Siege Weapons Page 3

  Your ship is currently impounded. Please contact the Trades Council for more information.

  “What the fuck?” I slammed my fist against the terminal, frightening the two heteros, who slid away. “Sorry,” I called over, swiping my wrist again and again against the terminal in case something else might happen. A button to contact a person at least, even a hetero. Nothing. Only the same message over and over.

  I racked my brain. Had I not paid a fine? Had a license expired? It couldn’t be anything like that. Javer had taken care of my trader’s license, not that it’d cost him much of anything, and my ship was registered to his company, so any fine should’ve gone straight to him. I’d only gotten two fines in my life; one for skimming an atmosphere trying to save fuel, and the other for stealing someone else’s landing spot. Javer had paid them both straight away, of course, after yelling at me and docking my pay, but still, a trader who couldn’t fly wasn’t worth shit.

  I decided to definitely not call Javer, at least not yet. The first thing he’d ask was why I was here on Targuline and not halfway to Jansen, and that I couldn’t answer.

  I headed back to the transport area at the edge of the arrivals hall and searched furiously for any information on my wrist-tech. Everything told me to contact the Trades Council. I dinged them and waited for a response.

  All our operators are busy at the moment, please try again later. Alternatively, you can visit us in person at the Complaints Department, Trades Council Central Office, Section 6, Quadrant XP, Targuline. Have a nice day.

  “Fuck.”

  THE TRANSPORT JUDDERED through Targuline’s atmosphere having spent half an hour in orbit to get to Quadrant XP. The ten rows of seats on the cheap, boxy ship remained mostly empty. I sat at the front, right next to the exit door. This transport had one destination, and infinity’s end, I wouldn’t let anyone else get in front of me at the query desk. I ignored the low murmur of hetero languages surrounding me like a cloud, one of them sounding excruciatingly like wet farts, and kept my face jammed to the narrow, dirty window.

  We came out of the clouds into smooth air, and I gazed at the planet, wondering if I shouldn’t have stayed here. Shards soared from the unseen world below into the sky, casting thousand-kilometer shadows onto the face of the planet. The ancient ones more of an unsteady mishmash of parts of buildings culled together. One thin cylinder of thousands of floors stacked one on top of another thin cylinder, connected only by the threads of transportation shafts and sewage pipes swirling around them.

  Franx had once explained to me that gravity, or the lack of it in the upper atmosphere, kept the Shards steady. At least the modern Shards, the ones built in the last half millennium, were a more stable pyramid shape, like Franx’s Shard. Flying through the upper atmosphere of Targuline reminded me of ascending the mountain on my home-world, when the treetops became thinner and you could almost be walking through the very tip of the forest. In the distance, lines of heavy spaceship traffic crawled around the bend of the dark horizon like ants on a rock. Night approached.

  The transport descended farther to the bowels of Targuline, a diagonal line straight from space to the planet. The clear air of the high atmosphere morphed into ever more noxious smoggy exhaust fumes while the traffic and the trunks of Shards became thicker and the visibility less. Personal vehicles darted about us as we flew past more regular-sized towers. The ones that were a thousand floors instead of a million.

  The headquarters of the Trades Council weren’t one giant building. They were over a hundred giant buildings, covering dozens of kilometers cubed, an entire quadrant of Targuline. It wasn’t that impressive in the grand scheme of things. I’d heard the Kyleri imperial government covered an entire planet, which most people weren’t allowed to even orbit. At least the Trades Council was in one of the nicer parts of the world, although nice in Targuline meant not getting robbed, at least not in the open.

  The sides of buildings flew past much quicker now as we prepared to land. The interior went dark as a tunnel swallowed the transport, and soon we jolted to a magnetic stop.

  “Welcome to the Trades Council Central Office,” the smooth metallic voice of a fake female said. “You have reached section twelve.” It repeated the same sentence in other languages I didn’t know.

  The other beings on the transport only now stood and headed for the exit at the front, but I’d already jumped out the second the door depressurized, straight into the bustling, cavernous central arrivals hall. It couldn’t be more different from the hodgepodge of rickety stalls crowded under a low ceiling at the top of the Shard. The massive circular hall must have been a kilometer in diameter at least, and another half that in height.

