Chapter 12
Vin Xohn sat alone in a dark room. A dim light above his head lit up a meter or so around him. Beyond that, everything remained hidden in darkness. The air reeked of unpleasant body odors. On the floor in front of him, he could make out dark splatter stains on the deck. Xohn took them as indications that something awful had happened in this room.
Fear set in. What might they do to him? Were they to hurt him? Would they hand him over to the agents chasing him? He wished he was back in the cell with Lee. Together they might figure a way out of this situation.
Xohn took Lee to be an odd contradiction. He turned out to be somewhat nicer than someone willing to ditch a person in space. He’d helped him find Azera and his prototype—his life’s love and his life’s work.
Deep down, he knew she hadn’t made it. He knew it was a fool’s hope, but he had hoped it all the same. His heart ached all over again. The anguish took over, and tears formed at the bottom of his eyes.
There was a clinking from outside the room, followed by a heavy metal door sliding open with a scraping metal-on-metal sound. The light outside the room wasn’t too bright, but it might as well have been. His eyes couldn’t adjust fast enough. He could only make out a backlit shadowy figure entering the room with magboot footfalls against the deck plating.
The door slid shut, and darkness swallowed the room again. The figure stopped in front of him, still outside the light. Only his magboots were visible.
After a moment, a harsh voice came from the figure in front of him, “You are Vin Xohn, the engineer?”
“Yes,” Xohn answered.
“You’re some kind of inventor.”
“Yes. Where are we? Who are you?”
The harsh voice interrupted him, “I ask the questions. You answer.”
“I’m sorry, I-”
“Are you working for Duryss Administration?”
“No, I-”
“You working with Commander Dekker?”
“Well, we travel together, but-”
“So, you working with him.”
Xohn took a breath before answering. “There was an attack on Foden Dock that we escaped in Glist. Jackson saved us! We’ve been trying to get away from people chasing us. He’s been helping.”
The figure leaned toward him. The dim light revealed a man wearing a military beret. Xohn gasped at the grotesque folds of scarred skin that caught the light and shadow on the left half of his face. It looked as if the left half of the man’s face had been melted.
He pointed at Xohn, “We know everything. Jackson spilled his guts. You are inventor of prototype heat exchanger, and received investments. Records show one of your principal backers being Consular Alden Duryss who invested millions. Our intercepts show small fleet from Duryss Administration in Sietae were dispatched to pick you up on Foden Dock.”
“No!” Xohn slammed his hands on the arms of the chair. “I arranged transport to this region to find my fiancé! It had nothing to do with-”
The man shoved his face in front of Xohn’s. “Commander Dekker already confessed he was under contract with Duryss Administration! You admitted to flying with him!”
“Until I spoke to Mr. Stephenson on Foden Dock, I knew nothing of the Duryss Administration. I’m not working for them. You have to believe me!” Xohn’s voice quavered.
The man backed off but stayed visible in the light. “You were supposed to meet Executive Stephenson on his shuttle, but you never showed up. Instead, you went with Dekker and this drifter Sollinger. By implication, it means-”
“Implication? There was no choice! I was trapped in the wrong bay. I tried to get to Stephenson’s shuttle. I did! The station was damaged, and I was left behind. Sollinger left me!”
An eyebrow on the man’s good side raised at that. “What you mean he ‘left you’? You were on his ship when you were brought here.”
“I mean, he left the station in his ship but left me behind with an emergency RemLok unit.”
“Bwaah!” The man snorted. Then he began a devious sort of chuckle. “Sollinger space you with a gel suit?”
“Yeah! Actually, it smelled quite bad. Out of the bay I just floated away for awhile. Then like a piece of cargo I get grabbed up by a limpet drone.”
“Boohhe!” The man laughed with a chortle. “He pick you up with a limpet?”
“Right!” Xohn half-laughed with him.
The man’s laughter died down, and he snapped back to his serious tone. “What else do you know about Lee Sollinger?”
Xohn’s face dropped, and he sat quietly, thinking about how to respond. “He is a solitary man. He’s sharp. A good pilot. Resourceful. And he’s got a lot of experience in space. A few years back he used to mine this area with an older gentleman. I don’t know what he does now. Some sort of trader, I guess.”
