Vendetta on Venus (Stark Raven Voyages Book 4) Read online

  Chan didn't see what Geoff used for a weapon. All he saw was a blur of motion, and Mar starting to turn. Something bounced from the man's head, he swore, and Geoff reached down, dragging the pistol from Mar's holster. Mar slashed with the knife, Geoff fell back with a cry, and Mar rose to his feet.

  Geoff, sprawling on his back on the tile floor, squeezed the trigger. The pistol was a rail gun, and it fired with a low hum that was drowned out by the greater sound of metal striking flesh.

  Mar grunted, the knife twitched as his fingers tightened, and Geoff fired again, then again. The third round came out through Mar's back, the jacket tearing away in a flap, blood splashing the wall behind him. He stood up very straight, then sank slowly down until he sprawled in a loose-limbed heap on the floor.

  For a long time Geoff lay there, the gun pointing up at the space where Mar had been. His usual suave grin was gone, his lips pulled back in a terrified rictus. Chan could see his upper and lower gums. The gun trembled in his hands, and he slowly, slowly lowered the weapon to the floor.

  There was blood on his chest, and he gasped as he rolled onto his knees. He shuffled forward, picked up Mar's knife, and slid closer to Chan. There was blood on the blade, some of it Chan's, some of it Geoff's, and the blade shook as Geoff stretched it toward the ties on Chan's wrists.

  "Maybe I should do that," Chan said. Geoff stared at him blankly, then shook himself and set the knife down. Chan picked it up, wiped the blade on his pant leg, and sawed awkwardly through the plastic tie. By the time he had his legs free, Geoff was leaning over the sink being violently sick.

  Chan took his time getting up. He hurt everywhere. Standing hurt. Breathing hurt. His head ached fiercely, and a split lip stung him every time he moved his mouth. He staggered over to the sink and stood beside Geoff. "You're cut," Chan said.

  Geoff ran the tap, rinsing vomit down the drain, then filled his cupped hands and rinsed his mouth. At last he straightened and said, "Out."

  "What?" Chan stared at him stupidly.

  "Get out." Geoff's voice was a hoarse rasp. "Now. Before Kenny comes back. Or I'll have to kill him too." A shudder shook his body. "Oh, Christ." His face spasmed, then relaxed. "Get the hell out of here," he said, his voice a bit calmer. "For Christ's sake get your ass out of the house. Kenny is coming back, and he was always the scary one." He gestured at the corpse on the floor. "Mar is bad enough. Was bad enough. But Kenny is worse."

  Chan stared at him, then looked at his own reflection distorted in the sink's chrome taps. Blood coated his face. He turned the taps on high and scrubbed his face and hands. When the water in the drain was mostly running clear he straightened and used his sleeve to wipe his face. He looked at Geoff. "What about you?"

  Geoff had his shirt open, revealing a gash that started at his left nipple and ran down across his stomach. Blood coated his lower body. He pulled a towel from a shelf above the sink and pressed it to the wound. "I'll say you did it." He gestured at the floor, where the gun lay beside the knife. "You cut me and shot him and ran." He looked Chan in the eye. "Now, for God's sake, get out of here."

  The iridium flashed through Chan's mind, but he could barely walk, never mind carry anything. He nodded and started for the doorway. Then a horrible suspicion seized him and he froze, turned.

  Mar lay sprawled on his stomach, his head up against the wall, his neck bent at a sharp angle. There was a hole in his back, and a bit of bone showed in the wound. Chan looked at Geoff, holding a blood-soaked towel to his chest, the pressure making one end of the cut yawn open like a horrible pink mouth. Chan could see raw flesh, and the pallor of Geoff's face wasn't something you could fake. No, it wasn't some convoluted scam. It was real.

  Chan nodded and hurried away.

  Chapter 4

  Liz was in a shop that sold ship parts, searching for inspiration, when they came for her. She heard the heavy tread of boots behind her and turned, her heart sinking, knowing what she would see.

  There were two of them, a man and a woman in the uniforms of station security, the armored jackets and helmets making them sinister and anonymous. The man grinned as he came toward her, flexing his fingers as if he hoped she'd resist. The woman hung back, her hand on a stun baton.

