But the pirates never had it. That left only the salvagers as the likely thieves. Could they have activated the core and learned of the Klin’s location?
Giodol suddenly became very excited. Oplim had eventually recovered the core — and he didn’t get it from the pirates. It had to have come from the salvagers.
So who were these scavengers, these beings who could not only scare away a contingent of Fringe Pirates, but also manage to get their hands on the most valuable computer core in the galaxy?
Giodol was determined to find out.
With already having an agent in mind to track down the Counselor’s shuttle, Giodol checked his list for another agent he could trust to follow up on the Nimor lead.
One stood out from the rest. But he hesitated. This agent was undercover, a Nimorian himself, who had been feeding intelligence to the Juireans for many years. By giving him this assignment, Giodol would be instructing the being to reveal himself as an agent for the Juireans. It would destroy his value to him, not to mention his continued existence on Nimor.
Giodol would probably have to offer the agent a severance package of some sort to gain his cooperation, and something far away from his home planet. That could be arranged. If these scavengers did indeed have information regarding the location of the Klin, then the price would be well worth it.
Giodol wrote out the orders, and then sent the secure transmission to Nimor. All he had to do now was wait to see what his agent discovered…
Chapter Five
Adam sat askew in the pilot’s seat of the Cassie-1 and watched as the planet Castor grew in size until it nearly filled the entire viewport. He’d seen some glorious planets before, many looking as if they’d come straight out of the CGI computers at Industrial Light and Magic — George Lucas’ company — and destined for an IMAX screen somewhere. These were magical worlds, full of vibrant, vivid colors and inviting blue oceans.
Castor wasn’t one of them.
In fact, it was a hellish-looking place, nearly all brown and dusty, with only a thin band of green around the equator, along with three small patches of brackish ocean.
But people didn’t come to Castor for the scenery. They came for the treasures under the surface.
Castor was the mining capital of The Fringe, so rich in iron, bauxite, sulfur and other metals and minerals that for thousands of years, long before the Juireans arrived, the natives of Castor had literally scraped their planet clean to get at them. With the surface now so dry, dusty and light in oxygen, making breathing virtually impossible without a respirator and O2-assist, the natives had turned their obsession into their salvation. Their entire civilization had moved underground, now occupying the labyrinth of tunnels cut through solid rock over the centuries in search of their precious resources. Vast cities, with populations numbering in the hundreds of thousands, now thrived in these tunnels, and in the massive central chambers bore out to accommodate the every-growing population.
Indeed, Castor was growing — and prospering. There were not many commodities that The Fringe supplied to the Expansion. The mines of Castor provided about the only money-making export in the entire Sector.
And with a dense population and prosperous economy came the criminal element.
Seton Amick was one of a dozen high-level crime lords who catered to the vices of the Castorian population, and indeed, the entire Fringe. He dealt in anything illegal, from drugs to technology. And with the loose monopoly on the latter imposed by the Juireans, bootleg technology was one of Amick’s biggest profit centers.
So when an upstart from Hildoria — the late Kunnlar Bundnet — had infringed on some of Amick’s territory with the sale of wave transmitters and linking devices, Amick had sent Adam out to make a statement. That was what Adam was good at — making statements. Amick employed several other, more stealthy assassins. But when he wanted to punctuate the hit with a message, he sent Adam.
Adam hadn’t intended on leveling Bundnet’s compound; he just wanted to get in and out without much fanfare and collect his fee. But more often than not, Adam’s hits turned into massive firefights with high body counts. He had been trained as a Navy SEAL, and their entire motto called for deadly stealth, not flashy and excessive overkill. However, it always seemed to work out that way…
Maybe he was just getting lazy, Adam thought. Since being set loose in this new existence of his, Adam had yet to meet anything even approaching his equal in strength, coordination or cunning. So with such a lack of competition, he was growing complacent, and he had to admit, a little bored. Killing aliens for a living at first seemed like the perfect occupation for him. But now, he wasn’t so sure.
As always, though, he held out for the promise that his situation was only temporary, and that one day he would return to Earth and to whatever life he could salvage there. The fee for Bundnet’s killing would be sizeable, and help sustain him a little while longer, as he continued his quest for a way home.
The spaceport for the Castorian capital city of Krune was massive and exposed to the harsh elements of the surface. Even though the labyrinth system was extensive, the Castorians could not justify using up precious living space underground for the ships of the realm. So Adam placed the Cassie-1 in a clearing about two kilometers from the nearest access port and donned an uncomfortable full-face breathing respirator and oxygen supplement for the brief walk through the blowing dust.
Castor’s gravity was about standard for The Expansion, which made it about equivalent to three-quarters that of Earth’s. Adam could have jogged the distance in just a few minutes with little effort, but he decided to stretch his legs and actually enjoy the wide open spaces for a change.
Gravity was both his ally and his bane. In order to maintain his strength and muscle mass, he had to spend as little time on-planet as possible. That meant staying cooped up in his ship for the majority of the time. Any sane being would have gone stir-crazy after only a few days in such confinement, and Adam had endured this routine for going on nine months already.
Adam took an elevator down 23 levels and was deposited in the middle of a bustling metropolis with shoulder-to-shoulder beings, chaotic wheeled transports and a noisy train system that was actually the envy of The Fringe. Luckily for Adam, the respirator helped filter out most of the foul stench emanating from the crush of alien bodies. Over the months, he had grown somewhat expectant of the odor, although one could never completely ignore it. Recently, however, he had begun to wonder if the aliens felt the same about his own distinctive scent. If they did — or even felt the same about the scent of other aliens — they never let on.
He boarded a west-bound train for the half-hour journey to the section of Krune where Amick lived. It was upscale, made up of very wide caverns with paved surfaces and lined with towering trees and bushes of vibrant green, yellow and red. The artificial lighting set high in the distant ceiling added warmth to the air, and they had even incorporated a gentle summer’s breeze circulating throughout the neighborhood. Wealth had its privileges.
The taxi dropped him off at the head of Amick’s street. As Adam made his way toward the gated entrance to the residence, he knew he was under surveillance; you didn’t survive in Amick’s game as long as he had by being careless.
As he approached the gate, four burly Castorian guards suddenly appeared out of nowhere holding flash rifles and serious attitudes. Adam had been to Amick’s house numerous times in the past, but still the guards frisked him, scanned for explosives and took his precious MK-47 from him for safe keeping, placing it in a safety box near the gate.
Entering the house itself was an awe-inspiring event. The foyer was massive, carved out of solid rock that had been polished to a brilliant luster and displaying striations of dozens of bright colors. And beyond the entry was the Great Room, a fifty-meter long chamber that ended at a vast glass dome overlooking the desolate exterior landscape of Castor. Only the wealthiest Castorians could afford homes that overlooked the outside world, and Amick was among the wealthiest.
Near the dome, and peering out at the late afternoon shadows as they crept slowly across the jagged mountains in the distance, stood Seton Amick, a communicator to his ear and speaking loudly to someone on the other end. Adam approached and stood silently as two husky Castorian guards moved closer to him, just in case.
