The Dragon Writers Collection Read online

  There was a long pause as the nurse walked up and stood in front of him. She searched his eyes and saw Heck’s silent plea. Nurse Chloe knew Heck Thomas very well. They had a romantic relationship that Heck had ended when things began to get serious. He hated himself for doing it, but he couldn’t commit to her and that was what she needed. Heck had sensed that Chloe would want him to retire and settle down, and that was something Heck Thomas wasn’t going to do. For anyone.

  “Alright then,” she said quietly. “I think I’d better go to the nurse’s station. Why don’t you grab a snack in the break room for you and your dep, I mean your prisoner? It’s nice and quiet in there and you can relax. No one will know you took a break from your duties.“

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Heck said with heartfelt gratitude. “That means a lot.” He watched as Chloe walked away from the break room and he wondered if he’d ever see her again to thank her for turning a blind eye. As she left he saw something sparkling on her left hand and knew she’d helped him out of the kindness of her heart. She had moved on.

  “Come on lover boy!” Dooly shoved him with his shoulder. “I’m hungry!”

  Heck and Dooly slipped into the break room and locked the door. Dooly took off his handcuffs and shoved some snacks into his pockets while Heck walked looked for the trash chute.

  When he found it he looked at his partner. “Would you like a glass of wine with that, sir?”

  Dooly glared at his boss as he shoved a donut into his mouth, he didn’t bother to answer the smart-ass comment. He wiped the back of his hand across his face and stood beside Heck.

  “Ready for the fun part?” Heck asked.

  “Why the hell not? I’ve been beat up, shocked, cuffed, and humiliated today. Why not die in a heap of biological waste?”

  “That’s the spirit!”

  Heck climbed into the chute first and was thankful that it was more of a slide than a shaft. The chute was steep and straight and large enough to accommodate himself and even the large framed Dooly. The shaft smelled horribly and the darkness was somewhat terrifying.

  What a way to find out that you’re mildly claustrophobic, he thought wryly.

  After a few seconds of sliding through the pitch black garbage chute, Heck found himself falling through the air very far above the trash strewn floor. Having served on several protection details for the Prime Minister and other government officials, Heck was very familiar with the layout of Palace Drift. Part of the responsibility of being on those highly esteemed, yet laborious, protection details was the planning phase. Every nook and cranny of the drift had to be mapped. And after it was mapped it was mapped again, and again, and again, by an actual agent, or Marshal, or officer; even the garbage chutes and containment areas had to be mapped and any likely infiltration or escape route had to be watched.

  On Heck’s first detail he’d managed to pull the odious duty of watching this very route, personally. He’d been here before and knew that this chamber was close to the gravity plating control room which was, by its nature, possessed of a much lower gravity field. The effects of the lower gravity spilled over in the surrounding areas and gradually increased the farther away from the control room until Earth gravity was reached.

  So when Heck landed on the piles of refuse and waste, it was in fact a soft landing. Heck quickly rolled to the side and waded through the waist deep piles of refuse as Dooly fell gently behind him. Once they got used to the lower gravity, they were able to vault over the trash piles and minimize their contact with the filth.

  “If they know this is an infiltration route, why ain’t it guarded or watched?”

  “It’s only guarded or watched when VIPs are moving around. And it’s too much trouble to place surveillance sensors down here. Nobody guards the sewer system, or even cares that it’s there until somebody important comes to town.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “Next, we kill the Prime Minister.”

  Dooly tried to speak, but nothing came out. Heck grinned, knocked some trash off Dooly’s head and walked towards a maintenance tunnel.

  “I didn’t come all this way, and go through all of this...crap...to get killed for killing the Prime Freaking Minister!” Dooly said as they entered the tunnel, voices echoing loudly. “What about Uzefski? Ain’t we gonna kidnap him?”

  “Yeah, that too,” said Heck shining the little flashlight he stole from the guard he and Dooly assaulted earlier.

  “How is killing the PM going to help us?”

  “Trust me, Dool!”

