Starship Swindlers: Outsiders Trilogy Book 2 Read online

  Starship Swindlers

  Book 2 of the Outsiders Trilogy

  A Novel

  Alex Kings

  Copyright © 2019 Alex Kings

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be redistributed,

  photocopied or sold without the author's permission.

  To keep up with new releases and have access to extras, visit the author's website at www.AlexKings.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Painting

  Chapter 2: Scenes from a Spaceship

  Chapter 3: Assassins

  Chapter 4: Another Job

  Chapter 5: Tragic News

  Chapter 6: Opera House

  Chapter 7: Escape Strategies

  Chapter 8: Hurry Up

  Chapter 9: A Daring Escape

  Chapter 10: Interviews

  Chapter 11: There May Be a Way

  Chapter 12: Will They Explode?

  Chapter 13: Matter of Honour

  Chapter 14: Interrupted

  Chapter 15: At Prices Like These

  Chapter 16: Blind Spot

  Chapter 17: Silence

  Chapter 18: Paper

  Chapter 19: Test Subject

  Chapter 20: Surprise Attack

  Chapter 21: Excuses

  Chapter 22: FTL Attack Drone

  Chapter 23: The Mission is Not Yet Over

  Chapter 24: Cutting the Net

  Chapter 25: Surgery

  Chapter 26: You Could've Told Us That Before

  Chapter 27: The Red Tide

  Chapter 28: Pretty Insightful

  Chapter 29: Captured

  Chapter 30: Crash

  Chapter 31: Advanced Aerial Training

  Chapter 32: Very Succinct

  Chapter 33: We Have No Choice

  Chapter 34: Cocktail

  Chapter 35: I Will Not Be Laodicean's Pawn

  Chapter 36: Black Hole

  Chapter 37: Barfight

  Chapter 38: Perfume Bottles

  Chapter 39: Hive Bellicose

  Chapter 40: You Are Fascinating

  Chapter 41: Glaber Technicians

  Chapter 42: That Was Anticlimactic

  Chapter 43: Pinned Down

  Chapter 44: Chase

  Chapter 45: Superheated Plasma Dance

  Chapter 46: Lamb

  Chapter 47: Things Were Simpler Then

  Chapter 48: Expressive

  Chapter 49: Conference

  Chapter 50: Fire Strider

  Chapter 51: Pipes

  Chapter 52: Such Wonders

  Chapter 53: At Least Twenty Minutes

  Chapter 54: These Two Again

  Chapter 55: A Long Walk

  Chapter 56: Auto Repair

  Chapter 57: Fifty Million

  Chapter 58: Seating Arrangements

  Chapter 59: The Station

  Chapter 60: We Can Work Together

  Chapter 61: Really Should Have Thought This Through

  Chapter 62: Broken Bones

  Chapter 63: A Burgeoning Conscience

  Chapter 64: Overhead Search

  Chapter 65: Voice

  Chapter 66: I Hope This Works

  Chapter 67: Almost Defunct

  Chapter 68: Home Again

  Chapter 69: Suit of Armour

  Chapter 70: Strategically Stupid

  Chapter 71: Your Choice

  Chapter 72: Done

  Chapter 73: Robot Arms and Conveyer Belts

  Chapter 74: If You Still Want To Be A Spanner In The Works

  Chapter 75: The Department For Interstellar Affairs

  Chapter 76: I Wish They Wouldn't Do That

  Chapter 77: Success

  Chapter 78: Chaos and Confusion

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1: Painting

  The Outsider crouched on the smooth granite of a small spaceport on Ghroga, the Varanid homeworld. Sunlight drenched everything. Occasional gusts of wind whipped dust along the ground. Shuttles hovered. A small freighter floated in the air for a few seconds before shooting upwards suddenly and vanishing into the sky. Volcanic mountains lay on the horizon behind the town.

  Eloise and Olivia sat side-by-side a few metres off the ground on effector-field-supported seats, painting the hull. One of Kaivon's recent modifications, a new sensor array, had replaced part of the old hull, and Eloise had taken the opportunity to repaint the Outsider's sigil – a red fox prowling through the snow.

