Shackleton's Folly (The Lost Wonder Book 1) (11 page)

A slave trafficker coming from the other direction arrived at the alley just as they did and flicked a switch. A number of the slaves who were following the trafficker cried out, reeling from the pain anklets. They grabbed and pulled at the devices until the pain stopped.

Alec stopped where the end of the alley intersected with the street. He stood to assess what he saw. Slave Alley was filled with all shapes and sizes of aliens wearing slave anklets. A particularly foul-looking slave trafficker, a bug-eyed, oversized, hairless rodent, came from his booth. Its bodyguards, who looked like great orange beavers and were a good 20 centimeters taller than Alec, kept an eye on their boss. He sidestepped Alec and Dancer to examine Electra.

Nader squeaked with joy, “We have seen this one before. Dolk has this female entertaining at Temple Coffee Shop. I will take what is mine, human.” He signaled to his bodyguards. “Bring some anklets for the female.” One grabbed a set from behind a belt slung from its shoulder to its hip.

Electra’s face seethed with rebellion, but her body remained still. The slave trafficker was about to prod her with an appendage when Alec grabbed Nader and spun him around so they were nose to snout, pulling a pouch until its leather tie snapped from Nader’s neck. Alec slowly poured out its contents. The golden grain was blown about by the wind.

“She is no property of yours,” Alec said coldly, as he took the trafficker’s shoulders in hand and spun him around. When his backside presented itself, Alec kicked it, knocking him sprawling to the ground.

The trafficker screamed, “We will kill you for your disrespect! You have dishonored us.”

The trafficker’s bodyguards approached Alec slowly, pulling projectile weapons from shoulder holsters. Alec removed the wrist bracer from his forearm; it closed upon itself, making a solid ring and telescoping instantly into a two-meter staff. The bodyguards faltered for a moment, arms outstretched and weapons pointed at him. As Alec spun his body and staff, it became an extension of his being. Alec stopped the staff’s spin, with the end thudding into the ground, and, then, he used it in an overhead arc to crack bone that was encircling a gun handle pointed at Dancer and Electra. “No, you don’t,” said Alec. The first bodyguard dropped his weapon, its paw smashed; it wailed, its pain and rage echoing from the walls of the buildings.

Alec missed the paw of the second bodyguard as it crashed into his skull, propelling him toward one of the buildings. His knuckles were smashed between the staff and the concrete. The staff flew from his hands into the crowd of spectators. Dancer managed to grab him before his face met the concrete wall. The second guard roared as Dancer held Alec up. Dancer scanned his friend, looking for brain damage. “Are you alright?” Alec nodded his head a bit. “I’ll make it.” He stood on his own.

A group of spectators fought over Alec’s staff, and Electra threw herself into the scuffle. She threw a roundhouse kick, clipping the biped in the side of its head. The staff dropped to the ground. Electra dove for the staff amongst the crowd groping for the weapon. The staff became a smudge of color as bodies flew before the expert wielding it. Electra stepped over four unconscious forms and offered Alec his staff back. He took it — and her hand — firmly. “Thank you.”

The beavers stood at full height. “I have no argument with you,” said Alec to the beavers. “I will leave with only what I came with.”

Alec knelt beside the trafficker. “You try to claim my kind as a slave again, and I will see to it that you join the gods then and there.” He moved closer to the creature’s ear. “Count on it.”

Alec squeezed the staff; it returned to its original shape, and he put it back on his forearm. He rubbed his banged-up hands. Electra watched intently, and Alec couldn’t help but notice. He said, “A ring staff. Most so-called intelligent races don’t even give it a second look when they check for weapons. I like that.”

Electra walked with Alec and Dancer as they left the alley behind. The bazaar’s merchant stalls contained everything imaginable — fabric, clothes, foods, trinkets, and much, much more. Alec turned to Electra. Her hazel eyes were cast a little downward, but he brushed her bangs back from her face and coaxed her into looking directly into his eyes. His world could be found in her eyes. He realized he had paused a little too long. “You have had combat training. Not as helpless as you would like others to think. Subterfuge — I like it.” He smiled broadly. “Remind me not to startle you, for my own safety, of course.”

Electra remained silent, but she seemed to communicate much in doing so. She reached out, tentatively, taking one of his hands; her fingertips stroked the hand as she examined his injuries.

