111 Souls (Infinite Universe) Read online

  “Very vell,” Petrova conceded after a moment’s pause. “I appreciate the fact that you brought me into this and in anticipation of a positive future vorking relationship, I shall accept your terms.”

  “Excellent,” the general nodded.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Petrova nodded to the general. “I’ve got some vork to do.”

  She vanished into the shadows of the dark underworld street and Ounimbongo suddenly felt very isolated and alone in the lower power neon lights and tough characters walking the streets of the underworld. With as much dignity as he could muster, he scampered his way down the street heading in the direction of the surface.

  5

  “Marquis! Get to the shuttle! Get airborne!” Jennings shouted as they raced back into the daylight in pursuit of O’Sullivan.

  “Oui, mon capitaine!” he replied and took off in a different direction, headed back to where they had left the shuttle.

  O’Sullivan had a good lead, but Jennings was gaining, and all he had to do was keep him in sight until Lafayette arrived with the shuttle. Then, it would be a matter of just pinning him down. They sprinted down the main thoroughfares of Centuria, but the road was mostly clear. Traffic in the city sprouted in an upward direction, so there were hundreds of hovercars speeding about the hundreds of levels above their heads, but very few transports on the ground. There were a couple of people walking casually around the city, but only a few. The bottom levels of Centuria were mostly industrial and warehouse areas. Most of the public resided much higher up in the structures and the general public areas were built atop some of the wider buildings. There was nowhere for O’Sullivan to hide.

  The fugitive must have realized this as well, because he suddenly stopped in the middle of the street and turned toward Jennings. Instinctively, Jennings threw himself to the ground and managed to barely avoid the red plasma bolts that raked the ground behind him. Coming out of the roll, Jennings drew his own weapon and squeezed off several shots, one of which glanced off O’Sullivan’s arm. He cried out in pain and his weapon went flying from his hand. Spinning around wildly, he looked like he was torn between trying to retrieve the weapon and whether he should start running.

  There was a sudden whoosh of repulsor lifts engaging as a small shuttle swung over the street, pinning O’Sullivan between the ship and Jennings. Very reluctantly, O’Sullivan raised his hands above his head and Jennings walked over to him, clapped some binders on his arms and led him up the shuttle’s ramp. The ramp closed behind them and the hovering shuttle took off into the sky.

  Petrova watched from the shadows and smiled to herself. She had guessed right to follow the older of the two and placing the homing device on the shuttle had been easy. Calling the local police to advise them of the firefight and giving them the exact names and physical descriptions of the two bounty hunters had been a rather inspired move as well, she thought to herself. The bounty hunters would have to try to bring in O’Sullivan to the Terran Gael Force while avoiding the local police, which would give her the perfect opportunity to snatch the mark right out from under their noses.

  6

  The three of them sat cramped into the small cockpit of the Melody Tryst’s only shuttle, aptly named Shuttle Four. (The first three had been, in order: blown up; crashed into an asteroid; lost in a card game by Lafayette.) The Cajun was at the stick, gaining altitude as he traversed one of the vertical skyways marked by the lighted buoys on repulsor-lifts that formed the city’s skylanes.

  “Captain,” a harsh voice came through the squaw and Fix’s face came into view.

  Lafayette looked worriedly at Jennings. The Melody Tryst did not break radio silence with them unless there was a problem.

  “What is it, Fix?” Jennings asked quickly.

  “Your faces just flashed over the Nucleus,” he replied. “You’re wanted in connection with a shooting on one of the many fashionable streets of Centuria.”

  “Last I checked, we received most of the fire, non?” Lafayette muttered.

  “According to Minerva, an unknown female called in a report,” Fix continued. “Accent had a trace of old Earth Slav to it.”

  “Dammit!” Jennings swore heavily. “Petrova.”

  “You can bet your arse,” Fix agreed.

  “I’d rather not,” he replied. “Can Minerva find us an underground to Security Central?”

  “It better not involve a sewage system,” Lafayette grumbled.