  Everything in the arrivals hall glowed white. Thousands and thousands of people, far more homos than heteros, moved around on the shiny white floor, entering and leaving docking stations and elevators like worker ants. Hundreds of floors rose above me, curved toward the ceiling of the dome so high or so white that I couldn’t see the top.

  My wrist-tech pointed the way to go. Up four levels and sixty degrees to the right. That would take me to the mag-lev. I pushed my way through the crowd. It wasn’t particularly packed. I wanted to push. Most of the people had the unmistakable stench of straight-laced bureaucrats, the ones who couldn’t be bought. Or more likely, were quite a bit out of my price range. The vast majority dressed in dull Trades Council colors: light blue or gray tunics with different streaks on the lapel indicating their office and rank. This one a systems engineer, that one a tax administrator. Instinctively, I turned my face away as an invigilator passed by. Those were the ones to watch out for. I shuddered at the memories of the more unsavory things I’d done to hide contraband from Trades Council invigilators.

  My boots clicked against the polished white floor and my jacket flapped behind me, brown and dusty. I could have been leaving a trail of muddy footprints for all I knew. But with invigilators on the prowl, and a ship full of infinity-knows-what currently impounded, I wasn’t about to turn to check.

  I reached the side I needed and got in line for rows of elevators. We waited single file, one after the other going inside till an elevator became full. It dinged softly, white doors slid shut, and another set of doors would open, fill up, then ding and close. Daily life as stunted, as inflexible, as pointless as the institution itself. Waiting in line to get to a place most of these people didn’t want to go. Every second I waited in this giant space, this nerve center of the Verge, made me miss the cramped quarters of my ship even more.

  I still didn’t have a clue about why they’d decided to impound my ship. My hands weren’t shaking. Talking my way out of a simple seizure should be easy. As far as I knew, I’d been contracted to take medical supplies to Jansen. It wasn’t my fault if the damn planet was under boycott or the cargo in my ship turned out to not be what the documents said it was. They would have to take that up with my boss.

  FINALLY, IT GOT to my turn. I stepped inside the elevator, the curved wall also white and glowing. More people filed in. I couldn’t see how to indicate my floor. Suddenly, a patch of blue appeared on the white wall beside me. I touched a finger to it and a yellow dot appeared, so I wrote the number four. Everyone else did the same against their parts of the wall. Then the ding came, the doors closed, and I noticed my heart pounding inside my chest.

  I HAD TO finally admit to myself I was lost. The mag-lev from the fourth floor of the arrivals hall had not taken me directly to the Complaints Department as promised; instead, I was the last person left and told sternly by the AI to exit. I must have come pretty far underground as I stood on a small platform carved out of sheer rock. The map on my wrist-tech told me I wasn’t too far from where I needed to be, but it couldn’t find a way to get there.

  I left via the one exit available and stepped into a state of wonderment. A giant, cavernous hangar, at least twice the size of the arrivals hall I’d come from, filled with hundreds of ships of all types and sizes. Some were suspended in mi
dair, others sat on riggings raised off the ground. Most were being worked on, the sounds of faint shouts, banging tools, and sawing metal drifted through the hangar.

  I could only see heteros. Apelike ones with powerful hands hanging upside down from scaffolding, working on ships. Other heteros twice as tall, their skin like tree wood, dragging carts of parts here and there. A few used tails to hold a drill steady, others sorted through scrap metal with claws, sniffing out the bits to keep from melting and ripping it in two with a serrated hoof. They talked and yelled questions, passed each other tools and spare parts. Maybe a dozen different species, all natives of different worlds, right here and working together. Something about it was beautiful to me.

  “Cans I helps you?” I almost stepped back at the shock of seeing Javer right here in front of me, but it was another hetero from his species. This one didn’t smell half as bad. Its tentacles flapped rather close to me. It held a diagnostics screen in one tentacle, the material similar to my wrist-tech except larger and firm. For some reason I hadn’t figured out yet, Javer’s species were always the ones in charge of any operation they were involved in.

