The Absconded Ambassador Page 8

  The twenty missiles passed beneath them, detonating a meteorite to their aft. But Roman wasn’t able to re-fire the opposite thrusters in time to avoid slamming the top of the ship into another meteorite. The whole ship shook, making the never-fun sound of folding metal.

  “Dammit,” Roman said, banking to follow. He spat laser fire after the merc, but they got behind cover. Roman pushed out of the ring, settling the ship with a view back to the asteroids.

  “What’s the damage?” he asked King.

  “Moderate structural damage to the top of the ship, including the hatch. The next time we open the ship up might be the last, unless we can make some spot repairs. And the sensor suite is damaged. No more jamming, even if the ring wasn’t in the way. Other systems are nominal. Though we won’t be able to take another collision like that.”

  “What’s our position relative to the base?”

  “Two hundred thousand klicks out, with the last ship pinging somewhere in between.”

  “I’m going to try to make a break for the base, flush the third one out of hiding.”

  “Roger that,” King said, working the sensors.

  Roman raced along the underside of the planetary ring, chewing up the empty space, until they were within a minute’s journey of the base.

  And there was the third ship, poking out of the ring to get a sensor ping. The ship disappeared back into the ring, a spider beckoning a fly to come into its web.

  Rather than that, Roman opened fire on the meteoroids around the third merc ship.

  The detonations and ricocheting from the laser fire started a chain reaction, ripples moving throughout that portion of the ring. The standard movements and positions of the meteoroids spoiled, the home-field advantage would be all but gone.

  Roman pushed the ship forward, moving into the chaos.

  “You are aware that this is a terrible idea, yes?” King said. “This will be a more chaotic killing ground than anything on our simulations.”

  “Then I’ll be right at home,” Roman said, leaning into his nature as a being of the Action genre. This region drew enough from that tradition that his narrative weight bent the universe to his will.

  Sometimes.

  And playing those odds was part of the entry fee. Roman scanned the field of vision, calculating the vectors, the future collisions, the rebounds, keeping the projected position of the merc base in mind.

  And he threw their ship into the morass, once again becoming the hunter.

  The third ship spooked, or got cocky, showing itself in a field cleared out by Roman’s pool break maneuver.

  Roman opened fire, and then kept on, spewing bursts and filling the void between them with death. The merc took a sharp dive to clear the field of fire.

  As expected.

  Roman hit two attitude thrusters at once, flipping the ship almost end-over-end.

  “Warn me when you do that!” King said, one arm braced on the side of the ship. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the senior Genrenaut looking a bit green around the gills.

  “Sorry, boss.” Roman took the firing stick again, narrowed in, and squeezed off another triplet.

  And hit.

  The cannon fire shredded the ship, leaving them alone with the disturbed planetary ring and waiting mercenary base, where he had no doubt the rest of the Dark Stars were armed to the teeth.

  “Plotting a course to the mercenary base. You want to start pulling out the guns?”

  “As long as you don’t pull another one of those Starfury flips, we’ll be fine.”

  “Aye-aye,” Roman said, saluting as King unbuckled and headed astern.

  * * *

  Shirin gave Leah the rundown on Verene en route to catch the ambassador.

  “The Verene are Jenr pleasure-dancers, trained the same way our geisha or courtesans were. Smart, inventive, and practically irresistible. In reality, more Jenr dynasties have been ruled by the concubines than the regents.”

  “Let’s hear it for Verene,” Leah said as the party packed into a transport tube.

  “We’ve got to get Bhean to break down and indulge, first, and this one’s all you—your plan, your execution. Just run it the way your new friend told you.”

  Given the fact that her friend had only said that the Verene were present and “attentive” during the negotiations, that left Leah feeling a bit out an airlock with a thin lifeline, but this was the job.

  Leah faded back to join the Verene.

  The quartet of Jenr dancers chatted companionably, wearing sheer shoulder throws, their gray loincloths, slippers, shoulder capelets, and nothing else. Each one of them was a four-armed Adonis, sculpted abs, powerful arms and shoulders.

