Children of Zanar 1: The Zanari Inheritance Read online

  ‘Sadrine’s Drift,’ Jay said as Kaya took her seat, sitting upright and nervous.

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  Jay raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s been in the news reports recently. A colony event.’

  ‘Do I look like someone who spends her off-time looking at news channels? A colony event? So, if you need someone like me to get you there, the buckies have interdicted the place. Why?’

  ‘They won’t say,’ Kaya blurted and immediately regretted it as those cool, blue eyes turned on her. ‘Th-they say they don’t know, just that everyone’s… everyone’s dead and they don’t know why.’

  The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly, feeling to Kaya as though they were boring into her. ‘You’re from there,’ the woman said. ‘You want proof of your family’s death, or life.’

  Kaya nodded and, because she felt as though she needed this woman’s help, she poured on the charm. ‘Please. I need to know.’

  The woman’s eyes widened again, and one eyebrow rose. ‘My name is Thea,’ she said. ‘This is Jinny. We’ll help you.’

  ‘I’m Jay,’ Jay said, apparently deciding he should get back in charge. ‘Jay Colder. This is Kaya. How much are we talking?’

  Before Thea could answer, the door burst open and four men in Abertine patrol uniforms walked in. They were soon followed by more, which was unusual enough, but as the second batch walked through the inner door, one of the first four raised an arm and pointed across the room toward the group. ‘There!’

  Kaya turned at the sound, just in time to see weapons being pulled from holsters. ‘Oh! By the Mind! They can’t be–’

  She was cut off by Jinny pushing to her feet, her chair clattering to the ground behind her. ‘At last! Some real fun!’ Her twin pistols were in her hands and she was raising them and firing before anyone else could even think.

  Anyone, it seemed, but Thea. The black-haired woman overturned their table as she rose, grabbed the front of Kaya’s jacket, and pulled her into cover. Kaya just had time to see Jinny’s first shots hit the wall on either side of the door frame and explode before she lost sight of everything behind the table.

  A second later, Jay was ducking down on the other side of Thea, his shotgun in his hand. ‘Is she nuts?!’ His exclamation was punctuated by two more explosions. In return, the wall behind them was being torn apart by gunfire. ‘She’s up on one of the tables. They’ll blow her apart.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Jinny,’ Thea replied. ‘She’s… lucky.’ A whoop of glee sounded out across the room as Jinny blasted the scenery again. ‘Though, if you want to be picky, yes, she’s a little crazy.’

  ‘How is she even lifting those guns?’

  ‘Trade secret.’ Thea turned her head toward the terrified girl beside her. ‘They seem quite determined to keep you away from this mudball of yours.’

  Kaya opened her mouth to speak and nothing came out, but Jay seemed determined to fill in the gap anyway. ‘Sure do. Makes it sound like she’s not just being paranoid about the buckies, doesn’t it?’

  Thea turned her gaze back to Jay. ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ She lifted her head, and her voice. ‘Stop playing with them.’

  ‘You spoil all my fun!’ Jinny shrieked back, giggling. Her hand cannons roared again, but this time the explosions were wider apart and cold air poured into the bar through a shattered window.

  ‘We move on three,’ Thea said. ‘Out through the window, stay with me. You are going to regret those boots, girl.’

  ‘I can run in them,’ Kaya replied and hoped she really could.

  ‘That would be good,’ Thea said. She closed her eyes. ‘One… Two…’ Her eyes snapped open and she twisted up onto her feet, grabbing Kaya as she went. ‘Three.’

  They were running and the front section of the bar was exploding. Kaya took in the detonations and they looked wrong, like blossoming flowers of superheated gas rather than normal explosions. Plasma? No one had invented a weapon that could fire plasma bolts in an atmosphere. Thea vaulted the window frame and reached out to grab Kaya, and Kaya was suddenly pushed forward as something hit her in the back like a fist. The shock of it had her stumbling as her feet hit the ground, but Thea was lifting and pulling, dragging her onward into the dimly lit outside. Jay caught Kaya’s other arm and lifted, and Kaya found herself being half-carried down the street.

