Shadow of Empire Page 5

  Blackhawk had been to the planet once, a long time ago, years before the system had been interdicted. He remembered it as a backward world, mostly agricultural, with a hereditary aristocracy ruling over a vast population of bonded serfs. There was some industry even then, but it was rudimentary, mostly primitive factories processing raw materials. The industrialization had drawn a significant percentage of the peasantry to the cities. They came in search of a better life than they had working twelve-hour days on the huge plantations, but all they found was another version of serfdom toiling in the filthy, smoke-spewing factories.

  Blackhawk punched at his keyboard, accessing the Claw’s main data banks. Saragossa had been redlined by order of the transport guilds seven years ago due to ongoing revolution and warfare on the planet.

  Well, it all made sense, Blackhawk thought. The place was a shithole, and the aristocrats had lived in obscene luxury while most of the people barely had enough to eat, and sometimes not enough. It had been a rebellion waiting to happen even years before, and now his people were heading straight for it.

  “Luke, what’s the chance of managing some makeshift repairs and pulling off another jump?” He knew the answer, but he asked anyway.

  “I’d say none, Skip.” Lancaster’s voice had calmed down. “I couldn’t get this tub back into hyperspace for all the emperor’s gold. I think the core’s blown. You’ll have to check with Sam to be sure, but I’m not getting any power readings from it at all.”

  Blackhawk leaned back and sighed. A hyperdrive core wasn’t going to be easy to find in a place like Saragossa, and trying to do it in the middle of a violent revolution was going to be that much worse. He’d had a bad headache already when his crew pulled him from the arena, but now he felt like his skull was going to crack open like an egg.

  “All right, Lucas, I get the point.” Blackhawk turned and walked toward the ladder to the lower deck. “If Sam can’t patch things up, we’ll land on the planet. There’s got to be a hyperdrive core somewhere on Saragossa. We may have to steal it, but I’m sure we can track one down.” It’s not going to be fun, he thought to himself, but everything’s relative—a few hours ago you were fighting a steroid-pumped freak riding a dinosaur.

  “Plot us a course toward the planet, Lucas. Bring us right in, shortest possible route.” Saragossa didn’t have a navy or even satellites, so there was no need for stealth. But Blackhawk was the cautious type; some called it paranoid, he called it smart. “I want full baffles, Lucas. No reason to announce our presence, just in case anybody’s watching.” He reached out and grabbed one of the rungs and started to climb down.

  “You got it, Skip.” Apparently Lancaster had already plotted the course, because the pilot punched a single button right before Blackhawk’s head disappeared below the floor. “Locked in,” he called after the captain. “But we’re not actually going anywhere until Sam gets the reactor back online.” The positioning jets were capable of limited operation on backup power, but the main engines needed the reactor, and right now Wolf’s Claw’s nuclear plant was shut down.

  Blackhawk shouted up the hatch, “Way ahead of you. I’m on my way down there now.”

  “So what’s it look like, Sam? Is it as bad as Lucas seems to think?” Blackhawk ducked through the door to the Claw’s main engineering space. It was a cramped area, tucked under the lower deck. There was maybe two meters of headroom in the center, enough for everyone but the Twins to stand up, but the entry hatch was small, and Blackhawk had to twist his way in.

  “It’s worse, Cap.” Samantha Sparks was the Claw’s engineer, the only person who knew the ship and its idiosyncrasies better than her captain did. She was hunched over an open access panel, pulling out chunks of burnt and blackened circuitry, a disgusted look on her face. She wore a pair of heavy insulated gloves, and her long red ponytail was tied into a knot behind her head. “That last hit took out a bank of stabilizers. When the hyperdrive kicked in, it overloaded half the systems on the ship.” She shot Blackhawk a quick glance, trying not to react to his standing there almost naked, but she was having a hard time of it. “This was all new equipment a few hours ago.” She held up a handful of charred and fused wiring for a second before she dumped it on the floor. “Now it’s garbage. Very expensive garbage.”

