Endurance: The Complete Series Read online

  “Da. Like that one.” Viktor brought the hover to a stop a few spaces down from the ship in question. He opened the door of the hover, hopped out and drew Dante from his belt, and tapped his intercom interface. “Sir, we believe we have found their escape ship. Have the local authorities meet us at spot …”

  A bright flash lit up the area, and the intercom link died. Before he could react, a voice came from behind him. “Set your guns on the ground, take off that intercom, and turn around slowly.”

  The voice made the hairs on the back of Viktor’s neck stand on end. He knew that voice, though he’d never seen its owner in person before. “Killian Yang.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant. Do as I ordered, please, so that I don’t need to have my men here shoot you. They have real weapons in addition to their EMP guns.”

  Viktor crouched and set Dante down. He removed his intercom interface and placed it beside the gun as well. Then he unholstered Dickens and set it beside the rest. He stood, raised his hands to shoulder level, and turned around.

  Killian Yang was not an intimidating man. He was tall, slim, with no hair on his head or face. He had the muscle tone of someone who enjoyed an occasional jog, and he wore an unassuming pair of slacks and a sport coat.

  The two brawny goons on either side of him, however, looked like they might have eaten semi-trucks for breakfast. Viktor had an inch or two on each of them, but they more than matched him in terms of muscle mass.

  Also they had energy guns. Huge energy guns. Even his under-uniform armor wouldn’t stop a blast that size. One of the goons kept his weapon trained on Viktor while the other headed over to investigate the hover.

  “You lured me here,” Viktor said to Yang. He avoided looking back at the hover; he didn’t want to draw attention to Areva if he could avoid it.

  Yang laughed. “To some extent. I can see in your eyes that you’ve realized this is about more than vengeance.”

  “If it was only about your nephew, your assassins would have shot me long ago.”

  “You’re right. My nephew made some mistakes, and they cost him his life. Aggravating, yes, but not worth all this effort.”

  “Why did you take Okoro? What made him a target?”

  “The information he carried.”

  “What information?”

  “All the data your ship brought back about the Haxozin Sovereignty.”

  Viktor’s eyebrows shot up. Whatever possibilities he’d expected, this wasn’t one of them. “Why would you want that data? And why would Okoro have it?”

  The goon searching the hover interrupted his questions. “Mr. Yang.”

  Viktor held his breath.

  “There’s nobody here. It’s empty.”

  Viktor let the breath out. Areva had escaped.

  “Good,” said Yang. He glanced at a point somewhere behind Viktor. “I believe the rest of our team has arrived.”

  The Uprising hover with the dented fender pulled up alongside them. The three armored operatives hopped out, one of them pulling Lieutenant Okoro along by the arm. Okoro was alive and conscious, though he’d been relieved of his service weapon, and from all appearances, his body armor as well. Viktor tried to catch his eye, but Okoro fixed his focus on the ground.

  The operative holding him removed his headgear and revealed himself to be Cassius the assassin. “We have him, Mr. Yang,” he said.

  “The data?” Yang asked.

  To Viktor’s great surprise, Okoro raised his head and answered the question himself. “I’ve got it. It’s all downloaded to my pocket computer. I was tied directly into the Endurance’s network during the trip, so it wasn’t too hard to access the files. I don’t think they even noticed the breach.”

  One of the armored operatives pulled out Okoro’s computer, unfolded it, and handed it to Yang. Viktor stared at his coworker. “Okoro. You work for them?”

  Okoro shrugged and nodded. “For about a month now.”

  “Why?”

  “You noticed how I’m always mentioning our limited resources? That’s why. You discovered aliens, Viktor. Aliens who want to kill us. United Earth isn’t strong enough to fight off an invasion from another solar system. They can barely even keep the Uprising at bay. Look at how long it took us to track Yang here, for crying out loud!”

  “The solar system is big,” said Viktor. “It is impossible to monitor all of it closely.”

