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  Finally, I watched the main Irunian destroyer decouple from the Byzantium and float away under the careful push of its plasma jets. I watched from the plate on the arm of my exosuit. Drez was silent and noted them move away too. We both wanted to be sure those stiff-necked types were gone before we breathed easy.

  After another 15 minutes passed, we watched as the Ghostmaker joined up with the other two destroyers in its formation and moved out of range. We weren’t close to any gravity wells or planets, so the ships could maneuver as they pleased. I turned off the plate as I felt the confused but relieved sensations of the kids fade away. I don’t know what I would’ve done if the Irunians had harmed those children.

  “Wow, Fixer,” Drez spoke at last, "That was the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen you do. And I’ve seen you pull some crazy shit out of your ass.”

  I turned and looked him in the face. “And did you have any great ideas, Spinesnatcher?” I asked. “Those marines were ready to slice the lot of us up, treaty law or not. All that commander needed to do was claim he’d found us in possession of a ship with some abducted Angelika kids. That’s a double capital offense on most planets, triple in some. No one would’ve said a word. Now, we have the ship, at least. I’m not cool with allowing that asshole commander control of those children, but he’s not going to do a thing to them now. He’ll dangle on air if anything bad ever comes to those kids, and he knows it.”

  “So, how are you going to explain to the boss that the entire Irunian Empire knows someone walked off with this ship?” Drez snapped back. He went over and picked up both of our blades. He handed mine back to me as he sheathed his own. Another sign that we were beyond fighting with each other for the moment.

  I put my short sword in its holster again. “I can’t help what happened in here,” I explained to him. “Korth didn’t say a thing about the crazy design of this ship or there being Angelika kids stashed in some filthy hole. He wanted the ship; he’ll get it when we take it to the docks. Job done as far as I’m concerned.”

  “How do you know the boss didn’t want those kids too?” Drez countered. “He didn’t say anything about them. Doesn’t mean he didn’t know they were on board this crazy place.”

  Now, I was pissed for a change. “Korth may be a lot of things,” I snapped back at Drez, “but he’s not the type who’ll take part in selling children. Not Angelika, especially. And are you serious? He’d have the entire galaxy on his ass. The entire family would be on the run from every military in the known universe. No, he’d never be involved in some splurge like that.”

  “I’m not saying he’s involved in anything. People have all kinds of ways to get motivated. What if he doesn’t know about the kids, but the people who want this ship do? If he’s involved with the capture of this ship for somebody, and they wanted those kids, what happens then? They won’t be too happy when he turns the ship over without the children.”

  “Again, Korth isn’t that dumb. If they’re hiding the real reason they wanted this ship, then how was he to know the truth? It’s on them.”

  “Which won’t make a bit of difference when they find out their treasure ship is filled with nothing.”

  “Look," I said in an effort to end the confrontation, “this is going nowhere. We need to figure out how to operate this thing. I don’t know how much air it has left, but we need to find out or take the shuttle back to Nyx. And showing up without the prize will make Mr. Hornhead mad as fuck.” As would Korth’s nickname were he to hear it.

  I walked away from Drez and went over to look at the consoles around the control room. None of symbols made the least bit of sense. I shook my head as I looked at the various dials and switches in the room.

  There were a series of screens that sat at least two feet from the ground. Others were on the overhead. Who’d designed this place? Screens that sat close to the ground? Others straight above our heads? It wasn’t for one species; the controls were set for all manner of beings. I counted at least 12 different handle shapes. Where the hell did they store the navigation part of this ship?

  I’d hoped I could work my way through the operation system based on what the controls resembled, but that wasn’t possible. There was nothing in common inside this place. I put my head on the bulkhead and swore. Our dead friends on the deck knew how to fly it. Was there something in their effects that could show us how?

  “This shit makes no sense to me,” I heard Drez swear from the other side of the room. “What kind of nonsense is this? It doesn’t look like the controls were built for anyone I ever heard about. How are we going to get this thing back to the docks?’

  “Push it,” I responded, as I stepped over one of the bodies on the deck. Funny how the commander was so quick to dismiss them. He didn’t even try to examine the bodies. Either I’d worked my verbal magic better than ever, or he already knew who they were and didn’t care.

  “What?" Drez called over to me, “Did you just say ’push’?”

  “I did. We still have the shuttle, and this ship is in freefall. All we need to do is get it moving with the shuttle’s engines.”

  “Are you messing with me?” Drez gasped. “This ship is how big, and you expect that little shuttle to do the job?”

  “Both have mass,” I explained. “This starship, a helluva lot more than the shuttle. But think about how tugs work. It doesn’t take much to keep it moving once you give it a shove. The only trick is steering it. We’re not that far from Nyx Station. We could push it into orbit around Nyx in a few weeks if we find the right point to give it a shove.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t the boss like to see that. Holy Deet, he’ll shit his pants if we come pushing this think into the station’s vicinity. What will the Fathers have to say about the two of us with an unregistered ship? Combine that with the story of those kids, and add the dead bodies we’ll have to explain.”

  “We can jettison those.”

