The Dark Defiance Read online

  Kale looked up at him, reading the look of concern on his face and answered the question without having to wait for a translation. “He’ll live,” he answered as he bound one of his battle dressings over a gash in the guard’s thigh. “You’ll need to get him looked at, though.”

  Tommy rendered that into Dheema, though the medium-sized male was already nodding at Kale’s tone.

  “My wife’s nephew,” he explained. He put a hand on Kale’s shoulder. “I got to the wall just in time to see you risk your life for him. You have my thanks, and you own a favor. I will keep it in trust until the day you wish to claim it. Just ask for Kobrak. If it is in my power to give, you shall have it.”

  Kale’s face reddened slightly when he heard the translation. Angry or pleased – Tommy was never quite sure with Kale. He simply gave Kobrak a curt nod before turning to offer water to the young guard.

  Duty discharged, Kobrak turned his attention to the gathered humans in his yard. “Friends.” Tommy had no trouble replicating the warm tone. “You have chosen an excellent time to come calling upon me.” Behind him, his guards were already rolling the heavy gates shut. He bowed to Liam. “That was very brave… and very… logical,” he said thoughtfully. “You have done this sort of thing before?”

  “It is what a soldier trains for,” Tommy translated for his father. “My men and I have practiced similar situations countless times. It becomes second nature – each man knows what to do with only a minimum of orders. It allows us to act more quickly, taking the initiative away from our enemy.”

  “I can see that it does,” Kobrak eyed the soldier with respect. “I might ask you to give us some pointers while you are here. Are you the leader of this group?”

  Rather than translate the miner’s misconception, Tommy went straight into introducing the crew, clearly identifying Harry as the leader and Bernie as the purchasing agent.

  Kobrak seized on Bernie’s title. “Salvation and a new client – all in one morning?” He beamed at the group before addressing one of the guards who had been closing the gate. “Sirak, could this day possibly get any better?” The guard merely shrugged. Kobrak sighed, frowning at him.

  “Go inside and make tea for our guests,” he ordered curtly, with a wave of his hand.

  “Captain,” Liam said, careful to keep a natural tone. “Those chaps were carrying Chinese weapons.”

  Kobrak, seeing the look of shock on Bernie’s face, looked to Tommy for explanation. Tommy looked to Harry.

  “Explain it to him,” Harry nodded to Kobrak. “Ask him if he’s heard anything about other humans bringing weapons down here.”

  Kobrak’s face grew grim as he listened to Tommy. “We’ve heard of a newcomer,” he answered. “Someone who had made a deal with Saramach, one of my worst competitors. Saramach and I have attacked each other from time to time but we have been at a stalemate for several years now. If he’s getting weapons and advice from your people, I may be in trouble – seeing what your ‘soldiers’ are capable of…”

  Tommy cut in, “They aren’t exactly our people,” he explained. “We’re the same species, but separate political entities.”

  “One of you inhabits a colony world?”

  “No,” Tommy grinned. “We have roughly two hundred independent nations on our planet.”

  “Two hundred?”

  “Well, that number changes from day to day…”

  “Oh, my various gods! How did you manage to build spaceships if your home world is in such disarray?”

  Tommy laughed. “Most of our nations have been relatively stable for a long time, and anyway, our ‘disarray’ keeps us on our toes.” He nodded towards Liam. “Are you not pleased that my father and his men possessed the skill to stop your attackers?”

  “Your father? Then he must be training you to take his place in the fullness of time?”

  Tommy shook his head. “He has taught me much of what he knows, and allowed me to train with his men, but I am not what our people would call a soldier. That distinction requires a commitment that I’m not sure I want to make.”

  Kobrak leveled an approving gaze on the younger Kennedy. “Still, you are more than just a translator.” He turned to look down at the captive who lay moaning at their feet. He was recovering from his blow to the head. “We should take our new friend inside and have a little chat. Doubtless, he has met this rumored newcomer, if he carries his weapons.”