  Eloise picked out details of shading in the fox's tail. Her electric blue dress rippled in the wind. When the occasional fleck of paint landed on it, nanotech hidden in the Tethyan silk absorbed it in seconds. Beside her, Olivia, wearing a white shirt and black trousers, went with the simpler task of making sinuous white strokes to fill out the field of snow.

  “I kind of want to paint those volcanoes,” said Olivia, offhand.

  “You know, I thought the exact same thing the first time I came to Ghroga,” said Eloise. “Oh, that reminds me. You have to see the Great Storm before we leave.”

  They spoke rarely, instead mostly content to listen to the nouveau blues piped through their comms.

  Across the spaceport, Rurthk walked alongside Kaivon. Rurthk, a Glaber, was tall, and by the standards of most of the galaxy, spectacularly ugly. Folds of leathery, greyish-pink skin stood out against his giant incisors, which were like foot-long knives of enamel. Immune to the discomfort of warmth, he wore an armoured black coat. Even now, well-off and able to take only the best jobs for his crew, he seemed weary and walked with his back slightly bent.

  Kaivon, his suit a stack of three dodecahedrons studded with LEDs and ports and panels, glided a few inches off the ground on effector fields. He took the thin, transparent slip of a tablet out of his suit and gave it to Rurthk.

  “It's a decommissioned Varanid freighter,” Kaivon said. “Jump capable. Eight hundred cubic metres cargo volume.”

  Rurthk gestured at the tablet, and it expanded in his hand to a reasonable size and displayed the ship Kaivon was talking about, with detailed specs by the side.

  “Crew complement of two. Nineteen thousand credits,” said Kaivon.

  Rurthk nodded. “I'm still wondering about expanding,” he said. He'd gone over the figures. With their current luck, their growing network of contacts, and the money from their encounter with Sweetblade a couple of months ago, it made sense to get another ship and hire a few people to crew it.

  “We're scarcely becoming an interstellar conglomerate,” said Kaivon. “And if we want to avoid heists and giant organised crime gangs, this is the way to get richer.”

  Rurthk nodded.

  “Besides, it could be helpful to have another ship to handle … legitimate jobs.”

  “This is a legitimate job,” said Rurthk.

  “And how long will that last?”

  Rurthk gave Kaivon a look. He read through the tablet, then handed it back to Kaivon. “I suppose it can't hurt. Buy it. We can start looking for crew when we've finished this mission.”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Kaivon, and glided away.

  A little over an hour later. Rurthk returned to the Outsider pushing a stack of artworks on a pallet. His customer, a smaller than average but still gigantic female Varanid, walked alongside him. The artworks were protected by a clear film of smart matter. Rurthk glanced at the top one. He could make neither head nor tails of it.

  “One of our best artists,” the Varanid said. She was a curator, apparently. Most of the works were going to an exhibition on Tethya, with a few to be sold later.

  “I shall have to take your word for it,” said Rurthk.

  “Not all aliens can appreciate his work.
Nor … to be fair … can all Varanids.”

  “This is the one,” Rurthk said, turning towards the Outsider.

  It stood, hodgepodge and asymmetric on the granite. Evidently Eloise and Olivia had finished their work and taken a shuttle to look at weather patterns.

  “An … impressive design. I like the decoration.” said the Varanid. She cocked her head. “And this is how you make your living? Ferrying goods back and forth across the galaxy?”

  “For the most part, yes,” said Rurthk.

  “You must do well,” said the Varanid. “I saw the newscast last week about rising tensions between the Glaber Territories and the other nations. Official trading lines cut. But I guess that, being a Glaber, you can trade across the border into the Glaber Territories without any problems.”

  “I try and avoid the Glaber territories,” said Rurthk. They reached the ship, and he hit a button. The cargo ramp lowered, halting and squeaking.

