Kate's Run
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: You know the drill. Rating: K. Time: See below.
Author's note: While I've enjoyed writing about the adventures of mercenary officer Rick Castle and his platoon of Tarkai scouts, I have noticed a distinct lack of long-legged, chestnut haired, hazel eyed beauties. This story and perhaps more will correct that. This story focuses on Kate Beckett at about the same time as my story, Castle's Platoon.
There is a certain technique to bribery. If the bribe is too small, the bribee may feel insulted and want more. At best, this can lead to lost time and money and at worst…Well, the very worst can happen. On the other hand, if the bribe is too large, the bribee may feel that the briber has more money than sense and want more. This can also lead to many complications. Perhaps fatal complications.
Kate Beckett looked down the dimly lit hallway at the passport control desk of the little used Sea of Clouds Spaceport on Luna. There was a man on duty. Kate took a few steps closer and saw his shabby, ill-fitting uniform and the brassard with the letters SP on it. The Special Police. That meant he was some politicians bully boy who'd been given a job that was really better done by a machine so he wouldn't have to beg in the streets. He raised his left hand and Kate saw he was missing two fingers, and the others were mangled. She put a fifty-dollar bill in her passport and checked the passport. Her chestnut hair had been dyed a deep, chocolate brown and the little makeup she wore tended to make her look older than she was. She walked forward, followed by her suitcase.
"Passport." The man demanded.
Kate handed it over. In spite of his bad hand, the fifty-dollar bill disappeared quickly. He passed the passport across the reader and was rewarded with a green light. He hadn't bothered looking at her face. She walked to the entrance of the ship that would take her away from Earth.
Once inside, she turned to see how her companion would do.
Alexis Harper had had her orange hair dyed black and her light blue eyes were covered by brown contact lenses. She wore revealing blue dress and staggered slightly.
"Passport?" The man said, looking at her.
She dropped the passport on his desk. Inside was a twenty-dollar bill, a five, and three ones, all crumpled and wrinkled.
"Say, colonel, would you like to have some fun? Just you and me? I have some joy sticks and I can see a place where we can get…"
"Can't you see I'm on duty, you stupid bitch." He snarled. "The last thing I need is some J-head hanging around." He swiped the passport across the reader. "Get lost, bitch."
Alexis staggered to the entrance of the ship with her suitcase wobbling behind her.
Once inside she walked to Kate.
"I have to get these damned contacts off. I can hardly see."
Kate grabbed her arm.
"Quiet. We have company."
At the end of the ship's passageway was another human passenger. Kate had had trouble deciding if their fellow passenger was male or female, but she decided that even though she was quite skinny, she did have some very small breasts. Her blonde hair was shaved on the sides and back and was about six inches long on top, combed back. She wore a teal tee shirt and over that were two gun-belts, each holding a heavy military issue pistol and ammo clips. Kate worried about that, but then again, both she and Alexis had the same model pistols. The woman had on very tight black pants and heavy ankle boots. She ignored Kate and Alexis.
The door at the far end of the passageway opened and a member of the crew emerged. He resembled nothing so much as a six-foot tall chipmunk, dressed in a garish blue and red kimono with a bright green sash tied around his waist. On his feet were straw sandals. Kate knew that the color of the sash and the way it was tied would tell something about the status of the crewman. She had no idea what it meant in this case.
"Most sincere and felicitous welcoming from the entire crew of the Fabulous Argosy of Pleasure and Delight. I am exceptionally pleased to be your host for this wonderful journey. I am Helpful Assistant Bedrutal Kinslovik. But first, I must get a small and hopefully not inconvenient bit of business taken care of. Could you please place any and all weapons you may have on the small, exquisitely designed vehicle now approaching you."
A small vehicle stopped in front of the blonde.
"You know, my weapons are kind of like family to me. They'd really hate to be separated from me."
Kate heard a series of clicks and found that a dozen gun barrels were now pointing at them from the wall of the passageway. The blonde smiled.
"Of course, sometimes families must be separated."
She put both gun belts on the vehicle. Kate saw that she had a large vibro-knife on the back of one gun-belt. She removed another smaller pistol from the left boot and some kind of bladed multi tool from the other boot.
"And if I might so politely remind you to remove the weapon around your neck?"
She pulled a necklace with an oval pendant off and added it to the pile.
The little cart came to Kate, and she took off her gun-belt and added a gun in an ankle holster and one in the small of her back. She also had her own vibro-knife. After a seconds' thought, she added the square of silk with a large golden coin sewn into one corner.
Alexis added her weapons to the cart.
"Excellent. I am so thrilled that we will be starting our wondrous journey on such friendly terms." Kinslovik said. "Follow me to your commodious stateroom."
The stateroom wasn't much. All three of them shared the stateroom. There were four beds and a very small bath cubicle.
Kate turned to their new roommate.