  The Völund

  In orbit around Khola

  “You wanted to see me?” Jan was standing at the entrance to the bridge, too nervous to sit. I hope nothing has happened to Liam or Tommy.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly.” Carol waved at Tommy’s chair, but Jan shook her head, preferring to stand. “Jan we have a situation… what’s wrong?”

  Jan had gone pale. She had nearly lost Liam in the dying hours of the war and now she was reliving those old emotions all over again. “Just tell me what happened, Carol.”

  Carol’s eyes suddenly showed her comprehension. “Oh God! No, Jan. Nothing is wrong with the shore party – they’re fine. This has nothing to do with them.” She grimaced. “My bad – I should have realized you’d be worried about them.”

  Jan dropped into the chair at Tommy’s communication panel with a shudder. “Is this some sort of new cardiac assessment?” She glared up at Carol. “Next time, lead with ‘everything’s fine with Tommy and Liam’. Just getting the page was bloody terrifying; you have to remember that this ship has families on it. It’s not a military vessel.” She sighed. Carol looked sufficiently chastened. “Right, what is it then?” Compared to what I just thought, whatever this really is, I can handle it.

  Carol smiled. “The Chinese ship is sending an ensign over here.”

  “An ensign? What in blazes do they want to do that for?” Mike Willsen asked as he walked into the bridge.

  “Thanks for joining us, Mike. They probably have several reasons. First and foremost, they want to check us out – learn everything they can about us. What really gets under my skin, though, is their other reason.”

  “And what would that be?” Jan prompted.

  “They want to put us in our place.” Carol frowned. “I’ve sent out enough boarding parties in my time to know what I’m seeing. When you stop a freighter in international waters to check for contraband, you don’t send a captain or a commander to check them out, you send some disposable junior officer.”

  “Is the ensign coming with a boarding party?” Mike asked in alarm.

  “No,” Carol shook her head. “If they did, I wouldn’t allow them through the nav shield. By sending an ensign over here, they mean to send us a subtle but deliberate message – they rule the roost around here.” She leaned forward. “I need your help. Your government-mandated roles here on the Völund will make them think twice before messing with us.” She grinned. “And by only letting him talk to you and not to deck officers, we can turn the insult back on them. Take him to the lounge for tea, show him around your labs, talk his ears off. Act like it’s a personal visit.”

  “So we completely ignore any official aspects of his visit and send him back with a red face,” Jan said with a laugh as a shuttle crossed in front of the bridge windows. “Dr. Willsen, why don’t you settle down in the lounge?” I’ll go down to the lighter bay and meet our new fan!”

  “Excellent idea, Dr. Kennedy.” Mike sketched an elaborate bow.

  Carol rolled her eyes. “Just don’t start an international incident.”

  When Carol reached the bay, the Chinese shuttle was already docked. Danraj was standing by the rear hatch with an MP5 submachine gun in his hands. The ensign was not pleased at being ordered to disarm. Jan walked past, pretending to head for a storage locker against one of the bulkheads. She rooted through it for a moment, taking the opportunity to get a better look at her adversary.

  The ensign was tall, slender and undeniably attractive. Even with the short haircut, there was no missing the graceful lines of her face. Hadn�
�t expected a woman, Jan thought. Does that mean I’m sexist? She abandoned her pretense with the locker and strolled over to the argument. “Is everything all right?” she asked innocently.

  “He wants to take my sidearm.” The young woman’s eyes blazed.

  “Well… Miss?”

  “Zhang An.”

  “Miss Zhang An, you’re more than welcome to visit, but we don’t allow visitors to carry weapons aboard our ship. Danny will take good care of it until you’re ready to leave.”

  Zhang An paused just long enough to communicate her disapproval before pulling her type 59 pistol from her holster and handing it to Danraj. “Are you the captain?”

  “Me?” Jan affected a distracted manner. “Good heavens, no, I’m one of the government researchers.” She frowned and looked back at the lockers.

  “Government researchers?”