  “Oh!” said the Varanid. “That was insensitive of me. I'm sorry!”

  Rurthk waved a hand. “It's fine,” he said, pushing the pallet up the ramp. “I make a perfectly good living as it is, and if the Glaber go to war, it's none of my concern. No trouble on the horizon for me.”

  “Yes, well, uh, good journey,” said the Varanid. She turned and hurried off.

  Rurthk looked back the way she'd come and shrugged. He unloaded the artworks and stowed the pallet away. He hit the door to close the ramp, and as it was lifting, he murmured to himself, “No, no problems on the horizon.”

  Chapter 2: Scenes from a Spaceship

  In the GEA central office, Investigator Laodicean checked the latest updates, piped to him through his neural link.

  “Our quarry is on Ghroga,” he told Illipa.

  Illipa yawned. She was hanging by her tail and left foot from the ceiling. “That's nice,” she said. “What are they doing there?”

  “Loading artwork to transport to Tethya.”

  “Stolen?”

  “As far as I can tell, no.”

  Illipa sprang into action suddenly, reaching out to her terminal. He fingers danced across the controls too fast to see. It was something that had always impressed Laodicean about her performance – using the ancient, clumsy interface that all the land species preferred, she was still faster than Laodicean, working at the speed of thought with his neural link.

  “Legitimate,” she said. “The artworks are going to a gallery in Tethya city. We could actually be there in ten minutes or so.”

  “I would rather not,” said Laodicean.

  Illipa's ears flattened against her head. She sighed.

  “It is part of the investigation, however tangential” Laodicean hurried to explain. “However … I would be open to seeing another exhibition. On Cantor, perhaps?”

  Illipa grinned. “As soon as we have a spare moment.” She turned back to the terminal, then to Rak, who was glumly checking his own terminal a couple of metres away. “How is your Glass Beach thing going?”

  “No progress,” said Rak. “Not a peep. I'm starting to think they're untraceable. We've alerted the Petaur and Albascene governments, and they're grateful, but they have no intel.” He growled and tapped his terminal listlessly. “I'm starting to feel like a conspiracy theorist. At least you two have something concrete to do.”

  “You'll find them eventually,” Illipa said with a grin. “And become everyone's hero.”

  “That thought is the only thing sustaining me,” said Rak.

  Illipa turned back to Laodicean. “Even if the Outsider's current mission is legitimate, we have six criminal activities since we started watching. Plenty to lever them with. And we haven't seen any dealings with Sweetblade, so it seems unlikely that we'll get further developments just by watching. So when are we going to move?”

  “When we began, I defined a period of time we would watch,” said Laodicean. “I would prefer to stick to it. But it is nearly over. You are right – we have sufficient leverage. So we move in three days.”

  *

  The Outsider accelerated away from Ghroga until the planet became a dusky-orange marble in the distance. Its jump engine hummed, plucked a microscopic wormhole from spacetime, and inflated it. The starfield ahead rippled, quivered, then was pushed aside by the growing wormhole mouth. As soon as it was big enough, the mouth shot towards the outside, engulfing it, then shrinking into nothing. The Outsider creaked and whined as it was compressed during the passage. It emerged sixty lightyears away, where Mero set up the next set of jump calculations.

  He hung from a structural member on the wall, putting in commands with his other foot and wondered idly what he was still doing here. With his large eyes, pointed ears, cream-coloured fur, and velvety skin-flaps for gliding linking his arms and legs, one might think Mero was cute. If he wasn't wielding a gun or a knife, this illusion might persist right up until one tried talking to him.

  The crew had taken a million credits from Tommy Egliante's servers. But having gone towards several military-grade shuttles, upgrades for the Outsider, and then having been divided six ways, the final cut wasn't quite as life changing as he'd hoped.

  Still, it was a significant amount. Mero had placed most of it in a secret account, and used the rest to buy a personal shuttle, a variety of intoxicants and a variety of prostitutes.

