Z +0.16.49
Harrison hammered futilely on the door, managing only to propel himself backwards.
He heard them behind him, a rhythmic buzz-thunk, buzz-thunk of magnetic boots on the steel plate floor of the corridor. He spun, bringing his pistol up.
A bright flash. Intense heat, like his fingers were on fire. He yelped, let go the Nambu, and saw it had been neatly holed halfway down the barrel. The gun drifted at the end of its power cord, smoking, useless, as Harrison grimaced and tucked his fingers beneath his armpit.
He looked up and was nearly blinded by two halogen lights shining directly in his face. Squinting, he saw two snow-white figures standing in the hallway, heavy-barreled laser rifles held easily in their arms, their faces hidden by the mirrored visors of their helmets.
Slowly, he raised his hands.
The two men stopped. Kept their rifles pointed casually at his chest. “We have a prisoner,” said one, his voice distorted and robotic in the helmet’s mic. Harrison realized the man wasn’t talking to him. “At least one, maybe two. Headed for the small craft bays.” A pause. “Yessir.”
The helmet jerked a little and Harrison felt the man was looking at him. “Dump the belt,” he said. “Follow me, he’ll be behind you,” the helmet nodded in the direction of the other man. “Any sudden moves, he’ll shoot. Move too slow, he’ll shoot. You shout or cry out—”
“He’ll shoot, yes, alright, I see where this is going,” said Harrison, slowly unbuckling the Nambu’s battery pack.
“—He’ll shoot,” said the man, implacable. “Move.”
They walked through a twisting maze of corridors, most unlit, some with faint emergency lighting glowing along the ceiling or floor. Harrison thought they were heading aft, though he couldn’t be sure. He kept an eye out for the “X” he had burned to mark the passage to the S-7A’s berth, but never saw it.
Despite promises to the contrary, he wasn’t shot, though the man behind him had pulled out a mini stunstick that provided a lightning shock with each blow. He liberally applied it to Harrison’s legs and back whenever he felt Harrison was moving too slow, which seemed to be most of the time.
They went through a hatch and down a ladder. The first man went down while Harrison and the other waited at the top. When he reached the bottom, he waved for Harrison to follow. As Harrison went down, he began to feel a tug on his feet, growing stronger with each rung. His arms grew heavy. Gravity. They were on the grav deck.
A short walk later, Harrison was led into a small office. Everything was in mirror-polished black. A Spartan desk, with a noteputer positioned perfectly in the center. A large 2D image of Terra, a blue-white globe in a sea of dark. A tall black chair, on which sat a white-robed man, with a long, deeply-lined face and wire-framed glasses. His grey hair was brushed straight back from his high forehead, and he sat ramrod straight in the chair, his movements sharp, precise, like a hawk.
He was looking down at the screen of the noteputer, but glanced up at Harrison over the tops of his spectacles when the door opened. He tutted once, pointed at a spot on the floor in front of the desk, and returned to the noteputer.
The ministick lashed out and hit Harrison in the back of his knees, driving him to the floor. A second blow caught him between the shoulder blades when he tried to get up. Harrison decided staying on the floor was a better idea.
The noteputer clicked, the only sound in the room for several long minutes. Harrison had plenty of time to appreciate the smooth coolness of the floor, of the excellent view he had of the underside of the desk. It was spotless.
“A pirate,” a voice said. It was cold, clear, each word a sentence on its own.
Harrison risked a look up. The man behind the desk regarded him coolly. “We’re not pirates,” Harrison said sullenly.
“No?” one eyebrow arched. “You board a ship unannounced, uninvited, and proceed to sabotage its controls and murder an unarmed member of its crew. Perhaps this is normal behavior in whatever squalid system you come from, but we at ComStar call that piracy.”
“We thought it was abandoned,” he protested.
“And when you discovered it was not, what did you do?” A bony hand waved his objections away. “I despair for our species, truly, I do.” The man sighed deeply. “I come from Caldwell, do you know it? I doubt it. Caldwell is blessed with few resources, and the only notable animal is a kind of shrew, a scavenger, a rodent that lines its nest with bright, shiny things to attract a mate—glass, crystal, emeralds, diamonds, it makes no difference to the shrew. That’s what you are, you people. Scavengers. Come to seize whatever pretty glittery thing you can find with no understanding or conception of what you’ve found.” The man stood, slowly, like an origami unfolding, and turned to look at the image of Terra. “Do you know where we stand?”
Harrison was tempted to point out he wasn’t doing much standing, but thought better of it. The other man was silent. An answer seemed expected. “A battleship,” he said.
“The Zughoffer Weir, to be precise,” the man said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
Harrison shook his head, then realized the other wasn’t looking at him. “No.”
The man turned to face him. “It was one of the ships that left with Kerensky,” he said. “And yet here we find it, evidently damaged after a battle with an evenly-matched or even stronger enemy, empty of crew, drifting in space. And the markings—unlike anything in the old StarLeague! The Exodus was attacked, or fought among itself. Don’t you see? This has implications, implications that go far beyond your muddy dreams of fame and fortune.” He threw up his hands. “And here you come, barging like a Caldwell ratling into the greatest discovery this century.”
There wasn’t much Harrison could say to that, so he didn’t. Only. “Why keep it a secret?”
The man looked at Harrison sharply, poised to speak, when the intercom in the office buzzed. “Yes?” he demanded angrily.
“Sorry to interrupt, Precentor Cole,” it said. “But we’ve captured another prisoner.”