  “What? Oh, yes.” She looked back at the ensign. “I’m here on behalf of both the UK and the US governments. There’s a few of us.” She smiled suddenly. “Why don’t you come up to the lounge and meet Dr. Willsen? I’m sure he would love to talk to you about navigation and cartography.” Without waiting for a response, Jan led the way.

  Good, she thought, seeing the young woman’s reflection in the bay windows. You’re following. The rest should be relatively easy. She reached the forward elevator and led her in.

  “Isn’t it a waste to put an elevator in your ship?” The young officer raised an eyebrow. “I thought you westerners were supposed to be good at noticing cost-cutting opportunities.”

  “It would have been more expensive to put grav plating on hundreds of steps,” Jan explained, fighting to keep a smug look from her face. “This way, we only plate the elevator floor – much simpler.”

  “On our ships, we use an open shaft with no grav plating. You just step in, grab the railing and push yourself in the direction you want to go.” She looked over and smiled sweetly. “Much simpler.”

  Bloody hell! How did our engineers miss that? Jan fought the urge to argue. She had to admit, the Chinese solution was elegant. So go ahead and admit it. “Elegant,” she said, with a rueful nod. “We spent a fortune, putting in an elevator, and we only ended up obscuring the best solution.”

  Ms. Zhang seemed surprised at Jan’s open admiration but she recovered quickly. “How long has the Völund been in operation?” The elevator doors opened and they stepped out.

  “She lifted off from the graving dock about thirteen months ago.” Jan stopped outside the doors and gazed at the elevator car for a moment before grinning and shaking her head. She motioned the way towards the crew lounge, falling in beside the young woman as they walked down the companionway. “Two months of shakedown cruising and then we spent four months getting here.”

  They reached the lounge and the Chinese officer couldn’t hide her surprise. “Hardwood floors?” she exclaimed. “I know you’re supposed to be decadent, but this is a little over the top!” She trailed a hand across the back of a leather couch as she walked behind it.

  “It’s engineered hardwood,” Jan amended. “A plywood base with a thin layer of walnut on the top.” She smiled at Elise, who was sitting near the windows. “It’s just here in the lounge. A little taste of home that keeps us from hiding away in our cabins during the long voyage. The lounge was decorated like this to draw the crew out and keep them talking to each other.”

  “It works rather nicely,” Mike’s voice wafted up from the couch.

  Zhang An pulled her arm back from the couch in surprise as the physicist sat up like a corpse rising from its coffin.

  “This is Dr. Mike Willsen, who does double duty as the company’s science officer as well as being an official government researcher. Mike, this is Zhang An. She’s come over for a tour.” Jan could see that Elise was staring at the young Chinese officer from the other side of the lounge. She was checking the visitor out from top to bottom and she didn’t look pleased to have her aboard.

  Mike gave a seated bow. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that I get two paychecks.” Then his face brightened. “Tour? You’d like to see the science section, of course.” He bounded off the couch.

  Elise sighed, frowning as she watched Mike escort the young officer aft towards the labs. Jan had to turn her head to hide the smile, walking through the galley that separated the lounge from the gym. Elise had been trying to get Tommy to notice her for the last three months, becoming increasingly frustrated in the process. She doesn’t realize how dense young men are, she thought, reminiscing about her university days. Tommy likes you well enough – more than well enough. He’s just too inexperienced to recognize how you feel about him.

  After almost two hours of dragging Zhang An through the various labs on the ship, they escorted her back to her shuttle. Though her visit hadn’t quite been the armed inspection that it was meant to be, she had warmed up to the two scientists and she hesitated on the boarding ramp of her small craft, eyes troubled. “You should be careful, if you go down to the surface,” she said, hesitantly. “It can be a dangerous place.” She turned and darted inside, closing the hatch before Jan or Mike could ask any questions.

  “What the hell do you think that meant?” Mike asked as the shuttle lifted off the bay floor and turned for the exit.

  “No clue,” Jan answered. “It certainly doesn’t give me a good feeling about our shore party.”

