Banished Worlds Read online

  “I’m already wishing.”

  The ships docked and the main hatch opened to let more people into our small ship. In walked two armored agents, and a man that looked like he had a worse day than mine. His expression told me of his discomfort. The three piece suit said he did not spend much of his time traveling in transport ships. On the big ships, you almost had to know you were in space to even have the slightest nausea. Three more agents in armor followed the sick guy to the holding cell. The last agent was a woman by the shape of the armor she wore.

  The sick man walked over to Nelson. “Is this the man you thought we needed?”

  Nelson looked to me. “Yes, sir, this is Harold Danbeu. He used to be one of my best people.”

  The man walked over to my cell and looked me up and down. “You don’t look like much. Kind of seen better days haven’t you, agent?” He might not feel good, but if I read him right, he was the kind of jerk that never felt good. That being the case, he would be a jerk to me now and a jerk to me later. Something else I would have to deal with, later.

  “I’m not an agent anymore,” I corrected him, nicely.

  “Why undertake this assignment if you are no longer an agent?”

  “Harry works for pay, he’ll be paid well.” Nelson spoke up fast.

  I guess I was supposed to go along with that, but too bad nobody bothered to inform me. “We’ll discuss payment after I hear about the job.”

  The man turned to Nelson. “You said this was worked out, that Harry Danbeu had agreed to retrieve the President’s daughter.”

  “President’s daughter, huh, The Package,” I said.

  “Yes.” One of the last three guards stepped forward, the sick man that had been talking moved aside for the guard to approach. “We are talking about my daughter, Mr. Danbeu.” This guard handed his rifle to the woman, unhooked his helmet and lifted it off. It was the President himself facing me. “Jane, my daughter Jane, is on Tirus. There was some kind of a mechanical malfunction on her ship. They had to land on Tirus. Your job is to retrieve her and get her to the extraction site.”

  “Is the ship damaged beyond repair? Can’t they just fix it and fly away?” I asked. The group of men outside of the cell all looked around at each other, but no one answered me. “Look, I can’t help, won’t help if I don’t have all of the information. I need everything you know, or think you know.”

  “It might have been sabotaged, Harry,” Nelson said.

  “We don’t know that,” the President snapped.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “We communicated with the ship after the crash. What they found might be sabotage, but it could not be confirmed prior to losing the signal.” This piece of information came from the sick man.

  “It’s a trap. Somebody snatched your daughter, and you want me to get her back and off of Tirus, the prison planet for murderers. No one is allowed to land there.”

  “Yes,” the President replied. “What do you say, Mr. Danbeu? Do we have a deal?”

  “Hell no, we just started talking. I still don’t know why you didn’t just send in five hundred agents and snatch her back. You have the men and they love to shoot people.”

  “That’s complicated.” This remark came again from the sick man.

  “And landing on Tirus, finding her, and getting off again isn’t?” I folded my arms and waited.

  “As you know, if we go down there in force and someone has her, they’ll kill her before we get close.”

  Nelson thumbed the remote in his hand and electrified my cell for a quick second.

  I jumped and cried out in pain.

  “Don’t be dumb here, Harry,” Nelson told me. “This gets you off of Lark, or do you like that prison planet now that you’ve been there for the last eight years?”

  “Tirus is a prison planet too and worse than the one I was on. Lark doesn’t have convicted killers roaming free.”

  “But Harry, do this little job and you’ll be a free man again, back in the network.” Nelson smiled and that scared me more than the remote in his hand.

  “Mr. Danbeu, I will give you a full pardon, if you do this and get her back to me safely.”

  I stepped back from the cell bars and sat down on the bench. “You want me to go there, locate the girl, get her off planet, and for that I am a free man?”

  “Exactly,” the President answered.

  I sat there a minute, watching Nelson, his finger itching to trigger the electrocution remote. I waited and watched until I could see his hand muscles tense up “I want more. I want more than just my freedom. You have the troops to storm the planet and get her back, but you want me. I frankly don’t care why.” I stood up and approached the bars again. “I’ll do this, but I get the Rei Gali Space Station.

  “You’re CRAZY!” Nelson yelled. He raised his voice enough to make me wonder if the armor was too tight.

  “That’s my price—A full pardon AND Rei Gali Space Station.

  “Rei Gali is a commercial company. I don’t have the authority to just give it away,” President Garrett said, staring at me.

  “You are the President of the Federal Union of Worlds, make it happen,” I replied, then looked to Nelson. “And if you touch that control again, my price goes higher, maybe a whole planet.”

  “You realize you are trying to blackmail the President of the Federal Union. I might just drop you in a hole on some deserted planet and forget you are there.”

  “It ain’t my daughter on Tirus. Let me know which ride I am taking.” I walked over to the bench and stretched out.

  The small group of guards and the President watched me a minute more, then the President led them back into his attached ship. The airlock closed behind them. I figured I had a long nap coming, but in this case I was wrong. I had barely closed my eyes to drift off when I heard the door hiss open. A guard approached the cell, pushed a data pad my direction, and waited for me to stand up again. “It’s done. We need your thumb print to finalize the agreement.”