  ‘What about Jinny?’ Kaya asked as she realised that the sound of explosions was receding, but continuing.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Thea replied. ‘She’ll meet us back at the Sword and keep the stink off us until we can get you there.’

  Kaya managed to get her own feet under her and started to concentrate on running, and pain lanced through her shoulder muscles. ‘Ah! What hit me?’

  ‘We’ll worry over that when we get to the ship. Now you concentrate on trying to run and let us keep you upright. And we’re turning right at the next alley.’

  With her back feeling as though it had been a mule kick rather than a punch that had landed, Kaya focused on running and keeping her feet. At least the exercise was keeping her warm, but she really wished she had thought to zip her jacket up before she had been launched out into the cold.

  ~~~

  Thea marched through the spaceport concourse as though she was any other inplaniti, confidence verging on the brash, not a care in the world, certainly not accompanied by someone the local police seemed to have an unusual interest in. And that incident back at the bar with the explosions? Oh, that was someone else entirely.

  ‘I don’t know how you can do this,’ Kaya whispered. ‘I’m scared witless. What if someone–’

  ‘Straighten your back,’ Thea ordered, ‘shut up, and don’t act like a fugitive. It’s all in the attitude. Buckies, more often than not, are looking for people who look like they’re up to no good.’

  ‘I sort of thought we were up to no good.’

  ‘Not until we try to land on your planet. Jinny is up to no good, but she’s not here.’

  Kaya was silent for a second as she concentrated on pulling herself up straight and striding purposefully as both Thea and Jay were doing. Truthfully, she was never going to quite manage that because she was having to hurry a little to keep up with their long strides. ‘I’m worried about Jinny,’ Kaya said eventually.

  Thea flicked her a glance. ‘You’ve known her for all of a minute and you’re worried about her?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Jay said, and then seemed to consider that. ‘I mean, she seemed like she could take care of herself.’

  ‘She can,’ Thea replied. ‘She’s fine. She’s lost the buckies and she’s heading our way. No need to worry, Sora Trevorny, but it’s commendable that you would.’ Thea made a sharp left turn and started down a narrower corridor. ‘Almost there.’

  After a few seconds, windows began to appear in the concrete walls and ships of various shapes and sizes were visible through them. The space outside was an open platform, marked out into various different landing zones. Spaceports tended to be built in out-of-the-way areas for largely historic reasons. Engines requiring reaction mass were rare these days, but having them take off and land in remote regions tended to be a good idea. Ships with pressor drives had no superheated exhaust to deal with and were less likely to explode, disastrously, if something went wrong. But it was only less likely; spaceports still had large, thick walls around the landing areas, just in case, but there was less need for per-ship compartmentalisation.

  Kaya scanned the visible ships, trying to figure out which was likely to be Thea’s. She figured she was looking for something fairly subtle, likely to go unnoticed among other vessels. Probably not especially new. Probably not excessively large, but not too small either. Then again, there was nothing huge parked up in this landing zone. There were two or three chunky-looking, one might say ‘industrial,’ freighters, only capable of making a planetary landing thanks to their pressor drives. More of the craft here were shuttles or light yachts: sleek craft, u
sually winged, with atmospheric capability, but probably incapable of FTL. There was one larger yacht, or Kaya thought it was a yacht. Spaceships were not her strongpoint, but this was one of the larger ships in the area: a sleek, winged dart with visible weapon turrets and a skin that seemed to diffract the light strangely. Unlikely, Kaya figured, and she put her money on a mid-sized, blocky transport.

  Thea was also looking out across the concrete and she frowned. ‘Huh. Wait here for five minutes, then come through to bay seven-A.’

  Jay’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there are a couple of buckies sniffing around the Sword and I want them quietly out of the way before Jinny gets here and takes them noisily out of the way.’ Jay nodded and Thea set off again, moving faster now, as she headed for the ramp down to the landing platforms.

  ‘You don’t trust her now?’ Kaya asked. ‘You suggested her.’

  Jay gave a shrug. ‘I’ve heard she’s good, maybe the best. She’s a bit of a legend, but I’ve never actually met her before.’

  ‘So? She seems to be doing what I need her to do.’

  ‘Yes, she does.’ He paused briefly and then added, ‘But I never told her your family name, so how does she know it?’

