Sabercat (Tommy Reilly Chronicles Book 1)

  Sabercat

  by

  T.L. Knighton

  Chapter 1

  In the vastness of space, the chance of just bumping into something becomes so astronomical as to enter the realm of the impossible, which was how Tommy knew that the ship on their tail wasn't there by coincidence. Of course, the bulkhead he slammed against during the ship's hard bank wasn't there by coincidence either.

  "Oh, do quit your whining," said the dark skinned piloting goddess strapped into the seat in front of him, her thick West African accent surprisingly soothing in the moment. "I am not the one who pulled your seat."

  Adele Ikande was tall, standing almost two meters…when she stood, and far lighter than the wrought iron that Tommy was convinced she had somewhere inside her lean, lithe body. She was a virtual virtuoso in the cockpit, so much so the crew had nicknamed her the Iron Maiden, though none had risked saying it to her face.

  "Yeah, well, you kind of need to sit when you fly, so what choice did I have?" he asked as he rubbed the side of his head. He turned to the intercom and pressed the talk button. "What the hell happened to the dampeners?"

  "What the hell happened to me telling you no hard banks?" responded an annoyed voice.

  "Not a lot of choice here," Tommy said.

  "Yeah, well, not a lot of choice here either. I told you we were down two. What more do you want?"

  Tommy cursed under his breath.

  "Boss?" she asked from the pilot's seat.

  "What?" he barked.

  An alarm screamed through the command cabin, its wail piercing Tommy's ears. "They are shooting at us," the pilot said as calmly as if she were ordering food for delivery.

  The ship banked hard, slamming him against the opposite bulkhead as a sliver shape streaked past the window. The bridge wasn't a massive thing, enough for the crew to stand here, but stations for only two people: the pilot and the captain.

  Everywhere were the signs of long-gone neglect. Pitted metal long since scrubbed clean of the offending rust, new components that didn't quite match the metallic tone of its surroundings, things that showed just how far the ship had fallen, but also how far she'd been brought back.

  "They are really shooting at us," she said with a soft chuckle he saw more than heard.

  "Oh, you think?" Tommy fired back, getting more than a little annoyed at the whole thing. This wasn't the first time he'd been attacked, after all. Luckily, Sabercat was faster than everything that had come after her. Especially with Adele at the helm.

  The ship banked hard in the opposite direction. "I did not think it was legal to arm civilian boats."

  "Tell you what. You get us out of here, and I'll be sure to send them a strongly worded email. That work?"

  She nodded, oblivious to his sarcasm.

  From behind him, a very familiar voice asked, "We being shot at again?"

  Tommy turned and looked at Harley Dane, his former bodyguard and now first officer. Shrugging, Tommy said, "I guess it's Tuesday."

  Harley was a mountain, stating a good quarter of a meter taller than Adele and barely wide enough to fit through the hatches on board. His hair, starting to gray just a bit, was kept in its Marine Corps issued "high and tight" that had been popular for centuries among the Corps, proof positive that you could take the boy out of the Marines, but you couldn't take the Marine out of the boy.

  "Is it sad that I've gotten shot at more often since I started working for you than I did in the Corps?"

  "At least you're never bored."

  The ship dropped hard as another silver projectile flashed past the window.

  "I am punching it," she said.

  "You sure we've got the juice?"

  "Do we have a choice?"

  Tommy grimaced. "Alright," he said, then made his way over to the intercom. "All hands, brace yourself for full burn."

  "Are you nuts? You know the dampeners are shot, right?"

  "Yeah, we know. That's why you got some warning," Tommy replied.

  He moved back, placing a wall behind him. "Punch it."

  In the pilot's seat, an ebony hand reached up and flipped up the clear plastic cover. Beneath the square cover, a red button sits, her finger resting mere millimeters above.

  "Three…two…one…burn," she said and pressed the button.

  The ship lurched forward suddenly as the crew was forced against whatever was behind them. The pilot was thrown back against her chair as Tommy felt the inertia try to fuse his lean frame with the bulkhead.