  “Can I read the document first?”

  “I don’t know, can you read?”

  I took the data pad and read the information. “This is a stock transfer. I didn’t want stock.” I handed the pad back, but the guard refused.

  “Yes, it is a stock ownership transfer. President Garrett owns eighty percent of the Rei Gali stock, and he is transferring it to you. You will have partners, other stockholders, but you will have controlling interest, so you will effectively own Rei Gali. Your legal pardons are at the bottom of the page.”

  “He really wants this kid back. Doesn’t he have more, like a lot more? Why is one run away worth this stock deal? He had a lot of kids even before I was sent to prison?”

  “That, Mr. Danbeu, is not my concern. Nor should it be yours if you take this job.” This time the guard reached for the data pad.

  I held onto it long enough for my thumb print to scan into the system and accept the transfer, pardons, and rescue mission. “Okay, I’m in, so open up.”

  “My orders are to release you once we are ready to insert your team.”

  “Team, wait a minute, what team? I haven’t picked a team.”

  “Agent Nelson picked them. All are accomplished agents, so they are trained and prepared for this.”

  “Prepared for this, but you still need me, huh? One of us is wrong and they just paid me a space station not to be. Who’s on my team? And when do I meet them?”

  “You already have. I guess you’ve already eliminated one member, an Agent named MoCco, but I hear you two didn’t get along much anyway. His friends aren’t happy either. You have a good rest now.” The guard stepped away from my cell.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  “I’m sure I don’t know. They did, after all, pay you a space station to deal with this problem. You must have a plan.” He turned and left, closing the air-lock behind him.

  I went back to my bench and laid down. I was not tired, but in the little cell there just was not
that much to do. After an hour or so, the air-lock hissed open again and in came another agent. My visitor waved a remote at the cell door lock and pulled it open.

  “It’s time for you to come with me.” The female agent still had her helmet set to opaque mode, just that shiny black face shield.

  A quick glance at the power unit controls, on her left wrist, told me she still had the power setting on full. It made me wonder if she thought I might try to attack her and escape or some silly shit thing like that. “So have you been at this kind of work long?”

  “Long enough. I am to escort you to the agents facilities where you will shower and get fresh clothes. We will then proceed to the mess hall for chow. Any questions before we start?”

  I smiled at the black face shield. “Are you going to scrub my back?”

  “I will not, but I am required to maintain visual contact with you at all times. It’s procedure with criminals.” She waved me toward the hatch to the other ship.

  “Oh, well, that explains the fully powered armor. You must not have gotten the memo, I’m innocent, ask your President.”

  “Pardoned is not innocent. I don’t confuse the two, you might not want to either. You were convicted of stealing government property. There was the conspiracy to steal an omega class vessel. There were bribery charges and also ten counts of assault and intimidation through threat to assault.” The agent read off my charges that fast. Either before the start of the mission she had been briefed, or she had studied my case for some reason.

  “You’re a fan. I didn’t know I had any.”

  We entered the other ship. The transport jump ship door cycled closed. She pointed up the corridor in the direction we were to go. Our ship had the clean white corridors of the agent fleet ship.

  “So, why have you been studying me?”

  My escort remained silent ignoring my questions.

  “Come on, we can talk until I go on this mission. Maybe something will happen that you can read about.”

  We reached the double set of doors that read Agents Station One; it was the quarters of the President’s personal guard. We stopped, or more accurately my escort stopped.

  “I am not studying you. Your record is part of this mission. It was in our briefing, and I am the mission retrieval expert. If anything interesting happens on this mission, I won’t have to read about it.”

  “Wait a minute, you’re going on this mission?” I took a step further away from her and studied the opaque helmet face shield.

  “Yes.”

  “Take off the headgear,” I ordered.

  “Why?” her voice sounded just a little confused and I heard a touch of raised temper.

  “If you’re on my team, I need to know what you look like. That goes for all of the agents that are going.”

  “Later, but for now get to the shower, get something to eat, and be ready to go when they decide it is time to insert the team.”

  “Get me Nelson right now, or I’ll jerk that helmet right off of you.” My temper flared a little. I was very tired of people, agents especially, bossing me around.

  She was fast and accurate. The female agent hit me in the gut, and I hit the deck on my knees. She grabbed me by the right shoulder and jerked me to my feet. “Shower and food, then you can speak to Agent Nelson.” She started back up the corridor with me in tow.

  I could breathe by the time she tossed me, clothes and all, into the shower. My escort did her job and watched without moving a muscle, or speaking to me the entire time as I showered. I tried to stretch the pain out of my right shoulder and back, in the hot water. The pain was not horrible, but it definitely affected my motion and temper. The shower, however, helped with the motion. I dried off and got dressed in fresh clothes. My old stuff was tossed into the trash recycler. I didn’t even get a minute to get my belonging out of my pockets before my old clothes were destroyed. I was informed that I would not be able to take them to the planet with me anyway.

  My escort, hands off, guided me to the mess hall. It happened to be empty, other than two cooks. After serving me, they too left. I did not ask if it was by design that we were alone, or if it just happened to be that way. I walked over to a table and sat down. It was a long table, but narrow. My escort stood a few feet away.

