Page 22 of Defiance (The Intersolar Union #7)

The Uaeri Corridor was a dark void in deep space that smelled like burning rubber and ozone. No system was close enough to distinguish from any other, leaving crews with a sense of drifting, timeless ruination. A sense that something had been here once. Not just the remnants of planetary bodies and passing satellites, but people.

Ferulis stared at the dark cargo vessel through the porthole of the intake pressure chamber. He rubbed his aging talons behind his back.

That ship was a ghost too. Not a single crewmember on board. One living soul, according to his ship’s AI. His own agent, not a stowaway or prisoner.

“What’s he found?”

Baellanus asked, joining the chairman. The hatches hissed and their tympana popped. The cargo vessel was drawing them into its orbit. They would dock soon.

“Nothing.”

“As in no cargo?”

“No food, no waste, perfect filters and nutrient filaments for the commissary. The ship is sterile.”

The eldest Atarian son had the good sense to look skeptical, but thoughtful.

“You think… there was another vessel inside.”

Ferulis nodded once with slow deliberation.

The ghost swallowed their small ship without a sound and their faces flashed with the cargo bay’s blue warning light. Gravity returned slowly as it usually did with massive class ships, and the agent outside was opening the door before his feet touched the ground.

“Welcome aboard Med-Go’s supposed flagship freighter,”

the agent said. He nodded to Baellanus Atarian.

“Agent Bjorek Dasin.”

Ferulis let them introduce themselves, examining his newest probationary agent. The green-mailed advenan was a young whipcracker with an unruffled way of carrying himself. He’d previously been a special operative aboard the Yafridi, Commander Lokurian’s old ship, but he showed more promise than a shit transfer onto some Union ship that would make him scrub toilets and fix drones.

He had the makings of a good agent. By the confidence of his stride and the alert scan of his eyes, Ferulis knew he’d made the right choice.

Thank souls. He’d need to recruit more at the rate the humans were gobbling up his people and turning them into hopeless romantics.

“Do you want to confirm my walk-through, sir?”

Dasin asked.

Ferulis waved it off.

“Later. Take us to the exhaust pad.”

“Yes, sir.”

Baellanus and Ferulis flanked Dasin as he led them into the cargo bay. The room was as large as an assembly hanger. Dust accumulated in the metal rafters high overhead without the air being circulated. They passed a blast door with a window into one of the extra wide conveyer belts to find it filled with thick white mist, as still as a crypt.

“It’s an ionizer,”

Dasin reported.

“Keeps static from building up and causing electrical fires. It’s not in the crew’s living quarters.”

“Which is why you could report on the food bays and waste,”

Baellanus guessed.

Dasin nodded to him.

“Gotta wear a BDRE if you want to go anywhere else. Even then, it’ll start causing interference.”

“Don’t bother. No one’s in there,”

Ferulis said gravely.

“Alive, anyway. Worse than silica dust.”

They stopped in front of a large grated landing pad similar to the ones in Renata’s hangar that absorbed the heat of plasma engines on take-off and landing. Novak expanded a holoscreen from his holotab and angled it down towards the ground to share his scans in live view.

“This is the only exhaust pad with any sort of chemical drift. Whoever parked their ship here left the bay doors open in the hopes that it would dissipate into space, but the atmospheric safety shield and zero gravity kept it hovering right where they left it.”

Baellanus and Ferulis shared a look, both pulling up their contacts.

“I’ve got Renata,”

his not-really-an-assistant said.

“Comm Xata,”

Ferulis barked at his linguitor.

Xata was, predictably, reclining in her command chair and digging crunch clusters out of a snack package with a bident. She had her boots up on the observation deck’s railing and waved her fingers.

“If it isn’t Para Ferulis,”

she purred.

“I’ve missed you, Chairman.”

“Siat, good to see you. Insubordinate as ever, I see,”

Baellanus said.

“Do you collect Atarians?”

she asked their XO, genuinely perplexed.

“Not her,”

Vindilus groaned as he got up from bed sounding like a wood chipper. Imani leaned into the feed to hold up her middle finger, then ducked away to slip on a shirt. The walls of their home unit pulsed with a permanent privacy veil. Smart.

“Status updates,”

Ferulis growled, drawing everyone’s attention.

Vindilus scraped his calloused palm down his scarred face, waking himself up.

“Renata’s fine.”

Xata ate another cluster, unperturbed.

“All’s quiet on Piaoguo. Not a peep. Not even a nibble.”

“What about Huajile?”

The commander shrugged.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on the port authority, but it’s all crickets. No shady cargo ships without a rock-solid alibi.”

“What about something the size of a cruiser?”