  Blackhawk regarded his engineer. Sparks was another of the oddly talented refugees he had picked up in his travels. Like the others, she’d been an outcast . . . Her parents had been killed on the planet Corinthia when she was nine years old, the victims of a feud with a local noble. He didn’t know all the details—she never knew them all herself—only that her mother, father, and brother had been killed. She escaped only because she had been outside when the attackers came. By the time she got back, her family was dead. She hid in a crawlspace under the building for two days before hunger and thirst drove her out into the streets.

  She grew up a gutter rat in Corinthia City, scavenging for food and a place to sleep for three years, before an engineer at the spaceport found her sleeping in the cargo hold of a grounded spaceship. He felt sorry for her and took her in, letting her sleep in the back room of the repair shop and bringing her food every day. She’d started cleaning up to earn her keep, but soon she was prowling around at nights, teaching herself everything she could about the guts of spaceships. It was complicated stuff for most people, but she turned out to have a great gift for it. Before long her broom and rags were stowed away for good, and she spent her days crawling around the bowels of damaged spaceships, zeroing right in on problems that had the other techs scratching their heads.

  She was seventeen when her benefactor was killed in an accident at the shipyard, and she was back on her own again. Blackhawk met her six months later. At the time, he happened to have a price on his head on Corinthia—not the most unique position he’d ever been in. He was trying to quietly repair a damaged Wolf’s Claw, with limited success until Sam crawled into the guts of the ship and found the problem in a few minutes. He paid her double what he’d promised her and offered her something else. A job and a home. She’d been with him ever since.

  He knew he’d rescued her from a difficult situation, but Blackhawk didn’t doubt it was he—and the crew—who were lucky to have found her. It didn’t change the fact, though, that even her immense skills were being put to the test at the moment.

  “Look, Captain, I can jury-rig enough to get a lot of these systems working—or at least sort of working—but we’re going to need a new core for the hyperdrive, that’s for sure. The old one is completely blown. I tried to cross-wire it, but there’s just no way.” She turned to face Blackhawk. “And unless we get a new one, we’re going be in this system for a long time.”

  Blackhawk sighed. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t expected, but he’d held out some hope they might get a break. If something on a ship could be fixed, he knew Sam could do it, and he’d hoped she might pull some miracle out of her pocket. But miracles, as usual, were in short supply.

  “What about the distortion field?” Most of the Claw’s systems were more or less standard equipment, if better and more powerful versions than those typically found on a smuggler’s ship. But the field was something completely different. It was top-grade imperial tech, military and highly classified. Equipment so sophisticated was almost unknown in the Far Stars. Blackhawk had never told anyone where or how he’d gotten it, and the crew knew better than to ask. But he was sure there were no spare parts for that on Saragossa, and that made him nervous.

  “It looks okay, Cap.” He could hear the wariness in her voice. “But I’ve only got that thing half figured out, so I’m not certain.” Among its other uses, the distortion field rendered Wolf’s Claw invisible, or at least close to it. It took far too much power to operate when the ship was blasting away on full thrust or fighting a battle, but it was extremely useful for hiding the ship planetside or when it was lurking somewhere in space with the engines off. The field was the only reason the ka’al’s people hadn’t found the
Claw on Kalishar. Without it, none of them would have made it off that miserable rock.

  “How about the weapons systems?” It was unlikely there’d be any fighting in space near Saragossa, but Blackhawk was still uncomfortable at the thought of his ship blasting around defenseless.

  “All offline now, but it’s just fried circuitry from the power spike.” She looked up at Blackhawk, brushing a tuft of hair out of her face as she did. “I can patch things up pretty quickly.” She turned and glanced over at a bank of readouts. “The reactor scragged automatically, but it looks like it’s undamaged. We’re on battery power right now, but I can restart the reaction any time.” She paused for a few seconds. “I’ll be gentle with it, but I should be able to have something close to full power in ninety minutes, at least where the transmission lines aren’t fried.” Another pause. “Weapons online a couple hours after that.”

  Blackhawk paused for a few seconds. “All right, let’s get the reactor back up as quickly as possible. I don’t like operating on backups.”