“I am certain you can speak Standard, but I am willing to wait as long as it takes for you to feel safe enough to talk.”

The voice of an adolescent drew their attention. “Captain Shackleton.”

Alec responded. “Uhrbar — good to see you, kid.” They turned to a medium-height humanoid youth with fair skin, a scarecrow’s build down to the large head on his shoulders, and straw-like hair.

“Captain Shackleton, the Koty have landed at the spaceport. They are already on the streets looking for someone.”

The news put Alec and Dancer on heightened alertness. Uhrbar became aware of Electra as being with the group.

He smiled at Electra. “Has he freed you, too?”

Electra said nothing but faced Uhrbar.

“There are many of us who owe Captain Shackleton a life-long debt. He will free you, too — you’ll see,” said Uhrbar. He gave Alec and Dancer a once-over. “The Captain freed us from our masters. He’s a stubborn human, in my book.” He looked down the street as if looking for something in the crowd. “We want to pay him for our liberty, but he says to get ourselves an education and make a good life. That will repay him.”

Alec responded, “Having you and your friends providing timely information is more than enough repayment.”

Dancer scanned the crowds of the bazaar and caught sight of the Koty Union soldiers in the distance. “We need to get moving,” he stated flatly. “The
Quest
has been silent too long, and I am unable to establish a link.”

Alec took Uhrbar’s hand and shook it warmly. “Thanks for the tip — now, scram. I don’t need you scooped up in any Koty dragnet. We’ll get out of here.”

“Be safe, Captain Shackleton.” Uhrbar slipped away down a street leading away from the Koty soldiers.

The Koty troops moved through the crowd with impunity. A bipedal street vendor nervously organized alienware sunglasses on his three-wheeled cart when a group of soldiers came up to him and started asking questions. The vendor made a break for the safety of the crowds, catching the soldiers off guard briefly, but then their weapon fire struck a few bystanders and the street vendor alike.

The motionless form of a street vendor, amongst the other bodies, was prodded with the muzzle of the rifle and checked for signs of life. The platoon regrouped around the fallen and started interrogating those bystanders who had only been injured and those who were not fortunate enough to get away from the scene. The fallen were checked for weapons and arrested.

In a low voice, Alec said, “Let’s get out of here.”

Worrell and Gino observed the rhythmic style as the Koty Union troops drove a wedge into the street traffic. The skimmer traffic had been stopped while the Koty troops instituted random searches, with the occasional local blasted for not answering the questions to the satisfaction of the interrogator or because they simply tried to run. Gino pointed to a flash of cobalt blue vanishing into the foot traffic heading toward the spaceport.

Gino brought up his communicator. “Us. Shackleton is on his way to the spaceport.” The link cut off quickly.

“Good for us,” said Gino.

“Good for us, too,” said Worrell.

Alec, Electra, and Dancer moved quickly across the busy tarmac, but, even from a distance, Alec knew there was something wrong. “Dancer, what do you see?”

Dancer confirmed Alec’s fears. “The
Quest
has been opened.” They ran to the ship, looking at its scorched outer hull. The metallic surface was awash with a carbonized residue from energy weapons.

“Electra, stay out here.” Alec ran headlong into the
Quest
. Dancer scanned the area for Koty Union troops and then dashed into the ship.

Dancer was able to re-establish a communications link with the
Quest
now that he was at such close range. He wanted to ascertain the extent of the ship’s systems damage as he walked through the debris of the galley. Alec entered from the command deck, carrying a burnt piece of bulkhead. Electra appeared, making an assessment of her own while picking up the items strewn about the room.

Alec shook with fury. “They burnt through the bulkhead to Dad and the rest. They did the same in your alcove.” Alec gripped a small, glassified cylinder in his hand that said “Jack Shackleton b. July 4
^th
, 2246 — d. April 1
^st
, 2299.” The end of the cylinder was broken off at an angle just past the date. Alec went white with rage, his face sagging with the intense emotion. Electra moved closer to Dancer as the communication screens flickered and a smiling Wolfgang Gray appeared on them all.

Gray smacked his lips before saying, “Shackleton, I’ve always liked you. How about a partnership?”

