Salvage
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I'd love to salvage Castle, but it's gone. Rating: K Time: The future, after my story Shipwreck.
He trudged through the lowest levels of the city, past piles of trash and stinking puddles of effluvium. He kept his head down and his shoulders were slumped. He wore the faded and patched red ankle length coat and hood of a Nabari Penitent. Even the beggars moved away from him. No one knew exactly what the Nabari did with their Penitents, nor how exactly one became a Penitent, but everyone knew that only those who had committed the most evil actions ended up as a Penitent.
He entered the cheapest food stall and bought the cheapest bowl of noodles. He knew better than to try to sit at one of the hard wooden benches and ate his meager bowl of noodles while standing. He left through the back door and walked slowly to the nearest grav shaft to go to the upper levels of the city.
Oddly, no Nebari Penitent got off of the grav shaft, but a tall man wearing the short black cape and black suit favored by tradesmen did get off. He stood on the grav train platform with others dressed as he was. He could have been the owner of a stall in the marketplace, or an employee of a small-time trader, or even an apprentice for some master craftsman. He was none of these.
To the north he could see heavy blaster fire. From what he knew of the political geography of the city, he thought that the Consolidationists were fighting with the Blue Regiment of the Militia. All of his fellows on the platform were careful not to notice the battle, or comment on it.
A smaller firefight was taking place to the southeast. More than a dozen factions were fighting for control there. He assumed that the authorities wouldn't get involved but would let them kill each other.
There was a bright flash of light followed by a long, low rumble to the west.
"My niece lives in that area." Said someone near him. "Someone should do something. That could have been a bomb."
He suddenly realized that what he said might be construed as a criticism of the authorities, and quicky spoke again.
"I mean, I know they're doing everything possible. Our dear Governor does so much for us. May the gods bless him."
No one seemed to have reported the man to the authorities as the grav train arrived and everyone piled onto the already busy cars. The tall man found a stanchion to lean on while he rode.
Four stops later, he got off and went down the nearest grav shaft, not all the way to the lowest levels of the city, but fairly far down.
Once again, no black clad tradesman got off the grav shaft, but rather a tall man wearing the green and gold livery of a Palace servant. He was watched by a pair of thieves, but seeing that his livery was shabby, they decided that he probably didn't have enough coin on him to be worth robbing. Besides, they were too close to the Palace to take chances.
The servant walked to the end of the street where a small van from the Palace was waiting. The side door opened, and the man got in. Unusually, there were no other servants in the van, which made the trip rather wasteful for the expense conscious Palace accountants. Equally unusually, the side and back windows of the van were blocked and there was a curtain between the passenger and the driver.
The van pulled up to a small gate at the palace and the man got out. He was greeted by a much better dressed servant who escorted him up several grav shafts until they got to a room in the administrative area of the Palace. The servant opened a door and indicated that the man should go through.
A richly dressed man sat at a single table, flanked by two large and heavily armed bodyguards. He gestured for the tall man to sit.
"Welcome, Mr. Castle. I do believe that you can make me more powerful and that I can make you wealthy."
Castle smiled.
"Nothing would make me happier, Your Excellency."
An hour later the doors to the Guards' Barracks opened and fifty-three green clad Guardsmen walked out, intent of sampling the many pleasures of the city. They walked down a narrow alley and if anyone noticed that only fifty-two Guardsmen exited the alley, they said nothing.
After a few minutes, a tall man left the alley. He wore the standard coverall and stout leather jacket of a spacer. As off world spacers were a somewhat privileged class on the planet, he wore a well-used blaster in a holster on his right hip. A native civilian of the planet carrying such a weapon openly would have been arrested at once.
He hailed a taxi and directed the vehicle to go to the spaceport. The vehicle stopped a half a kilometer from the entrance to the spaceport. The spaceport was run by the off-world merchants who provided a great deal of the planetary government's income and their laws applied there, not the laws of the rest of the planet. Accordingly, arbitrary arrest, extra-judicial punishment, confiscatory taxes and other such unpleasant things were unknown inside the spaceport. Citizens of the planet who had enough money spent as much time as they could at the spaceport. Many of the wealthiest lived there.
As always, there was a great crowd trying to enter the spaceport. The tall man exited the taxi and walked to the pedestrian entrance. A mercenary solder who resembled a very large but bipedal frog scanned his face and documents and indicated he should hand over his blaster. He did so and got a receipt. He would retrieve his weapon when he left the spaceport.
He walked down the street to a small hotel that catered to transients. He rode a grav shaft to his floor and went into his room.
"Well?" Said Kate Beckett. "Do we have a mission?"
