The Orion Deception (3 page)

Long ago the man who had been strong in faith would have said yes, that it was a sign. But Heck had grown very tired of looking for signs and trying to find direction where there was none. This woman needed Marshal Heck Thomas to come to her aid. And as the smile crept into Heck Thomas' face, he wondered who needed whom more. Although he knew he would, someday, go through that wormhole to find Laylara he was sure that all he would find would be her body and the cruiser that she had been locked inside of; if there was anything left of it to find.

It was time for Heck Thomas to let go.

"Sit down, please," he said as he slid his stool closer to her own. She had a familiar face. "What's your name?"

"Lainne Connor," she said wiping her eyes with a tissue.

"Ms. Connor, what is it you think I can do for you?"

"I think you can find my brother."

"Why me?"

"I know what it is you used to do. There isn't any place in the System that someone can hide from you."

"Who told you to look for me? And how 
did 
you find me, anyway? Most people don't even know Mason is an actual place in Florida, let alone where
this
dive happens to be."

"We have a friend in common, one who knew that you would be here in the 
Osprey's Nest.
"

"I find that hard to believe. You seem like too nice of a gal to be running in my circles."

"Our mutual friend is a person of high birth, royalty so to speak."

Heck growled at the realization of who the snitch was that ratted him out. He was beginning to sober up and wasn't liking it so he tried again to wave the bartender over for a refill, but the man just shook his head. "What the Hell?" he said as he looked around for a waitress. Finally he put his shot glass down with a loud crack on the polished bar.

"He's 'royal,' all right. A  'royal' pain in the ass!" he grumbled. "Assuming we're talking about the same person, why on Earth would I want to help you? Like I said, I have my own trouble."

"I know. But by helping me find my brother, you may find that there are other ways to reach your goal of finding Detective Espinosa."

"And now we've established that my best living friend can't be trusted to keep his damn mouth shut," he said angrily. "I'm going to have to kill him later."

"Seriously, Mr.-"

"I am serious, believe me. And please,
don't 
say my name."

"Fine," said the woman. She let out a long sigh and Heck couldn't help but look into her deep blue eyes. "Will you help me?"

Damn, 
he thought again. "Tell me what happened to your brother."

Lainne removed a small holophone from her purse and placed it on the counter. She tapped the side with her finger and a blue light suddenly danced in the air above the device. Then the blue light stretched as other colors projected into it from the phone and within about a second a holographic control panel appeared. She tapped an icon with her pen and the control panel disappeared, replaced by another panel that displayed pictures. She tapped on one and the picture expanded into a three-dimensional holographic image of a smiling young man.

"That's him," she said, staring wide-eyed into the image. "His name is William. He's 28 years old."

"Looks like your typical all-American kid."

"He was-
is,
" she corrected herself as she flicked off the picture with a wave her pen. "I won't bore you with too many details. But you should know that he's an FTL engineer for Aurora Aerospace Industries based here, in Florida."

"An 
FTL
 engineer? As in 'Faster Than Light?'"

"Exactly. As you can imagine, most of the work he does is classified under Commonwealth Security Directives. Consequently, I know very little of the nature of his work, other than the obvious."

"I see." Heck knew that AAI was the leading defense contractor in the entire Solar System. While everyone knew that the Commonwealth government was actively searching for a method to break the light barrier, few knew exactly which companies were involved.

"Not long after he disappeared I received a copy of the internal report from AAI concerning William's disappearance. The report said that he had been involved in casino gaming on a remote drift. They even suggested that Will had been running with some nefarious mafia characters. You can imagine how furious I was. Will is a nerd, always was. He couldn't be bothered wasting his time with activities like sports and gambling."

"You two were close then."

"Our parents were killed during the Cuban-American War. They were on the bridge between Fort Myers and Cape Coral when it was destroyed by Communist sympathizers. We've no other family left."

"What does your brother do for fun?" he asked, his old police mind kicking back on and collecting data to be analyzed later. He knew from past experience chasing fugitives that some people disappeared because they wanted to. But others didn't, and Heck didn't have enough facts to decide which camp William was in.

"He just works. Like I said, he is a nerd of the first order. When he went home after work, if he wasn't sleeping at the lab, he would keep working on his own personal theories and projects."

"So do you think the company is part of the cover up or are they ridiculously ignorant?"

"All I know is that he was working on something incredible in the FTL field. I believe the government snatched him up and AAI contrived the absurd story about a gambling habit that led to his own disappearance, implying a mafia debt payback."

"What sort of contact did you have with your brother before he disappeared?"

"He began acting very strange. For weeks before he disappeared he refused to meet with me, saying he was too busy. That was very unlike him," she said, dejectedly. Then she let out a deep breath and continued her tale. "William stopped taking my calls too; our communication was limited to trading messages with each other."

"What was the tone of his communication?"

"Typically, he would enthusiastically bore me with talk of his work for hours on end. Lately he was very wooden, oddly unemotional, even when discussing what he could of his research. He began talking about how he had managed to 'come into money,' whatever that meant. And the corporate investigators used that to justify their allegations of his gambling addiction."