  “Not impossible. The UELE just refuses to do it.” Okoro shook his head. “We have the technology to track every movement of every person and every ship in the system. But we don’t!”

  “For obvious reasons. People would never stand for that.”

  “They’ll have to, if they want to survive the Haxozin. The government will need to build up the UELE and the military, keep a closer eye on things, remove the ridiculous limitations we’ve imposed on ourselves for all these years. And with the threat of an alien invasion hanging over their heads, people will accept it. No, they won’t just accept it; they’ll beg the UELE to get more involved!”

  Viktor sighed. “The Haxozin are not invading. They do not even know where Earth is.”

  “Not yet,” Yang said. He finished studying whatever was on Okoro’s pocket computer and snapped it closed. “Now that we have this data, they will.”

  Okoro half-smiled at Viktor. “We’re going to find a way to contact them and tell them Earth’s location.”

  Viktor’s eyes widened and he sucked in a breath. “Have you lost your heads? Why would you want to do that?”

  “To make United Earth strong again,” said Okoro.

  “To give United Earth something to do besides interfering with Uprising business,” said Yang at the same time.

  Viktor looked from one to the other. “Your goals do not seem mutually compatible.”

  Yang shrugged. “The ends, maybe not, but the means, definitely. Alliances have been formed with less to go on.” He handed the computer to one of the big goons and nodded toward his ship. “Take everyone on board and prepare to leave as soon as I join you. I have one more thing to do here. Cassius will stay with me.”

  The five other men, including Okoro, all headed up the boarding stairs and into the waiting spaceship. One of them remained at the top of the stairs to keep an eye on the situation. Cassius took up a place beside Killian Yang and leveled his energy gun at Viktor’s head. A stray quote crossed Viktor’s mind: Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous. Accurate, if not entirely helpful.

  Viktor needed a topic to keep Yang talking long enough for the officers from the barricade to find them. “What are you going to do with Okoro?”

  “Not kill him, if that’s what you mean,” said Yang. “He suspected the UELE would catch him if he simply sent me the data, so part of our deal was that I provide him a way out. I keep my promises. Besides, we still need to work together to find a way to contact the Haxozin. Our collaboration isn’t over yet.” Despite Cassius’s overtly threatening position next to him, Yang smiled at Viktor. “Inciting a war by simply sending a message. I suppose the pen really is mightier than the sword, isn’t it?”

  Viktor’s eyes flicked between the assassin and his master. “You would use a computer to contact them. Not a pen.”

  “It’s a metaphor.”

  “It is an inaccurate description. It is also a foolish plan.”

  “Maybe. I don’t really want your opinion on that.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  Yang spread his hands. “I’ve told you my strategy.”

  “Yes, I am not sure why you did that.”

  “Because it’s important that you understand it in order to know what I’m offering you now. From what I’ve heard of your work over the past week, you came close to figuring it out several times. You’ve proven that you are smart. I would not mind having you work for me.”

  Viktor snorted. “I do not do treason.”

  “United Earth betrayed you first. Okoro’s told me about you. How th
ey assigned you to the Endurance. They don’t appreciate your talents, and they certainly don’t value them. They dislike you, and you dislike them.”

  “Perhaps,” said Viktor, “but I like my job.”

  The words felt like an epiphany as he said them. After the week of mulling over Okoro’s job offer, it felt good to come to the conclusion that he wouldn’t have accepted it, even it if had been genuine. Much as he enjoyed working on a real investigation, he couldn’t leave the Endurance to do it. The ship was his home.

  Killian Yang didn’t seem to believe him. “You must be joking.”

  “I do not do jokes.”

  “Hmm. Then perhaps you’re too far gone for me to use after all. Oh well. I’ll settle for the revenge you originally thought this was about. Goodbye, killer of my nephew.”

  “The word is ‘nepoticide.’”

  Yang blinked at him. “That is the worst last sentence I’ve ever heard.”