  ~~~

  Thea exited through the door out onto the landing zone and immediately reached out for the minds of the two men in uniform who were standing near the lower airlock door of the Sword. There was no specific need to kill either of them. If she could disable them for a while, then they would get to live. If they drew their weapons…

  She focused on masking her presence. Her initial read suggested they were lowest-grade patrol officers, a step up from raw recruits. She was not dealing with the cream of the crop here and, with her training, she could probably walk past them without them noticing, but they were a little too interested in the Sword. There were a few pieces of equipment and storage crates littered around the landing area, enough to let her get close. Close was good. Close might just save their lives.

  At little more than five metres, coming in from behind, Thea slipped out from behind a crate and began to close the distance. A good thing about all the interest the men were paying to the ship was that they were not looking elsewhere, i.e. at Thea. Her mind lashed out at one of them and he reeled, staggering forward.

  ‘Hey! What’s wrong?’ the second man asked, taking a step forward, and Thea hit him from behind. His leg buckled under him as she slammed her foot into the back of his knee. Before he could respond in any further manner, Thea slammed the pommel of the long knife she carried on a thigh scabbard into his skull and he went down. His friend followed a second later, still not recovered from the mental blow he had taken when Thea smacked him in the chin.

  With a smile, Thea pulled the electronic cuffs from their belts and considered where to hide them. It was always nice when the victims brought along their own restraints, but they would be spotted far too easily if she left them out in the open. Her gaze went back to the crate she had been hiding behind. That might be big enough…

  ~~~

  Walking out through the door, Kaya looked around for Thea and saw no one. Jay did not appear to be looking for her; he was checking the markings on the ground. ‘Seven-A should be… that one,’ he said, pointing.

  Kaya looked up and… It was the sleek, dart-shaped yacht with the weird skin. ‘Lost that bet then,’ Kaya muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Any sign of Thea?’ She could see no sign of Thea herself, but maybe he had better eyes. There was a flight of steps, possibly designed to collapse into the hull, extended down to ground level, and the hatch at the top seemed to be open.

  ‘No, guess she’s inside. No sign of buckies either and the hatch is open, so I guess we can trust her. Assuming there was anyone here earlier, of course.’

  ‘Yeah… I guess we should go in.’

  ‘I guess we should.’ Jay’s eyes scanned over the ship. ‘Fairly large for a smuggler. Somewhere around three kilotonnes. Don’t recognise that hull coating. Some sort of stealth system, maybe.’

  ‘Stealth sounds like a good idea.’ Kaya preceded him up the steps which were, basically, individual platforms supported on a pair of bars. They could easily have been folded up and retracted into the hull. They passed through what looked like a very heavy, open hatch of some description before Kaya could step through another hatch with a far lighter door and onto a deck. There was a second door two metres in and she stopped, wondering what to do next.

  That became obvious when Jay followed her up and the airlock they were in closed its outer door and began to equalise the inner and outer pressures. Abertine had a fairly high atmospheric pressure, almost 1.3 standard atmospheres. Kaya had more or less got used to it, but it was a little uncomfortable to breathe. The ship, it seemed, was operating on something closer to standard, and thus closer to the slightly low pressure Kaya had been born into. She was not going to mind that at all, and the ship atmosphere starting to circulate seemed to be a good deal warmer than the outside air. On the other hand, it was getting a lot warmer…

  The heat seemed to affect Jay even faster than Kaya. He was stripping out of his jacket, to reveal only a thin, sleeveless T-shirt beneath it, before Kaya began taking her own jacket off. His jacket did not seem to have much in the way of insulation in it after all. Wherever he came from, it was obviously not especially warm. He wiped sweat from his brow. ‘Keep it warm in here, don’t they?’ he said.

  Kaya giggled. ‘Wait until you see what it’s like on Sadrine’s Drift.’ The pressure shift, apparently, completed and the interior door opened up to let them through.