  “Yeah, right,” he grumbled. “Your girlfriend’s life is being measured in hours and we’re wandering like rats in the dark in the middle of Palace Drift. And by the way, how the hell are we supposed get out?”

  “I got that covered too.”

  After walking in the dank tunnels for nearly an hour in silence, Heck found the shaft leading up that he was looking for. They climbed up for a long time, far longer than he’d anticipated. His plan had to go off without a hitch. One misstep and the game was over.

  Finally, they reached the end of the shaft and they could see the drift’s artificial daylight peeking through the cracks in the grate.

  “Ok, Dool. Here goes everything.”

  With a tremendous heave the grate slid to the side and bright artificial sunlight greeted them. Dooly and Heck climbed out into the daylight and waited a moment for their eyes to adjust. That’s when Heck realized he was surrounded.

  “The great Marshal Heck Thomas and his sidekick, Stephen William Doolin.”

  “Hey, I’m a Deputy Marshal. I ain’t no sidekick!” Dooly said, indignant. “Jacka-”

  “Easy Dool. This is part of the plan.”

  “This is why I don’t ask you for too much detail about your plans.”

  Heck and Dooly were seated in a gray interrogation room on a hard steel bench, manacled hand and foot. A man in a dark suit sat across a steel table from the lawmen turned outlaws and a cheap light hung from the ceiling. Heck recognized the man as the Chief of the Secret Service, the agency responsible for protecting the Prime Minister and all high level dignitaries.

  “Well,” said Chief Ronald Huber in his Oxford, United Kingdom, accent. “What plan is that?”

  “That would be my plan to kill the Prime Minister.”

  “Heck,” Huber began, exasperated. “I don’t for a minute believe you’re here to kill the PM. Nor do I believe this rubbish that you destroyed CS Marauder, committed murder on Churchill Drift, kidnapped a Moon Police Detective, and joined the Ryevolutzia. It’s rubbish!”

  Heck tilted his head and smiled. He knew Chief Huber from his experience on many protection details and the man was a straight shooter.

  “You wanted to see me, didn’t you?” Chief Huber said quietly.

  “Yes, desperately.”

  “And you didn’t just knock on my door because...?”

  “Everyone in the solar system would know and I wouldn’t make it past the guards at the front door. I’m wanted for all that ‘rubbish’ you just mentioned.”

  “Hey,” interrupted Dooly. “Ain’t we here to get Uzefski?”

  “Something vital to the security of the Commonwealth is happening and you need to warn the PM!”

  “What’s happening?” asked Huber.

  “Your government is compromised. Someone high up wants to cripple your government and they want me, a rogue Marshal, to take the credit. I don’t know why. All I know is that it involves wormhole technology and Dr. Uzefski.”

  “The First Minister of Science?”

  “The same.”

  “Where is Laylara Espinosa?” asked Ron suddenly. It was a typical tactic used by investigators to keep a subject off guard, and to see how truthful they were being. Ron was no slouch, and neither was Heck Thomas, but Heck knew better than to do anything other than play along. Lives were hanging in the balance.

  “She was kidnapped by the Ryevolutzia. Last I saw she was being held onboard some old Socialist Alliance
warship near Alamo Drift.”

  “I’d heard that the Ryevolutzia succeeded in ousting the Gesellschaft from there.”

  “Look. They have the U-999 from Alamo Drift and they need Uzefski to complete the device for them.”

  “So you’re here to kidnap Uzefski?” asked Huber, skeptical.

  “Something like that,” Heck answered evasively.

  “And I’m just supposed to let you waltz out of here with him,” Huber exhaled deeply. “What’s stopping the PM from sending the fleet to the wormhole and destroying Ryevolutzia?”

  “If that happens, you will never get the device and you will never get the traitor that set all of this in motion,” said Heck passionately. “You know me, Ron. You know what a patriot I am. I would never sell out.”

  “Not even for Laylara?” he asked.

  “Not even for her,” he said coldly. “Not even for her.”

  Huber leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands in his lap, thinking.

  “I’m sorry, Heck. Looks like you’re going to prison.”