  “Maybe you should let me go and give up, considering I’m not a member of the bloody Resistance,” Ciarin offered.

  Lafayette smacked him on the back of the head as Fix ran some numbers. “Quickly, mon capitaine. We’re running out of sky,” he warned.

  “There’s a back door you can use,” Fix reported. “Power sub-station. Fully automated. Powers the central hospital and admin building in the event one of the storms knocks out main power.”

  “Navigating,” Lafayette responded, studying the intel that was being fed from Minerva, the Melody Tryst’s Near-Artificial Intelligence system.

  Jennings’ stomach lurched as Lafayette threw the shuttle hard over and headed for what looked like an orange five story metallic tumor growing on the side of the Government Administration Tower. He landed on the roof and the three of them exited, Jennings pulling Ciarin behind him.

  “The door,” Jennings said as he pointed at the black aperture set in a bump-out on the roof.

  Its security was fairly intensive, two-foot thick steel and an LBT Tumbler Encrypt with retinal and fingerprint scanners. Jennings guessed that the roof had sensors as well. They probably had about sixty seconds before alarms went off. Lafayette took out a small sliver of plastic that looked like a credit chit and slid it into the ID slot. The computer interface gave the appearance of shuddering as the screen flickered maniacally and then blanked out.

  “Minerva is in,” Lafayette said.

  “Come on. Come on,” Jennings intoned as the computer on his ship linked with the card and hacked its way into the system.

  With an explosive decompression, the door locks gave and the door slid open a little bit. Jennings opened it wide and shoved Ciarin through the door. Lafayette went to follow him, but Jennings held him up.

  “Stay with the ship,” he ordered. He took off into the doorway and called from inside, “But keep your comm open. Just in case I need rescuing.”

  7

  Pahhal finished studying the report he had collected detailing Captain Jennings’ pursuit of Ciarin O’Sullivan, fugitive number one hundred and ten. His resources were far greater than someone like General Ounimbongo could understand, and he had garnered enough information to piece together exactly how the O’Sullivan situation had played out. The more he read it, the more confident he was of his decision. Captain Jennings had contacts, investigative prowess, strength, improvisation and a certain finesse that most bounty hunters did not. They tended to prefer brute carnage, which ended up with the target being dead more often than not. Even Jennings’ failure at the hands of Petrova had told Pahhal a great deal about what type of man Jennings was. He had been outnumbered, outgunned and he had still walked away to tell the tale.

  His service record said the same. He had turned a number of hopeless situations in the Gael War into small victories over the Gael forces, or more often Terran defeats that were horrifically costly to the Gael military. Still, he supposed, all situations were hopeless for humans in the war. The fact that anyone could grab even a small victory was miraculous in and of itself. On top of that, when things got really bad for his side and defeat was imminent, he took prisoners of war rather than murdering any pockets of surrendering Gael. He was one of the few who did. Jennings was a man of honor and that defined him above all else. That was why he did not mind hunting the Resistance; he deemed people who killed civilians to be even worse than the Gael.

  That is what Pahhal would use against him- his honor. If you painted the proper picture for a man like Jennings, he would feel obligated
to bring Pahhal fugitive number one hundred and eleven. A light flicked on in the cockpit of his transport shuttle, advising him that the autopilot had activated the landing gear. He was setting down in the Western Docks on the outskirts of town. He looked through the ship’s main view-screen and saw the Melody Tryst resting before him. A small smile crossed his face as he realized one other thing he loved about Captain Jennings and his crew: they were starving.

  Chapter 3

  The Caf was the unofficial name of the galley on the Melody Tryst and it was where most of the crew were to be found in their off-hours. The Symphonic-class cargo-conversion was a tri-level ship: two levels to the aft compromising the majority of the spacecraft and a lone level flight deck to the fore connected to each level by a sloping gangplank. The Caf was at the center of the top level, separated from a lounge by a thin plastic partition. Eight doors and two small hatches led to crew and guest quarters or gave access to the ship’s two wings. The guest quarters were convertible to prison cells when the situation demanded it, which seemed to be more and more frequent as real work was snatched up by legitimate contractors and post-war profiteers. In the ceiling of the Caf was a ladder that would drop down and gave access to the shuttle that locked into place atop the Melody Tryst. Beneath their feet on the lower level was the cargo hold, small arms locker, armory (or large arms locker as Lafayette liked to say- where the ammunition for the Melody Tryst’s weapons was kept), a few smuggler’s holds and the engineering section.