  “Hey guys, thanks for coming on such short notice. We’ve got to keep Bhean on the ship, or the Interstellar Alliance falls apart. I’m going to be the lure, so I need you to watch me and then act when you see your opportunity. Shirin tells me you’re pros, so impress me. This isn’t just about a paycheck, we’re talking interstellar peace and all that good stuff.”

  The Verene nodded. One, who in boy-band shorthand she couldn’t help but describe as the Bad Boy, said, “We’ve had assignations like this many a time, Terran. The labor guild stands to gain a huge amount of business with this alliance. We will follow your lead.”

  Leah winked at the dancers and walked ahead to Shirin. “I’m going over the top. You bring me back down if it looks like I’m going too far. Ready to be loud and a bit obnoxious?”

  “Lead on, Probie.”

  * * *

  Leah and Shirin caught the Nbere ambassador just as he was about to board his ship, retinue in tow. Shirin had paid off the station crew to delay the embarkation, which gave them time to pull into line behind them.

  “Is the heating overclocked in this sector, or is it just me?” Leah asked Shirin, her voice raised for the ambassador’s benefit.

  “Don’t tell me this is your first time on a Pleasure Cruise,” Shirin said, playing into the bit.

  “I’ve had private dances, but there’s just so many muscles,” she said, fanning herself.

  The Nbere turned again to watch them and their retinue.

  “What is the delay?” asked one of the Nbere’s retinue, leaning out of line to see the station staff talking among themselves, as if confused or conflicted about some point of order.

  “If we have to wait much longer, I’ll be tempted to just take them back to my quarters and have our own cruise,” Leah said.

  Shirin feigned scandal. “How could we?”

  “What? They’re paid for, and they’re very eager.” Leah put her hand on the bicep of the lower left arm of one of the Jenr. “This one auditioned for the job. He’s very . . . limber.”

  “I do say, woman,” the Nbere huffed. “Do you need to flaunt them in public so?”

  The ambassador doth protest waaaay too much. The giant’s face was flushed, his voice shaky. He was a powder keg ready for a light. And in this case, the light was sexy four-armed blue boys.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Ambassador,” Leah said. “It’s just, this delay is so frustrating, and with these fine specimens here, I feel like Tantalus. You know our story of Tantalus?”

  The Nbere ambassador moved to the back of his party, putting him within arms’ reach of the Verene. “Of course. I’m well-versed in all Terran mythology.”

  “Then you must see what I mean. To have these kings among Jenr right. Here. At my fingertips, and to be held back by propriety?”

  “I mean, well, this is . . .” The ambassador was well and properly flustered. Now they just needed to allay his fears while fanning his desire.

  Leah felt a tall presence approach. And, cue the Boy Band.

  “You sound so stressed, Lord Ambassador. We are here, and we are most. Definitely. Willing.” The leader of the troupe joined the ruse, leaning into Bhean and brushing one hand across the Nbere’s beard.

  The four of them knew exactly what they were doing. The Verene were members of
the station’s labor guild, which stood to gain a huge amount of standing and jurisdiction if the Alliance was sealed.

  Ambassador Bhean melted into the Jenr’s touch, then turned to his own attaché.

  “Chane, delay my flight. This travesty extends to the Terrans’ management of the station, and I won’t be made to wait for my own ship. They can call on us when they’ve sorted out their idiocy.”

  Bhean extended a massive hand to Leah. “Now, madam attaché, I would ask to impose upon your hospitality while we find better things to do during this most egregious delay.”

  “I would never call a chance to partake of the finer things in life an imposition, Ambassador. My apartment is this way. I’m sure that these fine specimens can help us unwind.”

  Bhean and the Jenr went ahead, the ambassador’s retinue hustling to keep pace. Shirin and Leah dropped back. Shirin offered a not-at-all subtle fist bump.