  Thea’s voice sounded from speakers in the corridor. ‘You two should head up to deck two. There’s an elevator on your right. You’ll find some cabins there and a communal area. I suggest finding a seat to sit in. Jinny will be here in just under three minutes, and I intend to be off the ground and climbing in five.’

  ‘Won’t traffic control have something to say about that?’ Jay asked.

  ‘I’m clearing it through now. Shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll be pulling six gravities on the launch.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kaya said, and she started for the elevator.

  ‘You been through a six-g lift before?’ Jay asked as they rode up in the, not especially spacious, car.

  Kaya was rather aware of the now lightly dressed, firmly muscled man who, thanks to the sudden increase in temperature, was smelling rather obviously male on top of everything else. She decided not to trust her voice and shook her head.

  Jay grinned at her, taking the action as a sign of nervousness. ‘It’s not that bad. We’ll be up and out in… three or four minutes. You can take six for that length of time, no trouble.’

  ‘Uh, right.’

  ‘Then we get to the hard part,’ Thea’s voice added from the car’s speakers just as the door opened. She continued from the corridor outside. ‘It’s thirty-one hours at four gravities to get us beyond the limit.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kaya said again. She knew enough about space travel to understand what Thea was talking about, even if she had no idea of the reasons behind it. Every mass had gravity, and every mass had a hyperspace limit. That was the distance you had to be from it before you could enter hyperspace. Of course, it was only really an issue for large masses. Most planets had a limit of about a tenth of a light second. Stars had far larger limits; the one for Sadrine’s Drift was just under four hundred and sixteen light seconds. However, Sadrine’s Drift was in a far wider orbit than Abertine Prime, so the latter was further from its star’s hyperspace limit. Kaya looked up at the ceiling, which was sort of where Thea seemed to be speaking from. ‘What if they come after us?’

  ‘Then we move to plan B,’ Thea told her. ‘That involves drugs and acceleration pods, but we’ll outrun them, don’t worry.’

  ‘O-okay.’ Part of the stutter had come from walking into the ‘passenger lounge’ of the ship. Kaya had travelled to Abertine in the steerage passenger cabin
of what amounted to a junk freighter for about three days, and then the rest of the way on the cheapest commercial ticket she could arrange. This was just the communal lounge area for the four cabins around it, and it was nicer than her room at home. Four sofas sat about a central open area, each equipped with a gimballed device which was presumably designed to keep your drinks in the glass. Off to one side was a galley of some sort. Another wall was suggestive of an entertainment screen, though it was currently dark. If this was the communal area, what were the cabins like?

  ‘I’ve just received clearance from control,’ Thea announced. ‘Get seated and settled. Jinny is entering the airlock now. She’ll play stewardess as soon as we’re in clear space.’

  The four seats were moving, turning to align themselves to face the nose of the ship, Kaya assumed. She had never done a six-G launch, but she had done a three-G one and that had been uncomfortable enough. The invention of tractor/pressor fields had allowed people to create a form of artificial gravity: essentially, a field was created which pulled things down to whatever surface was the designated floor. That meant you could have gravity where there was none, but providing a means of insulating people from high gravity, or acceleration, was another matter. A field could be engineered to hold you in place against the acceleration of a vehicle, but that just meant you were getting pressed between two equal and opposing forces. It did not stop all the blood rushing to your feet so that you blacked out, and it could, in some conditions, result in you being crushed to death by your own safety system.

  So, basically, your best bet for a high-G take-off was to be facing in the direction you were accelerating, and to learn to handle the stress. Humans could take far more than six gravities without too much difficulty. In the short term. Oh yes. Swallowing, Kaya set off to take one of the seats and wait for Jinny to turn up. Jay sat down beside her, flashing her a grin which she assumed was supposed to make her feel better.

  Jinny’s voice came down the corridor from the elevator a few seconds later. ‘…don’t know if any of them were injured. Couldn’t say I’m that bothered about it anyway.’