Interlude C

  Vilden Smath took a deep breath and winced, rubbing his pounding head as he finished setting up his backup wrist-com. A message immediately flashed up and he went through the painful process of decoding it.

  Urgent Permitted Packet from: Jeckon to Malvo Station via Corporation Packet Shuttle ‘Greased Lightning’ to: Corporation Airship ‘Free Enterprise’

  Type Encrypted Message

  Type: Family Communique

  From: Functionary Jem Smath

  To: Special Agent Vilgen Smath

  Dear Nephew

  I hear you are venturing into the outback, I remember… Private Code found …

  … Secondary code found … Security check … PRIMARY DEVICE COMPROMISED

  … Backup Device Located … Security check … Passed

  ENTER PASSWORD

  Anotherfkingp*sswrdchange!

  PASSWORD CORRECT … Decoding …

  ***

  TOP SECRET

  ***

  Files Attached: Care of Your Neko; BH Facial Image; Airship Identification Data

  ***

  Acknowledged VVH in custody. We believe your concerns about the subject's health are warranted. Follow the directions in the attached document under ‘Your Neko’s diet’.

  Analysis of blood samples suggests a Stage Three Rejuvenation which to our knowledge is a first for this species. She will make a valuable research subject after she has been questioned. Please ensure she is properly tended and not interfered with.

  Instructions for her extraction will be provided when you arrive in Kacke.

  ***

  Files from the BH landing site were received. Video and interrogation of survivor analysed. Assume BH is alive and in possession of a genuine FYT suit. Analysis of footage suggests he has undergone at least a Stage Two Rejuvenation.

  ***WARNING SUBJECT CLASSED AS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS***

  Mission parameters have now been redefined. Locate and report. Analysis suggests any attempt to capture using locally sourced assets will fail.

  ***

  Analysis of the interview with the survivor agrees with your conclusion that Jeckon Intelligence is most likely the group behind BH’s rescue and BH is a willing accomplice. No recognised Agent on our databases and capabilities are unknown. Request Information.

  ***

  Your mission priorities have changed. Bringing VVH safely to Kacke is now your priority.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Finding and reporting the location of BH is a secondary mission priority. If you can liquidate him without endangering your other missions we highly recommend you do so.

  Consider all assets at your command disposable. Do try to keep Jekonian collateral damage to a minimum.

  ***

  Glory and Profits to the Corporation

  SPACECRAFT TECHNICAL REPORT

  Craft Capabilities… Really? You’re wasting my time with this? It’s an airship and a bodged together one at that. It doesn’t even have a name.

  Envelope - Semi Rigid Composite. Bright orange in colour. 4 gas bags. Relatively new and manufactured on planet by local firm Crystalworks. About as sophisticated as a bag of air can get.

  Propulsion - 4 electric engines of undetermined Free System origin powering propellers FFS.

  Cargo capacity - 2 large containers constructed out of actual fucking shipping containers.

  Gondola - unknown ship bridge module - Nonfunctioning. The size suggests it might have come out of something quite sophisticated.

  Power source - Solar panels with a variety of mismatched backup batteries.

  Navigation - Wrist com, local knowledge & luck?

  Offensive Capabilities - Intelligence suggests the crew have one hand blaster and one projectile rifle with limited ammunition.

  Conclusion - Capability Minus 5. This is the first active craft I have ever given a negative score to. More dangerous to its crew than anyone else. The gondola may be a tough nut to crack so I recommend you target the gas bag and let gravity take its course.

  ***unauthorised insertion***unauthorised insertion***unauthorised

  Oi, Vil, I don’t know who this Brandel guy is but he’s got the immortals here at head office in a right panic. If you can take him out it will be your ticket to the big time. Nice work with the catgirl. Don’t let her out, however nicely she asks and don’t fuck with Jeckon Intelligence.

