Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (20 page)

I leapt at him, dragging him into
the room and jamming my empty P-50 in his face. “Where is it?” I yelled,
knowing this was no longer just about a piece of alien technology, but about mankind’s
destiny as an interstellar civilization.

He tried to wrestle me off,
swinging the light at my head like a club, but I blocked it and hit him in the
face with the butt of my gun, knocking him to the ground.

“What did you do with it?” I
yelled.

“What are you talking about?” Vargis
demanded as a trickle of blood ran from his forehead.

“The Codex!” I yelled. “Where is
it?”

“It wasn’t him,” Marie said groggily
as she tried to throw off the stun effect.

“He’s got it! I know he has!” I
yelled, ready to beat him senseless with my bare hands. Vargis was the
sleezeball
who’d tried to cut me out of this deal from the
beginning. He represented the big money, the people who stood to make the most
from the Codex. I knew he’d do anything to get it.

“No,” She held her head as she
sat up slowly. “It was Bo.”

Bo? How could it be congenial,
unassuming, intelligent Bo, who’d not blown my cover when he’d had the chance?
I actually liked him, even his Confucian quotes. It couldn’t be Bo.

“It’s true,” she said. “Bo
stunned me. He’s got the Codex.”

Vargis pushed me away angrily,
adjusting his clothes. “You let an insignificant, paper shuffling lawyer steal
the Codex out from under your nose! You’re a bigger fool than I thought!”

Jase stirred, wincing as he
rubbed his head. “What hit me?”

“The shuttle’s the only way off
this rock,” I said, “and it’s grounded.” I released Vargis and ran back out
through the lounge area to the elevator. To my relief, it was still working. By
the time the door opened, Jase staggered out to join me.

“Sorry Skipper,” he said on the
way down. “He must have been in your quarters when I came back. I never even saw
him.”

We took the elevator down to the
hanger.

“Sarat’s dead,” I said after the
doors closed.

Jase gave me a surprised look.
“Did you do it?”

“No, it was the Mataron.”

Jase nodded grimly. “Saved me the
trouble.”

When the doors opened, we started
towards the office as the elevator began climbing back up to the penthouse. The
rectangular storm shutters were down, sealing off the hanger, but the shuttle
was visible through a window in one of the door segments, still securely
anchored to the landing platform outside.

We found Bo lounging in a chair in
front of the duty officer’s table. He looked up, surprised to find my P-50
aimed at his head.

“Where’s the Codex?” I demanded,
sensing from the confusion on his face that something was wrong, something I
didn’t understand.

“You don’t have it?” Bo asked. He
had nothing with him which he could use to hide the Codex and he obviously had
no idea what I was talking about.

“No! It’s gone,” I said.

Realization appeared on his face.
“Stolen?”

Oh no!
I thought, beginning to suspect what
had happened. “You didn’t take it?”

“No.” Bo glanced at the duty
officer. “How long have I been here?”

“Since the shift change,” the
duty officer said, eyeing my gun warily. “We’ve been studying weather patterns,
figuring out when the shuttle can fly.”

An alarm began beeping from the
airspace console beside the duty officer. He turned towards it with growing
unease.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Some fool’s coming in to land!”

“Is it the same vehicle as
before?”

The duty officer gave me a
puzzled look. “As before?”

“There was a vehicle hovering
outside the penthouse windows. Fifteen minutes ago!”

“No sir,” the duty officer
replied, motioning to the airspace display. “There ain’t been nothing out there
since the storm hit – until now.”

“It was bigger than your shuttle.
You couldn’t miss it from the landing platform.”

The duty officer scowled. “No one
goes out there in this wind! Not unless they want to go swimming!” He activated
his communicator. “Dragon Base Three to incoming aircraft, identify yourself.” When
there was no response, he said. “I don’t care who you are, the pad is closed. Do
not attempt to land. Acknowledge.”

He waited, but the approaching craft
continued to ignore his hail.