  When Jennings walked into the galley, he saw Fix and Lafayette were already there. Fix was sitting at the long table where most of their meals were held, and Lafayette was in the kitchen, preparing something. Jennings had no idea what Lafayette might be cooking as there was an extreme dearth of edibles on board, but the Marquis had done more with less before. Even dozens of generations removed from the French mainland, Lafayette knew more about cooking than the rest of them put together. Jennings did not know what half the contraptions in their kitchen (most purchased or brought in by Lafayette) were for, and Scottish blood ran deep in the veins underneath Fix’s black skin. From what Jennings understood, his only requirement in food was that it be dead. Even that was flexible given the circumstances. Lafayette caught Fix making haggis once and the two almost came to blows.

  For a moment, Jennings took a long look around, then checked under the table, in the corners of the ceiling and pulled out each chair.

  “He’s nae here yet,” Fix said without looking up from the tablet he was reading.

  “Squawk!” Jennings roared loudly, his voice echoing in the small space.

  One of the access panels to the wings sprang open and out flew a whirling ball of energy. “Inertial dampener is shot. Needed overhaul six months ago. Wait and see. Wait and see, captain says. We waited and we saw, and we need a new part. Yes, yes, yes. Wait, could bypass it through a power coupling, could work, could work. Yes. For a while anyway. Yes. Yes. Maybe. Try it and see. Good idea.”

  “Squawk?” Jennings interrupted his diatribe.

  The tiny engineer looked up as if noticing everyone else for the first time. With a sudden look of recognition, he straightened up swiftly, saluted Captain Jennings and leapt up into a chair. Stifling a yawn, Jennings sat down beside him. Squawk’s energy was enough to make anyone tired. The ship’s engineer was a Pasquatil, one of the three races humans had met when they began exploring the galaxy. Combined with the Merquand and the Uula, they had joined with humans to form the Terran Federation, although the Uula had only done so in a desperate attempt to beat back Gael incursions into their space. The Pasquatil were a diminutive race of “hyperactive chipmunks” as Lafayette had once said. Squawk stood about three feet tall on legs that could only be described as kangaroo-like. Although he could walk, he preferred to jump and spring almost everywhere. Large claws on his toes allowed him to cling to almost any surface, and a short, fat, furry tail extended from a hole in his engineer’s coveralls. He had long thin arms that allowed him to reach into nooks and crevices in the ship’s inner workings and a four fingered hand with opposable thumbs. His body was covered in a kind of downy gray fur from his head on down, but he had a vaguely humanoid, although dark gray, face- a prominent wet nose and whiskers being the main distinction.

  Pasquatil were born engineers. There was something about them that just intuitively understood how things worked. They probably could not tell you the physics or mathematics of it all, but they just understood it inherently. The downside of that was they tended to talk constantly, mostly to themselves, and very few Terrans had the patience for their obsession with the work they did. His name took about thirty seconds to say when it was not being pronounced by a fellow Pasquatil so Jennings just called him Squawk.

  There was a delicious aroma now emanating from the kitchen and Lafayette emerged carrying a frying pan and a large pot. As he set the sizzling frying pan in front of everyone, he announced, “Bon appétit. Enjoy the meal for it may be our last.”

  “How bad is it?” Jennings asked.

  “This magnificent feast represents the last of our dried fruit, canned meat, powdered potatoes and pasta,” Lafayette replied.

  Squawk pulled out a large bag of chocolate covered peanuts from his greasy coveralls and announced, “Fine. Fine. Fine. Everything I need for a while.” He threw two into his mouth and after a moment of frenzied chewing let out a contented sigh.