  Khola

  Kobrak’s offices

  Tommy, Bernie and Harry followed Kobrak out of the side room into the main office where the deals were made. The rest of the landing party were seated in chairs that were just slightly smaller than they were accustomed to. Kobrak rolled his sleeves back down and gestured for one of his subordinates to bring tea. Tommy was relatively unshaken. It wasn’t the first time he had seen someone beaten to death. After his father had been reported missing in Afghanistan, Tommy had been shuffled off to live with his uncle in East London – shortly before the barricades went up, cutting the sector off from the rest of the city. Cutting them off from the law.

  Tommy had spent close to a year working in a meth lab. He had been rented out to the East Ham syndicate by his less-than-loving uncle, Leo. He had witnessed the harsh discipline that the syndicate meted out to runaways. He still had nightmares about it, and yet, this interrogation hadn’t fazed him in the least.

  Harry was career military and, though he obviously didn’t approve of the miner’s methods, he managed to keep his composure.

  Bernie’s breakfast was laying on the floor, mingled with the prisoner’s blood. It had been there since the first bones started to break. That was the kind of sound to make one acutely aware of his own fragility.

  Kobrak stalked to his desk and sat down, glaring down at the surface while one of his men brought a tray around the room. A human, a soldier, was working with Saramach, training and arming his people. The old stalemate was about to come unglued. He looked up as the final cup was placed in front of him. “What exactly did you come here to buy?”

  “Any one of a variety of minerals or gasses,” Tommy didn’t bother to translate for Bernie. Where-ever the purchasing agent’s mind was at the moment, it wasn’t in this room. “Our preference would be for helium isotope number three – two protons, one neutron,” he added, repeating Bernie’s explanation from their earlier meeting. “We can carry a million and a half square feet of gas in our holds.”

  Kobrak leaned over his desk, looking down at their feet. “I suppose you have as many versions of that particular unit as you do countries?”

  Tommy picked up his pack from where he had dropped it on the way into the interrogation. He pulled out a simple steel ruler, handing it to the miner. “There is still some variation, but this is the foot that our holds are based on. It subdivides into twelve inches.”

  Kobrak placed the ruler on his desk and waved his hand over a glass insert to his right, activating a holographic user interface. He touched several sections of the display before dragging his hand over the s
urface of the ruler. A red line scanned from one end to the other, then disappeared.

  “This is a respectable quantity, for a first order,” he said. “Can I assume that you would be open to increasing your purchases in the future, once we know each other a little better?”

  “We would,” Tommy still didn’t bother with Bernie, though Harry seemed anxious to know what they were talking about.

  “Six days,” Kobrak said. “Ordinarily, we would be able to fill your order faster, but we’ve allocated all of the stock in my orbital yard to a customer of long standing. All of your helium is still floating around loose on Ghela, the gas giant below us.” He looked back at his display. “They should have been here by now.” He brooded for a moment, looking absently at the dried blood under his fingernails. “Thomas, would your captain be willing to help me deliver that order? If it clears out my yard, we could bring in your helium without having to turn other customers away. I could have it ready by the time you get back. In return, I could give you a twenty percent discount on your own first order.”

  Which means he’ll only mark up the original price by thirty percent, Tommy thought with a grin spreading on his face. “Captain, he can sell us helium-3. He needs a week to get it, but his yard is currently filled with an order that his customer is overdue in picking up. He says that, if we can deliver it, he’ll be ready to load us up when we return.”

  “Is he willing to compensate us for delivering to another customer?” Harry seemed open to the idea at least.

  “Twenty percent.”

  The captain nodded. “Tell him yes.”

  “Do you deliver to orbit?” Tommy asked.

  “Of course,” the mercurial miner grinned. “Full service, full satisfaction. That’s what the sign says.”

  “I saw no sign.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he answered drily, turning to glare at the male who had served the tea. “A little advice, Thomas,” he turned back to face the younger Kennedy, “if your wife asks you to hire her brother, just refuse. A few frosty weeks are far better than crippling your business with oafish in-laws.”