“Is he friendly to Duryss Administration?”
“I don’t think so. But I don’t think he’s particularly friendly with anyone,” Xohn answered wryly.
“What about you? Stephenson went to much trouble to protect you. Will you help us? Help us bring Duryss down?”
“Who is ‘us’?” Xohn turned his head up toward the man standing above him.
“We’re Hyades Resistance, Master Xohn. I’m Tarrek Zyevsky. I’m part of HIP 20935 Resistance cell. I was asked to find out what you know and what side you play on.”
“I don’t play on a side. I’m an engineer, not a freedom fighter.”
“Everyone picks a side.”
“I’m not going to invent weapons. If that’s what you’re after.”
Tarrek shrugged, “That’s not up to me. I’m sure we find ways to use your expertise. Will you help us?”
“I will help how I can,” he said quietly. Then he quickly added, ”But no weapons!”
Tarrek nodded. “I’ll let General Warrick know and arrange quarters for you. A guard will escort you while I bring Sollinger in here for a chat.”
Xohn looked down and nodded. “And Jackson?”
“Oh, he cooperating fully now.”
“But he’s really working for Duryss?”
“It would seem, yes. He spilled everything. We learned about your invention. Attack at Glist 6 rings to get it. Hunt for you. Attack on Foden Dock. All of it.”
“He was behind the attack in Glist 6! You’re certain of it?” The realization dawned on him. Jackson helped kill Azera! His mind struggled to fully work that thought out.
“He was at least a part of it. Duryss was behind it all, I promise you that.” Tarrek backed into the darkness and rapped on the door.
Xohn felt a mix of emotions well up inside himself. He roiled with anger, disgust, and disappointment. He was furious, and yet he knew Jackson to be a nice enough person. He saved them from the fighters at Foden Dock. He helped recover the ThermARC. Was it all a ploy? A cover?
The heavy door scraped metal against metal as it opened. Tarrek said something to one of the guards outside the door.
Xohn stood up slowly. The mix of gravity and this new realization weighed on him. Jackson betrayed them.
They pulled Lee into a dark room, shoving him onto a chair below a solitary dim light. A heavy door slid shut, sealing off the compartment with a heavy scraping sound. The feeling of artificial gravity made his bones ache and his stomach queasy. He was still trying to readjust to the Coriolis pseudo-gravity.
How did he end up in this situation? All he wanted to do was install his new shields, score some good hauls to buy better weapons, and hunt down the scum that killed Vic. The black box from the Phoenix was supposed to put him that much closer to figuring out who was behind it all. But, again he found himself waiting to get justice for Vic. If only he could figure out how to get out of here.
He’d been locked up before. Back in Cooper City, he escaped lockup countless times. Credit skimming on a high-security station like Cooper City meant he ran up against law enforcement often. Back then, he was smaller and able to fit through atmospheric vents. That wasn’t going to work now.
He tried to scan the room, but there was nothing to see. The dim cone of light above him left the rest of the room in total darkness.
The heavy door scraped open again, and a looming, backlit figure took heavy magboot steps inside. Lee noticed the lack of maglock sounds; deck locking wasn’t necessary in the low gravity environment. Whoever it was stayed concealed in the darkness.
“Commander Sollinger.” The figure spoke with an old ruskin-like accent common among descendants of the ancient Russians of Earth. “You are bit of mystery man.”
“Who me?” Lee said.
“Hah. You thinking you funny guy.”
“Eh, looks aren’t everything.”
“Hah. Tell me about it.” The man leaned forward, and Lee recoiled from the sight.
“Ew, gross!” Lee recoiled. ”What the screb happened?”
“This what happens when you don’t cooperate,” the man said with a threatening tone. “Look, we spoke to your friends, Dekker and Xohn. We have good picture of what happened. All we need to know is where you stand with Duryss Administration. Who’s side are you on?”
“Oh, I try to avoid politics whenever possible, especially before whiskey.”
The disfigured man pressed impatiently, “Are you ally or enemy?”
“Neither. I’m on my own side.” Lee said.
“Oh, come now, Commander, you work Hyades region for long time now. You must have opinion.”
“Look, to each their own. They stay out of my business, I stay out of theirs.”
“Your friend Dekker work for them. What about you?”