  Sparks nodded. “You got it, Cap.”

  “Get the weapons operational next.” He took a deep breath. “We may be alone out here, but I still don’t like being helpless.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to expedite things, Cap.” Sparks held Blackhawk’s gaze for a few seconds, giving the captain a quick smile. Then she buried her head back into the access panel and started ripping out burnt circuitry again.

  Blackhawk twisted his way through the entry hatch and back out into the access corridor. He reached up and grabbed a rung to pull himself up the ladder. His muscles rebelled against the exertion, the fatigue of the last few days finally beginning to tell. He ignored the soreness and climbed up to the lower deck.

  Most of the crew members were milling around, talking among themselves, but they shut up when Blackhawk stepped out into the middle of the deck. “Looks like we’re going to have to land on Saragossa to find a new hyperdrive core.” He tried to keep the fatigue out of his voice, but he doubted he was completely successful. “It’s not the ideal place, but we’ll find something usable. Then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

  “No problem, Cap.” Ace had the usual cocky smile on his face. “I’ll find whatever you need.”

  Blackhawk looked back with an expression somewhere between a grin and a frown. “Without shooting the place up this time, okay?” His crew was a capable group—the fact that they were still alive proved that much. But they did have a nasty habit of wearing out welcomes wherever they went. They usually got what they came for, but they tended to leave places in rougher shape than they’d found them, and that didn’t endear them to the locals.

  “What we need to do is find a ship and grab its hyperdrive core—quick, easy, quiet.” He paused. “Maybe we don’t even kill anybody this time, what do you think?” He had to fight back his own laugh. He couldn’t remember the last job his people pulled where nobody got scragged.

  Shira was leaning against a console, looking vaguely amused. But Ace spoke up first. “You know us, Cap. Gentlest souls in the Far Stars.”

  Blackhawk smiled. “Yeah, that’s how I always describe you guys.”

  He suddenly remembered he was still wearing the loincloth from the arena. “Well, if everything’s under control for the moment, I think I’ll run down to my quarters and change.”

  “Don’t go to the trouble for me, Ark.” It was Astra Lucerne, stepping out from around one of the bulkheads. She wore a wicked grin as she walked into the room, her ice-blue eyes staring at the Claw’s almost-naked captain. Her waist-length blond hair was tangled into a riotous mess, and she was still wearing the light gray shift she’d had on when Blackhawk had first found her, though it was now stained with the blood of her kidnapper. He had been thorough in dealing with her abductor, but he wasn’t going to get any points for neatness or subtlety. That wasn’t really his style, though, and he did his best to live up to his reputation for getting the job done—and for leaving somewhat of a mess behind.

  “I think you look good in a diaper.” She smiled and winked at him.

  Blackhawk felt a rare wave of embarrassment. He’d known Astra Lucerne since she was ten years old, with a long blond ponytail and a precociousness that got her into trouble on a regular basis. But she wasn’t ten years old anymore, and the way she was looking at him was enough to rattle him a bit—not that he’d let it show. He forced his own smile and nodded. “I am glad to see you are no worse for your ordeal, Astra.”

  He turned toward the other side of the room, where most of his crew was fighting the urge to laugh. “Shira, can you set Lady Lucerne up in one of the spare cabins? I’m sure she’d like to get some rest.” He flashed his eyes back to Astra as he spoke. “And find her some clothes. I imagine she wouldn’t mind getting the stink of Kalishar off her, like I’m going to do myself right now.”

  “Sure, Cap.” Shira suppressed a giggle and nodded to Astra, motioning toward one of the hatches as she did. “Let’s get you settled in, shall we?”

  Astra nodded. “Thank you, Shira. I am a little tired. Being kidnapped is exhausting, but it’s nothing compared to one of Ark’s heroic rescues.” She shot a last glance back at Blackhawk, smiling again as she did. “See you later, Ark.” She tried to hold back a laugh, but she didn’t try too hard. Shira walked through one of the hatches, and Astra followed, leaving most of the Claw’s crew standing around with a variety of grins on their faces.

