Icarus Read online

  Darus Station itself was a far cry from most orbital facilities located throughout Unified space. Before the Galactic War against the Kafarans, the station was firmly in the grasp of Unified Sector Command. It was a military complex first and a training facility second. With the end of the war and the disintegration of the Outer Sphere of Unified planets, Ohrep was now decidedly a handful of light-years outside overt Sector Command influence. As such, ownership of the station had fallen back to the Royal Mercantile Electorate, the administrative arm of the local trade guild, and the military presence on the station had all but dwindled to a single office manned by a handful of overweight security guards.

  The station itself looked more like a giant donut in space than a traditional space station. At equidistant points along the equator of the toroid were four long docking piers, each capable of handling a dozen medium-sized vessels. Perched on heavy beams above the donut hole was the administrative complex, itself capped by enormous communication towers. Below the hole, supported by twice as many beams as the administrative complex, was the elliptical habitat module, and below that was the station’s tapered ion reactor core and engineering module. At half a kilometer wide, the trading and supply ‘donut’ easily made up the bulk of the station footprint.

  With residency normally numbering just over a thousand, Darus Station had a habit of bloating to almost three times that, depending on whether the Mercantile Electorate had a conference in the system or not. Judging by the volume of ships attached to the docking piers and by the ones still waiting to connect themselves, it looked as if the Electorate was hosting a full house today. There were ships from almost every planet in the quadrant. Shawn saw freighters from Erkel, Jido, and Temkor right away. There were even sleek Lojarian bulk transports and a Hypervarion cruise liner attached to the farthest end of one of the piers.

  As Sylvia’s Delight neared the station, the ship’s transmitter burst to life. “Hypervarion Mark-IV, this is Darus Station. Do you copy?” a controlled voice asked through the speaker.

  Shawn reached for the control switch. “We copy, Darus. Our registry number is 459-Zed-Zed-Alpha-9.”

  It took only a moment for the station’s landing officer to verify the information. “Our systems have you listed as Sylvia’s Delight, Captain Shawn Kestrel in command.”

  Shawn looked over to Melissa, putting the communications on mute. “He doesn’t know I’m in Sector Command?” he asked in bewilderment. “That shouldn’t be possible. The information should’ve been automatically updated on my merchant record when I accepted this new commission.”

  “Maybe it should have, and maybe it shouldn’t have,” she offered with a none-too-innocent shrug. “Who’s to say?”

  He shook his head at her in disdain. “Looks like the Office of Special Intelligence is, if you ask me.”

  Melissa’s only reply was a wink and a devilish smile.

  “And,” he continued, “tampering with—or failing to update—an official service record is illegal.”

  Melissa rolled her eyes. “Stop being so legalistic and answer the station’s request already.”

  Baffled, Shawn turned back to the speaker. “Affirmative, Darus. We’re requesting to land.”

  “The trade conference has already begun, Captain. My board shows that all docking piers are full. If you’d like to wait until the conference has ended, we can accommodate you at that time.”

  Shawn looked to Melissa. She shook her head sharply, notifying him that the station’s suggestion wasn’t a viable option.

  Time to think fast.

  “Roger that, Darus. It’s just…well…it’s just that I have a…a problem here.”

  “We’re not detecting any problem on our sensors, Captain. Your ship is in perfect working order. Please clarify.”

  “Well, you see, we just got detained by those Unified knuckleheads, and they took half my cargo, and that included all my food. They said something about it being contraband. I mean, really, how are five pallets of Denesian cran-apples and three pallets of Hilian tree nuts considered contraband?” Shawn said with mock disgust, knowing full well that both of those items were illegal to transport within Unified space.

  There was a brief pause before the voice came back online. “Roger, Mark-IV. We see the carrier on our scanners. Are you saying you’re not with them?”

  “Them? Us? No way, pal. Not on your life! Problem is I’ve got a…I’ve got a…” He looked to Melissa, who had no help to offer at all.

  Well, you asked for it. “I’ve got a pregnant human female on board, and she’s in a really bad mood.”

  Melissa reached out and slapped him playfully on his shoulder.

  “Uh…please confirm, Mark-IV. Did you say a human female?”

  “Yeah, pal. That’s right. A pregnant one, and she’s liable to go bat-crazy if I don’t feed her soon. She may even try to eat the ship.” He stole a glance in Melissa’s direction. She was sitting, mouth agape and arms folded tightly across her chest. “I need some supplies fast, or you’re going to have an intergalactic incident on your hands.” Shawn knew it was against Trade Consortium regulations to turn away a ship in distress. He only hoped he had played his last-minute card well enough.

  “Stand by,” the male voice called out.

  She punched the mute button on the channel. “What on Third Earth are you doing, mister?”

  “Trying to land. And I could use a little help doing it, you know.”

  “I should say so! Telling him I’m pregnant…and in a bad mood! You know how much I hate that.”