Dasin asked, joining the other two in their comm halo. Xata raised a brow at him, planting her feet on the floor with interest.

“Is that Baby Bjorek all grown up?”

she asked, her tendrils spiraling to life.

Dasin smirked at her.

“I’ve been grown up a lot longer than you’ve noticed, commander.”

Xata bit her lip and grinned.

“Do not tempt her,”

Imani warned, leaning back into the feed again.

“Oh, I’m not nearly as dangerous as a human. Something about your translucent skin and wedge noses makes Union men froth at the mouth. A little shimmy of those lumps of fat on your chest, and suddenly they’re whipping out their c—”

“Who wants to be demoted to desk duty first?!”

Ferulis growled, cutting her off. All of his agents went quiet like subdued whelps.

“I was going to say ‘cruisers,’”

Xata cooed, her eyes flying over a data stream, “because several of those have come in and out of Huajile over the last satbit. Hundreds, in fact. Can you narrow down what you’re looking for?”

“Something that uses a high-end fuel cell instead of the usual plasma engine,”

Dasin supplied.

Baellanus tilted his chin in thought.

“A luxury cruiser with eight fuel cells would be powerful enough for a contraband chainskip engine.”

Vindilus grunted while Xata went on mute and yelled orders over her crew.

“Most of the smuggling on Huajile is disguised as useless junk that planetary customs pass over,”

he grumbled thoughtfully.

“Small ships move the big ticket items…”

His mandibles splayed out in a revelation.

“That ship we grounded in the jungle when the Nephim buyer tried to take Bree was an 8-cell sera class with a modified chainskipper. They could be moving dolls, but fuck if I know why.”

Xata returned, tossing some data their way.

“There were seven 8-cell cruisers in the last two satbits. One of them is registered to HIXBS as part of their guest fleet,”

she scoffed, standing up. Her feed followed her as she strode angrily towards her pilots’ hub. She leaned into the dome of glass, scanning the port, then turned her vid feed around to show Ferulis. She pointed to a silver and maroon ship with HIXBS’s logo on the side.

“There’s the bitch. Right fucking there.”

The chairman’s team fell silent in shock, but all Ferulis sensed was chum in the waters. His plan had worked. Charlie Halloway was in danger.

They all were.

And there he was playing Blind Man’s Bluff in the Uaeri Corridor on the other side of the Union. Med-Go was a distraction in plain sight.

“Call your brother and sister back,”

Ferulis snarled at Bael.

“I don’t give two shits what the council says, I’m claiming a high security emergency effective immediately. Get my mission control centers ready for mobilization if it comes to it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Xata, you know what to do.”

The shilpakaari woman winked then held her cheeks between her palms in fake dismay.

“Oh no, is that a power surge?”

she lamented dryly. Her comms cut out in a blip of bright light. Her ship, the Tidus, would go dark until they knew what that HIXBS vessel was capable of.

“We’ll update our team and put the Yafridi on high alert,”

Vindilus said.

“Comms out.”

Ferulis brought up his own vessel’s biometric locks and transferred command to Agent Dasin.

“Head to Piaoguo. Agent Gaul needs back-up.”

Dasin’s tail swung across the grated floor.

“That’s a four-sol skip, sir. Minimum. Can’t Commander Xata take care of it? Her crew?”

“Guei’s on the council, son. She knows all of my covert assets, except that you’re new on my roster. And that’s a two-sol skip. My ship has the highest chainskip priority in the Union. Her logs ghost out too. No one will know you’re there as long as you don’t park her next to the HIXBS cruiser like an idiot,”

he told his newest recruit.

“Yes, sir.”

“And us, sir?”

Baellanus raised his brow plate.

Ferulis sighed, feeling the age in his hip for real this time.

“We’re clearing the ship while we wait for a tugboat. Dasin’s tin can will have an extra BDRE and firearms.”

“No one’s alive in the ionizer mist,”

Bael said.

“The ship confirmed no vitals onboard. No crew or bodies.”

Ferulis gave him an unamused glare.

“Dolls don’t have vitals when they’re powered down, and if a ship’s manifest lists bodies as cargo, they don’t show up in vitals sweeps anyway. Imani Renatex can vouch for that. Call your brother. Grab the BDREs. Go.”

Baellanus nodded his head and strode away. Once his two men were gone, Ferulis sat, extending his bionic leg out in front of him with a hiss. He pulled the chrome bone from the inside of his jacket and took a long drag.

Drained, hopeful, bitterly aware of his age, Ferulis opened his messages from Ezraji Zarabi and scrolled through snaps of Novit, Matteo, and Amelia to give him strength.