  "Elizabeth Jones?" the man said, reaching for Liz's wrist. "You're under arrest for fraud and theft."

  Liz sighed and held out her arm, not resisting. He caught her wrist, yanked her toward him, and twisted. She yelped as he spun her around and shoved her face-first into a rack of emergency hull patches.

  "Hey, take it easy. I'm not—"

  He pressed his elbow to the back of her head, pushing her face harder into the rack, and twisted her left wrist high up between her shoulder blades. She felt the touch of a metal cuff to her wrist, and he snickered.

  It was the snicker that put her over the edge. She could understand the unnecessary roughness. She wasn't exactly known for delicacy herself, after all. She could even take it as a strange sort of compliment. Maybe he thought she was dangerous. But to snicker while he did it? That was just mean.

  The long days of tension and frustration had taken their toll on Liz's limited supply of restraint. Now, with nothing left to lose, she simply gave up on suppressing the fury that had been building since her arrival on Aphrodite.

  She reached back with her right hand and caught the man by one thumb. He pulled higher on her left wrist, and it hurt, but Liz simply ignored the pain. He might dislocate her arm, but that didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was what happened to him.

  Her heel raked his shin as she twisted his thumb, and he swore. He was dishing out far more pain than he was receiving, but he lacked the deep motivation that only homicidal rage can provide. He bellowed and pulled back, trying to keep a grip on Liz's wrist. She straightened up, bent her legs, and put some real torque into her thumb-twisting. He cried out and let go of her arm, and the outcome of the fight became a foregone conclusion.

  When the red haze finally lifted from her vision, Liz found herself bent over with her hands on her knees, panting for breath. Bits of torn skin stuck out from her knuckles. Her left hand was beginning to swell.

  She straightened up. The man was buried head-first in a rack of ignition cores, only his hips and legs showing. His feet twitched, but he wasn't getting up. His partner sat on the floor, sprawled back against some shelves, her eyes closed, her hands wrapped around the wrong end of the stun baton. Liz watched until she was sure the woman was breathing.

  Okay. You haven't killed anyone. Things could be worse. Of course, they're still plenty bad. She shook her head, trying to clear it. There was a warrant for my arrest, even before I assaulted two cops. I suppose I haven't made things all that much worse.

  She raked her fingers through her hair. "Okay," she said aloud. "First order of business, get off Aphrodite." She'd been looking at thermic lances before the arrest attempt. They would cut through the security clamps on the Raven, but not quickly enough. And there was nothing that would cut any faster. So … How could she fly the Raven without removing the clamps?

  The store owner, a chubby brown man with thinning hair, stood at the far end of the corridor, staring down at the fallen security officers. "Hey," she said, and he looked up. She gestured at a rack beside her. "How big do these emergency hull patches come?"

  He gaped at her, then shook his head. "One meter radius."

  "I guess I'm going to need a lot of them," she said. She scanned the rack.

  "In that case," he said, "you should consider the shelter rolls. Aisle three."

  She moved over to the next aisle, and he met her in the middle. "It's basically the same stuff as the hull patches," he said. "Flexible sheets of high-tensile plastic that you can glue to anything. Only it comes in big rolls instead of little pieces. It's designed for stretching around a frame to make an airtight chamber, but you could use it to cover any kind of hull damage." He gave her a thoughtful look. "Or a hatch that's been clamped open. Just use plenty of glue."

>   Liz considered it, then grabbed a couple of big rolls. "Sounds like just what I need. Thanks."

  He nodded. "I'll grab you a couple of tubes of Stick-All." He paused. "Er, no offence, but I'll need you to pay cash."

  She worked with feverish haste, knowing that station security would be converging on the ship before long. She would have preferred caution, testing every patch before continuing, but there just wasn't time. So she unrolled huge swathes of plastic, slathered them with glue, and shoved them into place, then covered the edges with more plastic. Getting it all off was going to be a nightmare job, but that was a worry for another day.

  The ventral hatch was fairly straightforward. It was nothing more than a round hole in the top of the hull, easily covered over. It looked terrible when she was done, with plastic coating the clamp and poking up in untidy ridges and cones, but it was airtight.