  The intercom came alive again, stopping their conversation succinctly. “Permission to land in bay six authorized. Lock on your navigational computer and proceed at half-power.”

  “Roger. Mark-IV out.” Shawn flipped the channel closed and shot Melissa a sideways glance. “You were saying something?”

  “And just how am I supposed to pass off being pregnant? I’m not exactly bulging at the seams here, Commander.”

  Shawn took her comment as an invitation to examine her body. He smiled, admiring the fact that she didn’t seem to be bulging from any of the wrong places. “Well, you’ll have to think of something, and do it quick. Then again, isn’t that what you OSI are supposed to be best at?”

  “We’re trained to avoid trouble, Commander,” she snapped, her arms folded tightly across her chest once again. “You, on the other hand, seem to have an internal compass that points squarely at it.”

  Chapter 5

  Once Sylvia’s Delight was secured in bay six, Shawn and Melissa—with Trent close on their heels—exited and quickly scanned their surroundings. The makeshift landing bay was little more than a modified cargo hold, probably the last available space on the station. The small hangar door that the Mark-IV had come through, itself barely large enough to accommodate D, served as the entire back wall to the compartment. The three remaining bulkheads had stacks of multicolored, multifaceted crates piled high against them and extending all the way to the overhead some thirty feet above. Some of the containers had apparently been moved aside, neither stacked nor organized into any discernible pattern, to uncover a door that would hopefully lead the team into the innards of Darus Station.

  Shawn disliked having his ship so close to the core of the trading depot, preferring the solitude and relative safety of the outer docking piers. If he had to make a quick escape, this would be one of the hardest places from which to do it. Be that as it may, he begrudgingly chalked the situation up as he had so many others in the past few days, hoping he wouldn’t live to regret it.

  “Comfy place you got us here, Skipper,” Trent offered jovially as he strode down the cargo ramp and then stumbled as his foot caught on a bundle of cables on the bay floor. “They really pulled out all the stops to clean this place up for us.”

  “Relax, your highness. It’s probably the best they could muster on short notice. And besides, it’s only temporary,” Shawn offered, before he shot a glance at Melissa. “Isn’t tha
t right, Miss Graves?”

  “It is, as long as I can get the information I need quickly.”

  “Then let’s not waste any time,” he said. He then turned to Trent. “I need you to stay with the ship and keep an eye on her. The station is expecting us to make a request for supplies, so make sure to get some sent down here. They’re also expecting a pregnant woman to be on board.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Trent interrupted. “I’m not exactly expecting here, you know.” He waved an exaggerated hand over his flat stomach.

  “Then put on a wig and shove a pillow under your shirt.”

  “Very funny,” Trent said mockingly.

  “Who said I was joking?” Shawn added in all seriousness.

  “Okay, let’s be reasonable. There’s no way—”

  “No one is allowed on the ship. Period. If station security shows up, give me a call on my transmitter.” Shawn held up the small voice communicator. “And keep a sharp eye on anyone who enters this bay. I don’t trust this place.”

  “You don’t trust any place, Commander,” Melissa inserted as she slipped her hands into her pockets.

  “Exactly. That’s why we’re still alive.”

  The overhead vents came on, blanketing the trio in a cloud of coldness. “It’s freezing in here,” Melissa said as her teeth began to chatter. “Can we please get on with my mission?”

  Shawn turned to Trent, as if to give him one more last-minute instruction. Trent held up a hand to stop him from saying anything further. “Really, it’s okay, Skipper. I’ve got it handled. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Shawn looked at him questioningly, then reached over and quickly pulled the illegal blaster out of Melissa’s holster and handed it to Trent.

  “Hey,” she began heatedly. “I might have needed that.”

  “You’re more likely to hurt yourself than anyone else with this thing. The only thing about this weapon you can rely on is that fact that it’ll likely blow up in your hand versus dispatching your target. That’s why they’re illegal.” He then turned and handed the weapon to Trent.

  “Oh, gee. Thanks, Skipper. Give me the defective weapon, why don’t you?”

  “Now I have less to be concerned about. Every time someone says I’ve got nothing to worry about, something that worries me tends to come knocking at my door.”

  *

  After traveling down a long, lonely corridor from the hangar bay, Melissa and Shawn finally arrived at what could be considered the actual insides of Darus Station. To say that the sheer size of the complex was overwhelming would’ve been an understatement to any creature who stood less than fifteen feet tall—which, coincidently, was nearly ninety percent of the known species.

  The inner portion of the station’s toroid body was largely hollow. There were a total of sixteen levels, with a handful of those spanning the entire diameter of the station. One of these decks, known as The Atrium Level, was the central most deck in the station. It consisted of two kilometers of shops, bars, restaurants, gambling halls, and entertainment centers designed to quench virtually any thirst in Beta Sector. The upper-class establishments held control of the outer edge of the ring, with their windows facing out into the openness of space. The less-affluent shops—if they were fortunate to have a view port at all—looked out to the opposite side of the station.