  Dooly’s jaw dropped. Huber got up to leave.

  “Don’t I get my phone call?” asked Heck, sarcastically.

  Huber paused, then fished something from his pocket and tossed it on the table. “Use my phone.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Heck Thomas marveled at the efficiency of the Secret Service’s detention system. In only thirty minutes he and Dooly were booked, processed, bio-scanned, and on a transport ship bound for an off-drift prison hulk.

  Heck could tell Dooly was seething and he was wondering if the man was planning to murder him. He couldn’t blame Dooly. He’d kept Dooly in the dark and forced him to go along with his wild scheme to save Laylara and the Commonwealth. And the only complaints the man had made were in jest, or half-hearted. Heck promised he would make it up to Dooly by politicking for an academy slot, if he wanted it. A man like Dooly might just be happy to remain a deputy marshal. In a lot of ways, Heck was like that. He never took part in politics and never competed for promotion. Some of his peers passed him by and were soon in a position to give him orders, but that never bothered Heck. He always managed to get around those when it suited him.

  At the risk of a smack on the head from a shock baton, Heck nudged Dooly to wakefulness. He was rewarded with a bloodshot, watery eyeball glaring back at him. Heck had finally exhausted his generous supply of trust with Dooly. He nodded and turned away, letting a sigh of regret escape his lungs. There wasn’t anything he could say that would replace the trust in the eyes of his friend. He had to remain confident that the unspoken communication between he and Chief Huber had been clear and understood.

  He prayed that the unspoken communication that took place over the holophone when he made his ‘one call,’ had been clear and understood as well. Everything hung on that. Laylara’s life, Heck and Dooly’s lives too. A prison hulk was no place for a lawman to be on the wrong side of a set of vertical steel bars. They would likely die there within a day. Doubtless, that’s exactly what Dooly was thinking.

  Mercifully, the prison hulk was only a short ride from Palace Drift today as it made its rounds picking up the condemned; the wait that spelled out the fate of former Marshal Heck Thomas and his partner Deputy Marshal Stephen W. Doolin would be short.

  Very short.

  The transport ship lurched to a sudden halt and the prisoners became restless; Heck and Dooly included. The guards had been merciless with their shock batons every time someone so much as whispered and the prisoners had been subdued to silence. Until now. Even the guards were distracted. The transport ship wasn’t very big. Long and slender, it was more of a shuttle than anything else. In fact, a lot of prison shuttles had once been civilian shuttle busses used to ferry citizens around on a drift, or short distances away from a drift. The seats on this shuttle were in pairs on either side of the cabin with a walkway down the middle; all sixty seats on the shuttle faced forward. Even though he was chained to a metal bar that was welded to the seatback in front of him, Heck strained in his chair to see behind him.

  A guard hustled swiftly past, absorbed in his task and didn’t even strike Heck for his violation of prisoner protocol. Then a loud clunk sounded, followed by another, and yet another. Dooly roused himself from his trance and looked questioningly at Heck who shrugged and smiled innocently. Dooly shook his head and grimaced. “I should have known you’d have another trick up your sleeve,” he whispered.

  “There wasn’t time to tell you. I couldn’t risk tipping anyone off.”

  Dooly nodded, but it was a nod that said, “I understand your reason, but you could have found a way.” Maybe he was right. Maybe Heck was being paranoid, because somewhere deep inside that little warning system that always helped him survive impossible situations, still didn’t entirely trust Stephen William Doolin. And for that, Heck Thomas despised himself. It was that same self-preservation trait that had lost him Chloe and other women before her. And that same trait that would probably cause Laylara to slip free of him and find someone else, if she survived Yulia Kharkov.

  “Grapplers?” asked Dooly. Heck nodded. Any minute now their rescuers would be boarding the shuttle. He only hoped they wouldn’t hurt any of the guards, despite his desire to give them each a little shock baton therapy. They were doing their jobs after all, and their job was one of the toughest in the solar system. In all the years of Heck’s career, he never had to serve as a full-time prison guard. People like Heck caught the bad guys, delivered them to the care of people like these men, and then went about their business. These men were outnumbered every shift they worked, sometimes a thousand to one. And every one of those who outnumbered them were waiting for the chance to stick a shank in their side.