  He waved a hand at Cassius, who took on a cold expression as he looked down the barrel of his energy gun. Viktor’s body went rigid with tension and his breath caught in his throat as he sensed he was about to die. But before the assassin could fire, the loud report of a projectile weapon drowned out all other sound.

  Blood spurted from Cassius’s head, and he collapsed to the ground, dead before he landed. Yang instinctively crouched to make himself a smaller target. The goon in the ship’s airlock brought his weapon up and looked around for the shooter.

  In the absence of another target, he opened fire on Viktor. Viktor dove for the hover vehicle and took cover behind it, hearing the lances of energy strike the vehicle’s side. He could also hear Yang yelling something, and a glance around the side of the car showed the crime boss sprinting up the staircase toward the airlock. Viktor ducked his head back before an energy blast could remove it. He wished he’d had time to grab Dickens or Dante.

  “Hey,” said Areva’s voice. A handheld projectile gun slid out from under the hover.

  Viktor picked up the weapon, then bent down and took a look beneath the car. Areva clung to the underside of the vehicle. She smiled at him. “Use my service weapon. I can’t see their ship from under here, and if I come out, they’ll see me.”

  Viktor chambered a round and returned the smile. “Thanks.”

  He leaned around the side of the hover and aimed up at the airlock, just as Killian Yang disappeared inside. Viktor instead fired at the remaining goon, but only grazed him as the man moved to trigger the airlock closed. Viktor emptied the gun at the door, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate a hull designed to withstand the duress of space travel.

  Yang’s ship lifted off from the lot and soared toward the domed ceiling, heading to one of the airlocks to Enceladus’s surface. Viktor hoped that the airlock would stop the escape attempt, but he had a sinking feeling that someone like Killian Yang wouldn’t plan all of this and forget to ensure his ability to leave once he achieved his goals.

  He was right. Apparently the Uprising members had a way to bypass the normal security procedures and let themselves out remotely, because the airlock’s inner door slid open and allowed the ship to enter. A moment later, the inner door closed, the atmosphere vented from the lock, and then the other side opened to the blackness of space. The ship disappeared from sight, and Viktor knew he had lost them—Yang and Okoro both.

  He sighed and leaned back against the hover. Areva crawled out from underneath it and joined him. “They’re gone?”

  He nodded.

  “With the data?”

  Another nod.

  Areva blew out a breath through pursed lips. “That’s bad.”

  Nod.

  “At least we got the killer.”

  Shrug. Nod.

  Areva leaned around the corner to look at Cassius’s corpse and caught sight of all the energy holes burned into their commandeered hover. “Oh, great,” she said. “This’ll make our division’s insurance premium go up.”

  * * *

  It took a few days to clear everything up with the Enceladus police force. They matched Cassius’s weapon to the one that killed the big guy from O&I. Since Cassius was dead and had murdered Adwin Soun first, Enceladus PD had no problem ceding jurisdiction of the case back to the UELE.

  They couldn’t find any traces of Yang’s ship, and the few Enceladus spaceships patrolling the moon’s perimeter hadn’t seen it speeding away. The lead officers talked about system-wide bulletins and possible ways of tracking the ship, but realistically, everyone knew they wouldn’t see Yang or Okoro again in the near future. Space was just too big.

  They replaced the grumpy old man’s hover car. Then they returned to Earth.

  Ten days after the chase, and a little less than three weeks since he began work on the case, Viktor again found himself standing near the Endurance’s airlock, waiting for Captain Withers to return after another meeting with Commissioner Wen. The other department heads stood with him, though Areva kept herself mostly obscured around a corner.

  Chris Fish was in the middle of a rant. “I’m just saying, you had a chance to save the world, and you missed it. That’s pathetic.”

  “We did not fail to save the world,” Viktor said.

  “I disagree. You didn’t get the bad guys, and now they’re calling aliens to kill us all. If you’d gotten the bad guys, that wouldn’t be happening. Ergo, you’d have saved the world. And you didn’t. Do you know how rare an opportunity like that is?”