  “No, I mean, maybe. I’m looking for the Complaints Department. My ship’s been impounded.”

  It flapped its tentacles. “If wes already started workings on it, you too lates.” It glided away from me. I jumped forward, suddenly petrified they would melt it down for spare parts. This was where impounded ships must come to die.

  “No, wait a second. It only happened now, a few hours ago.”

  “Wells, it won’ts be heres. You needs the Complaints Departments.” It continued to glide along the floor away from me, a couple of tentacles tapping away on the diagnostic sheet. “Ends of the hangar,” it pointed with a tentacle to the other side at least half a kilometer away. “Then you goes lefts, rights, straights, and lefts again. Or rights, lefts, straights, and rights.”

  “Thank you,” I said as it sped away. My boots clicked on the polished floor as I walked, slowly, taking it all in. Around halfway, I nearly died when I walked underneath what could have been an exact replica of my ship, suspended from the ceiling, with sparks flying off it as a couple of apelike heteros cut into the metal. It had the same wide and tall front as mine, with storage below, a sleeping berth above, and just enough room in the middle for a captain’s chair and control panel. The body of the ship then flattened at the back where the MAST drive sat, with two curved edges like a crab’s claw, each with a booster engine.

  I craned my neck to see the underneath. It was greenish, not blue-silver like mine, and seemed to have Ingvar markings on it, old rebel ones. It wasn’t unusual for such flank to accumulate in the Verge. No one built new ships out here, they only bought them, sold them, and cut them for spare parts. Still, it sent shivers down my spine to witness what appeared to be a Tevian transport ship painted with Ingvar rebel markings being carved for scrap in a Trades Council hangar.

  More sparks flew as the sawing above screeched to a crescendo. I jumped in fright as an object clanged to the floor a few meters away from me.

  “Sorry,” a voice from above yelled. The sawing continued, and I half ran toward the exit, not wishing to spend another minute in this graveyard of condemned ships.

  “IDENTIFICATION?” THE THANKFULLY human but rather old and chubby woman asked me. She sat alone in a row of reception desks a hundred long, her focus entirely on her personal vidscreen, not on me, sitting opposite her. This forgotten basement apparently doubled as a complaints department. Endless rows of benches behind me were sparsely populated with a few people in the guise of those resigned to sit and wait for nothing. I didn’t have that kind of time. I whacked my wrist-tech against her scanner, and it bleeped in agreement.

  “Well, Captain. Your ship has been impounded.”

  “I know that. Can you tell me why? Or how I can get it out?”

  “Not my department.” Yet her pudgy fingers placed a small square device in front of me. A pay-point. Her gaze was still glued to her screen. This bitch wanted a bribe.

  The number 10,000 flashed up. I’d played this game before. It was one thing to be shaken down by bandits or pirates out in the depths of the Verge. It was another to be held up right in the capital. In the damn Trades Council itself. I wasn’t having it. My blood boiled, and the urge to tear apart the entire building coursed through me.

  I jumped and kicked back the stool I’d been perched on, and it clattered to the floor. Now her pasty face and head of thinning hair met mine straight on. Her eyes narrowed as if sniffing out a bluffer in a high-stakes game. The bit of her neck that wouldn’t fit inside her tunic collar started to wobble.

  “I’m not paying you nothing. Give me my ship.”

  “Captain, you better bubble down some, or I’ll be calling security.”

  I could feel the attention on my back of everyone sitting and waiting. Their acquiescence to my shouting told me I had their support, at least silently. Not that it would do much good.

  I snapped my hand out and grabbed the pay-point, displaying it to the room as evidence of the stinking corruption at the heart of the Trades Council. No one seemed particularly interested, except the four security officers clad in black, their faces behind protective visors, who’d right now slammed into the waiting area.

  “Get on the floor,” one yelled, pointing a weapon at me.

  “Get down; get down now,” another shouted. Suddenly, liveliness had broken out in the waiting area. The others waiting rushed out as the four security guards surrounded me. I held the pay-point in front of them, hoping they might listen to reason.

  “Look, she…”

  One fired a weapon, and everything went black.