  ***unauthorised insertion***unauthorised insertion***unauthorised

  After reading the message Vilden sighed again and took a long drink of water as he looked out his window at the slowly emptying Inkloo and the crowd of protesting locals surrounding the Free Enterprise. His whole mission had gone from being a glittering success to an almost unmitigated disaster in a matter of hours. The only silver lining was that he’d accidentally uncovered the Nekomancer. No one had even suspected this rabble-rousing thorn in the side of the Corporations had been hiding on Jeckon. Or, for that matter, guessed that she was the legendary revolutionary Vanessa Von Dack. Probably because anyone who remembered her, still thought she was still safely frozen.

  Not that being unfrozen had done Von Dack any good. Whoever had set up her full immersion pod hadn’t calculated on a Neko occupying it. Or maybe they had and they’d wanted her trapped in her pod, slowly dying of starvation. Even after all this time Von Dack still had a Galaxy full of enemies, not to mention the anti-Neko propaganda some unknown agency was spreading here in the outback. Not that Head Office was much more enlightened, Vilden reflected, looking through the ‘Care of Your Neko’ booklet that didn’t look like it had been updated since Nekos had been openly sold as pets.

  His replacement wrist-com pinged and again he mourned the loss of his gloriously powerful limited-edition Hurch wrist-com which was, no doubt, gracing the furry little wrist of Von Dack.

  Vilden growled in frustration then looked at the Analysis Review he’d commissioned, then went cold as he looked at the image of Brandell Hawk recovered from the corpse’s bodycams at the crash site, then compared it to his personal footage from his visit to the Owner’s Lounge of the Flying Club.

  Vilden took a deep breath and immersed himself in the footage reliving the whole painful meeting again. He quickly realised he’d been skilfully pumped for information by the Hawk’s glamorous girlfriend, who was most likely an agent of the Jeckon Intelligence and the Hawk’s handler, although the look on the girl’s face when the Hawk had turned up made him think their relationship was more than just professional. Or maybe he’d just watched too many of those banned Free System spy thrillers. As research of course.

  And the Hawk, within seconds, had known what he was. Vilden cringed. He’d tried to recruit the most dangerous man in the galaxy just because the natives were saying he was a decent pilot and all round nice guy.

  He paused as a nasty thought occurred to him and he brought up the external footage focusing on the activities of the Hawk and the mysterious Agent before the escape. It took him a good couple of hours and when he was done Vilden lay back on his bed with his head in his hands and groaned in despair. He’d been played and not only him, the whole airship crew had been played. In fact, the whole damn settlement had been played. It looked like Vanessa Von Dack had walked off the airship through the main exit despite the medical officer’s report saying she’d been given enough drugs to knock half a settlement out.

  After a couple of minutes of feeling sorry for himself, he opened his secure com channel and called the shuttle that was still at the Hawk’s landing site.

  “Sir?” The pilot answered almost immediately.

  “Lieutenant. Kill the survivor and proceed immediately to the Ice Plains south of Inkloo. I need you to find this airship and deflate its envelope enough to disable it, but not enough to kill its crew.” Vilden said as he sent a picture of the irritatingly unnamed airship to the pilot’s console.

  “On the Ice Plains? It’s a distinctive airship but… I’ll need more information on its likely location… Sir” Vilden sighed, the whole crew, even before this debacle, was overdue for re-education which he was going to make sure included the correct etiquette for speaking with Special Agents.

  “It left Inkloo an hour ago heading for Kacke. Is that enough information for you?” Vilden asked sarcastically.

  “I can work with that… And err… Sir? What’s that on your face?” Vilden cut the connection with a snarl and glared again at his face in his mirror. Across his upper lip and curled around his cheeks. a moustache had been drawn with the blackout pen he used for redacting passages from hard-copy documents. The ink was not only permanent but etched itself into the material being redacted, which in this case had been his skin. Vilden suspected surgery would be needed to remove it. He put his head back in his hands and opened a voice-only channel to the Captain and told him to fuck the queue and get them the fuck out of this cursed ice cave, and cut the connection before the Captain could object.

  Then he smiled as the thought occurred to him that if the agent really was the Hawk’s girlfriend, Vanessa Von Dack was going to be one unhappy catgirl.

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