  “Hook, line, and sinker,” she said.

  “Those guys know what they’re doing,” Leah said, pulling on her collar.

  “Got to you, did they?”

  “The downside of throwing yourself into a role.”

  “I’m sure.” Shirin gave a knowing smile. The two women moved to the front, leading the party to their quarters in the diplomatic quarter through back channels that allowed for . . . discretion.

  But these Hail Mary saves were expensive. If the boys weren’t back when the deadlines they argued and bargained, wheeled and dealed for started to pop, all bets were off.

  * * *

  It seemed like the Dark Stars spent all of their money on fighters. The Genrenauts’ ship approached the merc base unmolested, the gray-and-silver building standing out from the yellow-orange of the moonlet it rested on.

  “Get that docking airlock open for me, kindly?” Roman asked, easing the ship in, bleeding throttle until he saw the way was open.

  “About that,” King said. “When we took the hit to the sensor suite, that’s one of the functions that went down. We’re not going to be able to just knock and get inside.”

  Roman cracked his neck, adjusting and stretching in his seat.

  “Then it looks like you’ll get to fire up the torch and cut us a way in. Moving up for hard seal.”

  “Acknowledge close for hard seal. Readying docking tube.” King worked the controls to extend the ship’s docking tube. Their ship could create a seal on a flat surface, good for salvage operations where the docking mechanism or airlocks in derelict ships—or in this case, unfriendly hideouts—were not functional or not responsive.

  Roman eased the ship in, keeping an eye out for laser turrets, proximity bombs, or anything else. But instead, he pulled the ship up and nailed a hard seal on the first try.

  “Piloting is a lot easier when no one is shooting at you.” Roman grinned. “Not as much fun, though. Hard seal confirmed.” He set all of the systems to standby, then diverted engines to sensors and climbed out of his chair.

  King had the acetylene torch in hand, face-shield down. “Ready torch. Unless you’d rather.”

  “Wouldn’t dare dream of denying you the fun.”

  The docking tube reached out from the undercarriage of their ship, showing the hull of the still-closed base door, worn steel probably twelve inches thick.

  “Roger that. Torch going live,” King said.

  Roman turned away from the torch, pawing through his jacket until he found his welding goggles, which looked like classic swimming goggles, complete with plastic bands, but with blacked-out lenses.

  He turned and watched the senior Genrenaut start to cut a yard-wide circle in the base’s front door.

  King worked methodically, neither rushed nor laggardly, completing the circular cut.

  “’Ware the door,” King said, letting the cuts cool for a few seconds. He reached to the center of the circle formed by the cut, then pushed with one arm, keeping his center of balance behind the cut. It wouldn’t do to open the door and then fall right in behind it. Without a proper welcome, the airlock was probably depressurized or gravity-free.

  The door slid and popped out the other side. A split-second later, it went thud on the ground inside the base.

  “Gravity normal,” King said.

  “Excellent. EVA firefights are a pain in the . . .”

  “Yep. You going to retrieve that dangerous ordnance or what?”

  Roman headed aft and unlocked the box full of explosives. It held a rocket launcher, three RPGs, as well as a handful of standard grenades and an assortment of station-grade firearms, high caliber enough to take out humanoids, but not so high end that they’d punch through the Doppel-eisen steel hull of the base.

  While Roman rechecked and recleared the guns, King pulled out their personal armor. The pair armored up, then strapped on the personal weapons, the rifles and hallway sweepers slung over them. It was enough firepower to clear forty mercs, though Roman hoped they’d only have to face half that many, and not at once. The Dark Stars weren’t military, had never been military. With a good leader, they might be able to work five or so at once, but otherwise, they’d be solo gunslingers looking to pick a fight. But they were still looking at ten-to-one odds in total.

  Roman and King had been through easily fifty firefights together over the years, and could work as smoothly together as Roman had ever operated with a pack-mate back home. And King had another twenty years of experience on top.