  Tommy gritted his teeth, trying desperately to fight the pain from the intense g-forces. "Adele! Cut it," he finally cried as he began to reach the end of his endurance.

  The pilot reached forward, her hand creeping closer to the button while shaking from the effort. Centimeter by centimeter, she pushed forward until she finally had her finger on the button and pressed down.

  The force pressing against Tommy's chest lessened gradually, but quickly. Maybe not as rapidly as he would have preferred, but still. He bent over and tried to catch his breath, not realizing how much of a strain something like that would put him through.

  "Are you alright, captain?" Adele asked from the pilot's seat.

  He nodded for a few seconds before choking out an affirmative answer. "Did we lose them?" he finally asked.

  Adele looked on two of the screens surrounded her seat, then said, "Looks like we did."

  "Good," Tommy said.

  After several minutes, heavy footsteps began echoing toward the bridge. Tommy braced himself, knowing who it was.

  Harley stepped on the bridge, his black boots echoing against the burnt-red metal. "Crew meeting?"

  Tommy stood back up and looked at his old friend. "Crew meeting."

  ** ** **

  "What the hell, boss?" asked Cody, the ships engineer as he laced his fingers and rested his hand on the battered wooden table sitting at the center of the galley area. Around it sat a hodge-podge of chairs, anything Tommy could find with his limited funds after springing for the ship. "I thought you said getting away clean would be the easy part."

  Tommy nodded and looked at the other man. Asian, average height, and built like a bodybuilder, he was one of the best around. Tommy had been damn lucky to find the man down on his luck enough to sign on. "Yeah, I know. The fact that they didn't show up until we were in the deepest black? That tells me something they probably didn't mean to tell me."

  "Oh?" he asked.

  "Yep. We need to check every single component on this boat. Everything. Every grating, every valve."

  "What are we looking for?" asked Michelle, her French accent subdued. The thin, pale brunette handled computers and navigation on the boat, as well as a few extra things from time to time.

  "Anything that doesn't belong. We'll go EVA if we have to –don't use the remotes, though. I don't trust their point-of-view for this – but there's something here that shouldn't be."

  "Sounds paranoid," Adele offered.

  "You know what they say," Harley said. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."

  She considered for a moment, then nodded. "This is true."

  "Any questions?" Tommy asked.

  Heads shook their negative responses. "Alright," Tommy said. "Let's get to hunting. Everyone but Adele. I want her in the cockpit. We look while we sail. No need to be a sitting duck for whoever's taken an interest in us."

  The crew stood and made their way to their posts. All except Harley.

  "You thinking there's a tracker on us?" he asked.

  Tommy shrugged and said, "Makes about as much sense as anything else I've got."

  "You got an idea who would do
such a dastardly thing?" Harley asked, but Tommy knew that the other man already had his answer.

  The big man chuckled as Tommy looked at him incredulously.

  "So, you think she'd sell you out and let you get killed?"

  Tommy sighed. "Maybe. Or maybe she wants me captured and ransomed, so I have no choice but to owe her for my life. Either's possible with her."

  "She leaves you for months on a deserted island in the middle of an ocean on a sparsely populated planet, and damned if you didn't take it personal."

  "Yeah," Tommy said, "I'm prickly that way."

  ** ** **

  The blinking light was impossible to miss, now that he was looking for it. Cody Chang was a hell of an engineer, if he did say so himself. The fact that he hadn't been over the exterior of the ship bugged him, even more so now that someone had put something on his hull. Right there on the starboard side, just over the wing where it wouldn't be noticed from the ground.

  "Captain," he radioed.

  "Yeah?" Tommy replied.

  "Found something," he replied, then carefully snatched the metal box. Colored to blend with the hull, it had some kind of antenna—a black, stubby thing, but still an antenna—sticking out and a single LED flashing. "Looks like some kind of transmitter."

  "Bring it inside," Tommy responded.

