The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

Earth. Why be tied to the old homeworld, with its climate-ravaged deserts, cities swallowed by rising oceans, and populations grown fractured by old animosities that, somehow, hadn't carried over to the new worlds? It was all so… profitable, honestly, for a smuggler like himself.

For this mission, at least, he and Yiorgos had to suffer through an entire flight from Earth to Nüwa – three Earth days and five hundred light years of stifling uniformity and perfection – onboard the United Worlds destroyer, Excellentia.

Then he reminded himself again of the money he and Yiorgos were earning. Seven-hundred thousand UW chits! Added to their savings, it was enough to purchase a gleaming new interstellar corsair or corvette from the shipyards on Rockmir.

The thought brought him back around to his last ship. Technically a clipper originally built in the Mars shipyards, the Brilliant had been everything the Excellentia wasn't. Utilitarian. Efficient. He didn't give a shit about Feng Shui. Parts inside and outside of her had been cobbled together from half a dozen other ships from as many solar systems, each part making it deadlier, faster, or better-defended. Outside were plasma jet engines and expanded gravwell panels, railguns, and a ten-petawatt laser cannon. A pair of Argolan mini-missile arrays had festooned the surface. And inside, the smells of ionized plasma and the sweat of years of tense situations mixed with the exotic scents of distant planets. Yes. And a crew of four besides him and Yiorgos, plus or minus the occasional adventurer. No chimes or schedules or fucking fake scenery on the screens. The crew could be themselves. Laughing, drinking, cussing, and gambling. Every centimeter of the ship served an important purpose without some decorative effect added to it. And the Brilliant was so fast, he could pick up an illicit load and transport it halfway to the other side of the quadrant before any UW ship or planetary militia could figure out it was missing.

But that dream had ended too soon. When the Pleiades Syndicate had found the Brilliant near Rorgos, and Dirken had refused to give them a share of his cargo of illegal Rigellian cloner modules, the resulting firefight didn't quite go his way. They crash-landed her on Rorgos. Two dead right away. Another two died during the five months of being stranded on that fiery planet, dodging lava flows and surviving earthquakes, until they had finally been rescued. Since then, there had been odd jobs as security to anyone willing to pay, trading legitimate commodities, and the occasional smuggling of illicit goods. He and Yiorgos led a vagabond life.

But this job! This took the cake.

"What are you thinking about?" Yiorgos asked, looking over at him with one human eye and one mechanical one. The human eye blinked; the mechanical one didn't. It used to unsettle him a little when that happened.

Dirken cleared his throat and looked away. "Who says I'm thinking about anything?"

"You're doing that thing again," he said. "Moving your mouth as you soundlessly talk to yourself. Eyes glazed over." He looked down to Dirken's hip. "Hand on your blaster."

Dirken chuckled and took his hand off his weapon, a Gree-tech singlehanded pulse emitter with duel fusion batteries. It was outlawed on the UW worlds — not because the blast was strong enough to blow a hole through eight-centimeter carbon-inconel plates with its plasma pulses, but because the fusion batteries were unstable and potentially explosive. Yet for the right service, such as running a load of unregistered uranium ore from the outer mining colonies, the Gree were still willing to trade for a few blasters.

"This job," Dirken said, flashing a confident smile. "Look at us. All we have to do is sit here and guard that safebox. Then we go buy a new ship!"

Yiorgos huffed. "We would have had enough by now if you hadn't screwed up the weapons deal with the Free Sisters of Luhman 16, Dirk. Couldn't keep your dick in your pants, could you?"

Dirken tensed his brow. "Well how the hell was I to know the Queen's daughter was still underage… at 86?"

Yiorgos threw out his hand, the mechanical wrist interface whirring as he did so. "She didn't have her fifth neck-tentacle! Everyone knows Luhmanians don't reach adulthood until they grow the fifth one."

Dirken rolled his eyes. "Stupid star system, anyhow. I'd question the sanity of any species that wants to live in orbit around a brown dwarf. That fucking star wreaked havoc on our magnetic systems."

Yiorgos just shook his head and leaned back on his cot.

In addition to what they earned on this gig, there were people who still owed them plenty. Fellow smuggler, 'TakTrak, for instance. That birdbrain owes me ten thousand UW chits, Dirken thought.

They were in a small storage room just off the bridge, not even the normal berth that would be given to the crew, much less passengers. Could be worse, Dirken thought. They could have shoved us in the corner of a cargo hold like on that freighter for the last Rigel job. It was obvious that the Captain wanted to keep a close eye on them and the safebox.

He looked again at the safe and wondered for the millionth time what was in it. For gigs like this one, the best course of action was not to ask, and it was clear at the outset that he wasn't going to get an answer if he did. They were due to arrive at Nüwa in just a day, deliver the safebox, and be on their way. Easy money.

But a niggling doubt kept scratching at the back of his mind. Maybe too easy.

CHAPTER TWO

GRAVJUMP SIX

The ship's intercom chimed for shift change, then the First Mate's gravelly voice piped through. "All crew, prepare for Gravjump Six." This would be the sixth of eight jumps that it would take to get to Nüwa, with periods of slower-than-light flight between each jump point.

Yiorgos cupped his hands in his lap, then a small projector in his cheek implant sprung