Shadow Captain (Star Master Book 1) Page 2

  "Escaping from a Loyalist privateer only to be burned up in the atmosphere doesn't strike me as the best idea you've ever had, my lady," he said.

  "Stop complaining," Lanati told him. "We are at far more risk of crashing into the planet than we are of burning up in the atmosphere."

  "Oh, that's reassuring," Menevis muttered under his breath.

  Lanati ignored him. Instead, she frantically worked the thrusters, trying to reorient the pod so that its tail rather than its nose was pointed towards the ground. She overdid it, and sent it into a backward spin, but a little pressure on the thrusters in the opposite direction managed to stop the spin and stabilize it at the angle she wanted. The trouble was that she had now burned off the fuel asymmetrically. Each thruster had its own fuel reserve. She could only soften their landing by firing all four thrusters simultaneously, and she could only do that as long as all four thrusters still had fuel. Trying to burn the remaining three after the partially empty one had failed would only end badly.

  With the ground rushing towards her, she slammed all four of the thrusters together, trying to slow her landing. She didn't ease off the other three thrusters quite fast enough when the partially empty one failed. The pod tipped sideways as it crashed into the ground, and she knocked her head against the side panel of the pod. The world went black around her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the bridge of the captured Swan, Essem paced impatiently back and forth.

  "Sir, the ship's computer has no information about the mission, beyond the flight plan that brought it to Dahar," the technician told him. "It's not even clear where they planned to go from here."

  Essem nodded curtly.

  "I wasn't expecting you to find much," he said. "I'm guessing Lady Lanati was briefed verbally, by her associates, and I would be surprised if she even shared the details with her staff."

  "There you are," said a petulant voice and Essem turned to see his first officer glaring up at him.

  Prasati was a petite, attractive woman, or at least Essem had found her attractive back when they were both first assigned to the privateer frigate Sickle. She had seemed to find him appealing as well, and they had been involved briefly before he realized that she wanted his job a lot more than she wanted him. He always wondered how he had failed to notice the look of smug entitlement in her hazel eyes when she first came aboard. Her family was a co-owner of the frigate, and had assigned her to look after their interests aboard ship. She seemed to think she should have been given command of the ship outright.

  "Your place is aboard the Sickle," he told her firmly. "It's not appropriate for both the executive officer and the captain to be off the ship at the same time."

  Prasati ignored him, and turned to the tall figure behind her, the one in gleaming red armor Essem had been trying not to look at, and said: "Do you see how he treats me, Deshraat?"

  "Shipboard discipline does not concern me, Commander Prasati." The deep voice issued from a speaker in the chestplate of the tall figure's armor. "All I want to know is who is responsible for the failure to secure the escape pods."

  Essem glared at Prasati. Every time Deshraat had a grievance, she aimed the powerful Red Knight at Essem, knowing Essem could not afford to offend him. Deshraat had come to them with this job on behalf of the High Council, and he was the one paying Essem's salary at the moment.

  "The defenders of the Swan are mostly to blame for that, if you want to talk about blame," Essem said. "They fought us for every inch of this ship, and we did not manage to get a squad down to the pods in time to head off Lady Lanati."

  "In other words, we didn't have enough troopers to secure this ship," Deshraat said.

  Prasati shot Essem a smug look, as if she had been the one to win an argument with him. He ignored her and said to Deshraat: "You were present for the discussion between myself and my first officer, when we agreed to leave half our boarding troops on the Sickle. There was a risk that the Swan's defenders would try to hijack our ship, and we hoped to guard against that risk."

  Holding back half the boarding troops had been Prasati's idea. She was paranoid at the idea of not having enough people around her, apparently convinced that Essem would have her assassinated at any minute.

  Her fears were misplaced: the entire reason why Essem commanded a lowly frigate for a privateer syndicate, instead of joining the Star Navy, was because he didn't play games like that. His father Admiral Khopesh had been recruited into the newly formed Star Navy, after a legendary career in the local system defense force, and had managed to dodge most of the Star Navy's internal politics. Essem knew that he himself would not be so lucky, so he had ended up on the Sickle instead.