  “I’m still impressed you survived at all,” Matthias said cheerfully. “That stunt with the hover on the roofs? Amazing. I coded a simulation of it in my favorite CAD program, and some of the other engineers are beta testing it. We’re thinking about making a video game.”

  The Endurance’s 104-year-old janitor walked by, dragging his vacuum cleaner behind him. “I’d play that,” he said.

  “I’ll send you a copy,” Matthias said as the old man rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. “What about you, Viktor? Want to relive the moment?”

  “I do not do video games.”

  “We know.” Chris rolled his eyes. “Because then you’d actually have to bother saving the world.”

  The airlock beeped twice.

  “Oh good, the cap’s here!” said Matthias. “I bet he has good news this time!”

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Chris. “You just watch. At best, we’ll be sent back out to Neptune.”

  Beep beep.

  “What about at worst?”

  “Kidnapped and sent to the Haxozin as a peace offering.”

  “You’re still going with that theory, huh?”

  “I’m not convinced it’s wrong.”

  Beep!

  The airlock slid open, and Captain Withers entered the ship. Unlike last time, he made eye contact with each of his department heads and smiled. “I have …”

  “Good news!” Matthias bounced on his heels and held out a hand for Chris to high five. When the other man refused, he high-fived himself and then resumed his attention stance. “Sorry, Cap. I got a little excited.”

  Withers collected himself, then began again. “Yes, I have good news.”

  “They caught Yang and Okoro?” Viktor asked.

  “Okay, not that good. No, they’re still under the radar.”

  “So we do not know if they have contacted the Haxozin or not.”

  “No. But bad as that is, it had at least one positive side effect. Dispatch finally gave us something to do.”

  “If it involves going back out of the solar system to fight the Haxozin, I’m out,” said Chris.

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Good.”

  “It involves going back out of the solar system to figure out where the Haxozin are so we don’t have to fight them.”

  Everyone stared at the captain blankly. “I’m confused,” Chris finally said.

  “Look,” said Withers, “no one knows exactly how far the Haxozin Sovereignty extends. They could be hundreds of light-years away.”
>
  “Probably not,” said Matthias, “since they were on the World of Infinite Tones, and that’s practically next door.”

  “The point is, even if the Uprising manages to send them a message, we have no idea how long it will take to get to them. It could be years. Maybe even decades.”

  “Unless Okoro also stole the plans for building a D Drive,” Viktor said. “Then they could simply go to the Haxozin in person. We do not know how much data he copied.”

  “True. The point is, United Earth isn’t sure how big of a threat we’re facing. So once they finish building the new D Drives, they’ll send out some ships to do reconnaissance on the galaxy. Learn what’s out there. How big the Haxozin Sovereignty is. How powerful they are. How likely they are to get any message the Uprising sends. There’s a lot we don’t know, and UE wants to find out.”

  “Wouldn’t that be more of a military thing?” asked Chris.

  “They don’t have enough of a space fleet to pull this off. Not since they had to shrink it at the end of the Lunar War. No, this is falling to law enforcement. To us.”

  Matthias grinned. “Cool.”

  “And, because we were instrumental in solving the murder of Adwin Soun and identifying Okoro as a traitor, we get to be one of those ships.”

  No one could miss the captain’s look of pride as he recounted their achievements, but Viktor frowned. “We played directly into Yang’s plan. We went straight to him. We brought his messenger and message with us. And we stole a car.”

  “Or,” said the captain, “you were skillfully manipulated by an enemy behind the lines, yet you still managed to uncover the truth, stay alive, and take down one of the Uprising’s top assassins. And you used quick thinking to come up with a solution that wouldn’t have occurred to most other officers. It’s all in how you spin the story, Ivanokoff.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “It’ll take a couple weeks for Dispatch’s engineering teams to install the other D Drives, but since ours is already built into our ship, we’ll be the first out there. They want us to check in with the People of Tone and learn more about the Haxozin, then see if they know of any other planets we can check out. We’re leaving in two days.”