“What type is it?” I asked,
craning my neck to see his display, now showing a contact marker approaching the
spire.

The duty officer shrugged. “Don’t
know, but its trajectory’s sub-orbital.” He leaned towards his display, eyes
widening. “Damn fool! He ain’t going for the pad! He’s landing on top.”

“Of the spire?” I asked. “At the
lookout?”

“He’s going to kill himself!” the
duty officer declared, shaking his head in disbelief.

The airspace display showed high,
but constant winds. A good pilot with the right machine could land there. Apart
from me, there was one other flyer on Icetop who could do it. “It’s Ugo! Has to
be!”

Jase gave me a stunned look.
“Gadron Ugo?”

“Come on!”

We raced back to the elevator.
The indicator showed it was up at the lookout. I called it down, counting the
seconds.

“Ugo’s on the other side of the
planet, Skipper,” Jase said, scarcely able to believe what I was thinking.

“He’s up there,” I said, glancing
skywards, “Right now! About to land!”

When the doors opened, we stepped
inside finding a sprinkling of snow scattered across the floor.

“If Ugo’s here Skipper, that
means . . .” Jase said warily as the elevator carried us up through the spire.

“Yeah,” I said dismally.

The lift doors opened, blasting Jase
and I with freezing winds so powerful we had to grab the safety rails to
prevent being blown off our feet. Embedded in the rock outside the elevator
entrance was a grappling harpoon, fired from an off-white cargo lighter
hovering fifteen meters away, nosing into the wind. Its side cargo door was
open and a cable ran from the lighter’s interior to the harpoon embedded in the
rock. Marie stood just below the small cargo transport, wearing a harness
attached to the cable that prevented her from being blown off the spire. She
carried the Codex in one hand and reached up with the other to one of the
Heureux’s
crewmen who stood tethered
inside the lighter’s cargo door.

“She’s got it!” I said, scarcely
able to believe she’d pull a stunt like this, after the night we’d just shared.

“Damn! She stunned me! In the
back!” Jase shook his head in disbelief, then took a step towards the door to
go after her.

I pushed him back. “No!” I yelled
over the screaming winds. “You’ll get blown off!”

The
Heureux’s
crewman hauled Marie up into the lighter and quickly
snapped a safety line onto her belt before freeing her from the harpoon’s
cable.

She turned back towards the lift,
giving me a smile and yelled, “I’m sorry my love, it’s just business!”

“Marie!” I yelled over the
screaming wind, “Come back! You don’t understand!”

She blew me a kiss with her hand,
then stepped inside. A moment later, the cable whipped free of the lighter and
the hatch closed.

Looking down at us through the
lighter’s cockpit window, a big, bald man sat grinning as he expertly wrestled
the controls. Gadron Ugo was Marie’s pilot-navigator. He’d served her father
for more than twenty years and now that she’d inherited the
Heureux
, he was her pilot too. Ugo mocked
me with a salute, then the stubby winged transport nosed up as he fed power to
the engines. It climbed on a tail of white light, picking up speed quickly before
vanishing into the low clouds racing above us.

“Oh man,” Jase said, “I knew we
couldn’t trust her!”

“She doesn’t know what she’s got
herself into!” I said, certain Marie thought she was still playing our
competitive little game and this was just a chance to go one up on me.

Jase’s eyes widened, adding in an
even more astonished tone, “I can’t believe she stole it from you!”

“Yeah, she’s a piece of work all right!”
And she’s in danger!

“What are we going do now?” Jase
asked miserably, thinking he’d lost his share of the commission.

“The only thing we can do,” I
said as snow swirled around our legs. “Go after her and get it back!”

* * * *

There was no UniPol station in the Dragon’s
Teeth island chain, only fishing company executives and support staff, none of
whom wanted to take responsibility for investigating the slaughter that had
taken place in Sarat’s penthouse. The tiny UniPol unit operating out of
Tundratown agreed to send an investigator on the next shuttle, but all they’d
find would be corpses mutilated by shrapnel and knife wounds. The bodies would
be frozen until the naval liaison officer made his regular visit in a few
months, but he’d have no more success in discovering what had happened than UniPol.