  “Look, I’m not going to hold it against you that you tried to break my shoulder. Nelson trained you, and I know how he is. I was trained by him too. Sit down, we’ll start again. You can even tell me your name.”

  “I’m fine with how we started. Eat, and I will show you to Agent Nelson.”

  “Sit down, tell me your name, have a bite to eat,” I offered with a smile. “I promise not to make you use your armor on me again. Surely, you can sit.” I picked up my knife and fork and started cutting my steak. “This is the first syn steak I’ve had in eight years. The only meat on a prison planet is from real cattle, pigs and chickens. They’re all bloody and gamy tasting, but people love’em, let’s say they prefer them.” I took a bit of my food and chewed, enjoying the rich flavor of the synthetic meat fiber. “Not me though. Give me a good syn steak any day of the week.” I looked up at my escort, held up a piece of steak, and motioned her to sit down. “I promise not to bite you. You don’t even have to tell me your name yet, we’ll just talk.”

  Slowly, she moved to the table and sat down across from me. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  I chewed another bite of my food, and swallowed. “Energy,” I said and pushed my plate off to one side. I glanced off to one side of the room.

  “What?” she asked looking from me to my plate. I could tell from the tilt of her helmet that direction.

  I was ready for her this time and grabbed her left wrist just long enough to slip the fork into the control pad that powered the armor. One minute she had full power to the armor, the next it was just so much heavy clothing. I dragged her across the table and smashed her helmet-protected head down hard several times. It stunned her. I was very tired of armored agents having the upper hand and my escort gave me an opening. I unsnapped the latches of the helmet and pulled it off, then pressed her unprotected throat against the hard edge of the table with my weight on her head and back. “You move, and I break your damn neck, clear?”

  “Yes.” She struggled, but not enough to try to get free.

  “Good. Now, what is your name, Agent? And make it fast.”

  “Roberts, Agent Roberts.” She coughed from the pressure I held on her throat.

  “Good, don’t make me ask you anything twice when we get on the planet, or this will have been the best part of our relationship, clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “What? What was that, Agent Roberts?” I pushed down just a little harder.

  “Yes, sir, Agent Danbeu.”

  “God, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone call me that. Thank you for your cooperation.” I leaned back, pulled my fork out of the control circuit, and let Roberts go.

  She jumped back the instant I released her, stabbing at the reset to the control pad.

  I watched her as I pulled my steak back over in front of me. “Half an hour and it will reset. You will have full power again and be able to again kick my backside.”

  “You two don’t have that much time.” Nelson stood in the doorway to the mess hall.

  I had seen him out of the corner of my eye when I was holding Roberts pinned to the table. She could not have seen him from her position, and he did not stop me which made me very curious. “Can I finish my steak?” I asked and got a positive nod from Nelson. I picked up Roberts helmet and held it out toward her. “You dropped this.”

  She snatched it away from me, but did not put it on. With the armor powered down, it was only a heavy, shiny hat. Roberts turned to Nelson. “I’m sorry, sir, I let him get a hand up on me. I didn’t know there was a design flaw in the power unit control pad. It won’t happen again.”

  “Forget it. Remember what I told you, all of you, Harry is a very bright boy, so be careful
next time. Go join the others and I’ll bring Harry along when he is done.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roberts replied. She shot me a quick, unreadable look as she exited.

  “She’s a kid, Nelson, what the hell is she doing out here, and on a mission to Tirus of all places?”

  Nelson walked over to me and sat down. “Twenty-two, God, she’s just twenty-two and so damn bright, Harry. A real brain in that rock hard head of hers.”

  “A real cute head too,” I said and continued eating.

  “You keep your mind on the mission, not on what Agent Roberts looks like. Just don’t talk to her if you don’t have too. You’ll need her and that brain when you’re leading this mission dirt side. Don’t bounce it on anymore tables, got it?”

  “What, you’re not going?”

  “Too many people in charge then, you know that. One boss, lots of soldiers.”

  “So I’ll be in command, do your other agents know that? They know the clear chain of command?”

  “I’ve told them and will tell them again before we drop you.”

  “Land,” I corrected him.

  Nelson shook his head. “Prisoner drop is your way in. After you hit the dirt, it’s all up to you to find the girl and Roberts has your egress instruction. You’ve been on Lark, you know the culture of a prison world. None of them have that, and that’s why you’re here. That’s the only reason you’re here. The rest of the team is all backup, muscle if you need it. Except for Roberts and Price, they are brains, agents yes, but not the muscle type. They’ll listen to you, but don’t push it.”

  “Great, this day just keeps getting better. Why didn’t you mention that before I beat her head on the table?”

  “Like you said, she’s young and has to learn not to trust men like you.”

  I took another bite of my steak. “Like us, Nelson, men like us. After all I learned my nastier manners from you.”

  “Finish up, we have a short briefing, then you’re away.” Nelson leaned back in his chair to wait for me.

  ***

  On our walk, deeper into the body of the President’s ship, a raised voice caught our attention. We followed it to the source.