  He genuinely hoped these guys survived. The guards knew what was happening and some were trying to communicate with the shuttle pilots who were necessarily locked in their cockpit. Their comm links weren’t working, and the guards were beginning to panic. Rifles were taken from the lockers and distributed to the guards. Then the power failed and the temperature dropped quickly.

  And Heck noticed something very odd. Dooly was snoring. In fact, so were several other prisoners. Then he was dimly aware of the sound of bodies falling down, presumably guards. As the blackness took him, he wondered if they had all been poisoned. Would he see Laylara again? Was there a Heaven?

  Heck woke up groggy and, once again, with a splitting headache. He had been living on pure adrenaline for most of that day and that had, thankfully, masked much of the pain he was feeling. His ribs hurt badly and so did his sides and his back. His tongue felt like it was too large for his mouth, and made of dry cotton.

  “I’m gettin’ tired of this, Heck,” growled Dooly.

  “Me too,” he said.

  Heck and Dooly were back in their chairs on Sixkiller. Strapped in and drifting in space. He looked at the clock and his pain filled mind registered four hours until his deadline. Whoever had rescued them had flooded the cabin with sleeping gas, respecting Heck’s desire to avoid killing any guards. Presumably, the guards and the other prisoners were waking up about now, to discover only that two of their prisoners were gone. And hopefully, no innocent casualties.

  “Virgil,” said Dooly.

  “Yes. I’m sorry, Dool.” he answered, as he began the flight sequences on Sixkiller’s computers. “I called Virgil from Huber’s holophone. And he came through.”

  “Virgil,” said Dooly again. “Is here.”

  “What? I don’t see him on the scanners.”

  “That’s because you ain’t scanning the inside of your cruiser!” a hand gripped his shoulder warmly. “Well, are we going or what?”

  “Damn, Virgil. You scared the sh-”

  “Come on,” interrupted the crime lord. “You never swore before, why start now?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to protect my investment, Marshal. To be frank, you owe me.”

  “I suppose that’s true,
” said Heck. He was truly amazed at how his entire career had been turned upside down. An outlaw lawman in debt to a very successful crime lord, one whom he had used as an informant on many occasions. Now he has me by the short hairs. “Let’s get on with this.”

  “Boss, we don’t have Uzefski.”

  “No, we don’t have him,” agreed Virgil. “But we have this.” Virgil handed Heck a small holocard. He slipped it into his computer and a holographic data-stream appeared suspended in the air before him.

  “Is that the formula?”

  “That’s the formula,” confirmed the crime lord.

  “What if Kharkov and her gang don’t believe you?” asked Dooly. “They told you to get Uzefski.”

  “He has a point,” offered Virgil. “They might just kill you and Laylara for not complying with their orders.”

  “They were going to do that anyway,” replied Heck. “Uzefski is dead, there’s no way we can comply.”

  “Then why the hell did we go through all of this, Thomas?” demanded Dooly angrily. The day’s events had worn him down, physically and mentally. He wasn’t in much of a mood to think that the physical abuse he’d endured had been for naught.

  “Because I didn’t know it until the meeting with Huber.”

  “Huber never said Uzefski is dead, Heck.”

  “He did, you just didn’t know what to listen for. I’ve known Huber a long time. He didn’t come out and say it, but there’s no reason he wouldn’t have introduced me to Uzefski. With Uzefski dead, there is no other way to prove the fact that Ryevolutzia is working on a potentially working functional wormhole device.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Is it? How did we survive, then?” asked Heck. “Virgil didn’t just happen to stumble on the transport shuttle’s classified route. Huber let me use his holophone so he could make sure whoever came to the rescue was going to do it right and do it his way. Clean.”

  “I wasn’t surprised when I heard from Chief Huber,” said Virgil. “As I said, I’m here to protect my investment.”