Read Scourge: Book Two of the Starcrown Chronicles Page 26

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  “I still think you were too heavy handed with him,” Morgana said quietly. We were sitting in the back of a hovercab on our way back to the ship. As the driver wove his way through the busy streets we kept watch for anything suspicious but no one seemed to be following us.

  “I disagree,” I said. Although the privacy panel was closed we weren’t certain the driver couldn’t hear us so we made sure to speak in low voices. “I think he had to buy our cargo. I’m positive it was Sloan’s ship that he was expecting to make this run, so without us he’s stuck.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Morgana said. “Smith is dangerous. He’s the point man for a very powerful organization. He’s not someone you want to go around antagonizing.”

  “Actually, that’s why I was pushing back against him so hard. I want him and his people to think that they’re dealing with someone who is just as hardcore as they are. They’ve got to believe that we’re every bit as ruthless as the other crews they’ve recruited if we want them to extend the same invitation to us.”

  “I think the cargo we showed up with has already gone a long way toward establishing our credentials,” Morgana said. “If his people are as well connected as we think, they already know what happened to the original transport and its crew.”

  “Exactly. And he has to believe that we’re the ones who actually pulled off that attack. He would have been suspicious if I hadn’t stood up to him.”

  Morgana pursed her lips briefly in thought. “Maybe so, but I still think you need to be a little less aggressive in your dealings with him. Getting into a chest thumping contest with him is only going to make him get his back up. And I can tell that he’s the type who likes to keep track of the slights that others do to him so he can pay them back later.”

  I knew she had a point, but there was something about Smith that just rubbed me the wrong way. And to be honest, I really enjoyed making him squirm.

  “You’re probably right,” I admitted, “but it did confirm that his people are very interested in meeting us. I agree with you that Smith is just the front man for the Brotherhood. This mysterious ‘associate’ of his has to be the man he reports to. We cost them a lot of Solars with that cargo we intercepted. They’ve got to be dying to know how a beat up old scow like ours managed to pull off that job.”

  According to what I had learned from Sloan, the pirate ships operated independently once they put to space. For security reasons there was never any communication between Smith and the ships working for him until they returned to Toula for new target assignments. As a result, Smith would have no idea what had happened to Sloan’s ship or how we had come into possession of what should have been his cargo. And with Smith and his people in the dark we were free to create any back story we wanted to explain how we came into possession of that cargo.

  When I had laid out my new plan to Morgan to have ourselves recruited by the pirate network, he was even more upset than he had been when he learned about us taking down a pirate sub on our own. Our heated conversation had burned up the hyperwaves for quite a while as we argued the issue back and forth. Eventually however, in spite of his misgivings, Morgan finally admitted that my plan had a good chance of succeeding.

  Fortunately, he didn’t know just how much I was going to have to amend what I was planning to do.

  The original plan had been for us to use the reported slaughter of the transport’s crew as proof of our own ruthless nature. Seeing us as vicious cutthroats, I had expected Smith to make the offer for us to join the pirate Brotherhood right there in the bank. It had seemed like a fairly straight forward plan. What I hadn’t counted on was being sent off world to an undisclosed location as part of the recruiting process. Apparently we were victims of our own success. Whoever was pulling Smith’s strings wanted to meet with me personally. That was the only reason I could see for his sending us away like this. If I was correct, our destination had to be the pirate’s main base. And if I could pull off this meeting without getting us all killed it would be an incredible intelligence coup. But heading off into the unknown was extremely risky. As fast and powerful as the Prometheus was, it was not indestructible. We would have to be on guard the entire time.

  Of course this change in plans was not something I would be discussing with Morgan. If the pirates discovered a discrepancy with our cover story they could decide that the simplest solution would be to just make us all disappear. Morgan was going to blow a fuse when he learned the kind of danger I was putting us in. But I felt that the chance to move up another rung on their organizational ladder was too important an opportunity to pass up. After months of dead ends we were finally in a position to make a major inroad into the pirate network and I was determined to see where this lead took us.

  As the cab pulled up to the entrance of our spaceport berth, I hoped that I was making the right call. The lives of everyone aboard our ship were on the line. Each of them had known the risks when they agreed to come with me on this mission and I knew that they would follow whatever course I chose without reservation. But that only made it all the more important for me to make the right decision.

  My attention returned to our surroundings as we arrived at our berth. There was a lot of activity taking place around the ship. I paid the driver and we climbed out onto the neocrete field. As we stepped through the gate I studied the three flatbed transports lined up beside our ship. The shipping containers from our hold had been lowered onto their cargo beds. Although we had only been carrying three containers, the value of the high-end electronics made it a rich cargo nonetheless.

  Lucky was talking to the driver of the lead transport and scrawled his signature on the driver’s flatpad as we came up to them. Taking his pad back, the driver tipped his head to us as we approached and climbed up into the cab. A moment later his transport’s engine powered up and his rig lifted off the ground on its suspension field and started forward.

  “Well, the easy part is done,” Lucky said, turning to us as the transports got under way. “Now I just have to shoehorn all those new containers into our hold.” He nodded toward the fence behind me. When I turned around I saw a line of transports idling just outside our berth. Once the trucks carrying away our sold cargo had cleared the bay entrance, the line of waiting transports started in. I counted fifteen trucks in total, each one bearing a full size shipping container. Our hold could accommodate a stack of three containers that size, with a maximum of five in each row. It would be crowded but with careful loading we would be able to squeeze the entire shipment aboard. As the first transport moved into position underneath the waiting loading arm, I wondered what we would be transporting for them this time.