  “SO, CAPTAIN ALES, what seems to be the problem?” A smooth, refined voice said.

  I couldn’t see anything, my vision completely blurred out and my mouth as dry—as if I’d gargled sand. As the parts of my body woke up, I became aware I was sitting, no, strapped to a chair, with my hands locked behind it.

  “Who…who are you?” I croaked as my eyes focused and confirmed my fears of being in a small, dark interrogation room.

  “Never mind that,” the voice said. A man. He sounded tall. But not gruff. Not a security officer. His accent posh Targulian. Like how an official would talk. “You assaulted a Trades Council worker.”

  “No I didn’t.” I tried to make my voice sound commanding, authoritative, but it remained nothing but a harsh squeak. “She tried to bribe me for ten thousand.” I coughed again and the man muttered. The blurry shape that must’ve been him moved from my right side, to the middle, then closer.

  “Here,” he said. “Drink this.” A long shape, an arm, moved toward me, and the edge of something cold and round touched my lips. Gently, he lifted the cup as I drank sweet, refreshing liquid that instantly cooled the harshness in my throat.

  “I know this game,” I continued, now I could actually speak. “A squad of underpaid security officers impounds a ship for no reason, their mole on the inside demands a bribe, and if they don’t pay—” I swallowed and took the haughtiest tone I could. “—the bastards attack.”

  His silence gave me confidence I wasn’t being held by the same thugs who’d shot me with an electric pulse. I could make out a black coat on the fellow and a dark gray tunic underneath with a flash of red on the collar. The uniform of an invigilator.

  The shape moved out of my line of sight. His footsteps then came from behind me. There was an electronic buzz, and my hands went free. I bent over and rubbed my eyes raw with my knuckles.

  “It’s a problem, corruption,” he said with a sigh. As if something should be done about it, as long as it wasn’t him.

  “You’re fucking right it’s a fucking problem. I’ve got fucking deliveries to make.” I sat straight and squinted my eyes open. Better, but still blurry. He was visible now, sitting on the metal table, swinging his legs.

  “Franx warned me you get like this.” Blinking, I tried to make his face out. Handso
me, for sure. A sharp, square jaw, clean-shaven, and a thick head of dirty blond hair. Thin eyebrows covered slitted dark eyes. His body appeared big and powerful. An enhanced homosapien, raised on vitamin diets and protein boosters and built more like an Andovan ape than normal human.

  “Hi,” he said, jumping off the table and holding out a hand. “I’m Boren.”

  I took it gingerly and we shook, but I still stared at him, unenlightened.

  “I live with Franx? We’re, eh, together?”

  “Ah. Sorry, I never knew your name.”

  “Oh. Franx never told you?”

  “No.” I stood slowly and checked all my pockets. “Or I didn’t remember.”

  There was a sense of aggrievement about him. A weird emotion for an invigilator. They were the ones tasked with stopping smugglers around the Verge, seizing outlawed merchandise, and keeping trade within the rules. Strange that I could hurt his feelings. I tried to walk, to get to my ship, or at least the door, but my legs nearly gave out from under me. I grabbed Boren for support.

  “Easy now. You got hit with a big shock.” His hand as strong as a magnet gripped around my forearm. “Soon as I saw your name flash in the prisoner detail, I came to get you. I could see they were trying to extort you, but I thought you guys were maybe in league. You know, a deal gone wrong.”

  “No, I’m carrying medical supplies.”

  “I know. I checked your licenses.”

  “I need to get to my ship. Now.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve ordered it released and put my own personal security detail on patrol around the docking pod.” That made my heart plummet. “You need to eat something. Get your strength back.” He helped me stand upright, and my stomach grumbled, ratting me out. “Come and eat with me and Franx, will you? I’m taking him out tonight anyway. I’d really love to get to know you a bit more…in the flesh. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  I sighed in resignation. He hadn’t heard nearly the half of it. The image of Franx and me tying up an invigilator in a damp warehouse on an abandoned moon came to mind. We’d stripped him naked and jammed a vial of undiluted cortex fuel in his veins as far as I remembered.