  The aft airlock was something else. There was a hull plate that extended down to become a ramp, and the security clamp was attached to the frame of the hatch, keeping the ramp from swinging back up. She was thinking about disconnecting the electronics and hydraulics to keep the ramp from automatically descending, then propping the ramp up with blocks to minimize the gap, when she reached up and smacked herself on the forehead. "Moron," she said, and boarded the ship.

  Another clamp kept the inner hatch of the lock from closing. It was a much smaller opening, and it solved the problem of how she was going to get back on board once the hatch was sealed. She stood in the corridor of the Raven and covered over the hatch opening from inside. She used most of the glue and all of the plastic, and the end result was a dimpled, wrinkled mess. But she thought it was likely to be airtight.

  By the time she reached the bridge, security officers in riot gear were pouring into the landing bay. One man pointed at her through the bridge windows, and she flipped him off, then started the engines.

  The Raven didn't want to rise with two hatches open. Liz spent a frustrating thirty seconds overriding the ship's safety features, hoping none of the officers outside thought of cutting a hole in the patches.

  Alarms and warning messages echoed through the bridge, from port control and from the cops outside. Liz muted everything, then lifted the ship a couple of meters from the deck and brought the nose around. She could just see the tops of the helmets on the security officers as they scrambled out of the way. Some sort of energy beam hit the front window, which set off another alarm inside the ship. Liz silenced that one, too.

  After that she needed all her concentration for flying. Aphrodite was a high-end station with landing bays that were open to space, protected by force fields. The energy cost was phenomenal, but it was certainly convenient. Liz sent the Raven floating down the length of the bay toward the beckoning rectangle of darkness that marked the exit.

  She nearly hit a blocky freighter coming in. The proximity alarm went off, and she was too busy to silence it, bringing the ship down hard enough that it banged against deck plates and rattled her in the pilot's chair. The freighter slewed upward and scraped along the ceiling, showering the Raven with sparks.

  The first few seconds after a ship came in had to be the safest time to exit, Liz reasoned. The next inbound ship had to be at least a few meters behind. She slammed the throttle open and the ship surged forward, through the force field, and into space.

  Lights flashed all over her console, urgent messages from the station that she was violating flight control rules and risking a collision or worse. She ignored it all, saving her attention for the bulk of a huge water hauler bearing down on her at high speed. The hauler was much too big to change direction, so Liz slammed the attitude controls to the side and brought the Raven whipping around in a tight turn. She followed the edge of the station, one wingtip almost scraping the station's shiny steel skin, and barely avoided a little flitter that popped up out of nowhere. There were landing bays on every side, with ships still coming out, and she cursed as she searched for a clear path.

  The flitter was moving away from the station, and she followed it. It had to have a clear path arranged for it, after all. She came up close enough behind the little craft that the proximity alarm sounded again. Other traffic became thinner with every meter she put between the Raven and Aphrodite. When there was nothing beyond the flitter but open space she overtook the little ship and accelerated hard.

  The flitter, and all the other chaotic traffic moving in and out of the station, seemed to be enough to thwart the tractor beams on the station. Either that or she'd been too fast for them to react. Or they were happy to have her gone. Whatever the reason, she was able to fly away unimpeded. A quick scan showed no sign of pursuing ships.

  Liz pointed the Raven at the outer planets and flew in a straight line until Aphrodite Station was a blip behind her, barely visible on radar. Then she turned the ship toward Venus.

  Chan floated.

  Lovely pink clouds surrounded him on all sides, and he flew among them. At first he drifted, but he discovered that by leaning forward and back he could make himself dip and dive and soar. He raced around a towering pinnacle of cumulus fluff, going faster and faster, until the wind of his passage made the cloud twirl and twist like a serving of soft ice cream. He giggled at the image.

  "It sounds like he's had enough."

  The voice jarred him from his dream, and he frowned, feeling a distant, unimportant pain as his lips moved. There was more pain out there, he sensed. He could remember quite a lot of it, and the residue was still with him, cushioned by those wonderful pink clouds.