  "I wish you'd just let me blow them up," Prasati complained.

  "No," Deshraat insisted. "My orders are to take Lady Lanati alive for interrogation. We must learn what her mission is, and seek out and arrest all the contacts she was supposed to meet. I don't know what the Partisans want so badly, that they would send a deputy-nomarch like Lanati to acquire it, but the High Council must have it. They will have it."

  This mission would be a lot simpler if we could do what Prasati wants, Essem thought, but Deshraat was their employer for this job, and they had to do what he said. If it helped keep the Partisans from starting a civil war, it would be worth the trouble it caused.

  "What are you thinking, Essem?" Deshraat asked, in that deep, inhuman voice of his.

  Essem always found it disconcerting when Deshraat said things like that. Essem forced himself to look at the blank red faceplate of the Red Knight's armor, as if there was an actual face there. He kept his face deadpan, more for the sake of his dignity than any idea that he was keeping secrets from the armored psychic.

  "It had occurred to me that there might be value in letting Lady Lanati run on her own for a while," he said. "She might lead us to her next contact."

  "Wouldn't it be so much quicker just to capture her and question her?" Prasati asked. "After all, Deshraat here can get information out of any one in the wink of an eye."

  Essem suppressed a shudder. He had seemed Deshraat do that at least once, and he had not enjoyed the experience.

  As usual, Deshraat ignored Prasati's flattery. It was the only redeeming trait he seemed to have, from what Essem had seen.

  "Essem is correct," Deshraat said. "Lady Lanati is a powerful psychic. She has almost certainly been trained to resist interrogation, no matter how unpleasant it becomes. And there is always the risk that when she is captured, her contacts will make other arrangements."

  "Yes," Essem said. "They might go into hiding, and we'd have the very blazes of a time trying to catch them."

  "But if we stay one step behind her, her contacts will fall into our hands easily." Deshraat said. The mechanized voice sounded almost pleased.

  "It's a risky plan but I'm open to it if you are, Sir Knight."

  "So be it," Deshraat said. "We will wait in orbit, and see what bolt-hole she comes out of next."

  The throbbing pain in her head jolted Lanati awake. She lifted her head and looked around. The stuttering lights in the crashed pod only made her head throb worse. She tapped her headset, and got a double beep, indicating that there was no local network service but that the headset was still functional and could transmit on unsecured radio waves.

  "Menevis? Annut?" She asked. "Is everyone alright?"

  The jhamool made a grumbling hoot deep in his throat, seemingly unharmed. His dense fur had probably protected him from bruising, and Menevis had secured the beast's harness well, better than he had his own. Menevis had been knocked unconscious in the impact, the same as Lanati had.

  By the time Lanati had unfastened her harness, Menevis was already stirring.

  He groaned, and held his hand to his head. "Now what have you done, my lady?" He asked.

  "Cheer up, Menevis," Lanati said. "We're still alive and we're still free. For the moment."

  "My lady is always so reassuring," Menevis grumbled.

  Only her upbringing kept Lanati from rolling her eyes. She didn't want anything bad to happen to Menevis. After all, his mother was a cousin of Lanati's father, and Lanati addressed her as "aunt" whenever she met her. She really didn't wish any harm on Annut either. But if she was going to be stranded in the middle of nowhere on a frontier planet with the Loyalists baying at her heels, there were several members of her protection detail she would rather have with her than Menevis. In spite of being two years old than her, he was inexperienced, unimaginative, and a chronic complainer, although she had to admit that he had a better excuse for the complaining right now than he usually did.

  "Now what do we do?" Menevis asked, as he staggered to his feet and freed Annut from its harness.