"Hi, my name is Jennifer Donnelly. I'm going…"
"Bullshit." Said the blonde with a laugh. "You're Kate Beckett and that makes your friend Alexis Harper."
Kate looked over at Alexis, trying to figure out how they could best take this woman down.
"Don't be ridiculous." The blonde said. "If I had any intention of turning you in, I'd have just slipped off to the bozo outside and told him he'd let a hundred and fifty thousand dollars walk past him. I'm only worth twenty thousand, but that's enough to get the police to forget about any help I may have been and send me off to a good, long fatal beating. Check wanted lists under the name Tilla Andrews."
Kate pulled out her pad and began looking at the government wanted list.
"What's taking you so long?" The blonde asked.
"The computer keeps track of who looks at wanted lists in the hope that some idiot will look himself, or herself, up. I'm checking the lists like a private enforcer looking for a payday. Ah, here you are. Assault and battery on one James Fulham, jr., Edward Baines and Franklin Osborne." It took a second, but the first name finally rang a bell. "James Fulham, jr. would be the son of Senator James Fulham?"
The blonde nodded and smiled.
"Yeah. I play cards." She pulled out a deck of cards. "Fulham thought of himself as a real bigshot gambler. I took him for a bit over five thousand. He had been drinking and said I'd cheated, and he'd teach me a lesson. Luckily for me, he didn't have any of his daddy's goons with him, just a couple of dumb buddies. The two grabbed me and Fulham got ready to hit me. The three weren't as good at fighting as I am. Fulham got two black eyes, a busted nose, a couple of teeth knocked out and some cracked ribs. His pals got about the same."
Senator Fulham was well known as being for sale. The US Senate was divided into those who supported the Triple Alliance between the US, Russia and China to run Earth and its nearest and wealthiest colonies, the so-called Core and the Nationalists who wanted Earth and all of human space to be run by Americans. The Chinese and the Russians had their own nationalists. As someone who could vote either way, Fulham had become very rich and very powerful. Given that politics was really a blood sport now, Kate had little doubt that Tilla would face a long and painful death.
Kate had been a member of the US Constabulary and was part of the protection detail for Senator Daley, a passionate supporter of the Alliance. They'd had intelligence that Senator William Bracken, a leader of the Nationalists, intended to have Daley assassinated. Daley couldn't believe that a fellow senator would assassinate him and refused the extra protection his protective detail had urged. It cost him his life. During the assassination, Kate had killed one of the attackers. The dead man turned out to be a nephew of Bracken's. Kate's boss, Colonel Roy Montgomery, had given Kate some money, several false passports and a ticket away from Earth. He told her to run and keep running. Montgomery should have taken his own advice. He and the rest of the protective detail were killed.
"I know about you, Beckett, but I'm not sure why Harper is with you?"
Alexis grinned.
"It's because Senator Daley was my dad. His marriage was political. Both families had a great passion for the Alliance, but dad and his wife had no passion for each other. After the birth of some obligatory children, Dad started looking around. He found my mom and they had me. He never acknowledged me, but he made sure I was taken care of. I did some volunteer work for him, and I would have graduated from college in another year. Bracken knew who I was, and Bracken is one of those people who's never quite sure if he's killed enough of his enemies. I decided to go with Kate. I had money and a contact gave me some phony IDs. And here I am. So, how did you happen to end up on a ship run by a bunch of oversized squirrels?"
"I don't have that much money. The Zond'hai are from someplace out past the Europa Cluster. They had about figured out that an FTL drive was possible when humans showed up. They bought a few human made ships, but they were expensive. They started building their own ships. They're real low tech compared to what we build, but they can afford them. This one was taking supplies to the Zond'hai embassy on Earth. They usually don't have any passengers or cargo to take back home, so they were happy to earn a few dollars from me."
"What do you know about the place we're headed for?" Kate asked.
"Not much. We'll be landing at a low-tech colony, New Windsor. There's another wealthy colony on the same planet, but it's on another continent. How'd you two pick this ship?"
"No one pays too much attention to non-human ships and this one is so slow it'll be a month and a half before we get to New Windsor. Bracken's people will figure we'll take the fastest ship we can and in a months' time, they'll be looking a hundred light years further out. At least that's what we hope."
The blonde smiled.
"I hope so too. So, you're Jennifer Donnelly, I'm Nancy Allan, and who are you?" She pointed to Alexis.
"I'm Charity Springer. A good girl gone bad."
There was a knock on the door and another crewman came in. This one was dressed in a very bright orange and green kimono, sandals and a blue sash around his waist.
"It is my pleasure to inform you that we have departed and before we enter FTL, we shall be feeding you a most scrumptious meal. If you will be so kind as to follow me?"
They did and sat down at a long table occupied by other Zond'hai. They looked at the food before them.
"This is going to be a very long trip." Alexis said.
TBC