  But all of that just added up to make what they were about to do possible, but not anything resembling easy.

  They didn’t know how many mercs were inside, how they were armed, or where the ambassador was. They’d have to take the place room by room, and with only two of them, they had very little margin for error. Even tac vests were only good for so much protection in the field. This region of the Science Fiction world didn’t have personal shields, so their super-Kevlar was as good as it got.

  Roman took the rocket launcher for himself and floated the munitions box down the tube toward the base.

  “Start with the flares?” Roman asked as they hovered in the tube.

  King leaned over the hole and tossed a pair of red flares into the base, establishing their new “down.”

  “Youth before wisdom.”

  “Bullet shield before senior operative, you mean.”

  “More like don’t ever make the black guy go first on a story world,” King countered.

  “Roger that,” Roman said, jumping into the base.

  The flares illuminated a wide, open hangar, one drape-covered ship in the corner. The only other exit was a door in the far left corner, red lights above the closed door.

  “Hangar is clear.”

  Roman continued to scan the hangar as he walked forward. He flipped on the under-slung light on his MP5, red-filtered light banishing shadows as he swept side to side. He held the RPG launcher over his left shoulder.

  King thudded into the hangar behind him.

  “You going to bring these RPGs, or just swing that thing around like a big metallic rod of compensation?”

  “I’ll have you know this thing makes a totally inappropriate but terrifying melee weapon.”

  “Save the sass for the mercs.”

  The room clear, King handed down the box of ordnance. Roman pushed the box along the floor with his steel-toed boot, the box making ear-assaulting metal-on-metal screech.

  “Too cheap for the stealth package, then?”

  “These come last. And they’re not exactly sneaky weapons. But just you wait. Twenty bucks says these come in handy.”

  King countered with “Fifty bucks says they almost get us killed.”

  “You’re no fun. Coming up on the door. Ready to breach?”

  “Ready.”

  “Breaching.”

  Roman threw open the door and was met by the sound of gunfire.

  “Here we go!” Roman said, and opened fire into the hallway.

  Nine: Knock Knock

  ROMAN AND KING moved slow and steady. Ru
shing would just get one of them a bullet somewhere vital.

  Instead, they moved room to room. Roman took point, grenades and flares preceding him.

  He finally got to use the RPG to break open a hard-sealed bulkhead after working the console proved unresponsive. When the bulkhead blew, a flurry of gunfire came through the hole, sending Roman and King back to their firing positions.

  In the subsequent report, he would fervently deny any claims by King that he had a “shit-eating grin” on his face.

  Roman lobbed a stun grenade through the mangled bulkhead. He covered his ears as the grenade’s concussive blast filled the hallway, then leapt into the fray with the launcher, swinging it around like a thick fighting stick. He clotheslined two dazed mercs and then spun the launcher around to jab it at the third’s gut, doubling over and allowing Roman to deliver the KO with a snapping front kick.

  He double-checked to make sure all three were out for the count, then whistled the all-clear.

  King chided him. “You are completely nuts. This isn’t your home world where you can toss weapons around like they’re unbreakable. On this world . . .”

  Roman shushed his boss, which was doubtless a bad idea, but necessary. “Don’t say that. Doubt will make you right. We’re in an action story, and Science Fiction is as much a setting as a genre. I’m the hero. My powder doesn’t get wet, I’ve always got a bullet left in the chamber, and when I use improvised weapons, they don’t break. Got it?”

  King nodded. “You’re the hero, hero.”

  He was playing fast and loose with the genre conventions, true. But there was a reason he’d picked up the rules of Science Fiction so quickly. Every genre had points of continuity, parallels with others. And on the world where he came from, he’d been able to use and abuse weapons more ridiculously than treating a rocket launcher like a baseball bat, and they always came through in the end.

  Roman inspected the launcher, grinning as he found no dents or breaks.

  Still got it, he thought.

  “When are we going to tell Leah where I come from?” Roman asked.