd discovered that closing his eyes made it even worse as the visual spectacle resembled a blood-drenched, horror-vid quality. Thirty seconds after transition, he finally allowed his eyes to focus and discovered Anino had blanked the forward display, which he knew would show a jittering mish-mash of stars as the TransLoc wave punched through the universe.

  "Why would you bring up Marek Alexander?" Dorian asked, recognizing Jimmy was once again among the living.

  "Just find it curious that I don't hear from you all for six stans and within the space of a month, you both show up with a plan to save my little circus," he said.

  "Marek had a job for you? Did he say what it was?"

  "We didn't exactly get that far in the conversation,"

  Dorian chuckled at what she imagined was an understatement. "How far did you get?"

  "He showed up in the stands during one of my street performances," Jimmy said. "I might have quick drawn a pistol and dropped a slug into the bleachers between his legs."

  "What'd he do?"

  "Well you know how he was always wearing that silly gangster hat?"

  Dorian nodded and rolled her eyes, acknowledging his statement as well as Jimmy’s ridiculous judgment. Jimmy was rarely found without a cowboy hat on his head. "Of course."

  "He just lifted it off his head about a centimeter and next thing I knew, he was gone. No trouble. Just disappeared."

  "For what it's worth, I think he felt bad about his part in Maria's death," Dorian said, knowing Jimmy wouldn't want to have the conversation but it needed to be said.

  "I've had a long time to think about it, Doc," Jimmy said. "I blame myself. I knew he was the worst kind of dangerous and I let it happen."

  "What kind of dangerous is that?"

  "Smart enough to see a problem coming, but not giving a shit who gets hurt as long as he gets what he wants."

  "Why'd you give him a warning shot?"


  "Person can't heal if they hold on to the darkness and I can't carry that kind of weight around. His sins are his," Jimmy said. "If I'd wanted him dead, I'd have tracked him down and done it already."

  "He could be mixed up in this," Dorian said. "That going to be a problem?"

  "If he's got anything to do with poisoning kids, it'll be a problem for him," Jimmy said. "Otherwise, I'm crystal clear. Our mission is the recovery of the bio material identified as Lucien Gray, Katriona Petrev, Gabino Alcazar, and Emilie Bastion, in no particular order."

  A soft thump on the deck alerted the two that someone had joined the party. Jimmy didn't need to turn to recognize the light tread of Tali Lizst.

  "Am I interrupting anything?" she asked.

  "Just getting caught up," Dorian said.

  Tali gave a perfunctory smile. "Mind if we discuss mission details?"

  Dorian typed a command and the chairs of the bridge slowly turned, moving from flight configuration to a conference configuration. "We'll be in transition for the next thirty-five hours, seems like as good a time as any."

  A moment later Jammin appeared through the hole in the deck, landing heavily.

  "Ahhh …" Bit appeared next, her arms pinwheeling in an attempt to level out her flight. Her bottom struck the ceiling above the zero-g lift.

  Unperturbed, Jammin snagged the ungainly woman's leg and brought her to the deck. Jimmy smiled at the stoic man's maneuver. He'd not only captured Bit, but positioned her so she landed with a minimum of discomfort, providing immovable stability as she momentarily floundered.

  "Would it kill you to install a stairwell?" Bit asked hotly. "Does everything have to be a frakking gymnastics test?"

  "I'll work on it with you," Jammin said, calmly, releasing her arm. "Zero-g is a skill, not a talent. You just need practice."

  Bit looked around, her face still flushed. "Frak, I didn't bring my fizzy up either."

  Tali pulled a pouch from the small pack she'd set next to her and handed it to her friend. "I've got your back, Bit. We all do. That's what being part of the team is all about."

  Bit accepted the pouch and fell heavily into the chair she'd staked out the first time they'd sat on the bridge together. "Sorry. Just got flustered. Thanks, Jammin."

  Jammin nodded.

  "Team dynamic has changed," Tali said. "We're going to be drilling again later this afternoon. And short of a boarding party finding us in fold-space — something Dorian has assured me is highly unlikely — we should once again be able to focus on our teamwork."

  "What kind of changes?" Dorian asked.

  "My teams work at such a high level because we train. Neither Jammin or I have ever worked with someone with Jimmy's speed. I hope we don't get into another free-for-all like we had with Victor's thugs, but if it happens, I want to be able to work like a team. It’ll take adjustment from Jammin and myself, but we're equal to the task."

  "You need to tell her about Marek," Jimmy said, looking at Dorian.

  "There's not much to tell," Dorian said.

  "Fine. I will," Jimmy said. "Our original team was four: Marek was our team leader, Slow Poke our point. I was shooter — as you'd expect — and our scout or trail was a woman who went by the callsign Belle."

  "Real Belle of the ball type?" Bit quipped, chuckling.

  Tali, not missing the micro-expression on Jimmy's face, held up her hand. "Careful, Bit."

  Bit pushed the fizzy drink pouch up to her face. "Didn't mean anything by it."

  "No offense taken," Jimmy said. "Maria earned her nickname because she was just a little thing. Plus, she was often ignored just long enough for her to flit in and ring someone's bell. She wasn't a bad dancer either."

  "What about Marek?" Tali asked.