  His frown deepened, and he focussed on the pain, the only thing that seemed real in the dream around him. Slowly, reluctantly, he moved toward that beacon of discomfort. He could feel more and more of his body, from a low throb coming from a bashed elbow to a solid column of rigid muscle where he used to have a nice flexible torso. His awareness grew until he could sense the location of his eyelids. He opened them.

  A room spun slowly above him, not entirely free of pink clouds but looking mostly real. Someone groaned, and he opened his mouth to ask what the problem was. That made the groan louder. He tried pressing his lips shut, and the groan faded to near silence.

  "Captain? Can you hear me?"

  The voice sounded like Joss, but the face above him was too blurry to recognize. He tried to ask if it was her, but when he opened his mouth some fool started groaning again.

  Cool fingers touched his lips. "Shhh. Lie still. You're all right. We've given you some morphine. It's possible we might have given you just a tiny bit too much. You should probably just ride it out."

  He meant to keep his eyes open, but the clouds were coming back, and flying put so much wind in his eyes that he just had to blink. After that he lost track of whether his eyes were open or shut. Finally he abandoned the whole debate and gave himself over to soaring through the clouds.

  The pain was back when his eyes opened again. He managed to turn his head without any more moaning, and lifted his head a few centimeters from the pillow beneath him. He was in a small, dimly-lit bedroom, surrounded by pale lavender walls. He had a quilt tucked up under his chin, and he saw a glass of water on a low table beside the bed.

  Getting the quilt off took some time. He wore pants, he saw, and nothing else. His chest looked blotchy, but he couldn’t make out the details in the poor light. He explored his chest with his fingers and discovered that he had some sore spots.

  Moving his legs to the edge of the bed was not easy, but he managed it. Getting his feet on the floor was easier than he expected, and it gave him the confidence to tackle sitting up. Every muscle in his torso seemed to be in spasm, and there was tightness in his legs and neck as well. Bending at the waist pulled on muscles in the back of one heel. He was a mess, but moving seemed to help. By the time he finished sitting up, sweating from pain and exertion, things were starting to loosen up.

  He was sitting there, leaning his elbows on his knees while he waited for a bit of dizziness to pass, when the door
opened and Rhett came in. The robot stood in front of him and said, "May I offer you a hand?"

  Chan clasped the robot's sturdy metal fingers and hauled himself up. By the time he was on his feet the room was getting crowded. Joss was there, looking worried, clearly restraining herself from clutching his arm. Another woman was with him, and Chan stirred through his splintered memory, trying to recall her name.

  "Lisa?" he said.

  "We're in her apartment," Joss told him. "She was just outside the gate of Stratos when we came out. You didn't look so good, and she lives nearby. So we brought you here."

  Chan let go of Rhett, felt the room spin, and grabbed on again. After a moment he let go once more. This time he was able to stand unaided. "How long has it been?"

  "Thirty-six hours," Joss said. "You're probably still a bit doped up. You'll be in some pain later."

  I'm in some pain now, he thought, but in truth it wasn't so bad. The tight muscles were the worst of it. Although moving around was the last thing he wanted to do, he told himself he'd take a walk.

  "You're dehydrated," Joss added. "Rhett, hand him that glass of water."

  Chan started to argue, then realized that he couldn’t wait for the robot to get the glass into his hand. He drained it in one long swallow, and said "Thanks."

  "They have a pretty good city police force here," Joss said. "We've been wanting to call them. We were waiting for you to wake up first."

  "No police," Chan said. "There's a small matter of a dead body that I don't want to get dragged into."

  Lisa went white. "Is Gary dead?"

  "No." Chan shook his head, saddened by her reaction. "Gary, Geoff, whatever his name is, is fine. Well, he was leaking when I left him. But alive." He paced back and forth in front of the bed, working the stiffness out of his muscles, as he told them the story of his encounter in Stratos. Joss went very still, her face cold and rigid as he spoke. Lisa listened with a sparkle in her eyes as he described Geoff's heroics, then put a hand to her mouth when he mentioned the knife slash. She was staring at the floor, a troubled frown on her face, by the time he finished.