Lagrangian Smuggler

Part 12

Jack's hands still shook as he navigated the darkened walkways of the Junker. It was the night cycle, and the crew were mostly asleep—a luxury now withheld from Jack. The shocking behavior of his brother had made him question his own sanity until the pieces had begun to connect. He thought he knew Theodore, and such an outburst could never have been provoked by the insult Staffer had given. It could only mean one thing—his brother was at risk of losing control of the cartel.

But what Staffer had said had not been meaningless, and as he reflected on the moment, Jack felt another flash of suspicion ignite in his mind. He had spent the nights since their departure from Raisa roaming the freighter's corridors, checking the cargo holds. He didn't know what he would find, but he knew that he had to make sure, if only to satisfy the desperate curiosity that kept him from sleep.

Hold eight was the last place he hadn't checked. When he entered, he saw what he expected to see—nothing. He flashed his light over the high walls and attachment struts and began to feel the strange sensation that something he couldn't see was missing. He stared for some time, trying to understand the instinctive warning. When it finally came, he felt the cold pit of despair open below him. The cargo hold was too small.

Hidden compartments were an old trick for smugglers but had fallen out of fashion in the space age. Most ship scanners were perfectly capable of mapping a vessel's superstructure and all of its interior voids. The best solutions were old tricks; outrunning patrols, paying off or intimidating customs agents, or arranging more amenable ports of call through the vast web of connections that lay beneath the surface of the Helvetic League.

The only conceivable reason to use a false compartment, Jack concluded as nausea began to unbalance him, was to hide something from your own crew. Something that would pass as the most conspiratorial of rumors through an organization. Never spoken or acknowledged—only hinted at until the level-headed dismissed the talk as absurd at best and dangerous at worst. Something that—if proven to be true—would cause an entire room of dangerous men to turn with hatred against a once trusted leader.

Jack poked at the wall for a loose panel. He found the slightly raised lip of a pressure plate and pushed against it, stepping back as part of the wall swung loosely aside. He crawled through into a cramped space—obviously not too large, or the crew would have noticed it.

The light played over a box of handcuffs and a few dirty blankets. He wanted to weep and rage, smash his fists against the wall, or take a gun, run to Theodore's quarters and get it over with. Once he had exhausted his emotions, he took ahold of himself, replacing the panel and returning to his bunk. A molten, lead weight sank into his stomach as he lay down, and he resolved that no matter what it cost him—no matter how the job worked out—there would be a final reckoning.

The mood on the bridge was somber as the vessel approached the end of its journey. Jack entered and took his usual seat near the edge of the compartment, from where he could observe the pilot's console.

He met Theodore's eyes and smiled the empty smile. It was an easy act, since Jack had long ago learned how to silence the parts of his brain that he couldn't dare listen to.

They were all nervous, because the planet Xīn lù occupied a well-protected system, and they would have to dive in as close to the sun as they dared to lose any patrol ships that might chase them. It was a maneuver that required the utmost care in calculation and execution, and the slightest mistake would result in their deaths. Fortunately, they had one of the more experienced and talented pilots in Rashid.

"Three Osprey class interceptors ahead of us." The older man announced, as they watched the distant ball of plasma grow to the size of an orange in the tinted-view screen. He suggested a few course adjustments to the helmsman, who manipulated the ship's maneuvering thrusters. They were flying inverted, engines firing against the direction of travel to shed trans-light velocity as they followed a ballistic path that curved around the star's gravity well. Should the need arise, they would slow down to the speed of an asteroid, allowing the immense stellar mass to drag them closer into its incandescent atmosphere as they flew past in the slingshot maneuver.