  Lanati squinted at the flickering display in front of her. "If I'm reading this correctly, there is a small town and trading center about ten miles south of us. It also has a decent-sized spaceport. No major security measures. It's the kind of place where a couple of drifters and a jhamool won't get flung into jail on sight. We should be able to find passage to the capitol easily there."

  "Why go to the capitol at all?" Menevis asked. "We've got a highly professional privateer breathing down our necks, ready to snatch us up and deliver us over to the High Council. That privateer has Star Navy connections if I had to guess. His frigate has stealth engines and managed to spoof our sensors almost flawlessly. We didn't see it until it was practically on top of us."

  "You're probably right," Lanati said. "But my mission on this planet is to meet was someone at the capital."

  "What makes you think they'd be willing to meet with you after this mess?" Menevis asked.

  Because my contact is with the embassy for Hedjet, my birth planet. I outrank him, she thought. Aloud, she said:
"Let's just say that I have my reasons for believing that he'll still want to meet."

  "And how exactly are you proposing that we get to the spaceport?" Menevis asked.

  Lanati glanced at his stiff, knee-high uniform boots, and grimaced with sympathy. Menevis' footwear looked like they would chafe. The lightweight moccasins she wore were at least comfortable although she didn't think they'd hold up to a trip across the prairie that well.

  "You're not going to like this part," she said. "We're going to have to walk."

  "At night?" Menevis asked indignantly.

  "It wouldn't be my first choice either," Lanati said. "But we've got to put some distance between ourselves and this escape pod, if we don't want to end up in a nice holding cell aboard that privateer frigate."

  Lanati unhooked her spear and extended it to about waist-height. She left the spearhead retracted. She suspected she would need a walking stick before this was all over, and the spear was the only thing she had handy that might work.

  The airlock on the wrecked escape pod faced west. The inner door cycled open when she worked the controls, but the outer door groaned and slid back only a hand's width. She levered the outer door open with her staff, muttering some very unladylike words under her breath. Lanati staggered out of the pod...and found herself caught in a glare of light. She heard Menevis and Annut stumble out behind her, heard a loud curse from Menevis and a hoot from Annut.

  "Be quiet, both of you," Lanati told them. Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the blaze of light, and she could see a herd of broad, hairy beasts chewing placidly on the other side of the light source. The animals were red-roan in color, standing taller than Menevis at the shoulder. Their wide heads were topped with bony crests that rose from the back of their skulls, crowned with sharp horns. She realized that she was looking at a herd of Dahar's most successful product: the crowncattle, famous throughout settled space for the quality of their meat. If neutered, the beasts could even be broken to bridle and saddle, although the riding animals didn't make particularly good steaks.

  The animal closest to her had a trio of painfully bright spotlights strapped to its crest, and Lanati could dimly make out a human shape on its back, holding a rifle.

  The dim figure spoke. "You're from the losing side of that space battle, aren't you?"

  "That is none of your concern," Menevis snapped.

  "Menevis, stop being rude. That's an order," Lanati snapped back at him. She addressed herself to the man on the crownsteer. "Sir, I apologize for the manners of my colleague. We mean you no harm. We just want to leave your land as quickly as possible."

  "It isn't my land," the stranger said. "It's open range. At least for now. Maybe not for much longer, with the High Council pressuring the frontier worlds to get civilized and fence everything in so they can tax it easier. They keep saying they want the money to build up that new Star Navy of theirs. Why do we need that? Every planet I ever heard of already pays taxes to their local government to keep the system patrol ships flying. I think it's some kind of power grab by the High Council."

  "I see," Lanati said. It looked like this man didn't hold her enemies in high regard.

  "The amateur broadcasters here on Dahar have been chattering about the space battle for hours," the stranger told her. "They say the frigate is a privateer called the Sickle, with letters of marque from the High Council itself. They say the Council sent a privateer instead of the Star Navy because the Star Navy thought chasing down a diplomatic transport was beneath them."

  "What else do the broadcasters say?" Lanati asked cautiously.

