Chapter 9

I made it with fifty minutes to spare.

I stopped for a moment at the top of the road that emerged from the jungle and was now descending to an oceanside valley.

There, at the shore of an ocean, bathed in brilliant bright light from many thousand floodlights, the enormous construction site of a future spaceport. Humongous machines shifting mountains of dirt, unfazed by a dense curtain of rain. Robots stomping through mud and water carrying raw materials to the containerized nanite factories who in turn fabricated Duro Crete and other things needed to complete the massive undertaking.

The huge eight thousand meter Gulliver freighter could not be overlooked. It had made planetfall and landed next to the construction project in the ocean. The waters didn’t even reach to the actual hull.

Gulliver freighters came in many different configurations. There were tankers, ore freighters or in this case an open freighter with an enormous flat cargo bed to transport very large items. Such as space stations, orbital forts, other space ships, entire settlements or in this case a multi-level prefabricated spaceport terminal, complete with command and control tower.

It had already been unloaded and was in the process of being lowered into the prepared enormous Duro Crete cavity.

Stacks of containers had already been loaded on the deck, with a stream of more being added.

The Detroit Brand Viper Intergalactic, an elegant and fast bird of 68 feet did barely register and was almost completely hidden by the growing stacks of large brown containers.

That bastard would slip out of the system just fine like that, the fighter jocks in their fancy Wolfcrafts not even paying particular attention to a Union freighter leaving a Union planet. I had runners use similar schemes and tricks before, those were the more successful ones.

Following the descending road, I was stopped by a modern hard light gate projection that glowed semi-solid yellow, while bright red letters informed that this was an access restricted site.

As modern as the gate was, the shiny wet Guardsman Mark IV that kept his sensors on the gate and the traffic was an older and thankfully less intelligent model. Simply sneaking in behind a cargo train would not work here, but what would work for the murdering son of a gun from Gullster’s and his Viper might just work for me as well.

Not that I had much time to waste, I was cutting it close.”

I left the Monoflash behind and rode concealed under a heavy cargo tarp, hugging a load of barrels past the robot and onto the construction site. Thankful for the fact that it wasn’t a Sentrymaster 900 or even an SII Doberman.

I rolled off the cargo bed and found myself in front of a bright yellow painted office container. A Shaill was arguing with a brown pelted Stangian about some sort of Tee-Exx 644 connectors that should have been delivered and were needed to attach some sort of cables and service lines to the just delivered terminal before it could be lowered completely.”

While the Shaill, appeared to have some supervisor position and the Stangian tried to explain why the big piece was still sticking halfway out of the hole, I used the moment to slip past them and inside the container.

It smelled of coffee, something very moldy perhaps the Shaill’s lunch and damp clothing. A central hip-high holo tank displayed the yet to be completed spaceport. Some sections were solid while other areas of the project were ghostly transparent and had a reddish tint. The spaceport terminal shown in green was just as the real one only halfway in the big hole, held there by tractor beams, Artigrav cranes and cushion fields.

I slipped into a yellow and green bio seal suit, that was hanging on a hook by an open locker. Added a yellow raincoat with the construction companies logo on the back. Out of a whim, I grabbed one of the rugged construction-grade PDDs, switched it to clipboard mode and headed back out.

Sneaking the other way around the container, I almost collided with a Botnaar, wearing his version of the same things in yellow and green. He stopped and wanted to say something when I yelled at him.”Did you find those Tee-Exx 644? The manifest says they were sent with the terminal.”

“Now you too, Sir? Why is it with your supervisors? When we...”

“Never mind that now. We’re losing time here. Have you double-checked the freighter?” “The freighter? It was unloaded hours ago. There was nothing left on the deck.”

“I better double-check. If they have been overlooked and ride back into space we going to be fekked.”

He growled.”Couldn’t hurt to look, I suppose. I called a drone. The Brummer is about to lift off, so you better be off by then.”

A Cargo drone with a partially open personnel cage was whisking me through the night and up past rain-wet walls of a man-made mountain.

I had the drone drop me off, about 200 meters from the now mostly concealed Viper. There were still drones in the air bringing more material. I still had some time I hoped.

Drawing the TKU but holding it concealed, I went closer. The Viper had its boarding ramp open and in the light cone that came from the inside, I saw Shin Tsuro, the sheriff and postmaster of Gullster’s Paradise.

There was no other way to approach, so I tried it head-on. Hoping he would mistake me for a construction worker or freighter crewman.

“Ah, you came!” He greeted me. I was a surprise that he appears not only recognized me already but expected me. He continued to speak.”I wanted to pay you a bonus for your excellent service. I hate to leave loose ends.”

Ah, that made sense he was thinking I was the man, I left bleeding on the floor at the Cool Steam tavern. A loud siren drowned every sound followed by a voice giving a ten-minute warning and giving crew and robots the command to check the cargo deck.

I got closer, Tsuro pulled what appeared to be a credit cube out of a pocket.”Hurry up, Kartan. I don’t want to be caught on an open deck when this monster lifts off.”

Keeping the TKU behind my back, I had to step into the light and he instantly recognized me. His face fell and he hissed.”You!”

I swung the TKU around and aimed at him.”I wanted to take you in alive and see you hanged, but...”

The Credit cube in his hand spat something and whatever it was stung my nose. I instantly lost muscle control and dropped to my knees.

That shows you, my friend that all those stupid Virtu-shows where the villain talks too much have it right, I had my gun out, identified the sucker long before he had seen me. I could have simply shot him right there and then.

He laughed.”Ah, Mr. Marifou the tough head hunter. You are nothing but an amateur. I told them you would not be a problem and I was right. Now you going to ride this monster into space, paralyzed. I wonder what will happen first. Will you freeze or suffocate to death? I wanted to tie loose ends by rewarding my local helper, but you’ll do just fine in his stead.”

“You wanted to kill me?” A new voice came out of the dark and the Hermanite stepped into the light.

The man knelt next to me, without taking his eyes of the postmaster of Gullster’s Paradise and pressed my AutoDoc against my arm.”That’s yours. You saved my life with it.”

He held out his mace.”I knew there was something weird about you offering me more credits if I would come.” He swung his Morgan Slayer shattering the hand with the fake credit cube.”Now I going to beat you to a pulp!”

Tsuro yelled in pain.

The loud siren drowned every sound once again and the voice gave the Imminent lift-off warning.

From the open boarding ramp, a Shiss appeared and fired an energy weapon. The man from Herman’s World fell backward with a fist-sized hole burned through his chest.