“No, I told you, I work for me. Look, this is fun and all, but I really gotta get back to-”
The disfigured man shook his head, “That’s not how this works. You answer my questions. If we like answers, we let you go, if not,” he smiled an ugly-looking smile. “Then playtime for me.” He pulled the nearby cart with a tray of instruments into the light.
Lee flinched a bit before he could steel his nerves, “Kinky—but no. I don’t do politics, I don’t pick sides, and I only work for myself. So I couldn’t care less about Duryss or whatever he does.”
“But you work with Dekker. He work for Duryss.”
“Like I said, I couldn’t care less. Why would ‘who Dekker works for’ matter to me?”
“You know nothing about what Duryss Administration is doing out here?” The man sounded incredulous.
“I hear the GalNet reports. He’s trying to shore up some anti-Thargoid defenses or something. He’s just a politician trying to score points with people to hang on to power. That’s what politicians do. Big surprise.”
“Oh, tovarisch, this take all day.” The man took the beret off his head and rubbed his hand through the thick, dark hair on the right side of his head. The left side was more mangled flesh all the way up into his hairline.
Lee was revolted by the sparse hair growth out of the folds of discolored skin on the left side of his head. “Whoa, I can see why you wear the hat,” he remarked without thinking.
The ugly man twisted back away from Lee then drilled a right hook into the side of his face near his temple. A flash, then ephemeral stars danced in his vision before blackness took him.
When he came to, his mangled interrogator said softly, “That was for my brother—this his hat. I don’t wear it to cover up. I’m not embarrassed by my looks. I wear it to honor him.”
The headache clawed into him with a relentless grip, pain shooting from the side of his face. He could barely move his head, so he followed the figure of the man walking around him with his eyes.
“Who are you?” Lee managed to say. “What do you want?” He coughed, then winced from the pain that shot through his head.
“We are the Resistance.”
“Yeah, I heard about you guys.” It still took effort to move his jaw against the pain. ”Hyades Resistance. Militant terrorists, right?”
“Militant yes, but not terrorists. We’re not terrorizing people. Duryss is,” he spat.
“That’s,” Lee had to clear his throat. “Not how the news tells it.”
“Bah, reporters in this region are his pawns. Really tovarisch, you have no idea what’s going on out here, do you?”
Lee shrugged.
The man paced slowly in front of him.
“You want to know how I look like this?” He raised his mangled hand and thrust it in front of Lee’s face.
Lee couldn’t help but flinch back—a mix of reaction to being hit and recoiling from the disgust of the man’s twisted, melted skin.
“I tell you the story. Then you know why I fight against Duryss—why I fight with the Resistance.”
Lee rubbed at the side of his face and felt the swelling. “Guess I don’t have much choice. Mind getting me some ice while I sit here and listen?”
“You need learn to take a hit, tovarisch.” He grabbed a pack from the cart and crumpled it with his fingers, working it until it began to solidify. He quickly forced it to flatten back out and handed it over. Lee gently placed the pack up to his face.
The man paced around him, and his voice came out of the darkness from behind.
“Me and my priyatel,” he began softly in his stilted Ruskin-accent. “You would say, ’buddy’—served together in Sirius Navy. Part of their elite unit, Sirius Navy Wolf Pack. The Wolf Pack trained to be the best fighting force in the galaxy. We survived many battles together. On the battlefield, we became brothers. He saved,” his voice stopped abruptly. “He saved me more times than I can count. Then four years ago-”
“Oh come on tough guy, don’t get all weepy on me. I didn’t realize terrorists used sob stories to torture people,” Lee quipped.
The man spat, reared back his arm as if to strike, but held back, glaring at Lee. “You need to keep mouth shut and you might learn something.”
Lee held his smirk. At least he knew he was getting under the guy’s ugly skin.
The man dropped his arm and continued, “Four years ago, after Wolf pack discharge, we joined security force. We worked lots of guard jobs: VIP protection, courier guard—you name it. This job,” he wagged a finger while walking around Lee. “We hired by Duryss Administration and sent to GPT lab in 69 Up-Tau.”
“Like I know or care what a GPT lab is,” Lee mumbled.