  Eyeing the small amount of spaghetti in the pot carefully, Jennings took a third and spooned it onto his plate. There was no sauce, so he piled the small portion of fried sausage and dried apples in some kind of wine sauce over top of it. Fix divided the rest of the meal up between himself and Lafayette, and everyone dug in with a kind of grim resolve.

  After a moment, the food was gone and Jennings said, “Remember Riverfront?”

  “Merde, don’t remind me,” Lafayette replied, pushing his plate away. “I ate my own belt.”

  “I ate the soles of my shoes,” Jennings replied.

  “Think we’re headed that way again?” he asked.

  Fix grunted. “We do nae have any coin, any credit,” he said. “The larders are empty and the tank is dry. We’ve no work on the horizon and no way to get to it. Oh, and you two are wanted by the local cops,” he added sourly.

  “No fuel, we have no fuel,” Squawk said, his voice jittering. “Need parts. Need fuel. No fuel, no flying. No parts, we’re crashing. Fuel or parts? Which or both? Need both, want both. Can we have? Must have.”

  “We’re in deep shit,” Jennings muttered at last.

  “Not as deep as Wolf VI,” Lafayette reminded. “We’re not chest deep in Gaels trying to kill us.”

  “You sure about that?” Fix growled, nodding toward the gangplank leading up from the cockpit.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jennings swore, immediately standing and going for a weapon.

  “I assure you that is not necessary,” the Gael said, raising two placating hands. “I mean you no harm. In fact, I have a job for you.”

  Not lowering his weapon in the slightest, Jennings gestured the Gael into one of the empty chairs around the table. With a swishing of flowing robes, the Gael sat and affixed its black eyes on the captain and his sidearm. Fix was still eating, barely paying attention to what was going on, while Lafayette eyed the captain closely, waiting to see what move he was going to make. The Pasquatil had vanished into one of the air shafts when the Gael had first arrived. After a long moment of stony silence, Jennings holstered the pistol and sat back down.

  “I don’t work for the Gael,” Jennings said flatly. “Could’ve saved you a trip down here.”

  “Are you in a position to turn down work, Captain Jennings?” the Gael asked.

  “Why ask questions you already know the answers to?” the captain countered quickly.

  The Gael attempted to feign surprise. “Whatever do you mean?” he asked.

  “You know my name. You know my ship. No one comes offering someone a job if they don’t know who he is
. If you know who I am, then you know that my crew and I have seen some bad luck recently. A Gael such as yourself would know exactly how many cents we have in our accounts and how much fuel we have in our tanks,” Jennings explained. “A Gael never makes a move without seeing all the pieces. So, quit dancing with me. You’re not my type.”

  The Gael bowed his head slightly and the faintest trace of a smile crossed his lips. “Very well, captain. We will cease dancing, as you say. I admire your candor and I hope you will appreciate mine,” he began. “My name is Pahhal and I am a person of some import among my people. Important enough to have been given a special charge: the humans of Terran Gael Force call it Operation Aurora: the elimination of the Resistance.”

  Pahhal sensed the muscles in Jennings’ arms tighten as his hands squeezed together. “What makes you think I would have any interest in taking on the Resistance?” Jennings demanded.

  “I am well informed,” the Gael replied. “Perhaps I shall just say that I admired the way you handled the Ciarin O’Sullivan situation.”

  “That didn’t work out so well for us,” Lafayette pointed out.

  “Due to some circumstances with the humans I have working for me I am afraid,” Pahhal replied. “Corruption is a vice that extends deep into the powerful members of your race… as is avarice.”

  “You son of a..." Lafayette stood up from his chair angrily.

  “Sit down, Marquis!” Jennings snapped harshly. “Don’t be rude to our guest.” He looked back at Pahhal, who seemed entirely nonplussed by Lafayette’s outburst. “You’re saying that someone in TGF is skimming off the bounties on Resistance captures?” He looked over at Lafayette and said, “Bet you ten bucks it’s Ounimbongo.”

  Pahhal did not make any indication that he was correct, but Jennings read something in his expression all the same and smiled.