To avoid waiting for the local
investigator, Jase and I assured the maintenance base manager we saw nothing,
then caught the first shuttle out, along with Vargis and Bo. Before leaving, we
all promised to visit the UniPol headquarters in Tundratown for questioning,
although none of us had any intention of talking to the law. As expected the
Heureux
was long gone by the time we
landed at the spaceport, giving Marie almost a day’s head start. Outside the
shuttle, a skimmer was waiting to carry Vargis across the landing ground to the
Soberano
, which was already warming
up its engines. He climbed aboard the small ground vehicle without a word and
raced away.

“Sore loser!” Jase muttered as he
started towards the
Lining
to prep
her for launch.

I shook hands with Bo at the foot
of the stairs wheeled up against the shuttle. Even though he’d lost the auction
and seen the business end of my P-50, he remained remarkably courteous.

“You’re going after her?” Bo
asked as we shook hands.

“Oh yeah.”

“
Before you embark on a journey of revenge,” Bo said, dipping
into his endless supply of Confucian quotes, “dig two graves
.”

“I’m not after revenge Bo, just
what’s rightfully mine.” He didn’t realize I was as worried about Marie’s
safety as I was about the alien-tech device she’d stolen from me.

Bo gave me a knowing look. “Rightful
ownership is open to interpretation, Captain Kade, considering you . . .
modified the rules in order to win.”

Damn, he knew! “I evened the
odds.”

Bo nodded appreciatively. “I
don’t know how you did it, but cheating was the only way you could win. You would
never have beaten Vargis otherwise – none of us could.”

“If you thought Vargis had so
much money, why bother coming?”

“I didn’t know Senor Vargis was
going to win until after I arrived.”

I gave Bo a curious look. “What
do you mean?”

Bo raised his hand to his left
eye, peeled back his eyelid and popped his eye into his palm, leaving his eye
socket empty. He held up the prosthetic eye for me to see. “Why do you think I went
last in the first round? It was so I could see your bids with this, and out bid
you all. Then I would have had the commanding position of always bidding last
and of always knowing what you bid.”

I glanced at his cybernetic
spying eye, puzzled. “But you lost the first round!”

“Yes, even though my bid was the
highest.” he said, waiting for the implications to sink in.

“The auction was rigged?”

“From the very beginning.”

So we were simply window
dressing, hiding the auction’s real purpose. “That’s why you didn’t blow my
cover?”

“There was nothing to gain. Senor
Vargis was meant to win no matter what any of us did. You outbid him in the
second round, yet he still won.”

“But you offered to pool your
resources with me.”

“Your second bid was impressive, proving
you represent someone of substance. Call it a hunch, but you didn’t strike me
as the kind of man who would surrender easily.” He shrugged. “I was correct,
although perhaps I should have offered Captain Dulon a deal instead.” He gave
me a rueful look. “We all have our weaknesses.”

“So someone cracked Earth Bank
security just to get the Codex to Vargis,” I said thoughtfully.

“To the right people,” Bo said, “knowing
how to defeat Earth Bank encryption would be worth even more than the Codex
itself.”

I couldn’t tell him it was the
Matarons who’d cracked it. Earth Bank security was so fiendishly complex, it
defied any human attempts to penetrate it. Even the EIS, who’d tried for years
to break into it, had been unsuccessful. Only superior alien-tech could have
done it. If I could have gotten the auctioneer to the EIS, they might have been
able to reverse engineer what the Matarons had done. I began to wonder what had
happened to the Earth Bank device after the Mataron attack. It may have been
buried under the rubble of a collapsed wall or hidden in the darkness – I
couldn’t be sure – then my eyes fell to the large case Bo was carrying. His
knuckles were white from the weight, even though his face showed no strain.