“GPT—General Pharmaceutical Technologies in 69 Upsilon Tauri system, a biological research installation, one of Duryss’s secret assets. While intimidating these grazhdanin geneticists to get their job done, an experimental airborne pathogenic agent leaked out of quarantine. All we knew was it some sort of designer virus, death sentence if infected. I survived by grabbing a suit and spacing myself. I put the suit on while the nearby star fried this half my body. My priyatel didn’t make it.”
He pulled the beret back off of his head. Squeezing it tight in his hand, he held it up to Lee. “This all I have left of him. Duryss called it the ‘cost of security’. I vowed revenge against him and joined Resistance. So I ask you again,” he stood in front of Lee, looking him straight in the eye. “Are you ally or enemy?”
“I told you, neither. I just want left alone. None of it involves me, I don’t care what the guy does,” Lee shifted in the restraints.
“That’s not what I hear.”
Lee cocked his head, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I hear you lost a brother too.”
“Yeah, and I’d like to get back figuring out who was involved.”
“What if I told you I know someone involved?”
“How could you know?”
The man leaned over the cart of instruments; a knowing grin grew on one side. “Take wild guess.”
Lee scoffed and shook his head, “Torture. You’re a sick man.“
“The Resistance requires us to be resourceful. Whatever it takes.”
“Oh come on, torture?”
“When used correctly, it can be– useful tool. That’s how we found out about Duryss’s involvement in the operation that pulverized the ring in Glist 6 three years ago.”
Lee sat up straighter, his brow furrowing, “How do you know that? Where did you hear that?”
“A mutual friend.”
“What friend? Tell me!” He started to get up from the chair.
The man pulled him by the collar, forcing him back into his seat, then leaned close to his ear, “Oh, wait, that’s right, you go alone.” The man walked around in front of Lee, adjusting the beret, ”Well, maybe it’s time you had new friends to help you. You help us, we help you. What’s the score?”
“It’s an old story. A friend of mine was killed. I’d like to see justice served. Simple as that.”
“So, you do have friends. See, you and I are the same. You lost a friend, I lost a brother. Same, yes? Now we can be friends.”
“Look, friend, I don’t know you and–“
“Name’s Tarrek. Tarrek Zyevsky,” he interrupted.
Lee ignored him, “And I don’t really care to. Just tell me who it is and let us go. You can all have a great time going after Duryss, and–”
The man shook his head, chuckling to himself. “You don’t get it. Your friends joined us. Xohn volunteered. Dekker took some, let’s say convincing, to switch sides, but now they both with the Resistance.”
“You tortured him? What do you mean ‘switch sides’?”
“Oh, you didn’t know?”
“Know what?” Lee was at the limit of his patience. He knew he was being toyed with.
The man crossed his arms with a smug look on the side of his face that could look smug.
“Dekker worked for Duryss.”
“Yeah, I got that the first couple times you said that.”
“Sure, sure,” the man admitted. “But I didn’t tell you what he did for them.”
“Well, by all means don’t keep me hanging.”
“He worked escort for delivery of first anti-xeno defensive batteries installed on largest stations in region,”
“Wow, really? Who cares–”
“Then he joined operation to recover Xohn’s prototype.”
“What?” Lee snapped his head around to look at him.
Tarrek gave a single nod.
“You mean in Glist?” His mind tried to process it.
“Yes. He was part of the operation that pulverized the ring in Glist 6 three years ago.”
“Jackson Dekker? Jackson Dekker was at Glist 6?” He shot up from the chair.
That’s why Jackson had been so quiet when he brought up what happened to Vic and Azera! That distant stare. He was there! He already knew.
“That sack of biowaste listened to me, to Xohn knowing what happened, and didn’t say a word. That spineless coward!” Lee shouted.
“And Consular Duryss financed the operation.”
Lee gritted his teeth. His face turned to a vengeful snarl, cheeks twitching. The muscles in his neck tightened to the point his head began to quiver. Dekker and Duryss, it was right there all along, right in front of him.
He shot an arm out, pointing out toward the hall. Then, with a deadly gaze and a low voice of simmering rage, he uttered, “I want five minutes in a room with Jackson Dekker. Just five minutes. Give that to me. You do that—I’ll help the Resistance take down Duryss.”
Tarrek folded his arms with a slight smile visible in the dim light, and said, “Whatever it takes.”