"Of course, we do." He replied.
"Tell us all about it." She said, kissing him, and then opening a beer for him. He sat at the only table in the room and looked at the other members of team he'd gathered for this one.
To his immediate left was Fenton O'Connell. He was sure he'd worked with him a dozen years before when he used a different name, but O'Connell had checked out as reliable and well trained. He didn't really care what name his team members used.
Next to O'Connell was Javier Esposito. He had a history going back nearly a century. Given how healthy he now looked, he must have spent a fortune, a large fortune, on rehabbing his body. That meant he could have retired years ago, and Castle decided he was an adrenaline junkie who couldn't live except on the very edge of death.
Next was Ann Hastings. Fairly young, blonde and attractive. According to her records, very competent and ruthless. She had made it clear she had no use for men but hadn't seemed interested in any of the women in the spaceport whose affections could be purchased for a time.
Next was LT, no other name as far as Castle could tell. He came well recommended by a number of sources Castle trusted implicitly. LT said little, which was fine with Castle.
Last was Kate Beckett, a former engineering officer on a starship. They had met when the passenger liner he had been on had blown up over three years before. She was in charge of the lifeboat he was on. She was the only surviving engineering officer of the ship and the company had fired her as they reasoned that something must have gone wrong in engineering since starships simply did not blow up. What had started as a business partnership had evolved into a romantic partnership.
He smiled at his team.
"We're going to do a salvage job for His Excellency, Governor-General Singh of Dorvan."
"A salvage job? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" O'Connell asked, but with a smile.
"It's no secret that Governor-General Singh is having trouble holding this planet for the Saffavid Empire."
Esposito laughed.
"He's lost half of the city and could lose it all. There's not much to this planet but Dorvan Prime.
"So, he needs help, not that a handful of off planet mercenaries like us will add much. So, he asked Mohamet, the Saffavid Emperor for help. The Emperor agreed, after all, this planet is a nexus for trade routes from the Terran Federation, the Consortium of Tralk, the Confederation of Woosenhoes, the Principality of Ganjeen and a dozen lesser powers. The Emperor makes an awful lot of money from taxes from Dorvan and Singh makes a good bit as well. The Emperor sent an Imperial Rescript allowing Singh to divert some of the cash flow from the spaceport to his own coffers so he can hire mercenaries, assassins, and whoever, plus the various Imperial intelligence services will help out as well. Mohamet sent the Rescript on a warship, a monitor. That's about the size of a destroyer, but more heavily armed and armored, but very slow. The monitor crash landed on a planet called Tallin. The captain got off a message torpedo and said he'd send another one when they got down. So far Singh has heard nothing. He wants us to go after the Rescript."
"Why not just ask the Emperor to send him another one?" Hastings asked.
"Because like all smart tyrants, Emperor Mohamet is one paranoid son of a bitch. If Singh gets ahold of two Imperial Rescripts, he can use one to cement his hold on Dorvan and later, he can use the other one to gather troops and try to make himself Emperor. That's how Mohamet became Emperor. He killed the previous Emperor, his whole family and his supporters back when he himself was just a planetary Governor-General."
"What's this Tallin like?" Esposito asked.
"It's hellhole. The place is half jungle and half swamp, hot as hell, and loaded with lethal critters. Worse, up until a dozen standard years ago it was the base for all manner of pirates, slavers, smugglers, raiders and other ne'er do wells for the whole sector. The Terran merchant princes got tired of them and told the Emperor in no uncertain terms to clean them out. The Emperor duly sent a task force who shot up the planet. No ships got off the planet, but probably a lot of people on the ground survived. After a dozen years in that hellhole there are probably a lot less of them alive and they'll be short of weapons and ammo since they didn't keep much on hand anyway. Just to be sure, the Imperial task force put a minefield in orbit around the planet. We have the code to tell the mines we're friendly and can land and take off."
"Why doesn't Singh send his own people?" LT asked.
"Because like all good tyrants, he's one paranoid son of a bitch. I'm sure he has his three secret police forces keeping an eye on his generals. The secret police forces keep an eye on each other of course and the Imperial Intelligence services keep an eye on Singh, his military, his secret police and the other Imperials."
"Singh has three separate armies. There's the Guard Corps, the regular army and the Militia, which is not a militia in the traditional sense, but more soldiers. He also has police and internal security troops. And every one of them reports directly to him. But, if he sent say, a team from the Guards Corps, one of the Guard Generals might just intercept the team on the way back and grab the Rescript. Then he'd make himself Governor-General."
"He thinks a group of mercenaries is more trustworthy?" O'Connell asked with a laugh.
TBC