Interlude D

  Vilden Smath shivered as the bitterly cold wind cut through his shipsuit as if it didn’t exist as he watched the silent, demoralised crew put straps around the shuttle in preparation for hauling it up into the airship. He waited until the medics brought the rescued pilot’s stretcher to him on the lift.

  The pilot was conscious, if a little wide-eyed from shock and woozy from the drugs the medics had given him. His helmet had been removed for treatment and ice was already forming in his hair and eyebrows.

  “I’m sorry Sir… I failed,” the pilot rasped. Vilden nodded. The pilot's failure was glaringly obvious.

  “At least you managed to save the shuttle,” he replied. Missing assets could be overlooked if the mission was successful, but when a mission failed badly as this one had, every miserable penny was going to have to be accounted for.

  “What’s left of it,” they both looked at the craft and the gaping hole in the front nacelle revealing a frozen mess of escaped coolant.

  “What the hell did they hit you with?” Vilden asked.

  “No fucking idea, I’ve flown over a hundred missions on seven planets and I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was like a giant hand grabbed the shuttle and shook it.”

  “It was a deliberate delaying tactic. They knew we wouldn’t leave a crew member behind,” Vilden said, deciding not to mention that he would have quite happily left the entire crew to freeze to death on the Ice Plains if he’d had a chance of capturing either one of his targets. Now this was no longer an option he’d strongly suggested to the Captain that he might want to shut down and reset the airship’s systems while they rescued the shuttle. He hoped that would sort out all the problems that had plagued the vessel since Inkloo and this unscheduled stop might actually work in their favour.

  “Thank you sir,” the pilot said, starting to shiver. Vilden nodded as his com chirped.

  “Power is back up Sir. The reset worked! All systems are restored and appear to be running normally,” the Chief Engineer told him.

  “Excellent,” Vilden gave a small smile as he watched as the straps tightened around the shuttle and it lifted into the air, spinning around to reveal the rear of the craft and the letters ‘BH’ scored deeply into its loading door. He shook his head and was about to say something to the pilot when his ear com chirped again. This time it was the Captain.

  “Sir, we have incoming… It's the Jeckon Defence Force. They are telling us to hove to and power down. What do we do?” He asked, a note of panic in his voice. Vilden sighed, his mind flicking through every possible scenario. None of them were going to end well.

  “Get that shuttle on board before they arrive, then power down… Oh and tell them we have a crew member in urgent need of medical care,” he turned to the pilot and gave him a rueful smile. “The JDF has decided to take an interest.”

  “Does that mean I’m going to be thrown to the wolves?”

  “You and your Captain. But look on the bright side, at least you’ll get better medical attention than you would here.”

  Less than a minute later two JDF offensive sub orbital shuttle craft appeared, looped around the airship, the shattered shuttle craft still dangling from its cable like a guilty dingleberry.

  Vilden sighed and shook his head in despair. Any hopes that the airspace violation would be classed as a minor misunderstanding and everyone would be allowed to go on their way with nothing more than a couple of hours delay and a strongly worded complaint to the Embassy were quickly put to rest. As Vilden desperately tried different methods to send a message as his wrist-com continually flashed ‘no communications possible’, a large JDF In-Atmosphere Carrier Vessel landed and disgorged a hundred white-suited troops who quickly and professionally shut down the crash site and took possession of the Free Enterprise.

  The pilot was taken away by a couple of the white suited troops while Vilden was escorted politely but firmly into a waiting shuttlecraft, his protests ignored by the silent, anonymous troops as he was securely strapped into one of several rear facing seats in the windowless cargo bay. The silent white suited troops strapped themselves in next to him, the rear door slammed shut and Vilden let out a grunt of surprise as the G forces hit, the shuttle’s inertia dampers whining in protest as they were utterly overwhelmed by the craft’s acceleration. The flight lasted just a few short, uncomfortable minutes before landing and the rear door swung open to reveal a chilly hangar.

  Vilden didn’t have time to take in any details before the same silent troops unbuckled him and escorted him out the hangar, down an anonymous corridor and into a room where they firmly closed the door leaving him alone. He inspected his surroundings.

  The room was about four metres square and two and a half metres high, chilly, white painted, brightly lit and bare of furniture with the exception of an uncomfortable looking chair bolted to the floor. After a few minutes he sat down on the chair. After a few more minutes he noticed an annoying persistent electrical hum that he suspected was deliberate. He waited. His wrist-com had stopped functioning so he had no way of telling how much time had passed before a seamless door opened behind him, he twisted around to see a fat man in a rumpled and food stained JDF uniform entered followed by a couple of the white suited troops. One was carrying a battered canvas chair that he placed a metre in front of Vilden.

  The fat man sat down heavily in the chair, looked at Vilden and smiled.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “So, what happened to your face?” he asked.

  “I am a Special Corporate Agent working as an emissary for the Sahara Galactic Embassy and as such have diplomatic immunity. You cannot hold me like this,” Vilden replied.