  "They say the privateer has a Red Knight onboard, vid-calling our System Council at all hours, throwing his weight around, threatening everybody in the system with death and dismemberment if they don't help him."

  Lanati felt a chill run down her spine. Like most people, she had learned to hate the psychic White Knights, after the mindbender scandal exposed their cruel, corrupt behavior. The Red Knights were supposedly a reformed, superior replacement for them. Unlike most people, Lanati knew that the Red Knights were even worse than what they had replaced.

  "They say the other ship came from Hedjet, and that the people onboard are Partisans and enemies of the people." The stranger paused to spit and curse. "Enemies of the people! Enemies of the High Council, more like!"

  "If you have Partisan sympathies..." Menevis began, but the other man cut him off.

  "I don't have sympathies, not political ones. I just don't like the High Council, or their precious Red Knights. I aim to spite that Red Knight by stampeding my crowncattle over that wreckage behind you. He won't know what to make of what's left after that."

  Lanati gasped. She'd heard stories about the destructive force of a crowncattle stampede. They might not be able to do much to an intact escape pod, but a pod as badly damaged as hers would be battered apart and trampled into small pieces, without much risk to the animals themselves. The rampaging crowncattle would be protected by their hard, flat feet and dense, hairy coats.

  "You have an hour to get out of the area," the stranger told Lanati calmly. "I don't aim to harm you or your friends, but I also don't plan to wait forever for you to get out of the way."

  "Why you insolent knave!" Menevis sputtered.

  "Menevis, enough!" Lanati said. She told the stranger: "Thank you for the warning and the information. If you'll excuse us, we need to get moving."

  "Please do," the stranger told her sarcastically.

  She tapped her headset and said: "Compass function."

  "West," it answered. She turned until it said "South." Then she started to walk, setting as brisk a pace as she dared. She didn't look back, but she could hear Menevis and Annut moving through the tall grass behind her. An hour later, she judged that they had covered about two miles. She felt the ground rumble beneath her and, off in the distance, she could hear the bellowing of angry crowncattle. The rancher had done what he said he would.

  "At least the Red Knight won't be able to make much sense out of the wreckage," Menevis said with a sigh. "The knave was right about that."

  "We must keep moving," Lanati told him, and started walking again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The sun was rising by the time Lanati and Menevis staggered up to the edge of the spaceport, each with one hand on the jhamool's shoulders. Menevis was limping, but he still held himself as stiffly upright as ever, as if he were providing security for Lanati in high society back on their home planet. Lanati had discarded the tattered remains of her moccasins an hour ago, and now walked barefoot. She did not hold herself as rigidly as Menevis, but she kept her head high and did her best to hide the soreness and exhaustion.

  Annut seemed to be the only one not in pain from the long hike, although he had gotten pretty grubby on the trip towards the starport, and he was covered in burrs up to his knees. It had been a chilly night up on the high prairie, and Lanati's ceremonial robes and Menevis's uniform had just about been enough to keep them warm.

  Lanati hoped they would find a ride quickly. Both because it was their best chance of escaping from their pursuers, and completing the mission, and also because the open country would get very hot during the day. The heat would stress Annut, with his layers of heavy fur, and be uncomfortable for her and Menevis in these clothes

  "Well, you were right about one thing," Menevis said. "This is a place with no security measures and nothing to keep people from stowing away on whatever ship they wanted."

  "We're not going to stow away," Lanati said. "With Annut along, the ship's crew would catch us in no time and they would have no qualms about handing us over to the authorities. And no hijacking either," she added, just as Menevis opened his mouth.

  "How did you know I was going to suggest that?" He asked.

  She smirked. "Precognition. Plus, I know you, cousin."

  What little imagination Menevis had went into coming up with elaborate scenarios that cast himself as a brutal but effective anti-hero. Pity he didn't have the skillset to carry his fantasies off in real life.

  The first ship they approached had a captain with an honest face, but he took one look at the dirty, shaggy jhamool and said: "Those things are dangerous. I'm not letting one aboard my ship."