  “I think you’ve all got enough work to do to keep busy,” Blackhawk snapped, glaring at his grinning crew for a few seconds before he turned and walked down the corridor toward his quarters. Finally, he thought, I’ve got a few minutes to get cleaned up. He was still covered in dried stegaroid guts, and it was starting to reek.

  He let out a long sigh as he ran his hand over the scanner plate and the door to his quarters slid open. He felt a bit of relief, but it was limited. He’d managed to find Astra and rescue her from the kidnappers, as he’d set out to do. That was a start, and he was glad to see she hadn’t been harmed. But he had no idea how he was going to get her back to her father on Celtiboria. The first step was finding a hyperdrive core somewhere in the middle of the Saragossan revolution.

  Typical, he thought with another sigh. Just fucking typical.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE IMPERIAL CAPITOL ON GALVANUS PRIME WAS AN AWESOME complex, built to attest to the power and vastness of the empire that claimed suzerainty over the Far Stars. Sprawling over ten square kilometers and built from interlocking blocks of black and white Sytorian marble, it loomed over the capital city, as if daring any other construction to challenge its grandeur, its raw projection of might and greatness.

  Yet, for all its majesty, this magnificent compound was a façade, an illusion. The image of imperial power it projected was a fiction.

  Galvanus Prime was the imperial sector capital, in theory the center of government and authority in the Far Stars. But most of the worlds outward from the Void had proven to be quite beyond the control of the empire, and few of the sector’s one hundred systems obeyed even the barest forms of the emperor’s rule. Imperial governors had come and gone, and each had proven as incapable as those who had preceded them at the task of bringing the planets of the sector to heel. The business of the Far Stars went on, as it had for centuries, its worlds busy battling one another or torn by their own internal struggles, quite unconcerned with the edicts of emperors and governors or their empty threats of force.

  Kergen Vos intended for that sorry history to end. Vos was the new governor, a man far more capable than any of the others who’d been relegated to this wild backwater on the fringe of human habitation. He was perhaps the first man who had actively pursued the post of governor of the Far Stars. Most of his predecessors had been sent beyond the Void in disgrace and spent the years of their exile sitting ineffectually in their massive headquarters, while the rest of the worlds casually ignored them. Command of the Far Stars was a dreaded assignment, a punishment for
imperial courtiers who had fallen into disfavor, and a graveyard for once-promising imperial careers.

  Vos was from a different mold than those who had come before him, though. An outsider, without the contacts or patronage usually required to prosper in the imperial bureaucracy, he had risen from the dusty plains of a backwater world up through the ranks of the imperial intelligence service. His ruthless brilliance and moral ambivalence served him well and led him from one successful mission to the next, leaving a trail of bodies behind even as he accumulated favor from a growing list of useful patrons. His career had been an uninterrupted success, one that had taken him far from his humble beginnings and provided him with considerable wealth and an enviable reputation. Yet, despite seemingly better prospects, he’d longed to take the job so many others viewed as a dead-end posting.

  No one in the imperial bureaucracy could remember the last time anyone had volunteered to take the leadership post beyond the Void. The unfortunates dispatched to this fringe on the edge of the empire invariably faded into obscurity and returned—if they returned at all—to vastly decreased levels of influence and prestige. Every Far Stars governor quickly found that the freebooters, warlords, and adventurers who ran the worlds of the Far Stars simply ignored imperial pretensions, as their fathers and grandfathers had done. They were as likely to question the governor’s intelligence and his parentage in a single breath as they were to pay the slightest heed to his directives.

  Vos knew it could be the same for him, save for one thing: he didn’t plan to sit in the massive palace and watch the days slip idly by, enduring the insults of his would-be subjects. He intended, at long last, to bring the renegade worlds of the Far Stars firmly under the emperor’s control. Kergen Vos was not afraid of a pack of pirates and mercenaries more accustomed to fighting each other than facing any real external threats. Vos was something new, a governor the likes of which the unruly brigands of the sector had never before seen.