“Did you hear me, sir?”
“Of course.”
“Any attempt to go in-system will likely get us arrested. Arrested at best, is more like it.”
“Humans.”
Rick spun, caught off guard and immediately afraid one of the many races adversarial toward Humans had followed them. Instead he found two giant flies, both holding their manipulator hands in front of their massive, multi-faceted eyes.
“Don’t kill us!” the bigger of the two Athal said.
“What do you want?” Rick demanded, not replacing his weapon. The Athal were known for having no known hint of ethics. They were most often found as traders and key members of the Wathayat Syndicate, where they wielded a disproportionate amount of power for such a relatively weak race.
“K-ka,” the one who spoke indicated the other bug, “overheard that you wanted transport off Karma. Did you escape?”
“Escape what?” Sato asked.
“Earth, or one of your colonies.”
“No, we want to go to Earth,” Sato said before Rick could stop him. He cringed inwardly and wondered what their response would be.
“This is not logical,” the one named K-ka said. “Why would you want to go to an occupied world? You are a mercenary race, and the Mercenary Guild has occupied your world.”
“Yes, we still want to go to Earth,” Sato said. “Do you have a ship?”
“We not only have a ship, but we have a contract to deliver goods to Earth.”
Sato reached into his bag and slowly drew out a 100,000 credit chit. “Interested in some extra cargo?”
Rick didn’t know the body language of the Athal. By the agitated way their feelers moved and mouth parts squirmed, he didn’t think he needed a lesson to be sure these two bugs were quite interested.
“That worked out better than I expected,” Rick admitted as they floated away from the encounter. The Athal had agreed to 200,000 for both of them and their personal gear. They’d paid the aliens 50,000 credits up front, though they’d wanted it all. They’d get another 50,000 once the pair boarded their craft, and the final 100,000 upon landfall on Earth.
“Athal are greedy,” Sato said in his occasional confident voice. It was part of the man’s demeanor Rick hadn’t yet figured out. Most of the time Sato seemed lost—a fish out of water, as it were. But occasionally he was as confident as a salty marine master sergeant on his 100th HALD. At least thus far, the confidence hadn’t been misplaced. Rick had a feeling, sooner or later, it wouldn’t work out.
“The limitation they put on our personal goods means we can’t take the smuggling module,” Rick said.
“True,” Sato agreed. “I have some tools and equipment we need, though. Better go get it now.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Rick agreed. “Now that we have these,” he held up his Yack, “it won’t be as difficult to get to the module. Even so, better let me.”
For a change, Sato didn’t complain. Instead he carefully detailed each piece of equipment Rick would need to retrieve, where it was stored, then gave him a key sequence to enter into the smuggling module’s integrated computer.
“The code will initiate a scrubbing sequence,” Sato told him. “Fifteen minutes after you enter it, the computer will burn itself out, destroying all data stored there and purging all systems, including releasing low level plasma, which will remove any biological evidence. When the port bots eventually find it and investigate, it will clearly be a smuggling module, but they’ll have no way of knowing what was inside, or who moved it there.”
“Pretty slick,” Rick noted.
“Should be; I designed it.”
They found a place for Sato to wait a short distance from the docking area. It was a tiny space with programmable life support intended as a location for aliens to be in a safe environment. For five credits, Sato had an hour in a safe place where nobody could observe him.
“You have the compact laser pistol?” Rick asked. Sato nodded and patted the holstered weapon under his uniform jacket. “Good. You won’t need it, but better safe than sorry.”
“Roger that,” Sato agreed. “See you in a few minutes.”
Rick closed the door on the isolation module, gave the area a final sweep with his sensors to be sure nobody was skulking nearby, then floated toward the cargo docks.
A bored Lumar was manning the security check station. When Rick came up, the alien held out a hand, and Rick passed him his fraudulent Yack. The Lumar stuffed it into a slate, which beeped, and he handed it back. “Next.” Rick passed into the cargo area.
He shook his head as he floated down the corridor, retracing the path from when they’d first arrived. He passed a few aliens going about their business. Some looked at him curiously; most just ignored him. There were more than a hundred roughly Human-shaped aliens in the Galactic Union. Covered by the robes he’d found lying in an alley on their first day, there was scarce evidence to suggest he was an actual Human. Of course, he did nothing to dissuade them from the idea.
As soon as he reached the warehouse where their module was stored, he immediately entered and quickly located it. <I’m at the module,> he sent to Sato via their pinplants.
<Remember, you only get two tries at the access code before everything melts down.> Then he proceeded to repeat the code several times.
<I got it, sir. I got it.> Sato stopped talking, and Rick entered the code on the hidden lock. It immediately released and slid open. As soon as he had his head inside, Rick knew something was wrong. Bits and pieces of equipment floated out, and his sensors picked up ozone. He activated one of his arm lasers and held the safety.
“Whoever you are, don’t move,” he said, his voice amplified by the armor’s external speakers. Instead of a voice,