  The largest establishment on the Atrium, the hotel-casino Marzzan, took up nearly three city blocks of space. Its gleaming silver and white exterior was bejeweled with neon lights in every conceivable shape and color. The crest of the casino, a twenty-foot-tall stylized ‘M,’ sat at the apex of the building that stood four decks high at its pinnacle. So tall was the building, in fact, that it had to follow the inward curvature of the station’s gently sloping walls. The central façade was laden with windows that passersby could gaze in and watch as tourists and residents won and lost fortunes at the tip of a hat on the main gambling floor.

  Shawn and Melissa had emerged not thirty feet from the Marzzan’s main lobby entrance, and Melissa took the opportunity to survey some of the patrons of the establishment before moving on.

  There appeared to be creatures from every corner of the known galaxy here, the colors and textures of their skin as varied as the spectrum of colors discernable to the human eye. Some had hair, others had feathers, and some were simply covered in scales. Still others wore spacesuits of a dozen different designs, each fully capable of sustaining the life forms inside while their owners immersed themselves in whatever pleasure they desired. There were no less than twenty beings entering or exiting the casino at any one time through a series of force-field-controlled revolving doors, and Melissa suspected that even more were changing places in the escalators and maglifts inside the structure.

  “The house always wins,” Shawn said as he observed Melissa’s captivation by the casino’s dazzling array of external lights.

  She shook herself, as if waking from a daydream. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  Shawn pointed to the strobe lights without looking at them. “Don’t stare at them for too long. They’re programmed to read the retinal patterns of whoever is looking at them. They change their flash arrangements accordingly, and try to convince your brain that going in would be a pleasurable experience.”

  “I thought…mind manipulation was illegal,” she stammered, fighting the urge to look at the lights once more.

  “The control is subtle, so the casino skirts the line of right and wrong,” he said, then added with a smile, “Besides, station security is in on the take.”

  “And you know this how, Mister Kestrel?”

  Shawn shrugged. “Take a look for yourself, Agent Graves.” He motioned to the entrance of the casino.

  Melissa turned slowly and saw two station security officers, fully uniformed with the exception of their hats—those accoutrements adorning the heads of two women the men were escorting into the establishment.

  Melissa’s eyes flickered from the officers to the women, then to the flashing lights again. The pattern appeared to change, and suddenly she began to have an overwhelming desire to move closer to them. She wanted to touch them, to be a part of them. It took a considerable amount of fortitude to tear her gaze away and look back to Shawn. “Are they all like this here?”

  “The security officers or the lights?”

  She began to rub her temples as she felt a small headache rise from the depths of her brain. “Both.”

  “As far as the officials go, I’d say it’d be a safe bet to say yes.” He put a gentle hand behind her back and guided her away from the entrance of the casino into an inconspicuous hallway. “But when it comes to the retinal lights, there aren’t that many here on the station.” Shawn looked around cautiously, hoping his movements hadn’t caused unwarranted suspicion. “Marzzan seems to have a monopoly on that sort of thing around here.”

  As a small crowd of gawking and laughing young woman strolled by, Melissa leaned her head back against a smooth wall and let out a slow sigh, her eyes held loosely shut.

  Shawn reached into his pocket and withdrew a palm-sized device. He switched it on, then waved it across Melissa’s forehead several times before pocking the device once more. “Feeling better?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said, her voice sounding disturbingly distant. She had one hand on Shawn’s shoulder to steady herself, the other rubbing her forehead slowly. “What is that thing?”

  “Zero-point dermoscope.”

  “Very thoughtful of you to carry one around for emergencies.” Her voice was sounding better each moment.

  “I tend to use it immediately after I’ve had conversations with stubborn OSI agents.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “The effects of the lights will wear off in a few seconds.”

  “It’s…it’s like a drug.”

  “If you think you got it bad just from looking at them from the outside, try stepping into the casino and see how bad it gets.”

  “You’ve been in
there before?” She jerked her head in the direction of the casino, then instantly regretted the maneuver as the pounding headache returned in spades.

  Shawn shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve lost more than my share, if that’s what you’re heading toward.”

  “Well, we’re not here to gamble. I hope you aren’t disappointed.” She rubbed her temples one final time, then straightened her hair and regained her composure.

  “Not at all,” he offered with a smirk. “I gave that up a long time ago.”

  Melissa craned her head around. “We need to get to deck two. How do we do that from here? And please, don’t say we have to navigate the innards of that monstrosity,” she nodded her head in the general direction of the casino.

  “No, but the lift isn’t far from the casino’s main entrance.”

  “There’s a surprise,” she replied sarcastically.

  “You know, I had no idea you were so susceptible to visual manipulation.”

  “I have a pretty bad headache, Commander. Now is not the time to start picking at my flaws.”

  Shawn watched as she straightened her hair. “It’s just interesting, that’s all.”

  “That I have flaws?”

  “Well, that you can admit that you have them at all. It’s…” Attractive? Alluring? Charming? “It’s nice.”