Alec rushed the screen. “You will pay for this desecration, Wolfgang, maybe not now or not as soon as I want it, but you will stand in judgment for your actions.”

“Why, Shackleton, I’m here to do business. Just like you, I now have a piece of the inscription. Let’s make a deal for the other piece you have.” Gray leapt to his feet when he caught sight of Electra. “My intelligence people told me you bought yourself a slave. She even looks human.”

“Let’s finish this, here and now,” Alec demanded.

“Whatever she cost you, I’ll double it. I had to get rid of my last slave girl. You know, she tried to kill me.” Wolfgang Gray looked wolfish. “I need a new playmate. We’ll have so much fun.”

Electra gave no response, but Alec replied, “She’s not a slave — she is a free woman.”

Gray sat back in his chair. “Shackleton, if you do not give up the inscription, the Koty will just kill you and your new friend; they will crush Dancer for recycling and just take the inscription.” And, with that, the screen went blank.

Electra helped pick up the mix of broken pieces and whole glassified cylinders strewn about the floor during the search of the sealed bulkhead. Alec pulled those still in the bulkhead and had started stacking them on a small desk to one side. Electra looked at him questioningly.

Alec held just the etched section of one in his hand; the rest of it was mixed in somewhere with the broken shards on the floor. “Ke Huy Quan, 2278-2302. He was a great guy; you’d have liked him. He got caught up in some refugee smuggling about a few years back. Didn’t survive the last run.” Alec’s eyes glistened with excess moisture. “I promised him that, if anything happened, I’d make sure he got home.” The number of cylinders had grown to several hundred. Electra and Alec held a moment of silence; she understood the significance. He placed the first cylinder in the bulkhead and then continued the process to place the rest of the remains back in place.

The damaged exterior hull of the
Quest
was peppered with repairs in progress; Alec was using a plasma torch to make the repairs. He cut out a patch and held it up to a hole in the sensor array access panel, putting clamps on it so he could weld it in place. The orbital buffer mini-bots had spread themselves across
Quest
’s hull grinding, sanding, polishing, and buffing the completed repairs to match the rest of the hull. When they were done, the repair was invisible to the naked eye.

When Dancer came into his eye line, Alec pulled off his safety visor. “We’ll make it.”

Dancer stroked the ship’s landing gear. “I’ve gotten most of what we need.” Electra exited the
Quest
and stood with Dancer.

“How’s Electra doing? Has she shown any out-of-the-ordinary interest in systems or equipment?”

Dancer shifted side to side. “No, she’s been what you would expect from someone who’d been shackled and enslaved. I think she’s just biding her time and studying us.”

Alec chuckled, “Well, whoever she is, she has been through a lot, and I can understand her not trusting us. She is a very special woman.”

“You will be careful, Alec? I have been watching you around her. I clearly need to watch out for the both of us.”

“She has combat training; we saw her take up my staff and use it well.” Alec considered, “I am sure she has been accessing the records, and the fact she has been able to hide it from you says something about her skills.” Alec’s mind flashed back to his encounter with Electra in the guest cabin. His ache for her companionship was ever present in his thoughts. “A complicated woman whom we have not yet convinced we are trustworthy.”

Dancer inconspicuously scanned Alec’s vital signs. He had a rapid heartbeat, and a flood of chemicals was coursing through him. “Yes, I see. You do not mind us getting back to the business at hand, I hope?”

“What’s up?”

“I’ve been studying Dolk’s star chart. It does correlate to a few star systems on the edge of known space.”

“A real star chart?” Alec pointed to the material on the ground near Dancer.

Dancer retrieved a piece of the hull-patching material near his feet and tossed it to Alec as he replied, “I’m doing a test import of the data into the nav computer.” Alec returned to work without responding, so Dancer turned to Electra. “Come with me, please.” He went to one of the landing gears and used his datapad. Electra stood ready to help in any way she could. He watched her with interest. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Dancer had repaired the exposed landing-gear system. He put back the exterior panel that covered the internal components. Dancer maneuvered the panel back into place, lining up the edges. He looked for the seam sealer but realized that he put it down on the tool cart. Dancer knew he couldn’t quite reach it from where he was standing. Electra saw this from where she was, near the cart. She picked up the seam sealer and held it up for him to grab.