  “And the militia will have heard about what happened by then. They’ll want to see the stiffs. What happens when we don’t produce them?”

  The Fathers were the elite trading council who ran Nyx Station. They were descendants of the Terrans who hollowed out the rogue asteroid and built a free state inside it, responsible to no one but a haven for people who wanted to do business away from the prying eyes of politicians and generals. They made the rules and lorded over the people who hauled the loads and staffed the warehouses. Most of the lower classes arrived long after the first families built Nyx Station. They didn’t figure into the machinations of the senate or trade council that ran it. From them, the underworld was recruited. It was rumored that the bosses in the lower levels were paid by the Fathers to keep the rabble under control.

  The militia was what passed for a civil guard around Nyx. The Fathers never wanted to field an army to protect their interests. They preferred to hire mercenaries to do what was needed to be done outside Nyx Station. The militia kept the territory around Nyx Station free of raiders and pirates. Inside the station, order was maintained by the militia civil guards. They had free reign to kick your ass if you stepped out of line or looked at the right upper level woman the wrong way.

  It worked well until the Irunian Empire began to eye Nyx Station as a suitable acquisition. So far, the Fathers had kept them at bay by allowing the Irunians their own part of the lower level and extensive trade concessions. It couldn’t last forever, though, and we all knew it.

  “This wasn’t the first time you let your fucking heart get the best of you,” Drez reminded me later.

  “You talking about that arms dealer?” I snapped at him. “Or did you have something else in mind?”

  “The latter,” he sneered.

  “I told you never to talk about that!” I yelled at him.

  What was I supposed to do? If I hadn’t let the Irunian Marines take those kids away, they’d have carved up Drez and me. Or both of us would’ve ended up tossed in an arena to please a crowd of degenerates. Anyway, the Irunians wouldn’t lay a ha
nd on those kids.

  At least, I didn’t think they would.

  Chapter Three

  We found the security key an hour later.

  Drez and I had spent the time in between trying not to talk about anything that would provoke a fight. We needed to work together if either of us planned to see Nyx Station again. Granted, there was still the option of scuttling the mission to take the trip back in the shuttle. But Korth would have both of our asses if we did that. I knew what he did to enforcers who disappointed him. We were "made men,” and you didn’t let your padroni down. I once heard the Samurai warriors in ancient Japan were expected to cut off a finger if they failed their lord. Korth would expect a lot more chopped off if we made him look bad.

  I decided that pushing the ship with the shuttle just wouldn’t work. It was a do-able idea in theory but only if you had a crew of scissorbills trained to do it. The two of us? Not a good idea. Should we get the Byzantium in motion...well, what would happen if it drifted off course? More fuel needed to right it, and we barely had enough in that thing to get us home. Korth only paid for the minimum, the cheap bastard.

  I stood there and tried to think of another plan. Then my gaze drifted over to the bodies of the dead command crew.

  “We never did check them over,” I mentioned to Drez. “The marines weren’t here long enough to go through their pockets either. Let’s see if any of them have something we can use.

  “Found it!” Drez announced two minutes later. He held up a quantum key, no more than two inches across.

  “Found it on a chain in his pocket,” Drez explained as he pointed to one of the uniformed bodies. “He was the captain, wasn’t he?”

  I shook my head. “The one who tried to speak to me before he died was the captain. At least that was the sensation I picked up from him.”

  “Then what the hell was this guy doing with it?”

  “Don’t know. No way to find out now.”

  I’d heard of these things before, but never seen one up close. Drez handed it up to me and I looked at it. It was dodecahedron in shape. In other words, it had 12 identical sides. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why it was that shape. A plain sphere wouldn’t have worked just fine?

  “That’s it?" I said to him.

  “I’ve seen one before,” he informed me. “They all look the same. This one is gold; I hear they come in silver and blue. Don’t know why. Let’s see if it works.”

  I nodded. We were low on options, and I didn’t want to return to Korth empty-handed.

  Drez walked over to one of the panels. He sat the object on top of its corner and stepped back.

  “Now what happens?” I asked.

  “Watch," he replied.

  The object blinked three times.

  Then the entire configuration of the panel display changed. I watched as the indecipherable figures above the display changed into standard Galactic. It all happened in a matter of seconds. Every character in the room became readable. I was stunned. The transformation was so fast, I didn’t see it take place.

  I walked around and looked at every display. There wasn’t a sign of the gibberish that was there a few minutes ago. Every switch had a display that told me what it was supposed to do. Every meter was labeled in a way I could understand it. It was the closest thing I’d ever encountered to pure magic.

  Drez went back over to where he’d placed the key. He dropped it into a pocket on his exosuit.

  “Pretty sweet, huh?” he asked. I had to nod.

  Now, it all made sense. We had a way to operate the starship on our own. It might take us a little while to get the hang of it, but the two of us could manage well enough. This wasn’t the first interstellar vehicle either of us had boosted. Most of them were built with enough AI assistance to make it easy for a trained operator to take it from point A to point B in freefall. Landing it on a planet or engaging in battle was a different matter. No one wanted to give AIs much authority when it came to warfare because a computer that could operate a warship and fire weapons was one that could be used against its builders. So, you still needed a crew for the tough things.