  Carefully, Cody worked his way back toward the airlock. Finding it this quickly had been dumb luck. A ship the size of Sabercat wasn't something that you actually wanted to make a habit of searching. Now that he had this in his hands, however, it was clear why they'd had problems. And here I thought someone on this boat wasn't on the up and up. I'd apologize for it if I wasn't pretty damn sure they were all thinking the same thing, he though as he cycled through the lock.

  ** ** **

  Tommy looked at the box, then looked at Cody. "You're sure this is it?"

  Cody shrugged. "I'm not saying there isn't anything else, but you asked me to look for stuff that didn't belong onboard. This don't belong on board."

  He nodded in reply. "Now, what do we do about it?"

  "What do you mean? We turn this sooka off," Cody blurted out.

  Harley stepped up to the table and picked up the transmitter. After a few moments, he looked at Cody and said, "And when the signal cuts off, what are they going to do?"

  Cody shrugged.

  Tommy smiled and said, "They're keep following our last trajectory at max burn until they find us."

  "Zig and zag our way to Jericho?"

  "Not going to happen," Harley said. "We don't have the juice."

  "Deermo," Cody muttered.

  Tommy considered for a moment. There weren't a lot of options available, but there had to be one. Then it hit him like a tsunami. "We leave it here."

  "Huh?" Harley asked.

  "Leave it floating in the black, then burn as hard as we can to Jericho. If they're working for who I think they're working for, they know we're barely scraping by. If they see us drifting, they may slow down to save fuel themselves, seeing as how we're not going anywhere."

  "And if they don't fall for it and come in full burn?" Cody asked.

  "Then we're not out anything. But if we're lucky, they'll decide this load just isn't worth all the chafing hassle and hunt for someone else."

  "That's great unless you're the 'someone else'," Cody fired back.

  He hated to admit it, but Tommy knew his engineer was right. Unfortunately, this was a case of finding the option with the lowest suck quotient possible, and this was it.

  "You're right," Tommy replied, "but there's only so much we can do. All we really have available is to be a bad target for them, so let's use it."

  Cody nodded, obviously not happy.

  "One more thing," Tommy said.

  The engineer raise his eyebrows, beckoning his captain to continue.

  "Can you rig something up that will detect signals coming from the ship?"

  He nodded. "Yeah, probably. I'll need to pick up some stuff on Jericho though."

  "Get me a list," Harley ordered.

  "Will do," he said as he stood. He looked at the other two men and nodded before leaving.

  Harley watched the engineer leave before turning back to Tommy. "She's playing for keeps," he said. Nothing on his face indicated surprise, or that he was pleased with the situation in any way, shape, or form.

  "When has she ever done anything different?"

  The big former Marine smiled mirthlessly. It immediately put Tommy to mind of a wolf, or a sabercat, if he were to be perfectly honest. Only their tight relationship kept him from needing to change his underwear…well, that and the fact that Tommy knew Harley was a big teddy bear without a really good reason not to be. "I won't put much else past her," the big man said.

  Tommy leaned back against the bulkhead, his dingy white shirt almost blending with the discolored metal. "I'm not going to let her win, Harley. I can't."

  Harley nodded and said, "I know you can't. I worked for the sooka, remember?"

  It was Tommy's turn to nod.

  "So," Harley said, trying desperately to change the subject, "any word on a load?"

  "Yeah. Private passage. Paying for the whole damn ship," Tommy said, the corners of his mouth turning up at the thought.

  "Really?" Harley asked, his mouth mimicking the captain's.

  "Yep."

  "Who's the fare?"

  Tommy shrugged and said, "Damned if I know. Someone with an outfit called the Territorial Resources Alliance."

  "Tree hugger?"

  "No clue. I can't find much on them, but they're a registered non-profit in Jericho, so they're a real thing at least."

  "Want us to keep an eye on the passenger?" Harley asked.

  "Oh yeah. Right now, I don't trust anyone, no matter how much they're paying us."