  “Yes, so you told the troops who brought you here, but until the Ambassador herself confirms your identity you will be staying right here in this room with me. You have been linked to several serious crimes so you might as well answer some of my questions to pass the time and if you keep saying the same thing over and over again it will get extremely tedious for both of us, so Agent Smath, what happened to your face?”

  “You’ve only got a limited time before my identity is confirmed by the embassy. Are you really going to waste your time on this line of questioning?” Vilden replied.

  “Vilden, may I call you Vilden? Or maybe you’d prefer Villy? Anyway, Villy, it’s like this. I can’t imagine you’re going to tell me what Sahara Galactic thought was so fucking important that it was worth causing a major diplomatic incident for, and we’ve got all the answers we need to send the airship crew down for a long, long time… So that leaves us with the one question everyone who has seen your face is dying to know the answer to.”

  “No comment.”

  “You know, if you tell us, we could try and get it removed. It’s going to be bad enough, being returned in disgrace to your embassy without that scrawled all over your face.” Vilden looked up, failing to conceal the look of hope on his face. He’d tried every solvent on the airship to remove the marker and all that he’d ended up with was a headache and a sore face.

  “You can get this off?”

  “Of course. It will be easy,” the fat man said expansively.

  “It was the Nekomancer,” Vilden admitted after a pause.

  “Really? The Nekomancer? The Neko cyberwarrior who’s been a pain in the Corporations’ collective asses for the past eight years. Were they on Jeckon purely to humiliate you with a permanent marker? I am intrigued,” the fat man mocked.

  “She is a prescribed Galactic Terrorist and we received intelligence that she was using the Ice Plains as a base to distribute her Neko terrorist propaganda.”

  “And the merest suspicion that this person might be hidden on the Ice Plains was enough to get an actual Special Agent to leave their nice cosy Embassy and risk the ire of Jeckon Intelligence on their home ground? Where did this intelligence come from?”

  “Do you really think I’m going to tell you that?”

  “Not really, but we have to ask. So, what happened?”

  “The operation was an easy in and out extraction, we secured the Neckomancer with no trouble. With hindsight we should have returned to base and immediately extradited her, but we got orders to investigate an unusual crash in the outback so we were rerouted to Inkloo. Whilst there the Nekomancer managed to escape and on her way out she decided to leave me like this,” Vilden said pointing to his face.

  “However did she manage that?” the fat man asked, raising a suggestive eyebrow.

  “I don’t know. I was asleep.” Vilden replied, rather more plaintively than he meant to.

  “And I thought Special Agents never slept. So, how did this ultra-dangerous Nekomancer escape? Surely you must have kept her in a secure room under constant guard.”

  “According to the Captain who made it extremely clear, when I boarded, he was responsible for everything that happened on his airship, she was locked up, guarded and drugged with enough Anandeole to knock out half the crew. Yet, somehow, she escaped.”

  “You think she had help?”

  “Why don’t you ask the owner of the airship she escaped on.”

  “An airship that appears to have disappeared into the ether. And even if you were in pursuit of a dangerous criminal, that does not excuse your airspace violations…” the fat man started before the door behind Vilden opened. An orderly hurried over to the fat man and said something into his ear. The fat man sighed and stood up.

  “Oh dear Villy, it appears our time together is over. And here we were getting on so well. Come on, up you get.”

  “What about my face?”

  “Her Excellency is demanding your immediate attendance. Who am I to refuse a Corporate Ambassador. Anyway, it rather suits you.”

  Vilden got up and followed the two guards out the room and down a short corridor to a sparsely, but expensively furnished room. In the centre of the room stood the Ambassador flanked by four of her personal guards. Her eyes widened when she saw Vilden, then she turned her attention to the fat man.

  “General Peaks, I must protest at the treatment of my envoy,” she said, with rather more warmth than Vilden expected. Vilden went cold at the mention of the name and turned to look at the fat man who, in the short distance from the questioning room to the atrium, had found a new jacket and was now immaculately turned out. The General gave him the briefest of winks as Vilden belatedly realised the man who’d questioned him was the legendary head of Jeckon intelligence.

  “Agent Smath has not been harmed, your Excellency.”

  “What about that scrawl on his face?”

  “He was like that when we found him. He's been imparting the most fascinating tale to me as to its origin.”

  “We do not appreciate our Envoys being questioned like common criminals.”

  “Doris, I am the head of Jeckon Intelligence. I have people to question common criminals for me… like, for instance, your airship crew. Villy and I have merely been involved in the mutual exchange of information.”

  “I see. Agent Smath. Do you have anything to add to your initial report regarding the crew’s behaviour?”

  “Nothing positive, Ambassador,” Vilden said darkly.

  “Very well, we will refrain from making any complaints about your arresting an entire crew of a corporate vessel just so long as the charges aren’t too horrific, but we do expect our airship to be released as a matter of urgency. We will take your leave, General.”

  “Until we meet again, ma’am.”

  “Yes. Dinner next week, as always. Come, Agent Smath. I am sure you are dying to attend your debriefing.”

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  , , and with a less adult theme