  That still left the question why he remained on the Outsider rather than, say, buying his own ship and piloting that. He swung over the back of the chair and left the jump calculations to cook. The truth was something he could barely admit to himself: He liked it here, when they weren't being hunted down by mob bosses – and he doubted he could find another position quite as nice, even if he were captain of his own ship.

  On his way down the corridor to the observation lounge, he passed Rurthk, and grunted a brief acknowledgement.

  Rurthk was returning to his quarters, a carton of fermented blood in his hand. He was stooping slightly under some imaginary weight. In his quarters, he lay back on the sofa and with a subvocal command to the computer activated the speakers. Guttural Glaber singing sounded against ancient rhythms. He took a drink and thought of the Glaber territories despite himself.

  As much as he would have liked to tell himself otherwise, he did worry about the Glaber, about what would happen. He usually managed to occupy himself with more pressing worries – about business, about the ship, about the crew – but the Varanid's comment had brought it to the front of his mind. It was looking more and more likely the Glaber Territories, with their tenuous alliance between powerful hives, would end up in a war with the other powers. Since the end of the War of the Ancients, when the Glaber had been the only species not given monopole cannons, there had been a tension. It had risen slowly through the decades.

  He tried to remind himself that the tangles of galactic politics weren't his concern, that the Outsider and the open vacuum were more his home than any planet in the Glaber Territories, but it didn't help.

  He crushed the empty carton and went to get another.

  In the engine room, Kaivon stood basking in the monopole reactor's hum. His effector fields were off, and his suit stood silent and stationary like an abstract sculpture. Half a dozen cables linked it to the surrounding machinery. He was dead to the outside world – all his sensory input was directed at the ship, at monopole injection rates, reactor temperature, jump engine status, bulkhead stresses, life support balances …

  What did Kaivon worry about?

  Only how well his new modifications were interacting with the rest of the Outsider's systems. And even that was more of an entertaining puzzle than a real worry. Kaivon, at least, was satisfied.

  Dr. Wolff was in the medibay, working on matters largely unrelated to medicine. Having found he had little to do when he wasn't patching up bullet holes and burns, he had taken to working on procurement.

  He was overweight with thinning grey hair, dressed in a forgettable grey suit, his large hands moving ponderously over the terminal. He smile
d, sometimes murmuring to himself, sometimes whistling fragments of old tunes.

  An icon on the terminal flashed to tell him he had a new message. It had come via bulkwave.

  Wolff stopped whistling, his curiosity piqued. He almost never received mail from off-ship. He called up the message. It was marked urgent.

  When he saw the title – The lab is active – and the sender, his smile vanished entirely.

  He opened the message, read it through once, twice, three times.

  “Oh,” he whispered, “shit.”

  Chapter 3: Assassins

  The fifth time people came to kill him, Felix Zino decided he'd had enough.

  They came to his temporary accommodation, an apartment aboard a backwater space station in orbit around a backwater star. It was the middle of the night, local time. The assassins evaded or disabled two of his security measures, but unwittingly tripped the third.

  Zino stood in the total darkness of his bedroom, already dressed in a white suit and wearing nightvision goggles, and watched as two of the assassins stepped silently into his bedroom. They were human. They wore nightvision goggles too. One took out a gun and fired it into the shape under the sheets.

  At the same time, Zino stepped out from behind the wardrobe and threw a knife into the back of the man's skull. He died believing his mission was successful. He began to collapse, and the second assassin began turn to him. Then another knife embedded itself in the second assassin's spine, positioned to paralyse him from the waist down without killing him.

  Zino ran towards the assassin, wrenched his arms behind his back before he could touch his comms, and lowered him to the ground. He jammed a lump of metal in the man's mouth, to stop him from issuing a subvocal command, biting a possible suicide pill, or simply calling out for his allies. Then, at last, he jabbed a tranquilliser into the man's neck.

  He retrieved his knives

  Two neutralised. That left another two.

  Zino stood behind the door. When the third assassin came through and saw his colleagues lying on the floor, he started forward. Zino came up behind him and slit his throat.