  I thought a bit about Korth Cinzar and the crime family he represented down on Nyx Station. Korth wasn’t from the station originally. He showed up a few years ago and set himself up as someone who could get things done the Fathers didn’t want to know about. Need a high interest loan or want a business rival eliminated? Boss Korth was the person you wanted to see. He bought some small warehouse near the docks and began to sell used furniture as a cover, but everyone knew what else took place inside.

  Officially, prostitution and other vices were regulated by the senate and the trade council. The good families near the top levels didn’t want to deal with the problems that came from having Suzi’s House of Delights next to their gardens or a jook-huffing operation near the art galleries. Their actions tended to drive the prices up and beyond the working stiff’s ability to afford them. They lived down on the lower levels. Enter the syndicates who could find ways to supply the vice at far below the official costs.

  There was plenty of room for trading in stolen goods as well. Every so often, a certain starship would make for Nyx Station with plenty of merchandise of questionable origin. After he’d set up shop, Boss Korth and the family moved more of it than anyone else did. He was resented at first by his rivals, but a few busted heads and money showered on the right people solved problems.

  I’d bounced around a bit after leaving the Janissaries. This was before the Irunians carved up the Sultanate with their allies. There was supposed to be some general amnesty in place for those who fought in the wars, but I never bothered to put in for it. I ended up on Nyx Station and needed a job. And, as I never have any luck, I got one.

  For the next hour, Drez and I spent time looking at the operations manuals for the Byzantium. One thing I didn’t like was the lack of any registration on the ship. This was bad. An unregistered ship was an invitation to an unprovoked attack. The only starships that operated without registration were smugglers and pirates. Any convoy near a vehicle without registration was authorized to open fire. Usually, it was a good practice. The last thing anyone wanted was an unknown ship coming at them without warning and boarding with a group of pirates. I’d been on both ends of those operations for Korth. I’d helped in raids on merchants and ran shotgun on his own vessels hauling contraband to and from Nyx.

  “So, how many guns does this thing carry?” I spoke aloud as we watched a screen form in the air and display the armaments on the Byzantium. “I see four cannons up front, two missile launchers, and a rear EMR pulse. This thing could pass as a warship.” Maybe it was one.

  “Check this out,” Drez spoke as he pointed to an object on the screen. It enlarged as a 3D image materialized in the air in front of us while a robotic voice rattled off ordnance specifics.

  “Holy shit,” Drez flared. “Do you know what this is?”

  “It’s a quantum laser,” I answered. “Damn, someone wants to fry anything they can find. Look at the specs; I wouldn’t want to be the party in its path.” I shook my head and tried to figure out why this thing was built. This had to be the reason Korth wanted us to bring it home.

  Seconds later, Drez almost hit the overhead when a klaxon began to wail through the ship.

  “All hands to their battlestations!” an AI voice began to wail. “Enemy ships are headed in our direction. Contact in 10 seconds. Nine. . . eight. . . seven. . .”

  At the same moment, the lights of one part of the control system began to change from green to yellow, then red. I was about to say something when a screen materialized in front of us.

  What do you know? Commander Peshawar was back and he’d brought many friends.

  “Enemy requests parley,” the voice of our AI spoke to me. “Shall I open fire, or do you want to communicate?”

  “What? Drez spoke up. “This thing can run the big guns on its own? I didn’t think they could do that without assistanc
e from the crew.”

  “You are the crew," the voice tossed back at him. “I can make recommendations, but you have to authorize me to engage in any hostile operation.”

  “Let’s see what our friend wants to talk about,” I interjected. “I knew that asshole would be back.”

  A small screen appeared next to the big one. Of course, it contained the face of our Irunian commander. I hadn’t expected anyone else.

  “Greetings,” the commander spoke. “In case you wanted to know, the children are out of the combat zone. It occurred to me after I left that I couldn’t possibly allow two lowlifes such as you to walk off with such a fine piece of hardware. I put in a quick inquiry based off the images we took from our exosuits. I must say, it came as no surprise to me that the both of you have many criminal records, both on Nyx and in other jurisdictions. Under the Treaty of Ortandro, I have the right to impound any vessel in the hands of criminal elements. I believe the both of you qualify, so if you be so kind as to allow us to board, we can bring this matter to a quick end.”

  Bring us to a quick end is what he had in mind.

  “There’s only one thing I believe about you, Commander,” I spoke to the haughty face. “I believe you sent those children out of the danger zone. I know they can’t be around, because if they were, you would find yourself naked in an arena facing off against some of the big carnivores as entertainment of the week. So, you’d never be that stupid.”

  “I would like to inform you,” he continued, "that I have plenty of help this time. I don’t know what kind of ordnance is on your ghost ship, but I suspect they are substantial. There are five corvettes moving into position around you right now. You can try to make a run for it, but we have enough firepower to melt you into scrap. I’d have already done so for your insolence, but it seems my superiors value the ship you’re inside for some reason.”