  "Don't blame you. We've got your back."

  Tommy grunted his aggravation. "You do, at least."

  ** ** **

  Tommy paced back and forth as he wanted outside his ship for Port Control to check in their load. Thirty containers of raw iron from the asteroid belt wouldn't go bad, but after twenty-three hours parked in orbit, he was ready to offload. Officially. There was also the unofficial load that he wasn't about to tell anyone about. It wasn't necessarily illegal, but it would delay delivery, and that wouldn't do.

  His black boots clipped along the dusty brown world as his hand rested on the Capella R-9 pistol resting in its holster on his hip. Jericho was habitable, but barely. Much of the planet resembled the Dust Bowl from the twentieth century, with swirling powder, high winds, and not a whole lot else going for it.

  In addition, the law on Jericho was practically non-existent. The Earth Defense Command Port Control handled the spaceport, but outside of its gates was a whole different world. While the EDC preferred no one be armed in port, they knew it was a lost cause on Jericho.

  "Mr. Reilly?" a grim faced man in the gray and black uniform of Port Control asked.

  "Captain, actually," Tommy replied, desperately trying to hold back his annoyance and not sure if he succeeded. "Ready to check us in?"

  The man nodded once and checked his pad. "You were due in yesterday," he remarked.

  "I was here. Control had me parked in the black since yesterday."

  The man continued looking at his pad. "Regulations state that you are supposed to be groundside by the check in time on your manifest."

  Tommy took a deep breath and said, "I was here. How am I supposed to be groundside when you people wouldn't let us land?"

  The man tapped on his pad screen at a furious pace, but didn't look up as he said, "You should plan accordingly, Captain. Delays happen." With those words, he ran his finger up the screen, sending a document to Tommy's pad.

  Tommy raised it and looked, his eyes widening as he read it. "Thirty thousand bits? That's my entire margin on this run!" He briefly considered the Capella on his hip, immediately dismissing it. Tempting though it might be, it was a one-way ticket to a s
lab. This jerk has too many friends with too many weapons. Besides, he wasn't like that. Not anymore.

  That didn't mean it wasn't tempting.

  "Not my problem," the man said as he looked at Tommy. "Pray that you don't have any other infractions."

  He glared that the Port Control official for a long moment, then turned toward the ship. He wanted to argue, but knew what would happen if he did. Instead of offloading, he'd get to deal with a depressingly thorough customs inspection. Again.

  Pressing the stud on his collar com, he said, "Alright, drop the ramp."

  A fifty meter section of the port side of the ship—a good quarter of the ship's length—swung slowly down, forming a ramp with a loud, mechanical grinding noise. Tommy pondered the official stepping too close and being crushed beneath the tons of weight and hydraulics, but knew deep down that he wasn't that lucky…or vindictive.

  Maybe.

  As the ramp lowered, Tommy watched the internal locks rolling away from the containers. Harley stepped down the ramp as the official walked up.

  "Well," the big man quipped, "he looks friendly."

  Tommy nodded once and glared at the official's back.

  "You look kind of friendly too, now that I think about it."

  "Bastard fined us thirty-k," Tommy said.

  Harley screwed up his face and exclaimed, "For what?"

  "Being a day late groundside."

  The former Marine turned and glared at the official as well. "Guess it didn't matter that we couldn't get down here?"

  "Says it's still our fault."

  "We still going to clear enough?"

  Tommy took a deep breath. "Yeah, I think so. Enough to pay the crew, refuel, get some food—provided we're not to particular as to whether we'd normally think of it as 'food'—and that's about it."

  Harley sighed. "Think we can get the fare to pay in advance?"

  ** ** **

  The tavern, if it was even worthy of that name, was built out of old shipping containers welded together with no attempt made to hide its origins either inside or out. The bar itself was, at best, rudimentary with several metallic spools forming pillars every meter or so. Sheets of old, weathered metal ran the span between the spools, each one tacked in place with welds that even a beginner would be ashamed to have seen in public.