  "You might as well hear it all," Jimmy said. "We'd been running non-stop missions and the team was tired. What the rest of us didn't know, but Maria was starting to suspect, was that Marek was moonlighting the team. Between missions, he was setting up extra jobs and keeping the fee. Truth was, though, we didn't care. The rush is hard to turn away from. Not only that, the money was good and we had access to all the best technology; we stayed in the best hotels, drank the best whiskey and ate the best food.

  "Then one day Maria comes out and accuses Marek of double dipping. The jobs were getting more dangerous and it was harder and harder to see any possible benefit. You know how it goes though; folks on the ground don't always see the big picture. We all understood that, but we never signed up to be mercs. The stuff we were doing was supposedly sanctioned by legit governments, even though we were run by a private corporation."

  "What'd he do?" Bit asked.

  "In our business, the space between life and death is measured in millimeters," Jimmy said. "That's why having your team look out for you makes all the difference. Marek betrayed us, but not in any way that could be proved. He just overlooked a couple of details and, just like that, Maria and Slow Poke were taken. Sure, it looked like an accident, but that wasn't Marek's MO. He didn't miss details."

  "Did you find your teammates?" Tali asked.

  "We found Slow Poke a week after he'd been taken," Jimmy said. "They tortured him until he died; took more than four days. Maria … well … we never saw Maria again."

  "You loved her," Bit said, her voice husky with emotion. "It's all over your face."

  "Shit," Jimmy stood and exhaled a hot breath.

  "That's hard, man," Jammin said.

  Jimmy nodded and sat back down.

  "This Marek," Tali said, trying to get the conversation back on track. "Is he the one I read about? He’s known as The Gangster?"

  Dorian nodded in agreement. "He is, but there's no reason to believe he's mixed up in this. There are a million other jobs he might want Jimmy for."

  "Is he as good as Jimmy?"

  "Drawn from opposite sides of the same cloth," Dorian said. "Marek is a plotter. One of the finest strategic minds I've seen. Lightning fast reflexes, but he tends to leave the dirty work to others. I think Jimmy's actions speak for themselves."

  "Hard for me to accept that I'm a step behind you, Jimmy," Tali said.

  "If I'd gotten ahold of you before you were put in the Navy's tank, you'd be his equal," Dorian said. "I've studied the changes your body forced on the synthetic muscles and nerves Mars Protectorate gave you. Takes a special type to make that transition. I'm sure you know plenty of warriors with replacements who aren't in your league?"

  "I know at least one girl who's faster," Tali said.

  Dorian held up her hand. "For her sake, we should keep that information between us."

  Jimmy pulled a silver flask from a pouch on the side of his leg and untwisted the cap as he reclined in his chair. After a long tug, he rested his head on the back of the chair, then tipped his hat forward, covering his eyes. "A lovely trip down memory lane," he finally offered. "Perhaps we could talk about the mission and leave the past where it belongs? Like … Doc Anino, what are you doing behind the stick? You never made a run with my old team in two hundred missions. We haven't picked up a flight jockey and we're inbound to Bethe Peierls. Are you really planning to run mission from Little Deuce? Can you afford to be tied to this?"

  "I'm already tied to it and I haven't been entirely forthcoming," Dorian said. "You see, Zoya used to be part of my inner circle. She ran the lab where Marek and Jimmy received their surgeries. I've chased her for years and this is my best lead."

  "Doesn't explain why you're here, Doc," Jimmy said. "I bet you know twenty fighter jocks who could fly this mission and would be ready to go at the drop of a hat. This feels personal."

  "What's personal is that my research is being used by despots to kill children," she answered hotly.

  "And …?" Jimmy pushed.

  "Damn you, James," Dorian said. "Why do you have to push?"

  "Mysteries tend to have a way of blowing up at the most inopportune times," he replied. "We're putting our asses on the line. Be straight. Is something going on between you
and Marek?"

  "What? No!" she sputtered. "It's Lucien Gray."

  "You know the stiff?"

  "Of course I do," she answered. "I sent Lucien to Oberrhein even though I knew he'd never make it off that planet alive. I sent him in hoping I could get a lead on the location of the lab that’s producing these soldiers."

  "That's cold, Doc," Jimmy said. "But it's more than that. He got under your skin, didn't he?"

  "It was the right call. He wasn't connected to anyone: no wife, no kids, and he was married to a job that had turned on him," Dorian said.

  "And you sent him to die," Jimmy nodded. "That's a lot of weight for anyone's soul. No judgment. I'm carrying plenty of weight of my own. Appreciate the honesty."

  "I think everyone in this room knows what it's like to carry a burden. We'll get your man, Dorian," Tali said. "Bit, I believe you have information on our target?"

  Bit looked around the room uncomfortably and when no one else spoke, she switched to professorial mode. "Belsev Station is tethered approximately four hundred kilometers above Fariza on the planet Vermeer. Originally built as a semi-orbital trading hub, the station utilizes gravitational systems to stay aloft. According to the Fariza government's public records, the station was removed from service eighty-three stans ago when the government shifted from democratic to totalitarian rule and trade became severely limited."

  Pausing, Bit gestured with both hands as if tossing a large ball into the middle of the room. A cylindrical station appeared. "Fourteen decks can provide permanent housing for six hundred souls, which is small by modern standards. The station's power and water are supplied through the connective tether that also supports four lift cars, each capable of carrying one point two tonnes. I've tapped into the municipal records. As you might expect, the station is anything but out of service, with power usage exceeding four hundred terajoules annually. Also, there are a considerable number of references in local publications to the Belsev Medical Station."