"Ok, so what kind of gambling? Cards, sports, asteroid racing?"

"The report was vague on specifics, as you can imagine, but it did mention asteroid racing. I could never get a straight answer from anyone at AAI when I called them. And when I went to the office of the CEO, I was threatened with arrest for trespassing. They 
really 
didn't want to see me."

"And what do you do for a living, that they wouldn't see you about the death of your own brother?" Heck knew there was something about this woman that gave him a sense of 
deja
 
vu.

"I'm a law clerk for the Committee on Law and Justice in Miami."

"Uh huh." While the ex-Marshal had never had a run-in with the Committee on Law and Justice, he knew plenty about them. He had seen her on holovision interviews a number of times before, which was why he recognized her face. The Committee was a government watchdog group. At times they could be vicious and unbending when they felt law enforcement or government were being dictatorial. Luckily, the Committee tended to focus their ire against the Commonwealth politicians most of the time. And, from time to time, they had been known to come out in support of local American law and government agencies that had come into conflict with the Commonwealth Police. While he disliked the manner in which the Committee would attack law enforcement officials, he did admire their constant guard against infringement on the rights of Americans within the Commonwealth. With a smirk he added: "You know that admission did very little to help your case, right?"

"Please," she said with a faint smile. "There isn't much time!"

It was then that Heck Thomas noticed how it was that he seemed to be more and more susceptible to the woman's charm as he became more sober. 
It's not supposed to work that way! 
he thought wryly as the bartender walked past behind the bar.

"Barkeep!" he said, holding his empty glass in the air and pointing to it with his free hand, all the while a scandalized look on his face. But the barkeeper shook his head with a wry grin and gave Heck a shrug of the shoulders. Heck gave up and put his glass back on the table, grumbling.

Just then Heck's legendary survival instinct kicked in and he became aware of a sudden increase in the general hubbub in the bar. He cautiously listened for something, anything, that might indicate danger. And then he heard it. His stomach twisted into a knot, realizing his chances of escaping from this bar were not favorable.

"...right there!" came the unmistakable observation. Someone recognized him. His mind started computing escape plans. Lainne was talking but he wasn't listening to her now.

"You sure, Eddie?" hissed a voice in a drunkenly loud whisper.

"Dammit, Pedro! 'Course I am! You saw the ticker too!" Heck watched the pair seated near the holovision over his glass, pretending to be disinterested. The ticker on the news feed was now running a story about
renegade Commonwealth Marshal, Heck Thomas,
and his picture scrolled by alongside other wanted felons. Though he had taken some precautions with genetic disguise technology, changing his hair and eye color and he grew in his beard, he knew his disguise would not pass sincere scrutiny.

"Hell," he cursed. Things were going to get out of hand soon. And as the adrenaline began to surge, and the fate of a damsel in distress was placed in his hands, the old Heck Thomas came back to life.

"Thanks!" he said wryly, glancing at his own three-dimensional image drifting along the bottom of the holovision display. "That sure made things easier."

"I'm sorry," she said, nervously glancing around. One of the nearby men was glancing down at a holophone computer in his hands. "I can't trust anyone now, least of all the government. You were the only one to turn to."

"The clowns in this bar won't bat an eye about turning us in for a reward."

The ex-lawman's perception of danger triggered a dump of adrenaline into his system, helping to clear his whiskey-fogged mind. Realizing he had to act quickly he shouldered a backpack and took hold of Lainne's hand. He began to make his way through the bar toward the back door where the fly-bikers had entered. But a strange look from the bartender told Heck that the man was probably on to him too.

"Crap," he said, turning around and dragging Lainne toward the front door.

The pair of men whose poorly concealed conversation warned Heck of the danger had taken an interest in them. The two men got up from their table and moved into Heck's path to bar the way out. In one smooth motion Heck picked up a stool and smashed the first man over the head. He followed through with a powerful shove to the second man that sent him flying backward. Before the splinters had even hit the floor, Heck and Lainne were moving past the dazed men and out the door. "Come on!"

"Pedro!" said Eddie, tapping his unconscious friend on the cheek. "Pedro? Wake up, man!" The rest of the patrons in the bar were abuzz with excitement. Some moved closer to the would-be bounty hunters, Pedro and Eddie, while others looked out the door after the fleeing pair.

The blistering heat and stifling humidity would have ordinarily overwhelmed the man who had spent so much of his life in climate controlled spacecraft, but his adrenaline was pumping and he barely noticed the sweat beading up on his brow.

"Sirens!" announced Lainne. Heck nodded, the sound of the approaching police cruisers thundering in fast from the distance echoed off the walls of the small-town buildings. The airborne cruisers were incredibly fast and could drop from full speed onto a ground parking lot within seconds. There was little time to hide. They ran through the parking lot and across Highway 19 toward a McDonald's, luckily for them there was little ground traffic in Mason these days.

Just as the pair disappeared inside McDonald's the first police cruiser rocketed overhead, engines screaming, and circled back to hover over the 
Osprey's Nest.
A second cruiser flew in fast and landed hard on the ground, its landing struts causing the old concrete parking lot to spray fragments into the air.